182 MENDELISM chap. 



mathematical zygote will thereby increase the mathe- 

 matical propensities of the gametes which live within 

 him. For the gamete recks little of quaternions. It is 

 true that there is progress of a kind in the world, and 

 that this progress is largely due to improvements in 

 education and hygiene. The people of to-day are better 

 fitted to cope with their material surroundings than were 

 the people of even a few thousand years ago. And as 

 time goes on they are able more and more to control the 

 workings of the world around them. But there is no rea- 

 son for supposing that this is because the effects of educa- 

 tion are inherited. Man stores knowledge as a bee stores 

 honey or a squirrel stores nuts. With man, however, the 

 hoard is of a more lasting nature. Each generation in 

 using it sifts, adds, and rejects, and passes it on to the 

 next a little better and a little fuller. When we speak of 

 progress we generally mean that the hoard has been im- 

 proved, and is of more service to man in his attempts to 

 control his surroundings. Sometimes this hoarded know- 

 ledge is spoken of as the inheritance which a generation 

 receives from those who have gone before. This is mis- 

 leading. The handing on of such knowledge has nothing 

 more to do with heredity in the biological sense than has 

 the handing on from parent to offspring of a picture, or 

 a title, or a pair of boots. All these things are but the 

 transfer from zygote to zygote of something extrinsic to 

 the species. Heredity, on the other hand, deals with the 



