254 The American Naturalist. 



[Februai 



I fail to see any great amount of truth in the claims of Mr. Spencer 

 that intellectual progress in the race requires the Epigenesis view. The 

 level of culture in a community seems to be about as fixed a thing as 

 moral qualities are capable of being; much more so than the level of 

 individual endowment. This latter seems to be capricious or variable, 

 while the former moves by a regular movement and with a massive 

 front. It would seem, therefore, that intellectual and moral progress 

 is gradual improvement, through improved relationships on the part of 

 the individuals to one another; a matter of social accommodation, 

 rather than of natural inheritance alone, on the part of individuals. It 

 is only a rare individual whose heredity enables him to break through 

 the lines of social tissue and imprint his personality upon the social 

 movement. And in that case the only explanation of him is that he 

 is a variation, not that he inherited his intellectual or moral power 

 Furthermore, I think the actual growth of the individual in intellect- 

 ual stature and moral attainment can be traced in the main to certain 

 of the elements of his social milieu, allowing always a balance of varia- 

 tion in the direction in which he finally excels. 



So strong does the case seem for the Social Heredity view in this 

 matter of intellectual and moral progress that I may suggest an 

 hypothesis which may not stand in court, but which I find interesting. 

 May not the rise of the social life be justified from the point of view of 

 a second utility in addition to that of its utility in the struggle for 

 existence as ordinarily understood ; the second utility, L e., of giving to 

 each generation the attainments of the past which natural inheritance 

 is inadequate to transmit ? Whether we admit Epigenesis or confine 

 ourselves to Preformism, I suppose we have to accept Mr. Galton's law 

 of Regression and Weismann's principle of Panmixia in some shape. 

 Now when social life begins we find the beginning of the artificial selec- 

 tion of the unfit ; and so these negative principles begin to work directly 

 in the teeth of progress, as many writers on social themes have recently 

 made clear. This being the case, some other resource is necessary 

 besides natural inheritance. On my hypothesis it is found in the 

 common or social standards of attainment which the individual is fitted 

 to grow up to and to which he is compelled to submit. This secures 

 progress tu two ways: First, by making the individual learn what the 

 race has learned, thus preventing social retrogression, in any case; and 

 seecond, by putting a direct premium on variations which are socially 

 available. 



Under this general conception we may bring the biological phenom- 

 ena of infancy, with all their evolutionary significance: the great 



