A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

by Cora May Williams

"Since Voltaire's day, the history of mental disease has registered a great number of similar facts. They abound in Gall, Esquirol, Moreau of Tours, and in all the writers on insanity. Esquirol knew a family in which the grandmother, mother, daughter, and grandson, committed suicide. 'A father of taciturn disposition,' says Falret, 'had five sons. The eldest, at the age of forty, threw himself out of a third-story window; the second strangled himself at the age of thirty-five; the third threw himself out of a window; the fourth shot himself; a cousin of theirs drowned himself for a trifling cause. In the Oroten family, the oldest in Teneriffe, two sisters were affected with suicidal mania, and their brother, grandfather, and two uncles, put an end to their own lives.'... The point which excited Voltaire's surprise, viz. the heredity of suicide at a definite age, has been often noticed: 'M. L——, a monomaniac,' says Moreau of Tours, 'put an end to his life at the age of thirty. His son had hardly attained the same age when he was attacked with the same monomania, and made two attempts at suicide. Another man, in the prime of life, fell into a melancholy state and drowned himself; his son, of good constitution, wealthy, and the father of two gifted children, drowned himself at the same age. A wine-taster who had made a mistake as to the quality of a wine threw himself into the water in a fit of desperation. He was rescued, but afterwards accomplished his purpose. The physician who had attended him ascertained that this man's father and one of his brothers had committed suicide at the same age and in the same way.'...

"A woman named Olhaven fell ill of a serious disorder, which obliged her to wean her daughter, six weeks old. This complaint of the mother began by an irresistible desire to kill her child. This purpose was discovered in season to prevent it. She was next seized with a violent fever which utterly blotted the fact from her memory, and she afterwards proved a most devoted mother to her daughter. This daughter, become a mother in her turn, took two children to nurse. For some days she had suffered from fatigue and from 'movements in the stomach,' when one evening as she was in her room with the infants, one of them on her lap, she was suddenly seized by a strong desire to cut its throat. Alarmed by the horrible temptation, she ran from the spot with the knife in her hand, and sought in singing, dancing, and sleep, a refuge from the thoughts that haunted her. Hardly had she fallen asleep when she started up, her mind filled with the same idea, which now was irresistible. She was, however, controlled, and in a measure calmed. The homicidal delirium recurred, and finally gave way, only after many remedies had been employed."

These are only a few out of the many instances that might be given of recurrence, at the same age or under the stimulation of similar conditions, of so-called pathological states. Science has hitherto given more study to such cases than to the inheritance of healthful conditions, though the line between healthful mental conditions and mental disease is very difficult to draw, and the assumption that all suicides are more insane than many of the people who are regarded as sane is unwarranted; of course if one starts with the premise that suicide is always a symptom of insanity, then the conclusion follows naturally that all suicides are insane; but this is a mere argument in a circle. As far as the inheritance of healthy or normal mental characteristics is concerned, we do know at least, from general observation, that a child often exhibits, as it develops, more and more rather than less and less the characteristics of some progenitor; and this, moreover, in many cases where the possibility of imitation is excluded. Observations might possibly be made here in a line with former reflections on man's adaptability and Haeckel's theory of the prenatal existence of the individual as repeating the history of his species. In the case of postnatal as well as in that of prenatal existence, the action of the environment can no more be left out of account than can that of heredity; and the influence of favorable or of unfavorable conditions at corresponding periods of development may explain the exaggerated growth or, on the other hand, the dwarfed character or non-appearance of tendencies associated in their development with these periods. But at present such observations can be little more than speculation. We may at least say, however, that Mr. Leslie Stephen's statement of the case, namely, that children "start with infinitely varying capacities" but that the environment of civilization is that which finally makes them what they become morally and mentally, should rather be reversed; for it is rather true that children are born into the world on about the same level mentally and morally (for we observe but little difference in the faculties of new-born babes), but that they by no means react, in development, upon the same or a similar environment in a similar manner. The case of the Athenian baby, whose probable equality with the modern infant is used by Mr. Stephen as an argument that the human race has made no progress as far as innate qualities are concerned, would therefore scarcely be a case in point, even if it were capable of proof,—as it is not. But it cannot be called a case in point in any sense, the English baby with which Mr. Stephen compares the Athenian infant not being of Athenian descent. Any comparison of this sort, to be of worth in the discussion of the element of heredity in human progress, must be between the baby of the primitive savage Briton and the modern British infant. The Athenians arrived at a high degree of social development; but the very fact that neither their civilization nor even that of Rome was acquired by the less civilized races who were their conquerors is rather testimony in favor of the theory of the hereditary, organic character of the habits and capacities acquired in the course of civilization. Nor have the Athenians transmitted their type unmixed; there is no pure Athenian or Greek race at the present day with which we could compare the ancient Greeks, even if we desired to affirm so great an independence of circumstances as would assure to such a race the unimpaired faculties of their ancestors in spite of all the changes in their environment which history records. Not only the environment was changed and mixed; the stock, also, of that race which once regarded all strangers as barbarians became equally impure. And assuredly the comparison of the "average child of to-day" with an Archimedes or a Themistocles is anything but a fair one.[156] Taken with the qualification of the predicate which Mr. Stephen cautiously introduces in asserting that the innate qualities of the average modern child are not "radically" superior to those of the greatest ancients, it leads us to suspect that Mr. Stephen is not, himself, very thoroughly convinced of what he attempts to prove. We may agree with Mr. Stephen that "If Homer or Plato had been born amongst the Hottentots, they could no more have composed the 'Iliad' or the 'Dialogues' than Beethoven could have composed his music, however fine his ear or delicate his organization, in the days when the only musical instrument was the tom-tom"[157]; for certainly no one can reach the same heights under an unfavorable environment that he might have attained under a favorable one; and that Homer could have expressed, in the ruder poetry which he might still have composed among Hottentots, the sentiments of the "Iliad," or Beethoven have produced his sonatas with the assistance of the tom-tom (provided that remained the only instrument after the appearance of an individual of such musical capacity as a Beethoven), cannot be conceived. But it is also inconceivable that a Beethoven, a Homer, or a Plato, could be born among the Hottentots, if "to be born among them" means to be born of their stock.

In order to make any direct comparison between the capacities of the descendants of civilized parents and those of uncivilized progenitors, we ought to be able to compare average results obtained in savage infants removed, in earliest infancy, to the advantages of civilization, with the average mental and moral acquirements of individuals born under those influences. We need to compare averages, I say, and not one or two individual cases alone; for, in order to assert the organic and hereditary character of human progress up to and under civilization, we are by no means compelled to prove a like advance in all parts of a nation or people, or even advance at all in every part. It is conceivable, and wholly in accordance with the general course of evolution, that types should remain stationary while other types are advancing, that lower types should continue to exist side by side with higher ones that have developed out of them, and even that, in some lines of descent, retrogression should take place while the species or a society as a whole is progressing. But our data for comparison of averages are not, by any means, as satisfactory as could be wished; for nowhere are the direct descendants of uncivilized races given equal advantages with those of the descendants of peoples already civilized. Galton's comparison of the negro with the white man is, for this reason, too extreme in its conclusions as to the hereditary character of intellect. Yet some general facts may be noted. And perhaps no better field for comparison is afforded us than the United States, where the white population is not the mere offshoot and tributary of a nation the great majority of whose better representatives inhabit a distant land, but an independent and successful nation, and where the negro race, while yet untutored, was suddenly endowed with a liberty nominally as great as that of the white man, together with a part in the government and a right to state education. This liberty may be, indeed is, in many parts of the South, a mere pretence, though even there toleration is gradually being acquired; but in the North the negro is treated on very nearly the same footing with the white man, the indignities offered him having their origin, for the most part, with former slave-holders, not with the born and bred Northerner. Negro children have free access to the northern schools, where they may often be seen sitting side by side with white children; and the best of American universities are open to negro students. If, then, the average of opinion, even in the North, maintains a certain amount of condescension towards the African, this condescension is no greater in degree than that maintained by the aristocracy of Europe towards the so-called lower (not the lowest) classes, and in spite of which many have risen to prominence from those classes. Indeed, the measure of condescension is rather less than the average manifested by master to underling in many European countries not so democratic as England; it would compare favorably with the attitude of the petty German officials to the ordinary citizen of the less well-to-do classes. It may mean discouragement, but there is no reason why it should, in all cases, mean failure. Yet, as a fact, very few of pure negro blood have risen to any prominence whatever, and the average of intelligence appears comparatively low; the large majority of those who have risen to eminence have had some admixture of the blood of the white race. The American Indian appears to be more capable of cultivation; but he has enjoyed fewer advantages than the negro. The Indian children at the schools provided for them do not, however, appear to exhibit the degree of intelligence possessed by white children. On the other hand, the mixture of white and Indian blood seems to produce, sometimes, rather more than the average of intelligence. The writer is acquainted with two cases of this kind. The first was that of the daughter of an ignorant Indian father, who lived entirely by hunting and fishing, and of an almost as ignorant white mother. The child, who had at first no advantages save those afforded by a primitive district school, nevertheless early developed an insatiable love of study, gained access to a higher school, and finally to what was, in her time, the highest school for women in the country. Here she did housework, during a course of four years, in order partly to pay her expenses, supplying the remaining sum for tuition afterwards out of her earnings as a teacher. By clothing herself, summer and winter, in cheap prints, she also saved enough to buy the time of a sister who had been bound out, assisted in the education of the rest of the family, and taught a school whose excellence is remembered and praised to this day. But the Indian is commonly supposed to be of higher stock than the African negro; he certainly exhibits, even in his uncivilized state, a cunning, a courage, and a persistence, of a higher type than that of the African; and the superiority of a mixture between this alert type and the intelligence of the white man is thus explained. I repeat, though the subtle results of many minute accumulating influences of individual environment must undoubtedly be taken into consideration in our judgment of different races, the difference of opportunity does not seem to account fully for the great difference of attainment.

It must be noticed, too, that, in comparing the negro with the white man in the United States, we have not compared a wholly savage people with a civilized one; for the negro has been, for several generations, in contact with civilization, and must have gained something from this contact. It is to be greatly doubted whether the infants of those Siberians of whose pleasure in the suffering of other beings an instance was given above would, even under the best of influences, develop into individuals of much real benevolence. The average child of civilized society is somewhat callous to the sufferings of animals, partly because he does not realize the reality of those sufferings; yet I have seen lost kittens tenderly cared for by ragged little street urchins; and I have more than once heard small boys, playing in the gutter, exclaim at the beating of a donkey or a horse. The child repeats, perhaps, to some extent, the history of his race's origin in savagery. Yet it is to be seriously doubted whether the children of the savages described as delighting in cutting their meat from living animals would attain, even under the most careful training, the average spontaneous humanity of the lad of civilized progenitors, or would ever become truly humane men and women. It is conceivable that superior mental and moral capacity may remain comparatively undeveloped, proper environment lacking, but we begin to see the fallacy of concluding, from such cases, the non-hereditary character of capacity when we suppose such cases as those above, of the rearing of savage infants under civilization. It must be added of the very isolated cases—of which much is often made—in which the children of civilized parents have been stolen by savages, at an early age, (1) that it is not, and cannot be, maintained that all the descendants of civilized progenitors are endowed with superior mental and moral tendency; and (2) that such instances are too few in number to furnish, alone, the basis of any theory. The evidence furnished us by the general results of neglect in the midst of civilization is more to the point; but, even in these cases, it must be shown that the children came of good parentage in order that the evidence may be admitted as telling against the theory of heredity. Every breeder of animals counts with the greatest confidence upon the action of the laws of heredity; and no reason can be given why these laws should not work in the case of man, why he should be the one species exempt from them. It is impossible to cross the dog with the wolf without perceiving the result of the crossing, in the mental as well as the physical characteristics of the offspring; and the dog does not differ more from the wolf than does civilized man, in the most advanced nations, from the savage. Even his physical characteristics, the contour of the head and face especially, the form of the features as well as the expression, are different and imply a higher type.

And, in discussing lower types in the midst of civilization, we cannot do better than give some consideration to Dugdale's remarkable book on the Jukes, which has already been mentioned. In this book is traced the history of five hundred and forty persons belonging to seven generations of descendants of five sisters, there being much intermarrying among them. Out of two hundred and fifty-two Juke women, whose history is traced, thirty-three were illegitimate, eighteen were mothers of bastards before marriage, twelve the mothers of bastards after marriage, fifty-three were prostitutes (the cases of eight being unascertained), thirteen were barren, eleven kept brothels, thirty-seven had syphilis, forty-five received, at some time, outdoor relief, the total number of years amounting to two hundred and forty-two, twenty-four received almshouse relief, the time reaching a total of thirty-five years, and sixteen were committed for crimes for a total of one and three-fourths years, the number of offences being twenty-four. Out of two hundred and twenty-five Juke men, forty-nine were illegitimate, twenty were prostitutes, one kept a brothel, fourteen were afflicted with syphilis, fifty received outdoor relief, the time being, in total, two hundred and seventy years, twenty-nine were in the almshouse for a total of forty-six years, and thirty-three were committed for crime for a total of eighty-nine and a half years, the number of offences being fifty-nine. The lines with which the Jukes cohabited or intermarried were naturally of a low moral type, but they do not show nearly as high a percentage of crime and pauperism; thus among the marriageable women of the Jukes, we find the percentage of harlotry to be 52.40, among those of the intermarrying or cohabiting lines only 41.76. Of the stock of Ada Juke, known to the police as "Margaret, the mother of criminals," nine offenders were sent to prison for a total of sixty years, their crimes constituting fifty-four per cent of all the crimes against property recorded of the Jukes, and including burglary, grand larceny, and highway robbery; besides one murder and three attempts at rape. Dugdale thus describes his first acquaintance with the "Jukes." "In July, 1874, the New York Prison Association having deputed me to visit thirteen of the county jails of this state and report thereupon, I made a tour of inspection in pursuance of that appointment. No specially striking cases of criminal careers, traceable through several generations, presented themselves till —— County was reached. Here, however, were found six persons, under four family names, who turned out to be blood relations in some degree. The oldest, a man of forty-five, was waiting trial for receiving stolen goods; his daughter, aged eighteen, held as witness against him; her uncle, aged forty-two, burglary in the first degree; the illegitimate daughter of the latter's wife, aged twelve years, upon which child the latter had attempted rape, to be sent to the reformatory for vagrancy; and two brothers in another branch of the family, aged respectively nineteen and fourteen, accused of an assault with intent to kill, they having maliciously pushed a child over a high cliff and nearly killed him. Upon trial, the oldest was acquitted, though the goods stolen were found in his house, his previous good character saving him; the guilt belonged to his brother-in-law, the man aged forty-two above-mentioned, who was living in the house. This brother-in-law is an illegitimate child, an habitual criminal, and the son of an unpunished and cautious thief. He had two brothers and one sister, all of whom are thieves, the sister being the contriver of crime, they its executors. The daughter of this woman, the girl aged eighteen above-mentioned, testified, at the trial which resulted in convicting her uncle and procuring his sentence for twenty years to state prison, that she was forced to join him in his last foray, that he had loaded her with the booty and beat her on the journey home, over two miles, because she lagged under the load. When this girl was released, her family in jail, and thus left without a home, she was forced to make her lodging in a brothel on the outskirts of the city. Next morning she applied to the judge to be recommitted to prison 'for protection' against certain specified carnal outrages required of her and submitted to. She has since been sent to the house of refuge. Of the two boys, one was discharged by the grand jury; the other was tried and received five years' imprisonment in Sing Sing.

"These six persons belonged to a long lineage, reaching back to the early colonists, and had intermarried so slightly with the emigrant population of the Old World that they may be called a strictly American family. They had lived in the same locality for generations, and were so despised by the respectable community that their family name had come to be used generically as a term of reproach.

"That this was deserved became manifest on slight inquiry. It was found that out of twenty-nine males, in ages ranging from fifteen to seventy-five, the immediate blood-relations of these six persons, seventeen of them were criminals, or fifty-eight per cent; while fifteen were convicted of some degree of offence, and received seventy-one years of sentence.... The crimes and misdemeanors they committed were assault and battery, assault with intent to kill, murder, attempt at rape, petit larceny, grand larceny, burglary, forgery, cruelty to animals."

But this book of Dugdale's, which traces so clearly and thoroughly long lines of criminal descent, makes manifest, also, the influence of environment. We find, for instance, in the line of the illegitimate posterity of Ada Juke, generation five, the case of a male descendant, who was sentenced to Sing Sing for three years at the age of twenty-two, but who, leaving prison at the expiration of his sentence, abandoned crime and settled down to steady employment. A second case is that of another male descendant of Ada, who assisted his brother in burglary at the age of twelve, and served probably some thirteen or fourteen years in prison, but later reformed and took to stone-quarrying, having learned, says Dugdale, industrious habits in prison. A brother of this man, who had also served sentences in jail for assault and battery, and a term of two years at Sing Sing for burglary (the term beginning at the age of twenty-two), moved at the age of thirty-one into the same county as his brother, and went into the business of quarrying. A female descendant in the illegitimate line of Ada, generation five, who seems to have followed a dissolute life up to the age of fifteen, at this point married a German, a "steady, industrious, plodding man," and settled down into a reputable woman. In the legitimate line of Ada, again, generation five, we find the case of a girl "said to have been born in the poorhouse," who "was adopted out from there into a wealthy family, and is doing well." In all these cases, the reform was the result of contact, during the earlier period of life, with new elements inducing industry and sobriety. Such cases might lead us to doubt the conclusions we should otherwise feel justified in drawing with regard to the action of heredity, and must certainly render us cautious not to impute the whole character of the individual to heredity alone. But the complicated nature of all social relations should restrain us from laying all stress upon any one element in those relations, in any case. Here, again, we recur to the conception of conditions and results in distinction from that of cause and effect. If statistics such as these of the Jukes included minute and careful statements as to mental and physical characteristics and resemblances, they would undeniably be much more reliable basis for conclusions as to the hereditary nature of character. Nevertheless, incomplete though this evidence be, it is by no means such that it can be logically disregarded. It is to be said of such cases of reform and respectability as those noticed under favorable influences (1) that we are not informed as to its exact extent and motive and have no means of knowing what these were; (2) that, if reversion to ancestral types is possible in the sense of deterioration, there is no reason why it should not be possible in the opposite sense also,—no reason why better characters should not, through, perhaps, some favorable prenatal influence at exactly the right period of development, occasionally crop out in a line of general baseness;[158] and (3) that the admixture of a strain of somewhat better blood may produce, or some especial crossing be favorable to, the development of higher character in a part, though not necessarily all, of the offspring. "When the domestic pig and the wild boar or the wolf and the dog are crossed," says Ribot,[159] "some of the progeny inherit the savage, and others the domestic instincts. Similar facts have been observed by Girou in the crossing of different races of dogs and cats." We know quite well that the same law governs the transmission of character in human beings. In a family of children, some will inherit the characteristics of the father, some those of the mother. Mr. Jenkins of the Bureau of Police of Brooklyn, N.Y., related to me a case that had come under his notice. Of a family consisting of father, mother, two sons, and a daughter, the mother was a hard-working, honest washerwoman, while the father was depraved in his tendencies; and of the three children the daughter resembled the mother in character, the sons, on the other hand, their father. One of the sons was sentenced to prison for a bad case of burglary, and was shot while attempting to escape; and on the same day on which his picture was removed from the rogues' gallery, his brother's was hung in its place, the latter having, with calm deliberation and preparation, murdered a girl with whom he had some relation. A similar case is recorded by Gall, where the mother represented the good, the father the evil stock, and of five children three were condemned to severe penalties for thieving, the other two lived correct lives. It is to be noticed that, of the three cases of better character among the Jukes cited above, the two reformed characters were brothers. It is by no means proved by these cases that all or a majority of the Jukes were capable, even under the best of influences, of a like betterment of character. On the contrary: the general characteristics of extreme licentiousness attaching to the whole family, on which Dugdale lays special stress,—a licentiousness extending even to cohabitation and marriage with the negroes at a time when the latter were yet in slavery and regarded as little more than animals,—as well as the exceeding viciousness and inhumanity exhibited in some of the crimes (witness the attempted rape on the niece of twelve and the pushing of the child over the cliff), show a tendency of character much below the average. Nor was the prison discipline which accomplished the reform of the two brothers the only opportunity of steady industry, or the prison the only reformatory environment afforded. Dugdale mentions an "extensive employer of labor, located near the original settlement of the Jukes," who "employs several members of it," treating them "with firmness and unvaryingly scrupulous fairness," interposing his authority and checking them in incipient crime. He acts as their banker and, as school trustee, arranges, "where widows depend upon their boys for support, that they shall work for him and go to school alternate weeks." If, indeed, the family is located, as it seems to be, in the rather sparsely settled districts of northern New York, it is scarcely likely to suffer great isolation, as it might in the midst of a city, or to be excluded from means of honest livelihood. Dugdale mentions, indeed, that this employer "has not taken up this work as a 'mission,' but strictly as a business man, who, finding himself placed where he must employ the rude laborers of his locality, deals with them on the sound and healthy basis of commercial contract, honestly carried out and rigidly enforced." Unfortunately, Dugdale does not furnish us with any exact information as to the result of this very humane course of treatment. We can only revert to his remark that, though the Jukes had lived in this neighborhood for generations where work was evidently not lacking nor kind and judicious treatment absent, their name was used generically, by the reputable community, as a term of reproach.

We have already noticed some inconsistencies in Stephen's theory of human progress as merely that of an accumulation of knowledge. But he practically contradicts, elsewhere in his work, this view of advancement. On page 201 of the "Science of Ethics," he says distinctly: "As men become more intellectual, sympathetic, and so forth, they gain fresh sensibilities, which are not simple judgments of consequences hitherto improved, but as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities." Even if this statement were meant to apply to the individual alone, a great difficulty must lie in the way of any theory that sensibilities so inherent, sensibilities "as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities," will not affect the character of descendants through inheritance, in the same manner as these primitive sensibilities are acknowledged to affect it. But elsewhere Stephen remarks: "An instinct grows and decays not on account of its effects on the individual, but on account of its effects upon the race. The animal which, on the whole, is better adapted for continuing its species, will have an advantage in the struggle, even though it may not be so well adapted for pursuing its own happiness." He is careful to use the word "happiness" here, but the division under which the sentence appears is headed, "Social and Individual Utility," and he distinctly states, on the preceding page, that the social instincts may be a disadvantage to the individual in the struggle for existence. He writes, in this connection: "The process by which the correlation of pernicious and painful states is worked out is one which, by its very nature, must take a number of generations. Races survive in virtue of the completeness of this correlation."[160] This is Darwinism applied to humanity; and, surely, since the human race has existed in the social state for very many generations, we must suppose, according to the theory thus stated, continuous organic advance, even if we did not consider the passage in connection with the assertion of the gain, with increasing intelligence and sympathy, of sensibilities as direct, imperative, and substantial as any primitive ones. Again Mr. Stephen writes: "It is true, generally, that each man has certain capacities for moral as for every other kind of development, and capacities which vary from the top to the bottom of the scale. No process of education or discipline whatever would convert a Judas Iscariot into a Paul or John."[161] Then education, the environment of civilization, is not the only factor in the production of character. Nor is it, according to Mr. Stephen's own words, the only important factor. If capacities vary from the top to the bottom of the scale, then surely this variation cannot be an unimportant element of development. As a matter of fact, Mr. Stephen himself lays especial stress upon inherited characteristic as the basis of character. He says, for example: "The character is determined for each individual by its original constitution, though the character is modified as the reason acts.... But, after all, we start with a certain balance of feeling, with certain fixed relations between our various instincts; and, however these may change afterwards, our character is so far determined from the start. Again, it is plain that this varies greatly with different peoples and gives rise to different types."[162] Surely the formation of types at least cannot be a matter of the individual alone. Furthermore, Mr. Stephen distinctly asserts a growth of intelligence in the savage—which we cannot suppose to stop short with the beginning of civilization—while he especially emphasizes the fact that the emotions develop concomitantly with the intellect. He says also: "We assume an organic change to occur—no matter how—in certain individuals of a species, and that change to be inherited by their descendants; and thus two competing varieties to arise, one of which may be supplanted by the other, or each of which may supplant the other in a certain part of the common domain. Some such process is clearly occurring in the case of human variations. Everywhere we see a competition between different races, and the more savage vanishing under the approach of the more civilized. Certain races seem to possess enormous expansive powers, whilst others remain limited within fixed regions or are slowly passing out of existence. So far as human development supposes an organic change in the individual [?], we may suppose that this process is actually going on and that, for example, the white man may be slowly pushing savage races out of existence. I do not ask whether this is the fact, because for my purpose it is irrelevant. We are considering the changes which take place without such organic development, not as denying the existence of organic developments, but simply because they are so slow and their influence so gradual that they do not come within our sphere. They belong, as astronomers say, to the secular, not to the periodic changes. Confining ourselves, therefore, to the changes which are, in my phrase, products of the 'social factor,' and which assume the constancy of the individual organism,"[163] etc. The passage is of importance as acknowledging the reality of organic progress; but it is full of the self-contradictions which we have already noticed. It starts with the Darwinian assumption that organic change occurring in individuals is directly inheritable by their descendants; this assumption, having done its office, however, is discarded, and we are told that any organic change cannot be that of individuals but must be that of societies, or at least that it must be of such sort that we have not only no need to consider it with regard to the individual life, but even no need to consider it in the study of the whole development of a society under civilization, or rather that we have no need to study it at all as soon as we have the "social medium" to fall back upon for an explanation of progress; and finally, in direct contradiction to the assumption first made, a constancy of the individual organism is asserted. This assertion is also in direct contradiction to the assertion before noticed that character is determined by original constitution and that original capacity differs "infinitely"[164] in different individuals. We are indebted to Mr. Stephen for a very minute analysis of the influence of even smallest details of circumstance upon character; surely, while we are thus emphasizing the delicacy of nervous organization that answers, with the sensibility of a gold-leaf electroscope, to the slightest variations in the environment, we cannot logically leave out of account the results of such variation in inheritance because these, too, are minute. And surely we cannot conceive that an organism so sensitive to the influence of environment is yet so inflexible and unalterable as far as the transmission of its changes to offspring is concerned. On any sound physiological theory, we cannot avoid supposing that all these minute changes in character which Stephen refers to the action of the social environment are accompanied by exact physiological equivalents. Then either these changes of organization are not inheritable,—in which case the organism does not propagate itself but something different from itself, and we have no alternative but to resort to some such theory as that of Weismann,—or else these changes are inheritable (subject, of course, to all the variations which individual circumstances of development must induce), in which case their inheritance must be of quite as much importance as their origin to any theory of social progress. As we have said, Weismann has gradually come to admit some influence of the environment on the germ-plasm. We can indeed conceive of the representation of all previous development of the species in the individual, and of the determination of the degree of importance assumed, in the organism, by any particular acquirement or tendency by the coincidence of circumstance, but we can scarcely conceive logically of a propagation of organization that does not represent all the influences which have made that organization what it is. Even from Stephen's standpoint, it is difficult to understand how the organization of society, which he admits to be no organization on the plane of the higher animal, but of a much lower type, can be of so much importance in the advance of mankind, its variations the condition of progress, and yet the much more interdependent organization of the animal body be supposed to remain constant and take no part in this progress. It is difficult to comprehend how so much stress can be laid on the mere external influence of the units of society on each other, and, at the same time, the far more intimate and direct influence of parents on their offspring can be deemed of so little importance as to warrant our disregarding it altogether. It is especially difficult to understand how it is that heredity can be disregarded, not merely in its influence on the individual or even on the generation, but in all its manifold, intricate, and prolonged workings since man first extended family life to tribal organization; and this, too, in spite of the acknowledgment that progress through heredity is real if slow. It is strange that there should always be a tendency to draw a distinct line between social man and all the rest of the animal kingdom, as if, when society began, all former laws ceased from operation. Thus it is sometimes said that natural selection no longer acts on the individual because it acts on societies as wholes also; as well say that it cannot act on inner organization because it acts on the organism as a whole. As a matter of fact, it affects society through individuals, and the individual through, or rather in, his organization. If it is true, as Stephen asserts, that change of social tissue is primary and fundamental to all external social change, it is not the less true that change of individual organization is fundamental to all change of external action. No theory of development which goes beyond the individual life and considers the progress of society as a whole can scientifically disregard the element of heredity in this progress.