A SELECTIVE AGENCY NEEDED TO IMPROVE CHARACTER
The general result of the facts and arguments now set forth in the
merest outline leads us to conclude that there has been no definite
advance of morality from age to age, and that even the lowest races, at
each period, possessed the same intellectual and moral nature as the
higher. The manifestations of this essentially human nature in habits
and conduct were often very diverse, in accordance with diversities
of the social and moral environment. This is quite in accordance with
the now well-established doctrine that the essential character of man,
intellectual, emotional, and moral, is inherent in him from birth;
that it is subject to great variation from individual to individual;
and that its manifestations in conduct can be modified in a very high
degree by the influence of public opinion and systematic teaching.
These latter changes, however, are _not_ hereditary, and it follows
that no definite advance in morals can occur in any race _unless there
is some selective or segregative agency at work_.
As there is a great amount of misconception on this subject some
explanation may be advisable. Many well-educated and intelligent
persons seem to think that whatever characters or faculties are
hereditary are also necessarily cumulative. They hear that mental as
well as physical characteristics are hereditary; their own observation
tells them that there are musical families as well as tall families.
They hear that the late Sir Francis Galton wrote a book on _Hereditary
Genius_, and perhaps they have read it; but they do not observe that
neither he nor anyone else has proved that genius of any kind is
cumulative, that is that a man or woman of genius will have, on the
average, some one or more children with a greater amount of that
special power or faculty than their own. The very contrary of this is
really the case. The more a person's talent or mental power is above
the average the less chance there is that any of his or her children
will have still more of that power than he has. A really great poet, or
painter, or musician, appears suddenly in a family of mediocre ability
or of no ability at all in that special direction. A few examples may
be instructive.
Sir William Herschell was the son of a German musician, and was himself
a musician by profession; but he became an astronomical genius, one
of the greatest of his age. His son, Sir John Herschell, was a very
clever man, with advantages of education and position. He followed his
father as an astronomer, and was a great mathematician, but is never
considered to be equal to his father. Darwin's most eminent son was a
mathematician, not a naturalist.
The reason of this is that heredity follows the law of "recession to
mediocrity." This is, that all groups of living things vary around an
average or mean as regards each of their characters; and those near
the average are always numerous, while as we approach the extremes in
either direction the numbers become less and less. Families follow the
same law. If you take a family for three or four generations, including
perhaps some hundreds of persons, some will be short, some tall; but
the majority will be near the mean, and the tallest of all will be
less likely to have taller descendants than themselves than those
nearer the average. But the children of the tallest, though generally
shorter than their parents, will still tend to be above the average
height.
When a character is so useful to its possessor in the struggle for
existence as to be of what is termed "survival value," then those that
vary most above the average will be preserved or selected generation
after generation as long as the increase is useful.
It is because the higher intellectual or moral powers are so rarely of
life-preserving value, and are not unfrequently the reverse, that they
are not _cumulative_, though they are _hereditary_.
* * * * *
With this explanation we will now proceed to examine somewhat closely
our moral position as a nation; what is the nature of our social
environment; how it came to be what it is, and what lessons we may
learn from it.