ABSTRACT
A glance at some of the characters that may be acquired by social heredity shows how large a number of important influences lie entirely outside organic heredity. For the individual person have biological heredity; for society people have what may properly be called a social heredity that passes along accumulations gained by parents from the surrounding civilization—in other words, from the environment. Not only the use of spoken words but the ability to write them down is another example of social inheritance that lays the foundation for all knowledge. The very construction and existence of society depend upon numerous and diverse social inheritances. The functioning of government, the accumulation of wealth, many artificial conditions of environment that minister to the higher life of the race, and numerous other factors that distinguish human life from mere animal life proceed from social ideals that are handed on from generation to generation.
