ABSTRACT
Social inheritance plays a small part in the life of animals of the higher orders. It requires little reflection to make us realize that in the case of human beings social inheritance plays a big part. This chapter examines some detail of social heritage elements. There are techniques, customs, social usages, and institutions. Heredity and social heritage do not entirely exhaust that which is transmitted from the past; there is also the availability of material things which outlast the generation which has created them. The life histories of individuals have little effect upon the germplasm and consequently upon the heritage of the next generation. Such changes in societies as do arise from the operation of heredity are due to choices in mating and to differential fertilities. But the social heritage is a changing heritage, the history of each generation matters, and there may be rapid changes within a comparatively few years in what is transmitted.
