Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The two parts of which this Essay consists, originallypublished in The Nineteenth Century for April and May1886 respectively, now reappear with the assent of theproprietor and editor of that periodical, to whom mythanks are due for his courtesy in giving it. Somepassages of considerable length which, with a view toneedful brevity, were omitted when the articles firstappeared, have been restored.
Though the direct bearings of the arguments containedin this Essay are biological, the argument contained in itsfirst half has indirect bearings upon Psychology, Ethics,and Sociology. My belief in the profound importance ofthese indirect bearings, was originally a chief prompterto set forth the argument; and it now prompts me tore-issue it in permanent form.
Though mental phenomena of many kinds, and especiallyof the simpler kinds, are explicable only as resulting fromthe natural selection of favourable variations; yet thereare, I believe, still more numerous mental phenomena,including all those of any considerable complexity, whichcannot be explained otherwise than as results of theinheritance of functionally-produced modifications. Whattheory of psychological evolution is espoused, thus dependsvion acceptance or rejection of the doctrine that not onlyin the individual, but in the successions of individuals,use and disuse of parts produce respectively increase anddecrease of them.
Of course there are involved the conceptions we formof the genesis and nature of our higher emotions;and, by implication, the conceptions we form of ourmoral intuitions. If functionally-produced modificationsare inheritable, then the mental associations habituallyproduced in individuals by experiences of the relationsbetween actions and their consequences, pleasurable orpainful, may, in the successions of individuals, generateinnate tendencies to like or dislike such actions. But ifnot, the genesis of such tendencies is, as we shall see, notsatisfactorily explicable.
That our sociological beliefs must also be profoundlyaffected by the conclusions we draw on this point, isobvious. If a nation is modified en masse by transmissionof the effects produced on the natures of its membersby those modes of daily activity which its institutionsand circumstances involve; then we must infer thatsuch institutions and circumstances mould its membersfar more rapidly and comprehensively than they can do ifthe sole cause of adaptation to them is the more frequentsurvival of individuals who happen to have varied infavourable ways.
I will add only that, considering the width and depthof the effects which acceptance of one or other of thesehypotheses must have on our views of Life, Mind, Morals,and Politics, the question—Which of them is true? d