ity,' since the child really inherits the details; but he inherits them from society by this process of social growth, rather than by direct natural inheritance.

To show this in a sketchy way, I may take the last three points which Professor Cope makes under the Epigenesis column, the points which involve consciousness, and show how I think they may still be true to the Preformist if he avail himself of the resource offered by 'Social Heredity.'

I do this rather for convenience than with any wish to controvert Professor Cope; and it may well be that his later statements may show that even this amount of reference to him is not justified.

1. (5 of Cope's table). "Movements of the organism are caused or directed by sensation and other conscious states."

The point at issue here between the advocate of Epigenesis and the Preformist would be whether it is necessary that the child should inherit any of the particular conscious states, or their special nervous dispositions, which the parent learned in his lifetime, in order to secure through them the performance of the same actions by the child. I should say, no; and for the reason-additional to the usual arguments of the Preformists-that 'Social Heredity' will secure the same result. All we have to have in the child is the high consciousness represented by the tendency to imitate the parent or to absorb social copies, and the general law now recognized by psychologists under the name of Dynamogenesis-i. e., that the thought of a movement tends to discharge motor energy into the channels as near as may be to those necessary for that movement.' Given these two elements of endowment in the child, and he can learn anything that his father did, without inheriting any particular acts learned by the parent. And we must in any case give the child this much; for the principle of Dynamogenesis is a fundamental law in all organisms, and the tendency to take in external copies' by imitation, etc., is present in all social animals, as a matter of fact.

The only hindrance that I see to the child's learning everything that his life in society requires would be just the thing that the advocates of Epigenesis argue for-the inheritance of acquired characters. For such inheritance would tend so to bind up the child's nervous substance in fixed forms that he would have less or possibly no unstable substance left to learn anything with. So, in fact, it is with the animals in which instinct is largely developed; they have no power to learn any thing new, just because their nervous systems are not in the mobile Both of these requirements are worked out in detail in my book.

condition represented by high consciousness. They have instinct and little else. Now, I think the Preformist can account for instinct also, but that is beside the point; what I wish to say now is that, if Epigenesis were true, we should all be, to the extent to which both parents do the same acts (as, for example, speech) in the condition of the creatures who do only certain things and do them by instinct. I should like to ask of the Neo-Lamarckian: What is it that is peculiar about the strain of heredity of certain creatures that they should be so remarkably endowed with instincts? Must he not say in some form that the nervous substance of these creatures has been 'set' in the creatures' ancestors? But the question of instinct is touched upon under the next point.

2. (6 of Cope's table). "Habitual movements are derived from conscious experience." This may mean movements habitual to the individual or to the species in question. If it refers to the individual it may be true on either doctrine, provided we once get the child started on the movement-the point discussed under the preceding head. If, on the other hand, habitual movements mean race movements, we raise the question of race habits, best typified in instinct. I agree with Mr. Cope that most race habits are due to conscious function in the first place; and making that our supposition, again we ask: Can one who believes it still be a Preformist? I should again say that he could. The problem set to the Preformist would not in this case differ from that which he has to solve in accounting for development generally : it would not be altered by the postulate that consciousness is present in the individual. He can say that consciousness is a variation, and what the individual does by it is 'preformed' in this variation. And then what later generations do through their consciousness is all preformed in the variations which they constitute on the earlier variations. In other words, I do not see that the case is made any harder for the Preformist by our postulate that consciousness with its nervous correlate is a real agent. And I think we may go further and say that the case is easier for him when we take into account the phenomena of Social Heredity. In children, for example, there are variations in their mobility, plasticity, etc.; in short, in the ease of operation of Social Heredity as seen in the acquisition of particular functions. Children are notoriously different in their aptitudes for acquiring speech, for example; some learn faster, better, and more. Let us say that this is true in animal communities generally; then these most plastic individuals will be preserved to do the advantageous things for which their variations show them to be the most fit. And the next generation will

show an emphasis of just this direction in its variations. So the fact of Social Heredity-the fact of acute use of consciousness in ontogeny -becomes an element in phylogeny, also, even on the Preformist theory.

Besides, when we remember that the permanence of a habit learned by one individual is largely conditioned by the learning of the same habits of others (notably of the opposite sex) in the same environment, we see that an enormous premium must have been put on variations of a social kind-those which brought different individuals into some kind of joint action or coöperation. Wherever this appeared, not only would habits be maintained, but new variations, having all the force of double hereditary tendency, might also be expected. But consciousness is, of course, the prime variation through which coöperation is secured. All of which means, if I am right, that the rise of consciousness is of direct help to the Preformist in accounting for race habits-notably those known as gregarious, coöperative, social.

3. (7 of Cope's table). "The rational mind is developed by experience, through memory and classification." This, too, I accept, provided the term 'classification' has a meaning that psychologists agree to. So the question is again: Can the higher mental functions be evolved from the lower without calling in Epigenesis? I think so. Here it seems to me that the fact of Social Heredity is the main and controlling consideration. It is notorious how meagre the evidence is that a son inherits or has the peculiar mental traits of parents beyond those traits contained in the parents' own heredity. Galton has shown how rare a thing it is for artistic, literary or other marked talent to descend to the second generation. Instead, we find such exhibitions showing themselves in many individuals at about the same time, in the same communities, and under the same social conditions, etc. Groups of artists, musicians, literary men, appear, as it were, as social outbursts. The presuppositions of genius-dark as the subject is-seem to be great power of learning or absorbing, marked gifts or proclivities of a personal kind which are not directly inherited but fall under the head of sports or variations, and then a social environment of high level in the direction of these sports. The details of the individual development, inside of the general proclivity which he has, are determined by his social environment, not by his natural heredity. And I think the phylogenetic origin of the higher mental functions, thought, self-consciousness, etc., must have been similar. I have devoted space to a

⚫ detailed account of the social factors involved in the evolution of these higher faculties in my book.

I fail to see any great amount of truth in the claims of Mr. Spencer that intellectual progress in the race requires the Epigenesis view. The level of culture in a community seems to be about as fixed a thing as moral qualities are capable of being; much more so than the level of individual endowment. This latter seems to be capricious or variable, while the former moves by a regular movement and with a massive front. It would seem, therefore, that intellectual and moral progress is gradual improvement, through improved relationships on the part of the individuals to one another; a matter of social accommodation, rather than of natural inheritance alone, on the part of individuals. It is only a rare individual whose heredity enables him to break through the lines of social tissue and imprint his personality upon the social movement. And in that case the only explanation of him is that he is a variation, not that he inherited his intellectual or moral power Furthermore, I think the actual growth of the individual in intellectual stature and moral attainment can be traced in the main to certain of the elements of his social milieu, allowing always a balance of variation in the direction in which he finally excels.

So strong does the case seem for the Social Heredity view in this matter of intellectual and moral progress that I may suggest an hypothesis which may not stand in court, but which I find interesting. May not the rise of the social life be justified from the point of view of a second utility in addition to that of its utility in the struggle for existence as ordinarily understood; the second utility, i. e., of giving to each generation the attainments of the past which natural inheritance is inadequate to transmit? Whether we admit Epigenesis or confine ourselves to Preformism, I suppose we have to accept Mr. Galton's law of Regression and Weismann's principle of Panmixia in some shape. Now when social life begins we find the beginning of the artificial selection of the unfit; and so these negative principles begin to work directly in the teeth of progress, as many writers on social themes have recently made clear. This being the case, some other resource is necessary besides natural inheritance. On my hypothesis it is found in the common or social standards of attainment which the individual is fitted to grow up to and to which he is compelled to submit. This secures progress tn two ways: First, by making the individual learn what the race has learned, thus preventing social retrogression, in any case; and seecond, by putting a direct premium on variations which are socially available.

Under this general conception we may bring the biological phenomena of infancy, with all their evolutionary significance: the great

plasticity of the mammal infant as opposed to the highly developed instinctive equipment of other young; the maternal care, instruction and example during the period of helplessness, and the very gradual attainment of the activities of self-maintenance in conditions in which social activities are absolutely essential. All this stock of the development theory is available to confirm this view.

And to finish where we began, all this is through that wonderful engine of development, consciousness. For consciousness is the avenue of all social influences.-J. MARK BALDWIN, Princeton.

The preceding communication from Prof. Baldwin is copied from Science of August 23, 1895. It is reprinted in order to render intelligible a review of it which I propose to publish in the next number of the NATURALIST.-E. D. COPE.

ANTHROPOLOGY.1

This a hand

Mercer's Cave Explorations in Yucatan. somely illustrated volume which describes in detail the researches made by the Corwith Expedition to Yucatan, under the direction of Mr. H. C. Mercer of the University of Pennsylvania. The object of the expedition was to search for the remains of prehistoric man in the cave deposits, and to learn who were the predecessors or ancestors of the peoples whose civilization is attested by the remarkable ruins which are such a conspicuous feature of that country. Explorations of this kind made in Europe have achieved such important results to archeology, that every research in America must be watched with great interest. As a summary of his work, Mr. Mercer remarks:

"The intervening two months seemed a long time; nor was it easy to realize that, after all, the area gone over had not exceeded one hundred miles in length by ten in breadth. Twenty-nine caves had been visited in sixty days, of which ten had been excavated. Thirteen had archeological significance. Six had yielded valuable, and three, decisive results.

"We had seen but little of the ruins. We had not passed southward over the boundary line into the great wilderness, whence fables of lost cities reach the traveller's ear. Our continued study of an un

1 This department is edited by H. C. Mercer, University of Pennsylvania.

2 The Hill Caves of Yucatan: A Search for the Evidence of Man's Antiquity in Central America; being an account of the Corwith Expedition of the Department of Archeology and Paleontology of the University of Pennsylvania, by Henry C. Mercer. J. B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, 1896. 8vo., pp. 183.