Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![XV] Heredity and Environment its progeny the highest qualities of its parentage. In the case of the human race, how¬ ever, many writers thoughtlessly speak of the hereditary effects of strength or skill due to any mechanical work or special art being continued generation after gene¬ ration in the same family, as among the castes of India. But of any progressive improvement there is no evidence what¬ ever. Those children who had a natural aptitude for the work would, of course, form the successors of their parents, and there is no proof of anything hereditary except as regards this innate aptitude. Many people are alarmed at the state¬ ment that the efíects of education and training are not hereditary, and think that if that were really the case there would be no hope of improvement of the race ; but closer consideration will show them that if the results of our education in the widest sense, in the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the world at large, had really been hereditary, even in the slightest degree, then indeed there would be little hope for humanity ; and there is no clearer proof of this than the fact that we have not all been made much worse—the wonder III](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0124.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
