Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/474

470 In recent times the improvement of the great body of human tradition has been greatly accelerated by remarkable advances in the means of communication. Under the incidence of those broadening influences represented by the press, the railroad, the steamship, the telegraph and the telephone, local prejudices and customs are gradually breaking down. The enormous expansion of commercial enterprises and the ease of travel have developed a tolerance of thought undreamed of a few generations ago. We do not hear so much in these days of the "Heathen Chinee," and much of the virulence of other national and racial prejudices has been softened. Communities which have developed picturesque usages on account of their isolation from the great current of human thought and ideas at the swarming centers of civilization, are gradually losing their old-time seclusion with the introduction of the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone and the camera. By overcoming the restraining conditions of time and space, the great modern inventions have combined to loosen up the former rigidity of tradition, thus making for more flexible standards.

But as we have stated above, the enduring character of a civilization whose standards are fluid and plastic, depends upon the quality of the people. There appears to be no scientific reason for believing that the mind of modern man is in any marked way superior to the mind of primitive man. The reason for this is found in the fact that improvement in the innate mental constitution of a species comes only through the agency of selection, the extermination of the dull and unadaptable, the preservation of the alert and adaptable to be the progenitors of future generations. Now natural selection is not as great a factor in the lives of human beings as in the lives of other animals. Because of his greater cleverness, memory and foresight, man has been able to protect himself from many hostile forces and has materially modified the ruthless struggle for existence. Thus it has been that many individuals unfitted for a more rigorous existence have had their lives prolonged to leave more than their natural quota of sickly offspring. For this reason, leading authorities agree that there has been little improvement in the innate mental constitution of man during the historical period. In proportion as he has simplified his tradition and made of his customs more efficient instruments, man has learned to control the forces of nature which worked him harm and has been able gradually to limit the sphere within which pitiless natural selection operates.

At the present time our traditions are openly or indirectly, as the case may be, hostile to natural selection as a means of human improvement. Humanitarian ideals, democratic principles. Christian beliefs and medical practises, are unalterably opposed to the ruthless extinction of the unfit. Yet our mores need to have injected into them the idea that abiding human progress can come only through the improvement