Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/40

22 in no wise inherit it, whereas the soul of his accomplishments does not die, but lives in the air, and becomes part of the vital breath of society. And, again, "power that has been laboriously acquired and stored up as statical in one generation" sometimes, says Maudsley, "becomes the inborn faculty of the next; and the development takes place in accordance with that law of increasing speciality and complexity of adaption to external nature which is traceable through the animal kingdom; or, in other words, that law of progress, from the general to the special, in development, which the appearance of nerve force amongst natural forces and the complexity of the nervous system of man both illustrate." On the other side John Stuart Mill is just as positive that culture is not inherent. "Of all vulgar modes," he remarks, "of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences;" and, says Mr Buckle, "we cannot safely assume that there has been any permanent improvement in the moral or intellectual faculties of man, nor have we any decisive ground for saying that those faculties are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous country."

Whether or not the nervous system, which is the connective tissue between man's animality and his intellectuality, transmits its subtle forces from one generation to another, we may be sure that the mind acts on the nerves, and the nerves on every part of the system, and that the intelligence of the mind influences and governs the materialism of the body, and the consequences in some way are felt by succeeding generations; but that the mind becomes material, and its qualities transmitted to posterity, is an hypothesis yet unestablished.

Moreover we may safely conclude that the improvement of mankind is a phenomenon purely intellectual.