Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/41

Rh Not that the improvement of the mind is wholly independent of the condition of the body; for, as we shall hereafter see, so intimate is the connection between the mind and the body, that the first step toward intellectual advancement cannot be taken until the demands of the body are satisfied. Nervous phenomena are dependent upon the same nutritive processes that govern physical development; and that this nerve force, through whose agency the system is charged with intellectuality, as the molecule is charged with mechanical force, does exist, is capable, to some extent, of transmitting acquirements or artificial instincts from parent to child, we have every reason to believe; but, so far as we know, intellectual force, per se, is no more a transmittable entity than is the flesh-quivering of the slain ox life.

The strangest part of it all is, that though wrought out by man as the instrument, and while acting in the capacity of a free agent, this spirit of progress is wholly independent of the will of man. Though in our individual actions we imagine ourselves directed only by our free will, yet in the end it is most difficult to determine what is the result of free will, and what of inexorable environment. While we think we are regulating our affairs, our affairs are regulating us. We plan out improvements, predetermine the best course and follow it, sometimes; yet, for all that, the principle of social progress is not the man, is not in the man, forms no constituent of his physical or psychical individual being; it is the social atmosphere into which the man is born, into which he brings nothing and from which he takes nothing. While a member of society he adds his quota to the general fund and there leaves it; while acting as a free agent he performs his part in working out this problem of social development, performs it unconsciously, willing or unwilling he performs it, his baser passions being as powerful instruments of progress as his nobler; for avarice drives on intellect as effectually as benevolence,