an be inherited only by lineal offspring,
passing from father to son. Extrinsic personality may fail to be
inherited by lineal descendants and may be inherited by others than
lineal descendants. It is transmitted and determined by social
inheritance. Yet it is through personality that the individual may
break away from the dominant currents of the social order, and become
thus the means for the transformation of that order. The secret of
social progress lies in personality. In proportion as the social order
is fitted, accordingly, widely to develop high-grade personality,[DC]
is its own progress rapid and safe.

Does acquired personality react on intrinsic personality? This is the
problem of "the inheritance of acquired characteristics." Into this
problem I do not enter further than to note that in so far as newly
developed personal traits produce transformations of body and brain
transmittable from parent to offspring by the bare fact of parentage,
in that degree does acquired pass over into intrinsic personality and
thereby become intrinsic. In regard to the degree in which acquired
has passed over into intrinsic personality, thus differentiating the
leading races of mankind, we contend that it is practically
non-existent. The phenomena of personality characterizing the chief
races of men are due, not to intrinsic, but to acquired personality;
in other words they are the products of the respective social orders
and are transmitted from generation to generation by social rather
than by biological heredity.

XXXIV

THE BUDDHIST WORLD-VIEW

Fully to comprehend the genius and history of Japan and her social
order, we need to gain a still more thorough insight into the various
conceptions of the universe that have influenced the people. What have
been their views as to the nature of the ultimate reality lying behind
all phenomena? What as to the relation of mankind to that Ultimate
Reality? And what has been the relation of these world-views to the
social order? To prepare the way for our final answer to these
questions, we confine ourselves in this chapter to a study of the
inner nature of the Buddhist world-view.

Since the Buddhist conception of the Ultimate Reality and of the
universe is one of the three important types of world-views dominating
the human mind, a type too that is hardly known in Western lands, in
order to set it forth in terms intelligible to the Occidental and the
Christian, it will be