tinually brought by exercise to the highest point of efficiency.

We are not to conclude that physical heredity is of no importance to the
social order; it must be obvious that the better the qualities of the
individuals constituting a race, the more easily they will fit
themselves into good social traditions, the more readily they will
advance those traditions to a still higher point of excellence, and the
more stoutly they would resist deterioration. The qualities upon which
the social fabric calls must be there, and the more readily they are
forthcoming, the more easily the social machine will work. Hence social
progress necessarily implies a certain level of racial development, and
its advance may always be checked by the limitations of the racial type.
Nevertheless, if we look at human history as a whole, we are impressed
with the stability of the great fundamental characteristics of human
nature and the relatively sweeping character and often rapid development
of social change.

In view of this contrast we must hesitate to attribute any substantial
share in human development to biological factors, and our hesitation is
increased when we consider the factors on which social change depends.
It is in the department of knowledge and industry that advance is most
rapid and certain, and the reason is perfectly clear. It is that on this
side each generation can build on the work of its predecessors. A man of
very moderate mathematical capacity today can solve problems which
puzzled Newton, because he has available the work of Newton and of many
another since Newton's time. In the department of ethics the case is
different. Each man's character has to be formed anew, and though
teaching goes for much, it is not everything. The individual in the end
works out his own salvation. Where there is true ethical progress is in
the advance of ethical conceptions and principles which can be handed
on; of laws and institutions which can be built up, maintained, and
improved. That is to say, there is progress just where the factor of
social tradition comes into play and just so far as its influence
extends. If the tradition is broken, the race begins again where it
stood before the tradition was formed. We may infer that, while the race
has been relatively stagnant, society has rapidly developed, and we must
conclude that, whether for good or for evil, social changes are mainly
determined, not by alterations of racial type, but by mo