o do so
adequately. But his treatment was of great value in giving an impetus
to further research. This value indeed can scarcely be over-estimated.
And when the natural history of the mental operations shall have been
written, the cardinal fact will stand forth, that the instinctive and
emotional foundations are the outcome of biological evolution and have
been ingrained in the race through natural selection. We shall more
clearly realise that educability itself is a product of natural
selection, though the specific results acquired through cerebral
modifications are not transmitted through heredity. It will, perhaps,
also be realised that the instinctive foundations of social behaviour
are, for us, somewhat out of date and have undergone but little change
throughout the progress of civilisation, because natural selection has
long since ceased to be the dominant factor in human progress. The
history of human progress has been mainly the history of man's higher
educability, the products of which he has projected on to his
environment. This educability remains on the average what it was a
dozen generations ago; but the thought-woven tapestry of his
surroundings is refashioned and improved by each succeeding
generation. Few men have in greater measure enriched the
thought-environment with which it is the aim of education to bring
educable human beings into vital contact, than has Charles Darwin. His
special field of work was the wide province of biology; but he did
much to help us to realise that mental factors have contributed to
organic evolution and that in man, the highest product of Evolution,
they have reached a position of unquestioned supremacy.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 153: _Origin of Species_ (6th edit.), p. 205.]

[Footnote 154: _Descent of man_ (2nd edit. 1888), Vol. I. p. 99;
Popular edit. p. 99.]

[Footnote 155: _Ibid._ p. 99.]

[Footnote 156: _The Expression of the Emotions_ (2nd edit.), p. 32.]

[Footnote 157: _Descent of Man_, Vol. II. p. 435.]

[Footnote 158: _Ibid._ 437, 438.]

[Footnote 159: _Origin of Species_ (6th edit.), p. 205.]

[Footnote 160: _Origin of Species_ (6th edit.), p. 205.]

[Footnote 161: _Ibid._ p. 233.]

[Footnote 162: _Ibid._ p. 205.]

[Footnote 163: _Origin of Species_ (6th edit.), p. 233.]

[Footnote 164: _Origin of Species_, pp. 210, 211.]

[Footnote 165: Independently suggested, on somewhat different lines,
by Profs. J. Mark Baldwin, Henry F. Osborn and the write