It would seem here as if man were a most undesirable factor in social evolution; as if he acted solely as a brake on the wheels of progress, always seeking to maintain previous conditions, and to modify conduct retroactively. We can easily see how this deterrent position is taken by us. Our range of perception depends on our brain. The brain is an organ, transmitted with hereditary modification like any other organ, and that hereditary modification is of course resultant from earlier conditions. The older the modifying conditions the deeper the modification; racial habits of unbroken centuries are not to be offset by one lifetime’s change. So we look out upon the world through an ancestral brain which is far more responsive to simple primitive stimuli than to the more subtle combinations of the present; witness the absurd delight of modern man in hunting. By this inheritance we find it easier to enjoy, approve of, understand, and uphold that which has been than that which is; to say nothing of that which is to be. Nevertheless the brain is of most easily modifiable structure, and, of itself, shares in the uplifting pressure toward higher development. Each child should bring to the race a little more brain capacity, a little more inclination to progress, and no doubt he does. But this tendency to new power of thought and breadth of vision, which is ours in every child by virtue of social evolution, is heavily offset by the parental action, by our conscious contribution to our own conduct. Nothing is firmer in our minds than the concept of parental duty; an instinct of primitive force and cumulative development. Parental duty involves education, and education, as previously grasped by man’s consciousness, has been one of the most retroactive of social forces as well as one of the most beneficial. It is a simple physiological law that the impressions first received are keener and deeper than those of later years. Thus each old person carries a memory of better things in his youth; not that they were better in any way, but that his machinery was fresher and took stronger impression. Owing to this the teaching of the aged has always harked back to the superiority of the past—their youth, and deprecated the decadence of the present—their age. It is the measure of personal life erroneously applied to racial life. Under its pressure has sprung one of the most universal of our folk-myths, the legend of a Heroic Past. The diminutive size and narrow experiences of a child make the events of youth seem larger than those of maturity. The aging brain, as it weakens in recent memories of what a large experience makes small events, recurs vividly to those important records of its youth, and thus naturally cherishes this conviction of the real superiority of those early days. The long life and wide range of impression of the human being give a broad field for this natural assumption, and the power of speech makes the assumption transmissible.