=The Lamarckian explanation of decadence.=--The second of the two false interpretations of history in terms of biology is still, and always has been, widely credited. When historians have paid any attention to the breed of a people as determining its destiny, they have invariably added to the fallacy of racial senility this no less fecund error. It is that, in consequence of success, a people become idle, thoughtless, unenterprising, luxurious, and that these _acquired characters are transmitted_ to succeeding generations so that, finally, there is produced a degenerate people unable to bear the burden of Empire--and then the crash comes. The historian usually introduces the idea already dismissed by saying that a “young and vigorous race” invaded the Imperial territories--and so forth. The terms “young” and “old,” applied to human races, usually mean nothing at all. The reader will recognise, of course, in this doctrine of the transmission to children of characters acquired by their parents, the explanation of organic evolution advanced by Lamarck rather more than a century ago. It is employed by historians for the explanation of both the processes they record, progress and retrogression. Thus they suppose that for many generations a race is disciplined, and so at last there is produced a race with discipline in its very bone; or for many generations a nation finds it necessary to make adventure upon the sea, and so at last there is produced a generation of predestined sailors with blue water in its blood. And in similar terms moral and physical retrogression or degeneration are explained. Let us consider the contrast between the interpretation which accepts the Lamarckian theory of the transmission of acquired characters and that which does not. Consider the babies of a new generation. According to Lamarck, these have in their blood and brain the consequences of the habits of their ancestors. If these have been idle and luxurious, the new babies are predestined to be idle and luxurious too. This, in short, is a “dying nation.” But, if acquired characters are not transmitted, the new generation is, on the whole, not much better, not much worse, than its predecessors--so far as this supposed factor of change is concerned. Each generation makes a fresh start, as we see in the babies of our slums to-day. It does not begin where the last left off--whether that means beginning at a higher or at a lower level than that at which the last started: but it makes a fresh start where the last did. Now, in general, we have seen that Lamarck's theory is discredited. The view of Mr. Galton is accepted, that acquired characters are not transmitted, either for good or for evil. If there are no other factors of racial degeneration or racial advance, then races do not degenerate or advance, but make a fresh start every generation: and Empires rise and fall without any relation to the breed of the Imperial people--an incredible proposition.