Throughout the whole series of the animal world, and especially in the higher groups which approach nearest to ourselves, mental and physical characters are so inextricably intermixed in their relation to the laws of evolution and heredity, that either of them studied separately leads us to the same conclusions. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that breeders of animals of all kinds act upon the principle that all the qualities of the various stocks, whether bodily or mental, are _innate_ and have been due to selection; while training, though necessary to bring out the good qualities of the individual, has had no part in the _production_ of those qualities. When a horse or dog of good pedigree is accidentally injured so that it cannot be regularly trained, it is still used for breeding purposes without any doubt as to its conveying to its progeny the highest qualities of its parentage. In the case of the human race, however, many writers thoughtlessly speak of the hereditary effects of strength or skill due to any mechanical work or special art being continued generation after generation in the same family, as among the castes of India. But of any progressive improvement there is no evidence whatever. Those children who had a natural aptitude for the work would, of course, form the successors of their parents, and there is no proof of anything hereditary except as regards this _innate_ aptitude. Many people are alarmed at the statement that the effects of education and training are _not_ hereditary, and think that if that were really the case there would be no hope of improvement of the race; but closer consideration will show them that if the results of our education in the widest sense, in the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the world at large, had really been hereditary, even in the slightest degree, then indeed there would be little hope for humanity; and there is no clearer proof of this than the fact that we have not _all_ been made much worse—the wonder being that any fragment of morality, or humanity, or the love of truth or justice for their own sakes still exists among us. * * * * *