h caused admiration
and wonder, but they have had very little influence of a practical
nature on Western civilization. So society may make progress in either
art, religion, or government for a time, and then, for the want of
adaptation to the conditions imposed by progress, the effects may
disappear. Yet not all is lost, for some achievements in the form of
tools are passed on through social heredity and utilized by other
races. In the long run it is the total of the progress of the race,
the progress of the whole, that is the final test.

_Social Progress Involves Individual Development_.--If we trace
progress backward over the trail which it has followed, there are two
lines of development more or less clearly defined. One is the
improvement of the racial stock through the hereditary traits of
individuals. The brain is enlarged, the body developed in character
and efficiency, and the entire physical system has changed through
variation in accordance with the laws of heredity. What we observe is
development in the individual, which is its primary function. Progress
in this line must furnish individuals of a higher type in the
procession of the generations. The other line is through social
heredity, that is the accumulated products of civilization handed down
from generation to generation. This gives each succeeding generation a
new, improved kit of tools, it brings each new generation into a better
environment and surrounds it with ready-made means to carry on the
improvement and add something for the use of the next generation.
Knowledge of the arts and industries, language and books, are thus
products of social heredity. Also buildings, machinery, roads,
educational systems, and school buildings are inherited.

Connected with these two methods of development must {24} be the
discovery of the use of the human mind evidenced by the beginning of
reflective thought. It is said by some writers that we are still
largely in the age of instincts and emotions and have just recently
entered the age of reason. Such positive statements should be
considered with a wider vision of life, for one cannot conceive of
civilization at all without the beginning of reflective mental
processes. Simple inventions, like the use of fire, the bow-and-arrow,
or the flint knife, may have come about primarily through the desire to
accomplish something by subjecting means to an end, but in the
perfection of the use of these things,