Biology of Man

Abstract

IN the review by J. S. H. of Mr. Wells's “Men Like Gods” (NATURE, May 5, p. 591) we are told that even domestic-minded leopards and tigers are not lightly to be dismissed after recent experiments on the inheritance of tameness and wildness in rats. Almost in the next paragraph we are further informed that the rôle of eugenics is to be reduced to a minimum, and its functions are to be replaced by education. Wildness in the lower animals is to be removed by selective breeding, wildness and brutality in man is to be cured by education, by environment, and that mysterious process a “change of heart”. It is very strange how dominant is the wholly unwarranted belief that man is an animal for whom other laws told than for his humbler mammalian kindred.