the customs, the traditions, the beliefs, the knowledge which are handed on by one generation to another independently of organic propagation. By it a new heredity, free from the limitations of protoplasmic continuity, is established. Its first beginnings are seen in the imitative tendencies of animals by which the young of one generation acquire some of the habits of their parents, and by which gregarious and social animals acquire a community of procedure ensuring the advantage of the group. “Taboo,” the systematic imposition by the community of restrictions upon the conduct of the individual, is one of its earliest manifestations in primitive man and can be observed even in animal communities. But with the development of the power of inter-communication by the use of language, the Record rapidly acquired an increased development, which was enormously extended by the continuous growth in mankind of the faculty of memory. To the mere tradition preserved by memory and handed on by speech was then added the written record and its later multiplication by the mechanical arts of printing, by which it acquired permanence and universal distribution. The result is the creation of an almost inconceivably vast body of traditional custom, law and knowledge into which every human being is born, less in the more isolated and barbarous communities, but large everywhere. Education is not in its essential nature a training administered to the young by an older generation, but is the natural and unaided assimilation of the Record of the Past by the automatically educable brain—an assimilation which is always in all races very large but becomes far larger in civilized communities. It is among them so important whilst the Record in all its details is so far beyond the receptive capacity of the brain, that selection and guidance are employed by the elders in order to enable the younger generation to benefit to the utmost by the absorption (so to speak) in the limited span of a lifetime of the most valuable influences to be acquired from this prodigious envelope of Recorded Experience. The imperishable Record invests the human race like a protective atmosphere, a new and yet a natural dispensation, giving to man, as compared with his animal ancestry, a new heaven and a new earth!
A result of the very greatest importance arising from the application of the generalizations of Darwinism to human development and to the actual phase of existing human population is that education has no direct effect upon the mental or physical features of the race or stock: it can only affect those of the individual. Educability, defects or excellences, or peculiarities of mind or body, can be handed on from parent to offspring by protoplasmic continuity in reproduction. But the results of education cannot be so handed on. The educated man who has acquired new experiences, new knowledge, can place these on the great Record for the benefit of future generations of men, but he cannot bodily transmit his acquirements to his offspring. Were acquired (superimposed) characters really transmissible by breeding, then every child born would inherit, more or less completely, the knowledge acquired by both its parents. But we know this is not the case: the child has to begin with a clean slate and learn for itself. Aptitudes and want of aptitude, which are innate and constitutional, are transmitted to offspring, but not the results of experience, education and training. Blemishes in the stock, defects of mind or body, though they may be to some extent corrected in the individual by training, cannot be got rid of from the stock by any such process. A defective stock, if allowed to breed, will perpetuate its defects, in spite of the concealment of those defects in an individual by training or other treatment. Equally it must be concluded that the weakness and degradation produced by semi-starvation and insanitary conditions of life are only an effect on the individual and cannot affect the stock. The stock may be destroyed, killed out by adverse conditions, but its quality is not directly affected, and if removed to more favourable conditions it will show no hereditary results of the previous adversity; indeed it will probably have been strengthened in some ways by the destruction in severe conditions of its weaker members and the survival of the stronger individuals. Such considerations have the very greatest importance for the guidance of the action of civilized man in seeking the health and happiness of the community. But it must not be forgotten that the problems presented by human communities are extremely complex, and that the absence of any selection of healthy or desirable stock in the breeding of human communities leads to undesirable consequences. The most thrifty and capable sections of the people at the present day are not (it has been shown) in overcrowded areas, producing offspring at such a rate as to contribute to the increase of the population. That increase, it has been shown, is due to the early marriage and excessive reproduction of the reckless and hopeless, the poorest, least capable, least desirable members of the community. The questions raised by these considerations have attracted much public attention under the newly invented name of “eugenics,” but they are of an exceedingly difficult and delicate nature. (E. R. L.)
ZORILLA, MANUEL RUIZ, Don (1834–1895), Spanish politician, was born at Burgo de Osma in 1834. He began his education at Valladolid, and studied law afterwards at Madrid University, where he leaned towards Radicalism in politics. In 1856 he was elected deputy, and soon attracted notice among the most advanced Progressists and Democrats. He took part in the revolutionary propaganda that led to the military movement in Madrid on the 22nd of June 1866. He had to take refuge in France for two years, like his fellow-conspirators, and only returned to Spain when the revolution of 1868 took place. He was one of the members of the first cabinet after the revolution, and in 1869, under the regency of Marshal Serrano, he became minister of grace and justice. In 1870 he was elected president of the House of Deputies, and seconded Prim in offering the throne to Amadeus of Savoy. He went to Italy as president of the commission, carrying to the prince at Florence the official news of his election. On the arrival of Amadeus in Spain, Ruiz Zorilla became minister of public works for a short time, and resigned by way of protesting against Serrano and Topete entering the councils of the new king. Six months later, in 1871, he was invited by Amadeus to form a cabinet, and he continued to be the principal councilor of the king until February 1873, when the monarch abdicated in disgust at the resistance he met with in the army, and at the lack of sincerity on the part of the very politicians and generals who had asked him to ascend the throne. After the departure of Amadeus, Ruiz Zorilla advocated the establishment of a republic. Notwithstanding this, he was not called upon either by the Federal Republicans to help them during the year 1873, or by Marshal Serrano during 1874 to join Martos and Sagasta in his cabinet. Immediately after the restoration of Alphonso XII., early in 1875, Ruiz Zorilla went to France. He was for nearly eighteen years the soul of the republican conspiracies, the prompter of revolutionary propaganda, the chief inspirer of intrigues concerted by discontented military men of all ranks. He gave so much trouble to the Madrid governments that they organized a watch over him with the assistance of the French government and police, especially when it was discovered that the two military movements of August 1883 and September 1886 had been prepared and assisted by him. During the last two years of his life Ruiz Zorilla became less active; failing health and the loss of his wife had decreased his energies, and the Madrid government allowed him to return to Spain some months before he died at Burgos, on the 13th of June 1895, of heart disease.
ZORNDORF, a village of Prussia, in the Oder valley, north-east of Custrin. It is famous as the scene of a battle in which the Prussians under Frederick the Great defeated the Russians commanded by Fermor, on the 25th of August 1758 (see Seven Years’ War).
ZOROASTER, one of the great teachers of the East, the founder of what was the national religion of the Perso-Iranian people from the time of the Achaemenidae to the close of the Sassanian period. The name (Ζωροάστρης) is the corrupt Greek form of the old Iranian Zarathustra (new Persian,
