The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

by Friedrich A. Hayek

Whilst learnt rules, which the individual came to obey habitually and almost as unconsciously as inherited instincts, increasingly replaced the latter, we cannot precisely distinguish between these two determinants of conduct because they interact in complicated ways. Practices learnt as infants have become as much part of our personalities as what governed us already when we began to learn. Even some structural changes in the human body have occurred because they helped man to take fuller advantage of opportunities provided by cultural developments. Neither is it important for our present purposes how much of the abstract structure that we call mind is transmitted genetically and embodied in the physical structure of our central nervous system, or how far it serves only as a receptacle enabling us to absorb cultural tradition. The results of genetic and cultural transmission may both be called traditions. What is important is that the two often conflict in the ways mentioned.