62 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



nurture, the question whether nature is inherited nurture or not 

 may seem a matter of words and definitions, rather than a real 

 problem of things ; although no one can lose sight of the truth 

 that aptitude for nurture is not, unfortunately, the same as apti- 

 tude for beneficial nurture. It is, at most, no harder to acquire 

 pernicious habits than to acquire good ones ; no harder to culti- 

 vate bodily infirmity, or logical inconsequence, or mental imbe- 

 cility, or moral obliquity, than to develop and make the best of 

 our faculties and opportunities. He who has passed the plastic 

 age without adding to his nature much nurture he would gladly 

 be quit of, is either more fortunate or less particular than the bulk 

 of mankind. While it may be true that we acquire no nurture 

 but that which our nature permits, it is no less true that this 

 nature permits a wide range of good and bad ; and that it by 

 no means binds us to make of our nature all that it permits. All 

 this seems true of other living things as well, and the view that 

 nature is inherited nurture throws no light on the problem of 

 fitness. 



Belief that something is added to our nature by experience, 

 and training, and education, rests on deliberate or unconscious 

 acceptance of some such definition of nature as that which Alci- 

 phron gives ; and, as the modern zoologist, who regards nature as 

 the inherited effect of past nurture, seems to lose sight of Euphra- 

 nor's analysis of this definition, I beg leave to refresh his memory 

 by a short quotation from the old dialogue. 



v 

 Euphranor. You seem very much taken with the beauty of nature. 



Be pleased to tell me, Alciphron, what those things are which you esteem 

 natural, or by what mark I may know them. 



Alciphron. For a thing to be natural, for instance, to the mind of man, 

 it must appear originally therein : it must be universal in all men : it must 

 be invariably the same in all nations and ages. These limitations of origi- 

 nal, universal, and invariable exclude all those notions of the human mind 

 which are the effect of custom and education. The case is the same with 

 respect to all other species of beings. A cat, for example, hath a natural 

 inclination to pursue a mouse, because it agrees with the forementioned 

 marks. But if a cat be taught to play tricks, you will not say these tricks 

 are natural. For the same reason, if upon a plum tree peaches and apricots 

 are engrafted, nobody will say they are the natural growth of the plum tree. 



Euph. But to return to man : it seems you allow those things alone 



