CHAPTER TWELVE 



NATURE AND NURTURE 



1. CONTEMPLATING the characters of any living Effects of 

 being, whether plant or animal, we may ask which are 



due to heredity ("nature") and which to environment 

 ("nurture"). The answer to this question assumes 

 great practical importance in relation to domestic 

 animals and plants, and still greater when we come to 

 consider man and all the problems of education, of 

 morality, and justice. First of all, however, it is neces- 

 sary to be quite sure what we mean by these terms. In 

 a broad sense, heredity and environment are alike 

 nature; but the custom has grown up of using "na- 

 ture" to mean the inherited equipment, as when we 

 speak of "the nature of the beast," or say, in the words 

 of the old nursery rhyme, "dogs delight to bark and 

 bite, it is their nature to." 



2. With this definition or limitation, the matter Favorable 

 superficially appears rather simple, but it is in fact 



very complex and often puzzling. We cannot say that sar y for 



. r i ,, existence 



we came into the world as infants, with our ' nature, 

 and that every subsequent addition is due to "nur- 

 ture," though in one sense this may be true. Most 

 assuredly the environment provided our food, the source 

 of all our growth. Not only this, but the physical sub- 

 stance of the living body is constantly wearing away, 

 so that after a few years there is very little of the 

 original material with which we were born. A little 

 further inquiry shows us that long before birth we were 

 growing, and absorbing nourishment, so that if we wish 

 to go back to the actual beginning and ascertain what 

 our "inheritance" was, we find that it was nothing more 

 than a fertilized cell of the minutest size. Truly it 



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