DIMINISHING ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE 333 



i'ii \ ironmental differences which are experienced by children in the 

 public schools of New York are not very great and that the traits con- 

 cerned are not really important ones. Such important traits as normal 

 healthy body and mind for a long life of valuable achievement, and 

 a clean bill of character, can only be determined as present or absent, 

 in their varying amounts, after the race of life has been completely 

 or nearly run, and the records of success or failure, of distinction or 

 obscurity, of vices or virtues, have been left behind. The boy is father 

 to the man but our knowledge of biometry already teaches us that this 

 does not mean identity; it merely means a correlation. 



The study of children may lead us to wrong conclusions for other 

 reasons. It has already been shown in this article that, other things 

 equal, the young can be more easily affected by surroundings than the 

 adult, and also that there is a great tendency for the higher organisms to 

 equalize in time what they have gained or lost in youth, and to grow 

 after a predetermined plan. For these reasons even the discovery of 

 actual modifications produced among children would not show that the 

 grown men and women, who will be freer to pick and choose their 

 congenial environment, will not follow the same paths that they other- 

 wise would have done. 



Pearson and his pupils have recently attempted, by the comparative 

 study of children, to differentiate between the relative influence of 

 heredity and environment. Their results are confirmatory for the 

 special traits studied. In a memoir on vision and sight 46 the authors 

 write as follows, with regard to the effects of environment. 



As far as the admittedly slender data of this first study reach, there is: 

 ( 1 ) No evidence whatever that overcrowded, poverty stricken homes, or phys- 

 ically ill-conditioned or immoral parentages are markedly detrimental to the 

 children's eye-sight. (2) No sufficient or definite evidence that school environ- 

 ment has a detrimental effect on the eye-sight of the children. 



At the close of the paper the authors make the surprising state- 

 ment that their own research is " the first eugenic study which has 

 endeavored to compare the inheritance and environment factors. We 

 anticipated finding them to be far more comparable in magnitude." 

 If the authors had read a little of the earlier researches on the question 

 of the relative influence of heredity and environment they would neither 

 have spoken of their own eugenic study as the first nor have expressed 

 wonderment at the result. 



In "The Relative Strength of Nurture and Nature,'' Ethel M. 

 Elderton 47 analyzes the above investigation on the eye-sight of children, 

 and also her own study on " The Influence of Parental Occupation and 



415 Amy Barrington and Karl Pearson, " A First Study of the Inheritance of 

 Vision and the Relative Influence of Heredity and Environment on Sight," 

 London, 1909, pp. 61. 



47 " Eugenics Laboratory Lecture," Series III., London, Dulau & Co., 1909. 



