DOES HEREDITY OR ENVIRONMENT MAKE MEN? 499 



call them George and James. There was no great outward difference 

 in them as boys. Their parents tried their utmost to treat them exact- 

 ly alike, but the more they treated them alike, the more amazingly 

 unlike they grew. When their mother sent them on an errand James 

 would always loiter and show up an hour late, while George was on 

 time. George was always devising new ways of doing the farm work, 

 while James was content to get by in any old way or not get by at all. 



When they went to school the teacher saw no great difference be- 

 tween them, but soon discovered that while James was two years 

 older, Still, George could do his class work better and within a year was 

 one grade ahead of his brother. In spite of expending very little effort 

 on George and every possible effort on James, it was impossible to make 

 them progress alike. Of course two or three hundred years ago James 

 and perhaps George also, might have been mere ignorant louts about 

 the village. Quite possibly both might have been bandits and 

 criminals according to the ideas of crime in that day. But if so, 

 George would have been the leader and James the follower. Conse- 

 quently the absolute mental and moral achievements of both were 

 enormously increased by the wonderful modern environment. But 

 their achievements and character remained relatively the same. 



However, the community saw no outstanding differences between 

 these two boys. They were both good, well-behaved lads. But let us 

 look thirty years later. George was in the United States Senate, one 

 of the great orators, one of the great political and economic thinkers 

 of our time, one of the keenest and most graceful writers of the day 

 and, had he not made a political blunder, would probably have been 

 president of the United States; while James was keeping a fourth- 

 class pie counter in western Illinois. 



Now this world is made up of Jameses and Georges. And in the 

 careers of these men and these families, the Crosbys, and the Conrads, 

 the Jameses and Georges, are exhibited in simple relief the vast forces 

 that make and unmake empires, that create and separate social classes, 

 that evolve great cultures and intellectual disciplines and overthrow 

 them — in short, the forces that make our lives, and make history and 

 civilization what they are. I might add that George married into one 

 of the great families of the world and his two children show promise of 

 helping to glorify the age. James married a woman of his own type 

 and his two children show every promise of continuing in pie-counter 

 channels. Now it is necessary to have pie counters as well as Senates. 

 And I have little doubt that James blames his situation on his environ- 



