DOES HEREDITY OR ENVIRONMENT MAKE MEN? 503 



conclusion is that environment does not much change the relative 

 situations and achievements and characters of men. But a rich en- 

 vironment gives all men the chance for greater achievements and a 

 wider life. If Roosevelt had been born in Africa he would not have 

 been the Roosevelt he was. But even in Africa he would have been 

 the "Buanna Tumbo" — the big hunter as the natives called him, the 

 mighty man with the big stick with the power to move things and men. 

 And he would have had a "perfectly corking time." 



You should remember always that by the hereditarian view you 

 are not mastered by fate, but you are the masters of fate. You make 

 your environment to a far greater extent than it makes you. Life is 

 self-expression, self-realization. Every one should study his heredity, 

 and the lives of his immediate ancestors. He should choose his voca- 

 tion with a view of avoiding their failures and imitating their successes. 

 If they drank to excess, it should be a special warning. If they had 

 particular talents, these should be emulated. You probably have some 

 or all of them. Let your natural, inborn light shine, to be seen of all 

 men. You are always going to live with yourself. Then make your- 

 self a good person to live with. You probably have a great deal of 

 good heredity going to waste. Explore yourself and find out. You 

 can not express anybody else's heredity. You must express your own. 

 For there is no antagonism between heredity and environment. 

 Heredity has furnished you with untold powers and no one ever 

 develops all of them as much as he could and ought. It is your duty 

 to use those powers in building an environment amid which and with 

 which both you and your descendants may make the noblest possible 

 practical achievements. 



It seems to me that this view of life, far from being fatalistic, as 

 the extreme environmental view surely is, is filled with the most inspir- 

 ing optimism. A boy may never hear the chance sermon, or read the 

 inspiring book which our environmental friends often point out as 

 being the "cause" of his fine career in life. If such things are the 

 "causes" of the success or failure of men, then we are mere pawns upon 

 the chess-board of environment, mere marionettes upon the stage 

 whose wires are pulled by this mysterious and awful hand of doom. 

 In a bad environment a boy would be bound to turn out to be bad, 

 and in- a good environment he would be bound to turn out to be good. 

 Whatever the optimism or pessimism of such a view may be, we see 

 simply that this is not true. Good boys constantly come up out of 

 bad environment, and boys turn out badly amid the best environment 

 that human wisdom can devise. 



