THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION 47 1 



grow directly out of the relation of biological and cultural 

 factors. One of them is that of the re'ation of heredity and 

 environment, or as it better stated since the days of Galton, 

 of nature and nurture. 



THE fundamentals: nature and nurture 



It is not necessary, fortunately, to raise the question 

 in its full scope. For in the practice of educative training it 

 is necessary that the two factors should cooperate and not be 

 set over against each other. In other words, they are fac- 

 tors, and the factors of education. The most ardent devotee 

 of the importance of original nature cannot deny the necessity 

 of the surrounding medium as the means of developing 

 native capacities and giving them direction. The acquisition 

 of language is a striking instance. Without a hereditary or 

 "natural" equipment, an individual cannot learn to speak. 

 But his speech would remain a mere babbhng and lisping, 

 mere cries probably not even well articulated and certainly 

 without sense and meaning, except for the nurture given by 

 interaction with other previously educated human beings. 

 When we come to written language and Hterature, dependence 

 upon nurture by social environment is even more obvious. 

 Although even then native capacities of the hand and brain are 

 involved, education signifies the process of using them in 

 certain definite ways, ways that are expressed in nurture. 



Thus with respect to education the problem reduces 

 itself to one of greater or less emphasis. Some magnify one 

 factor, some the other. None can deny the necessity of both. 

 As a rule, the particular emphasis given depends upon arbi- 

 trary conditions; in part, personal temperament and previous 

 training decide; in part, social creeds. Anyone who has read 

 the literature on the subject is aware, for example, that 

 those who incline to favor political aristocracy emphasize 

 original hereditary differences as the dominant force; those 

 inclined to a democratic faith put more emphasis upon the 

 force of environment and its nurture. Ardent social reform- 

 ers and revolutionists have often gone to the point of 

 asserting, as did Helvetius, the omnipotence of education 

 when that is taken in its widest sense. Extremists in the 

 other direction hold that as you cannot make a silk purse out 



