NATURE OR NURTURE? 



Actual Improvement of the Race Impossible Except through heredity — Facts 



on Which the Eugenist Bases His Faith — The Attitude of Eugenics 



Toward Social Problems^ 



The Editor 



TITTLE more than a year ago I 

 I sat on the same platform with 



i J the late Jacob Riis, at a confer- 

 ence on race betterment. A 

 number of members of our association 

 spoke of the need for improving the 

 heredity of the children of the sliuns. 

 Finally Jacob Riis took the floor. 



"We have heard friends here talk 

 about heredity," he exclaimed. "The 

 word has rung in my ears until I am 

 sick of it. Heredity, heredity! There 

 is just one heredity in all the world that 

 is ours — we are children of God, and 

 there is nothing in the whole big world 

 that we cannot do in his service with it." 

 That, I regret to say, is the attitude 

 still held by a great many social workers 

 — the people who would see the power 

 of heredity demonstrated before their 

 own eyes every day, if their eyes were 

 not closed by preconceived ideas. I 

 am not going to waste any time demon- 

 strating to you that there is such a 

 thing as heredity, because I believe you 

 would all be willing to admit it — as an 

 academic question, as a theory. But 

 I dare say that when it comes to prac- 

 tice, a great many of you tacitly proceed 

 on the assiunption that Jacob Riis 

 stated so explicitly and vigorously. 

 You want to see the world made better, 

 and you therefore support charities, 

 legislation, uplift movements, philan- 

 thropic attempts at social betterment, 

 all of which have as their object the 

 improvement of the environment of 

 persons who are living in a bad environ- 

 ment. You believe that by so doing 

 you ensure the improvement of the race. 

 Now if you are right in acting on 

 this principle, then we eugenists are 

 largely wrong. If you can better the 

 race by improving its environment. 



then you have found a short cut in 

 social progress, which we are too blind 

 or stupid to follow. If all that every 

 man needs is a chance, then we are 

 hunting on the wrong scent. 



The faith of the social worker, the 

 legislator, the physician, the sanitarian, 

 in his method of improving the race is 

 very literally the kind of faith that 

 St. Paul described as the substance of 

 things hoped for, the evidence of things 

 not seen. We eugenists have a stronger 

 faith, because it is based on things that 

 are seen, and that can even be measured. 

 We think we can prove that it is, on the 

 whole, man who makes the environ- 

 ment, not the environment which makes 

 man. We are far from denying that 

 nurture has an influence on nature, to 

 use Galton's antithesis, but we believe 

 that the influence of nurture, the 

 environment, is only a fifth or perhaps 

 a tenth that of nature — heredity. 



If we can prove this to you, I think 

 eugenics will have justified its claim to 

 consideration. If we cannot you ma}^ 

 properly scorn us for wasting your 

 time and ours. I shall therefore give 

 up this evening to an endeavor to prove 

 to you that man is largely the product 

 of his heredity, and that environment 

 has no power to improve this heredity 

 and not much, within ordinary limits, 

 to deteriorate it. If I succeed in 

 convincing you, I shall expect you to 

 join us in believing that the way to 

 improve the race is not to work on a lot 

 of bad heredity, but to see that a larger 

 supply of good heredity is made avail- 

 able. 



WHAT BIOLOGY TEACHES 



The problem, like many others in 

 eugenics, might be attacked from two 



^ A lecture to the Young Men's Christian Association, Washington, D. C, March 18, 1915. 



227 



