OPERATION OF VIRILE SENTIMENT 149 



responds to its altered conditions and lives, the 

 Flax cannot respond and perishes. The new environ- 

 ment is common to both plants, but the difference in 

 the behaviour of the two organisms is the manifes- 

 tation of inborn constitutional divergencies, which 

 the environment cannot alter nor even modify in 

 the smallest degree. Since the environment per se 

 cannot make the Flax respond, it follows that 

 it is equally incapable of making the Summer 

 Savory respond, and the response which this plant 

 does manifest under certain changed conditions is 

 therefore not environmental in origin, but is inborn 

 in the organism. 



Let us pass from the example of plants in the 

 Tyrolese valleys to Man under social conditions. 

 The same conclusion confronts us. In Knightsbridge, 

 fifteen years ago, there was a Church wedged in 

 between two public-houses. Both the latter were 

 small and dirty ; their atmosphere was heavy 

 with the smell of beer and smoke ; the floors were 

 begrimed with dirt which cannot be described ; torn 

 papers, spillings of beer, discoloured sawdust, and 

 disused cigarettes were commingled in an untidy 

 medley. To anyone with any degree of inborn 

 refinement, the surroundings must have been 

 repellent. On Sundays, as well as on other days, the 

 company within was of the type incident to that 

 class of house. The speech was coarse, loud, gesticu- 

 lating, obscene, and ribald ; there was no order or 

 priority of utterance and the words of each person 

 were drowned in the prevailing din created by the 



