314 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



amongst the prophets of a nation, since one great deed is better 

 than many sermons. Men are all hero-worshippers to some 

 extent and they try to mould themselves after their heroes. 

 Tennyson and Browning, Nelson and Nicholson, Arnold and 

 Kingsley, these are all names of men who have helped to make 

 our mental environment, our ways of thought and the whole 

 tone of modern England. This point is well brought out in Mr 

 Bagehot's Physics and Politics, which no one should omit to read. 

 But by no means everything depends upon the leaders. An 

 inspiring appeal is of little avail if the rank and file are not of the 

 right stuff. Higher ideals would avail but little unless supported 

 by the slow but irresistible advance of evolution. 



There is never any noble development of virtue without 

 predisposition, never on the other hand without a stimulating 

 environment. Heroism in fact is born in the blood, but it will 

 only thrive in a congenial atmosphere, in a society in which great 

 deeds are venerated. Hence the enormous importance of educa- 

 tion, if we include under that term all the influences brought to 

 bear on a human being from his birth onwards. To insist on 

 this would seem a mere commonplace, only worthy of a copy- 

 book, and yet it is a fact that requires driving home. Not only 

 is there a feeling among Englishmen that they can trust to 

 heredity to pull them through, but even when the influence of 

 early environment is fully recognised there is a danger that the 

 training of children may be entrusted to the wrong persons. 

 No doubt our over-confidence in unimproved natural endowment 

 is waning through somewhat bitter experience, but when we 

 turn to consider the education of the masses we cannot fail to 

 see great dangers looming ahead. 



Evolution, it must not be forgotten, produces only a pre- 

 disposition, a soil in which noble thoughts will take root and 

 grow when properly planted and tended. And, obviously, their 

 own parents are the persons to whom should be intrusted the first 

 implanting in children of the love of good. The whole course 

 of human progress has been made possible only by family life. 

 Very little will result from grand talk about grand ideas unless 

 there is affection on both sides in child and instructor. 



