PROBLEM OF NURTURE AND NATURE 



49 



all the influences that follow the birth of an individual climate, 

 housing, food, parental conduct, and do not distinguish between these 

 various classes, we may be able to show that environmental are less 

 influential than hereditary forces, but we shall not discover which 

 categories of environmental forces are most worth dealing with out 

 of the wide field provided by nurture. We shall distinguish first 

 accordingly between the physical environment housing, sanitation 

 and ventilation which within certain limits can be modified by 

 legislation or municipal regulations and parental environment 

 cleanliness, wage-earning power, feeding, parental habits and parental 

 health. But even this classification is not clear cut. For example 

 relative to other factors we find ventilation an element of some import- 

 ance in child nurture. But there are two phases of ventilation the 

 one an absence of the means of ventilation is a feature of true physical 

 environment, but the other phase the neglect of existing means of 

 ventilation is a feature of parental environment that is of parental 

 habit. It may thus be quite as much a nature as a nurture factor. 

 As a matter of fact the second phase of ventilation is more highly 

 correlated than the first with health in the child, and the reader will 

 find this result almost universal: whenever a nurture factor can be 

 interpreted as possibly an indirect nature factor then it is likely to 

 be more influential. 



Take the case of suitable feeding again, this may depend upon 

 father's wage, and that on his physique, or it may depend on the 

 mother's efficiency as a housekeeper, which in turn is closely related 

 to her habits and health. Or again it may be the outcome of municipal 

 arrangements as in the provision and inspection of milk supply ; further 

 geographical conditions may produce effect when we contrast urban 

 with rural districts, or the great seaports 1 with manufacturing towns. 



than physical environment. But just as popular opinion has overlooked the necessity 

 for estimating the relative intensity of Nature and Nurture in past measures of social 

 reform so it appears to escape our present pioneers of educative methods that a 

 fundamental d, priori problem is to determine how far parental habits in the mass are 

 the product of tradition or of inheritance the heredity of an inert nature ; indeed 

 there is further some evidence that the tendency to maintain traditions is itself largely 

 a racial character. We not only observe that individuals brought up under the same 

 environment, physical and educational, have wholly different standards of order and 

 cleanliness, but a very small experience even of European travel shows that order and 

 cleanliness are racial characters, which are as conspicuous in certain European lands 

 as the predominating negligence and filth in others. 



1 The relation of infantile diseases to food supply deserves careful study. The 

 prevalence of diphtheria in seaports may be connected with this subject. 



4 



