NURTURE AND NATURE 7 



to emphasizing the very evils it was intended to lessen? These are 

 the problems which occur to the eugenist and call for investigation 

 and if possible settlement. 



The outlines of our enquiry are not hard to sum up. We know 

 from a variety of investigations that the correlation between physical 

 and mental characters in parent and offspring is about -45 to -50. 

 The first question to be asked is : Are the physical and mental 

 characters of children correlated with their or their parents' environ- 

 ment to a higher, an equal, or a lesser extent? But even the answer 

 to this first question will not finally solve the relative intensity of the 

 environmental and heredity factors. We have still to ask how far the 

 parents' physical and mental characters are productive of the observed 

 environment. It is conceivable that the relation between children's 

 physique, for example, and parental occupation is an indirect result 

 of the inheritance of physique and a correlation between parents' 

 physique and their occupation. In other words, what we are 

 attributing to environment may be a secondary influence of heredity 

 itself. A weakling may have no option but to follow an unhealthy 

 trade, a man is a tailor or shoemaker, because he has not the physique 

 needful for smith or navvy. His offspring may be physically inferior 

 because he is a weakling and not because he follows an unhealthy 

 trade. Clearly, to solve our problem, we must know if there be any 

 correlation between the same character in the parent as we are 

 observing in the child and the environment we are correlating with 

 the child's character. Unfortunately data enabling us to determine 

 the relationship of any mental or physical character of the parent 

 with the environment which is supposed to influence the child is 

 rarely forthcoming. We have, however, some information which may 

 help us indirectly in our consideration of this part of the enquiry. 



After this preliminary warning as to the difficulties of the problem 

 of heredity and environment we propose to consider what evidence is 

 available for determining the relative intensity of nature and nurture 

 in the case of man. The material at our disposal may be summed 

 up as follows : 



I. The Report on the Physical Condition of fourteen hundred 

 school children in the City of Edinburgh, with some account of their 

 homes and surroundings, issued by the Charity Organization Society. 

 Information is given as to the number of children, living and dead, 

 the number of rooms, rent, father's work and wages, mother's work, 

 work and wages of other members of the family, and age, height, 



