6 THE REI.A11VI -1KI N(.TH OF 



6 to admit the enormous part played by environment in modifying 

 living i. .mis. This modification, however, is of two kinds: 



A change in the somatic characters of the individual following 

 upon his transfer to different surroundings or his treatment to differ* -nt 

 conditions of nurture ; this environmental change in the individual 

 appears to be more marked in plants than in animals. If it is in any 

 case persistent after the offspring of the individual have returned to 

 the original environment, most biologists would assert that a germinal 

 change of some kind, an unrecognized selection of germ plasm, has 

 taken place in the original individual. 



(b) A change in the germ characters of the race, owing to the 

 environment selecting for survival a certain differential class of 

 individuals, and their somatic characters thus becoming more frequent 

 and possibly dominant in the population owing to the strength of 

 heredity. 



Now we are not in any way concerned with a consideration of this 

 second modification due to environment. We have solely to deal with 

 the problem of the extent to which the offspring are modified by an 

 indirect environmental factor, namely the occupations and habits of 

 their parents and the condition of their homes. We are not considering 

 (b), for we are dealing with surviving children, and not with the 

 selective infantile deathrate. Now the influence of the parental 

 environmental factor on the welfare of children is of fundamental 

 importance, quite apart from the selective infantile deathrate and the 

 possibility of the inheritance of acquired characters. It is at present 

 and has been in the past the chief direction of legislative and philan- 

 thropic attack on social evils. Degeneracy of every form has been 

 attributed to poverty, bad housing, unhealthy trades, drinking, 

 industrial occupation of women, and other direct or indirect environ- 

 mental influences on offspring. If we could by education, by 

 legislation, or by social effort change the environmental conditions, 

 would the race at once rise to a markedly higher standard of physique 

 and mentality? Much, if not the whole of the battle for social reform 

 has been based on the assumption that this question was obviously to 

 be answered in the affirmative. No direct investigation has really ever 

 been made of the intensity of the influence of environment on man. 

 To modify the obviously repellent was the immediate instinct of the 

 more gently nurtured and controlling social class. Was this direction 

 of social reform really capable of effecting any substantial change? 

 Nay by lessening the selective deathrate may it not have contributed 



