THE HUMAN SCIENCES 49 



And in either case is not man degraded into a mere element 

 of a larger whole ? l 



" Undoubtedly," I reply, " if unity shuts out difference, 

 or difference unity " ; or to apply ourselves to the matter 

 immediately in hand "if man in focussing his environ- 

 ment within his personality destroys it." But this is the 

 point at issue. It is the use of these exclusive categories 

 that we would question. 



Let us, then, go back to the facts, and put the matter to 

 the test. Take up any self or character and examine its 

 history and its content. Will you find his history at any 

 stage to be anything else than the simultaneous building 

 up of his self and his world ? Will you find any shred or 

 item of his content which is not also his environment? 

 Modern psychology answers clearly in the negative. In- 

 vestigate the ' ' personality " of a farm labourer, or a college 

 tutor, or a country parson. You will find that he is born 

 of certain parents, and that he may carry within him, as 

 breeders say, " strains from both sides." The qualities he 

 inherits are probably not the same as if he had been born 

 in the stone age, or from lake-dwellers ; for into the very 

 constitution of his parents, and therefore into his own, 

 there has entered something of the results of the customs 

 of civilised life. And even if acquired aptitudes are not 

 inherited, he is born into a very different world from that 

 of the lake-dwellers ; and that world ' ' leaves him not a 

 moment alone, but continually tampers with him." " The 



1 What does it matter, it has been asked, whether the machine of 

 which man is a part is a physical machine or a spiritual machine ? He 

 is still a part of a machine, and carried round in its revolutions. A 

 most cogent objection, I should reply, provided we do not ask what 

 either " a machine " or " spirit " means. 



D 



