THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 155 



That hereditary conditions and the influence of environ- 

 ment somehow, and to some degree, affect human character 

 no one will deny. But the significance of the admission 

 is rarely seen. As a rule, the question is reduced into that 

 of the degree or extent to which these natural elements 

 enter into human life. For it is considered that, to make 

 the character depend wholly upon these two elements, to 

 regard it simply as the product of these two factors, is to 

 deprive character of all moral or spiritual meaning. Is it 

 not evident, it is asked, that moral character must be made 

 by each individual for himself ; that it must be the expres- 

 sion and manifestation of the self ; and that the self 

 disappears if it be analysed into hereditary and environing 

 elements in their interaction ? 



Consequently, we find the apologist of man's spiritual 

 or moral nature endeavouring, by means of various devices, 

 to retain something for man, as rational, which exists over 

 and above these natural factors. He attributes to man a 

 will which is not inherited and not ruled by circumstance, 

 or a self which is greater even than its own content. ' ' The 

 Ego is something more than the aggregate of feelings and 

 ideas, actual and nascent." These and their natural ante- 

 cedents do not exhaust the Ego or give a complete account 

 of all its actual and possible phenomena. ; ' When I am 

 told, ' You are your own phenomena,' I reply : ' No ; I 

 have my own phenomena, and so far as they are active it 

 is I that make them, and not they that make me.' " J The 

 self, it is held, is something more than the whole character 

 even. There is in it a transcendental element which 

 character can at no moment wholly express or embody. 

 The self is a noumenon amongst phenomena, and belongs 

 1 See Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, II. chap. i. 



