172 THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 



doctrine we have endeavoured to explain, the outer world, 

 so far from being an obstacle to his self-realisation, is the 

 indispensable condition of it. The social and physical 

 environment furnishes the whole content of his rational 

 life. Hence the richer the world is in which he finds him- 

 self, the more constant its pressure upon him, and the more 

 varied and more active its incitations, the more surely he 

 attains what it is in him to be. The world is there in order 

 to be possessed by his intelligent nature ; and his intelli- 

 gence grows just in the degree to which he enters upon 

 this possession. It is there to call forth the active powers 

 of his will, and his will grows in range and effectiveness 

 with its reaction upon the world. He is set to realise his 

 rational nature, not in spite of, but by means of his sur- 

 roundings. And his dependence upon them, though as 

 complete as the dependence of his body upon air and light 

 and food and drink, is a dependence which ends in con- 

 verting them into his own substance, and making them 

 into constitutive elements of his power to think and act. 

 It is isolation, and not connection, that implies impotence. 

 It is the aloofness of a world whose meaning is not com- 

 prehended which brings bondage and compulsion. In the 

 degree to which the self is free it possesses the world. It 

 internalises it within the self ; the self ideally comprises it 

 and makes it the instrument of its will. In fact, this is 

 the process by which the child develops towards the fulness 

 of his stature. That is to say, his education is the opening 

 out of his powers of converting that which originally was 

 external to him into constituent elements of his self. 

 When he has reached the stage at which his development 

 ceases, one can say with much truth that all his environment 

 is within him. To the degree in which the character has 



