478 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



pal factors of which is use or functional ac- 

 tivity. An amazing number of persons have 

 but little self control. Is this always due to 

 defective inheritance, or is it not frequently 

 the result of bad habits, of arrested develop- 

 ment? To charge defects at once to heredity 

 removes them from any possible control, helps 

 to make men irresponsible, excuses them for 

 making the least of their endowments. To 

 hold that everything has been predetermined, 

 that nothing is self determined, that all our 

 traits and acts are fixed beyond the possibility 

 of change is an enervating philosophy and is 

 not good science, for it does not accord with 

 the evidence. It is amazing that men whose 

 daily lives contradict this paralyzing philoso- 

 phy still hold it, as it were in some water- 

 tight compartment of the brain, while in all 

 the other parts of their being their acts pro- 

 claim that they believe in their powers of self 

 control: they set themselves hard tasks, they 

 overcome great difficulties, they work until it 

 hurts, until they can say with Johannes Miil- 

 ler, Es Tdebt Blut an der Arbeit, and yet in 

 the philosophical compartment of their minds 



