THE INFLUENCES OF NURTURE 83 



eye usually catches two or three salient features of 

 marked resemblance, and these divert attention from 

 the differences. There are characters, such as peculiari- 

 ties of stature and disposition, which seem to blend and 

 average out, but the lasting-on of peculiarities is one 

 of the sure facts of heredity. Thus after studying man's 

 natural inheritance for a while there grows upon us a 

 feeling of its inexorableness. What is bred in the bone 

 and imbued in the blood has great staying power. We 

 see sturdy wholesomeness ; we see, on the other hand, 

 that the iniquities of the fathers reappear in their 

 children to the third and fourth generation or longer. 



But as we dwell longer with the facts that cloud of 

 fatalism lifts a little. We begin to realise that, for the 

 individual at least, there is a potent life-moulding factor 

 in ' Nurture ' — that is to say, in the influence of surround- 

 ings, food, exercise, occupation, education, company, 

 habits, and so forth. Man is in great part born ; he is 

 also in great part made. Circumstances count. 



John Knox the Reformer and John Lyly the Euphuist 

 both make use of the convenient verbal contrast between 

 inborn or inherited * nature ' and extrinsic or imprinted 

 ' nurture,' and Shakespeare in the Tempest makes Pros- 

 pero speak of Caliban as " a devil, a born devil, on whose 

 nature nurture will never stick." The usage was made 

 scientific by Sir Francis Galton. By ' nature ' in the 

 technical sense is meant all that the living creature in 

 the germ is or has to start with in virtue of its organic 

 continuity with preceding generations. By ' nurture ' 

 is meant all the environmental and functional influences 



