172 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



diverse points of view is that your life experiences have 

 been different. 



The social medium which a child enters at birth, in 

 which he lives, moves and has his being, is fundamental 

 in determining his thought and action. The individual 

 from childhood to ripest old age is more or less recep- 

 tive to the social environment consisting of the stand- 

 ards, usages, and customs which the group has evolved 

 out of its collective experience. ' ' Barely can the matur- 

 est minds so far succeed in emancipating themselves 

 from this medium as to undertake independent reflection, 

 while complete emancipation is impossible, for all the 

 organs and modes of thought, all the organs for con- 

 structing thoughts, have been molded or at least thor- 

 oughly imbued by it. " l 



"The individual simply plays the part of the prism 

 which receives the rays, dissolves them according to fixed 

 laws and lets them pass out again in a predetermined 

 direction and with a predetermined color." 2 We for- 

 get that the interpretation the child puts upon external 

 things is never entirely naive or original. It is a mistake 

 to assume that each civilized individual's conduct of life 

 is a purely logical process. The content of the human 

 mind is largely determined by the social usages and con- 

 ventions of class and age, which in turn refract impres- 

 sion and determine the final form assumed by the inter- 

 pretation. 3 There are "experiences thousands of years 

 old which have been inherited for generations as com- 

 pleted intuitions; destinies historic, and prehistoric, 

 with their effects upon mental character and inclination, 

 with their forms of thought and mode of reasoning; 



1 Gumplovvicz, op. cit., p. 157. 



2 Ibid. 3 Chapin, Education and the Mores, p. 70. 



