424 NATURE AND NURTURE 



perceive no element of beauty in the chignon or crinoline of the, 

 as it seems to us, terribly inartistic Victorian era ; but our fathers 

 were ravished by the appearance of the women who wore them. 

 Various savages admire mutilations which are horrifying to us. 

 Indeed almost all races practise some form of mutilation and find 

 it beautiful ; thus we crop and shave the magnificent human 

 mane which, judging from its great evolution, must have been a 

 principal instrument of fascination amongst our remote ancestors. 

 I, personally, am nauseated by the sight of long hair on a male 

 human head. Doubtless sexual jealousy is in a measure in- 

 stinctive ; yet while the husband is jealous of the lover, the latter 

 is seldom jealous of the former ; were the emotion purely in- 

 stinctive they should be equally jealous. The jealousy of an 

 Australian black is as nothing compared to that of the Mohamme- 

 dan. Parental affection is an instinct, yet many people have 

 cheerfully practised infanticide ; and the average parents of various 

 races are good or bad according to the prevailing fashion. 

 Perhaps the most convincing evidence that parental actions are 

 mainly founded on acquirement is afforded by the fact that 

 civilized parents whenever possible tend to delegate them to the 

 hands of servants. The actions to which they are prompted by 

 purely instinctive impulses, for example thirst, hunger, weariness, 

 and sexual love are never delegated. 



698. To sum up : the distinguishing peculiarity of the human 

 being as compared to other animals is that his characters arise 

 much less under the stimulus of nutriment and much more under 

 that of use. Most of his nutritional characters are mere foundations 

 on which ' acquirements ' are reared. Biologists commonly suppose 

 that innate characters are much more important than acquirements. 

 But if, were it possible, we deprived an adult human being of his 

 acquirements nothing would be left but the likeness of a new born 

 infant which possessed the sexual instinct, and a few adult physical 

 traits such as hair, teeth, external ears, and organs of generation. 

 Manifestly the physical and mental maturity of the normal human 

 being depends mainly on acquirements, the making of which is 

 just as essential a part of adult development as the growth of heart 

 and limbs is of fcetal development. This truth, though opposed to 

 scientific tradition and on that account rarely recognized, is really 

 a matter of common knowledge and is so plainly true that I think 

 it has only to be formally stated to be recognized as true. It 

 may be that there is more of what is innate and less of what is 

 acquired in this or that human character than I have been led to 



