THE MIND OF MAN 283 



physical differences from his brother the more unkempt 

 aspect, the clumsier gait, the uncouth gestures would, how- 

 ever, be an expression of mental differences. To take yet 

 another illustration. The child of English parents, reared by 

 African savages, would remain an Englishman in body. Not 

 so in mind. His sexual and parental instincts, such as they 

 are, would remain, though some of their manifestations might 

 be different. But his instincts of curiosity and imitativeness 

 would confer on him a set of mental acquirements ideas of 

 religion, morals, modesty, language, ways of thinking and 

 acting, knowledge in general wholly different from those 

 which distinguished his progenitors. An utter savage, 

 mentally he would be the child of his immediate surroundings. 

 All that a thousand generations had slowly acquired would 

 be exchanged for what a thousand others had accumulated. 

 Outside the imagination of a follower of Lamarck no Rev. Tom 

 Creedys ever existed. In real life we read of white children 

 captured by Red Indians becoming as cruel and treacherous, 

 as inimical to their kindred as their captors ; of English 

 children in India acquiring all the " che-che " characteristics ; 

 of savages civilized in a single generation. Man, intellectually 

 the highest animal, is not less malleable than a slave ant. 



453. Man has been termed the educable animal. But only 

 a part of his education is achieved in the school-room or 

 under the influence of grown people. During infancy he 

 educates himself, and, under often incalculable influences, 

 many of his merits and demerits are acquired even so early. 

 In childhood and boyhood he is educated very largely by 

 companions only a little older than himself. When people 

 declare that they do not know whence this or that individual 

 derives this or that peculiarity of disposition in which he 

 differs from his parents, they forget these early influences. 

 Parental traits which are inborn are transmissible; they 

 appear almost inevitably in the offspring. 1 



1 The fact that children often offer startling mental contrasts to their 

 parents is presumptive evidence that neither the parental nor the filial 

 traits are inborn. The remark that the children of clergymen are apt to 

 be " wild " is so common as to be almost proverbial. Children derive 

 their acquired mental traits by imitation, not only from their parents, 

 but from their companions. Extremely austere people are often not on 

 intimate terms with their children. They govern more by fear than by 

 love, through authority than through confidence. That child is always 

 in peril whose parents are not his closest friends and companions, who 

 is obliged to carry his hopes and fears, his impulses and temptations to 

 chance associates. He who is reared in a very austere household has a 

 wide region wherein to go astray. Other people may not necessarily be 

 more wicked than his parents, but at least they think fewer things 



