468 TRADITION AND HEREDITY 



unprejudiced person go and live in the working-class quarter of 

 any large town without any object in view other than to experience 

 the conditions. Under such circumstances the conclusions which 

 grow up in his mind will probably be something of the following 

 nature. To all seeming the innate qualities of the boys and girls, 

 in temperament, disposition, and intellect, are very much what 

 they were in the boys and girls he was at school with or formerly 

 associated with himself. The more intimate his acquaintance 

 becomes with the conditions among which these boys and girls 

 grow up, the more striking seem the peculiarities and limitations 

 of the mental horizon outside of which they have little chance 

 of penetrating compared with that which confronts children of 

 his own class. The dullness and drabness, if there is nothing 

 worse, of a home life in two or three rooms, relieved by what 

 excitement can be found in the smaller streets of a large town, 

 or later by picture palaces or an occasional football match, followed 

 by marriage and the struggle to keep up a home under discouraging 

 circumstances all these features, which are not appreciated in 

 their full weight until they are, as it were, felt by individual 

 experience, seem adequately to explain the differences between 

 the adults of one class and those of another. Any one who has 

 had such an experience will, on the whole, be rather surprised that 

 more sordidness does not exist, than be inclined to summon the 

 hypothesis of innate inferiority to explain the sordidness that 

 does exist. 



17. Profound differences in tradition as between the social 

 classes do therefore exist and, as far as we have gone, they might 

 appear to account for all mental differences manifested ; they 

 must in any case account for a considerable part of them. But 

 though we could prolong the discussion on the same lines and 

 produce much evidence tending to the same conclusion, we could 

 reach no precise result. We may go on therefore and ask whether 

 there is any evidence of the existence of innate differences between 

 the classes. 



Mere observation of the boys and girls of the different classes 

 does not indicate any differences. But mere observation is not 

 enough. The problem may be approached in two ways. We may 

 notice the results of inquiries made regarding the intelligence of 

 children by modern methods, and we may also ask by what 

 characters those who rise to a higher social status are distinguished, 



