250 Heredity and Environment 



memories of past experiences and anticipations of future ones. 

 Through intelligence and social cooperation he is able to control 

 environment for particular ends, in a manner quite impossible 

 to other organisms. On the other hand heredity as a factor of 

 development is no more powerful in the case of mari than in any 

 other organism. Consequently the relative importance of hered- 

 ity and environment is not the same in the development of an 

 intelligent and social being, like man of the present age, as it is 

 in lower organisms. For man and for every other living crea- 

 ture heredity fixes the possibilities of development, it "sets bounds 

 about us which we cannot pass"; but the more complex those 

 possibilities become the more complex must be the environment 

 which calls them forth and the more varied become the results of 

 development under altered conditions of life. 



Capacity for Training and Education. Functional activity also 

 plays a larger part in man's development than in that of any other 

 animal, owing to the longer period of his development and to the 

 more extensive and varied training which he is capable of under- 

 going. It is a notable fact that the period of immaturity in man 

 is longer than in any other animal, and it is during this formative 

 period that environment and education have their greatest influ- 

 ence. Other animals develop much more rapidly than man but 

 that development sooner comes to an end. The children of lower 

 races of mankind develop more rapidly than those of higher races 

 but in such cases they also cease to develop at an earlier age. 

 The prolongation of the period of infancy and of immaturity in 

 the human race greatly increases the importance of environment 

 and training as factors of development. 



The possible training of human faculties is also more varied 

 and extensive than in other animals, not only because those facul- 

 ties are more numerous but also because they are more plastic 

 and are capable of higher development, that is, are more edu- 

 cable. Human faculties are functions and methods of reaction, 

 which are dependent in part upon the bodily mechanism and in 



