THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 319 



heritance. This again seems like a commonplace remark enough, 

 but certain things flow from it. Each member of society gives 

 and gets the same set of social suggestions, the differences being 

 the degree of progress each has made, and the degree of faithful- 

 ness with which each reflects what he has before received. This 

 last difference is, again, a phenomenon of variation and brings us 

 back to the genius ; but I wish to neglect him a little longer, in 

 order to point out another fact which is fundamental to what is 

 distinctive in this paper. 



There grows up, in all this give and take, in all the inter- 

 change of suggestions among you, me, and the other, an obscure 

 sense of a certain social understanding about ourselves generally 

 a Zeitgeist, an atmosphere, a taste, or, in minor matters, a style. 

 It is a very peculiar thing, this social spirit. The best way to 

 understand that you have it, and something of what it is, is to 

 get into a circle in which it is different. The common phrase 

 "fish out of water" is often heard in reference to it. But that 

 does not serve for science. And the next best thing that I can 

 do in the way of rendering it is to appeal to another word which 

 has a popular sense, the word judgment. Let us say that there 

 exists in every society a general system of values, found in social 

 usages, conventions, institutions, and formulas, and that our judg- 

 ments of social life are founded on our habitual recognition of 

 these values, and of the arrangement of them which has become 

 more or less fixed in our society. For example, to say "I am 

 glad to see you" to a disagreeable neighbor shows good social 

 judgment in a small matter ; not to quarrel with the homoeo- 

 pathic enthusiast who meets you in the street and wishes to doc- 

 tor your rheumatism out of a symptom book, that is good judg- 

 ment. In short, the man gets to show more and more, as he 

 grows up from childhood, a certain good judgment; and his good 

 judgment is also the good judgment of his social set, community, 

 or nation. The psychologist might prefer to say that a man 

 "feels "this; perhaps it would be better for psychological read- 

 ers to say simply that he has a " sense " of it ; but the popular 

 use of the word "judgment" fits so accurately into the line of 

 distinctions I am making that I shall adhere to it. And so we 

 reach the general position that the eligible candidate for social 

 life must have good judgment as represented by the common 

 standards of judgment of his people. 



It may be doubted, however, by some of my readers whether 

 this sense of social values called judgment is the outcome of sug- 

 gestion operating throughout the term of one's social education. 

 This is an essential point, and I must just assume it. Its con- 

 sideration falls under the method of the child's learning, which. 

 I have referred to as too great a topic to treat in this article. 



