8 Environment and Efficiency 



Nowadays there are statisticians who prove to us that the 

 " correlation " between the mental capacity of the elementary 

 school child and that of its parent is infinitely greater than 

 the correlation between the mental capacity of that child and 

 its environment ; and in the same way that the mental ability 

 of the Oxford undergraduate has a much greater correlation 

 with the mental ability of his father and brothers than with 

 his and their environment. But each of these calculations is 

 based solely upon the child in relation to its usual en- 

 vironment. Has anyone worked out the correlation between 

 the efficiency of the young person trained in an institution 

 or cottage home and his efficiency if left in his previous en- 

 vironment, or between the efficiency of the young person so 

 trained and that of the parent in the Class A from which 

 he has sprung? Have they taken a child of the upper or 

 middle-classes and submitted it to a Class A environment, 

 and then, as they watched its subsequent development, found 

 the correlation between this result and what he would have 

 been if left in his earlier environment ? And if this has not 

 been done, are we in a position to regard environment as a 

 negligible quantity in the formation of character. 



It seems to me that, until it can be proved to us that 

 the transformation we see effected in these children is but a 

 superficial growth doomed to be uprooted by the strong arm 

 of Heredity, for every drunkard we pass in the street, for 

 every criminal who is driven past us in a prison van, we are 

 bound to say to paraphrase the words of John Bradford 

 " There, but for the force of circumstances, go I ! " 



