Moral Consequences of Heredity. 347 



education, in the full and exact meaning of the term, does not 

 consist simply of the lessons of our parents and teachers : manners, 

 religious beliefs, what we read, what we hear, all these are so many 

 silent influences which act on the mind, just as latent sensations 

 act on the body, and which contribute to our education ; that is to , 

 say, they cause us to contract habits. 



But we must not exaggerate. Some such as Lamarck and his 

 daring predecessors have attributed so much to the influence of the 

 physical environment as to make it simply a creator ; and so great 

 power has often been attributed to education, that the individual 

 character would be its work, .to the exclusion of all native energy. 

 Thus the expression of Leibnitz was bold : Entrust me with educa- 

 tion, and in less than a century I will change the face of Europe. 

 Descartes too, attributing to his method what was the fruit of his 

 genius, goes so far as to say that ' sound understanding (bon sens) 

 is the most widely diffused thing in all the world, and all differences 

 between mind and mind spring from the fact that we conduct our 

 thoughts over different routes.' The sensist school, in its abhor- x 

 rence for everything innate, has exaggerated even this view. 

 According to Locke, 'out of one hundred men more than ninety 

 are good or bad, useful or harmful to society, owing to the educa- 

 tion they have received.' Helvetius, carrying this view to its 

 extreme, holds that ' all men are born equal and with equal facul- 

 ties, and that education alone produces a difference between them.' 

 With astonishing obstinacy he propounds the incredible paradox 

 that men do not differ from one another in acuteness of sense, 

 reach of memory, or capacity for attention, and that all possess in 

 themselves the power of rising to the highest ideas j differences of 

 mind depend entirely on circumstances. 1 



It is highly important that we ascribe to education only what 

 belongs to it, and that we vindicate against it the rights of spon- 

 taneity, for the cause of spontaneity is our own. To us spontaneity 

 and heredity are one. Whether certain psychic qualities result 

 from spontaneous variation, or from hereditary transmission, is a 

 question of no importance. We have only to show that they exist 

 before education, which may at times transform them, but never 



e P Esprit, 3 e Discours 



