94 AMERICAN MEN OF LETTERS [94 



crucial. Presumably young Mather's home environment 

 did exercise tremendous influence upon him. By itself, 

 however, the most favorable environment could hardly 

 have produced a Cotton Mather from any child whatso- 

 ever subjected to its influence. No doubt any normal 

 child would have been benefited by being educated by In- 

 crease Mather, but plainly not all children would have 

 been benefited to an equal degree. To say that a good en- 

 vironment will always produce genius is to assert the 

 absurdity that x plus y will always produce z, no matter 

 how y may vary. It is to shut one's eyes to all educational 

 experience by denying the existence of innate individual 

 differences, an axiom of biology and of psychology.' Since 

 it appears, therefore, that persons with apparently every 

 advantage are often less successful than others who seem 

 to lack the most elementary opportunities, and since it 

 appears that American literati tended to be developed in 

 a few families, rather than somewhat uniformly through 

 the whole mass of the population, it seems clear that one 

 is hardly justified in asserting that environment alone 

 accounted for the appearance of literary ability in all of 

 the persons considered. For the foregoing reasons, 

 therefore, Ward's proposition that the influence of nature 

 is of very little significance does not seem to be valid. 



All the facts on which this study is based have now 

 been presented and discussed. The final chapter which 

 follows is devoted to a summary of the evidence sub- 

 mitted and a statement of the conclusions which seem 

 justified in the light of that evidence. 



^ Cf. Thorndike, Educational Psychology, vol. iii, chs. xiv and xvi. 



