86 HEREDITY 



and environment : understanding that the word 

 heredity is here used in its widest sense, as indi- 

 cating the whole of that process by which a man's 

 ancestry affects him. Our answer to the question is 

 at once seen to be clear and decisive. Certainly the 

 poet is born and not made ; but so is the pig. The 

 pig is a pig because it was born a pig, not because 

 its environment made it so. Similarly a man is not 

 a horse though he may have been born in a stable. 

 Everything that constitutes a pig a pig, a man a man, 

 a genius a genius, is really inborn ; that is to say, is 

 a matter of heredity or ancestry. Even if such a 

 variation as genius seems to be plainly not a matter 

 of heredity in the limited sense, it is a matter of 

 ancestry ; infinitely more a matter of ancestry than 

 of environment. A Shakespeare could not be born 

 to a sow or even to a Fuegian woman, no matter 

 what environment was provided. "Race is every- 

 thing," said Disraeli. 



That, of course, is an exaggeration ; and it is there- 

 fore necessary that we should attempt to estimate 

 the power of environment. Firstly, then, environ- 

 ment is impotent to create : the poet is not " made," 

 nor the pig. Charm it never so wisely, the environ- 

 ment can only affect the development of the potenti- 

 alities already present. Every man thinks he could 

 play billiards as well as John Roberts if only he had 

 time to practise enough ; but he is wrong. His in- 

 nate characters — and therefore his ancestry — are 

 already determined, and infinite practice will not 

 make him another Roberts unless he was born one. 

 Practice can make perfect only " what's bred in the 

 bone." 



