12 NATURE AND NURTURE 



herd were due in part to food and stallage, and in part 

 to the character of his foundation stock and his choice of 

 matings ? Would he not endeavour to determine the 

 limits and proportions of each factor ? 



But if we assume that any profitable result could flow 

 from the vague answer that social evils are in part due to 

 nurture and in part due to nature, have we ever acted 

 upon this answer ? Have we not for the last seventy to 

 eighty years devised all our social reform on the concep- 

 tion that we had but to improve the environment, to 

 better the nurture of the nation, and we should progress 

 indefinitely ? Has not the assumption that nurture, not 

 nature, is the chief factor in national progress been the 

 key to all social legislation, to factory acts, building acts, 

 sanitation acts, education acts, and a multitude of other 

 enactments devised to raise the state of the people ? 

 Has not this also been the aim of all philanthropy, all 

 charity, and most medical progress ? Have we not, in fact, 

 largely handicapped nature by depriving inherent native 

 ability of its special prerogative in nurture ? We have 

 burdened it also with the provision of nurture for the 

 very stocks whose multiplication ought to be discouraged. 

 It appears to me, therefore, that the whole of the liberal 

 and philanthropic social reform of the past half-century 

 and more has been based not on the hypothesis that both 

 nature and nurture contribute to the progress of the race, 

 but solely on the assumption that improving the environ- 

 ment would indefinitely raise us in the scale of nations. 



I should like to impress upon you the allegory of 

 a certain workman who found his chisel ineffectual. He 

 hardened it, and he tempered it, and he gave it a cutting 

 edge on the grindstone, and he finished up on the oilstone. 

 Then he tried his chisel again and in ten minutes it was 



