THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE 27 



Now I will not dogmatically assert that environment 

 matters not at all ; phases of it may be discovered which 

 produce more effect than any we have yet been able 

 to deal with. But I think it quite safe to say that the 

 influence of environment is not one-fifth that of heredity, 

 and quite possibly not one-tenth of it. There is no real 

 comparison between nature and nurture ; it is essentially 

 the man who makes his environment, and not the environ- 

 ment which makes the man. That race will progress 

 fastest where consciously or unconsciously success in life, 

 power to reproduce its kind, lies with native worth. 

 Hard environment may be the salvation of a race, easy 

 environment its destruction. If you will think this point 

 out in detail, I believe you will see the explanation of 

 many great historical movements. Barbarism has too 

 often triumphed over civilization, because a hard environ- 

 ment has maintained, an easy environment suspended, 

 the force of natural selection — the power of the nature 

 factor. 



Are we then to discard the methods of civilization, to 

 describe as worthless the whole field of Uberal and social 

 reform ? I have answered that question already in my 

 allegory. Are we to throw aside the oilstone and break 

 up the grindstone because they cannot make bad steel 

 into an effective tool ? Surely they are necessities for 

 the proper working of a good tool. The mistake in our 

 social policy has been that we supposed them primary and 

 not secondary, that we thought to advance the nation 

 by legislation which has hampered nature, to provide 

 nurture for the feeble, for the inherently weak stock, the 

 steel, of which grindstone and oilstone will and can 

 make nothing. 



I do not speak Hghtly ; there is very definite evidence 



