36 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
conditions of life and especially to political institutions. These agencies, 
however, do little unless they are such as to change the breed. 
External changes may indeed give an opportunity to special strains, 
which then acquire ascendency. The industrial developments which 
began at the end of the eighteenth century, for instance, gave a chance 
to strains till then submerged, and their success involved the decay 
of most of the old aristocratic families. But the demagogue who 
would argue from the rise of the one and the fall of the other that 
the original relative positions were not justifiable altogether mistakes the 
facts. 
Conditions give opportunities but cause no variations. For example, 
in Athens, to which I just referred, the universality of cultivated dis- 
cernment could never have come to pass but for the institution of 
slavery which provided the opportunity, but slavery was in no sense a 
cause of that development, for many other populations have lived on 
slaves and remained altogether inconspicuous. 
The long-standing controversy as to the relative importance of nature 
and nurture, to use Galton’s ‘ convenient jingle of words,’ is drawing 
to an end, and of the overwhelmingly greater significance of nature 
there is no longer any possibility of doubt. It may be well briefly to 
recapitulate the arguments on which naturalists rely in coming to 
this decision both as regards races and individuals. First as regards 
human individuals, there is the common experience that children 
of the same parents reared under conditions sensibly identical may 
develop quite differently, exhibiting in character and aptitudes a 
segregation just as great as in their colours or hair-forms. Conversely 
all the more marked aptitudes have at various times appeared and not 
rarely reached perfection in circumstances the least favourable for 
their development. Next, appeal can be made to the universal experi- 
ence of the breeder, whether of animals or plants, that strain is 
absolutely essential, that though bad conditions may easily enough 
spoil a good strain, yet that under the best conditions a bad strain 
will never give a fine result. It is faith, not evidence, which encourages 
educationists and economists to hope so greatly in the ameliorating 
effects of the conditions of life. Let us consider what they can do 
and what they cannot. By reference to some sentences in a charming 
though pathetic book, ‘ What Is, and What Might Be,’ by Mr. Edmond 
Holmes, which will be well known in the Educational Section, I may 
make the point of view of us naturalists clear. I take Mr. Holmes’s 
pronouncement partly because he is an enthusiastic believer in the 
efficacy of nurture as opposed to nature, and also because he illus- 
trates his views by frequent appeals to biological analogies which help 
us to a common ground. Wheat badly cultivated will give a bad yield, 
though, as Mr. Holmes truly says, wheat of the same strain in similar 
