January 10, 1913J 



SCIENCE 



51 



bility rests upon society to provide as 

 favorable environment as possible for all 

 its members. Experienced persons can to 

 a certain extent choose their own environ- 

 ment and thus indirectly control their 

 responses and habits, but young children 

 are almost, if not quite, as incapable of 

 choosing their environment as of choosing 

 their heredity, and it becomes the duty of 

 society to see to it that the environmental 

 stimuli are such as to develop rational, 

 social and ethical habits rather than the 

 reverse. 



Of all animals I suppose that man en- 

 joys the most extensive and most varied 

 environment, and its effect upon his per- 

 sonality is correspondingly great. Of all 

 animals man has the longest period of im- 

 maturity and it is during this period that 

 the play of environmental stimuli on the 

 organism is effective in modifying devel- 

 opment. In addition to the material en- 

 vironment he lives in the midst of intellec- 

 tual, social and moral stimuli which are 

 potent factors in his development. By 

 means of his power to look before and after 

 he lives in the future and past as well as in 

 the present ; through tradition and history 

 he becomes an heir of all the ages. The 

 modifying influences of all these environ- 

 mental conditions on personality is very 

 great. Each of us may say with Ulysses : 

 "I am a part of all that I have met." 

 So great is the power of environment on 

 the development of personality that it may 

 outweigh inheritance; a relatively poor in- 

 heritance with excellent environmental 

 conditions often produces better results 

 than a good inheritance with poor condi- 

 tions. Of course no sort of environment 

 can do more than to bring out the hered- 

 itary possibilities, but, on the other hand, 

 those possibilities must remain latent and 

 undeveloped unless they are stimulated 

 into activity by the environment. 



Not only the possibilities of develop- 

 ment, but also the actual, developed capaci- 

 ties of men, are much greater than the 

 habitual demands which are made upon 

 them. How often have we surprised our- 

 selves by doing some unusual or prodigious 

 task! What we have once done we feel 

 that we can do again. We realize more or 

 less clearly, depending upon our experi- 

 ence, that what we habitually do is far less 

 than we could do. It is this reserve, upon 

 which we can draw on special occasions, 

 that gives us the sense of freedom. I well 

 remember a conversation which I once had 

 with the late Dr. William Pepper. He had 

 asked me to undertake a task which I 

 felt incapable of performing, and I had 

 pleaded inability, lack of time, anything to 

 escape the responsibility. But with a con- 

 fidence born of experience he said to me, 

 "You know we can do what we have to 

 do." In his inspiring address on "The 

 Energies of Men," William James showed 

 that we have reservoirs of power which we 

 rarely tap, great energies upon which we 

 seldom draw, and that we habitually live 

 upon a level which is far below that which 

 we might occupy. Darwin held the opin- 

 ion, as the result of a lifetime of observa- 

 tion, that men differ less in capacity than 

 in zeal and determination to utilize the 

 powers which they have. In playful com- 

 ment on the variety and extent of his own 

 life work he said, in modest and homely 

 phrase, " It is dogged as does it. ' ' It may 

 be objected that the zeal and determination 

 were inherited, but here also the hered- 

 itary possibilities become actualities only 

 as a result of use, training, habit. 



It is generally admitted that no constant 

 distinction can be recognized between the 

 brain of a philosopher and that of many a 

 peasant. Neither size nor weight of brain, 

 nor complexity of convolutions, bears any 

 constant relation to ignorance or intelli- 



