Heredity and Environment 117 



great wealth. Very often he succumbs to luxury and 

 shortens his days. Every man of years and experience 

 must have known cases of this nature, and the sad 

 thing is that often these are valuable lives, which can 

 ill be spared — men of strong intellectual vigour and 

 kind hearts, who, losing the stimulus of work and 

 succumbing to the so-called joys of external things, 

 suffer the inevitable Nemesis of all departure from 

 nature and duty. Again, we have known many in- 

 stances of misery to both parents and children from the 

 same cause. The sons of fathers who have acquired 

 wealth soon discover that work is not necessary to 

 livelihood, for money is plentiful, and they soon yield 

 to temptation ; ere long they are wallowing in the 

 sensual mire ; they are soon cut off, and the place that 

 knew them knows them no more. We think without fear 

 of contradiction we may assert that it would be a good 

 thing for humanity and the world if the attainment of 

 great wealth were denied to all men, even in the present 

 circumstances. 



All the religious bodies of the world understand the 

 power which environment gives them in maintaining 

 and increasing the numbers of believers in their re- 

 spective creeds. One and all take care that, either 

 directly through the priest or indirectly by means of 

 the parent, the dogma of the Church shall be taught to 

 the child from its earliest years, and that its ritual shall 

 environ him. It is recorded that a great Cardinal of the 

 Roman Church once said : " Let me instruct the child 

 up to seven years and I will let who will endeavour to 

 mould his thoughts thereafter." Doubtless this is an 

 exaggerated statement of a great truth — that the early 

 environment of the child moulds the whole course of 

 his life. 



And not only the Church, but mankind as a whole 

 realises the power of environment. The old proverb, 



