466 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



ing stimuli, intelligence, inhibitions. Freedom 

 is the more or less limited capacity of the high- 

 est organisms to inhibit instinctive and non- 

 rational acts hy intellectual and rational 

 stimuli and to regulate behavior in the light of 

 past experience. Such freedom is not un- 

 caused activity, but freedom from the mechan- 

 ical responses to external or instinctive stimuli, 

 through the intervention of internal stimuli 

 due to experience and intelligence: To the 

 person accustomed to think of will and choice 

 as absolutely free this may seem to be a sort of 

 freedom so limited as to be scarcely worth the 

 having; and yet "it is the dawning grace of a 

 new dispensation," the beginnings of rational 

 life, social obligations, moral responsibility. 



The only control over natural phenomena 

 which is possible is in choosing between alter- 

 natives which are offered; and the only control 

 which one who has reached the age of intelli- 

 gence can have over his own development con- 

 sists in choosing between the alternatives which 

 are open to him. He may not choose his he- 

 redity or early development for the alternative 

 paths which were once offered here have long 



