482 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 by 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 



