THERE are many who have some understanding of heredity and of environment when taken separately who fail to realise their effects upon each other.
The common cause of the stumbling is easy to remove.
It is often said that two men are differently affected by the same environment, or what seems to be the same environment, and that therefore there must be some power in men to "overcome" their environment.
I have dealt with this argument already, showing that the contest between a man and his environment is really a contest between heredity and environment, and may be compared to the effort of a man to swim against a stream.
A given environment will affect two different men differently because their heredity is different.
But remembering that we are born without any knowledge, and that we are born not with intellect nor conscience, but only with the rudiments of such, it must be insisted that the hereditary power to resist environment is very limited. So much so that we may amend our figure of the swimmer and the stream, and say that no man, howsoever strong and brave, could swim against a stream unless he had learnt to swim.
And the learning to swim is environment, and works against the contrary environment, typified by the stream.
Let us take the case of two children. One has bad and one good heredity. One is a healthy baby, born of moral stock. The other is a degenerate, born of immoral stock. We will call the healthy baby Dick, and the degenerate baby Harry.
They are taken at birth into an environment of theft, drunkenness, and vice. They are taught to lie, to steal, and to drink. They never hear any good, never see a good example.
Harry, the degenerate, will take to evil as a duck to water. Of that, I think, there is no question. But what of Dick, the healthy baby?
Dick is born without knowledge. He is also born with undeveloped propensities. He will learn evil. His propensities will be trained to evil. How is he to "overcome his environment and become good"? He cannot. What will happen in Dick's case is that he will become a different kind of criminal—a stronger and cleverer criminal than Harry.
But, I hear some one say, "we know that children, born of thieves and sots, and reared in bad surroundings, have turned out honest and sober men." And the inference is that they rose superior to their environment.
But that inference is erroneous. The fact is that these children were saved by some good environment, acting against the bad.
For there is hardly such a thing as an environment that is all bad. In the case of Dick and Harry we supposed an environment containing no good. But that was for the sake of illustration.
For the environment to be all bad, the child must be prevented from ever seeing a good deed, or reading a good book, or meeting a good man, woman, or child.
Now, we can imagine no town, nor slum, in which a child should never hear nor see anything good. He is almost certain at some time or other to encounter good influences.
And these good influences will affect a healthy child more strongly than they will affect a degenerate, just as the evil influences will affect him less fatally than they will affect a degenerate. Because the poor degenerate is born with a bias towards disease or crime.
Two children may be born of the same parents, reared in the same hovel, in the same slum, taught the same evil lesson. But they will meet different companions, and will have different experiences.
One may meet a good boy, or girl, or man, or woman, and may be influenced for good. The other may chance upon the very worst company.
Let us suppose that two children are born in a Hoxton slum, and that one of them falls under the influence of a Fagin, and the other has the good fortune to meet such a manly and sensible parson as our friend Cartmel! Would not the effects be very different? Yet at first sight the environment of the two boys would seem to be precisely alike.
And we shall always find that the man who rises above his environment has really been helped by good environment to overcome the bad environment He has learnt some good. And that learning is part of his environment He must have been taught some good if he knows any, for he was born destitute of knowledge.
A good mother, a wise friend, a pure girl, an honest teacher, a noble book, may save a child from the bad part of his environment.
It would appear at first sight that two boys taught in the same school, by the same teacher, would have the same school environment. But at a second thought we find that need not be the case.
We know what one bad boy can do in a class or in a room. We may know, then, that the boys who share a class or a room with a bad boy have a worse environment than the boys who escape his evil influences.
It is a mistake to think of heredity as all good, or all bad. It is mixed. We inherit, all of us, good and bad qualities.
It is a mistake to think of environment as all good or all bad. It is mixed. There are always good and bad influences around every one of us.
It is a mistake to think that any two men ever did or can have exactly the same environment.
It is as impossible for the environment of any two men to be identical, as for their heredity to be identical. As there are no two men exactly alike, so there are no two men whose experiences are exactly alike.
Good and bad environment work against each other. All kinds of environment work with or against heredity. Different heredities make different natures; different natures are differently affected by similar environments. But the child, being born without knowledge and with rudimentary faculties, is, whatever his heredity, almost wholly at the mercy of his environment.
I hope I have made that clear.
One man is afflicted with colour-blindness, another with kleptomania. The kleptomaniac may be the most troublesome to the community; but is he more wicked than the others?
Why does an apple tree never bear bananas? Because it cannot
Why does a French peasant never speak English? Because he has never been taught.
Why is an English labourer deficient in the manners of polite society? Because he has never moved in polite society.
Why does not Jones the engineer write poetry? Why does not Smith of the Stock Exchange paint pictures? Why does not Robinson the musical composer invent a flying machine?
Because they have not the gifts nor the skill.
Why does Jarman play the violin so evilly? He has no ear, and has been badly taught. Why does Dulcett play the violin so well? He has a good ear, and has been taught properly.
Would proper teaching have made a Jarman a proper player? It would have made him a less villainous player than he has become. But teach him never so wisely, Jarman will not play as Dulcett plays. He has not the gift.
Is it Jarman's fault that he has no gift? It is not. He did not make his own ear. Whence did he derive that defect of ear? From some ancestor, near or remote.
Is Dulcett's fine musical ear due to any merit of Dulcett's? No. He did not make his own ear; he derived it from some ancestor, near or remote.
Here are four brothers Brown. John Brown is a drunkard. Thomas, William, and Stephen Brown do not drink. Does John deserve censure, and do his brothers deserve praise? Let us see.
Why is John a drunkard? His grandfather was a drunkard, and he was sent as a boy to work in a shop where the men drank. Then how is it his brothers do not drink? Thomas had the same hereditary inclination to drink, and he derived it from the same source. But he worked in an office where all the clerks were steady, and when on one or two occasions he indulged in liquor, a wise friend warned him, and with a hard struggle he escaped from the danger.
William, although the same blood runs in his veins, has escaped the hereditary taint To use the colloquial parlance, "he does not take after his grandfather." He never felt inclined to take liquor, and although he worked with men who drank, he remained steady without an effort.
Stephen also was free from the hereditary taint. He mixed with men who drank, and he gradually formed the habit, which gradually formed the taste for drink. But he married a good woman just in time, and she saved him. Thus:
John is a drunkard from heredity and environment
Thomas was a drunkard from heredity, and was saved by environment.
William was always steady from heredity and environment.
Stephen was steady from heredity, almost became a drunkard from environment, and was finally saved by new environment.
John owed his ruin to his grandfather and his shopmates.
Thomas owed his safety to his shopmates, who rescued him from the taint of his grandfather's evil legacy.
William owed his safety to his blood.
Stephen, after being endangered by his companions, was saved by his wife.
Assuming all other conditions to be equal, and all other traits of character similar, how are we to blame one or praise another of these four brothers? Each is what descent and surroundings have made him.
An apple tree cannot bear bananas. A rose tree cannot bear lilies. A rose tree in good soil bears well; a rose tree in bad soil bears poorly. In times of drought the crops perish for lack of water. In rainy weather the hay rots instead of drying.
Let us now consider some of the arguments actually used in denying the power of environment.
Some little time ago the Rev. R. J. Campbell, of the London City Temple, preached a sermon on environment. From a report of that sermon I take the following passage:
His argument was that it was all nonsense to say that environment made the man. The man who had any manhood in him could rise above and beyond his environment, just as Bunyan soared above his tin kettles.
This is an example of the confusion of mind into which educated men fall when they deal with this simple subject.
Mr. Campbell's first mistake is the mistake of separating heredity from environment. Of course, it is nonsense to say that environment makes the man. But who did say anything so silly?
Heredity "makes the man," and environment modifies him. Having made that clear, let us consider Mr. Campbell's second sentence:
The man who had any manhood in him could rise above and beyond his environment, just as Bunyan soared above his tin kettles.
Mr. Campbell says: "The man who has any manhood in him." But suppose he has not any manhood in him! Suppose he is a poor human weed born of weeds. Can he bear wheat or roses? And if he only bears prickles or poison, who is to blame? Not the man, surely, for he did not choose his parents nor his nature. Shall we blame a mongrel born of curs of low degree' because he is not a bulldog?
A man can only realise the nature that he has, and can only realise that in accordance with environment.
But this same sentence shows that Mr. Campbell does not understand what we mean when we use the word "environment".
For he tells us that a man can rise above and beyond his environment.
Now, a man's environment is composed of every external influence which affects him in any way, from the moment of his birth to the moment of his death.
Therefore a man cannot rise above and beyond his environment until he ceases to exist.
Mr. Campbell cites John Bunyan as a man who "rose above his environment." The fact being that Bunyan's good environment saved him from his bad environment.
From the preface to my edition of The Pilgrim's Progress I quote the following suggestive words:
How was it, one naturally asks, that a man of little education could produce two centuries ago a masterpiece which is still read wherever the English language is spoken, and has been translated into every European tongue? It is not sufficient to answer that the author of the work was a genius: it is necessary to show what the conditions were which enabled his genius to develop itself, led him to find the form of expression which best suited its character, and secured for what if produced immediate popularity and lasting fame.
Bunyan was a poor boy of very little education. But he was born with a great imagination, a sensitive nature, and keen powers of assimilation. He was, in short, a born literary genius.
In his youth he got amongst bad companions, and led a lewd and wicked sort of life.
How, then, came he to reform his life, and to write his wonderful book? To listen to Mr. Campbell, one would suppose that the tinker's boy rose against his environment, and without any help for good from that environment. But did he?
We find he served for some years in Cromwell's army. Would the fierce religious atmosphere of Cromwellian camps have no effect upon his sensitive and imaginative nature?
We find that he and his wife read together two religious books: The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and Bishop Bayley's Practice of Piety. Would such books, so read, make no impression upon his impressionable mind?
We find that he was drawn to go to church. That he was "over-run with the spirit of superstition." Would that affect him naught?
We find that his neighbours at last took him "to a very godly man, a new and religious man, and did much marvel to see such a great and famous alteration in my life and manners."
Beyond this we need not go. The religious soldiers of Cromwell, the pious books and the pious wife, the spirit of superstition, and the godly man, were all parts of John Bunyan's environment, and, acting upon the peculiar nature given to him by heredity, these and other facts of his environment lifted him up, made him what we know, and enabled him to write his glorious book. Instead of a man who rose above his environment we have in Bunyan a man who was led by one kind of environment to gamble and drink and blaspheme, and by another kind of environment was made into a fanatical religious enthusiast.
John Bunyan was John Bunyan when he played tipcat, and used profane language on the Sabbath. Up to that time the "manhood that was in him" had not saved John Bunyan.
If, as Mr. Campbell suggests, it is the inherent manhood that saves a man, how was it that Bunyan's manhood, up to a certain point in his life, failed to raise him above his environment.
And, when the change came, what was it that brought that change about? Bunyan had only the same manhood: the same manhood which had already been defeated by the environment. How was it that same manhood now served to raise him above the environment?
John Bunyan was the same John Bunyan; it was the environment that changed. It was the pious Ironsides, the pious wife, the godly man, the atmosphere of superstition, that made John Bunyan the profane tinker into John Bunyan the man of religion.
Bad environment got John Bunyan down: there is no doubt of that. Good environment lifted him up. The manhood was the same at both periods. It was the environment that changed.
If ever there was an example of the power of environment to save or sink a man, that example is John Bunyan, tinker and poet.
Another instance of misunderstanding is afforded by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, who, in an article in the Daily News, argues against the power of heredity and environment, as follows:
The well-bred man—literally speaking, that is the man with a heredity and environment much above the normal—can put forth all the cardinal sins like scarlet flowers in summer. He has lands that meet the horizon, but he steals like a starving man. He has had armies of comrades in great colleges, yet he snarls like a hunchback hissed in the street He has treasuries of gold that he cannot remember; yet he goads poor men for their rent like a threadbare landlady in the Harrow Road. He is only meant to be polite in public, and he cannot even be that. The whole system of his country and constitution only asks one thing of him, that he should not be an unpresentable beast—and he often is. That is a type of aristocrat that does from time to time recur to remind us of what is the real answer to the argument for aristocracy founded on heredity and environment. The real answer to it is in two words—Original Sin.
Had Mr. Chesterton understood the subject upon which he wrote the above picturesque but fallacious paragraph, he never would have sent it to the Press. But he is always falling into blunders about heredity and environment because he has never learnt what heredity and environment are.
He seems to think that the West End means good environment, and that the East End means bad environment. He seems to think that noble blood means good heredity, and that simple blood means bad heredity.
And he calls atavism "original sin."
Let us now consider the rather melodramatic nobleman Mr. Chesterton has portrayed for us.
He does not tell us much about the nobleman's environment. He has lands and wealth, and has been to college.
Does it tend to the moral elevation of a man to be like the "Chough" in Shakespeare, "spacious in the possession of dirt"? Are the wise men of all ages agreed that the possession of great wealth is a good environment? Or do they not rather teach that luxury and wealth are dangerous to their possessor?
In so far as this noble was a very wealthy man, I should say that his environment was not good, but bad.
There remains the college. Now, men may learn good at colleges, and they may learn bad. Is not that so? But let us give Mr. Chesterton the credit and score the college down as good environment.
There remains unaccounted for—what? All the life and experiences of a rich young man.
What were his parents like? Did his mother nurse him, or neglect him? Did his father watch over him, or let him run wild? Were his companions all men and women of virtue and good sense? Did he read no bad books? Did he make no dangerous friendships? Did he ever do any work? Was he ever taught that there art nobler ways of life than shooting dumb animals, seducing vain or helpless girls, debauching at bachelors' parties, playing at bridge, reading French novels, and running loose in the gilded hells of Europe and America?
Because, until we have these and a few thousand other questions answered, we cannot accept Mr. Chesterton's assurance that this wicked nobleman had a good environment.
Then, as to that question of "original sin." Is Mr. Chesterton in a position to inform us that his bold bad peer is not a degenerate? Is Mr. Chesterton sure that he has not inherited a degenerate nature from diseased or vicious ancestors?
No insanity in the family? No gout? No consumption? No drunkenness? No diseases contracted through immorality or vice? All his family for a hundred generations back certified as having united "the manners of a marquis and the morals of a Methodist"?
Quite sure the noble was not a degenerate? Quite sure that his failure was not due to bad environment instead of to bad heredity?
Then I should advise Mr. Chesterton to study Darwin, Galton, Lombroso, Weissmann, and Dr. Lydston, and he will find that a man of good descent may cast back, or "breed back," to the ape or hog, may be born an atavist; and may be incapable of being a gentleman for the simple reason that he is a wild beast.
In which connection I may remark that in The Diseases of Society Dr. Lydston mentions that Benedikt's experiments upon criminal skulls showed that the skull of "the born criminal" (atavist) "approximates that of the carnivora." That is to say, a man may be cursed with a skull resembling that of a tiger.
Is it any wonder that such men, to repeat Mr. Chesterton's poetical simile, "put forth sins like scarlet flowers in summer"?
I am grateful to Mr. Campbell and to Mr. Chesterton for their arguments: they serve the useful purpose of exemplifying the confusion of thought upon this subject which exists in quarters where we should least expect to find it.
As it is of the utmost importance that we should thoroughly understand the relations to each other of heredity and environment, this being a subject upon which there is much stumbling, we shall do well to make quite sure of our ground before we go a step farther.
It is erroneous to speak of "a struggle between a man and his environment," or of a man "rising above his environment".
What we call "a man" is a product of heredity and environment.
The "man" is largely what environment has already made him.
At the instant of birth a child may be regarded as wholly a product of heredity. But his first breath is environment. The first touch of the nurse's hands is environment. The first washing, the swaddling clothes, the "binder," and the first drop of mother's milk are parts of his environment.
And from the first moment of his birth until the time of his manhood, he is being continually moulded and affected by environment.
All his knowledge, all his beliefs, all his opinions are given to him by environment.
And now, with this in our mind, we can see the absurdity of Mr. Campbell's talk about John Bunyan.
Before his conversion Bunyan was already "a creature of heredity and environment." The very conscience of the man, which his wife, and the godly man, and Cromwell's soldiers, and the preachings in the church he frequented, were to awaken, had been created by environment.
For a child is born without conscience: with only the rudiments of a conscience, to be developed or destroyed—by environment.
Now let us reconsider the example of our swimmer and the stream. The swimmer is something more than a mere "heredity." He is a man, and he has learnt to swim. Therefore in his battle with the stream of environment he is using heredity and environment For environment taught him to swim.
Let us take another simile. A man is rowing a boat across a bay. The tide, the currents, and the wind may be regarded as environments. All these environments may be with him, or against him. Or the tide may be against him, and the wind in his favour, and the currents dangerous if not avoided.
But "the man" is largely what environments have made him. His knowledge of rowing came from environment, his knowledge of the bay is environment, his knowledge of the run and position of the dangerous currents is environment, the boat and the oars belong to his environment.
And with all the useful and favourable environments, plus his hereditary qualities, he fights the adverse environments of the wind, and the tide, and the currents.
Now, let us suppose the sea to be rough, and the tide and wind strong, and against the oarsman. And then let us imagine the cases of two men, one of whom was an expert sailor, in a good boat, well found, and one a landsman, who could not row, who did not know the bay, who did not understand wind and tide, who was ignorant of the currents, who had bad oars and a leaky boat.
It is evident that the sailor would have a chance of getting safely across the bay, and that the landsman would be in grave peril of being capsized, or carried out to sea.
And the difference between the sailor and the landsman would be entirely a difference of environment.
But suppose, farther, that the sailor was of healthy descent, that he was, by heredity, strong, and brave, and intelligent; and suppose that the landsman was a degenerate: weak, nervous, fainthearted, and stupid; then the difference would be one of heredity and environment.
And if the landsman were drowned and the sailor came safely to shore, should we curse and revile the one, and applaud and reward the other. Or should we take the sailor's success as a matter of course, and give our pity to the landsman?
Well: in such a crazy boat, with such useless oars, with such a faint heart, a lack of knowledge and skill, and such a feeble mind, does the "Bottom Dog" put out, to wrestle with the winds and storms, and escape the dangerous currents of life.
And how can we expect the badly bred, badly trained, badly taught degenerate to succeed like the well-bred, well-trained, and well-taught hero?
What Mr. Campbell calls John Bunyan's "manhood"—the manhood that "raised him above his environment"—was largely composed of environment.
There never yet has been a hero whose heroism was not in a great measure due to his environment. Let any one who doubts this look back to our suggestions of the fate of a child born into evil environments.
Every man is largely what environment has made him. No man can be independent of environment: but for environment he could never live to be a man at all.
And now let us consider some of the good and evil things environment may do.
We hear a good deal about men who "rise above their environment"; but we seldom hear of men who are uplifted by their environment.
Yet, as I have shown, no man rises above bad environment unless he is helped by good environment.
Those who dread the power of environment cannot have given much thought to the subject.
Instead of being a menace to the human race, the power of environment is the source of our brightest hope.
Environment has shaped evolution, and has raised man above the beasts. Environment has created morality and conscience.
Environment, feared as a power for evil, is also a power for good. If bad teaching, and evil surroundings make bad men; then good teaching, and good surroundings will make good men.
If bad food, bad air, ignorance, and vice, degrade mankind; then good food, good air, knowledge, and temperance will uplift mankind.
If men and women are largely that which environment makes them, then, by improving the environment we can improve men and women.
And here I come into touch with a certain school of dismal scientists who would have us believe that it is useless to improve environment, because men are what heredity makes them, and because we cannot control heredity.
Let us dispose of these pessimists before we go any farther. Happily, the cases in which heredity is stronger than environment are few.
Environment cannot make a model citizen of the "born criminal," or atavist. But good environment will make the worst man better than he would be under bad environment.
Environment cannot make a genius. No amount of feeding, training, and teaching will make an average man into a Shakespeare, or a Plato. But good environment will do more for the dullest of men than bad environment will do.
Environment cannot prevent atavism. It may happen that the best of stock will "breed back" to a lower type. It may happen that a criminal or an incapable will crop out suddenly in a line of good and intelligent men and women. But good environment will abolish degeneracy, as certainly as bad environment will cause it.
For the occasional genius we need feel no concern. He will come when heredity produces him; and he is welcome. And for the atavist, or "born criminal," we may be thankful that he is comparatively rare, and may content ourselves with doing the best we can with him, in future, instead of the worst, as heretofore.
I am assuming that the worst type of born criminal is quite hopeless; but I am not sure of that. We can tame wild beasts, and why not wild men?
But the dismal scientists will tell us that even good environment cannot improve the race, because "acquired characteristics cannot be transmitted": which is to say that knowledge cannot be handed down hereditarily from father to son, and that, therefore, all that the best environment can do is to begin at the beginning with each generation, to teach and train them.
I deny that, and will give my reasons. But suppose we admit it. What follows?
Is it not better to teach and to train each generation well, than to teach and train them ill?
If mental and physical culture cannot be handed down; if the children of the educated and the well-developed must be born uneducated and undeveloped, is it not better to have a generation of strong and cultured men and women than a generation of degenerate weeds? Because we cannot, by education, raise a breed of Washingtons and Darwins, and Miltons and Nelsons, are we to content ourselves with a population of hooligans and boors?
If environment cannot permanently improve the breed, is that any reason for making the worst, instead of the best, of the breed we now possess?
And now, as to that question of improving the breed, I claim that environment would improve the breed, and would improve it as it has improved it in the past, by "natural selection."
How do cattle-breeders improve their stock? By breeding from the best animals, and not from the worst.
Men of weak or base moral natures, and men of weak minds and bodies will, I believe, generally reproduce their faults in their descendants. But, to marry, they must find wives.
I said a little way back, "take care of your women, and the race will take care of itself."
Good environment would "take care of the women." The women being properly nursed, fed, taught, and honoured, would select partners who would not shock them morally, nor disgust them physically.
Virtuous, refined, and intelligent women do not, in general—there are exceptions—love and marry men of weak minds, nor men of diseased bodies, nor men of low moral type.
Therefore, given proper environment, the "born criminal" and the mental weakling would not be able to find wives. But that is not the only way in which good environment would affect the breed. Nearly all degeneration is caused by bad environment, and good environment would stop degeneration, and by that means would improve the mental, moral, and physical average.
It has been suggested, by some of the most dismal scientists, that to prevent the spread of degeneration we should prevent degenerates from marrying. But I think a sounder method would be to stop the production of degenerates, by abolishing the environment that produces them.
As to the atavist, or "born criminal," I would point out that one of the laws of heredity is the tendency to "revert to the normal." That is to say, genius and atavism do not "persist." In a few generations the atavist and the genius have bred back to the average level.
That, as I have pointed out, is due to the mixture of blood by marriage.
Thanks to this law, even the "born criminal" cannot often reappear. An example of the working of this law is afforded by the descendants of the Australian convicts, who have turned out excellent men and women.
I think, then, that we need not be seriously troubled by the gloomy forebodings of our pessimists. With bad environment human nature has no chance: with good environment human nature will take care of itself.
And now let us look at some of the facts in proof of the magical results of improved environment.
I have before me a newspaper report of an interview with Mr. George Jackson, secretary of the Middlemore Children's Emigration Homes. This society was founded some thirty years ago, and has since sent out to Canada more than three thousand children from the slums.
The children came from the worst of slums, and from the worst of homes. They are spoken of by the reporter as being rescued from homes "where they are in daily contact with grinding poverty and misery, in an atmosphere of moral and physical foulness, with parents who are drunken, criminal, and inhuman." And of these three thousand waifs not two in a hundred turned out badly.
To give an idea of the working of a changed environment in the case of these children, I will quote from the report of the Birmingham Daily Post:
Mr. Jackson's view ranges over some three thousand children of both sexes rescued from the very lowest haunts of misery and vice, picked up forlorn and deserted from the gutters of Birmingham, snatched from the evil influence of parents who had carried active cruelty or passive neglect to such terrible lengths that the retributive hand of human law had at last fallen upon them, from parents who would have deliberately forced their offspring to mendicancy, to thievery, or to prostitution. These three thousand worse than destitute little ones, these infants "crying in the night, and with no language but a cry." who had started their sad lives on the very threshold of that dark door over which is written, "All hope abandon," were rescued by kindly hands and carried into the sunshine. For a time they were fed, and clothed, and schooled, taught that there was something more in life than squalor and selfishness and vice, and then they were taken thousands of miles away from those foul slums in which their eyes had first opened to the murky light, their tender sensibilities first awakened to the bitter lesson of human pain and misery. They were taken to where God's fresh, free air sweeps across leagues of virgin forest and prairie, to where existence is vigorous, it may be, but healthy, and pure, and invigorating, to where conditions are such as to develop strong, self-reliant manhood, instead of debased and neurotic criminality. It was in the complete and sweeping character of the change that lay the wisdom of the scheme. On the lone backwood farmstead of Canada the slum child had no opportunity, even had he wished, of once more coming within the range of vicious influences such as he had left. There was no temptation to many of the vices with which cruel circumstances had made him so terribly familiar. Heredity of evil was cheated of its chances, and whatever tendencies to good remained were fostered and given full scope for development. Further, the degraded relatives were no longer able to act the part of a millstone around the child's neck, to fetter his every aspiration to a better life, to drag him down or keep him down to their own dark state.... Hundreds upon hundreds of prosperous farmers in Canada at this day can look back to the dim past, when they sold matches or papers, or picked up as best they could, in the streets of Birmingham, a few stray coppers to take home to their dissolute parents; to the time when, with empty stomachs and with the rain and snow beating through ragged garments onto their little pinched bodies, they cried through the rigours of winter nights on a sheltered doorstep rather than face the blows and curses which awaited them in the only place which they could call home. They were born to poverty and crime "as the sparks fly upward," and they have lived to thank God for that kindly agency which rescued them from their inheritance of misery.
Of these three thousand children two thousand nine hundred and forty were saved—by a change of environment. Had the environment been left unchanged probably not 2 per cent, would have escaped ruin. As their parents were, so would they have been. Had their parents been rescued in their youth only 2 percent of them would have failed.
The experience of Dr. Bamado and his friends with the children taken from the slums was very similar. The percentage of failures was small, and the London papers, in their obituaries of the good doctor, speak enthusiastically of the value of his work, and say that thousands of children rescued by him and his agents "are now steady and prosperous citizens beyond the seas." Since Dr. Bamado took up the work over fifty-five thousand children have been saved—by changed environment.
From an article by Mr. R. B. Suthers in the Clarion of August, 1904, I quote the following account of the George Junior Republic, an American institution, founded by Mr. William R. George, in 1896.
The Junior Republic is a collection of 100 hooligans, juvenile criminals, and unfortunate boys and girls who live under a constitution based on that of the United States. The government is government of the citizens, for the citizens, and by the citizens. Children of all ages are admitted, but the rights of citizenship are not granted to those under 12, and at 21 the juniors are drafted into the great republic outside. Schooling is compulsory up to the age of 16, after which the citizen has the choice of many trades, in the Junior Republic, including farming, carpentering, printing, dairying, or he may be a cook, waiter, store keeper, or office boy. The girls may go in for dressmaking, cooking, and laundry work.
These boys and girls, recruited from the slums and the criminal forcing beds of the great cities, govern themselves. They make their own laws, appoint their own officials, run their own gaol, and are practically as free as the citizens of the big republic of which they become full-fledged members when grown up.
Mr. George asserts that he has never known them when administering the law, to give an unjust or foolish decision.
Remember they were hooligans, criminals, and wastrels.
It ought not to be necessary to argue that children well brought up will turn out better than children ill brought up. We all know that such must be the case: we all see every day of our lives that, such is the case: we all know the power of environment for good as well as for evil. But facts are stubborn things, and the above are stubborn facts.
I have hitherto dealt almost wholly with the environment of the poor, but it is needful also to say something as to the environment of the rich, as Mr. Chesterton's mistakes have shown.
The chief evils of the environment of the rich are wealth, luxury, idleness, and false ideals.
It is not healthy for young people to be brought up to do nothing but spend money and hunt for excitement. It is not good for young or old to have unlimited wealth and leisure. It is not good for men, nor women, nor children, to be flattered and fawned upon. Flunkeyism and slavery degrade and debase the master as well as the servant: the snob lord, as well as the snob lackey.
We have hundreds of religions in the world; but how many teachers of true morality? True morality condemns all forms of selfishness, all acts that are hurtful to our neighbours, to the commonwealth, to the race. In the light of true morality, a rich landowner, or a millionaire money-lender, is a greater criminal than a burglar or a foot-pad; and a politician or a journalist who utters base words is worse than a coiner who utters base coin.
This being so, all the rich are bred and reared in an immoral atmosphere.
But the atmosphere is polluted in other ways. The children of the rich are perverted with false ideals. They are taught to regard themselves as superior to the workers, who keep them. They are taught that it is sport to murder helpless and harmless birds and beasts and fishes. They are taught to toady to those above, and to expect toadyism from those below them. They are given tacitly to understand that it is their lordly right to command, and that it is the duty of the masses to obey. They are allowed to believe that to be born "spacious in the possession of dirt," or free to wallow in unearned money, is honourable, and that to be poor and landless is a proof of inferiority.
They are puffed up with false ideas of value, and suppose that to possess an opulence of pride and a beggarly smattering of useless and often hurtful knowledge, is more creditable than to be capable of making honest pots and pans, and boots and trousers; of laying level pavements, and cutting invaluable drains. They have their unfurnished minds lumbered with immoral ideas of empire, of conquest, of titles, of stars and garters. They are the spoilt children of Vanity Fair, and very many of them are the lamentable failures which their environment would lead us to expect.
No man is educated who has never learnt to do any kind of useful work; no man lives in a good environment who has not been taught to think of the welfare of his fellow creatures before his own, no life is sound, nor sweet, nor moral, which is not based on useful service. Therefore the environment of the rich is generally evil and not good.
These are not the reckless utterances of any angry demagogue. Every word I have written about the evils of idleness, of luxury, of arrogance, of vain-glory and self-love, is endorsed by the teachings of the wisest and the best men of all ages; every word is supported by the records of history, by the known facts of contemporary life; every word is in accord with the new and the old morality.
It is a matter of common knowledge that the environment of the rich "puts forth sins like scarlet flowers in summer."
THE religious mind loves mysteries. Conscience has always been set down as a mystery by religious people. It has been called "the still small voice," and we have been taught that it is a supernatural kind of sense by which man is guided in his knowledge of good and evil.
Now, I claim that conscience is no more supernatural than is the sense of smell, and no more mysterious than the stomach.
If conscience were what religious people think it is—a kind of heavenly voice whispering to us what things are right and wrong—we should expect to find its teachings constant. It would not chide one man, and approve another, for the same act. It would not warn men that an act was wrong in one age, and assure them in another age that the same act was right. It would not have one rule of morality for the guidance of an Englishman, and another rule of morality for the guidance of a Turk. It would not change its moral code as the man it is supposed to guide changes his beliefs through education and experience. It would not give such widely different men of the same age and nation.
If conscience were really a supernatural guide to right conduct it would always and everywhere tell man what is eternally right or eternally wrong.
But conscience is changeable and uncertain. It is a magnetic needle that points North at one time and South at another time; that points East on one ship and West on another ship; that points all round the compass for all kinds of travellers on life's ocean; that has no relation to the everlasting truths at all.
Sceptics have pointed out that "conscience is geographical"; that it gives different verdicts in different countries, on the same evidence.
But I shall show that conscience is:
1. Geographical: that it is not the same in one country as in another.
2. Historical: that it is not the same in one age as in another.
3. Personal: that it is not the same in one person as in another.
4. Changeable: it alters with its owner's mind.
And that, therefore, conscience is not a true and certain guide to right, and cannot be the voice of God.
First, as to geographical, or local, conscience. The English conscience looks with horror or disgust upon polygamy, child murder, cannibalism, and the blood feud.
The Turkish conscience allows many wives; the Redskin conscience allows the scalping of enemies; the Afghan conscience applauds the dutiful son who murders the nephew of his father's enemy; the cannibal conscience is silent at a feast of cold missionary; the Chinese conscience goes blandly to the killing of girl babies; the Rand conscience sees no evil in the flogging of Kaffirs and Chinese; the aristocratic conscience is not ashamed of taking the bread from starving peasants and their children; the capitalist conscience permits the making of fortunes out of sweated labour.
Now, cannibalism, murder, cheating, tyranny, the flogging of slaves, and the torture of enemies are all immoral and evil things. They cannot be good things in the East and bad things in the West. But conscience—the mysterious and wonderful "still small voice"—blames man in one part of the world and praises him in another for committing those acts.
Conscience is local: it tells one tale in Johannesburg or Pekin, and quite a different tale in Amsterdam or Paris.
And to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our reason.
As to historical conscience. What men thought good a few centuries ago they now think bad.
Take only a few examples. Men once saw no wrong in slavery, in trial by wager of battle, in witch-burning, in the torture of prisoners to extract evidence, in the whipping of lunatics, in the use of child-labour in mines and factories, in duelling, bear-baiting, prize-fighting, and heavy drinking.
Not very long ago men would tear out a man's tongue for "blasphemy," would hang a woman for stealing a turnip, would burn a bishop alive for heresy, would nail an author to the pillory by his ear for criticising a duke, would sell women and children felons into slavery; and conscience would never whisper a protest.
Now, it was wrong to burn heretics, and pillory reformers, and work babies to death in the mill and the mine in those days, or it is right to do the same things now.
But conscience now condemns as wrong the same acts which it once approved as right; it now approves as right what it once condemned as wrong.
Conscience, then, differs in different ages. Conscience tells two quite different tales at two different times.
And if we want to find out which tale is the true one we have to use our reason.
As to personal conscience. We all know that one man's conscience differs from another. We all know that in any English town on any day there are as many varieties of conscience as there are varieties of hands, and eyes, and feet, and noses.
There are the Nonconformist conscience, the Roman Catholic conscience, the Rationalist conscience, the Aristocratic conscience, the Plebeian conscience, the Military conscience, the Commercial conscience, the Tory conscience, and the Socialist conscience.
One man's conscience forbids him to swear, to eat meat, to drink wine, to read a newspaper on Sunday, to go to a ball or a theatre, to make a bet, to play at cards or football, to stay away from church.
Another man's conscience permits him all those indulgences, but compels him to pay trade union wages, to speak courteously to servants and poor persons, to be generous to beggars, and kind to dumb animals.
A very striking example of this personal difference in the ruling of conscience is afforded by the quite recent contrast between the sentiments of Northern and Southern Americans on the question of negro slavery.
Another equally striking example is the difference to-day between the rulings of the consciences of Socialists and sweaters.
My own conscience, for instance, never chides me for "Sabbath breaking" nor for "neglect of God"; but it would not allow me to grow rich on the rent of slum houses, nor on the earnings of half-starved children, nor on the sale of prurient novels, or adulterated beer, or sized calico.
Now, it is either right or wrong to do all these things. It cannot be right for one man to dance and wrong for another to dance; it cannot be right for one man to bet, and wrong for another man to bet; it cannot be right for one man to draw rents for slum houses, and wrong for another man to draw rents for slum houses.
But conscience tells some men that it is right to do these things, and tells other men it is wrong to do the same things.
Conscience is not the same thing to one man that it is to another man. It praises Brown and blames Jones for doing the same thing. It tells different tales to different men.
An when we want to know which is the true tale we have to use our reason.
As to changeable conscience. We all know very well that conscience does not keep to one rule of right and wrong even with one man; but that it changes its rule whenever the man changes his belief through teaching or experience.
I need not give many examples of these changes. Every reader can supply them for himself. When I was a boy my conscience pained me severely if I stayed away from Sunday school or neglected to say my prayers. But it does not chide me now for not going to church, nor for not reading the Bible, nor for not praying. Why has conscience thus changed its tone with me? Simply because I have changed my opinions.
But those things could not have been wrong then if they are right now. Conscience has changed. Conscience changes as the mind changes. It tells one tale in our youth, and another in our prime, and perhaps yet another in our decay.
And if we want to know which tale is the true tale we must use our reason.
And now we find that conscience is different in different nations, in different cities, in different classes, in different persons, in different ages, in different circumstances, in different moods.
And, when we come to think about it, we find that conscience never tells us anything we do not know. It is a voice which always tells us what we do know: what we believe. It does not teach us what acts are right and what acts are wrong. It reminds of what we have been taught about right or wrong.
It is not a divine voice, for it often leads us wrong. It is not a divine voice, for it is no wiser and no better than ourselves.
What is it? What is conscience? Conscience is chiefly habit: it is chiefly memory: but it is partly, perhaps, inherited instinct. Conscience is habit. We all know that it is easier to do a thing which we have often done before than to do a thing we have never done before.
We all know that what we call practice improves an organ or power of our body or our mind.
As the proverbs put it: "Use is second nature." "Practice makes perfect."
Most of us know that an organ develops with use and decays with disuse.
If you wish to develop your muscles you must use them. If you wish to improve your memory or to sharpen your wits you must use them.
When a man is first taught to use a rifle he finds to his surprise that he cannot pull the trigger just exactly when he wants it. But in time he does that quite without thought or effort. The muscles of his finger have been "educated" to act with his eye.
Some men, when they first begin to shoot, shrink from the rifle. They fear the recoil or the sudden explosion, and the muscles of their shoulder flinch. If a man gives way to that habit it grows upon him, and he can never shoot straight. The muscles have learnt to flinch; and they flinch.
One man falls into the habit of swearing. The habit grows upon him. The words come ever more readily to his tongue, and he swears more and more.
Now, let us suppose a boy has been taught that it is wrong to swear. In his memory lies the lesson. It has been repeated until it has grown strong. When he hears swearing it shocks him. But the more he hears it the less it shocks him. The words grow more familiar to his ear, just as the sound of a waterfall or of machinery grows familiar to the ear.
Then suppose he swears. That is a very unusual act for him. And his old lesson that to swear is wrong is still firm and ready. It is not his habit to swear: it is his habit to shrink from swearing.
So if he swears, his memory, which has been educated to resent all swearing, brings up at once to his notice the lessons of years.
The same kind of thing is seen on the cricket field. A batsman is playing steadily. He has been trained to play cautiously against good bowling. But he has a favourite stroke. The bowler knows it He sends a ball very aptly called a "ticer" to entice the batsman to hit, in the hopes of a catch. The desire to make that pet cut or off-drive is strong; but the "habit" of caution is stronger; he lets the ball go by. Or the habit is not as strong as the desire, and he cuts the ball; and, even as he watches it flash safely through the field for the boundary, he feels that he ran a foolish risk, and must not repeat it.
What is it tells him he did wrong? It is his memory: his memory, which has been educated to check his rashness. In fact, it is his cricketer's conscience that warns him.
So with the youth who swears. No sooner has the word passed his lips than his educated memory, which has been trained to check swearing, brings up the lesson, and confronts him with it.
But let him swear again and again, and in time the moral lessons in his memory will be overlaid by the familiar sound of curses; the habit of flinching from an oath will grow weak, and the habit of using oaths will grow strong.
It is really what happens with the rifleman who gives way to the recoil and forms a habit of flinching, or with the cricketer who allows his desire to score to overcome his habit of caution. The old habit fades from disuse; the new habit grows strong from use. The rifleman becomes a hopelessly bad shot; the batsman degenerates into a slogger: the young man swears every time he speaks, and his conscience loses all power to check him.
Take the case of the letter "h." The young Lochinvar who comes out of the West sounds his aitches properly and easily—just as properly and as easily as a fencer makes his parries, as a pianist strikes the right notes, as C. B. Fry plays a straight bat. It is a matter of teaching and of use, and has become a habit. From his earliest efforts at speech he has heard the "h" sounded, has been checked if he failed to sound it, has corrected himself if he made a slip.
But the young Lochinvar who comes out of the East drops his aspirates all over the place without a blush or a pang. He has never been taught to sound the "h." He has not practised it. He has formed the habit of not sounding it, and it would take him years of painful effort to change the habit.
Now what happens in the case of a letter "h" is what happens in the case of the rifle, of the ticing ball, of the swearing. One man's memory is educated to remind him not to swear, not to slog, not to flinch, not to drop the "h." The other man's memory is not so trained.
And this trained memory we call conscience. It is purely habit: and it is wholly mechanical.
There is a good story of a gang of moonlighters who had shot a landlord, and were afterwards sitting down to supper. One man was just raising a piece of meat to his lips when the clock struck twelve. Instantly he dropped the meat. "Be jabers!" he said, "'tis Friday!"
That was the habit of abstaining from meat on a Friday. It had been drilled into his memory, and it acted mechanically.
Conscience, then, is largely a matter of habit: it depends a great deal on what we are taught. But it is not wholly a matter of habit, nor does it depend wholly on our teaching.
We all know that two brothers, born of the same parents, brought up in the same home, educated at the same school, taught the same moral lessons, may be quite different in the matter of conscience. One will shrink from giving pain, the other will be cruel; one will be quite truthful, the other will tell lies.
And so to go back to our rifleman and our cricketer. Every novice does not flinch from the recoil, every batsman is not prudent. No. Because men are different by nature.
Some boys are easy to train; some are not. Some are naturally obedient; some are not. Some are naturally cruel; some are naturally merciful.
The conscience of a boy depends upon what he is by nature and what he is taught.
If the emotion of anger is naturally strong in a boy it will need a better-drilled memory to check his anger than if the emotion of anger were weak.
I do not mean it will need more teaching to curb his "will," but it will need more teaching to build up his conviction that anger is wrong, because the motion resists the teaching.
But in the case of a boy gentle and merciful by nature it needs no teaching to prevent him from torturing frogs, and very little to make him know that to torture frogs is wrong.
It is a common mistake in morals to say that a man is to blame for an act because he "knew it was wrong." He may have been told that it was wrong. But until he feels that it is wrong, and believes that it is wrong, it is not true to say that he knows it is wrong; for he may only know that some other person says it is wrong, which is a very different thing.
For instance, it might be said in this way that I am wicked for listening to Beethoven on the Sabbath, "because I know that it is wrong." But I do not know that is wrong. I do not believe that it is wrong. I only know that some people say it is wrong.
So I claim that conscience is what a man's nature and teaching make it: that it is a habit of memory, and no more mysterious than the habit of smoking, or dropping the aspirate, or eating peas with a knife.
Let us now look at some of the scientific evidence.
I will quote first from Darwin, "Descent of Man," Chapter 4:
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable, namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well, developed as in man.... Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct would arise as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct, had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression.
Now let us see what Darwin means. The social instincts include human sympathy and the desire for the company of our fellows; love of approbation, which is the desire to be loved, or to be thought well of, by our fellows; and gratitude, which is the love we pay back for the love which is given us:
These social instincts are sometimes so strong, even in animals, as to overcome the powerful maternal instinct; so that migratory birds, as Darwin shows, and as we all know who have read our Gilbert White, will go with the flock and leave their new broods defenceless and unprovided for.
The social instincts, then, are very strong, and they lead us to conform to social rule or sentiment.
But now Darwin tells us that in the case of man "images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain." These "images" are mental pictures, and they are printed on those brain cells which make what we call "memory." Now, Darwin tells us that these memory pictures would cause us pain as often as they reminded us that we had broken the social rule or outraged the social sentiment in order to indulge some instinct of a selfish kind.
And Darwin makes it clear to us that such a selfish desire may be strong before it is gratified, and may yet leave an impression of pleasure after it is gratified which is weak indeed in presence of the deep-rooted social memories.
Let us take a few examples. The desire for a pleasure may be strong enough to drive us to enjoy it, and yet the pleasure may seem to us not worth the cost or trouble after the desire has been sated. When we are hungry the desire for food is intense.
After we have eaten we are no longer hungry. But we grow hungry again, and then the desire for food is as intense as ever.
Dick Swiveller goes to a bachelor party, and the desire for the convivial glass is strong within him. He drinks too much, and the next morning calls himself a fool for drinking. He is ashamed of his excess, and he has the headache, and the temptation is now absent. But when he is well again, and at another party, the old desire comes back with the old power. So Dick once more indulges too freely in "the rosy," and has another sick head in consequence. And then the social instincts rise up and reproach him, and the sated appetite, being weak, appears to him contemptible.
The social instinct is constant: the selfish desire is intermittent. The passion is like a tide which leaps the moral wall and then falls back to low water. The wall remains: it may be sullied or shaken, but it is still a moral wall, and only a long succession of such tides can break it down. When passion has broken down the moral wall the man is at the mercy of his passions. They flood the dwelling of his soul again and again until he is a ruin.
This, I think, explains Darwin's idea of the struggle between the social and selfish instincts.
In "Adam Bede" George Eliot blames the seducer of Hettie Sorrel for doing a terrible wrong for the sake of a brief selfish indulgence. But that charge is unfair. It implies that the deed was planned and done in cold blood. But the fact was that both Hettie and Arthur were carried away by a rush of passion. The great tide of desire, a desire made terribly strong by Nature, had overleapt the walls of morality and prudence.
Anger has been called a brief madness. The same kind of thing might be said of all the passions. It is as easy to be virtuous after the temptation as to be wise after the event We can all be brave in the absence of the enemy. The result of a struggle between the sea and a wall depends upon the force of the tide and the strength of the wall. It behoves us all to see that moral walls are builded strong and kept in good repair.
Let us go back to the action of the memory in the making of morals. Dr. C. W. Saleeby, who is doing good work in this field, gives us clear light in his book, "The Cycle of Life." He says:
Memory means a change impressed more or less deeply on the grey surface of the brain.
A change. Those "images" which Darwin tells us are continually passing through the mind have actually made a change in the brain. That is to say, they have made a change in the mind: they have made a change in the personality.
After showing how a singer learns to produce a note properly by practice until he is almost incapable of producing it improperly, and until its proper production has become mechanical, Dr. Saleeby says:
The effect of practice, as in any other art, mechanical, mental, or both, has been so to alter the constitution of the nerve cells as to produce a new mode of action.
The nerve cells have been re-arranged, and the habit of the person has been altered. He is no longer quite the same person. He now acts and thinks differently.
Now, these changes in the arrangement of the brain cells and fibres may be looked upon as the building up of the moral wall. And the desires and aversions are like the rising and falling tide.
And the tide of our desires is a tide of nature. Because our desires and aversions seem to work by reflex action. What is reflex action?
Reflex action, as I use the term here, is the mechanical action of the nerves. We do not grow hungry, or thirsty, or angry, or compassionate on purpose: we do not fall in love on purpose. The stomach, working, like the heart and lungs, by reflex action, without our knowledge or direction, uses up the food, and our nerves demand more. The desire for food, for love, for revenge, is due to reflex action. The desire makes itself felt first without our asking, and we have to refuse or to grant its request after it is made.
We do not say: "Behold, there is a pretty face: I will be attracted by it." We cannot help being attracted by the face that attracts us, any more than we can help being hungry. The face attracts us, more or less, and we decide to seek out its owner, according to the strength of the attraction and of the reason for resisting the attraction. We see a diamond. We do not say: "There is a diamond. I will not think it beautiful." We cannot think it anything but beautiful; but whether or not we shall buy it or steal it depends upon the strength of our desire and the strength of the reasons against gratifying that desire.
Now, let us see how these conflicting ideas act. A man sees a beautiful woman, and desires to see more of her. But he fears if he sees much of her he will fall in love with her. And he is engaged to marry another woman. What goes on in his mind? Memory reminds him that he is engaged, and that it would be "wrong" to follow his desire. And every time the temptation draws him to follow his desire he calls up the "image" of the other woman, and he calls up the images of old lessons, of old thoughts, of old opinions read and heard by him. And the stronger the temptation grows the more earnestly does he invoke these images. Now, what does all this show? It shows the contest between the reflex action of desire, backed by the memories of love's pleasures, on the one part; and, on the other part, of the moral feelings of memories of what he has learnt or thought to be right and wrong. It is then a battle between memory and desire.
A man is never tempted by a woman who does not attract him.
He never steals a thing he does not want. He does not drink a liquor he does not like. The desire must be there before his will is put to the test. And the desire is independent of his will.
A child has no morals. It has only desires. If it likes sugar it will take sugar. If it is angry it will strike. It is only when it is told that to steal sugar or strike its nurse is "naughty" that it begins to have a moral sense. And its moral sense consists entirely of what it learns—that is to say, its moral sense is memory. And its memory is a change in the arrangement of the cells of the grey matter of the brain. And these changes make the brain into a different kind of brain: make the child into a different kind of child.
Now, the child does not teach itself these moral lessons. It does not know them. It has to be taught by those who do know. And its moral sense depends upon what it is taught. And its conscience depends upon what it is taught.
And, that being so, is it not quite evident that the conscience is not the voice of God; that the conscience is not an innate knowledge of right and wrong born with the child; but it is nothing more nor less than the action of the memory?
The whole of this subject is ably and exhaustively treated by Luys in "The Brain and Its Functions," but I have not room here to go into it fully. Briefly put, the scientific explanation may be expressed thus: The brain cells have power to receive and to repeat impressions. When a new sensory impulse arises it awakens these impressions by means of the fibres of association. It is as though the brain were a phonographic "record." Upon this "record" there is printed, let us say, some moral lesson, as "Look not upon the wine when it is red in the cup." On the word "wine" being heard the association fibre which links the idea of wine to the moral idea of temperance sets the "record" in motion, and memory recalls the caution, "Look not upon the wine in the cup." It is as if a "record" on which is printed a song by Dan Leno were joined up with a battery which, upon hearing the word "Leno," would start the "record" to repeat the song.
I hope I have made that clear. I will now conclude by quoting from Dr. Saleeby a passage dealing with the important subject of "association." I take it from "The Cycle of Life":
Nerve cells are significantly incapable of division and reproduction.... All the experience of living merely modifies, the state of the cells already present. The modification is memory.
But though a nerve-cell cannot divide, it can send forth new processes, or nerve-fibres from itself—what we call a nerve being simply a collection of processes from a nerve-cell. Throughout the brain and spinal cord we find great numbers of nerve processes which simply run from one set of nerve-cells to another, instead of running to a sense-organ, or a muscle, or a gland. Such fibres are called association fibres, their business being to associate different sets of nerve-cells.