WHICH HAS THE GREATER INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER-HEREDITY OR ENVIRONMENT ?

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 83

WHICH HAS THE GREATER INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER - HEREDITY OR ENVIRONMENT ?

EXVIEOKMENT. (Being the paper written by Harry for the

Side " Environment. )

Which has the greater influence upon character, heredity or environment? Iwo factors exercise xhe gieatest power over character — heredity and environment. Indeed, so great is the power of these two factors that a- class of men have arisen who claim that a man's character can be accmately determined simpJy by a knowi-edge of these two factors, and the lelative importance to be assigned to each. With that, hotrever, we have no concern. Our duty is to try and prove that of the two factors environment has the greater influence. One might show how the qualities of the father descend to the son, and how that individual owes so much of his character to the blood that courses through his veins ; or, to quote extensively from Professor Diuinmond's essay on environment, wheiein are definitions of what "is meant by that term: — •"''One might show how the moral man is acted upon and changed continuously by the influences, secret and open, of his surroundings, by the tone of society, by the company he keeps, by his occupation, by the books he reads, by Nature — by all, in short, that constitutes the habitual atmosphere of his thoughts, and the little world oi his daily choice. Thus what biography describes as parental influences biology would speak of as heredity, and all that is involved in the second factor — the action of external circumstances and surroundings — the naturalist would include under the term environment. We can estimate there early influences in any particular case with but small imagination if we fail to see how powerfully they also ha\e moulded mind and character, and in what subtle ways they have determined the couise of the future ,ife. We are invited to consider external influences — schools and schoolmasters, neighbours, home, pecuniary ciicumstances, scenery, and bj and bye the religious and political atmosphere of the time. These also we are assured have played their part in making the individual what he is."

In the first place, the history of our nation is a standing proof that environment exercises a greater influence upon character than heredity. What is the stock from which we are descended? Her is an extract from the pages of a modem historian, relative to our ancestors: —

"A people with huge bodies, cold blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish fl-axen hair, ravenous stomachs filled with meat and cheese, heated with strong dunk, of a cold temperament, slow to love, prone to diunkenness. They lived on the? fruit of the land, their flocks, N their women, and their slaves. War and pillage was their whole idea of a freeman's work Open one of the old" sagas, and you will read of a daughter of an earl reproaching her lover for basing seldom provided the wells with hot blood, and never having Feen for a whole winter a raven^croaking over the carnage. He pacifies ncr by saying- 'I have rrftrched with my sword. Ihe raven has followed me. Furiously we fought. We fired the dwellings of men. We wal'owed in the blood of those, who kept the gates. From such men and -'such maids, you may judge the lest. Idolatry and carnage by an overstrong temperament, the butchering instincts — such meet us at every step in these old saga-s. Picture to yourself, then, a race like that, living in marshes and gloomy forests. Half-naked savages — a kind of wild beasts. Ferocious pillagers, hunters of animals and hunters of men. Of all barbarians, says the ancient historian — of all oarbarians the most formidable ; and we may add. says the modern historian, the most ferocious." Who are these peop'e? Your ancestors and mine. That is the stock from which we come.

Now. turn from that picture to that of the British nation of to-day. What a marked contrast! And how has that contrast been brought about 9 Mainly by the influence of environment. The batter qualities of our competitors have been studied and emulated ; the surroundings of each class of citizen have been so improved gradually, as also have conditions of life, that now we stand in the front rank of civilised nations. What has been the greater motive power in bringing this about? Has it been heredity? If so. then why have so few of the qualities of our savage ancestors descended to us ? Has not the greater power been environment, which has turned aside in such a great measure the influence of heredity? The second proof follows naturally from the first. Just as the advance of civilisation has been to a greater measure dependent upon environment than upon heredity, so our future progress depends upon the supreme importance being assigned to environment. The very progress we are making at the present time in the colonisation and ' civilisatior of other lands, in standards and conditions of living, etc.. is a proof that environment has the greater influence. Our future piogress. then, depends upon our treating environment as infinitely more powerful in the formation of character than heredity. The reason is manifest. Heredity repiesents selfishness: environment unselfishness: and selfishness, in very kingdom — plant, animal, and man — tends to extinction. "We must fight selfishness." says Ben Tillett; "it is the mother of all the sin and the sorrow." Belief in heiedity would tend towards stoppage. It would be as if we said, "There is no use trying to improve. We are what we are made, and we must fight through life witll Ike banieap- of teredit^ " Or, take a country for an example. The Persians are, and always have been, great believers in heredity and fate, and to-day what rank do thy hod amongst civilised countries? On the other hand, belief in the paramount influence of environment tends towards progress. If we realise that surroundings do the most towards making the man then we de-vise all ways and means for improving the environment of those who are to form the nation of to-morrow. One of the most potent factors in- the colonisation of Canada is Dr Barnardo's Home. This home was instituted in order to dft the London arabs off the streets, and. by surrounding them with a wholesome environment Rfl4 with, pi«e (jpi waobliug in-

fluertces, to =o st.engthen and make their characters, and, fo a great extent, do away with the pernicious influences of heredity, thflt they would be fitted to become loynl and good citizens. What is the result of that venture of faith 9 Is it not a "fact that one of the most go-ahead colonies of our Motherland has drawn its lifeblood from this, home? It was a wonderful scheme that of sending the boys, after they had improved through the influence of the home, out to Canada, and getting them to develop the lesources of that land. And yet these boys, by heredity on the lowest p atform of life, yet, through the transforming and ennobling influence of environment, these boys become useful and respected citizens of a rapidly-advancing country.

A further proof that environment is more poweiful in the foimation of character than heredity is the fnct that such strenuous endeavours are now being made to improve our everyday environment.

I have aheady enumerated what Professor Drummond says comes under the teim "envirorunent." We shall consider for a Jew moments the main constituents . —

(a) Home. — It is in the home that the hereditary instincts are modified or encouraged, and the spirit of early training largely determines the character of the man. "Home is a gieat word," says Dr Waddell. "It is the sweetest of words because it is the greatest of things. Napoleon used to say that what France wanted was homes." And there is no one who can deny that the influences of early home life can ultimately, if taken in hand at a sufficiently early stage oust those of heredity. ALdeiman Ben Tillett. secretary of the London Dockers' Union, in an essay, in which he maintains that environment wields the msiin influence over character, writes in this strain: — "Bob the mother of the means' to educate her children, and you rob the nation of its possibilities for good. That surely is an aigvunent of environment. * The mother is anxious that her boy or girl shall have the best society, the best education, and the best surroundings." (b) Schools and Schoolmasters. — Epictetus. 50 years before Christ was born, said : "You will* do the greatest service to the State if you raise not the roofs of the houses but the souls of the citizens, for it is better that great °ouls should live in small houses than that mean slaves should live in great palaces.

What is the one great object of schools but to elevate ennoble environment. And is it not a fact that yeai by year, as education advances, more ability is demanded of the men and women whose life-work it is to teach in our schools.

(c) Labour. — Labour is one of the chief— if not the chicf — enviionment, and how Herculean have been the effoits to impiove the conditions of labour, so as, through the medium of this enviionment, to impiove character. Look up the improvements brought about of late years by the Factories' Acts the Workers' Conciliation aad Arbitration Acts, etc. These acts have been made law with the main object of improving the environment of labour.

In all these cases we are doing our best to elevate and ennob c our environment, and the very fact of our doing so points to our belief that environment possesses a greater influence over character than heredity. I have spoken of the ennobling influence of environment. But its degrading tendency can be proved on similar lines. I have not time to say more on this aspect, but shall just quote again from Ben Tillett's essay on "The Wealth and Progress of the Empire." After speaking of the sweating system prevalent in the Old Country, of the families practically reared in coal mines, of the white slavery in the pottery districts of Staffordshire-, he goes on to spy : — "Humanity is not made up of predilections in one direction — we are disposed to goodness as to badness, end our environment, is in the main the cause of the bad." Consider now the primary elements of character. What constitutes character but our everyday thoughts, for "thoughts made words, woids acts, acts conduct, and conduct character." Is it not a fact that environment possesses the. stronger ho d upon these elements of character than heredity? George Eliot says of Melema in "Romo'ia" : "He was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually determines character. \ow. this "reiterated choice of good or evil is influenced more largely by environment. It is easy to understand that, given a different environment when the choice is made the choice would probably be ft different one altogether. So many of our novels hinge upon the influence of environment upon character. I have referred to one — "Romola" — but read almost all of George Eliot's works, and the same principle is emphasised time and again. A book I have been studying just lately, "Thackeray's Histoiy of Pendennis," incidentally presses the point of the influence of environment upon one's everyday thoughts and acts. And because environment exercises a greater influence upon these constituents of character therefore it must necessarily follow that it exercises the greater influence upon character.

My fifth reason is that environment is more tangible, as it were, to a man than heredity. The more he advances in ag"e the more he realises to what extent his future will be shaped Dy the voluntary environment with which he surrounds himself—the books that he reads, the company that he keeps, the work that he chooses for himself and other conditions that constitute the environment of the man of to-day. These are of infinitely more importance to him than his hereditary instincts, and because he considers them so they exert a fat greater influence. "Our environment." Drummond says, "is that in which we live, and move, and have our being. Without it we shou'd" neither live nor more nor have any being. . . In the environment are the conditions of life. I am only as lam sustained ; I continue only as I receive. For the reasons I have above stated, therefore, I maintain that environment has the greater influence upon character. Briefly, my reasons are these* — (1) On the proof of the histoiy of our race. (2) Because progress depends upon our accepting as true that environment has a ftiongei influence upon character than heredity. (3) Because our efforts are being directed at the present time to improving our environment. (4) Environment has tlie stronger influence upon the primary elements of character, and iterefore upon <rli stxsicteir (5) Environment is nearer aud more diiectly concerns man than heredity.