CHAPTER SEVEN—HOW HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT WORK
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.