“Individuals who are subjected to the influence of a particular environment are usually so much more influenced by the forces that select them for that environment, that accurate knowledge in this field is obtainable only with difficulty. The fact, for example, that most Congressmen are college graduates is probably due not so much to their education as to their early giving evidence of ability that demanded such training. In the words of the professor: ‘The factor of selection is commonly neglected, the influence of environment commonly overestimated. Environment does not create, but merely selects and stimulates natural abilities. About all that education can do is to supply facilities for and remove obstacles to the growth of the brain, encourage desirable activities by making them pleasurable, and inhibit their opposites by making them uncomfortable. Mental hygiene, opportunity, and incentive are the foundations of the teacher’s Blackstone.’
“I was prepared to be impressed most of all by what Portia called the ‘human-nature room,’ for here were printed records of many studies based on answers to widely circulated ‘questionnaires.’ From one set it was deduced that half of us have favorite sounds, open vowels and liquid consonants leading; one-fourth are fond of particular words, ‘murmur’ being the choice of the majority; most people are fond of particular names, ‘Helen’ being the prime favorite. Similar records showed that women read more than men, but reach the period of maximum reading sooner, the greatest reading age being about twenty, the average amount small after thirty-five, most people reading for emotional rather than intellectual reasons. Yet others indicated that muscular power increases and attention decreases in summer, the mind being at its best from December until April.
“I was concluding that here was a very mine of richness for the novelist, when the professor remarked: ‘We attribute small importance to this sort of thing. Conclusions based on reports from artificially selected and incompetent observers and combined in an unscientific manner have no general validity. Only direct expert observation of representative cases, and accurate statistical study of all the factors involved, can bring reliable results. We may base our educational ideals on philosophic or popular theories, but our study of the nature of mind and the ways of affecting it, to be at all valuable, must be rigidly scientific.’
“Well, I had learned enough and to spare without these suggestive, if inaccurate, observations of general human nature, and without even looking into certain rooms, where zoölogists and psychologists united in studying the development of mind in the animal world.
“‘I presume,’ I remarked to Portia as we left the building, ‘that when you come to consider suitors for your daughters, you will inquire into not their social and financial standing, but their personal equations of perception and motor-activity, and request statistics concerning the central tendency and variability of each of their mental and moral traits?’ ‘Undoubtedly,’ she replied, ‘and I should want to know similar facts for their parents, and also the details of their reaction to humidity and to heat.’
“‘Shall you require similar data concerning the prospective father of those daughters?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps,’ she concluded; ‘but considering the present undeveloped state of the science, I should insist on conducting those investigations myself. Just now I have no time for such experiments. I must to a lecture. Good-bye.’
“Thus Portia left me to proceed to my lunch and to cogitate alone, a more confirmed perfectibilian than ever, marvelling at the achievement of this generation, and half prepared to accept as true an inscription that I had seen in the last room we visited: ‘Psychology has a message to the world, richer and more original than that of the Renaissance.’”
XIX
The Club of the Bachelor Maids
PROFESSOR Maturin told me that he was convinced, after very brief cogitation, that no one but his young friend Portia could have caused him to receive the impressively simple card which lay before him, reading: “The Pleasure of your Company is requested at the First Annual Gentlemen’s Day at the Club of the Bachelor Maids.” Therefore, before dispatching his acknowledgment to the house committee, he wrote to Portia that he should be more than happy to accept the invitation if she would be good enough to accompany him and see him safely through. To this she acceded with a promptness that implied her anticipation of the suggestion; and so the designated afternoon found them entering the portal together. I quote the account of his experiences as exactly as I can remember it.
“The house, which had been remodelled out of two dwellings in the fifties near the avenue, was very interestingly although simply furnished, in colonial fashion for the most part. There was a spacious public room with tapestried walls and wicker furniture, a library and a reading-room with home-like fireplaces, and an extensive lunch and dinner-room in mahogany and cream. I understood that there were also Turkish baths in the basement, and a sun parlor and a garden on the roof, but these were not shown.