For man did not help God in the act of his creation, nor did he choose his own ancestors.
"What! do you mean to say that the ruffian, the libertine, and the knave are not to be blamed nor punished for any of the vile and cruel acts they perpetrate?" asks "the average man."
Yes. That is what I mean. And that is not a new and startling "craze," as many may suppose, but is a piece of very ancient wisdom; as old as the oldest thought of India and of Greece. In the Bhagavad-gita it is written:
He sees truly who sees all actions to be done by nature alone, and likewise the self not the doer.
And Socrates said:
It is an odd thing that if you had met a man ill-conditioned in body you would not have been angry; but to have met a man rudely disposed in mind provokes you.
Neither am I unsupported to-day in my heresies. Most theologists are opposed to me, but most men of science are with me: they look upon man as a creature of "heredity" and "environment."
What a man does depends upon what he is; and what he is depends upon his "breed" and his "experience."
We admit that no two men are quite alike. We should not expect men who are unlike in nature and in knowledge to do like acts. Where the causes are different it is folly to expect identical effects.
Every man is that which his forbears (his ancestors) and his experiences (his environment) have made him. Every man's character is formed partly by "heredity" (breed, or descent) and partly by "environment" (experience, or surroundings). That is to say, his character depends partly upon the nature of his parents, and partly upon the nature of his experience.