Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

by Robert Blatchford

"You will be just as good a painter as your heredity and environment allow, or compel you to be.

"If you have any hereditary talent for the art, so much the better. But painting requires something more than talent: it requires knowledge, and practice. The more knowledge and practice you get the better you will paint. The less hereditary talent you possess, the more knowledge and practice you will need. Therefore, if you want to be a good painter, you must work hard."

The second speech would leave out the word hereditary before the word talent, and would begin, "You will be just as a good a painter as your talent and industry will make you." Otherwise the speeches would not differ.

But are we to suppose that the first speech would discourage a boy who wanted to be a painter? Not at all: if the boy understood what heredity and environment mean. It tells him that he can only be as good a painter as his talent and his industry will make him. But it does not tell him what are the limits of his industry and talent, for nobody knows what the limits are. That can only be settled by trying.

To know that he cannot get more out of a gold reef than there is in it, does not discourage a miner. What he wants is to get all there is in it, and until he wants no more, or believes there is no more, he will keep on digging.

It is so with any human effort. We all know that we cannot do more than we can, whether we believe in free will or no. But we do not know how much we can do, and nobody can tell us. The only way is to try. And we try just as hard as our nature and our desire impel us to try, and just as long as any desire or any hope remains.

Not only that, we commonly try when the limit of our attainment is in sight. For we try to get as near the limit as we can.

For instance. A young man adopts literature as his trade. He knows that before he dips a pen into a bottle that he will never reach the level of Shakespeare and Homer. But he tries to do as well as he can. A miner might be sure that his reef would not yield a million; but he would go on and get all he could.

So it is in the case of a desire for virtue. A man knows that he cannot be better than his nature and his knowledge allow him to be. He knows that he will never be as good as the best. But he wants to be good, and he tries to be as good as he can. The fact that a private soldier is not likely to get a commission does not prevent him from trying to get a sergeant-major's stripes. The knowledge that he is not likely to get twenty-one bull's-eyes in a match does not prevent a rifleman from getting all the bull's-eyes he can.

So with our young painter. All desire is hereditary. All knowledge is environment. The boy wants to be a painter, and he knows that industry and practice will help to make him a good painter. Therefore he tries. He tries just as hard as his desire (his heredity) and the encouragements of his master and his friends (environment) cause him to try.