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.