HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
With special assistance from
BENJAMIN CHARLES GRUENBERG, Ph.D.
The frequent appearance of the "black sheep" in a flock of tolerably white sheep, the frequent failure of the best efforts of parents and teachers to make a fairly decent man out of a promising boy, have led many to question whether, after all, the pains and effort are worth while. We have come to question the wisdom of bothering about "environment"; just as we sometimes question the existence of a principle called "heredity." Every day some one asks the question, "Do you believe in heredity?" And many times a day people discuss, "Which is more important, heredity or environment?"
These are certainly practical questions for parents, since the answers we receive must influence our practice or conduct in relation to the children. If we felt quite sure that heredity was everything and environment nothing, we should reduce our school appropriations and build larger jails and asylums, or we should resign ourselves as best we could to letting "nature take her course." On the other hand, if we felt sure that heredity was nothing and environment everything, we should proceed at once to double our school equipment, raise the teachers' salaries, convert our penal institutions into reformatories and our armories into recreation centres, and advance the age of compulsory education just as far as we thought we could afford to.
Those who place the emphasis upon heredity, in the attempt to discredit the value of thoughtful and painstaking control of the environment of the developing child, usually remind us that a man like Lincoln achieved power and distinction in spite of what we would ordinarily consider serious obstacles to complete development, whereas thousands of college graduates who have had all the advantages that trained tutors and guarded surroundings can give have developed into mediocre men and women—have even developed into vicious and criminal men and women. They will remind us that from a class of children that had the same teachers for many years has emerged a group of very distinct men and women; they will remind us that brothers and sisters with the identical "environment" turn out to be so different.
On the other hand, those who see nothing in "heredity" will point to the same Lincoln and ask confidently why his ancestors and his descendants do not show the same degree of power and achievement. They will point to the same family of brothers and sisters who had the same "heredity" and ask why they all turned out so differently. The black sheep proves just as much—and just as little—for one side of the argument as it does for the other.
There are, it is true, many people who say that they "do not believe" in either heredity or environment. Such people see the difficulties of the disputants and reject both alternatives. They prefer to say frankly that they do not understand the situation; that life is too complex to be solved by puny human intellects. Or they resort to some equally unintelligible explanation, such as "Fate" or "Nature"—which is but another way of saying that we never can understand. On the other side stands the scientist who refuses to shut his eyes to any established facts, and insists upon trying to understand as much as possible, though he may never hope to understand all.
But no one is prepared to say authoritatively that either heredity or environment is the exclusive or even the predominant factor in determining the character of the individual. Indeed, the voice of the scientist, which is the only authoritative voice we have in such matters, is telling us very plainly that the whole question of "heredity or environment" is not a real question at all: we are confronted in every child with a case of heredity and environment, and the practical question is how to control the latter so as to get the most from the former.
To begin, then, in a modest way to understand what is understandable, in the faith that understanding will grow with thought and observation, is the first duty of those who are not content to fold their hands in resignation or despair. We know that we can control wherever we have real knowledge. The cook knows that she cannot make roast duck out of pork chops; but she knows also that she can make palatable and digestible pork chops by proceeding in one way, and that she can make tough and sickening pork chops out of the same materials by changing her procedure. In the same way the scientific approach to the problem of child training teaches us that, while we cannot make a "swan out of a goose," we can make the gosling into a better goose or a poorer goose by the treatment we apply to it.
A frequent source of doubt and misunderstanding is the universal occurrence of such distinct types among brothers and sisters. The query at once arises, "Have not these children the same heredity?" Brothers and sisters have the same ancestors, but not the same heredity. Recent biological discoveries teach us that the individual develops from a bundle of units derived from the two parents, but the units supplied by a parent never represent the totality of the parents' composition, nor do all the units that are passed on come to manifest themselves as parts of the character. The parent passes on sample units from her or his own inheritance, so that no two combinations are ever exactly alike. It is a commonplace observation that Johnny may have his maternal grandmother's chin, his paternal grandmother's eyes, his father's walk, his Uncle George's lips, his Aunt Mary's sharp tongue, his grandfather's alertness, and his mother's good judgment. Of course, he has not his grandmother's eyes or his uncle's lips: these relatives still retain their respective facial organs, and his father still has his quick temper. What Johnny has inherited is a something, perhaps in the nature of a ferment, which determines the color of his eyes, a certain something that makes his lips develop into that particular shape, a certain something that causes his brain to respond to annoyance in the same manner as that of his Aunt Mary's. And the various ancestors and relatives have received from their parents similar determining factors that have manifested themselves in similar peculiarities. We do not inherit from our relatives, or even from our parents: we are built up of the same elements as those of which our relatives are built, but each one of us has received his individual combination of factors. Hence, no two brothers or sisters are exactly alike, although they have the same parents and the same ancestors.