The old parable of the wheat cast upon the ground may help us. That which falls upon stony ground fails of germination; that which falls upon poor soil will germinate, but will die of drought or be scorched by the sun; that which falls upon good soil will develop into a good plant. The kind of plant that may develop is determined by the seed, by heredity; how the plant will develop is determined by the surrounding conditions, by the environment. On the physical side these facts are so familiar to us that we never question the connection between development and food, or between development and exercise, or between development and other physical conditions. Of course, we say, an undernourished child will never be strong; of course, an overworked child will never be strong, of course, drinking and smoking and other dissipation will prevent healthy development. And yet, do we not know that of two underfed children, one will show the ill effects more than the other; that of two overworked children, one will survive abuse with less permanent injury than the other.

We must, then, have clear in our minds the idea that everything that happens to a child and that may produce a reaction or an effect is worth considering from the point of view of its influence upon his development. Indeed, instead of discussing heredity versus environment, we should try to conceive of the personality of the child as made up of the effect of a certain heredity responding to a certain environment. For example, the child inherits the instinct to handle things. At a certain age this instinct will take the form of handling objects within reach, and of breaking them. We cannot say that the child has an instinct for breaking vases or tearing books; he has simply the instinct to do something with material that he can handle. Now, it is possible for the child to exercise this instinct only on material that can be broken or torn; it is also possible for the child to exercise it on material that can be manipulated constructively—as blocks for building, clay for shaping, or, later, tools of various kinds. In one case the child establishes habits of tearing or breaking; in the other the same instincts—the same "heredity," that is—issues in habits of making. Or we may take the instinct of curiosity, which every normal child will manifest at an early stage. This instinct may find exercise in wondering what is in parcels or closed cupboards; or it may exercise itself in wondering about the thunder and the flowers and the things under the earth; or it may be quite suppressed by discouragement or by unsatisfying indulgence. Thus the same instinct may lead under different treatments to different results. This does not mean that every child has the making of an investigator; it means that a perfectly healthy instinct capable of being turned to good use is often perverted or crushed out because we have not learned to cultivate it profitably through control of the growing child's development.

There is abundant evidence that the mental and moral capacities are inherited in the same way as the purely physical or physiological ones. We have, however, much more to learn about how to control the development of the former than about the control of the latter. Yet this point should be clear to every parent and teacher; whatever the child's inheritance may be, the full development of his capacities is possible only under suitable external conditions. What these conditions are depends upon the combination of capacities that the particular child possesses. But to find out what these capacities are we must give the child an opportunity to show "what's in him." This we can do by placing him in an environment simple enough for him to adjust himself to readily, and at the same time complex enough to give every side of his nature a chance to respond. This is the significance of modern educational movements that seek to leave the child untrammelled in his responses to what goes on around him. We have learned that some children will become tall and that others will never reach beyond a certain height; we seek merely to keep them healthy by suitable feeding, exercise, rest, bathing, etc. But in the matter of mental development we have not yet learned that it is impossible for all children to reach the same degree of linguistic or mathematical or artistic development, and we try to bring all of them up to our preconceived standard of what a child should do in each line. The thing that we need to find out is what a particular child can do; and then we must give him the opportunity and the encouragement to do his best. The things we encourage him to do will be the basis for the habits which he will form, for the skill which he will acquire—and so for the activities that will yield him satisfaction and determine his behavior in relation to others. That is, the things the child learns to do well will determine what kind of a person he will be when he grows up.

But it would be a mistake to suppose that every child is born with a set of special aptitudes that fit him for some particular occupation. Many children do indeed have rather special types of native ability, as the child of artistic proclivities, or the "natural born" preacher. And, on the other hand, many children are born with marked shortcomings in their makeup, although these "deficiencies" need not always interfere with their developing into excellent men and women. For example, a child may be color-blind, or incapable of mastering a foreign language in school, or awkward in doing work requiring great skill—and yet capable of doing high-grade work in other lines. Those children that have strongly-marked proclivities—which usually show themselves early in life and which are commonly associated with strong likes and dislikes—will no doubt do the most effective work along the lines of their native talents. And those with marked deficiencies should certainly not be directed into occupations wherein the lacking talents are essential for success. But the great mass of children vary from each other not so much in the directions along which their special abilities lie as in the degree to which they are capable of developing the ordinary abilities which they do have. For such children the choice of an occupation cannot wisely be made very early in life, nor should a very special choice be made until there has been an opportunity to try out a large variety of activities and processes. Indeed, even for the child of decided genius it is desirable that there be a chance to try out many kinds of activities, both physical and mental. This is desirable not so much in the hope of counteracting his special bent on the theory of supplying exercise for the functions that are not to his liking as for the purpose of giving him an opportunity to find out all he can do, and to give us a chance to find out all he can do well.

Even children who pass as "average" children, however, may be divided into classes according to the variations in their native capacities. That is to say, some children, although not exhibiting any special talents or special deficiencies, are nevertheless more easily adjusted to doing muscular work than others; some are more happy in the manipulation of numbers; some show greater patience; some are more easily fatigued by the repetition of a process; some cannot stand on their feet for long periods without suffering, and so on. These differences should certainly be taken into consideration, first of all, in the treatment accorded them in the school and at home, in what is required of them, in the selection of studies, etc. And, in the second place, these facts should be considered in the choice of general fields of occupation. It would be the height of cruelty and of injustice to insist upon Walter's preparing for and entering his father's business—just to keep up the family tradition—when a little attention to the boy's work in school and to his play and to his personal preferences and tastes would show that he was eminently unsuited for the business, and at the same time well suited for some technical pursuit such as engineering. Untold misery and failure spring from our negligence in these matters, no less than from our direction of the child's development in accordance with the parents' ambitions rather than in accordance with the child's discoverable abilities and disabilities.

How far short our ordinary training falls of giving our various capacities their full development is shown by the exquisite acuteness of touch and of hearing acquired by children who become blind in infancy. The senses of touch and hearing are here developed so far beyond what ordinary persons ever attain that the belief is quite common that one who is defective in one sense has been compensated by "nature" with special capacity in the other senses. As a matter of fact, however, the extreme development is not the result of special endowment or "heredity," but altogether the result of special training or "environment."

There is a certain sense in which the idea of heredity impresses one with a paralyzing feeling of inevitableness. When a child is born his sex is irrevocably fixed; the character of his eyes and of his hair, the form of his features and the ridges on his finger-tips are unalterable except through mutilation or disease. But up to a certain limit the child will grow just in proportion to the nurture that he receives. And what that limit is we may not know until we find out through years of patient effort, through endless trying out in every direction. He will grow farther in some directions than in others, and the limit in each direction is the element of destiny supplied by heredity. Very few, however, reach their limit in many directions, and no person has ever reached his limit in every direction. The distance we do actually go depends, in practice, altogether upon the kind of environment that is supplied. This environment, so far as the growing child is concerned, is entirely within our control, and we have no right to give up our efforts and to shift the responsibility to unsatisfactory heredity until we are quite sure that all has been done that suitable surroundings and treatment—suitable "environment"—can do. We must watch and wait, and work hard while we wait and watch.

XV.

FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE

Is it not strange that "school," which we provide for our beloved children for their own good, at so great a cost of thought and money, should be so little appreciated by them? Is it not strange that "school," which is intended to give power and freedom, should be looked upon by the children as no better than a prison—a good place from which to escape?