Upon these primarily depends his success or failure. It is quite true that
environment has a high degree of influence, so great indeed that some
speak of a "social heredity"; they mean by this phrase that the mental
equipment of an individual is determined by the things he finds about him,
or learns from others without having to invent or originate them himself.
Thus a Zulu boy acquires the habits of a warrior and a huntsman when he
grows up in his native village, although he would undoubtedly develop
quite different aptitudes if he should be taken as an infant to a city of
white men. Nevertheless his mental machinery itself would be no less
surely determined by heredity, even though the things with which it dealt
would be provided by an alien environment.
Our present knowledge of the nature and history of human mentality enables
us to learn many lessons that have a direct practical value, although it
is impossible under the present limitations to give them the full
discussion they deserve. Starting from the dictum that physical
inheritance provides the mechanism of intellect, education and training of
any kind prove to be effective as agents for developing hereditary
qualities or for suppressing undesirable tendencies.
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