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More than this, he could see in the original, fertilized cell, all its powers, defects and potentialities and could, in the same manner, look down through the short years during which the human organism, grown from the cell, shall have life and movement, and could see its varied environment.
In its most perfect development it takes the form of caste, and the presumption is the movement toward caste begins upon the abandonment of a wandering life, and varies in intensity with the environment and temperament of each race, the feebler sinking into a state of equilibrium, when change by spontaneous growth ceases to be perceptible.
But this means that the supposed cause is not, by itself, adequate to insure the effect. And as soon as we include the environment, the probability of repetition is diminished, until at last, when the whole environment is included, the probability of repetition becomes almost nil.
But, in an environment which encourages individual effort, the most important step in the process of securing equality of opportunity is to get rid of the serious obstacles to the development and active use of the natural ability of those born low in the industrial order.
I have dwelt at some length upon this question of sex education, because it is one of especial difficulty when we have to deal with a child of nervous inheritance, or with a child in whom symptoms of neurosis have developed in a faulty home environment.
I cannot believe that I would have gotten nearly so much of good from my early experiences if I had lived in the city. If I am right, this is another element to add to the great urban problem. If the experience of the city child suffers spiritual privations from the limitations of his environment, must this not show itself in social tendencies? In any case I had a motive in what I have said.
There are many respects in which it is impossible to compare Robinson Crusoe with a workman in a huge watch factory; yet they are both men. Both the amoeba and we live in the closest relation to our environment, and conformity to it is evidently necessary: life has been defined as the adjustment of internal relations to external conditions.
If it be conceded that these are the result of environment, then their cause is not far to seek, and the cure is also in sight.
The causes of such minds are many: heredity, environment, associations, lack of proper self-control and understanding; they can all be summed up, however, as the lack of moral sense in the individual and in the race. The guiding star of existence, the conscience, in such cases, has ceased to function; the goal ahead, a future existence, has been lost sight of. Souls are adrift.
It was a corner of her every-day environment; these things were the companions, the witnesses, of moments of her life, phases of herself, which were hidden from Peter; they were the companions and witnesses of her solitude, her privacy; they were her confidants, in a way. They seemed not merely to express her, therefore, but to be continually on the point I had almost said of betraying her.
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