that this improvement in the condition of the individual will result in his production of better infants, and that thus the race, gaining a little momentum in each generation, will gradually move on toward ultimate perfection.
There is no lack of efforts to improve the race, by this method of direct change of the environment. It involves two assumptions, which are sometimes made explicitly, sometimes merely taken for granted. These are:
- That changes in a man's surroundings, or, to use the more technical biological term, in his nurture, will change the nature that he has inherited.
- That such changes will further be transmitted to his children.
Any one who proposes methods of race betterment, as we do in the present book, must meet these two popular beliefs. We shall therefore examine the first of them in this chapter, and the second in Chapter II.
Galton adopted and popularized Shakespere's antithesis of nature and nurture to describe a man's inheritance and his surroundings, the two terms including everything that can pertain to a human being. The words are not wholly suitable, particularly since nature has two distinct meanings,—human nature and external nature. The first is the only one considered by Galton. Further, nurture is capable of subdivision into those environmental influences which do not undergo much change,—e.g., soil and climate,—and those forces of civilization and education which might better be described as culture. The evolutionist has really to deal with the three factors of germ-plasm, physical surroundings and culture. But Galton's phrase is so widely current that we shall continue to use it, with the implications that have just been outlined.
The antithesis of nature and nurture is not a new one; it was met long ago by biologists and settled by them to their own satisfaction. The