is presented with the opportunities of a fairly favorable environment, its peculiarly indispensable sort of environment. Naval commanders are not likely to be developed in the Transvaal, nor literary men and artists in the soft coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For ten men who succeed as investigators, inventors, or diplomatists, there may be and probably are in some communities fifty more who would succeed better under the same circumstances."
While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circumstances kept from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be that his inherited talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.
F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpass the average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they would also surpass the average man to a very high degree as poets,—or doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those occupations.65
The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed that