cramped by a book-language not yet flexible enough for the demands of rhythmic emotion, not yet sufficiently popularized for the natural and familiar expression of supreme thought, not yet so rich in metaphysical phrase as to render possible that ideal representation of the great passions which is the end and aim of Art, not yet subdued by practice and general consent to a definiteness of accentuation essential to ease and congruity of metrical arrangement. Had he been born fifty years later, his ripened manhood would have found itself in an England absorbed and angry with the solution of political and religious problems, from which his whole nature was averse, instead of in that Elizabethan social system, ordered and planetary in functions and degrees as the angelic hierarchy of the Areopagite, where his contemplative eye could crowd itself with various and brilliant picture, and whence his impartial brain,-one lobe of which seems to have been Normanly refined and the other Saxonly sagacious, could draw its morals of courtly and wordly wisdom, its lessons of prudence and magnanimity. . What we mean when we say Shakespeare, is something inconceiveable either during the reign of Henry the Eighth, or the Commonwealth, and which would have been impossible after the Restoration."

It has been claimed by some sociologists that the social demand determines the type of genius that we find in any society. When society places a premium upon creative work in art and music, we get artists and musicians, i. e., men of ability show their ability in this direction. On the other hand, in an age like our own where the rewards are mainly for those who achieve success in organization of business enterprise or in exploiting the natural wealth of the country, genius shows itself in business, engineering. and the like. Only a situation demanding mechanical skill produces an Edison, only a great war produces a Grant, only a literary age produces a Shakespeare. The environment may accept or reject, nurture or destroy the man of genius.

But why all this discussion concerning the importance of environment? Mainly this the possibility of achievement on the part of any individual is not merely a function of his ability. Even the genius may be suppressed. You may kill physically the child whose contribution to human welfare would far exceed the achievement of one who is carefully nurtured. The genius as we know him is a man of great ability who has had an opportunity. The fallacy of the doctrine of the irrepressibility of genius is found in the fact that by the very nature of things only those who succeed are considered. We cannot know of the men of genius who have been suppressed, the men for whom the element of opposition in the environment has been greater than they could overcome. It has been argued that the genius cannot be hid, that he will assert himself, and yet we know that men of genius have very frequently lacked the element of aggressiveness which would be necessary in overcoming serious obstacles of an economic sort. From the work of Galton and others who have followed him it is argued that the probability of achieving renown is much greater for the son of a man of great ability

than for the average individual, but this does not prove that genius may not be very widely scattered, and that it fails to become apparent only because of untoward circumstances. If the environment may be a determining factor for the genius, how much more important it must be for the men of less endowments.

It is this element of stimulus and of opportunity that it is the particular function of education to provide. As far as we are concerned, even though we admit the very wide variability in native capacity, the problem is not altered. All of the children have possibilities of development and it is ours to provide the conditons most favorable for this growth. If children differ. if the possibility of achievement is not equal in any two children with whom we deal, all the more are we responsible for a careful study of the individual child and for an attempt to make such provision as will render his growth along the line of his special aptitude most certain. It has been said that democracy tends to mediocrity, that the result is a levelling down instead of a levelling up. If this be true it is an indictment of our education. We have been so much concerned in recognizing the freedom of all children that we have tended to overlook the genius and have failed to stimulate him to the highest endeavor.

If we view the problem from the standpoint of the doctrine of evolution, we are forced again to recognize the freedom of the child. From the very beginnings of society men have labored for the common good. Progress is the result of the power of the individuals composing society not only to maintain the existing social structure but also to further consciously the evolutionary process. If there has been progress it is because each generation has been free to transcend its inheritance. The striking thing is that out animal inheritance is modified and checked in its functioning. As intelligent beings we adjust these tendencies to reaction to the changed conditions which confront us. There is struggle; the conditions of social life demand restraint, reconstruction, and readaptation. We accept certain social ideals; we are governed in our activity by social approval and disapproval. It may be argued that there is always present in the process of evolution a force working for righteousness, but when conscious evolution enters, man chooses to align himself with this spiritual principle. He is free to achieve morality not because the necessity for struggle ceases but rather because he chooses to place himself in harmony with those forces which are making for progress.

In summarizing it may be helpful to inquire briefly concerning the achievement of the great majority of those who reach adult life. What men and women of today are doing is an indication of the freedom which was theirs at birth. Not that achievement is a complete measure of endowment. There are few who would be willing to claim that they had accomplished all that was possible. There are those who have been severely handicapped by unfavorable elements in their environment. But we can at least

claim that we have a partial measure of freedom in the actual accomplishment of men.

First of all, these men of today have preserved their own lives. Their native equipment has made it possible for them to survive under a great variety of circumstances, and, for many of them, in an environment which swarms with the enemies of human life. The fact that men have been unable to withstand the ravages of disease under radically new environmental conditions is not so remarkable as is the fact that in time, through the survival of the most fit, the race has become practically immune, free in the sense that it can achieve physical health and vigor under conditions once seemingly impossible of conquest. It is not that immunity from disease is inherited, but rather that natural selection operates in producing a race of those who are strong enough to overcome the adverse conditions. Added to this element of survival is the knowledge of hygiene, of medicine, and of surgery, which it has been possible for these men to acquire and which has been used in combating elements in the environment inimical to human life. These two elements, the natural tendency to persist and the ability to profit by the past experience of the race in preserving life, constitute one aspect of man's freedom and are the bases of the possibility of achievement which characterizes him.

These men have not only lived, they have worked. Their freedom has made possible achievement heralded abroad as epoch making in the history of civilization, perhaps, or they have done the work which is not acclaimed but which is none the less necessary. There have been relatively few who have been unable because of lack of ability to establish themselves in vocations worthy of their best efforts. They have been above all adaptable. They have done the work which the situation in which they found themselves demanded. The freedom of man is measured by human progress.

But life is not all work and men are by nature so constituted that they demand leisure. We associate commonly with the ideal of leisure the possibility of culture in the best sense. Children are born able to grow in power of appreciation of the nobler things of life. There is no normal man or woman to whom growth in power to appreciate literature, art or music is denied by inheritance. It is true that other interests may crowd out these nobler elements of experience, it is possible that physical exhaustion coupled with a lack of a stimulating environment may mean the neglect of the most worthy pleasures, but this does not indicate a native lack of capacity nor deny the possibility of achievement along these lines.

It is not claimed that achievement in all directions is equally possible for all individuals. Differences there are, and they must be recognized. It has developed, as we have inquired concerning the freedom of the child whether physical, mental, or moral, that in each case we have been compelled to emphasize the fact of the possibility of achievement. Children are plastic, docile, and modifiable. The great majority of men and women are born free to achieve much more than they actually accomplish. Children

for the purposes of education are born free not to become alike but rather to become different. Our difficulty has been often that we have not individualized the child sufficiently: we have not provided the environment which has brought out the best that there was in him. Our child is free to become something of everything, but he ought to become a factor in the social wellbeing of the group in which he lives because he has been wisely guided and stimulated in some one line of activity.

In conclusion it may not be out of place to say that our modern society believes in the freedom of the child, has confidence in his power to contribute his share to social well-being. Indeed the main thesis of this paper might have been the universal belief in the modifiability of the human being. We might have concluded our survey by claiming that the proof of our hypothesis concerning the freedom of the child was found in the existence of facts that could not otherwise be explained. The philanthropic, reformatory, religious, and educational institutions with which our land abounds are evidences of this belief and of the validity of our claim. We are coming to believe more and more in the child and in his possibilities. We have confidence in opportunity for growth and development and are skeptical of the value of repression. Men everywhere are beginning to recognize the fact that the hope of progress for humanity is found in the education of the little child.

IN HOW FAR AND IN WHAT WAY IS IT TRUE THAT THE CHILD IS BOUND BY HEREDITY?

PROFESSOR C. B. DAVENPORT, CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON, COLD SPRING HARBOR, LONG ISLAND, N. Y.

I hold in my hand some millet seeds from the same parents and some violet seeds from the same parents. I have here two pans of earth, A and B; A being a rich loam and B a nearly pure sand. I plant in pan A some of the millet seeds and some of the violet seeds and in pan B some of the millet seeds and some of the violet seeds. The millet seedlings that sprout in A are different from those that sprout in B; that is environment. In both pans A and B the millet and violet seedlings are easily distinguishable; that is heredity. You may make the conditions in A and B as unlike as possible, compatible with germination-yet in both the general differences betweeen millet and violet seedlings are maintained and they are readily distinguishable. Heredity seems stronger than environment in determining the result. The question of the relative importance of heredity and environment is, however, special for each species. Among bacteria environment seems to be the chief determiner of form; among the higher animals and plants it is heredity.

What is heredity? It is the internal control of development. Let us consider its action in the case of the fertilized human egg, as this minute body, only one-one hundred and fiftieth of an inch in diameter, proceeds to produce a man. At first uniform, equivalent cell-division is its business, until a hollow sphere of cells is produced. Then specialization begins in different parts of the sphere-the hollow sphere becomes pushed in at one pole, forming thus an inner and an outer membrane, and each membrane undergoes further foldings-is thickened there, thinned here, pushed in or pushed out. Lateral folds grow together in the middle line or are torn apart; pockets arise, at first simple, then dividing again and again to form glands. Finally, after days and weeks of foldings, local thickenings and thinnings, atrophies, concrescences, perforations, splittings of cell masses, fusions and vacuolizations of membranes and migrations of free moving cells the specific form, with its principal organs is blocked out. Now histological changes begin, cells destined to form vessels or nerves elongate, future gland cells remain cubical, epidermal cells flatten. Some secrete great masses of supporting tissue like that of gelatinous tissue, cartilage and bone, and others undergo a chemical transformation within themselves, turning into horny materials like that of the outer skin and the hair. Thus as each different kind of cell arises it assumes its special function. Then co-ordination of function appears, first between nerve and muscle, and then between the central nervous system on the one hand and the muscles, glands and sense organs on the other.

For some time before birth, heart and blood vessels, liver and kidneys, nerves and muscles, are hard at work. Birth is a mere incident in development, involving a new sort of food and means of feeding and new external stimuli. Many developmental processes are still going on at birth and continue long after, e. g., the secretion of the formed substance of bone and other tissues, the growth of hair, the chemical manufacture of the pigment of hair and iris, and a score of other less obvious processes including the extraordinarily important development of the association fibres of the brain. One after another these become established, and fortunate in results the teacher who is prepared to exercise each new function as it becomes fit.

But, already, long before birth, a different and not less important fact is evident. Many of the great developmental processes-of which the culmination is, perhaps, in the fourth month-have stopped. The stopping of a process is as important a part of ontogeny as the initiation of a process. And it is upon the proper adjustment of the initiating and inhibiting of processes that normal development depends.

We must pause for a moment to consider what determines the course of development-why should a process start, take such and such a course and then stop? We know that all protoplasm is highly irritable and responsive; and we can see that developmental processes are responses to stimuli. A part already formed acts as a stimulus on an arising part. In