Читать книгу Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog - Robert Blatchford - Страница 6

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I HOPE the reader will not fight shy of heredity. I trust he will find it quite simple and interesting; and I promise him to use no unfamiliar words, nor to trouble him with difficult and tedious scientific expositions.

I deal with heredity before environment, because it is needful to take them one at a time, and heredity comes first; as birth before schooling.

But we must not fall into the bad habit of thinking of heredity and environment apart from each other, for it is both, and not either of them that make man's character.

It is often said that neither heredity nor environment accounts for a man's conduct. And that is true. But it is true, also, that heredity and environment account for every quality in the human "make-up." A pianist, an artist, or a cricketer is "made as well as born," and so is every man. A good batsman is a good batsman for two reasons: (1) He was born with good sight, steady; nerves, and sound sense, all of which he owes to his ancestors. (2) He has been well taught, or has practised well, and this practice, this endeavour to succeed, he owes to his inherited ambition, and to the precept and example of other men. So if a man plays a fiddle well, or steers a ship well, or devotes his life to charity, the excellence is always due to heredity and environment. For the cricketer would never have been a cricketer, nor the violinist a violinist, had he been born in a country where cricket and violin playing were unknown. And, on the other hand, a man bred amongst cricketers or musicians will never excel in music nor in cricket unless he has what is called "a gift"; and the gift is "heredity."