Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Education of Behaviour: A Psychological Study
In order to see how heredity and environment act and react on each other, we shall begin with a brief investigation into the origin of standards of conduct and attainments. Superficial observation may suggest that these two important springs of action have come into existence in absolutely different ways, for we can remember acquiring most of our attainments by conscious efforts of our own, whereas many of our standards of con duct seem so much part and parcel of ourselves that we are sometimes tempted to think we must have been born with them. However, further re?ection soon shows that both are really the joint products of natural power and environment.
I will consider attainments first The know ledge which a child acquires at school depends partly on himself, but much more on the school. He may, for instance, have only slight ability for mathematics, and yet learn more than another with greater natural talent, merely because he happens to have a better teacher. Even exceptional ability may never develop in an unfavourable environ ment, for we need opportunity to discover what we can do, and we may exhaust ourselves in over coming real or imaginary obstacles when we have discovered it.
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