connections
with that period.

In brief, the environment consists of those conditions that promote or
hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic activities of a living
being. Water is the environment of a fish because it is necessary to the
fish's activities--to its life. The north pole is a significant element
in the environment of an arctic explorer, whether he succeeds in
reaching it or not, because it defines his activities, makes them what
they distinctively are. Just because life signifies not bare passive
existence (supposing there is such a thing), but a way of acting,
environment or medium signifies what enters into this activity as a
sustaining or frustrating condition.

2. The Social Environment. A being whose activities are associated with
others has a social environment. What he does and what he can do depend
upon the expectations, demands, approvals, and condemnations of others.
A being connected with other beings cannot perform his own activities
without taking the activities of others into account. For they are the
indispensable conditions of the realization of his tendencies. When he
moves he stirs them and reciprocally. We might as well try to imagine a
business man doing business, buying and selling, all by himself, as to
conceive it possible to define the activities of an individual in terms
of his isolated actions. The manufacturer moreover is as truly socially
guided in his activities when he is laying plans in the privacy of his
own counting house as when he is buying his raw material or selling
his finished goods. Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in
association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the
most overt cooperative or hostile act.

What we have more especially to indicate is how the social medium
nurtures its immature members. There is no great difficulty in seeing
how it shapes the external habits of action. Even dogs and horses have
their actions modified by association with human beings; they form
different habits because human beings are concerned with what they do.
Human beings control animals by controlling the natural stimuli which
influence them; by creating a certain environment in other words. Food,
bits and bridles, noises, vehicles, are used to direct the ways in
which the natural or instinctive responses of horses occur. By operating
steadily to call out certain acts, habits are formed which function with
the same uniformity as the