he is unable
to share in the life of the group to which he belongs. Some kinds of
participation in the life of those with whom the individual is connected
are inevitable; with respect to them, the social environment exercises
an educative or formative influence unconsciously and apart from any set
purpose.

In savage and barbarian communities, such direct participation
(constituting the indirect or incidental education of which we have
spoken) furnishes almost the sole influence for rearing the young into
the practices and beliefs of the group. Even in present-day societies,
it furnishes the basic nurture of even the most insistently schooled
youth. In accord with the interests and occupations of the group,
certain things become objects of high esteem; others of aversion.
Association does not create impulses or affection and dislike, but it
furnishes the objects to which they attach themselves. The way our group
or class does things tends to determine the proper objects of attention,
and thus to prescribe the directions and limits of observation
and memory. What is strange or foreign (that is to say outside
the activities of the groups) tends to be morally forbidden and
intellectually suspect. It seems almost incredible to us, for example,
that things which we know very well could have escaped recognition
in past ages. We incline to account for it by attributing congenital
stupidity to our forerunners and by assuming superior native
intelligence on our own part. But the explanation is that their modes
of life did not call for attention to such facts, but held their minds
riveted to other things. Just as the senses require sensible objects
to stimulate them, so our powers of observation, recollection, and
imagination do not work spontaneously, but are set in motion by the
demands set up by current social occupations. The main texture of
disposition is formed, independently of schooling, by such influences.
What conscious, deliberate teaching can do is at most to free the
capacities thus formed for fuller exercise, to purge them of some of
their grossness, and to furnish objects which make their activity more
productive of meaning.

While this "unconscious influence of the environment" is so subtle and
pervasive that it affects every fiber of character and mind, it may
be worth while to specify a few directions in which its effect is most
marked. First, the habits of language. Fundamental modes of speech, the
bulk of t