ctim of
defective inhibition as having gone deliberately to work, through wicked
perversity and pure wilfulness, to make himself a nuisance, to persist in
being a nuisance, and to refuse to be other than a nuisance, rather than
exercise what more fortunate men are pleased to term self-control.

Character is usually appraised as "good" or "evil" by the nature of a man's
actions, the assumption being made that he can control his impulses if he
be so minded.

This is not so. "Good" and "evil" are only relative terms. What one man
thinks "evil", a second holds "good", while a third is not influenced.

Now the performance of the act judged is directed by the performer's brain,
the constitution of which was pre-determined by the germ-plasm from which
he arose, so that _the basis of character is inherited_.

The moral sense is the last evolved and least stable attribute of the last
evolved and least stable of our organs, the brain; and brains are born, not
made to order. To blame a man for having weak control--a sick will--is as
unreasonable as to blame him for a cleft palate or a squint. The "good"
people who jog so quietly through life little reck how much they owe their
ancestors, from whom they received stability.

These tendencies represent the total material for building character.
Training and environment can only nourish good tendencies and give bad ones
no encouragement to grow gigantic.

If training and environment alone formed character, then children reared
together would be of similar disposition; by no means the case. Similarly,
if external influences altered inborn tendencies, then, not only would the
evil man be totally reformed by strong inducements to virtue, but strong
inducements to vice would lead totally astray the good man, for "good" is
no _stronger_ than "evil", both being attributes of mind.

In mind as in body, from the moment he is conceived to the moment his dust
rests in the tomb, man is directed by immutable laws, though he is not
simply a machine directed by impulses over which he has no control. There
is real meaning in "strong will" and "weak will" will being a tendency to
deliberate before and be steadfast in action, a tendency which varies
immensely in different people. The fallacy of "free will" lies in assuming
that every one has this tendency equally developed, making character a mere
matter of saying "Yes!" and "No!" without reference to the individual's
mental make-up.

Delibera