an the struggle almost
always concerns the individual. Gradually the family comes to be the
fuller unit. Only that is success which leads to the success of this
higher group. After a time the family broadens to the tribe, and then
the tribe to the nation. The evolution of social institutions is at
present going on at an enormously rapid rate. Throughout the civilized
world democracy is coming to its own. Even where the form of monarchy
still prevails, the subjects of the monarch are having more and more
rights. The people of England are surely as free as are the people of
the United States. Increasingly all forms of government will secure
for all their subjects, no matter what their station in life, a fair
share of the general prosperity. In this field, human evolution is
perhaps more rapid than in any other.

Any individual human being is a network of traits and peculiarities.
He has all the ordinary attributes of humanity, but to the whole
complex he gives an individual peculiarity which is totally his own.
Where did he get his qualities? In the earlier times the fairies were
supposed to have blessed him or cursed him in his cradle. A later age
saw in the stars the rulers of man's destiny. He was jovial, or
saturnine, or martial, depending on the planet which was in the
ascendant at the time of his birth. Now we know "it is not in our
stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." Everything a man is
comes to him from within or from without; from nature or from nurture;
from his heredity or from his environment. From our ancestors we get
all the possibilities of our lives. To a certain extent we are slaves
to our heredity, but not by any means to any such extent as to make us
hopeless, unless our heredity is miserably bad. To the great mass of
us come larger potentialities than we ever develop, and such
possibilities of degradation as, fortunately, few of us ever reach.
Within an enormously wide range, man is the architect of his own
fortune. Only such traits develop as find a stimulus in the
environment. Accordingly, a very large proportion of the development a
man may achieve depends upon the circumstances under which he is
placed, or, what is far more to the point, in which he may place
himself. Man is not the blind sport of a relentless destiny. It is his
to choose his environment; it is his to modify his environment when he
cannot leave it. To an extent which no other animal has ever
approached, man is the arbi