n and a few simple fundamental
instincts. But unlike all other animals, the possession of these alone
does not enable us to take and maintain our positions in the community
life. Man's life to-day is subject to a great social heritage which,
unlike his natural heritage, can be realized only as a result of his
own activity and acquisition. Civilized man is the result of Nature
plus Nurture. Civilization has been defined as "the sum of human
contrivances which enable human beings to advance independently of
heredity." The knowledge of fact, historic and scientific, of
literature, of art, of custom, and manner, and all that goes to make
up the culture and education which are the distinctive traits of our
human lives--all this is no possession of ours when we make our first
bow to society. Nor do these things become ours through a simple
process of growth and development while we remain the passive
subjects. All of these things represent the active individual
acquirement of the racial accumulation of tradition and learning--what
the biologist would call the results of modification. Our troubles
begin when we realize that in the acquisition of this load each
generation does not begin where the preceding left off, not at
all--but we begin where our parents did. The first thing we do toward
advancing our places in the world is to absorb what we can of the same
kind of thing our forbears absorbed, learn over again their lessons,
repeat their experiences; and then we proceed straightway to increase
the difficulties for the next generation by writing more books,
discovering more facts, making a little more history, and so it goes:
the load of tradition increases with every successive generation, and
so it has gone since the beginning of man's civilization. It is
declared that the modern schoolboy knows more than did Aristotle. We
cannot resist the inquiry, Has the modern schoolboy better native
ability than had Aristotle? Here is the whole point of this matter;
are we any better endowed mentally now that the amount to be mentally
absorbed and accomplished is so many times greater? Has our capacity
for mental accumulation kept pace with the amount to be accumulated,
and with the necessity for such accumulation as a fitting for human
life of the civilized variety?

Madison Bentley has recently put it nicely in this way. Does talent
grow with knowledge? "May we not suppose that the men and women of
some distant glacial age, who dwe