that is ours--we are
children of God, and there is nothing in the whole big world that we
cannot do in His service with it."

It is probably not beyond the truth to say that in this statement Jacob
Riis voiced the opinion of a majority of the social workers of this
country, and likewise a majority of the people who are faithfully and
with much self-sacrifice supporting charities, uplift movements, reform
legislation, and philanthropic attempts at social betterment in many
directions. They suppose that they are at the same time making the race
better by making the conditions better in which people live.

It is widely supposed that, although nature may have distributed some
handicaps at birth, they can be removed if the body is properly warmed
and fed and the mind properly exercised. It is further widely supposed
that this improvement in the condition of the individual will result in
his production of better infants, and that thus the race, gaining a
little momentum in each generation, will gradually move on toward
ultimate perfection.

There is no lack of efforts to improve the race, by this method of
direct change of the environment. It involves two assumptions, which are
sometimes made explicitly, sometimes merely taken for granted. These
are:

1. That changes in a man's surroundings, or, to use the more technical
biological term, in his nurture, will change the nature that he has
inherited.

2. That such changes will further be transmitted to his children.

Any one who proposes methods of race betterment, as we do in the present
book, must meet these two popular beliefs. We shall therefore examine
the first of them in this chapter, and the second in Chapter II.

Galton adopted and popularized Shakespere's antithesis of _nature_ and
_nurture_ to describe a man's inheritance and his surroundings, the two
terms including everything that can pertain to a human being. The words
are not wholly suitable, particularly since nature has two distinct
meanings,--human nature and external nature. The first is the only one
considered by Galton. Further, nurture is capable of subdivision into
those environmental influences which do not undergo much change,--e.g.,
soil and climate,--and those forces of civilization and education which
might better be described as culture. The evolutionist has really to
deal with the three factors of germ-plasm, physical surroundings and
culture. But Galton's phrase is so widely current that