shapen in iniquity," and fit only to be consigned to perdition (on a
dustheap, or elsewhere). But if the same man were to wait till
October and then eat an apple from the same tree, he would form a
wholly different conception of its value. He would find that the
sourness had ripened into wholesome and refreshing acidity; the
hardness into that firmness of fibre which, besides being pleasant to
the palate, makes the apple "keep" better than any other fruit; the
indigestibility into certain valuable dietetic qualities; and so on.
It is the same with the growing child. _Most of his vices are virtues
in the making_. During the first year or so of his life he is a
monster of selfishness; and selfishness is the most comprehensive and
far-reaching of all vicious tendencies. Does this mean that he has
been conceived in sin? Not in the least. It means that he is making a
whole-hearted effort to guard and unfold the potencies of life--in
the first instance, of physical life--which have been entrusted to
him. It means that he has entered the path of self-realisation, and
that if he will be as faithful to that path during the rest of his
life as he has been during those early months of uncompromising
selfishness, he will be able at last to scale the loftiest heights of
self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice.

_Environment._ The influences which environment exerts seem to fall
under three heads--

(1) General influences of a more or less permanent character, such as
home, neighbourhood, social grade, etc.

(2) General influences of a more or less variable character, such as
education, employment, friendship, etc.

(3) Particular influences, such as companionship (good or bad),
literature (wholesome or pernicious), places of amusement (elevating
or debasing), special opportunities for self-sacrifice or
self-indulgence, etc.

Corresponding to these in plant-life we have--

(1) Soil, situation, and climate:
(2) Cultivation and weather:
(3) The various insects and micro-organisms which are ready to
assail or protect growing life.

(1) If two acorns from the same tree were sown, the one in a deep
clay soil and a favourable situation, the other in a light sandy soil
and an unfavourable situation, the former would in time develop into
a large and shapely, the latter into a puny and misshapen oak-tree.
It would be the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with two human beings who
were exposed from their earliest days to widely differ