erefore is extremely susceptible to
environmental influences. We are all familiar with the differences in
moral standards of different social groups. One boy may become a bully
and another considerate of the rights of others, one learns to steal and
another to be honest, one to lie and another to be truthful, because of
the influence of their environments rather than on account of
differences in their original natures. We are beginning to recognize the
importance of environment in moral training in the provisions made to
protect children from immoral influences, in the opportunities afforded
for the right sort of recreation, and even in the removal of children
from the custody of their parents when the environment is extremely
unfavorable.

Though changes in method and ideals cannot reduce the differences
between individuals in the intellectual field to any marked extent, such
changes can raise the level of achievement of the whole group. For
instance, more emphasis on silent reading may make the reading ability
of a whole school 20 per cent better, while leaving the distance between
the best and worst reader in the school the same. Granting that
heredity, original nature, is the primary cause of individual
differences in intellect (aside from those sex differences mentioned)
there remains for environment, education in all its forms, the
tremendous task of: First, providing conditions favorable for nervous
health and growth; second, providing conditions which stimulate useful
capacities and inhibit futile or harmful capacities; third, providing
conditions which continually raise the absolute achievement of the group
and of the race; fourth, providing conditions that will meet the varying
original equipments; fifth, assuming primary responsibility for
development along moral and social lines.

Concerning those individual differences of which heredity is the
controlling cause, two facts are worthy of note. First, that human
nature is very highly specialized and that inheritance may be in terms
of special abilities or capacities. For instance, artistic, musical, or
linguistic ability, statesmanship, power in the field of poetry, may be
handed down from one generation to the next. This also means that two
brothers may be extremely alike along some lines and extremely different
along others. Second, that there seems to be positive combinations
between certain mental traits, whereby the presence of one insures the
presence