Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/366

360 serviceable. Are those variations which produce new species caused by the environment? Can life be regarded as the resultant of physical forces? Many zoologists and physiologists answer in the affirmative, but it appears rather that life develops not on account of, but in large measure in spite of, physical forces—these tend to the dissipation of energy, they are the causes of death rather than of life. So in like manner it seems that the environment would tend to reduce the great man to its level rather than to lift him above it—Dante wrote in spite of his surroundings, not on account of them. Still the environment counts for much. If the seed of the white pine is dropped among New England rocks it will grow into a small bush, if planted in the rich soil of the south it will become a great tree. We have the 'Divine Comedy' because Dante had 'the steep stairs and bitter bread' in place of Beatrice.

As the environment tends to reduce all things to its level, so heredity tends to maintain the type. Whence then the great man who brings something new into the world? Carlyle had the same heredity and the same initial environment as his brothers. Why should he write of heroes and become one, while they remained peasants? Why, we may ask the theory of organic evolution, should certain individuals of a species possess variations tending to greater complexity, which lay down the lines of evolution? Perhaps all we can say is that the question 'why' is more in place in the nursery than in the laboratory. Why heredity should maintain the type is as obscure as why new types should arise. If the world were a chaos, no questions would be asked, as it is a cosmos it must have a certain definite order. But if when we ask 'why' we really mean 'how,' then we have the plain way of science before us. We can investigate the stability and variability of the type, we can study the effects of the environment on the individual. We know perhaps in a general way that any great war will find the material at hand for the making of a Grant and a Lee, and, on the other hand, that a Shelley may be what he is in spite of heredity and environment. More exact knowledge can only come from an inductive study of facts.

As in organic evolution the effects of variations are less obscure than their causes, so in social evolution we can trace more easily the influence of great men than we can account for their origin. As we ascend the scale of animal life and human development the role of social tradition becomes increasingly potent. A new trait in a single individual among lower animals, even though it may be both useful and stable, can have but an infinitesimal effect in altering the species. In man a new advance made by a single individual becomes quickly the common property of all. Let fire be discovered and we have a trait that endows every one. Let the printing press be invented and each can speak with a thousand tongues. Let Dante see the ideal of