Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/132

128 only 10 additions per minute. As a result of this partial equalization of opportunity, the superior individuals were farther ahead than ever! If equality of opportunity has no equalizing effect in so easily alterable a trait as rapidity in addition, surely it can have little power in such

 Chart 4. The Relation of the Gains from Equal Amounts of Practise in the Case of Individuals of High and Low Initial Ability.

traits as energy, stability, general intellectual power, courage or kindliness.

Men differ by original nature. With equal nurture of an inferior sort they progress unequally to low stations; with equal nurture of a superior sort they progress unequally to high stations. Their absolute achievements, the amounts of progress which they make from zero up, are due largely to the environment which excites and directs their original capacities. Their relative achievements—the amounts of progress which they make, one in comparison with another—are due largely to their variations one from another in original capacities.

The man's original nature, too, has large selective power over his environment. The thousand babies will in large measure each create his own environment by cherishing this feature and neglecting that, amongst those which the circumstances of life offer. As Dr. Woods has well argued, the power of the environment to raise or lower a man is very great only when the environment is unavoidable. We must remember that one of these babies, if of mean and brutal nature, can by enough pains avoid industry, justice and honor, no matter how carefully he is brought up; and that one of them of intellectual gifts can, if he cares enough, seek out and possess adequate stimuli to achievement in art, science, or letters, no matter how poor and sordid his home may be.

If, a hundred years ago, every boy in England could have had as