Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/40

36 anything, but when depressed a sense of helplessness overpowers him. Again, one person is original and independent while another is always imitative. Here is a famous lecturer who has quelled mobs with his eloquence but who is prevailingly diffident; while there is a woman who has lived always in the backwoods and is as forward as a Canada Jay. Sincerity or insincerity, generosity or stinginess, gregariousness or seclusiveness, truthfulness or untruthfulness, are all qualities whose presence or absence is determined largely by the factor of heredity. The way a person reacts to a given stimulation is, thus, determined by the germinal determinants that have fallen to his lot and the training and experience that have favored or repressed the complete development and fruition of such determiners. The self-control which he realizes he is exercising at any moment is a part of his involuntary reaction. And the individual can no more alter his reaction than he can pull himself up by his boot-straps.

How opposed is the conclusion, to which we seem logically forced, to the theory of organized society as carried out in its laws and in its treatment of persons. Here are two men, one whose reactions are all social; the other whose reactions are prevailingly antisocial. The first we praise, we heap with honors, we supply with the good things of life. The other we condemn, we hold him culpable, we confine him to a cell seven feet by four with little air and less daylight, and we feed him with the poorest food. We are rewarding the one and "punishing" the other. Yet each has turned out the necessary product of his own organism under the conditions in which it has developed. Neither exercised any selection of the elementary constitution of his organism, which was decided at the time the two germ cells united; neither had any control over the conditions of early development of the determiners, over his early education and the development of the germs, if any, of inhibitions. If the reactions of the organism are socially "good," fortunate that person; if he "elects" to study hard and prolong his education he does so because of a liking or ambition for which he is in no way responsible. Society does well to care for the good organism, to preserve it from overwork, from accident, from corroding influences. If, on the other hand, the reactions of the organism are socially "bad," unfortunate that person; if he "selects" bad companions and runs away from school, his reaction is in such case a necessary consequence of his make up. Society does well to restrict the product of the bad organism, protect society from it, or, if it seems best, to send it to the scrap heap. No doubt there are persons who are trainable, but have not had their inhibitions cultivated. It is sometimes possible to develop these dormant germs even relatively late in life. The infliction of pain is occasionally of educative value even in youth at the age of puberty. In other words punishment for crime may have, in some cases, a