World-power and evolution / by Ellsworth Huntington.

  • Ellsworth Huntington
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: World-power and evolution / by Ellsworth Huntington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    who live under a highly energizing climate and are also under a single government. Some readers may feel that the importance of environment is exaggerated in this book. That will be largely because they do not attach as much weight as does the author to the qualifying phrases which he has used. A few generations ago the emphasis was all upon the various agencies wdiich combine to furnish train¬ ing. In a broad sense these include the Church, the Home, the School, the State, and other institutions. Recently tremendous emphasis has justly been given to another factor, namely, heredity. We are told that heredity plays nine parts and training one in determining what a man’s character shall be. According to such an extreme view physical environment is scarcely worthy of mention. Yet training, heredity, and physical environment are like food, drink, and air. One or another of these may be placed first according to the individual preferences, and one or another may demand more attention according to circumstances. It is idle, however, to say that one is any more important than the others. All are essential. Until the world learns this vital lesson, it will be necessary that some students should lay special stress upon heredity because its. importance is not as yet so fully recognized as is that of training. Other students must lay still greater stress upon physical environment because its importance is still less appreciated. When the world realizes that the human race must be bred as carefully as race horses, and that even when people inherit perfect constitutions their health must receive as much care as does that of consumptives, it will be time for a book in which training, heredity, and environment receive exactly equal emphasis . Part of the material here used has already been published in the Journal of Race Development and in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, but most is new. In writing this book, many sources have been drawn upon, some of which are acknowledged in the list of references in the Appendix. The author has also drawn
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