The power of environment : nurture versus nature / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The power of environment : nurture versus nature / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tendencies. The pine has become a pine through endless generations of development; the rhubarb has be- come a rhubarb, and the bee has become a bee, through the same slow process of evolution. Each of these organisms, and every other spe- cific organism of all the myriads, has its own con- geries of hereditary factors, and by no conceivable influence can these be suddenly transformed. What has been developed through the slow process of the ages can be modified through a similar slow process of future ages. Yet within each organism, in virtue of the slow development and modification through the past ages, there are stored up multitudes of hereditary factors that are more or less in antagonism, only one or another series of which can be made manifest in a given generation. And the power of environment is ex- ercised in selecting between or among these con- flicting factors. Nurture could not determine that the Monte- rey pine should cease to be a pine, but it could de- termine whether it should be a dwarf or a giant. Nurture could transform a worker into a queen— but not into a drone. The illustrations from the vegetable and ani- mal worlds have been used to make the case tangible. Let us now turn attention to the human [11]
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