Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

And since we are but debtors to the dead, but starvelings decked out by charity in the braveries made by other hands, and since we are deserving of no praise for our grandeur and our virtues, how shall we lift up our vainglorious and foolish faces to despise and contemn our less fortunate brothers and sisters, who have been made evil, even as we have been made good, who have been left uncouth and ignorant, even as we have been polished and instructed?

"But for the grace of God," said the tinker of Elstow – but for the graces of environment, say we – there, in the hangman's cart, in the felon's jacket, in the dunce's cap, in the beggar's rags, in the degradation of the drunkard or the misery of the degenerate weed of the slums – go We.

CHAPTER SEVEN – HOW HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT WORK

THERE are many who have some understanding of heredity and of environment when taken separately who fail to realise their effects upon each other.

The common cause of the stumbling is easy to remove.

It is often said that two men are differently affected by the same environment, or what seems to be the same environment, and that therefore there must be some power in men to "overcome" their environment.

I have dealt with this argument already, showing that the contest between a man and his environment is really a contest between heredity and environment, and may be compared to the effort of a man to swim against a stream.

A given environment will affect two different men differently because their heredity is different.

But remembering that we are born without any knowledge, and that we are born not with intellect nor conscience, but only with the rudiments of such, it must be insisted that the hereditary power to resist environment is very limited. So much so that we may amend our figure of the swimmer and the stream, and say that no man, howsoever strong and brave, could swim against a stream unless he had learnt to swim.

And the learning to swim is environment, and works against the contrary environment, typified by the stream.

Let us take the case of two children. One has bad and one good heredity. One is a healthy baby, born of moral stock. The other is a degenerate, born of immoral stock. We will call the healthy baby Dick, and the degenerate baby Harry.

They are taken at birth into an environment of theft, drunkenness, and vice. They are taught to lie, to steal, and to drink. They never hear any good, never see a good example.

Harry, the degenerate, will take to evil as a duck to water. Of that, I think, there is no question. But what of Dick, the healthy baby?

Dick is born without knowledge. He is also born with undeveloped propensities. He will learn evil. His propensities will be trained to evil. How is he to "overcome his environment and become good"? He cannot. What will happen in Dick's case is that he will become a different kind of criminal – a stronger and cleverer criminal than Harry.

But, I hear some one say, "we know that children, born of thieves and sots, and reared in bad surroundings, have turned out honest and sober men." And the inference is that they rose superior to their environment.

But that inference is erroneous. The fact is that these children were saved by some good environment, acting against the bad.

For there is hardly such a thing as an environment that is all bad. In the case of Dick and Harry we supposed an environment containing no good. But that was for the sake of illustration.

For the environment to be all bad, the child must be prevented from ever seeing a good deed, or reading a good book, or meeting a good man, woman, or child.

Now, we can imagine no town, nor slum, in which a child should never hear nor see anything good. He is almost certain at some time or other to encounter good influences.

And these good influences will affect a healthy child more strongly than they will affect a degenerate, just as the evil influences will affect him less fatally than they will affect a degenerate. Because the poor degenerate is born with a bias towards disease or crime.

Two children may be born of the same parents, reared in the same hovel, in the same slum, taught the same evil lesson. But they will meet different companions, and will have different experiences.

One may meet a good boy, or girl, or man, or woman, and may be influenced for good. The other may chance upon the very worst company.

Let us suppose that two children are born in a Hoxton slum, and that one of them falls under the influence of a Fagin, and the other has the good fortune to meet such a manly and sensible parson as our friend Cartmel! Would not the effects be very different? Yet at first sight the environment of the two boys would seem to be precisely alike.

And we shall always find that the man who rises above his environment has really been helped by good environment to overcome the bad environment He has learnt some good. And that learning is part of his environment He must have been taught some good if he knows any, for he was born destitute of knowledge.

A good mother, a wise friend, a pure girl, an honest teacher, a noble book, may save a child from the bad part of his environment.

It would appear at first sight that two boys taught in the same school, by the same teacher, would have the same school environment. But at a second thought we find that need not be the case.

We know what one bad boy can do in a class or in a room. We may know, then, that the boys who share a class or a room with a bad boy have a worse environment than the boys who escape his evil influences.

It is a mistake to think of heredity as all good, or all bad. It is mixed. We inherit, all of us, good and bad qualities.

It is a mistake to think of environment as all good or all bad. It is mixed. There are always good and bad influences around every one of us.

It is a mistake to think that any two men ever did or can have exactly the same environment.

It is as impossible for the environment of any two men to be identical, as for their heredity to be identical. As there are no two men exactly alike, so there are no two men whose experiences are exactly alike.

Good and bad environment work against each other. All kinds of environment work with or against heredity. Different heredities make different natures; different natures are differently affected by similar environments. But the child, being born without knowledge and with rudimentary faculties, is, whatever his heredity, almost wholly at the mercy of his environment.

I hope I have made that clear.

One man is afflicted with colour-blindness, another with kleptomania. The kleptomaniac may be the most troublesome to the community; but is he more wicked than the others?

Why does an apple tree never bear bananas? Because it cannot

Why does a French peasant never speak English? Because he has never been taught.

Why is an English labourer deficient in the manners of polite society? Because he has never moved in polite society.

Why does not Jones the engineer write poetry? Why does not Smith of the Stock Exchange paint pictures? Why does not Robinson the musical composer invent a flying machine?

Because they have not the gifts nor the skill.

Why does Jarman play the violin so evilly? He has no ear, and has been badly taught. Why does Dulcett play the violin so well? He has a good ear, and has been taught properly.

Would proper teaching have made a Jarman a proper player? It would have made him a less villainous player than he has become. But teach him never so wisely, Jarman will not play as Dulcett plays. He has not the gift.

Is it Jarman's fault that he has no gift? It is not. He did not make his own ear. Whence did he derive that defect of ear? From some ancestor, near or remote.

Is Dulcett's fine musical ear due to any merit of Dulcett's? No. He did not make his own ear; he derived it from some ancestor, near or remote.

Here are four brothers Brown. John Brown is a drunkard. Thomas, William, and Stephen Brown do not drink. Does John deserve censure, and do his brothers deserve praise? Let us see.

Why is John a drunkard? His grandfather was a drunkard, and he was sent as a boy to work in a shop where the men drank. Then how is it his brothers do not drink? Thomas had the same hereditary inclination to drink, and he derived it from the same source. But he worked in an office where all the clerks were steady, and when on one or two occasions he indulged in liquor, a wise friend warned him, and with a hard struggle he escaped from the danger.

William, although the same blood runs in his veins, has escaped the hereditary taint To use the colloquial parlance, "he does not take after his grandfather." He never felt inclined to take liquor, and although he worked with men who drank, he remained steady without an effort.

Stephen also was free from the hereditary taint. He mixed with men who drank, and he gradually formed the habit, which gradually formed the taste for drink. But he married a good woman just in time, and she saved him. Thus:

John is a drunkard from heredity and environment

Thomas was a drunkard from heredity, and was saved by environment.

William was always steady from heredity and environment.