Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

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.

Stephen was steady from heredity, almost became a drunkard from environment, and was finally saved by new environment.

John owed his ruin to his grandfather and his shopmates.

Thomas owed his safety to his shopmates, who rescued him from the taint of his grandfather's evil legacy.

William owed his safety to his blood.

Stephen, after being endangered by his companions, was saved by his wife.

Assuming all other conditions to be equal, and all other traits of character similar, how are we to blame one or praise another of these four brothers? Each is what descent and surroundings have made him.

An apple tree cannot bear bananas. A rose tree cannot bear lilies. A rose tree in good soil bears well; a rose tree in bad soil bears poorly. In times of drought the crops perish for lack of water. In rainy weather the hay rots instead of drying.

Let us now consider some of the arguments actually used in denying the power of environment.

Some little time ago the Rev. R. J. Campbell, of the London City Temple, preached a sermon on environment. From a report of that sermon I take the following passage:

His argument was that it was all nonsense to say that environment made the man. The man who had any manhood in him could rise above and beyond his environment, just as Bunyan soared above his tin kettles.

This is an example of the confusion of mind into which educated men fall when they deal with this simple subject.

Mr. Campbell's first mistake is the mistake of separating heredity from environment. Of course, it is nonsense to say that environment makes the man. But who did say anything so silly?

Heredity "makes the man," and environment modifies him. Having made that clear, let us consider Mr. Campbell's second sentence:

The man who had any manhood in him could rise above and beyond his environment, just as Bunyan soared above his tin kettles.

Mr. Campbell says: "The man who has any manhood in him." But suppose he has not any manhood in him! Suppose he is a poor human weed born of weeds. Can he bear wheat or roses? And if he only bears prickles or poison, who is to blame? Not the man, surely, for he did not choose his parents nor his nature. Shall we blame a mongrel born of curs of low degree' because he is not a bulldog?

A man can only realise the nature that he has, and can only realise that in accordance with environment.

But this same sentence shows that Mr. Campbell does not understand what we mean when we use the word "environment".

For he tells us that a man can rise above and beyond his environment.

Now, a man's environment is composed of every external influence which affects him in any way, from the moment of his birth to the moment of his death.

Therefore a man cannot rise above and beyond his environment until he ceases to exist.

Mr. Campbell cites John Bunyan as a man who "rose above his environment." The fact being that Bunyan's good environment saved him from his bad environment.

From the preface to my edition of The Pilgrim's Progress I quote the following suggestive words:

How was it, one naturally asks, that a man of little education could produce two centuries ago a masterpiece which is still read wherever the English language is spoken, and has been translated into every European tongue? It is not sufficient to answer that the author of the work was a genius: it is necessary to show what the conditions were which enabled his genius to develop itself, led him to find the form of expression which best suited its character, and secured for what if produced immediate popularity and lasting fame.

Bunyan was a poor boy of very little education. But he was born with a great imagination, a sensitive nature, and keen powers of assimilation. He was, in short, a born literary genius.

In his youth he got amongst bad companions, and led a lewd and wicked sort of life.

How, then, came he to reform his life, and to write his wonderful book? To listen to Mr. Campbell, one would suppose that the tinker's boy rose against his environment, and without any help for good from that environment. But did he?

We find he served for some years in Cromwell's army. Would the fierce religious atmosphere of Cromwellian camps have no effect upon his sensitive and imaginative nature?

We find that he and his wife read together two religious books: The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and Bishop Bayley's Practice of Piety. Would such books, so read, make no impression upon his impressionable mind?

We find that he was drawn to go to church. That he was "over-run with the spirit of superstition." Would that affect him naught?

We find that his neighbours at last took him "to a very godly man, a new and religious man, and did much marvel to see such a great and famous alteration in my life and manners."

Beyond this we need not go. The religious soldiers of Cromwell, the pious books and the pious wife, the spirit of superstition, and the godly man, were all parts of John Bunyan's environment, and, acting upon the peculiar nature given to him by heredity, these and other facts of his environment lifted him up, made him what we know, and enabled him to write his glorious book. Instead of a man who rose above his environment we have in Bunyan a man who was led by one kind of environment to gamble and drink and blaspheme, and by another kind of environment was made into a fanatical religious enthusiast.

John Bunyan was John Bunyan when he played tipcat, and used profane language on the Sabbath. Up to that time the "manhood that was in him" had not saved John Bunyan.

If, as Mr. Campbell suggests, it is the inherent manhood that saves a man, how was it that Bunyan's manhood, up to a certain point in his life, failed to raise him above his environment.

And, when the change came, what was it that brought that change about? Bunyan had only the same manhood: the same manhood which had already been defeated by the environment. How was it that same manhood now served to raise him above the environment?

John Bunyan was the same John Bunyan; it was the environment that changed. It was the pious Ironsides, the pious wife, the godly man, the atmosphere of superstition, that made John Bunyan the profane tinker into John Bunyan the man of religion.

Bad environment got John Bunyan down: there is no doubt of that. Good environment lifted him up. The manhood was the same at both periods. It was the environment that changed.

If ever there was an example of the power of environment to save or sink a man, that example is John Bunyan, tinker and poet.

Another instance of misunderstanding is afforded by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, who, in an article in the Daily News, argues against the power of heredity and environment, as follows:

The well-bred man – literally speaking, that is the man with a heredity and environment much above the normal – can put forth all the cardinal sins like scarlet flowers in summer. He has lands that meet the horizon, but he steals like a starving man. He has had armies of comrades in great colleges, yet he snarls like a hunchback hissed in the street He has treasuries of gold that he cannot remember; yet he goads poor men for their rent like a threadbare landlady in the Harrow Road. He is only meant to be polite in public, and he cannot even be that. The whole system of his country and constitution only asks one thing of him, that he should not be an unpresentable beast – and he often is. That is a type of aristocrat that does from time to time recur to remind us of what is the real answer to the argument for aristocracy founded on heredity and environment. The real answer to it is in two words – Original Sin.

Had Mr. Chesterton understood the subject upon which he wrote the above picturesque but fallacious paragraph, he never would have sent it to the Press. But he is always falling into blunders about heredity and environment because he has never learnt what heredity and environment are.

He seems to think that the West End means good environment, and that the East End means bad environment. He seems to think that noble blood means good heredity, and that simple blood means bad heredity.

And he calls atavism "original sin."

Let us now consider the rather melodramatic nobleman Mr. Chesterton has portrayed for us.

He does not tell us much about the nobleman's environment. He has lands and wealth, and has been to college.

Does it tend to the moral elevation of a man to be like the "Chough" in Shakespeare, "spacious in the possession of dirt"? Are the wise men of all ages agreed that the possession of great wealth is a good environment? Or do they not rather teach that luxury and wealth are dangerous to their possessor?

In so far as this noble was a very wealthy man, I should say that his environment was not good, but bad.

There remains the college. Now, men may learn good at colleges, and they may learn bad. Is not that so? But let us give Mr. Chesterton the credit and score the college down as good environment.

There remains unaccounted for – what? All the life and experiences of a rich young man.

What were his parents like? Did his mother nurse him, or neglect him? Did his father watch over him, or let him run wild? Were his companions all men and women of virtue and good sense? Did he read no bad books? Did he make no dangerous friendships? Did he ever do any work? Was he ever taught that there art nobler ways of life than shooting dumb animals, seducing vain or helpless girls, debauching at bachelors' parties, playing at bridge, reading French novels, and running loose in the gilded hells of Europe and America?

Because, until we have these and a few thousand other questions answered, we cannot accept Mr. Chesterton's assurance that this wicked nobleman had a good environment.

Then, as to that question of "original sin." Is Mr. Chesterton in a position to inform us that his bold bad peer is not a degenerate? Is Mr. Chesterton sure that he has not inherited a degenerate nature from diseased or vicious ancestors?

No insanity in the family? No gout? No consumption? No drunkenness? No diseases contracted through immorality or vice? All his family for a hundred generations back certified as having united "the manners of a marquis and the morals of a Methodist"?

Quite sure the noble was not a degenerate? Quite sure that his failure was not due to bad environment instead of to bad heredity?

Then I should advise Mr. Chesterton to study Darwin, Galton, Lombroso, Weissmann, and Dr. Lydston, and he will find that a man of good descent may cast back, or "breed back," to the ape or hog, may be born an atavist; and may be incapable of being a gentleman for the simple reason that he is a wild beast.

In which connection I may remark that in The Diseases of Society Dr. Lydston mentions that Benedikt's experiments upon criminal skulls showed that the skull of "the born criminal" (atavist) "approximates that of the carnivora." That is to say, a man may be cursed with a skull resembling that of a tiger.

Is it any wonder that such men, to repeat Mr. Chesterton's poetical simile, "put forth sins like scarlet flowers in summer"?

I am grateful to Mr. Campbell and to Mr. Chesterton for their arguments: they serve the useful purpose of exemplifying the confusion of thought upon this subject which exists in quarters where we should least expect to find it.

As it is of the utmost importance that we should thoroughly understand the relations to each other of heredity and environment, this being a subject upon which there is much stumbling, we shall do well to make quite sure of our ground before we go a step farther.

It is erroneous to speak of "a struggle between a man and his environment," or of a man "rising above his environment".

What we call "a man" is a product of heredity and environment.

The "man" is largely what environment has already made him.

At the instant of birth a child may be regarded as wholly a product of heredity. But his first breath is environment. The first touch of the nurse's hands is environment. The first washing, the swaddling clothes, the "binder," and the first drop of mother's milk are parts of his environment.

And from the first moment of his birth until the time of his manhood, he is being continually moulded and affected by environment.

All his knowledge, all his beliefs, all his opinions are given to him by environment.

And now, with this in our mind, we can see the absurdity of Mr. Campbell's talk about John Bunyan.

Before his conversion Bunyan was already "a creature of heredity and environment." The very conscience of the man, which his wife, and the godly man, and Cromwell's soldiers, and the preachings in the church he frequented, were to awaken, had been created by environment.

For a child is born without conscience: with only the rudiments of a conscience, to be developed or destroyed – by environment.

Now let us reconsider the example of our swimmer and the stream. The swimmer is something more than a mere "heredity." He is a man, and he has learnt to swim. Therefore in his battle with the stream of environment he is using heredity and environment For environment taught him to swim.

Let us take another simile. A man is rowing a boat across a bay. The tide, the currents, and the wind may be regarded as environments. All these environments may be with him, or against him. Or the tide may be against him, and the wind in his favour, and the currents dangerous if not avoided.

But "the man" is largely what environments have made him. His knowledge of rowing came from environment, his knowledge of the bay is environment, his knowledge of the run and position of the dangerous currents is environment, the boat and the oars belong to his environment.

And with all the useful and favourable environments, plus his hereditary qualities, he fights the adverse environments of the wind, and the tide, and the currents.

Now, let us suppose the sea to be rough, and the tide and wind strong, and against the oarsman. And then let us imagine the cases of two men, one of whom was an expert sailor, in a good boat, well found, and one a landsman, who could not row, who did not know the bay, who did not understand wind and tide, who was ignorant of the currents, who had bad oars and a leaky boat.

It is evident that the sailor would have a chance of getting safely across the bay, and that the landsman would be in grave peril of being capsized, or carried out to sea.

And the difference between the sailor and the landsman would be entirely a difference of environment.

But suppose, farther, that the sailor was of healthy descent, that he was, by heredity, strong, and brave, and intelligent; and suppose that the landsman was a degenerate: weak, nervous, fainthearted, and stupid; then the difference would be one of heredity and environment.

And if the landsman were drowned and the sailor came safely to shore, should we curse and revile the one, and applaud and reward the other. Or should we take the sailor's success as a matter of course, and give our pity to the landsman?

Well: in such a crazy boat, with such useless oars, with such a faint heart, a lack of knowledge and skill, and such a feeble mind, does the "Bottom Dog" put out, to wrestle with the winds and storms, and escape the dangerous currents of life.

And how can we expect the badly bred, badly trained, badly taught degenerate to succeed like the well-bred, well-trained, and well-taught hero?

What Mr. Campbell calls John Bunyan's "manhood" – the manhood that "raised him above his environment" – was largely composed of environment.

There never yet has been a hero whose heroism was not in a great measure due to his environment. Let any one who doubts this look back to our suggestions of the fate of a child born into evil environments.

Every man is largely what environment has made him. No man can be independent of environment: but for environment he could never live to be a man at all.

And now let us consider some of the good and evil things environment may do.