Human improvability / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
[1932?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Human improvability / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    born in the latter’s civilization. For there can be no doubt that both animals and plants may quickly alter when removed to a new environment, and that there is a wider range of possibilities than has been hitherto generally supposed in the development of what is inherited by the organism, the precise nature of that development being determined by the nature of the environment to which it is subjected. Changes in food, soil, temperature, humidity and the like affect the final result of an organism’s physical development. May we not suppose also that man’s mental and moral development depends not so much, or at all events not merely, upon what is inherited, as upon the relation between that inheritance and the physical and social environment in which the individual grows up ? How often do we ascribe the moral defects and delinquency of a young person to the fact that he never had a fair chance of living decently ! May we not entertain the view that man’s improvement is largely due merely to a certain innate improvability, the precise expression of which in turn depends on the environment in which he grows up ? During a subsequent visit to South and East Africa I had the opportunity of several talks with Europeans whose lives had been largely spent in teaching the coloured races there. With surprising unanimity their opinion was that, given equal opportunities, their coloured pupils promised to equal the achievements of any white population. They were vigorous in their denial that there was one education needed for the negro, another for the European. For them negro and European possessed equal mental capacity and equal powers
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