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INCENTIVES FROM LOCAL

ENVIRONMENT

XIII

INCENTIVES FROM LOCAL

ENVIRONMENT

OCIAL scientists debate the relative im

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portance of individuality and environ

ment in the making of character. The tendency is to overweight the latter, as if a man were the creature of circumstances, as the pearl is of the oyster. Weakness and vileness are apologized for because of unfortunate conditions of birth and education. Popular romances often robe moral filth in fair excuses, and thus pander for pence to the reader's lower nature under pretense of teaching the new psychology. The brilliancy of the writers of such literature is like moonlight glistening upon the surface of a cesspool.

We may give due prominence to environment without depreciating the counter fact that individuality is the stronger force. The kind. of vegetation depends more upon the seed than upon the soil. Men cannot "gather figs of thistles," even in the fourteen feet of rich Cuban alluvial, nor will a monastery make saintship out of inherent villainy, as history abundantly illustrates. On the other hand, no

aridness will convert a vine into a thorn bush, nor will slumdom turn conscientiousness and native honor into rascality and shame.

But while it is true that environment affects chiefly quality and abundance in the growth of character, yet we must recognize the immense possibilities within this limitation. The soil and climate must be considered.

This topic is raised from the plane of theorizing into intense practicality by the fact that most men can create or largely modify their own circumstances. However it may be in cases of extreme heathenism, in such a civilization as ours, where good men and bad have equal access to circles of business, free admission to public schools, libraries, and churches, one may be said to choose one's moral soil and climate. Whatever his original place, he can migrate if he has sufficient enterprise, or if he stay he can by resolute purpose create better conditions, as by irrigation the "desert blossoms like the rose," while the untilled meadow land runs to hardhack. Many of our best men and women have fertilized their moral field by burning off the wild growth of adverse circumstances in fiery fight with temptations, while many of our worst people have through neglect allowed the most sacred associations to be overgrown with that which "strangles the harvest."

The power of association will be seen if we note the influence that places may come to exert upon character. There are no dryads that live in oaks, nor sylphs that breed in air, nor elfs whose highways are the moonbeams shining in dells; but there are far subtler agencies for good and ill which abide in localities. We ourselves people familiar spots with genii. The thought and feeling we have indulged in these places seem to have saturated external objects with their essence, and to greet us with their effluvia, depressing or inspiring, whenever we return to them.

We may study this subject under the law of "association of ideas."

A noted scholar used to speak of his "chair of divination "-his old study chair-into which he had but to drop in order to feel an impulse to strong thinking, as if his brain were a loom and the chair were charged with a sort of electric power which drove the operation. A genial writer tells of the scratches and ink-blotches on his study table as the footprints of his muses, and how an elegant table-cover which his wife had spread over it one Christmas proved to be a pall beneath which his inspirations all lay dead. A familiar scene from the window revives the memory of old ideas and impressions, the mind having left on hill and stream and among the tree-tops visual re

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