isa-normaladvance-1903-00004

Description:	THE NOKMAL ADVANCE.father. Doubtless I have received from them mvnatural antipathv to medicine.That the passion known as alcoholism is veryfrequently transmitted, if not in the form of apassion for drink itself, yet in its degenerates ofmania, idiocy and hallucination, will hardly be denied. All the appetites and passions of mans nature, whether held under reasonable subjection andcontrol, or allowed to run riot in the life in unbridled intensity, tend to reappear in some formor degree in ones descendants. It is estimatedthat between seventy and seventy-five per cent, ofall the children of imbeciles, idiots and insane persons show at least serious mental defects.If there is any one faculty or power which,above all others, distinguishes man as man, marking this or that as a positive, strong individuality,it is the possession of that active executive capacity known as will. That the principle of heredityhas large sway in this realm seems to admit oflittle doubt. Every one will recall families ofstatesmen, soldiers, and others eminent in executive action in support of this contention, and theyare so numerous and striking as to disprove allidea of mere coincidence. The Adamses in ourown history, the Caesars, Fox and Pitt of England,the Medici family of Italy, the Walpole family andthe families of Alexander the Great, Charlemagneand scores of others distinguished in the worldshistory might be cited in support of this claim.Maurice of Nassau was a great military captain his father was William of Orange, known as theSilent Maurice, elector of Saxony, was his grandfather Frederick William was his brother William III, king of England, was his great nephew,and Turenne, one of the greatest French generalsprior to Napoleon, was his nephew. It is impossible to reject the belief that heredity played an important part in the lives of these and other distinguished families.If time permitted, it would be easy to show thatnational characteristics and traits throughout thehistory of the world are likewise attributable insome degree to the principle of heredity but, taken in connection with the simple observation ofevery .thoughtful person, enough has been said toestablish the main contention, namely, that everyindividual life and character is moulded, fashioned, determined in part by the great law andprinciple of hereditary influences.The second important factor of individuality inall its forms and qualities we may term environment. And by this we mean the sum of natural,physical, social, institutional and spiritual conditions under which the individual lives from birthto death. The whole world of humanity and ofinstitutional life lies about him and conditions hisvery existence. These conditions hover over andabout him during every waking and sleeping moment of his existence, and they help to determinehis entire physical, social, institutional and spiritual life. Consider for a moment the life of theindividual and the race as affected by the simplefact of the change of seasons. Food supply, clothing and shelter, occupations and nearly all thequestions relating to mans physical life are ingreat degree dependent upon and determined bythis elementary fact of his physical environment.The daily revolution of the earth upon its axis,causing the endless succession of day and night,the character of the soil upon which we tread, ourfood and drink, the air we breathe, the sky overour heads, sunshine and shower, bud, blossom andfruit, the heat of summer and the frosts of winter, the splendor of the noonday sun, the silentnight, the natural products of the earth uponwhich we live—all these and every natural phenomenon, and force, and law leave their impressupon the physical, and, through this, upon themental and spiritual constitution of man. Whatis true of tribes, races and nations with referenceto the infl uence of these external conditions is trueon a smaller scale of the individual. So importantand far-reaching has this influence come to be regarded, that numerous books have been written bylearned, scholarly men, such as Helmholts Universal History and Buckles History of Civilization, which are devoted to> explaining the historyof the world as the outcome of the physical environment in which the different races and nations have been placed. Doubtless these writersare carried away to a degree by the realization ofthe large place which this factor lias in the development of human civilization, but that the history of mankind has been in large degree determined by physical, conditions would seem to ad-
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/33729
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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