We have now reviewed in some detail the principal results of recent psychological research and observation, so far as these bear directly on man’s mental and moral growth. Varied as is the mass of information thus brought together, we have found it pointing uniformly to one conclusion—the transcendent significance of the environmental influences of early life.

Again and again we have found confirmation of the view that what a man is and does depends, as a rule, not so much on the gifts or defects of his heredity as on the excellences or shortcomings of his childhood’s training and surroundings. If these are favourable, even the dead hand of a bad inheritance may be arrested, and he may develop surprising strength of intellect and character; if unfavourable, mental284 and moral inferiority may be looked for, no matter how good the heredity.

This, of course, emphasises the responsibilities of parenthood, chief among which, as would appear from the facts surveyed, are the beginning of formal education in the home, the providing of a carefully planned material environment, and the setting of a really good example. There can be no doubt, to return for a moment to the superlatively instructive case of Karl Witte, that by all odds the greatest force in the moral development of that splendid scholar and gentleman, was the unceasing inspiration he unconsciously drew from the lives of his father and mother—from their integrity, unselfishness, patience, sincerity, and courage. Parents cannot too soon learn that, to quote a cardinal clause in the elder Witte’s educational creed:

“Our children are what we are. They are good when we are good, and bad when we are bad. I would extend this assertion. With full conviction I would say, they become clever, magnanimous, modest, witty,285 agreeable, amiable, if these are our qualities. They become the opposite if we precede them with the opposite.”

Or, as Doctor Dubois has so admirably put it in one of his University of Berne addresses on moral education:

“You, madam, who complain of the irritability of your little girl, could you not suppress your own, which I have seen break out, in a few words exchanged with your dear husband, immediately afterward? You, sir, who bitterly reproach your son for his impulsiveness and instability of temper, have you not these faults yourself?... Remember the proverb, ‘The fruit does not fall far from the tree.’” (“Reason and Sentiment,” pp. 53–54.)

Personally, also, I am of Witte’s belief that intellectual training along the lines followed by him in his son’s upbringing is of itself an important adjunct to moral growth. Certainly, by developing the powers of observation, analysis, and inference, it makes it easier for the child to appreciate the force of any286 arguments advanced by the parent in the way of direct moral instruction. Besides this, by keeping the child’s mind occupied with wholesome and profitable matters, it saves him from the idleness and waste of energy which, in childhood as much as in adult life, favour the formation of bad habits. And assuredly the methods by which his mental education may best be carried on in the first years of existence are such that they may be readily applied by all parents.

It is by no means a difficult thing to begin, as Witte did, by naming to the little one various small objects in and about the home. These should be named over and over to him, slowly, clearly, impressively; and the attempt should next be made to convey to him a notion of their properties, by teaching him, for example, to detect differences in colour and in such............