THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3593, 23 January 1923, Page 59

THE SKETCHER.

CIVILISED NATIONS NOT HAVING THEIR GENERATIONS WELL BORN. Mr Yernon Kellogg, at one time Professor of Biology at Iceland Stanford University, U.S.A., has a remarkable article in the Atlantic Monthly on “'The New Heredity,” from which the following quotation is taken: ‘‘Over the surface of the cerebral hemispheres of the human brain there is spread a thin superficial layer of nerve cells, blood vessels, and supporting tissue called the cerebral cortex. It varies from one and a-half to five millimetres in thickness, and the total number of nerve or brain cells in it is about nine millions. But, taken altogether, these nerve cells weigh only about 13 grammes, and make onlv about a cubic inch of matter. “Yet, in a just-bom child, this thin layer of grey brain-matter, this trivially small part of the whole body is the clean surface on which is to be painted, slowlv, in enduring pigments, the influencing picture of Nature and human life which the new individual is to carry till death. This Sicture will largely determine its beaviour as child, adolescent, and adult. ‘To the formation of this picture all the sense organs will contribute ; also, all the inferences based on the observations made by the senses. The whole social heritage of the human race will add to the making of this picture, in a degree determined by narents, plavmates, teachers, and books. “The substance of this surface on which the picture is painted, and hence an important element in determining the character of the picture itself, is the physical basis of intelligence and memory : this substance, and the picture painted on and into it, is the very seat of human personality. The blood and lymph and the hormones (gland secretions) "will affect this substance; every reaction of the rest of the body will be registered on it. Up to the inherent (inherited) limits of its possibilities, it will be influenced by any and all _ of the elements of the environment which may, by chance or deliberate determination, be brought to bear on the individual from beginning to end of his life.” He seeks to shatter the hopelessness of a barren doctrine of heredity bv showing how much can he done by nurture. He ha« to admit that it is “a matter of determined fact that most civilised nations are not having their succeeding generations well born.” But he says:—■ —Robbing Millions of Hope.— “Portunat-ely, our fate as regards both personal and social achievement and happiness is not all determined by heredity. I say fortunately, for despite* the good fortune of the individual who finds himself naturally endowed with a sound body and unusual mental capacity and despite the good fortune of a race or nation or any social group which inc’udes in its Tanks a large number of such naturally endowed individuals, it would be a calamity beyond reckoning if heredity were to be the sole arbiter of our fate. “Such a condition would rob millions of hope. It would, too, absolve all of us of personal responsibility for our own outcome and that of the race. Or it would at least restrict this ■Personal responsibility to the simple brutal one of preventing any individuals except those of a certain standard of physical and mental fitness from participating in racial increase. —Nurture as well as Nature.— “But heredity, despite all the claims for it made by the convinced hereditarians, is by no means the only factor, although it is a very important one, in the determination of human achievement, and hence happiness. There is nurture as well as nature to be taken into account : that is. environment and education as well as inheritance. But it does behoove any nation ambitious for national achievement and solicitous for the individual health and happiness of its people to pay serious attention to all possibilities of having its succeeding generations wellborn. “As a matter of determined fact, most civilised nations are not now having their succeeding generations well-born. The birth rate of these nations is a selective birth rate, and it is not one based on good selection. Karl Pearson pointed out some years ago that one-fourth of England's population was nroducing each year one-half of the new births, and that this ultraoroliflc, fourth was exactly that part of the total population least well-endowed by heredity and social heritage. —Environment has a Large Influence.— “How much can we do in determining the fate of our children bv submitting them to carefully-chosen environment and education? How much influence does inevitable variation in environment have in determining the final fate of our children? The answers are, I firmly believe, and with all appreciation of the significance of our modem knowledge of heredity, that environment has a large influence in determining the outcome of any given person, and that we can do much to help determine the fate of our children by controlling their environment in the motherbody, in the cradle, in the school and playground, and, indeed, through all their life. “There need he no doubt about this, despite all our new understanding of the great role that heredity plays in human fate. In fact, this very new understanding assures us of the great role that environment- and education also play in human and animal and plant fate. There is. indeed, no heredity or, better, no result of heredity without environment. The fertilised egg cell, with its inheritance determiners, can come to nothing without a certain necessary environment for itself and for the embryo and the adolescent into which it is to develop. There can

be heredity only when there can be environment and specific environment at that. The two are inseparable: they inevitably co-operate. One without the other is nothing. “Fortunately we can, in some measure, control and determine this environment. Therefore it is for us to find out what results any given environmental conditions produce, and then to eliminate as far as possible the bad conditions and seek earnestly to establish the good ones. Personal and social effort can do much for the unborn embryo, and more for the babes and adolescent. —Forward and Backward Pupils.— “Perhaps the principal fault with our present system of education is that it takes too little into account these inherited differences in individual capacity : it is too blind to tile fixed levels of mental capacity which characterise the various groups in school and college classes. And hence it is wasteful and inefficient in its attempts to offer the needed environmental (educational) conditions necessary to the fullest development of our youth. When the use of mental tests among school children had revealed c’early that some children were inherently less intelligent than others—this had, of course, been revealed before, even if lees exactly, by simple observation—it was realised that it would be advantageous to establish ‘backward’ classes ; and this was gradually done in most schools. But now we know' that it is no less advantageous to provide special opportunities for ‘forward’ pupils—to establish ‘forward’ as well as ‘backward’ classes. —Not at the Expense of the Stupid.— “This has been criticised as undemocratic, as favouring the smart at the expense of the stupid. But it is not at the expense of the stupid. It is as much to their advantage as to the advantage of the smart, for it relieves them of trying to do the impossible, and hence of becoming hopeless because of failure to achieve it. And it gives them opportunity to make the very most of their pessibilities. It is democratic in the highest degree to give to every child the opportunity to make the most and best of himself. It is undemocratic, unfair to the child and harmful to the nation, to limit the child of superior intelligence to the pace of the child of average intelligence, to say nothing of the pace of the child of inferior intelligence. And our present school system does just that. Equal opportunities for all children to maka. the utmost out of .their varying inherent mental-capacity, through suitable environment and education, is real democracy in education. -—To Conform to the Average.— “And everything I have just said applies as well to college and university students as to school children. We see to-day, in our great institutions of higher learning, the efforts and time of administrators and professors, and the money and equipment of the institutions, devoted largely to attempts to hold backward and average and forward students to the same work and standards. The backward are lifted and pushed, and the forward restrained, to make all conform to the average. The result is discouragement and bitterness among the backward and deadening of interest and idleness among the forward. These seek relief in athletics and extraneous student activities where all forwardness is recognised and rewarded. —Education is Environment. — “Education is environment. It should be good environment, helpful, not harmful, environment, if the race is to make the most of itself. This is simply a biological truism. That it may be good environment, educators must have personal knowledge of science, or personal faith in, it, and personal resolution to make their practice conform to their knowledge and faith. We are incredibly wasting money, effort, and time, and sacrificing individuals and society by our present-day educational methods, because these methods were established before the days of the new knowledge of heredity, and because we have had a wrong conception of democracy in education. “The time has come to do better. But it will take a mighty effort to do it. If the professional educators will not do it of their own free will—and, as one of them and knowing the breed pretty well, I am fearful of them—then they must be made to. “The biologist stands aghast at what he sees happening. He knows what the consequences of flouting Nature are. The fate of plants, animals, and men is determined by heredity and environment. It takes the best of both to assure the best fate. Shall man, who has some power over his heredity and much power over his environment, not use this knowledge and this power to give himself the best fate possible? If he does not he is worse than foolish ; he is criminally responsible to bis children and his children’s children.” WANTED—A SCRAP OF PAPER ACCEPTED BY ALL THE NATIONS. “Many people must have been astonished the other day to read the statement of a great writer and thinker that gold is dead. For him who sees this death in its proper place, said this writer, who sees it in the perspective of centuries—what an event! “But if gold is dead, it is still among the dead things that play their part in the life of the earth,” says a writer in My Magazine. “The moon is said to be dead, but how great a part it plays in human life! “May it not be asserted, indeed, that some of the chief forces which affect our human affairs, influencing the destiny of nations, and determining the history of mankind, are forces which in themse’ves have no force, powers which in themselves are powerless? “Dead gold may be; but, invisible as it now is, vanished from shop and market as it is, still its power is over men and

women and children, and the problem of statesmen is still the problem of gold. “How strange it is that a thing which has worked such irretrievable ruin on the earth, a thing which has less life than a greenfly, a thing we can all do without, is still regarded as the hope of man s salvation ! “How stranger still that men do not yet perceive the way out from this tremendous menace of ruin! Is it because that way is so simple ? “It lies on the road of conduct. It is a question of words. Gold is only essential to the salvation of the civilised world because that civilised world is not yet sufficiently civilised to be commonly honest. Suppose ! “Suppose the nations could all trust ono another. Suppose that they all saw the need of each other, and were willing to help each other. What will they need as a symbol for the exchange of their goods? Gold? But why gold, which is so scarce ? Is the labour of man to be bound by the quantity of gold in the earth? Suppose Germany had won the war, and had carried off all the gold—every sovereign of it: would there be no money in England ? Suppose the banks of America were burned down and all the gold in the world vanished : would the trade of the nations stand still ? “To ask those questions is to see liow absurd they are. “What, then, is necessary as a symbol for goods ? Only a scrap of paper. Nothing more. A scrap of paper accepted by all the nations of the earth as the universal currency of mankind, and currency of equal value in all countries, would solve this problem and end for evermore the disastrous reign of gold. “Why is there not such a currency? Because the earth still tarries for the brotherhood of man. But when men are honest and kind, then they will measure each nation’s right to currency by its ability to create goods, and all will agree how much currency should be given to each nation ; and a central board of international bankers, the heads of the Universal Bank of Man, watching prices in each country, will be. able, by giving more currency when those prices are low, and withdrawing a litttle when those prices are high, to stabilise the exchanges of the world to the fraction of a penny, and so do away with all the bankruptev. unemployment, starvation, and revolutions which are the consequences of uncertain trade. To Kill Gold—- “ Therefore, to work for the brotherhood of man is to work for the death of gold ; or, shall we say, for the restoration of gold as a shining symbol of God and a glorious material in the hands of the craftsman ? “We need never have a gold coin in our pockets. Already we have dethroned this tyrant, but not yet have we put an end to his reign. He is dead, but his dead hand holds us in his grasp. To be free of him for evermore we must choose brotherly co-operation instead of brutish rivalry, and see that the end of life is not wealth, but character.” FABRICS FROM TREES GERMANY’S GREAT DISCOVERY. German enterprise has displayed itself in a form which offers a serious challenge to several important industries in England. Our cotton and wool spinning, silk and linen, carpet weaving, floorcloth and linoleum industries are presented with a rival which may have a serious influence on the markets of the world which are at present supplied with British goods. In these industries manufacturers are dependent on raw materials drawn from many sources, more especially from America for cotton and Australia for wool. The German discovery makes her a producer of her own supplies of raw material, for it is largely drawn from wood of which she has unlimited reserves in her many forests. British ingenuity may put us abreast with Germany in regard to the discovery, but we are hopelesslv handicapped through the excessive depletion of our timber supplies during the years of the war. In short, Germany has discovered the means of turning wood into a great variety of soft material which can be woven into fabrics resembling silk, cotton, linen, and woollen and other goods, and at the Munich trade exhibition, in which specimens were shown, there were delicately knitted silk sweaters, materials for wear in many forms, Gobelin tapestries, Smyrna rugs, which only an expert could say were imitations, flexible linoleum, and a hard horn-like substance which is used for buttons, walking-stick handles, and other purposes. The production of artificial silk from a form of cellulose is not new. Artificial silk is produced in England, but the importance of the German discovery lies in the fact that it does not depend on cotton as the basis of the new fibre. The origin of the new fibre is wood and it is claimed that it can be manufactured more cheaply than from any other material. The cellulose from which the vista fibre is made is the discovery of the Koeln Rottwell Company, who were active munition makers during the war, and the discovery will enable Germany to retain the munition factories as important assets in time of peace, a striking contrast to the experience in England, where such extensive concerns as the Gretna factory have become a white elephant. The Koeln Rottwell powder factory, the Rhenish Westphalian explosive works, and the Nobel dynamite works are all now actively running in consequence of the discovery, which is the result of three years of experiment by Max Duttenhofer, the general director of the Rottwell factory. Pyroxylene or tri-mtro cellulose (gun cotton) formed the starting noint in the experiments, but in its developed state Germany is independent of imported

t -up*’ ■ "v. % material, and the fibre which is produced is handed over to the ordinary spinning and weaving mills. Another form of the material, used for linoleum, is known as trioline, and is, perhaps, superW to the corky product with which we ai‘e familiar in its softness and flexibility, whereas its cost is said to be only about onethird. Still another form of the cellulose is known as zellon, which is a fireproof product for insulation purposes, whilst a harder kind, known as trolit, is regarded as a substitute for such things as ivory and the hardest woods are generally used for. Germany is also developing her dye industries, and in these two directions is showing enterprise, which may easily prove her financial salvation.