THE “TIGER” IN US

Waipa Post, Volume 38, Issue 2269, 16 February 1929, Page 2

THE “TIGER” IN US

Is there a tiger in every baby, is vice inherited? This question was widely debated by leading authorised in London a few weeks ago, who joined issue with Sir Berkeley Moynihan, president of the Royal College of Surgeons. Sir Berkeley had made the stinking declaration of his belief in the essential goodness of human nature. He disagreed with the Prime Minister who spoke of the tiger instincts in human nature, and said: “I do not believe that vice is in the smallest degree an inherited quality. I believe that children are born the purest things that the world knows, and that whatever vice creeps into the life of a child is something that creeps in from the outside.” A distinguished Harley Street mental specialist said: “Sir Berkeley takes an extreme view. Of late years psychologists have laid emphasis on the importance of early influence on the child mind. But minimising the hereditary factor is quite another thing from cutting it out altogether, as he does. You can never be absolutely sure whether hereditary or outside influences are responsible for certain tendencies. As the Prime Minister said, the tiger is there, and parents of irreproachable character have children with strong criminal . propensities.”, A leading London pathologist said: “I totally disagree with Sir Berkeley’s opinion that vice is not inborn. The tiger impulses in an infant are shown in its desire to tear things to pieces. It wants to be dirty and hates to be clean. These instincts are inborn.”