very much nearer the limits of their physical strength than they ever approach those of their mental powers.
In the moral realm we practically never reach the limit of our capacity for good and evil. Every child is born with unlimited potentialities either for good or for evil. But he inherits no fixed endowment of goodness, and he bears no burden of original sin. Capacities and tendencies are what he inherits. If his parents have been vicious, their sins will be transmitted to him, not as a complete second edition of their vice, but as a general weakness towards it. The virtues of his parents are transmitted to him, not as specific virtues, but as general health of mind and power of resistance to evil. His actual moral life, his thoughts and deeds, his convictions and habits, are of his own acquisition. All his morality is attained and achieved. Conduct is not inherited; it is self-consciously made. Capacity is an inheritance, character is not an inheritance but an acquisition.
§7. The Social Environment Character. is acquired by the child through interaction with his environment. Environment means more to the child than to any other creature. The child's relation to his environment is a growing relation. And the child is the only animal that has a social environment. Great as is the influence of the physical environment, that of the social is much more profound and extensive. The presence and significance of this environment of moral and intellectual forces is not yet fully recognised. For it is not an environment which we can see or touch.
