But even when our conception of the meaning of environment has been thus enlarged, we need to be on our guard against misconception from another side. For the environment is only one factor in the problem; the organism is another, and the relative importance of the two is a matter of vital significance. We may still make the mistake of treating the environment as active and the organism as passive. This would be a similar mistake to that which is made when morality and religion are treated as being no more than a reflection of economic conditions. The action of the environment is given a place of first importance, while the reaction of the organism on its environment is treated as a negligible quantity. Historically this may be taken as a reaction against the extreme spiritualistic view which, in upholding, a theory of Free-Will made no allowance for the influence of the surroundings. An extreme view in one direction usually sets up an extreme view by way of opposition, and it must be confessed that in social philosophy the power of the environment has often been made omnipotent. The medium has been presented as active and the organism as passive. Different results occur because the susceptibilities of organisms vary. Good or bad influences affect individuals differently for much the same reason that soils differ in their capacity for absorbing water. From the scientific and the philosophic side this conception derived a certain adventitious strength. In the first place there was the now generally discarded psychology which taught that the individual mind was as a sheet of blank paper on which experience inscribed its lessons. And in the second place the growth of biological science brought out with great distinctness the influence of the environment on organic life. It was very plain that the quality and quantity of the food supply, the action of air and light, and other purely environmental forces exercised an important influence. In the plant world it was seen how much could be effected by a mere change of habitat. In the animal world markings and structure seemed to have an obvious reference to the nature of the environment. It, therefore, seemed nothing but a logical inference to extend the same reasoning to man, and treat not only his structure but his mental capacities as being the outcome of the same kind of correspondence.