We must not forget that the refined John Wesley believed in witch-burning, that the refined Jeremy Taylor thought all the millions born in heathen darkness would be doomed to eternal torment. Nor must we forget that many educated, cultured, and well-meaning Europeans and Americans to-day believe that unbaptised babies, and free-thinkers, and unrepentant Christians will lie shrieking forever in a lake of fire and brimstone. We must not forget that it is now, in the Twentieth Century, that I, an Englishman, am writing this book to plead that men and women, our brothers and sisters, should not be hated, degraded, whipped, imprisoned, hanged, and everlastingly damned for being more ignorant and less fortunate than others, their fellows. Taken straight from the cradle and brought up by brutes, a child would be scarcely human. Taken straight from the cradle and brought up amongst savages, the child must be a savage. Taken straight from the cradle and brought up amongst thieves, the child must be a thief. Every child is born destitute of knowledge, and every child is born with propensities that may make for evil or for good. And the men and women amongst whom the child is born and reared are the sole source from which he can get knowledge. And the men and women amongst whom the child is born and reared are the sole means by which his propensities may be restrained from evil and developed for good. The child's character, then, his development for good or evil, depends upon his treatment by his fellow-creatures. His propensities depend upon his ancestors. That is to say, a child must inevitably grow up and become that which his ancestors and his fellow-creatures make him. That is to say, that a man "is a creature of heredity and environment." He is what he is made by a certain kind of environment acting upon a certain kind of heredity. He does not choose his ancestors: he does not choose his environment. How, then, can he be blamed if his ancestors give to him a bad heredity, or if his fellow-creatures give to him a bad environment? Should we blame a bramble for yielding no strawberries, or a privet bush for bearing no chrysanthemums? Should we blame a rose tree for running wild in a jungle, or for languishing in the shadow of great elms? There are no figs on thistles, because the heredity of the thistle does not breed figs. And the lily pines, and bears leaves only, in darkness and a hostile soil, because the conditions are against it. The breed of the rose or the fig is its heredity: the soil and the sunshine, or the darkness and the cold, and the gardener's care or neglect, are its environment. Let any one who under-rates the power of environment exercise his imagination for a minute. Suppose he had never learnt to read! Suppose he had never learnt to talk! Suppose he had never learnt to speak the truth, to control his temper, to keep his word, to be courteous to women, to value life!