And, when the change came, what was it that brought that change about? Bunyan had only the same manhood: the same manhood which had already been defeated by the environment. How was it that same manhood now served to raise him above the environment? John Bunyan was the same John Bunyan; it was the environment that changed. It was the pious Ironsides, the pious wife, the godly man, the atmosphere of superstition, that made John Bunyan the profane tinker into John Bunyan the man of religion. Bad environment got John Bunyan down: there is no doubt of that. Good environment lifted him up. The manhood was the same at both periods. It was the environment that changed. If ever there was an example of the power of environment to save or sink a man, that example is John Bunyan, tinker and poet. Another instance of misunderstanding is afforded by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, who, in an article in the _Daily News_, argues against the power of heredity and environment, as follows: The well-bred man--literally speaking, that is the man with a heredity and environment much above the normal--can put forth all the cardinal sins like scarlet flowers in summer. He has lands that meet the horizon, but he steals like a starving man. He has had armies of comrades in great colleges, yet he snarls like a hunchback hissed in the street He has treasuries of gold that he cannot remember; yet he goads poor men for their rent like a threadbare landlady in the Harrow Road. He is only meant to be polite in public, and he cannot even be that. The whole system of his country and constitution only asks one thing of him, that he should not be an unpresentable beast--and he often is. That is a type of aristocrat that does from time to time recur to remind us of what is the real answer to the argument for aristocracy founded on heredity and environment. The real answer to it is in two words--Original Sin. Had Mr. Chesterton understood the subject upon which he wrote the above picturesque but fallacious paragraph, he never would have sent it to the Press. But he is always falling into blunders about heredity and environment because he has never learnt what heredity and environment are. He seems to think that the West End means good environment, and that the East End means bad environment. He seems to think that noble blood means good heredity, and that simple blood means bad heredity. And he calls atavism "original sin." Let us now consider the rather melodramatic nobleman Mr. Chesterton has portrayed for us. He does not tell us much about the nobleman's environment. He has lands and wealth, and has been to college. Does it tend to the moral elevation of a man to be like the "Chough" in Shakespeare, "spacious in the possession of dirt"? Are the wise men of all ages agreed that the possession of great wealth is a good environment? Or do they not rather teach that luxury and wealth are dangerous to their possessor?