Woodworth says in a criticism of McDougall’s view of instincts: “What he here overlooks is the fact of native capacities or rather, the fact that each native capacity is at the same time a drive towards the sort of activity in question. The native capacity for mathematics is, at the same time, an interest in things mathematical and in dealing with such things. This is clearly true in individuals gifted with a great capacity for mathematics.”[21] I do not wish to become involved here in a discussion of the original nature of man on the instinctive side. I wish merely to rebel at the assumption of specific inheritance of abilities that are really sociological units. Mathematics is an ability which is useful to us, which we have come to encourage in education. But it is a man-made unit. There is no reason to believe that the inherited components of mentality are in any direct way related to such talents as mathematics or music. The units may vaguely predispose, but the units are not mathematics and music. We may say that the inherited physical and chemical units of the nervous system may be so distributed as to predispose one man to mathematics, and another to music, but we must not argue for inherited interests as correlates. The evidence is all that the inherited nervous chemistry of the individual is what on the side of behavior, we define as intelligence—power of adaptation. We may logically fall back on the inheritance of predisposition to ability, meaning thereby the inheritance of such nervous qualities as will better fit the individual to cope with mathematical than with musical situations; but if we adopt this cautious ground in disputation we cannot argue in another matter for an inherited interest in mathematics, innate because of the inborn mathematical talent. If the inherited qualities merely predispose they merely delimit; just as a man born without arms would probably not become a great baseball player, nor a deaf man a great musician, nor a man with poor motor control a skilled mechanic—so we are predisposed nervously for capacities. Hence can we argue that the inborn root of the interest is the capacity? Is it not safer to assume that interests in success, approval of fellowmen and general mental activity led to the development of the capacity by virtue of a favorable environment, and led by the same environment to interests centered about its activity?