ABSTRACT
This chapter describes English Mens earliest antecedents, including the hereditary influences, the inborn qualities of their mind and body, the causes that first induced them to pursue science, education they received and their opinions on its merits. The advantages are great of confining the investigation to men of our own period and nation. The simultaneous discovery of the planet Neptune on theoretical grounds by Leverrier and Adams is a very curious instance of what the peoples are considering. In patent inventions the fact of simultaneous discovery is notoriously frequent. The phrase “nature and nurture” is a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence from without that affects him after his birth. When nature and nurture compete for supremacy on equal terms in the sense to be explained, the former proves the stronger.
