My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS, ETC. 47practice were founded, was that the character of everyindividual is formed for and not by himself, first byheredity, which gives him his natural disposition withall its powers and tendencies, its good and badqualities; and, secondly, by environment, includingeducation and surroundings from earliest infancy,which always modifies the original character forbetter or for worse. Of course, this was a theory ofpure determinism, and was wholly opposed to theordinary views, both of religious teachers and ofgovernments, that, whatever the natural character,whatever the environment during childhood andmen could beyouth, whatever the direct teaching, allgood if they liked, all could act virtuously, all cotddobey the laws, and if they wilfully transgressed anyof these laws or customs of their rulers and teachers,the only way to deal with them was to punish them,again and again, under the idea that they could thusbe deterred from future transgression. The utterfailure of this doctrine, which has been followed inpractice during the whole period of human history,seems to have produced hardly any effect on oursystems of criminal law or of general education ; andthough other writers have exposed the error, and arestill exposing it, yet no one saw so clearly as Owenhow to put his views into practice ; no one, perhaps,in private life has ever had such opportunities ofcarrying out his principles ; no one has ever shownso much ingenuity, so much insight into character, somuch organizing power ; and no one has ever producedsuch striking results in the face of enormousdifficulties as he produced during the twenty-sixyears of his management of New Lanark.Of course, it was objected that Owen's principleswere erroneous and immoral because they wholly