refuses to seek the causes in
spiritual events which the man himself met with before birth--regardless of
heredity--and by means of which he shaped his talents and abilities.

Another view would find no satisfaction in such an interpretation. It
would assert that even in the manifested world nothing happens in definite
places or surroundings without our having to presuppose causes for the
event in question. Even though in many cases such causes have not yet been
investigated, they are there. An Alpine flower does not grow in the
lowlands. Its nature has something which associates it with Alpine
regions. Just so must there be something in a man which determines his
birth in a certain environment. Causes belonging to the physical world
alone are not sufficient to account for this. To a more profound thinker
such an explanation appears in somewhat the same light as when one has
dealt another a blow, the motive for which is not attributed to the
feelings of the one but is to be explained by the physical mechanism of
the hand.

Any explanation of abilities and talents solely by "heredity" is to such a
viewpoint equally unsatisfactory. It is true one may say: "See how certain
talents are inherited in families." During two and a half centuries
musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. Eight
mathematicians sprang from the Bernoulli family, to some of whom quite
different occupations were assigned in their childhood; but the inherited
talents always drove them to the family vocation. It may be further
pointed out how, by an exact investigation of the line of ancestry of a
person in one way or another the gifts of this person have shown
themselves in the forefathers, and only represent the sum of inherited
talents. Whoever holds the latter of the two views above indicated will be
sure not to let such facts pass unnoticed, but to _him_ they cannot mean
the same as they do to one who relies for his interpretation on the events
of the world of sense alone. The former will point out that inherited
talents can no more of themselves, combine into a complete personality
than can the metal parts of a watch fit themselves together. And if
objection is made that the co-operation of the parents may possibly
produce the combination of talents,--that this as it were, takes the place
of the watchmaker,--he will reply: "Look impartially at what is new in
every child-personality, at that which is absolutely new; that cannot c