rd
form of social activity. In this chapter we are concerned with the
general features of the way in which a social group brings up its
immature members into its own social form.

Since what is required is a transformation of the quality of experience
till it partakes in the interests, purposes, and ideas current in the
social group, the problem is evidently not one of mere physical forming.
Things can be physically transported in space; they may be bodily
conveyed. Beliefs and aspirations cannot be physically extracted and
inserted. How then are they communicated? Given the impossibility of
direct contagion or literal inculcation, our problem is to discover the
method by which the young assimilate the point of view of the old, or
the older bring the young into like-mindedness with themselves. The
answer, in general formulation, is: By means of the action of the
environment in calling out certain responses. The required beliefs
cannot be hammered in; the needed attitudes cannot be plastered on. But
the particular medium in which an individual exists leads him to see and
feel one thing rather than another; it leads him to have certain plans
in order that he may act successfully with others; it strengthens some
beliefs and weakens others as a condition of winning the approval of
others. Thus it gradually produces in him a certain system of behavior,
a certain disposition of action. The words "environment," "medium"
denote something more than surroundings which encompass an individual.
They denote the specific continuity of the surroundings with his own
active tendencies. An inanimate being is, of course, continuous with
its surroundings; but the environing circumstances do not, save
metaphorically, constitute an environment. For the inorganic being is
not concerned in the influences which affect it. On the other hand,
some things which are remote in space and time from a living creature,
especially a human creature, may form his environment even more truly
than some of the things close to him. The things with which a man varies
are his genuine environment. Thus the activities of the astronomer vary
with the stars at which he gazes or about which he calculates. Of
his immediate surroundings, his telescope is most intimately his
environment. The environment of an antiquarian, as an antiquarian,
consists of the remote epoch of human life with which he is concerned,
and the relics, inscriptions, etc., by which he establishes