Section 84. (e) Nature and Nurture.
Schopenhauer was the first to classify people according to nature
and nurture. Just where he first used the categories I do not know,
but I know that he is responsible for them. "Nature" is physical
and mental character and disposition, taken most broadly; "nurture"
is bringing up, environment, studies, scholarship, and experience,
also in the broadest sense of those words. Both together
present what a man is, what he is able to do, what he wants to do.
A classification, then, according to nature and nurture is a classification
according to essence and character. The influence of a man's
nature on his face, we know, or try to know, but what criminal
relationships his nurture may develop for us, we are altogether
ignorant of. There are all sorts of intermediaries, connections and
differences between what the goddess of civilization finds to prize,
and what can be justified only by a return to simplicity and nature.
