But the biological evidence does not lend itself readily to summary
treatment, and we shall therefore examine the question by statistical
methods.[2] These have the further advantage of being more easily
understood; for facts which can be measured and expressed in numbers are
facts whose import the reader can usually decide for himself: he is
perfectly able to determine, without any special training, whether twice
two does or does not make four. One further preliminary remark: the
problem of nature vs. nurture can not be solved in general terms; a
moment's thought will show that it can be understood only by examining
one trait at a time. The problem is to decide whether the differences
between the people met in everyday life are due more to inheritance or
to outside influences, and these differences must naturally be examined
separately; they can not be lumped together.
To ask whether nature in general contributes more to a man than nurture
is futile; but it is not at all futile to ask whether the differences in
a given human trait are more affected by differences in nature than by
differences in nurture. It is easy to see that a verdict may be
sometimes given to one side, sometimes to the other.
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