…environment. And we find in a French thinker who was extremely influential at his time, though very little read now, the Helvetius, we find a doctrine which reaffirms the Pelagian doctrine that man is born without any hereditary characteristics and that he…

…that he becomes what he is in virtue of what he learns and of how he reacts to the influences around him. And Helvetius made the a somewhat astonishing statement, that any shepherd boy of the Civennes could be turned into an Isaac Newton by suitable…

…behaviorism. In the early days of behaviorism, Watson made some really extraordinary statements which exactly parallel those of Helvetius. He affirmed that, for example, that he could find, behaviorists could find no evidence of inherited human faculties…

…The consequence of the fact of variability is that liberty is a very precious thing. After all, if we were all the same as Helvetius pointed out, or as Pelagius pointed out, or as Watson pointed out in his early days, if at birth we were all the same…