Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE EARLY YEARS OF JAMESON. " Oui conscious years are but a moment in the histoiy of the elements that build us." There is perhaps nothing more difficult to explain than differences of character in mankind—why some attain to power, whilst the many exist only to pass out of existence. For practical purposes the terms character, temperament and individuality are one and the same, and are used to express the control over circumstances exercised by an individual's brain and will power. The finer the brain, the stronger the will, and the more perfectly the two are co-ordinate, the greater is the character or individuality of the individual, and the wider the area of circumstances over which he operates. These qualities are, moreover, hereditary, and heredity to-day has a two-fold significance. It is applied, of course, to the observed characteristics, physical and mental, of known ancestors; but it also includes those infinitely more subtle factors of family, race, and environment which essentially contribute in the manufacture of a new individual. Such an one is the heir of all human achievements in the past, and represents a fresh combination of inherited memories. He is, in fact, a new form of brain and will power, confronting an environment slightly different to any that has preceded it. The character of a man cannot, therefore, be moulded by his circumstances, but must inevitably create for itself those that are necessary to its manifestation. The adage that " adventures are to the adventurous " is true because the timid have no quality within themselves wherewith to create the necessary adventurous surroundings. It is obvious that if the term heredity be confined to the few observed traits of immediate ancestry it cannot explain either the success or th...