So the veritable education of the Spirit begins at once, in the cradle, and its chief means will be the surroundings within which that childish spirit first develops its little awareness of the universe; the appeals which are made to its instincts, the stimulations of its life of sense.

The first factor of this education is the family: the second the society within which that family is formed.
Though we no longer suppose it to possess innate ideas, the baby has most surely innate powers, inclinations and curiosities, and is reaching out in every direction towards life.

It is brimming with will power, ready to push hard into experience.

The environment in which it is placed and the responses which the outer world makes to it--and these surroundings and responses in the long run are largely of our choosing and making--represent either the helping or thwarting of its tendencies, and the sum total of the directions in which its powers can be exercised and its demands satisfied: the possibilities, in fact, which life puts before it.

We, as individuals and as a community, control and form part of this environment.