During the first year or so of his life he is a monster of selfishness; and selfishness is the most comprehensive and far-reaching of all vicious tendencies.

Does this mean that he has been conceived in sin?
Not in the least.

It means that he is making a whole-hearted effort to guard and unfold the potencies of life--in the first instance, of physical life--which have been entrusted to him.

It means that he has entered the path of self-realisation, and that if he will be as faithful to that path during the rest of his life as he has been during those early months of uncompromising selfishness, he will be able at last to scale the loftiest heights of self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice.
_Environment._ The influences which environment exerts seem to fall under three heads-- (1) General influences of a more or less permanent character, such as home, neighbourhood, social grade, etc.
(2) General influences of a more or less variable character, such as education, employment, friendship, etc.
(3) Particular influences, such as companionship (good or bad), literature (wholesome or pernicious), places of amusement (elevating or debasing), special opportunities for self-sacrifice or self-indulgence, etc.
Corresponding to these in plant-life we have-- (1) Soil, situation, and climate: (2) Cultivation and weather: (3) The various insects and micro-organisms which are ready to assail or protect growing life.
(1) If two acorns from the same tree were sown, the one in a deep clay soil and a favourable situation, the other in a light sandy soil and an unfavourable situation, the former would in time develop into a large and shapely, the latter into a puny and misshapen oak-tree.
It would be the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with two human beings who were exposed from their earliest days to widely different permanent influences.
(2) If wheat of a certain strain were sown on the same day in two adjoining fields, one of which was well farmed and the other badly farmed, the resulting crops would differ widely in yield and value.
It would be the same with two human beings, one of whom (to take a pertinent example) attended a school of Utopian tendencies, and the other a school of a more conventional type.

Of all moralising (or demoralising) influences education is by far the most important, owing to the fact that it can do more, and is in a position to do more, than any other influence either to foster or to hinder growth.
The influence of weather on plant-life is, of course, enormous.