rational beings it is worse than shallow to generalize at all
about comparative behavior until there is a measurable similarity
between the environments to which behavior is a response.

The pragmatic value of this idea is that it introduces a much needed
refinement into the ancient controversy about nature and nurture,
innate quality and environment. For the pseudo-environment is a hybrid
compounded of "human nature" and "conditions." To my mind it shows the
uselessness of pontificating about what man is and always will be from
what we observe man to be doing, or about what are the necessary
conditions of society. For we do not know how men would behave in
response to the facts of the Great Society. All that we really know is
how they behave in response to what can fairly be called a most
inadequate picture of the Great Society. No conclusion about man or
the Great Society can honestly be made on evidence like that.

This, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We shall assume that what
each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on
pictures made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him that
the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the
edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a
fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go in quest of it. If
someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time
act exactly as if he had found gold. The way in which the world is
imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does
not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort,
their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results.
The very men who most loudly proclaim their "materialism" and their
contempt for "ideologues," the Marxian communists, place their entire
hope on what? On the formation by propaganda of a class-conscious