adjustment of relations go on within and not without, it says nothing.
Yet I have shown how impossible it is to conceive one of these kinds
of goodness without the other.

But a graver objection still--or rather the same objection pressed
more closely--is this. The present definition naturally brings up the
picture of certain constant and stable surroundings enclosing an
environed object which is to be changed at their demand. No such state
of things exists. There is no fixed environment. It is always fixable.
Every environment is plastic and derives its character, at least
partially, from the environed object. Each stone sends out its little
gravitative and chemical influence upon surrounding stones, and they
are different through being in its neighborhood. The two become
mutually affected, and it is no more suitable to say that the object
must adapt itself to its environment than that the environment must be
adapted to its object.

Indeed, in persons this second form of statement is the more
important; for the forcing of circumstances into accordance with human
needs may be said to be the chief business of human life. The man who
adapts himself to his ignorant, licentious, or malarial surroundings,
is not a type of the good man. Of course disregard of environment is
not good either. Circumstances have their honorable powers, and these
require to be studied, respected, and employed. Sometimes they are so
strong as to leave a person no other course than to adapt himself to
them. He cannot adapt them to himself. Plato has a good story of how a
native of the little village of Seriphus tried to explain Themistocles
by means of environment. "You would not," he said to the great man,
"have been eminent if you had been born in Seriphus." "Probably not,"
answered Themistocles, "nor you, if you had been born in Athens."