Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr - poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

Perhaps not all the beliefs of our tribe that Dr. Holmes would like to eradicate from our minds are superstitious fears. Some of them may in fact be part of our nature as human beings. Holmes, however, likely did not believe in such a thing as a human nature innate in all men. I think he was inclined toward the tabula rasa view of epistemology.