328 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



CIVILIZATION AND VEGETATION 



By Professor GEORGE J. PEIRCE 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY 



CERTAIN experiences, national and personal, have caused me to 

 reflect of late on this subject, the outlines and meaning of which 

 will become clear, I hope, as we proceed. 



With the modesty which we all recognize to be the supreme charac- 

 teristic distinguishing man from all other living organisms, we regard 

 the human race as the dominant one in nature. We consider it not only 

 the one whose mental, if not physical, evolution has proceeded furthest 

 toward the highest good, but the one which by natural or divine right 

 should subjugate and rule all others, should domesticate or exterminate 

 at will, should plow or disembowel the earth, should make the desert bear 

 crops or strip the slopes of their forest cover, centuries old. In fact, so 

 complete is human modesty, that the race does all these things and many 

 more with no thought but as to the means and the gain, never a question 

 as to the right. That is modestly assumed. 



Human modesty even goes so far as to compel competition among 

 men. The gross material cannibalism that once prevailed has given 

 place to that refined cannibalism which, on bourse and stock exchange, 

 in manufacture and sale of commodities, even in the numberless 

 Ohympuses of our American colleges, " eats up " the " lambs," devours 

 the weak competitor, and oppresses the friendless. Peace is not in the 

 scheme of nature, that nature in which man has taken the role of 

 Ishmael, whose hand was against every man and every man's hand 

 against him. 



With this Ishmael, as in all nature, struggle is universal and inevi- 

 table; struggle, competition, war if you will, which can have only one 

 end, the extermination of one of the stragglers. There is such a thing 

 as extermination by assimilation. The King of the Cannibal Islands 

 exterminated the first missionaries by assimilating them after murder. 

 We are to-day exterminating the Indian as such by assimilating him 

 without murder as certainly as in the days of the Indian wars. 



Where are the races of wild animals from which we have " devel- 

 oped " cows and hens, the intelligence, alertness and gaiety of whose 

 countenances is so obvious ? We have assimilated them. Some of their 

 excellences have even been imitated on the stage. 



What is the joy of living as a tame hen, as a domesticated cow, as 

 a pruned pear tree ? " The ox that treadeth out corn " is sure of daily 

 food ; so is " the cock of the walk " ; so also are the subjugated plants of 



