228 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



unstable. The constitution of the United States is a written one, and is 

 popularly supposed to be fixed and permanent, but it is constantly changed 

 by interpretation almost as readily as if unwritten. The word " commerce," 

 when the constitution was adopted, related only to commerce on water. 

 That it should include railroads and telegraphs and telephones was of course 

 not in the minds of the framers of our liberties. The clause relating to 

 " persons held to service or labor " once included slaves in its interpretation. 

 This still stands as of old, but future generations will need to read history to 

 know what it meant when first placed there. This audience all breakfasted 

 this morning, but probably not one thought that he went to break his fast. 

 It was to all simply the first meal of the day, too early in some cases 

 possibly, with none of the haste witnessed of those who had been fasting. 

 My topic is culture and horticulture. I wish to speak of culture as we 

 understand it in its general sense, and then discuss as briefly as may be the 

 relation of horticulture to that general culture. What is culture? Let us 

 understand what we are to talk about. Its primary meaning is from a word 

 that signifies to till, to cultivate. Culture then is a state of tillage, material 

 in its derivation, of the earth, earthy. It suggests the plow in its furrow 

 and the hoe and the clod. But culture is more than these. The word is as 

 barren as the soil it delves in, but the idea is as fruitful as the bountiful 

 harvest that culture promotes. By some witchery of the soul it stands for 

 the harvest: The conception has drifted away from the producer of the 

 product — the stone has left the hand that set it in motion, and yet not 

 entirely is it cut loose from the element of cultivation. Culture is not a 

 state simply: there is an implication of activity, of digging, of refining. 

 True culture is in the active, not passive voice. It is a power as well as a 

 condition, a process as well as a product. Emerson says "that culture 

 implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers;" that it 

 "redresses one's balance;" that it is a "suggestion from certain best 

 thoughts." This is not a full definition and may need foot-notes to define 

 the definition, but it will answer our present purpose. 



The crude, uncultivated man is a waster of energy. Nature is exhaustless 

 in power and resources, prolific in products and wasteful beyond computa- 

 tion. It takes a million acorns to make a single oak. A single pair of 

 plants or insects, if given free fecundity, would not leave standing or living 

 room for any other living thing. So nature is an exterminator as well as a 

 producer. Progress is what is spared from extermination. Culture aids the 

 sparing. Barbaric and half civilized men killed more men in battle with 

 clubs and spears and swords than the Gatling gun of modern warfare. Codes 

 and culture go hand in hand. Even the prize ring howls down the man who 

 hits below the belt. 



Culture is the gloved hand — it is the power without the laceration. 

 Culture is an economist — it saves blood and with blood, life. But life has a 

 voracious appetite and must eat or starve ; so in the end nature as an exter- 

 minator would bring about the old equilibrium and no progress would be 

 attained. What sense in hospitals and asylums, in aid societies and humane 

 organizations, if the magazines are empty ? Better knock the aged and 

 crippled and leprous in the head at once and save the supplies for the sound. 

 There are just as many deaths in this world as births — what matters it to 

 save or prolong a life, if in the end nature restores equilibrium in spite of 

 culture ? True, but saved and prolonged life adds to the stock of life on 



