VIRILE SENTIMENT 53 



plant's green colouring matter. The organism is 

 thus protected from the harmful influences of an 

 increased intensity of sunlight. Its green colouring 

 matter — its chlorophyll — remains undamaged, and 

 can continue to discharge those vitally-important 

 functions that belong to it. This plant thus thrives, 

 flowers, and seeds under the changed environment. 

 But it is quite otherwise with the Flax. It does not 

 develope any purple sap ; it fails to respond in that 

 way, or in any other protective way, to its changed 

 conditions. It cannot even reach the flowering 

 stage, for soon after it has passed the seedling stage 

 its chlorophyll becomes destroyed by the intenser 

 sunlight, and it perishes. 



Here, then, are two organisms that give us a 

 crucial test of the validity or invalidity of this re- 

 markable environmental doctrine. And the answer 

 is definite and condemnatory ! What an organism 

 can and will do does not depend on the environment, 

 but on the qualities of the organism itself. It is 

 one of the inherent capacities of the Summer Savory 

 to respond to this particular kind of new environment, 

 and to adapt itself to the changed conditions. It 

 is one of the inherent defects of the Flax that it 

 cannot do what the Summer Savory does ; and the 

 only result of applying the environmental doctrine 

 to it is to kill it. This is a fact which is not without 

 its social significance. It is a fact which is not 

 without illustration in the case of Man himself. 

 Let me give the illustration, for it is highly significant 

 and entrancingly interesting. Certain missionaries, 



