14 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS I 



tion as the means whereby hundreds compete for 

 the place and nourishment adequate for one : it 

 employs frost and drought to cut off the weak 

 and unfortunate ; to survive, there is need not 

 only of strength, but of flexibility and of good 

 fortune. 



The gardener, on the other hand, restricts 

 multiplication ; provides that each plant shall 

 have sufficient space and nourishment ; protects 

 from frost and drought ; and, in every other way, 

 attempts to modify the conditions, in such a 

 manner as to bring about the survival of those 

 forms which most nearly approach the standard 

 of the useful, or the beautiful, which he has in 

 his mind. 



If the fruits and the tubers, the foliage and 

 the flowers thus obtained, reach, or sufficiently 

 approach, that ideal, there is no reason why the 

 status quo attained should not be indefinitely pro 

 longed. So long as the state of nature remains 

 approximately the same, so long will the energy 

 and intelligence which created the garden suffice to 

 maintain it. However, the limits within which this 

 mastery of man over nature can be maintained are 

 narrow. If the conditions of the cretaceous epoch 

 returned, I fear the most skilful of gardeners would 

 have to give up the cultivation of apples and 

 gooseberries ; while, if those of the glacial period 

 once again obtained, open asparagus beds would 

 be superfluous, and the training of fruit trees 



