Culture and the State 41 



are shut off from rain and become a desert. The planet 

 changes. But all these changes are slow, how very slow ! 

 and the plants perceive no change; instead, they become 

 absolutely transformed, become used to new conditions; 

 so that at length we have the richness of variety that we 

 are only now beginning a little to understand. Heredity 

 is to-day the problem of natural science. We do not 

 solve it : we are finding only the pathway along which its 

 impulse moves. It is difficult; small wonder. What we 

 see, the present ; not the ultimate ; the unfinished product 

 of Nature 's culture-methods, operating through ten thou- 

 sand thousand generations! 



The physical conditions of this world, then, the condi- 

 tions amid which life is called to act, change, change all 

 the time; generally slowly, but at length definitely and 

 appreciably; and life, plants, animals, have learned to 

 respond. Were it not so, all our effort would be vain. 

 Nature began the scheme of culture, and in all we do in 

 garden and field, we are but following her cue. We 

 change the conditions under which the plant grows, and 

 the plant changes. Shakespeare knew this very well. 

 Read act iv, scene iv, of A Winter's Tale if you would 

 understand what four hundred years ago men knew of 

 plant-culture. 



Precisely as with plants, so it is with our human till- 

 age. We change conditions and all changes. Monmouth 

 College brings from their various far-scattered homes 

 these eager, growing youth. She changes their environ- 

 ment. She brings them into a new atmosphere, an at- 

 mosphere of scholarship, where learning is the only value, 

 wisdom the only sunshine, the encomium of good and 



