NURTURE VERSUS NATURE 



bank's method to the human plant would suggest 

 that we lessen rather than increase the safe- 

 guards against bacterial foes that surround the 

 average child. The individual that is susceptible 

 should, in this view, be permitted to succumb, in 

 the interest of the race. 



Of course, no humanitarian can give assent to 

 such a literal application of the knowledge of the 

 plant breeder. Mr. Burbank himself would be 

 the last to suggest such an application. We must 

 recall that the aggregate conditions of civilization 

 are artificial in the highest degree; that civilized 

 man is and must everywhere remain a hothouse 

 plant. The essential province of government is to 

 give the weak protection against the strong, and 

 against the adverse forces of nature. 



The manners and customs of civilized society 

 have been built up in recognition of the fact that 

 persons weak-bodied and susceptible to disease 

 may have attributes of mind that make them 

 among the most valuable members of society. 



Civilized man is not reared to compete with 

 the denizens of the jungle, nor to submit to the 

 hardships that may fall to the lot of barbaric 

 tribes. His case is rather that of the tropical 

 plant transported to temperate zones, which may 

 require the constant protection of a hothouse 

 environment, being quite unable to compete with 

 plants of the field, yet being prized for the flow- 

 ers that it puts forth, and regarded as fully worth 

 the solicitous care necessarily bestowed upon it. 



Viewed in this light, the work of the euthenist 

 [327] 



