14 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. i 



cation 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 garden- 

 ers 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 



