IMPROVING THE HUMAN PLANT 



would have been quite impossible to produce the 

 improved races that have been developed at Santa 

 Rosa and Sebastopol. 



And unless a way can be found to make the 

 average environment of successive generations of 

 human beings better and better — ^instead of allow- 

 ing it to become worse and worse — we cannot hope 

 that the generations of our grandchildren and 

 great grandchildren will maintain the average 

 standards of our own time, let alone improve upon 

 them. 



Educating the Seedling 



A word must be said also as to the influence of 

 environment in its bearing on the mental and 

 moral development of the individual in determin- 

 ing the bringing out or the suppression of heredi- 

 tary potentialities. 



The mental and moral attributes of man may 

 be likened to the flower or fruit of the cultivated 

 plant, in that they are the qualities most recently 

 developed or transformed through selective breed- 

 ing. In token of their newness, they are the quali- 

 ties most easily altered or modified by environing 

 influences or by new racial blendings. 



There are, for example, the qualities that are 

 prone to "Mendelize" in hereditary transmission, 

 as we shall see illustrated and interpreted in 

 another connection. 



[223] 



