IMPROVING THE HUMAN PLANT 



The direct influence of environment on these 

 highly differentiated and hence unstable charac- 

 teristics of plant or of man is easily demonstrated 

 in any experiment garden or in any social com- 

 munity. 



But even the most deep-seated and funda- 

 mental qualities may be profoundly modified if 

 the environing influences are applied during the 

 childhood of the seedling plant or the human 

 subject. 



"As the twig is bent the tree is inclined" is a 

 maxim the literal truth of which is apparent to the 

 least-skilled horticulturist. The application of the 

 maxim to the human sapling is equally familiar 

 matter of fact to even the tyro in human pedagogy. 



A Shakespeare is not born with a fund of 

 knowledge and a profuse vocabulary stored in his 

 brain; but only with the receptive quality of brain- 

 fibre that will enable him — granted proper sur- 

 roundings — to acquire knowledge of things and of 

 words. Placed in childhood on a South Sea Island, 

 among savages, Shakespeare could have passed his 

 life without knowing a single word of the English 

 tongue, and without having even the vaguest con- 

 ception of the existence of a written language of 

 any kind. 



This extreme example will serve to suggest the 

 extent to which the individual even of the very 



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