The Training of the Human Plant

THE TRAINING OF THE HUMAN PLANT
By Luther Burbank


Contents

I. The Mingling of Races
II. The Teachings of Nature
III. Differentiation in Training
IV. Sunshine, Good Air and Nourishing Food
V. Dangers
VI. Marriage of the Physically Unfit
VII. Heredity ? Predestination ? Training
VIII. Growth
IX. Environment the Architect of Heredity
X. Character
XI. Fundamental Principles


Chapter 1 Excerpt

DURING the course of many years of investigation into the plant life of the world, creating new forms, modifying old ones, adapting others to new conditions, and blending still others, I have constantly been impressed with the similarity between the organization and development of plant and human life. While I have never lost sight of the principle of the survival of the fittest and all that it implies as an explanation of the development and progress of plant life, I have come to find in the crossing of species and in selection, wisely directed, a great and powerful instrument for the transformation of the vegetable kingdom along lines that lead constantly upward. The crossing of species is to me paramount. Upon it, wisely directed and accompanied by a rigid selection of the best and as rigid an exclusion of the poorest, rests the hope of all progress. The mere crossing of species, unaccompanied by selection, wise supervision, intelligent care, and the utmost patience, is not likely to result in marked good, and may result in vast harm. Unorganized effort is often most vicious in its tendencies.

Before passing to the consideration of the adaptation of the principles of plant culture and improvement in a more or less modified form to the human being, let me lay emphasis on the opportunity now presented in the United States for observing and, if we are wise, aiding in what I think it fair to say is the grandest opportunity ever presented of developing the finest race the world has ever known out of the vast mingling of races brought here by immigration.

By statistical abstract on immigration, prepared by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor in Washington, I find, that, in the year 1904, 752,864 immigrants came into the United States, assigned to more than fifty distinct nationalities. It will be worth while to look carefully at this list. It shows how widely separated geographically, as well as ethnologically, is the material from which we are drawing in this colossal example of the crossing of species. . .

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