Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/725

 INDIVIDUAL TELESIS 709

much stress has been laid by certain biologists, that such improved races usually revert more or less to their original con- dition when human influence is withdrawn. On the contrary, this fact establishes another law of biology, viz., that natural selection does not secure the survival of the fittest in the strug- gle for existence. It merely fixes the exact position which each species is capable of holding in the general competition. This is always far below what it might attain if competition were removed. Exactly what man does is to remove this competi- tion, and the immense progress that every species makes is shown in the improvement of the stock under man's intelligent care.

Considering next the effect of the telic power directed to the vegetable kingdom we perceive that substantially the same results have attended it. These are even more important here, for they involve nothing less than the whole range of agriculture and horticulture. These prime sources of social existence are altogether due to the working of the intellect upon the laws of vegetable life. One of the first manifestations and essential characteristics of the telic faculty is foresight, or the power to "look before" as well as after. Upon this, more than any other, agriculture depends, since the seed could only be sown in antic- ipation of the harvest, which is a future event.

In the vegetable kingdom, even more clearly than in the animal, is the truth apparent, to which attention was drawn, that the effect of human telesis is to improve the quality of the plants selected for cultivation. In the case of the cereals, for exam- ple, it is clear that this improvement is in the direction of a general structural advance. In fact it was through the study of plants that the principles I have here stated were first brought home to me. I made an attempt to formulate them over twenty years ago, and in the following words :

There is no .... necessary correspondence .... between organism and habitat, no .... necessary .... harmony between species and envi- ronment. This need only exist so far as is necessary to render the life of the species possible. Beyond this the greatest inharmony and inadaptation may