7 10 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
be conceived to reign in nature. Each plant may be regarded as a reservoir of vital force, as containing within it a potential energy far beyond and wholly out of consonance with the contracted conditions imposed upon it by its environment, and by which it is compelled to possess the comparatively imperfect organization with which we find it endowed. Each individual is where it is, and what it is, by reason of the combined forces which hedge it in and determine its very form. 1
Recurring to the subject in 1886 I quoted this paragraph from the older paper and added :
Since these words were written this principle has been widely recognized by botanists. It is now known that the plants of every region possess the potency of a far higher life than they enjoy, and that they are prevented from attaining that higher state by the adverse influences that surround them in their normal habitat. The singling out of certain species by man, and their development through his care into far higher and more perfect forms to supply his needs, both physical and aesthetic, further demonstrate this law. Man gives these plants a new and artificial environment favorable to their higher development, and they develop accordingly. In a word, he gives them opportunity to progress, and they progress by inherent powers with which all plants are endowed. Once, when herborizing in a rather wild, neglected spot, I collected a little depauperate grass that for a time greatly puzzled me, but which upon analysis proved to be none other than genuine wheat. It had been accidentally sown in this abandoned nook, where it had been obliged to struggle for existence along with the remaining vegetation. There it had grown up, and sought to rise into that majesty and beauty that is seen in a field of waving grain. But at every step it had felt the resist- ance of an environment no longer regulated by intelligence. It missed the fostering care of man, who destroys competition, removes enemies, and creates conditions favorable to the highest development. This is called cul- tivation, and the difference between my little starveling grass and the wheat of the well-tilled field is a difference of cultivation only, and not at all of capacity. I could adduce any number of similar examples from the vege- table kingdom. 8
I now reaffirm this principle, which has not been challenged, and assign it to its proper place in a system of sociology as one of the leading contributions of biology to that science.
It remains to consider the effect of the exercise of the telic faculty upon the physical world. Much has already been said
1 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. IX, New York, October 1876, p. 682. "The Forum, Vol. II, New York, December 1886, p. 348.
