-may be set above Darwinian natural selection without injustice. This conclusion yields a most valuable contribution to rural problems. The prospect for the rural population is far brighter than the observed working of selection suggests. Assuming, for the moment, that the best emigrate from the country town, it seems inevitable that the people should degenerate as new generations are bred from the inferior stock left behind. This need not be the case at all, if we have reached a true view of the method of evolution. A blighting but needless discouragement broods over the modern mind because the worse families have many, and the better families have few children. So great is the penalty of scientific misconception when the guarded opinions of scholars enter the popular mind through treacherous catch-words. The crucial fact is the power of environment,-which includes social heredity and education and every philanthropic force and all uplifts of democracy. More significant by far than the purging of natural selection, is the transformation of peoples by which worthless human stock is improved after it is born. The laws of evolution are such that ultimately improvements flow in the blood, and wellborn children appear in lines springing from ignoble ancestors. This power of children to be better than the fathers is the key to history and the hope of sociology. There is no scientific reason for the popular notion that the depleted rural population is under a fatality of evil. Its future depends almost wholly upon the power of environment,-upon education, upon commerce, upon evangelization, upon participation in the great movements of the age. The best may go forth year by year, but if the forces that make men after they are born are in full vigor, the rural population will keep its place in the general progress of mankind. Warning is not less mandatory than the summons to courage, for bad environments are prolific of evil. In his famous address, "Barbarism the First Danger,"1 Dr. Bushnell made a profound study of environments before the evolutionist had confused a simple matter. It was his view that migration detached a people from its old social environment with ominous consequences. The institutions, the customs, the refining influences of the old home cannot be immediately replaced. Hence in new lands degeneracy is inevitable in the first generations. Thus he saw it in his own day on the frontier; thus he read the early history of New England, whose second and third generations" were as if a nest of eagles had been filled with a brood of owls." Those born to be eagles became owls in the wilderness; and there is no doubt that an owl species would have succeeded in time, of which owls and owls only would have been born, if the environment had not been enriched as a new civilization grew into vigor; if the schools, the churches, the democratic institutions, the solemn and uplifting ideals of a high movement of humanity had not gained ascendancy over the debasing wilderness. The rural population is threatened with an impoverished environment in the changes 1 "Work and Play," pp. 227-267. of the times, but the danger should arouse all lovers and helpers of men as well as those in immediate peril to labor for that better environment of commerce and education and religion-that ceaseless influence of ideals and institutions—which is competent to develop eagles even from owls. Our investigation must now seek to ascertain the actual character of the rural environment. CHAPTER XI THE INFLUENCE OF NATURE IT must be conceded that the incidence of selection is such that if nothing else acts upon the people who remain after the sifting of the rural population, degeneracy must ensue. At the best, humanity has a great root and a huge bulk of stalk and leaf for the few blossoms into which it flowers. If all the bloom is plucked repeatedly, how differs the choicest garden bed from the weeds of the roadside that fling no colors to the breeze? For the moment after the cutting it may seem that there is no difference, but next morning's sun will find the dewy garden ablaze again. There are secret forces at work that make the country competent year after year to send forth men and women who have the fine qualities of their predecessors. Among these helpful forces the influence of nature merits special attention. We may borrow from Washington Irving a thesis for this chapter: "In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the working of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolt ing in an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities."1 It is common to speak of the love of nature as a very recent acquisition. It may recall us to a more seemly modesty if we read once more in The Spectator how the wise and good Aurelia and the husband," who has been in love with her ever since he knew her, wresting themselves away from their walks and gardens, sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly, as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country life." 2 This was two generations before Cowper wrote more than a century ago: "The country wins me still; I never framed a wish, or formed a plan That flattered me with hope of earthly bliss, The appreciation of nature is not a raw product of the latest enthusiasm ; it is a vintage of many seasons, and although the store is greater in recent years, mellow remainders still tell of the abundant flow of old-time presses. Where is there a finer expression of feeling for landscape than in Petrarch's lines? "Once more, ye balmy gales, I feel you blow; 1"The Sketch Book," Rural life in England. 2 No. 15. 8"The Task," Book IV. 4 Oscar Kuhns, "The Great Poets of Italy," p. 141. |