After a gardener has produced his seed, guaranteeing a good heredity by breeding together those individual plants which possess in the highest degree the qualities he desires to secure, he turns his attention to the seed bed. First of all, the location must be good--the bed must be on a southern slope, where it will benefit by the first warm rays of the spring sun; then the soil must be finely pulverized, in order that the tiny rootlets may easily force their way downward, finding nourishment ready at hand; when the seeds have been planted, in ground well prepared and fertilized, they must be watered, cultivated, weeded; and as they develop into larger plants, thinned, transplanted, pruned and sprayed. The wise gardener considers environment as well as heredity. By sowing choice seeds in well prepared soil, he ensures the excellence of his crop. Modern society may well be compared to a garden. The plants are living, moving beings, with some freedom to act on their own initiative. Moreover, it is they who make and tend the gardens in which they grow. Like the gardener in the story, they must look to environment as well as to heredity. The seed bed must be carefully prepared, and the young plants, as they appear, must be given all the attention which science makes possible. Modern society is a garden of which the products are men and women. The sowing, weeding, cultivating--carried forward through social institutions--determines by its character whether the race shall decay, as other races have done, or progress toward the Super Man. The science of social gardening--Social Adjustment--has been given a great impetus, in recent years, by the increased knowledge of the relative influences of heredity and environment in determining the status of the individual. This knowledge has led us to a belief in men. Earlier beliefs conceived of the majority of men as utterly depraved. Some indeed were among the elect, but the remainder, born to the lowest depths of the social gehenna, were outcasts and pariahs, helpless in this world and hopeless in the next. This doctrine of total depravity set at nought all progressive effort. Here stands a man--society has called him a criminal. Last year he attempted to steal an automobile, less than three weeks after his release from serving a two-year sentence for grand larceny. To-day he is in court again, charged with entering a lodging house and stealing three pairs of trousers and an overcoat. The man is on trial for burglary--what shall be the social verdict regarding him? "Alas," mourns the advocate of total depravity, "God so made him. It is not our right to interfere." "Wait," says the social scientist, "until I investigate the case."