selection" in the genesis and preservation of species, and since his
successors, both followers and opponents, have added to this many other
kinds of selection that are continually operative, it has become
increasingly evident that from one standpoint we may look on the sum of
natural processes, organic and inorganic, as a vast selective system, as
the result of which things are as they are, whether the results are the
positions of celestial bodies or the relative places of human beings in
the intellectual or social scale. The exact constitution of the present
population of New York is the result of a great number of selective acts,
some regular, others more or less haphazard. Selection is no less
selection because it occurs by what we call chance--for chance is only our
name for the totality of trivial and unconsidered causes. When, however,
we count man and man's efforts in the sum of natural objects and forces,
we have to reckon with his intelligence in these selective processes. I
desire to call attention to the place that they play in educative systems
and in particular to the way in which they may be furthered or made more
effective by books, especially by public collections of books.

When we think of any kind of training as it affects the individual, we
most naturally regard it as changing that individual, as making him more
fit, either for life in general or for some special form of life's
activities. But when we think of it as affecting a whole community or a
whole nation, we may regard it as essentially a selective process. In a
given community it is not only desirable that a certain number of men
should be trained to do a specified kind of work, but it is even more
desirable that these should be the men that are best fitted to do this
work. When Mr. Luther Burbank brings into play the selection by means of
which he achieves his remarkable results in plant breeding he gets rid of
the unfit by destruction, and as all are unfit for the moment that do not
advance the special end that he has in view, he burns up plants--new and