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The opportunity for betterment is real and practical, not merely academic.

Men ignore Nature’s laws in their personal lives. They crave a larger measure of goodness and happiness, and yet in their choice of dwelling places, in their building of houses to live in, in their selection of food and drink, in their clothing of their bodies, in their choice of occupations and amusements, in their methods and habits of work, they disregard natural laws and impose upon themselves conditions that make their ideals of goodness and happiness impossible of attainment.

Prof. George E. Dawson, The Control of Life through Environment.

And is it, I ask, an unworthy ambition for man to set before himself to understand those eternal laws upon which his happiness, his prosperity, his very life depend? Is he to be blamed and anathematized for endeavoring to fulfill the divine injunction: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for that is the whole duty of man”? Before he can keep them, surely he must first ascertain what they are.

Adam Sedgwick. Address, Imperial College of Science and Technology,

December 16, 1909. Nature, December 23, 1909, p. 228.

In my judgment, the situation is hopeful. To realize that our problems are chiefly those of environment which we in increasing measure control, to realize that, no matter how bad the environment of this generation, the next is not injured provided that it be given favorable conditions, is surely to have an optimistic view.

Carl Kelsey, Influence of Heredity and Environment upon Race Improvement.

Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1909.