We have been god-like in the planned breeding of our domesticated plants, but rabbit-like in the unplanned breeding of ourselves.

Toynbee contrasts humanity’s deliberate, highly controlled improvement of domesticated plants (selective breeding aimed at desired traits) with the largely unmanaged way human populations reproduce. The “god-like” phrase underscores the power and foresight humans apply to agriculture, while “rabbit-like” suggests rapid, instinct-driven multiplication without planning for long-term consequences. The remark functions as a critique of modern civilization’s imbalance: technological mastery over nature paired with insufficient ethical, social, or political planning about human welfare, population, and heredity. It also gestures toward mid-20th-century anxieties about overpopulation and the responsibilities that come with scientific control, implying that civilization’s survival may depend on applying comparable deliberation to human self-governance.