"Eugenics," wrote Francis Galton, who founded the science and coined the name, "is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally." The definition is universally accepted, but by its use of the word "study" it defines a pure science, and the present book is concerned rather with the application of such a science. Accepting Galton's definition, we shall for our purposes slightly extend it by saying that applied eugenics embraces all such measures, in use or prospect either individually or collectively, as may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations of man, either physically or mentally, whether or not this was the avowed purpose.

It is one of the newest of sciences. It was practically forced into existence by logical necessity. It is certainly here to stay, and it demands the right to speak, in many cases to cast the deciding vote, on some of the most important questions that confront society.

The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwin's work on The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, in 1859. It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed sequences of events can be described in formulas which are called natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws. Then the question logically arose, "Is not man himself subject to these same laws? Can he not use his knowledge of them to improve his own species, as he has been more or less consciously improving the plants and animals that were of most value to him, for many centuries?"

The evolutionist answered both these questions affirmatively. However great may be the superiority of his mind, man is first of all an animal, subject to the natural laws that govern other animals. He can learn to comply with these laws; he can, therefore, take an active share in furthering the process of evolution toward a higher life.

That, briefly, is the scope of the science of eugenics, as its founder, Sir Francis Galton, conceived it. "Now that this new animal, man, finds himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and intelligence," Galton wrote 30 years ago, "he ought, I submit, to awake to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half consciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so, deliberately and systematically."

But, it may well be asked, how does this sudden need for eugenics arise, when the world has gone along without it for hundreds of millions of years in the past, and the human race has made the great ascent from an ape-like condition in spite of the fact that such a science as eugenics was never dreamed of?

For answer recall that natural selection, which is mainly responsible for bringing man to his present situation, has worked chiefly through a differential death-rate. The less fit die: the more fit survive. In the earlier stages of society, man interfered little with natural selection. But during the last century the increase of the philanthropic spirit and the progress of medicine have done a great deal to interfere with the selective process. In some ways, selection in the human race has almost ceased; in many ways it is actually reversed, that is, it results in the survival of the inferior rather than the superior. In the olden days the criminal was summarily executed, the weakly child died soon after birth through lack of proper care and medical attention, the insane were dealt with so violently that if they were not killed by the treatment they were at least left hopelessly "incurable" and had little chance of becoming parents. Harsh measures, all of these, but they kept the germ-plasm of the race reasonably purified.

To-day, how is it? The inefficients, the wastrels, the physical, mental, and moral cripples are carefully preserved at public expense. The criminal is turned out on parole after a few years, to become the father of a family. The insane is discharged as "cured," again to take up the duties of citizenship. The feeble-minded child is painfully "educated," often at the expense of his normal brother or sister. In short, the undesirables of the race, with whom the bloody hand of natural selection would have made short work early in life, are now nursed along to old age.

Of course, one would not have it otherwise with respect to the prolongation of life. To expose deformed children as the Spartans did would outrage our moral sentiments; to chloroform the incurable is a proposition that almost every one condemns.

But this philanthropic spirit, this zealous regard for the interests of the unfortunate, which is rightly considered one of the highest manifestations of Christian civilization, has in many cases benefited the few at the expense of the many. The present generation, in making its own life comfortable, is leaving a staggering bill to be paid by posterity.

It is at this point that eugenics comes in and demands that a distinction be made between the interests of the individual and the interests of the race. It does not yield to any one in its solicitude for the individual unfortunate; but it says, "His happiness in life does not need to include leaving a family of children, inheritors of his defects, who if they were able to think might curse him for begetting them and curse society for allowing them to be born." And looking at the other side of the problem, eugenics says to the young man and young woman, "You should enjoy the greatest happiness that love can bring to a life. But something more is expected of you than a selfish, short-sighted indifference to all except yourselves in the world. When you understand the relation of the individual to the race, you will find your greatest happiness only in a marriage which will result in a family of worthy children. You are temporarily a custodian of the inheritance of the whole past; it is far more disgraceful for you to squander or ruin this heritage, or to regard it as intended solely for your individual, selfish gratification, than it would be for you to dissipate a fortune in money which you had received, or to betray any trust which had been confided to you by one of your fellow men."

Such is the teaching of eugenics. It is not wholly new. The early Greeks gave much thought to it, and with the insight which characterized them, they rightly put the emphasis on the constructive side; they sought to breed better men and women, not merely to accomplish a work of hygiene, to lessen taxes, and reduce suffering, by reducing the number of unfortunates among them. As early as the first half of the sixth century B. C. the Greek poet Theognis of Megara wrote: "We look for rams and asses and stallions of good stock, and one believes that good will come from good; yet a good man minds not to wed an evil daughter of an evil sire, if he but give her much wealth.... Wealth confounds our stock. Marvel not that the stock of our folk is tarnished, for the good is mingling with the base." A century later eugenics was discussed in some detail by Plato, who suggested that the state intervene to mate the best with the best, and the worst with the worst; the former should be encouraged to have large families, and their children should be reared by the government, while the children of the unfit were to be, as he says, "put away in some mysterious, unknown places, as they should be." Aristotle developed the idea on political lines, being more interested in the economic than the biological aspects of marriage; but he held firmly to the doctrine that the state should feel free to intervene in the interests of reproductive selection.

For nearly two thousand years after this, conscious eugenic ideals were largely ignored. Constant war reversed natural selection, as it is doing to-day, by killing off the physically fit and leaving the relatively unfit to reproduce the race; while monasticism and the enforced celibacy of the priesthood performed a similar office for many of the mentally superior, attracting them to a career in which they could leave no posterity. At the beginning of the last century a germ of modern eugenics is visible in Malthus' famous essay on population, in which he directed attention to the importance of the birth-rate for human welfare, since this essay led Darwin and Wallace to enunciate the theory of natural selection, and to point out clearly the effects of artificial selection. It is really on Darwin's work that the modern science of eugenics is based, and it owes its beginning to Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton.

Galton was born in 1822, studied mathematics and medicine, traveled widely, attained fame as an explorer in South Africa, and after inheriting sufficient income to make him independent, settled down in London and gave his time to pioneering experiments in many branches of science. He contributed largely to founding the science of meteorology, opened new paths in experimental psychology, introduced the system of finger prints to anthropology, and took up the study of heredity, publishing in 1865 a series of articles under the title of "Hereditary Talent and Genius," which contained his first utterances on eugenics.

The present generation can hardly understand what a new field Galton broke. Even Darwin had supposed that men do not differ very much in intellectual endowment, and that their differences in achievement are principally the result of differences in zeal and industry. Galton's articles, whose thesis was that better men could be bred by conscious selection, attracted much attention from the scientific world and were expanded in 1869 in his book Hereditary Genius.

This was an elaborate and painstaking study of the biographies of 977 men who would rank, according to Galton's estimate, as about 1 to 4,000 of the general population, in respect to achievement. The number of families found to contain more than one eminent man was 300, divided as follows: Judges, 85; Statesmen, 39; Commanders, 27; Literary, 33; Scientific, 43; Poets, 20; Artists, 28; Divines, 25. The close groupings of the interrelated eminence led to the conclusion that heredity plays a very important part in achievement. The greater success of real sons of great men as compared with adopted sons of great men likewise indicated, he thought, that success is due to actual biological heredity rather than to the good opportunities afforded the scion of the illustrious family. Galton's conclusion was that by selecting from strains that produced eminence, a superior human stock could be bred.

In 1874 he published a similar study of the heredity of 180 eminent English scientists, reËmphasizing the claims of nature over nurture, to use his familiar antithesis. In 1883 he published "Inquiries into the Human Faculty and Its Development," a collection of evolutionary and anthropometric essays where the word Eugenics was first used in a new exposition of the author's views. "Natural Inheritance" appeared in 1889, being the essence of various memoirs published since "Hereditary Genius," dealing with the general biological principles underlying the study of heredity and continuing the study of resemblances between individuals in respect to stature, eye color, artistic faculty and morbid conditions.

Galton's interest in eugenics was not lessened by the abundant criticism he received, and in 1901 he defended "The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment" before the Anthropological Society. Three years later he read a paper entitled "Eugenics; Its Definition, Scope and Aims," to the Sociological Society. His program, in brief, was as follows:

1. Disseminate knowledge of hereditary laws as far as surely known and promote their further study.

2. Inquire into birth rates of various strata of society (classified according to civic usefulness) in ancient and modern nations.

3. Collect reliable data showing how large and thriving families have most frequently originated.

4. Study the influences affecting marriage.

5. Persistently set forth the national importance of Eugenics.

The following year, Galton again read a paper before the Society, suggesting the award of certificates of quality to the eugenically fit. He also maintained that marriage customs which are largely controlled by public opinion could be modified for racial welfare through a molding of public sentiment.

In 1904 he founded a Research Fellowship at the University of London to determine, if possible, what the standard of fitness is, and in 1905 a Scholarship was added. Edgar Schuster and Miss E. M. Elderton held these posts until 1907, when Professor Karl Pearson took charge of the research work and, at the resignation of Mr. Schuster, David Heron was appointed Fellow. On Galton's death, January 17, 1911, it became known that through the terms of his will a professorship was founded and Professor Pearson was invited to hold it. His corps of workers constitutes the Galton Eugenics Laboratory staff.

To spread throughout the British Empire such knowledge of eugenics as might be gathered by specialists, the Eugenics Education Society was formed in 1908 with Galton as honorary president. Its field comprises: (1) Biology in so far as it concerns hereditary selection; (2) Anthropology as related to race and marriage; (3) Politics, where it bears on parenthood in relation to civic worth; (4) Ethics, in so far as it promotes ideals that lead to the improvement of social quality; (5) Religion, in so far as it strengthens and sanctifies eugenic duty.

In America the movement got an early start but developed slowly. The first definite step was the formation of an Institute of Heredity in Boston, shortly after 1880, by Loring Moody, who was assisted by the poet Longfellow, Samuel E. Sewall, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other well-known people. He proposed to work very much along the lines that the Eugenics Record Office later adopted, but he was ahead of his time, and his attempt seems to have come to nothing.

In 1883 Alexander Graham Bell, who may be considered the first scientific worker in eugenics in the United States, published a paper on the danger of the formation of a deaf variety of the human race in this country, in which he gave the result of researches he had made at Martha's Vineyard and other localities during preceding years, on the pedigrees of congenitally deaf persons—deaf mutes, as they were then called. He showed clearly that congenital deafness is largely due to heredity, that it is much increased by consanguineous marriages, and that it is of great importance to prevent the marriage of persons, in both of whose families congenital deafness is present. About five years later he founded the Volta Bureau in Washington, D. C., for the study of deafness, and this has fostered a great deal of research work on this particular phase of heredity.

In 1903 the American Breeders' Association was founded at St. Louis by plant and animals breeders who desired to keep in touch with the new subject of genetics, the science of breeding, which was rapidly coming to have great practical importance. From the outset, the members realized that the changes which they could produce in races of animals and plants might also be produced in man, and the science of eugenics was thus recognized on a sound biological basis. Soon a definite eugenics section was formed, and as the importance of this section increased, and it was realized that the name of Breeders' Association was too narrowly construed by the public, the association changed its name (1913) to the American Genetic Association, and the name of its organ from the American Breeders' Magazine to the Journal of Heredity.

Under the auspices of this association, the Eugenics Record Office was established at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, by Dr. C. B. Davenport. It has been mainly supported by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, but has since been taken over by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It is gathering pedigrees in many parts of the United States, analyzing them and publishing the results in a series of bulletins.

In the last few years, the public has come to take a keen interest in the possibilities of eugenics. This has led some sex hygienists, child welfare workers, and persons similarly engaged, to attempt to capitalize the interest in eugenics by appropriating the name for their own use. We strongly object to any such misuse of the word, which should designate the application of genetics to the human race. Sex hygiene, child welfare, and other sanitary and sociological movements should stand on their own feet and leave to eugenics the scope which its Greek derivation indicates for it,—the science of good breeding.[73]

In all parts of Europe, the ideas of eugenics have gradually spread. In 1912 the first International Eugenics Congress was held at London, under auspices of the Eugenics Education Society; more than 700 delegates were in attendance.

Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria are united in an International Eugenics Society and the war led to the formation of a number of separate societies in Germany. Hungary has formed an organization of its own, France has its society in Paris, and the Italian Anthropological Society has given much attention to the subject. The Anthropological Society of Denmark has similarly recognized eugenics by the formation of a separate section. The Institut Solvay of Belgium, a foundation with sociological aims, created a eugenics section several years ago; and in Holland a strong committee has been formed. Last of all, Sweden has put a large separate organization in the field.

In the United States the subject has interested many women's clubs, college organizations and Young Men's Christian Associations, while the periodical press has given it a large amount of attention. Public enthusiasm, often ill-guided, has in a few cases outrun the facts, and has secured legislation in some states, which by no means meets the approval of most scientific eugenists.

When we speak of scientific eugenists, it may appear that we use the word in an invidious way. We use it deliberately, and by using it we mean to intimate that we do not think enthusiasm is an adequate substitute for knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a measure as being eugenic or dysgenic—as likely to improve the race or cause its deterioration. Eugenics is a biological science which, in its application, must be interpreted with the help of the best scientific method. Very few social workers, whose field eugenics touches, are competent to understand its bearings without some study, and an appreciation of eugenics is the more difficult for them, because an understanding of it will show them that some of their work is based on false premises. The average legislator is equally unlikely to understand the full import of eugenics, unless he has made a definite effort to do so. All the more honor, then, to the rapidly increasing number of social workers and legislators who have grasped the full meaning of eugenics and are now striving to put it in effect. The agriculturist, through his experience with plants and animals, is probably better qualified than anyone else to realize the practicability of eugenics, and it is accordingly not a matter of mere chance that the science of eugenics in America was built up by a breeders' association, and has found and still finds hundreds of effective advocates in the graduates of the agricultural colleges.

The program of eugenics naturally divides itself in two parts:

(1) Reducing the racial contribution of the least desirable part of the population.

(2) Increasing the racial contribution of the superior part of the population.

The first part of this program is the most pressing and the most easily dealt with; it is no cause for surprise, then, that to many people it has seemed to be the predominant aim of eugenics. Certainly the problem is great enough to stagger anyone who looks it full in the face; although for a variety of reasons, satisfactory statistical evidence of racial degeneracy is hard to get.

Considering only the "institutional population" of the United States, one gets the following figures:

Blind: total, 64,763 according to census of 1900. Of these, 35,645 were totally blind and 29,118 partly blind. The affection is stated to have been congenital in 4,730 cases. Nineteen per cent of the blind were found to have blind relatives; 4.5% of them were returned as the offspring of cousin marriages.

Deaf: total, 86,515, according to the census of 1900. More than 50,000 of them were deaf from childhood (under 20), 12,609 being deaf from birth. At least 4.5% of the deaf were stated to be offspring of cousin marriages, and 32.1% to have deaf relatives. The significance of this can not be determined unless it is known how many normal persons have deaf relatives (or blind relatives, in considering the preceding paragraph), but it points to the existence of families that are characterized by deafness (or blindness).

Insane: the census of 1910 enumerated only the insane who were in institutions; they numbered 187,791. The number outside of institutions is doubtless considerable but can not be computed. The institutional population is not a permanent, but mainly a transient one, the number of persons discharged from institutions in 1910 being 29,304. As the number and size of institutions does not increase very rapidly, it would appear probable that 25,000 insane persons pass through and out of institutions, and back into the general population, each year. From this one can get some idea of the amount of neurotic weakness in the population of the United States,—much of it congenital and heritable in character.

Feeble-minded: the census (1910) lists only those in institutions, who totaled about 40,000. The census experts believe that 200,000 would be a conservative estimate of the total number of feeble-minded in the country, and many psychologists think that 300,000 would be more nearly accurate. The number of feeble-minded who are receiving institutional care is almost certainly not more than 10% or 15% of the total, and many of these (about 15,000) are in almshouses, not special institutions.

Paupers: There were 84,198 paupers enumerated in almshouses on January 1, 1910, and 88,313 admitted during the year, which indicates that the almshouse paupers are a rapidly shifting group. This population, probably of several hundred thousand persons, who drift into and out of almshouses, can hardly be characterized accurately, but in large part it must be considered at least inefficient and probably of mentally low grade.

Criminals: The inmates of prisons, penitentiaries, reformatories, and similar places of detention numbered 111,609 in 1910; this does not include 25,000 juvenile delinquents. The jail population is nearly all transient; one must be very cautious in inferring that conviction for an offense against the law indicates lack of eugenic value; but it is worth noting that the number of offenders who are feeble-minded is probably not less than one-fourth or one-third. If the number of inebriates could be added, it would greatly increase the total; and inebriacy or chronic alcoholism is generally recognized now as indicating in a majority of cases either feeble-mindedness or some other defect of the nervous system. The number of criminals who are in some way neurotically tainted is placed by some psychologists at 50% or more of the total prison population.

Add to these a number of epileptics, tramps, prostitutes, beggars, and others whom the census enumerator finds it difficult to catch, and the total number of possible undesirable parents becomes very large. It is in fact much larger than appears in these figures, because of the fact that many people carry defects that are latent and only appear in the offspring of a marriage representing two tainted strains. Thus the feeble-minded child usually if not always has feeble-mindedness in both his father's and mother's ancestry, and for every one of the patent feeble-minded above enumerated, there may be several dozen latent ones, who are themselves probably normal in every way and yet carry the dangerously tainted germ-plasm.

The estimate has frequently been made that the United States would be much better off eugenically if it were deprived of the future racial contributions of at least 10% of its citizens. While literally true this estimate is too high for the group which could be considered for attempts to directly control in a practical eugenics program.

Natural selection, in the early days of man's history, would have killed off many of these people early in life. They would have been unable to compete with their physically and mentally more vigorous fellows and would have died miserably by starvation or violence. Natural selection's use of the death-rate was a brutal one, but at least it prevented such traits as these people show from increasing in each generation. Eugenists hope to arrive at the same result, not by the death-rate but by the birth-rate. If germinally anti-social persons are kept humanely segregated during their lifetime, instead of being turned out after a few years of institutional life and allowed to marry, they will leave no descendants, and the number of congenital defectives in the community will be notably diminished. If the same policy is followed through succeeding generations, the number of defectives, of those incapable of taking a useful part in society, will become smaller and smaller. One who does not believe that these people hand on their traits to their descendants may profitably consider the famous history of the so-called Juke family, a strain originating among the "finger lakes" of New York, whose history was published by R. L. Dugdale as far back as 1877 and lately restudied by A. H. Estabrook.

"From one lazy vagabond nicknamed 'Juke,' born in 1720, whose two sons married five degenerate sisters, six generations numbering about 1,200 persons of every grade of idleness, viciousness, lewdness, pauperism, disease, idiocy, insanity and criminality were traced. Of the total seven generations, 300 died in infancy; 310 were professional paupers, kept in almshouses a total of 2,300 years; 440 were physically wrecked by their own 'diseased wickedness'; more than half the women fell into prostitution; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were thieves; 7 were murderers; only 20 learned a trade, 10 of these in state prison, and all at a state cost of over $1,250,000."[74]

How heredity works both ways, is shown by the history of the Kallikak family, published by H. H. Goddard a few years ago.

"At the beginning of the Revolutionary War a young man, known in the history as Martin Kallikak, had a son by a nameless, feeble-minded girl, from whom there have descended in the direct line four hundred and eighty individuals. One hundred and forty-three of these are known to have been feeble-minded, and only forty-six are known to have been normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful. Thirty-six have been illegitimate; thirty-three, sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes; twenty-four, alcoholic; three, epileptic; eighty-two died in infancy; three were criminal, and eight kept houses of ill-fame. After the war, Martin Kallikak married a woman of good stock. From this union have come in direct line four hundred and ninety-six, among whom only two were alcoholic, and one known to be sexually immoral. The legitimate children of Martin have been doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, traders, landholders, in short, respectable citizens, men and women prominent in every phase of social life. These two families have lived on the same soil, in the same atmosphere, and in short, under the same general environment, yet the bar sinister has marked every generation of one and has been unknown in the other."

If it were possible to improve or eradicate these defective strains by giving them better surroundings, the nation might easily get rid of this burden. But we have given reasons in Chapter I for believing that the problem can not be solved in that way, and more evidence to the same effect will be present in other chapters of the book.

An understanding of the nature of the problem will show that present methods of dispensing justice, giving charity, dealing with defectives and working for social betterment need careful examination and numerous modifications, if they are not to be ineffectual or merely palliative, or worse still, if they are not to give temporary relief at the cost of greatly aggravating the social disease in the end.

In the past America has given and at present still gives much thought to the individual and little, if any, to posterity. Eugenics does not want to diminish this regard for the individual, but it does insistently declare that the interests of the many are greater than those of the few, and it holds that a statesmanlike policy requires thought for the future as well as the present. It would be hard to find a eugenist to-day who would propose, with Plato, that the infants with bad heredity should be put to death, but their right to grow up to the fullest enjoyment of life does not necessarily include the right to pass on their defective heredity to a long line of descendants, naturally increasing in number in each generation. Indeed a regard for the totality of human happiness makes it necessary that they should not so continue.

While it is the hope of eugenics that fewer defective and anti-social individuals shall be born in the future, it has been emphasized so much that the program of eugenics is likely to be seen in false perspective. In reality it is the less important side of the picture. More good citizens are wanted, as well as fewer bad ones. Every race requires leaders. These leaders appear from time to time, and enough is known about eugenics now to show that their appearance is frequently predictable, not accidental. It is possible to have them appear more frequently; and in addition, to raise the level of the whole race, making the entire nation happier and more useful. These are the great tasks of eugenics. America needs more families like that old Puritan strain which is one of the familiar examples of eugenics:

"At their head stands Jonathan Edwards, and behind him an array of his descendants numbering in 1900, 1,394, of whom 295 were college graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges; 65 professors in colleges, besides many principals of other important educational institutions; 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; 100 and more clergymen, missionaries, or theological professors; 75 were officers in the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited; 33 American states and several foreign countries, and 92 American cities and many foreign cities have profited by the beneficent influences of their eminent activity; 100 and more were lawyers, of whom one was our most eminent professor of law; 30 were judges; 80 held public office, of whom one was vice president of the United States; three were United States senators; several were governors, members of Congress, framers of state constitutions, mayors of cities and ministers of foreign courts; one was president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; 15 railroads, many banks, insurance companies, and large industrial enterprises have been indebted to their management. Almost if not every department of social progress and of the public weal has felt the impulse of this healthy and long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them was ever convicted of crime."

Every one will agree that the nation needs more families like that. How can it get them? Galton blazed the way in 1865, when he pointed to selective breeding as the effective means. The animal breeder knows what marvels he can accomplish by this means; but it is not practicable to breed human beings in that direct way. Is there any indirect method of reaching the same ends?

There are, in our opinion, a good many such means, and it is the principal purpose of this book to point them out. The problem of constructive or positive eugenics, naturally divides itself into two parts:

1. To secure a sufficient number of marriages of the superior.

2. To secure an adequate birth-rate from these marriages.

The problem of securing these two results is a complex one, which must be attacked by a variety of methods. It is necessary that superior people first be made to desire marriage and children; and secondly, that it be economically and otherwise possible for them to carry out this desire.

It may be of interest to know how the Germans are attacking the problem, even though some of their measures may be considered ineffective or inadvisable.

At its annual meeting in 1914 the German Society for Race Hygiene adopted a resolution on the subject of applied eugenics. "The future of the German people is at stake," it declares. "The German empire can not in the long run maintain its true nationality and the independence of its development, if it does not begin without delay and with the greatest energy to mold its internal and external politics as well as the whole life of the people in accordance with eugenic principles. Most important of all are measures for a higher reproduction of healthy and able families. The rapidly declining birth-rate of the healthy and able families necessarily leads to the social, economical and political retrogression of the German people," it points out, and then goes on to enumerate the causes of this decline, which it thinks is partly due to the action of racial poisons but principally to the increasing willful restriction of the number of children.

The society recognizes that the reasons for this limitation of the size of families are largely economic. It enumerates the question of expense, considerations of economic inheritance—that is, a father does not like to divide up his estate too much; the labor of women, which is incompatible with the raising of a large family; and the difficulties caused by the crowded housing in the large cities.

In order to secure a posterity sufficient in number and ability, the resolution continues, The German Society for Race Hygiene demands:

1. A back-to-the farm movement.

2. Better housing facilities in the cities.

3. Economic assistance of large families through payment of a substantial relief to married mothers who survive their husbands, and consideration of the number of children in the payment of public and private employees.

4. Abolition of certain impediments to marriage, such as the army regulation forbidding officers to marry before they reach a certain grade.

5. Increase of tax on alcohol, tobacco and luxuries, the proceeds to be used to subsidize worthy families.

6. Medical regulations of a hygienic nature.

7. Setting out large prizes for excellent works of art (novels, dramas, plastic arts) which glorify the ideal of motherhood, the family and simple life.

8. Awakening a national mind ready to undergo sacrifices on behalf of future generations.

In spite of some defects such a program brings out clearly the principle of eugenics,—the substitution of a selective birth-rate for the selective death-rate by which natural selection has brought the race to its present level. Nature lets a multitude of individuals be born and kills off the poorer ones; eugenics proposes to have fewer poor ones and more good ones born in each generation.

Any means which tends to bring about one of those ends, is a part of Applied Eugenics.

By this time the reader will have seen that eugenics has some definite ideals not only as to how the race can be kept from deteriorating further, under the interference with natural selection which civilization entails, but as to how its physical, mental and moral level can actually be raised. He can easily draw his own conclusions as to what eugenics does not propose. No eugenist worthy of the name has ever proposed to breed genius as the stockman breeds trotting horses, despite jibes of the comic press to the contrary. But if young people, before picking out their life partners, are thoroughly imbued with the idea that such qualities as energy, longevity, a sound constitution, public and private worth, are primarily due to heredity, and if they are taught to realize the fact that one marries not an individual but a family, the eugenist believes that better matings will be made, sometimes realized, sometimes insensibly.

Furthermore, if children from such matings are made an asset rather than a liability; if society ceases to penalize, in a hundred insidious ways, the parents of large and superior families, but honors and aids them instead, one may justifiably hope that the birth-rate in the most useful and happy part of the population will steadily increase.

Perhaps that is as far as it is necessary that the aim of eugenics should be defined; yet one can hardly ignore the philosophical aspect of the problem. Galton's suggestion that man should assist the course of his own evolution meets with the general approval of biologists; but when one asks what the ultimate goal of human evolution should be, one faces a difficult question. Under these circumstances, can it be said that eugenics really has a goal, or is it merely stumbling along in the dark, possibly far from the real road, of whose existence it is aware but of whose location it has no knowledge?

There are several routes on which one can proceed with the confidence that, if no one of them is the main road, at least it is likely to lead into the latter at some time. Fortunately, eugenics is, paradoxical as it may seem, able to advance on all these paths at once; for it proposes no definite goal, it sets up no one standard to which it would make the human race conform. Taking man as it finds him, it proposes to multiply all the types that have been found by past experience or present reason to be of most value to society. Not only would it multiply them in numbers, but also in efficiency, in capacity to serve the race.

By so doing, it undoubtedly fulfills the requirements of that popular philosophy which holds the aim of society to be the greatest happiness for the greatest number, or more definitely the increase of the totality of human happiness. To cause not to exist those who would be doomed from birth to give only unhappiness to themselves and those about them; to increase the number of those in whom useful physical and mental traits are well developed; to bring about an increase in the number of energetic altruists and a decrease in the number of the anti-social or defective; surely such an undertaking will come nearer to increasing the happiness of the greatest number, than will any temporary social palliative, any ointment for incurable social wounds. To those who accept that philosophy, made prominent by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and a host of other great thinkers, eugenics rightly understood must seem a prime necessity of society.

But can any philosophy dispense with eugenics? Take those to whom the popular philosophy of happiness seems a dangerous goal and to whom the only object of evolution that one is at present justified in recognizing is that of the perpetuation of the species and of the progressive conquest of nature, the acquiring of an ascendancy over all the earth. This is now as much a matter of self-preservation as it is of progress: although man no longer fights for life with the cave bear and saber-toothed tiger, the microbes which war with him are far more dangerous enemies than the big mammals of the past. The continuation of evolution, if it means conquest, is not a work for dilettantes and Lotos Eaters; it is a task that demands unremitting hard work.

To this newer philosophy of creative work eugenics is none the less essential. For eugenics wants in the world more physically sound men and women with greater ability in any valuable way. Whatever the actual goal of evolution may be, it can hardly be assumed by any except the professional pessimist, that a race made up of such men and women is going to be handicapped by their presence.

The correlation of abilities is as well attested as any fact in psychology. Those who decry eugenics on the ground that it is impossible to establish any "standard of perfection," since society needs many diverse kinds of people, are overlooking this fact. Any plan which increases the production of children in able families of various types will thereby produce more ability of all kinds, since if a family is particularly gifted in one way, it is likely to be gifted above the average in several other desirable ways.

Eugenics sets up no specific superman, as a type to which the rest of the race must be made to conform. It is not looking forward to the cessation of its work in a eugenic millenium. It is a perpetual process, which seeks only to raise the level of the race by the production of fewer people with physical and mental defects, and more people with physical and mental excellencies. Such a race should be able to perpetuate itself, to subdue nature, to improve its environment progressively; its members should be happy and productive. To establish such a goal seems justified by the knowledge of evolution which is now available; and to make progress toward it is possible.