204 THE NEXT GENERATION 



command of reason and protect children before they are 

 born, we shall be able to change the entire outlook for the 

 race within two or three generations. 



If we succeed in doing this, those who live in the future 

 will have the chance to be as surprised as Dr. Jordan was 

 when he went to Aosta. They will read about the defectives 

 of the twentieth century, will look hither and thither for their 

 descendants, and when they ask what has become of them, 

 answer will be made, " They have ceased to be ; practical 

 application of the laws of race regeneration saved them." 



If now we ask what race regeneration really means, we shall 

 be told that children have the right to be well born, and that 

 men and woman who are so defective as to be unfit must not 

 be allowed to become ancestors. And this is the meaning of 

 race regeneration. 



It is a matter of securing better descendants by taking the 

 laws of inheritance into account. It is an obligation which 

 commands each generation to pass on to future generations 

 the best it has received, and to let its worst inheritance die 

 with itself. 



The history of the human race does indeed make it plain 

 that a worthy line of ancestors is more to be desired than 

 gold or lands or worldly position of any sort. It proves that 

 right parentage is the noblest gift which one generation 

 may offer to another. 



Each of us carries his own ancestral standard through life. 

 Each received this standard from men and women who are 

 ranged back of us in endless rows. If the standard was high 

 when it came to us, let us pass it on just as high to those who 

 are to come after. If it tottered when we received it, let us 

 so conduct our lives that it may be straightened up a little and 

 be carried higher rather than lower by the next generation. 



