NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 193 



From the point of view of racial welfare one should distinguish 

 between the elimination of infants who are destined to produce 

 inferior adults and infants who, though weak, grow up into adults 

 who are strong and healthy. The preservation of the latter class 

 of infants would not lead to undesirable developments, except 

 perhaps in making it necessary for parents to bestow more care 

 upon their new born children. As the human species evolved 

 from animal ancestry infants became progressively weaker and 

 required more and more attention for their successful rearing. 

 Along with this there went an increase in the amount of parental 

 care devoted to the young. Infants may be very poorly adapted 

 to survival in an unfavorable environment and nevertheless form, 

 as adults, the most desirable types of the race. Goethe as an 

 infant was very puny and his life was for a time almost despaired 

 of, but as a man he was exceptionally robust, vigorous and long 

 lived. It is only in so far as infantile weakness is correlated 

 with weakness or defect in later life that the elimination of the 

 less hardy babies would have any relation to racial improvement. 

 It is probable that despite many exceptions there is a general 

 correlation between weakness in infancy and weakness in later 

 life. Ploetz has adduced evidence to show that infant and child 

 mortality is less in stocks with greater longevity. Part of the data 

 were obtained from records of royal families (fiirstliche Familien) 

 of Germany and another part from families mainly of the middle 

 class (burgerliche Familien). The results may be seen in the 

 following table: 



