HUMAN CONSERVATION 247 



3. FURTHER APPLICATION OF WHAT WE KNOW 

 NECESSARY 



Human performance always lags behind human 

 knowledge. Many persons who are fully aware of 

 the right procedure do not put their knowledge into 

 practice. It follows, therefore, that any program of 

 eugenics which does not grip the imagination of the 

 common people in such a way as to become an effec- 

 tive part of their very lives is bound to remain largely 

 an academic affair for Utopians to quarrel and theo- 

 rize over. 



It is not enough to collect facts and work out an 

 analysis and interpretation of them, for, important 

 as this preliminary step is, it must be followed by a 

 convincing campaign of education. 



The lives of the unborn do not force themselves 

 upon the average man or woman with the same 

 insistency as the lives already begun. In the midst 

 of the overwhelming demands of the present, the 

 appeal of posterity for better blood is vague and 

 remote. If every individual regarded the germ- 

 plasm he carries as a sacred trust, then it would be 

 the part of an awakened eugenic conscience to restrain 

 that gennplasm when it is known to be defective or, 

 when it is not defective, to hand it on to posterity 

 with at least as much foresight as is exercised in 

 breeding domestic animals and cultivated plants. 



The eugenic conscience is in need of development, 

 and it is only when this becomes thoroughly aroused 

 in the rank and file of society as well as among the 



