258 GENETICS 



b. By Enlarging Individual Opportunity 



Much good human germplasm goes to waste 

 through ineffectiveness on account of unfavorable 

 environment or lack of a suitable opportunity to 

 develop. 



Every agency which contributes toward increasing 

 the opportunity of the individual to attain to a 

 better development of his latent possibilities is in 

 harmony with a thoroughly positive eugenic prac- 

 tice. Thus better schools, better homes, better 

 living conditions, in short, all euthenic endeavor, 

 directly serves the eugenic ideal by making the best 

 out of whatever germinal equipment is present in 

 man. 



c. By Preventing Germinal Waste 



Much good protoplasm fails to find expression in 

 the form of offspring because one or the other of 

 possible parents is cut off either by preventable 

 death or by social hindrances. To avoid such ca- 

 lamities is a part of the positive program of eugenics. 



1. Preventable Death 



War, from the eugenic point of view, is the height 

 of folly, since presumably the brave and the phys- 

 ically fit march away to fight, while in general the 

 unqualified stay at home to reproduce the next gen- 

 eration. When a soldier dies on the battlefield or in 

 the hospital, it is not alone a brave man who is cut 

 off, but it is the termination of a probably desirable 

 strain of germplasm. The Thirty Years' War in 



