THE TREND OF EVOLUTION 181 



means of increasing and diffusing knowledge were never so 

 good as at present. If knowledge and education can save 

 the race the prospect is promising, for they were never before 

 so widespread; the possibilities of continued progress rest on 

 education, eugenics, and enlightened effort. 



Education is the first and most important step in combating 

 these tendencies to racial decline. Assuming that the social 

 instincts of the major portion of mankind are sound and that 

 there is sufficient intelligence in the race at large to recognize 

 the dangers that threaten, it ought to be possible by education 

 to meet these dangers and overcome them. A more thorough 

 and widespread knowledge of the nature of man and of the 

 principles of heredity and development would lead to the 

 elimination of many of these dangers, for in the main we have 

 sinned through ignorance. Such knowledge would prevent the 

 importation and propagation of physical, mental, and moral 

 degenerates; it could prevent the amalgamation of better 

 races and families with poorer ones; it should increase the 

 number of good matings and of superior children; and it 

 should make human life healthier, happier, more rational, and 

 more efficient. Whatever good may come to the race through 

 better legislation, sanitation, eugenics, or euthenics will be 

 made possible by better education. 



What part eugenics may play in the betterment of the hu- 

 man race cannot now be foreseen. There is no doubt that, by 

 means of a thoroughgoing system of eugenics, feebleness of 

 body and of mind could be largely reduced and the race as a 

 whole made more healthful and intelligent; in short, the gen- 

 eral average of the race could be raised more nearly to the 

 level of the most perfect men and women of the past or 

 present. It is doubtful whether eugenics can go farther than 

 this and there is no probability that it can ever produce a race 

 of supermen. Important as eugenics is in preventing racial 

 degeneration it does not hold forth the hope of endless human 



