EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS 389 



of Rochester is doing this with its public school children. We can urge 

 the gathering of such data by privately controlled institutions of similar 

 purpose. We can urge right-minded individuals everywhere to supply 

 such data as to themselves and their families. But this will still fall 

 far short of our need, for those who are contributing the most children 

 to the coming generation will be the last voluntarily to supply the de- 

 sired data. Nothing short of a state system of compulsory gathering of 

 data for all individuals can serve as an adequate basis for such negative 

 eugenics as it may in time be wise to enforce by law. But such com- 

 pulsory gathering of data can not now be had. There must first be 

 much education of general sentiment, and there must be trained stu- 

 dents to take the records. 



That observant naturalist, Oliver Herford, speaking in the supposed 

 person of a crab, recently said : 



Be sure you are right 

 Then go sideways for all you are worth. 



I am asking for more time for the man of science to do his work 

 before we insist upon applying too widely his results, lest in such appli- 

 cation of uncertain scientific data we find ourselves making crab-like 

 progress. 



But I can not close with such a negative word. There are positive 

 aspects of the matter which deserve the chief emphasis. Let me again 

 urge that among the great needs must be recognized first scientific study 

 of the principles of inheritance, and for this liberal financial support 

 should be had ; and second the cultivation of the realization that in mar- 

 riage it is ignoble to seek the happiness only of the man and wife and to 

 forget the character of the children and through them the welfare of so- 

 ciety. Our poets and prophets, as well as our men of science, must open 

 men's eyes to the beauty and worth of the social ideal in the family. 

 Though we have advanced so short a way in the discovery of the phenom- 

 ena and principles of inheritance, and though we have accurate inherit- 

 ance tables for so few individuals, we can still clearly discern that mar- 

 riage of certain individuals is unsocial. To what extent the state can 

 now intervene to prevent such marriage is a question which needs careful 

 detailed study, and is not an appropriate question for discussion in this 

 brief general paper. But aside from this question of the limits of state 

 action, we must emphasize the vital need of cultivation of the social 

 point of view in this most vital of social institutions, the family, and the 

 need now to gather the data upon which eugenics may in the future 

 be based. 



