EVOLUTION OF MAN AND ITS CONTROL 49 



THE EVOLUTION OF MAN AND ITS CONTROL 1 



By ROSWELL H. JOHNSON 



An Introduction to Eugenics 



THERE are two very different ways in which the progress of man 

 may take place, and great error and confusion have arisen from 

 the failure to discriminate them. The one consists of a change in 

 the intrinsic qualities of men as they are born from generation to 

 generation. This is biological progress or evolution. The other 

 process, to some extent independent of the individual, is a change in 

 the things men have, know, and do, and may be called social progress. 

 If, we compare the best tribal stocks of the present with those of two 

 thousand years ago, we find but little innate gain, but the social progress 

 in that time has been astounding. 



The comparative slowness of biological progress as contrasted with 

 that of civilization is to be expected when we consider the power of the 

 latter to accumulate and hand down the results of every advance, while 

 in biological evolution there is a constant intervention of heredity on 

 the conservative side. Although the greatest human progress thus far 

 has consequently been wrought in the social rather than the biological 

 field, there have always, since as early as Plato, been patriots and phi- 

 losophers who aimed to uplift not only the environment of the race, but 

 its inborn character as well. The question is — is it possible to secure 

 for the new-born babies of the future an innate moral, mental and 

 physical nature superior to that of the present generation? 



It is as an answer to this question that the new science of eugenics 

 is being mapped out, its field being the study of the biological factors 

 affecting human evolution, with their application to the breeding of a 

 better race of men. Though it deals chiefly with the laws of heredity 

 it must consider also problems of environment and nurture, as will be 

 seen later on. 



The chief reason for the impracticability of most plans of race im- 

 provement until recent times has been that their advocates failed to 

 regard the complex relations which social and biological progress must 

 always bear to one another. Plato, for example, in his anxiety to allow 

 none but superior children to be born into his Republic, was willing to 

 give up such a valuable institution for social progress as the family. 

 We must aim, therefore, to bring into harmony, as far as possible, the 



1 The author is indebted to Miss Jessie Wallace Hughan for assistance in 

 preparing this manuscript for the press. 



VOL. lxxvi. 4. 



