5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



two great modes of progress., choosing such methods of biological im- 

 provement as may help rather than hinder civilization, and, where this 

 can not be done, judging carefully in any specific case between social 

 and biological values. 



That the modern preachers of eugenics are quick to recognize their 

 unity of interest with the workers for social and institutional progress is 

 shown by Dr. Francis Galton : 



Eugenic belief extends the function of philanthropy to future generations. 

 It renders its actions more prevailing than hitherto by dealing with families 

 and societies in their entirety, and it enforces the importance of the marriage 

 covenant by directing serious attention to the probable quality of future off- 

 spring. It strongly forbids all. forms of sentimental charity that are harmful 

 to the race, while it greatly seeks opportunity for acts of personal kindness as 

 some equivalent to the loss of what it forbids. It brings the tie of kinship into 

 prominence and strongly encourages love in family and race. In brief, eugenics 

 is a virile creed, full of hope, and appealing to many of the noblest feelings of 

 our nature. 



Chapter I. The Method of Evolution 



Before coming to a decision upon radical schemes for race improve- 

 ment, it is of vital necessity that we consider first the factors of human 

 evolution, and second the possibility and means of their control, with 

 the relations of these means to progress that is social rather than bio- 

 logical. We must ascertain from biology those factors which are ac- 

 tively producing change in other organisms, and then determine to 

 what extent they are potent in human beings as well. 



Natural selection, though a dominating factor, is not the sole one 

 in evolution, determinate variation and the direct influence of environ- 

 ment being also of great imjjortance. Of these two the former is non- 

 controllable, and affects eugenics only in so far as its presence may make 

 our work easier or more difficult; so we may confine our interest at 

 present to natural selection and the direct influence of environment. 



The latter factor brings us at once to the time-honored controversy 

 over the "inheritance of acquired characteristics." The dispute seems 

 to have ended in a drawn battle, one party having established its claim 

 that modifications of the body are not inherited in kind, while the 

 other has proved that the environment is able to originate certain in- 

 heritable characteristics, provided only the action in question is able to 

 penetrate to the germ cells themselves. This modification of the germ 

 cells caused by environment is called blastophthory by Forel, and is thus 

 described (p. 35, "The Sexual Question") : 



I mean by blastophthory or deterioration of the germ that which can also be 

 called false heredity, that is, the consequence of every direct pathogenic or dis- 

 turbing action, in particular, of certain intoxicants, upon the germ-cells, of 

 which the hereditary determinants are also changed. 



An illustration of this direct influence is afforded by the experiments 

 of Professor Wm. Tower, at the University of Chicago. It was found 



