EVOLUTION OF MAN AND ITS CONTROL 53 



physical world, they may at last be harnessed to the service of reason- 

 able man, the future is largely in our hands. 



Man early utilized the forces of heredity in the culture of plants and 

 animals, and his achievements in this direction, from the prehistoric 

 domestication of animals to the great successes of our modern breeders, 

 have been amazing. It is natural, therefore, that philosophers should 

 have begun their eugenic activity by recommending the direct control 

 of heredity by thoroughgoing artificial selection, and from Plato onward 

 we have had various projects for the deliberate improving of the human 

 stock. Such modifications admit of accomplishment in two ways, by 

 the prevention of breeding from the worst and by very extensive breed- 

 ing from the best. 



Little can be hoped from this latter method in connection with 

 making superior women the ancestresses of the race, for at best a 

 mother can bear and do justice to but few children. Accordingly, 

 some polygynous device must needs be resorted to in order to utilize 

 fully the men of best type as fathers. Such suggestions vary from 

 free love or crude polygamy, involving as it does greater parenthood 

 for the economically successful, to Noyes's " stirpiculture," as practised 

 in the Oneida community, whereby a few picked men were the author- 

 ized fathers of all the children, or to G-. Bernard Shaw's licensing of 

 supermen for extra-matrimonial relations. The directness and sensa- 

 tional character of these projects has given them, to be sure, great 

 notoriety, and it is perhaps to be regretted that the Oneida experiment, 

 at least, was not allowed to work itself out as an attempt at artificial 

 selection for the light it would have thrown on the subject. 



Here, however, we must bear in mind that we are seeking social, as 

 well as biological progress. No wholesale plan can ever prevail which 

 denies to the majority the right of parenthood, and the family, not- 

 withstanding the aspersions of Mr. Shaw and others, has proved too 

 valuable a social institution to be lightly discarded. Moreover, from 

 the viewpoint of heredity alone, any of these schemes might tend to 

 perpetuate instincts generally considered undesirable, by breeding most 

 extensively from those who voluntarily embraced polygynous relations. 



We must have far more light from investigation and experiment 

 before such plans as the foregoing can be profitably adjudged, and, as 

 they are obviously out of immediate consideration, their discussion 

 does little more than arouse prejudice and postpone real progress. 



We reach solid ground for the first time when we consider the pre- 

 vention of breeding from the very worst. A definite beginning of such 

 prevention has already been made in our prisons and institutions of 

 public charity, and the only difference of opinion can be as to just 

 what class of inferior men and women should be cut off altogether from 

 parenthood, and as to what methods can be employed that will not 

 endanger social progress. 



