EVOLUTION OF MAN AND ITS CONTROL 57 



idiots, and after a careful examination of the bulletins concerning them, this 

 author has proved that there exist two annual maximum points for the con- 

 ception of idiots (calculated by going back nine months before the day of birth). 

 These are the seasons of the carnival and the vintage, in which there is the 

 most drinking. Now, in the wine-growing cantons, the maximum formed by 

 the season of the vintage is enormous and stands almost alone, while it scarcely 

 appears in the others. Furthermore, these two maxima fall precisely at the 

 annual period when the curve of conception for the rest of the population is at 

 its minimum. The maximum of normal conceptions is in the beginning of the 

 summer. 



The bearing of these facts upon the regulation of intoxicating liq- 

 uors need not be pointed out. 



Though spread of knowledge and ethical training must be the ulti- 

 mate reliance in dealing with these deleterious influences in the envi- 

 ronment, yet they work but slowly, and legislative methods must be re- 

 sorted to where feasible. In the whole great field of environmental 

 betterment, eugenics is at one with social reform. The time has gone 

 by when the cry of " paternalism " could block the path of protective 

 legislation, for, even though the individualist may still claim the right 

 to destroy himself, society must restrain him from dragging with him 

 unborn generations to suffering and degeneracy. 



Chapter IV. The Action of Lethal Selection 

 As natural selection is most often represented as a struggle for ex- 

 istence, or war between individuals or races, lethal selection of the 

 direct group variety, by which a weaker tribe is exterminated or subju- 

 gated by a stronger, has been made much of by historians. 



War, however, is losing its place as a factor in group selection, as 

 has been graphically shown by David Starr Jordan, in " The Human 

 Harvest." In former days, every able-bodied man was a soldier, vic- 

 tory depended upon personal prowess and generalship, and thus the 

 tribe of inferior warriors was not unfrequently exterminated. At pres- 

 ent the army is not the whole tribe, but merely a professional class, so 

 that its personal might is no necessary criterion of the fitness of the 

 nation. A modern victory depends on such a complex of circumstances, 

 commerce, finances, organization and alliances, that any fitness indi- 

 cated by military survival, while perhaps a very important attribute of 

 the social organism as such, has no direct relation to the inheritable 

 qualities of the race. Even when defeated, moreover, a modern tribe 

 stands little chance of extermination, and may even lose fewer men than 

 its conqueror. 



When we consider selection within the race, on the other hand, war 

 becomes a definite influence toward degeneration. The modern military 

 system involves a selection among the adult males as to who shall be the 

 soldiers and thus be subjected to a high death rate from disease as well 

 as battle. Those selected as marks for bullets and fever are always, to 



