TYPES OF MEN 279 



tion, and elements of it get into men even if, as a masculine trait, we 

 try to suppress it. If drunkenness eliminated all the round-faced men 

 it would not make the race immune. Alcohol does not, to any extent, 

 eliminate women, and the round-faced type married to long-faced men 

 would continue to breed round-faced men. We could thus have one 

 fourth of the men of each generation die from alcohol, and still have 

 no immunity arise to protect the race. 



In contrast to this, a disease like tuberculosis mainly affects the 

 long-faced type. Instead of letting elimination operate against them, 

 it would seem more fitting to put them in upland regions and dry cli- 

 mates where they would not suffer from this disease. Better housing, 

 food, clothing, recreation or amusements may guard against an inherited 

 defect and give a useful life to those who, a generation ago, would have 

 been exterminated by disease. The humanitarian and philanthropist 

 may have been wrong in their remedies, but every discovery in science 

 or medicine proves the soundness of their general view and puts them 

 into a position to be of aid to the uplift of mankind. We can not, as 

 yet, spare either the long-faced or the round-faced types. While this is 

 true, elimination that acts on types and not on single traits must be a 

 bungling means of social progress hurting more than it helps. When 

 men are relocated, eat what they should and live as hygiene demands, 

 our social traits can be reconstructed to meet the demands of a higher 

 civilization. Disease, poverty, vice and inequality can be eliminated. 

 Why leave the tried paths of progress for methods that might work 

 among tigers and wolves, but which humanity has outgrown ? 



The gist of my argument may be put in a single question. Are 

 we to eliminate men because of the lack of single traits, or should social 

 elimination be the weeding out of bad types ? Let me illustrate by a bit 

 of personal experience. I recently went to an oculist, who found that I 

 could read letters so distant that he had to use an opera glass to find 

 that I was right. On the other hand, I had bad muscular adjustment. 

 I combined the best eyesight with the worst muscular adjustment that 

 in each case his practise had yielded. I would, therefore, ask, am I to 

 be eliminated because of bad muscular adjustment, or perpetuated 

 because of my good eyesight? Is, also, Carlyle to be eliminated be- 

 cause he suffers from " eye strain," or to be preserved because of his 

 literary expression? Is John Stuart Mill to be eliminated because of 

 tubercular tendencies, or encouraged because of his logical powers? 

 My answer to these questions is that single defects should be remedied 

 by action on the individual even if this remedy, say eye-glasses, must be 

 applied to succeeding generations. It is only where we have a combi- 

 nation of many inherited characters in one family or group, thus form- 

 ing an undesirable type, that elimination becomes a necessity. Every 

 innate character is good; it becomes bad only in undesirable combina- 

 tions or unfavorable situations. 



