IMPROVEMENT OF THE HUMAN BREED. 233 



There is yet another existing form of princely benevolence which 

 might be so extended as to exercise a large effect on race improvement. 

 I mean the provision to exceptionally promising young couples of 

 healthy and convenient houses at low rentals. A continually renewed 

 settlement of this kind can be easily imagined, free from the taint of 

 patronage, and analogous to colleges with their self-elected fellowships 

 £nd rooms for residence, that should become an exceedingly desirable 

 residence for a specified time. It would be so in the same way that a 

 good club by its own social advantages attracts desirable candidates. The 

 tone of the place would be higher than elsewhere, on account of the high 

 quality of the inmates, and it would be distinguished by an air of 

 energy, intelligence, health and self-respect and by mutual helpfulness. 



Prospects. 



It is pleasant to contrive Utopias, and I have indulged in many, of 

 which a great society is one, publishing intelligence and memoirs, hold- 

 ing yearly elections, administering large funds, establishing personal 

 relations like a missionary society with its missionaries, keeping elaborate 

 registers and discussing them statistically with honest precision. But 

 the first and pressing point is to thoroughly justify any crusade at all 

 in favor of race improvement. More is wanted in the way of 

 unbiased scientific inquiry along the many roads I have hurried over, 

 to make every stepping-stone safe and secure, and to make it certain 

 that the game is really worth the candle. All I dare hope to effect by 

 this lecture is to prove that in seeking for the improvement of the race 

 we aim at what is apparently possible to accomplish, and that we are 

 justified in following every path in a resolute and hopeful spirit that 

 seems to lead towards that end. The magnitude of the inquiry is enor- 

 mous, but its object is one of the highest man can accomplish. The 

 faculties of future generations will necessarily be distributed according 

 to laws of heredity, whose statistical effects are no longer vague, for they 

 are measured and expressed in formulse. We cannot doubt the existence 

 of a great power ready to hand and capable of being directed with vast 

 benefit as soon as we shall have learnt to understand and to apply it. 

 To no nation is a high human breed more necessary than to our own, 

 for we plant our stock all over the world and lay the foundation of the 

 dispositions and capacities of future millions of the human race. 



