EUGENICS AND WAR 427 



There may also be a wholesome reaction from the two chief forms of 

 national weakness, and an endeavor to improve the conditions which 

 tend to increase these. All this will make for progress, as long as it is 

 clearly recognized that veneering does not make bad wood sound. So 

 far as improved nurture induces the fuller development of a good in- 

 heritance, or guards life from gratuitous infection or inhibition, or 

 prevents the tare seeds in our inheritance from germinating, it is to be 

 welcomed. 



(2) In the second place this is a time of vivid national self -con- 

 sciousness and of freshened idealism, and it is possible that the spiri- 

 tual momentum of this may enable us to go ahead. It is just possible 

 that we may be brought by the war nearer the idea and the actuality of 

 a positive peace, of entering more fully into our kingdom. We must 

 agree with Professor Patrick Geddes that the peace times we have 

 known have often been more accurately states of latent war. 



(3) A third consideration is also full of hope, that one of the almost 

 certain results of the war will be an increased sense of solidarity among 

 the various self-governing Dominions of the British Empire. We are 

 going to know and to like one another better, having fought together, 

 rejoiced and sorrowed together; we are going to see more of one an- 

 other as distance-annihilating devices increase and cheapen. Perhaps 

 we shall evolve a great confederate organization for the common tasks 

 of peace. Is there not here a eugenic prospect of great interest, of 

 larger experiments in out-breeding and in the influences of novel nur- 

 ture? Perhaps we may discover in greater frequency of environmental 

 and functional change, which is so potent in keeping the individual 

 young, a possible source of variational stimuli, rejuvenating even the 

 germ-plasm, which may be apt to get a little stodgy in one small island. 



Perhaps we should not ever pass from a eugenic outlook without re- 

 membering that it is partial. In building a wall the mason uses 

 plumb-line, level, and square, and so we have to employ other criteria 

 besides that of the conservation and evolution of life. As eugenists we 

 are concerned with the natural inheritance and its nurture, which is 

 fundamental, as men we are also concerned with our social heritage, 

 which is supreme. The social organizations and institutions in whose 

 life we share, the traditions of honor, veracity and justice, the treas- 

 ures of literature and art, memories, such as we honor to-night, which 

 ever beckon us to follow after valor and understanding — these and 

 much more form our social heritage, to be wrought for and fought for 

 as keenly as the embodied health of the race. We cannot end without 

 expressing the hope that even if the natural inheritance of our race 

 must suffer impoverishment through the tragic sifting of this most ter- 

 rible war, we shall win through in the end with our social heritage en- 

 riched. 



