22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



minated, and it will no longer be necessary to think of them as possible 

 dangers to human life. Thus, in England, by the universal practise of 

 muzzling the dogs for a sufficiently long period, hydrophobia has been 

 eliminated; in the tropics by the quite feasible if somewhat difficult 

 plan of destroying the mosquitoes, yellow fever and malaria may be 

 utterly stamped out in some regions. Other diseases are much less 

 easily controlled, but it does not appear more difficult to destroy them 

 than it once did to get rid of the wolves in England. 



Along with the development of the medical and agricultural sci- 

 ences, we may hope for great advances in social organization, reducing 

 to a minimum the tremendous waste of life and property which goes 

 on to-day. It is not too much to expect that every individual will be 

 assured all the air, food, clothes and shelter necessary for a normal 

 existence, and will find ample opportunities for exercising such talents 

 as he may possess. Liberty will be curtailed in so far as it permits 

 antisocial activities, but it will be tremendously extended, in the form 

 of practical opportunities to develop ordinary or special abilities. All 

 this may be a long way ahead, and there may exist great differences as 

 to the program for the near future; but I suppose that few will deny 

 that some such outcome as that indicated should logically follow from 

 indefinite advance in the direction we are even now taking. 



If we picture human society thus relatively perfected, and free from 

 many of the ills which now so fearfully decimate it, what have we left 

 to desire? Very much, I venture to think. Is there one of us who 

 could honestly say that, if he had been born into such a society, he 

 would be without any serious defects of mind or body ? In other words, 

 given as good an environment as could well be devised, should we then 

 be perfect ? It is exceedingly obvious that we should not. 



Those who are enthusiastic, and very justty, concerning the possi- 

 bilities of social reform, are somewhat too apt to assume that all defi- 

 ciencies noted in people to-day are due to adverse external conditions. 

 The student of heredity — even the farmer, when he is dealing with his 

 crops — knows better than that. Figs do not grow on thistles, for all 

 the fertilizers in the country. There is no doubt whatever that every 

 year there are born thousands of persons who are not merely unfitted 

 to succeed in the world as it now is, but would never be successful in 

 any complete sense in any world which could be devised or imagined. 

 Some of those who recognize this fact see in it the doom of all social 

 amelioration. If to-day the tremendous destruction of the unfit which 

 takes place leaves us so many incapables, what would happen if most of 

 those who perish were to survive ? Would not society be buried beneath 

 a load of incompetency, wbich would make even such organization as 

 we have impossible? To this gloomy suggestion it may be replied, in 

 the first place, that much of the present-day elimination is of those who 



