78 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



is unable to understand the tastes, leading thoughts and all-absorbing 

 ideal of the other. 



The nearest approach to such state interference in intelectual selec- 

 tion can now be observed in the city of Washington. It is of course 

 the unforeseen consequence of laws which were not in the least devised 

 for selective ends; but, in spite of being clumsy, slow and but little 

 discriminating, the process which obliges thousands of men of superior 

 intellect, drawn from all parts of the country, to reside permanently 

 or temporarily with their wives in a city selected for that purpose, 

 could not fail to produce the usual results. The writer has shown 

 elsewhere 1 that in no city or section of the country, nor even of any 

 country, can be found such a high birth rate of genius. Birth rate 

 of genius does not mean here the percentage of men of talent, born 

 everywhere and now living in Washington, but the percentage of those 

 born in Washington, who are now living in all parts of the country. 



Our period sees in acquired knowledge a panacea for all evils and 

 we have a federal Bureau of Education. A federal Bureau of Selec- 

 tion may be a distinctive feature of a next and more enlightened period. 

 This institution will take up the work of which the publishers of 

 " Biographical Dictionaries of Contemporary Men and Women of Dis- 

 tinction " now have the undisputed monopoly. Its officers will de- 

 termine who are our bachelor celebrities and where are the daughters 

 of those who are married. This last datum will be invaluable; if a 

 pure-blood literary woman can not be found for a promising young 

 novelist, a half-breed genius will always be better than a woman of 

 the type of Dickens's wife. The bureau will supervise the education 

 of the nation's future great men; should an Agassiz marry the daughter 

 of a Dana, it will see that Latin and Greek be not allowed to crowd out 

 geology from the educational curriculum of the children born of such 

 a union; fossil studies are not the study of fossils. The organization 

 of meetings and conferences of a literary, scientific and social char- 

 acter, in which men and women of talent will get acquainted with each 

 other will be another duty of the bureau. Some will say that the state 

 can not enter the marriage agency business without losing some of its 

 dignity. If they were transported into the room where naked recruits, 

 huddled together like cattle, are awaiting the medical examination 

 which will decide of their fitness to kill other men in international 

 duels, those same critics would not raise a protest. Such is the power 

 of traditional ideas. There is more shame in the killing than in the 

 marrying business, and it is more honorable for the state to raise the 

 intellectual standard of the nation than to degrade the race, physically, 

 mentally and morally. 



1 The Century Magazine, November, 1905. 



