27 8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



to Mr. Galton and Prof. Karl Pearson, the existing evidence 

 does not permit an answer in the affirmative, however flattering 

 such might be to our vanity or soothing to our conscience. No 

 doubt a certain amount of evolution or elimination of the unfit 

 does take place even in civilised states — an evolution which 

 sends the drunkard, the wastrel, and the sluggard to join the 

 dregs of the population and confers somewhat tardy laurels on 

 thrift, on forethought, and on intelligence. But such evolution 

 only reflects in a dim and distorted fashion natural selection as 

 understood by modern biologists. 



In a herd of deer or troop of monkeys each member enters 

 the world under absolutely equal conditions, and his chance of 

 producing progeny depends on the average on his adaptation 

 to the environment common to the herd. Amongst civilised 

 people, on the other hand, what can be more grotesquely 

 unequal than the environments under which the progeny of 

 different classes enter on the battle of life, between the sur- 

 roundings of a slum child and those of one born in a ducal 

 house ? Even in the highly improbable event of their receiving 

 an approximately similar scholastic education, the former will 

 from his home environment have received constant suggestions 

 to lie, to steal, and to drink. The character of the youth of 

 "gentle birth," on the other hand, comes to maturity in a 

 sheltered atmosphere of culture and of intellectual refinement. 

 Knowing as we do the enormous effect of " herd suggestion " 

 on the human mind, who can ascribe with any certainty the 

 failure of many of the lowly born to inherited defects ? Who 

 will assert that many a slum-born criminal and wastrel is by 

 heredity inferior to numbers of the upper and middle classes 

 who pass through life, if not with credit, at least without con- 

 spicuous blame ? Only when there is approximate equality 

 of opportunity, only when the present extravagant handicaps 

 have passed away, and men — aye, and women too — start on 

 life's race as nearly equal as human institutions will permit, 

 shall we be able to point with any confidence to the lower 

 class and say : These possess an undesirable heredity, their 

 multiplication is injurious to our polity. At present society, 

 after pushing the mass of the proletariat into the mire of base 

 surroundings, is apt, standing daintily aloof, to point the finger 

 of scorn at them as incurable heirs to a vicious heredity. 



