342 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Perhaps the most important point as regards eugenics is how 

 far the Mendelian phenomena apply to the human race. Any 

 means which are to act in a selective manner in improving or 

 preventing the degeneration of the race must be applied to 

 characters appearing in individuals. Particular characters in 

 individuals, as individuals, must be dealt with. It seems 

 probable that most of these will prove to be comparatively 

 ecent variations and so will be transmitted alternatively. 



It is in fact the selection of variations occurring in individuals 

 which offers the only chance of improving the characters, mental 

 and physical, of a race. Nothing in the way of forcing acquire- 

 ments upon individuals with inferior capacities can raise the 

 standard of capacity in the race any more than teaching bull- 

 dogs to point would produce a capacity of learning to point. 

 Selection of variations in the capacity for acquiring the 

 necessary characters involved in pointing, if extended over 

 many generations, would no doubt produce a race of bull-dogs 

 that were comparatively easy to train to point, but it would 

 hardly be a practical proposition, as we already have a breed 

 of dogs which has been subjected to selection with regard to 

 these capacities for hundreds of generations. In the same way 

 it does not seem to be a practical proposition to attempt to breed 

 men with desirable and without undesirable qualities from the 

 failures by selecting the favourable variations they may produce. 

 They would reproduce thousands of unfavourable variations to 

 one favourable one, and that one would vary from a lower 

 mean than the average ; and worse than all, the undesirable 

 offspring cannot be drowned as puppies are by the breeder, but 

 must be kept alive to produce more undesirables. 



Such characters as lunacy and idiocy, deaf-mutism and 

 criminal tendencies, were, until recently, subjected to such 

 stringent selection that they must have been eliminated very 

 soon after the unfavourable variations appeared. So far 

 Prof. Davenport's views are, I think, unassailable. But when 

 it comes to crossing racial characters, mental or physical, 

 the problem is a more serious one and involves far greater 

 dangers ; as, if my views are correct, even a slight blend of 

 undesirable racial characters may be almost impossible to 

 eliminate. 



