THE PURPOSIVE IMPROVEMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE 575 



physical deformity, mental defect and moral delinquency 

 would be abolished and "men hke gods" would people the 

 earth. But a more careful and cautious appraisal of the 

 difficulties involved has led many biologists to the conclusion 

 that while the principles of good breeding apply to man as 

 much as to any other organism, the practical difficulties in 

 the way of utihzing these principles are so great that it is 

 hopeless to expect any rapid improvement of the heredity of 

 the race under existing social conditions or under any others 

 that are hkely to be reahzed within the next few centuries. 

 Under popular forms of government, the great mass of 

 mankind cannot be expected to observe the laws of good 

 breeding and to ehminate from reproduction all but the 

 very best hereditary lines, and the most that can be expected 

 from the prevention of the breeding of defectives is that the 

 race may be saved from further deterioration. If some wise 

 and benevolent despot, or if some superhuman intelligence 

 and power, were to control the breeding of men as man 

 controls his flocks and crops, the same sort of improvement 

 could be brought about in the human race as has been 

 accomplished in the case of domestic animals and cultivated 

 plants. In a certain sense, society has such power and it 

 can impose all sorts of restrictions and inhibitions on individ- 

 uals, but it is more than doubtful whether it has superhuman 

 intelligence or benevolence. Under these conditions, the 

 whole program of human eugenics is reduced to an attempt 

 to prevent or reduce the breeding of the worst lines, to 

 promote the breeding of the best types and to leave the 

 great mediocre mass of mankind to people the earth as it 

 has always done in the past. How inefficient such a program 

 is can be appreciated if one compares it with the rigid 

 elimination from reproduction of all but the best lines in 

 modern stock breeding. And how long it would take markedly 

 to improve the entire human race by such a feeble measure 

 can be left to those who deal with geological ages and 

 light-years. 



The difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of any more 

 radical program of eugenics than that indicated above, 

 namely the gradual reduction of the fecundity of the worst 

 human types and the encouragement of greater fecundity 



