time: the refreshing river 



evolve through this phase, and arrive at a new and higher one 

 in which its instruments will again be small and compact. Science 

 may show how a man can provide all his needs, in communica- 

 tion, food and transport, from very small instruments and 

 concentrated supplies carried in his pockets. ... If science is 

 developed to this stage, it would provide new concrete bases for 

 freedom."^ 



The Dominance of Economics over Eugenics. 



In the case of an animal occupying a known oecological niche, 

 there is but one possible environment, and the dominant species 

 may be said to be well fitted for it. But the environment of man is 

 not given a priori. In an exceedingly important paper, the great 

 geneticist H. J. Muller,^ has once and for all demonstrated the false- 

 ness of the assumption often made, that our present social stratification 

 is correlated positively with genetic worth. Apologists for the existing 

 social order, he says, defend their position with the a priori argument 

 that in the social struggle, the better rise to the top. They neglect 

 to show that success in modern economic competition depends on 

 many factors beside innate endowment, and that to-day we have 

 increasingly operative the principle of "to him that hath, more shall 

 be given." But let us assume that inborn differences do play some 

 role. The question is, what role.^ Are the characteristics which now 

 lead men to rise economically, those which are the most desirable 

 from a social point of view.^ It could at least as well be maintained 

 that the dominant groups tend to have the genetic equipment which 

 would be least desirable in a well-ordered social system, since they 

 have been selected chiefiy on the basis of predatory, rather than 

 constructive and unselfish behaviour. This opinion is confirmed by 

 a view of the lives of the more eminent financiers. It may even be 

 maintained with some show of reason that the successful captain of 

 industry, the eminent military leader or politician, and the successful 

 gangster, are psychologically not far apart. In the social battle of 

 present-day society, the high-minded, the scrupulous, the idealistic, 



^ p. xxvii. 



2 H. J. Muller, Sci. Monthly, 1933, 37, 40. Muller is one of the most brilliant pupils 

 of T, H. Morgan. It was Muller who discovered the effect of X-rays in increasing the 

 mutation-rate of animals — a discovery which, apart from being an important research 

 tool, may still open the way to an understanding of the mechanism of evolution itself. 

 He was for long the director of the biological departments at the University of Texas, 

 and later he organised the famous genetics institute at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. 



166 



