3o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



over man by force of arms. More than all who fall in battle or are 

 wasted in the camps, the nation misses the "fair women and brave 

 men" who should have been the descendants of the strong and the 

 manly. If we may personify the spirit of the nation, it grieves most 

 not over its " unretuming brave," but over those who might have been 

 but never were, and who, so long as history lasts, can never be. 



It is claimed that by the law of probabilities as developed by Quete- 

 let, there will appear in each generation the same number of potential 

 poets, artists, investigators, patriots, athletes and superior men of each 

 degree. But this law has no real validity. Its pertinence involves the 

 theory of continuity of paternity, that in each generation a percentage 

 practically equal of men of superior force or superior mentality should 

 survive to take the responsibilities of parenthood. Otherwise Quete- 

 let's law becomes subject to the operation of another law, the operation 

 of reversed selection, or the biological "law of diminishing returns." 

 In other words, breeding from an inferior stock is the sole agency in 

 race degeneration, as selection natural or artificial along one line or 

 another is the sole agency in race progress. 



And all laws of probabilities and of averages are subject to a still 

 higher law, the primal law of biology, which no cross-current of life 

 can overrule or modify: Like the seed is the harvest. 



And because this is true, arises the final and bitter truth: "Wars 

 are not paid for in war time. The bill comes later ! "• — David Starr 

 Jordan in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1911. 



SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL GOOD WILL 



SCIENCE with its applications has been one of the principal fac- 

 tors leading to peace and international good will. Science, 

 democracy and the limitation of warfare are the great achievements of 

 modern civilization. They have advanced together almost continu- 

 ously from the beginnings of the universities of Bologna, Paris and Ox- 

 ford in the twelfth century to their great triumphs in the nineteenth 

 century and the present promise of their complete supremacy. It may 

 be urged reasonably that science is the true cause of democracy and that 

 science and democracy together are the influences most conducive to 

 permanent and universal peace. 



The applications of science in industry, agriculture and commerce, 

 in the prevention of disease and of premature death, have abolished 

 the need of excessive manual labor. It long ago became unnecessary 

 for the great majority of the people to be held in bondage in order that 

 a few free citizens might have education and opportunity, and slavery 

 has been gradually driven from the world. The vast progress of scien- 

 tific discovery and invention in the nineteenth century has reduced to 

 a moderate amount the daily labor required from each in order that all 



