590 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN LIFE 



Present civilization carries dangers with it 

 Obstructs natural selection 



By protecting the feeble against disease 

 By saving incompetence from pauperism and starvation 

 War selects unfavorably by destroying large proportions of 



the highest types 

 Extremes of poverty and wealth have deteriorating effects 

 Offsets to these dangers 



Physical strength, immunity to special diseases, etc. have no 



direct connection with human needs in civilization 

 We can use science and skill to guard against disease and so 



give more desirable types a chance 

 We can use machinery to take the place of mere muscular 

 power and so give opportunity to more sensitive and 

 more dehcately organized types of humans 

 We can apply our science to the problem of preventing wars, 

 and so eliminate the unfavorable selection and waste 

 We can apply science to the problems of distribution of 

 wealth as well as to production, and so eliminate de- 

 grading forms of poverty 

 We can apply science to problems of education and eliminate 

 the waste and degradation of misuse of our resources 

 3. Improvement of the race 



Nothing to show that the race has improved within historic times 

 Greek ideas of race improvement 

 Sparta: reenforce natural selection by rejecting the feeble, 

 sickly, and deformed; severe training and hardship 

 for the young, to weed out those who cannot stand 

 the strain 

 Plato: prevent defectives from reproducing 

 Eugenics (Francis Galton, 1875) 



Social control of agencies that can improve future generations 

 Why important 



Individual variation 



Some traits are more desirable than others 

 Some traits are acquired, but many important ones are 

 inherited 

 Examples of good stock 

 Examples of bad stock 

 Undesirables are multiplying too rapidly 

 Desirable types are handicapped in matters of mere numbers 



