112 ANALYSIS OF THE FOUR PRINCIPLES. 
drudgery. If degeneracy is threatened, the remedy will not be found 
in restoring the conditions of savage life, in which the imbecile and the 
insane, the deaf and the diseased, are all eliminated by starvation ; 
but rather by such forms of institutional and prudential selection, 
enforced by public opinion and law, as will prevent the marriage of 
those who are specially liable to have defective offspring. It thus 
appears that institutional selection and prudential selection, both of 
which may be subjected to rational control, are the chief factors by 
which man may hope to maintain and control his own evolution. 
The powerful influence of institutions on human evolution will be 
recognized by those who consider the effects that must be produced 
on the vigor and vitality of a nation when military organization and 
destructive wars prevent many of the most vigorous men from having 
anv share in producing the next generation, while many others who 
leave children are suddenly removed by death when their families 
most need their aid. Again, the institutions in which the community 
combines for the maintenance of justice and order and the training of 
the young must have a profound influence on the physical inheritance 
of the race, through the advantage it gives to the peaceful and law- 
abiding. 
In the evolution of civilized man the law of natural increase is 
liable to be set aside in a way that often becomes extremely abnormal. 
I refer to the effects of prudential selection in limiting the size of 
families, both by delaying marriage and by restraint after marriage. 
Of course, both methods of using the reason are legitimate if the end 
sought is not a selfish desire to be free from care and responsibility. 
The evil has grown to such proportions in certain communities that 
the very existence of these groups is threatened. The fundamental 
difficulty seems to be that public opinion has failed to set before the 
men and women of force and character—before those who are the back- 
bone of the nation—the double ideal of maintaining a vigorous life 
and civilization during their own generation and of transmitting the 
same to a posterity of unabated vigor and of high native character, 
as well as of high training and culture. It is impossible that this 
standard should be attained if there is unwillingness to establish 
family relations until the battle of life has been fought out and won. 
Nor can it be realized if after marriage those who should become 
parents wish to reserve the chief portion of their energy for social 
entertainments or for the pleasures of art, science, literature, and 
travel, with no consideration of how these great gifts of past genera- 
tions can be best transmitted and rendered continuously progressive 
