68 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1907 
districts, children grow up under adverse conditions, which 
prevent them from realizing in full and free development 
what we may term their natural health ability. They 
inherit a capacity for a richer life than that to which they 
attain. They have not the requisite opportunities, and 
they often fail to exercise such as they have, for reaching 
an adequate level of what we may term acquired health 
performance. They exhibit in a saddening degree that 
deterioration which is due to failure to reach the standard 
of health and vigour of which their hereditary possibilities 
give promise. Is this deterioration directly inherited ? 
If so, the admittedly grave fact of individual deterioration 
is the precursor and the cause of the yet graver fact 
of racial degeneration. The hereditary possibilities in their 
children stand at a lower level. On the Weismannian 
view this is not so. There may indeed be some deteriora- 
tion of the germinal cells, through imperfect nutrition and 
the influence of poisons or metabolic products. A starved 
and unhealthy body may influence deleteriously and 
pollute the germinal fountains of new life. But these 
effects may be less deep-seated than a radical change 
in the nature of the vital substance, which is the bearer of 
hereditary qualities. Dr Archdale Reid has indicated the 
nature of degeneration on the hypothesis of Weismann. 
It means the survival of a degenerate slum type through 
the elimination of higher types. For it must be remem- 
bered that on the basis of natural selection as dominant, 
the only way (omitting minor qualifications) in which the 
statistical mean of natural ability can be altered is though 
the elimination of a greater number of variants on the one 
side of that mean than on the other side. If more adap- 
tive variants survive, the mean level of adaptation is 
raised. 
I will now outline in brief the suggestion above-men- 
tioned. It will be well to put the matter in concrete 
