THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 219 



was what Nietzsche would have called a '' Creator." He came 

 into a branch of knowledge that was in chaos and he gave us 

 order ; he found there stagnation and he converted it into pro- 

 gression ; he saw multitudinous facts dead because they had no 

 consistent interpretation, and he gave them Ufe. The magnitude 

 of the task that he accomplished and the nature of the debt that 

 posterity owes to him, only those who fully know the state of 

 hereditary studies in his day can properly appreciate. 



The reader of Professor Bateson's book will find a great deal of 

 matter of absorbing interest. He will find problems that have 

 escaped elucidation for centuries glowing under the newer Ught of 

 the Science of Genetics. At last we see the only way by which 

 problems of inheritance can be effectually and scientifically 

 attacked. The facts of geographical distribution, of the inter- 

 relationship of species on the overlapping bomids of their common 

 territory, may suggest problems for investigation, but they cannot 

 by themselves supply a truthful answer. The problems of evolu- 

 tion and of variation to-day give promise of receiving correct 

 answers. We cannot, of course, yet close the book of knowledge, 

 for we have only just passed its preface and reached its first real 

 page; but we no longer grope in semi-darkness, for now we have a 

 method by which we can put to Nature a single definite question, 

 and get from her a single and definite answer to every question 

 we choose to put. That is an enormous gain. This method 

 is the most powerful instrument biological science has ever 

 wielded, and the intellectual conception that lies behind it and 

 supplies the motive power must be ranked among the greatest 

 of her victorious achievements. 



With regard to Man, it is now clear that what medicine, social 

 reform, legislation, and philanthropy have failed to accomphsh, 

 can be achieved by Biology. Tell the student of Genetics what 

 type of nation we desire, within the limits of the characters which 

 the nation already possesses, and confer upon him adequate powers, 

 and he will mould it, by the process of elimination. It is not too 

 much to say that if he were instructed to evolve a "'iit" nation — 

 that is, one of self-rehant and self-supporting individuals — in the 

 course of a few generations there would be few workhouses, 

 hospitals, unemployables, congenital criminals, or drunkards. 



The family and the Nation.— .4 study in Natural inheritance 

 and Social Responsibility. By William Cecil Dampier 

 Whetham, M.A., F.R.S., and Catherine Durning Whetham, 

 His Wife. Longmans, Green, & Co., London. Is. M. net. 



Perhaps in no book of its size has so much information of the 

 greatest value, from the civic standpoint, been incorporated, nor 



