384 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



passage in Avhich even Galton, the foimder of eugenics, feeling per- 

 haps some twinge of his Quaker ancestry, remarks that "as the 

 Bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to perish, the 

 sooner it goes, the happier for mankind." It is not the eugenists wh.o 

 will give us what Plato has called divine releases from the common 

 ways. If some fancier with the catholicity of Shakespeare would 

 take us in hand, well and good ; but I would not trust even Shakes- 

 peares meeting as a committee. Let us remember that Beethoven's 

 father was an habitual drunkard and that his mother died of con- 

 sumption. From the genealogy of the patriarchs also we learn, 

 "what may very well be the truth," that the fathers of such as 

 dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp or organ, and the 

 instructor of every artificer in brass and iron — the founders, that is 

 to say, of the arts and the sciences — came in direct descent from 

 Cain, and not in the posterity of the irreproachable Seth, who is to 

 us, as he probably w\as also in the narrow circle of his own con- 

 temporaries, what naturalists call a nornen nudum. 



Genetic research will make it possible for a nation to elect by what 

 sort of beings it will be represented not very many generations hence, 

 much as a farmer can decide w^hether his byres shall be full of short- 

 horns or Herefords. It will be very surprising, indeed, if some 

 nation does not make trial of this new power. They may make awful 

 mistakes, but I think they will try. 



Whether we like it or not, extraordinary and far-reaching changes 

 in public opinion are coming to pass. Man is just beginning to know 

 himself for what he is — a rather long-lived animal, with great powers 

 of enjoyment if he does not deliberately forego them. Hitherto 

 superstition and mythical ideas of sin have predominantly controlled 

 these powers. Mysticism will not die out ; for those strange fancies 

 knowledge is no cure; but their forms may change, and mysticism 

 as a force for the suppression of joy is happily losing its hold on the 

 modern world. As in the decay of earlier religions, Ushabti dolls 

 were substituted for human victims, so telepathy, necromancy, and 

 other harmless toys take the place of eschatology and the inculcation 

 of a ferocious moral code. Among the civilized races in Europe we 

 are witnessing an emancipation from traditional control in thought, 

 in art, and in conduct which is likely to have prolonged and won- 

 derful influences. Returning to freer or, if you will, simpler con- 

 ceptions of life and death, the coming generations are determined 

 to get more out of this world than their forefathers did. Is it, then, 

 to be supposed that when science puts into their hand means for 

 the alleviation of suffering immeasurable, and for making this 

 world a happier place, that they will demur to using those powers? 

 The intenser struggle between communities is only now beginning, 

 and with the approaching exhaustion of that capital of energy 



