In Peace 



traits of the man or woman as they 

 might have been, without regard, so far 

 as we know, to the way in which these 

 qualities have been actually developed. 



The evolution of a race is selective 

 only, never collective. Collective evo- 

 lution, the movement upward or down- 

 ward of a people as a whole, irrespective 

 of education or of selection, is, as Le- 

 pouge has pointed out, a thing un- 

 known. " It exists in rhetoric, not in 

 truth nor in history." 



No race as a whole can be made up 

 of " degenerate sons of noble sires." 

 Where decadence exists, the noble sires 

 have perished, either through evil in- 

 fluences, as in the slums of great cities, 

 or else through the movements of his- 

 tory or the growth of institutions. If 

 a nation sends forth the best it breeds 

 to destruction, the second best will 

 take their vacant places. The weak, 

 the vicious, the unthrifty will propa- 



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