WEISMANWS ESSAYS UPON HEREDITY. 27 



what method and theory of punishment are we 

 to adopt? Clearly the only reasonable course is 

 elimination. A recent writer on "Marriage and 

 Heredity" tells us that the Chinese put to death 

 "by the slow process" not only the man convicted 

 of treason, but his son and grandson, on the ground 

 that presumably potential traitors must be got rid 

 of. This is very much what Mr. Cotter Morison's 

 recommendation of a scientific homoculture comes 

 to. We must "suppress" those human beings 

 which show signs of moral or physical taint, and 

 gradually improve the breed. 



But there are two difficulties which suggest them- 

 selves with regard to this method. First, it has 

 been tried, and the one thing that we are all agreed 

 upon is, not that it failed, for where it was 

 thoroughly carried out it was most effective, but 

 that the attempt itself was wrong. We refer to 

 that form of artificial selection known as religious 

 persecution. The vast majority in the countries 

 where this form of selection was practised were 

 agreed as to the right type to be preserved ; and 

 the elimination of what cattle-breeders would call 

 the " curs and screws," or, as they were called in the 

 language of the day, heretics, was carried on with 

 the cheerful co-operation of Church and State. At 

 the Reformation there was, in England and some 

 other countries, some slight change of view as to the 

 type of character to be preserved, but the method 



