SELECTION: ORGANIC AND SOCIAL 231 



eugenist's method is the breeder's method 

 selection for parenthood; but the difficulty is that 

 we have to deal with larger ends than men, we 

 cannot ignore the social framework and a whole 

 hierarchy of social integrates. Even if we ignore 

 them in theory, they will be too strong for us in 

 practice. The eugenic programme must submit 

 to social criticism, which will not be merely 

 theoretical. 



Let us recall some of the facts which bring the 

 importance of the eugenic ideal home to us. One 

 quarter of the married people of this country, 

 one-sixth to one-eighth of the total adult popula- 

 tion, Prof. Karl Pearson tells us, produce 50 per 

 cent, of the next generation. " How essential it 

 is for the maintenance of a physically and mentally 

 fit race that this one-sixth to one-eighth of our 

 population should be drawn from the best, not the 

 worst stocks ! " " We cannot recruit the nation 

 from its inferior stocks without deteriorating our 

 national character." This is the argument which 

 Pearson so powerfully develops. 



Of course the statistics of diminishing birth-rate 

 require careful treatment by experts. The average 

 annual birth-rate per 1,000 has fallen from 35*35 

 in 1876-80 to 28-10 in 1901-1905, but against this 

 we must notice that the death-rate has also fallen 

 from 20*79 to 16. The ominous fact is that it 

 was by a gradual but persistent diminution of 

 natality that France reached her present state of 

 a death-rate in excess of the birth-rate. 



Yet Prof. Pearson's point is not so much the 

 general diminution, but the differential diminution. 

 In Britain the diminution seems greatest where 

 it is least wanted, namely, among the workers of 



