EUGENICS THE FUTURE OF MAN 



which concerns itself with all the influences that 

 can improve the inborn qualities, physical, in- 

 tellectual, and moral, of our own or any race. 

 But before outlining the recent history of this 

 study, which its author, Mr. Francis Galton, has 

 called eugenics surely a happy term let us in- 

 quire whether any influences are already extant 

 which tend to such improvement. For it is now 

 accepted by thinkers of all schools that the great 

 thesis implicit in the masterpiece of Mr. Galton's 

 illustrious cousin, Charles Darwin, is a proven 

 truth. The human race, as we know it, is the 

 contemporary product of aeons of improvement. 

 To this our brains, our backbones, our thumbs, our 

 religions, our symphonies, our manners bear wit- 

 ness. Now, while biologists still discuss among 

 themselves the relative importance of the factors 

 in organic evolution, they have ceased to question 

 the enormous influence of that factor which Dar- 

 win discovered and named natural selection. In- 

 deed, the current question is whether natural se- 

 lection is the only factor, as Weismann asserts, or 

 merely the principal factor, as Darwin himself 

 maintained. In brief, we may take it that, of any 

 generation, whether of mosses or mice or men, the 

 fittest tend to be more largely represented than the 

 less fit in the succeeding generation. The fittest, 

 however as no amount of didactics will make the 

 many understand are not necessarily the best, but 

 are merely those best adapted to the conditions 

 of the environment. These conditions, however, 

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