262 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



no one is able as yet wisely to say what course is 

 to be pursued in improving the race. But the prob- 

 lem is so interesting and its outcome so overwhelm- 

 ingly important that men will never cease striving to 

 know, and may, before many years, begin wisely to 

 guide us in our efforts to provide a finer stock. 



Heretofore our efforts at improving the strain have 

 been confined to cattle, chickens and plants. An al- 

 most unalterable repugnance rises as soon as we 

 speak of improving the human strain. Visions, if 

 not stories, start up at once, of experimental matings 

 of human beings, and of all other unspeakable abomi- 

 nations which no decent man expects to happen or 

 even wishes to attempt. If there is one thing in hu- 

 man society the value of which has been demon- 

 strated through the unending ages, it is the mono- 

 gam ic marriage. All ideal workers must point to 

 the life-long union of a strong, vigorous, clean- 

 minded and clean-lived man with a similarly fine, 

 strong, clean-minded and clean-lived woman. Such 

 an ideal may be slow in its attainment, but he aims 

 too low who aims to secure anything less than this. 

 The long struggle out of bestiality into pure monog- 

 amy has been so slow, so gradual, so noble in its 

 attainments, and is still so far from perfection, that 

 it would be an inconceivably stupid blunder to let 

 go a single point that has been gained. Whether 



