216 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



same time, would throw some of the additional financial 

 burden on those who escaped this form of national 

 service. Pious founders might establish endowments 

 for satisfactory parents, and, with the experience thus 

 gained as a guide, the State might slowly feel its way 

 to granting honours and rewards, suitable to all ranks 

 of life, to those who produced and brought up strong, 

 healthy, and able offspring. 



Of late years, the duty of the State to support the 

 falling and fallen has been so much emphasized that its 

 still more important duty to the able and competent 

 has been obscured. Yet it is they who are the real 

 national asset of worth, and it is essential to secure that 

 their action should not be hampered, and their value 

 sterilized, by the jealousy and obstruction of the social 

 failures, and of others whom pity for the failures has 

 blinded. Mankind has been shrewdly divided into 

 those who do things and those who must get out of the 

 way while things are being done, and if the latter class 

 do not recognize their true function in life, they them- 

 selves will suffer the most. The incompetent have to 

 be supported partially or wholly by the competent, and, 

 even for their own good, it would be worth while for 

 the incompetent to encourage the freedom of action 

 and the preponderant reproduction of the abler and 

 more successful stocks. It is only where such stocks 

 abound that the nation is able to support and carry 

 along the heavy load of incompetence kept alive by 

 modern civilization. 



Meanwhile and always, our duty is to investigate the 

 problems of heredity, and to apply new-won conceptions 



