NATURE'S INSURGENT SON 41 



present. At the same time no attempt at present has 

 been made by the more advanced communities of civi- 

 lized men to prevent the multiplication of the weakly or 

 of those liable to congenital disease. Already something 

 like a panic on this subject has appeared in this country. 

 Inquiries have been conducted by public authorities. 

 But the only possible method of dealing with this 

 matter, and in the first place of estimating its importance 

 as immediate or remote, has not been applied. Man 

 can only deal with this difficulty created by his own 

 departure from Nature to which he can never return 

 by thoroughly investigating the laws of breeding and 

 heredity, and proceeding to apply a control to human 

 multiplication based upon certain and indisputable 

 knowledge. 



It may be a century, or it may be more than 

 five centuries, before the matter would, if let alone, 

 force itself upon a desperate humanity, brutalized by 

 over-crowding, and the struggle for food. A return to 

 Nature's terrible selection of the fittest may, it is 

 conceivable, be in this way in store for us. But it is 

 more probable that humanity will submit, before that 

 condition occurs, to a restriction by the community in 

 respect of the right to multiply, with as good a grace as 

 it has given up the right to murder and to steal. In view 

 of this Man must, in entering on his kingdom, at once 

 proceed to perfect those studies as to the transmission 

 of qualities by heredity which have as yet been only 

 roughly carried out by breeders of animals and horti- 

 culturists. 



There is absolutely no provision for this study in any 

 civilized community, and no conception among the people 

 or their leaders that it is a matter which concerns any 

 one but farmers. 



