viii Prefatory Note 



quieter moments it is worth while endeav- 

 ouring to bring home to the thoughtful that 

 no community of men can trust blindly to 

 heredity to preserve their racial characters. 

 Every nation is an agglomeration of good 

 and bad elements, and each new generation 

 is born from but a relatively small portion of 

 the whole. The greatness of a nation de- 

 pends on the dominant fertility of its fitter 

 stocks, and fluctuates with the extent of this 

 dominance. Love of ease, a mistaken sense 

 of duty, insidious new social habits, may 

 tamper with the preponderating fertility of 

 the fitter and more capable racial constituents 

 before we have realized their effects. Some 

 only of these things can be touched by the 

 legislator ; in the aggregate they are subject 

 alone to social feeling and to an enlightened 

 national pride. Is it possible to arouse a 

 consciousness in the folk that the parentage 

 of the next generation is not a personal but a 

 national problem ? that a nation which has 



