66 Appendix I 



of natural selection in man. The lessons to 

 be deduced from censuses, registrar-general's 

 reports, anthropometric surveys, educational 

 returns of every type when these are 

 efficiently and fully developed become of 

 primary national importance, and will speak 

 imperatively in the near future to our more 

 thoughtful statesmen. 



The struggle of classes and of individuals 

 within the community must be subservient 

 to the general fitness of the community as a 

 whole in its contest, in peace or war, with 

 other communities. From this standpoint 

 the patriotic feeling must not only be aroused 

 by such clear and obvious sources of national 

 deterioration as unhealthy dwellings and 

 factories, adulterated food, drink and over- 

 strain,* but also by those more subtle factors 

 of degeneration which can only be appreciated 

 by more elaborate statistical investigations. 

 Such factors may, indeed, be far more r^pid 

 in their effects than those which are more 

 obviously and tangibly present in the in- 

 dividual, and so at once attract the attention 

 of the social reformer. The one series affect 

 the population for the time being there is 

 no evidence that they will be permanently 

 acquired by its offspring ; the other series 

 are to a much greater extent irreversible. 



* The complacency which asserts that we are better 

 than our forefathers in these respects entirely overlooks 

 the real problem, which is centred in considering our 

 progress relative to other great nations. 



