294 EUGENICS 



the human race on the principles of the stud farm the 

 objection holds good which was put forward by Huxley : 

 ' Who is competent to do the necessary selecting ? 

 How can the pigeons be their own Sir John Sebright ?' 

 ' The points of a good or of a bad citizen/ says Huxley, 

 ' are really far harder to discern than those of a puppy 

 or a short-horn calf. Many do not show themselves 

 before the practical difficulties of life stimulate man- 

 hood to full exertion. And by that time the mischief 

 is done. The evil stock, if it be one, has had time to 

 multiply, and the selection is nullified/ And there is 

 another objection. The ruthlessness necessary for the 

 carrying out of the method of deliberate selection is 

 in itself so unsocial a quality that, if it were ever to 

 arise, society would probably be far worse off than 

 before. The method is in itself directly opposed to 

 the development of the higher social qualities. 



The student of Eugenics must therefore endeavour 

 to devise other methods, both for encouraging the 

 fertility of the better stock and for discouraging that 

 of the inferior stock. A considerable number of 

 specific suggestions have already been made. ' Not 

 a few medical men/ writes Heron, ' are urging that 

 propagation among the obviously unfit those affected 

 with definite hereditary taints : the imbeciles, the 

 idiotic, the sufferers from syphilis and tuberculosis, 

 should be authoritatively restrained/ Can it be urged 

 that such a proceeding would be unduly tyrannous ? 

 Surely if these people understood the irrevocable laws 

 of heredity if they only knew they would be them- 

 selves unwilling to hand on a tainted existence to 



