BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 5^ 



can be no doubt that it would " pay " the British nation to put 

 aside a million a year for research on eugenics, or the improve- 

 ment of the human breed. 



I may be permitted here to quote a notable passage from 

 the foremost British experimenter on heredity, Mr. William 

 Bateson (1905, p. 589) : 



" There are others who look to the science of heredity with 

 a loftier aspiration j who ask, Can any of this be used to help 

 those who come after to be better than we are healthier, wiser, 

 or more worthy ? The answer depends on the meaning of the 

 question. On the one hand, it is certain that a competent 

 breeder, endowed with full powers, by the aid even of our present 

 knowledge, could in a few generations breed out several of the 

 morbid diatheses. As we have got rid of rabies and pleuro- 

 pneumonia, so we could exterminate the simpler vices. Vol- 

 taire's cry, ' E eraser Vinfdme,' might well replace Archbishop 

 Parker's Table of Forbidden Degrees, which is all the instruction 

 Parliament has so far provided. Similarly, a race may con- 

 ceivably be bred true to some physical and intellectual char- 

 acters considered good. The positive side of the problem is 

 less hopeful, but the various species of mankind offer ample 

 material. In this sense science already suggests the way. No 

 one, however, proposes to take it ; and so long as, in our actual 

 laws of breeding, superstition remains the guide of nations, 

 rising ever fresh and unhurt from the assaults of knowledge, 

 there is nothing to hope or to fear from these sciences. 



" But if, as is usual, the philanthropist is seeking for some 

 external application by which to ameliorate the course of de- 

 scent, knowledge of heredity cannot help him. The answer to 

 his question is No, almost without qualification. We have 

 no experience of any means by which transmission may be 

 made to deviate from its course ; nor from the moment of 

 fertilisation can teaching, or hygiene, or exhortation pick out 

 the particles of evil in that zygote, or put in one particle of good. 



