FUTURE DESTINY OF THE RACE 89 



In fact it may be broadly stated that in all primitive tribes 

 which occupy a limited area, care is taken not to have more 

 babies than are required. 



It is not seriously suggested that infanticide should be 

 practised in a modern Christian state ; only that means should 

 be taken to render it difficult or impossible for the unfit to 

 breed. A beginning has been made by Eugenic societies in 

 stirring up public opinion on the subject ; but no way could be 

 devised in which public opinion could be more effectively 

 stirred up than by making a fair knowledge of zoology a 

 necessary element in modern education. 



The lessons which the Eugenist seeks to enforce are written 

 in flame across every page of zoology : the wiping out of less 

 perfectly developed and less adaptive tribes by better equipped 

 ones is going on daily under our very eyes. If this sort of 

 mental pabulum were supplied to those who are likely to 

 become our public men and leaders instead of the exclusively 

 classical education on which the last generation has been reared, 

 the Eugenist would not preach to deaf ears, and there is at 

 least a chance that social and economic questions would be 

 fairly faced instead of being merely tinkered with. It is 

 easy to put from one's mind general talk about natural 

 selection if one has had a non-scientific education, for the term 

 probably does not convey a definite image to the mind, but to 

 the man with even a very moderate zoological training it 

 means something infinitely too important to be put on one side. 

 Let us hope that a time is coming when a knowledge of the 

 laws of life will be thought to be at least as important as 

 acquaintance with the rules of the grammar of dead languages. 



It would be futile to close a book like this without some 

 reference to the objection that zoology deals with man, as if 

 he were body without soul. The answer to this objection is 

 twofold. First , zoology, as a natural science which deals with 

 phenomena perceptible by the senses, must deal with man as it 

 deals with other animals, as if they were bodies only. Whether 

 man's behaviour is entirely explicable as the outcome of the 

 chemical energy of his body is a question which lies entirely 

 outside the province of zoology. Secondly, all that zoology 

 asserts concerning man is not that he is merely body, but 

 that he and the animals are akin. It may be that in the 



