532 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL RESULTS 



One enthusiast over microbic selection says : " The higher 

 the infantile death-rate which medicine so energetically combats, 

 the surer is the next generation of being purged of all weakly 

 and sickly organisms." But he omits to record the fact that 

 the infantile maladies also affect the intrinsically strong and 

 capable, and often weaken them, one might say, quite gratui- 

 tously. (3) Many of the microbic agents which thin our ranks 

 are very indiscriminate in their selection, and even if we believed 

 that in warring against microbes we are eliminating the elimi- 

 nators who have made our race what it is — as the enthusiastic 

 apologists for Bacteria declare — it is surely open to us to put 

 other modes of selection into operation. It were a sad confession 

 of incapacity if man could not select better than bacteria. (4) 

 Finally, since we cannot keep to the biological outlook, is it 

 ridiculously old-fashioned to plead that even when the physical 

 constitution is miserable, the weakling may be a national asset 

 worth saving, for its mental endowment, for instance, and for 

 other reasons ? That the weakling is to be allowed to breed more 

 weaklings if it can, is another matter. Every one agrees that the 

 reproduction of weaklings should be discouraged in every feasible 

 way — in every way compatible with rational social sentiment. 



Multiplication of the Unfit. — We have to face a more difficult 

 problem when we consider the multiplication of the relatively 

 unfit. It is, we suppose, true that these have now a better chance 

 to survive and multiply than at any other epoch in the history 

 of our race. Especially perhaps in Britain do the weeds tend 

 to increase more rapidly than the flowers. It is impossible 

 to ignore the seriousness of the outlook. If, as Professor 

 Karl Pearson points out, 25 per cent, of the married couples 

 in Britain produce 50 per cent, of the next generation, how 

 much depends on the character of that 25 per cent. From the 

 most diverse regions we have reports of the alarming increase 

 of what not even the most optimistic can regard as other than 

 undesirables. In a fine climate and in a period of cheap food 



