MULTIPLICATION OF THE UNFIT 533 



and high wages, the ratio of defectives — including deaf and 

 dumb, lunatics, epileptics, paralytics, crippled and deformed, 

 debilitated and infirm — is said to have increased from 5-4 per 

 1,000 above 15 years in 1874 to n*6 in 1896. Particular statis- 

 tics, such as these, may be open to criticisms, but there are scores 

 of similar statistics from almost every civilised country, and 

 there is no escape from the general result. As Emerson said, 

 we are breeding men with too much guano in their composition. 



A Host of Practical Suggestions. — Needless to say, many 

 of the inquirers who have become impressed by the facts have 

 not been backward in making practical suggestions, which 

 might be arranged, if one had time, on an inclined plane. Some, 

 more trustful in natural selection than in any human device, 

 have taken up an extreme laissez-faire position, which, as human 

 society is constituted, is quite untenable. The other day we 

 passed by a rock village in Italy which was not so long ago in 

 the direst sense left to itself when cholera broke out within it, 

 sealed up, as it were, like a bee-hive diseased — but it is idle to 

 talk of leaving natural selection free play in any civilised com- 

 munity. Others, going to the opposite extreme, have advocated 

 what may be called surgical methods for both sexes to a degree 

 that is more than spartan. Between these extremes we find all 

 manner of suggestions. We need only refer to the marriage 

 examination and certificate system which is being increasingly 

 discussed — to much profit, it seems to us — in Germany ; the 

 segregation schemes which suggest that those obviously unfit 

 who have to fall back on the State {i.e. the relatively fit citizens) 

 for support should forfeit the right to reproduce, for which, 

 again, there is much to be said ; and the wise and gentle con- 

 structive eugenic proposals with which Mr. Galton has made 

 us all familiar. 



Probably every one who is at all aware of the facts will admit 

 the desirability of giving attention to eugenics or the improve- 

 ment of the human breed, positively, if possible, in the way of 



