294 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



other types of manhood and achievement, art, literature, 

 philosophy and science, the greatest intellectual achieve- 

 ments of mankind up to that time, but in these Sparta had 

 no share. Her eugenics was of the same type as that of the 

 animal breeder. It aimed to produce a single specialized type 

 of superior excellence. In this it succeeded, but at the sacri- 

 fice of all else. In this, again, it resembles animal husbandry, 

 which produces a type of animal more useful to man, but 

 wholly dependent upon him, and unable to maintain itself 

 if thrust back into the struggle for existence with other 

 animals. 



The civilization for whose continuance Plato planned came 

 to an end. We do not know why. Historians differ widely 

 in their views as to why Greece and Rome fell. But one sug- 

 gestion is that in their later days the inferior classes increased 

 more rapidly than the superior ones and the general average 

 was thereby lowered. Now it is conceivable that this may 

 have happened in one of two ways. If each class reproduced 

 its kind, then the lower classes must have reproduced faster 

 than the upper ones. This is what is assumed to have 

 occurred by those who consider modern nations to be 

 threatened in a similar way. 



On the other hand it is possible that there was no real 

 germinal difference between the so-called upper and the 

 lower classes. The classification of ancient society may have 

 rested on economic rather than biological grounds and the 

 downfall have been due to economic causes rather than to 

 racial changes. If this is true then the more rapid reproduc- 

 tion of those low in the social scale was not in itself harmful 

 to the race, that is would not have caused a lowering of its 

 biological level, and economic causes must be sought to 

 explain the decay of ancient civilization. The question is 

 one for historians to deal with, but its answer must be borne 

 in mind when the fate of ancient civilizations is cited as a 

 warning to us. 



A belief that biological decline is occurring or is likely to 

 occur among modern nations has given rise to the modern 



