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308 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



face. Democracy is as safe a remedy against such evils as 

 state controlled marriages would be, if they were obtainable. 



The most important inherited traits are probably those 

 which are quantitatively variable, which occur in a graded 

 series, like bodily size and strength, mental power, and power 

 of resisting disease. In regard to these, excellence is a matter 

 of degree and is relative. Further no particular grade breeds 

 true. Regression toward the normal is the universal rule. 

 If society could be managed like a stock farm, then it would 

 be possible to change the normal toward which regression 

 occurs, very slowly and gradually, as for example in mental 

 power. The average grade of intelligence could be raised by 

 rigid selection long continued. Possibly this has occurred in 

 the evolution of existing races of men. If so, it has occurred 

 unconsciously and through natural selection and probably 

 more from the struggle of one cultural group with another 

 than from the struggle of one individual with another. But 

 the modern eugenic ideal is to make a conscious selection of 

 parents within the group with a view to elevating the normal 

 within the group, a thing that has not hitherto been at- 

 tempted, unless in Sparta for the breeding of soldiers. 



If there were a central directing agency which had the 

 power as well as the wisdom to control matings within the 

 group, something could undoubtedly be done slowly to ele- 

 vate the general average of bodily vigor or innate mental 

 power within the group. This could be done most rapidly 

 by polygamy which would permit of a relatively rigid selec- 

 tion of sires; less rapidly under monogamy by a selection of 

 parents among both sexes, the offspring to be cared for largely 

 by the rest of the community. But the social consequences 

 of either of these methods are so tremendous, so subversive 

 are they of individual liberty, that no modem civilized com- 

 munity has been willing to contemplate either of them. The 

 whole movement of modem times is in an opposite direction. 

 Practically therefore, we are limited to such eugenic measures 

 as the individual will voluntarily take in the light of present 

 knowledge of heredity. It will do no good, but only harm, to 



