THE CHART OF EVOLUTION 19 



understand. More than this, we demand that such a man, framed 

 of ordinary clay, shall right the wrongs of nations thousands of 

 miles away; shall give of his substance for starving millions in 

 Turkey or China ; and in a hundred ways shall act as if he were 

 more than human. 



Thus we have built up a wonderful fabric of civilization, and 

 at the same time have actually weakened the human race by 

 diminishing its vitality and hence its will power. We have also 

 lessened its adaptation to its environment. Our foolish hands 

 have turned the rudder in such a way as to check the reproduction 

 of the bravest warriors, the people of deepest religious zeal, the 

 men and women of highest self-control, and those with the greatest 

 power to think and act. Today, as Conklin well puts it, "social 

 heredity has outrun germinal heredity." In other words we have 

 woven a complex fabric which makes the most strenuous demands 

 upon human character, but we have weakened the fiber by inter- 

 fering with the course of evolution and by subjecting the human 

 race to new and unfavorable conditions. Thus, when some great 

 crisis comes, the social fabric is suddenly rent, as it was in the 

 Great War, and we see man in all his nakedness. We realize that 

 in many ways he is still a weak-willed brute. 



When it comes to the problem of strengthening the social fabric 

 all the many methods may be grouped under three great heads. 

 First, we may improve our systems of religion, education, philan- 

 thropy, and government. Work along such lines may all be 

 summed up under the general heading of training. No one will 

 question that our efforts to train the next generation in the right 

 way must be redoubled. Second, we must give tenfold or a 

 hundred-fold greater weight to the great problem of eugenics. 

 Our country's children must have a good inheritance. The best 

 inheritance and the finest training, however, are not enough. 

 Between the two stands health. How many human ills arise 

 because well-trained people with a good inheritance fail to do 

 their part through ill health or nervousness.'' Think of the 



