1320 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



encouragement of chivalrous marriages, {b) There may spring up a 

 freshened enthusiasm for all-round fitness and a high standard of 

 health, and it must be granted that all improvements of "nurture" 

 in the widest sense are to the good as long as it is clearly recognised 

 that veneering does not make bad wood sound. A nation's losses 

 may strengthen a resolution to face the national wastage due to 

 such diseases as tuberculosis; and to improve the conditions that 

 are in part to blame for other evils, such as syphilis and alcoholism. 



(c) Some clearer understanding of what selection means may lead 

 to a scrutiny of the retrenchments which the costliness of the war 

 always necessitates. To economise upon the nobler super-necessaries 

 means crippling such super-men as painters and musicians. We 

 should try pinching ourselves in our comforts before we begin 

 starving our souls. But talking is easy and doing is difficult. 



(d) What the biologist is most concerned with is the natural in- 

 heritance of the race, whic?i is fundamental, but the human outlook 

 is wider than the biological. Man is concerned with his social heritage, 

 which is supreme — with, for instance, his traditions and ideals of 

 honour, veracity, courage, justice, and good will among men. 

 Hence ever mere clearly appears the urgent need of planning and 

 mobilising truly evolutionary progress, with its nobler rivalries. 



THE CASE FOR EUGENICS 



The industrial age, with its increasing progress of business and 

 manufactures, naturally soon developed their appropriate comple- 

 ment of increase of wealth and population; so that its characteristic 

 economics and corresponding politics long seemed beyond question. 

 Criticisms, however, have long been arising of the sufficiency of 

 all this progress, and even of its efficiency at best; but only those 

 from biology here claim consideration ; and of these there are mainly 

 two. First there came the shock to economic optimism nearly a 

 century ago, from the depressed, disease-tainted, and short life of 

 working children, women and men, and with some measures accord- 

 ingly; whence largely a substantial advance in public health. And 

 this not only through the application and advance of medicine, but 

 also largel}' by recognition of the association of ill-health with bad 

 housing and slum conditions. Hence the sanitationists, with their 

 standard plans and regulations — all still in progress, and with 

 diminished death- and disease-rates encouragingly. And though the 

 cost of these changes first shocked would-be economists, and so 

 needed moral motives and social leadership to carry them out in 

 practice, the resulting economic gains, both by diminished loss of 

 time through illnesses, and by lengthened years of productive 

 efficiency, were increasingly found a main factor in industrial 



