BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1325 



exemplary to wise ambition than "The Peerage", though that too 

 would yield a substantial proportion worthy of such scientific record. 

 Thus the old and natural interest in pedigrees would be democratised 

 and aristocratised anew ; and so be rid of its burden of mere snobbery. 

 "The Golden age of Genealogy has yet to come"; indeed, it is now 

 beginning, and with a scrupulosity and thoroughness surpassing 

 even that of royal families in the past, and a graphic completeness of 

 notation surpassing all heraldic quarterings. Yet no longer inter- 

 preted in the old and still customary sense ; for merely by the line of 

 ascent which carries the family name, "practically nothing is 

 known" from the truly genetic viewpoint. For any of the other three 

 grandparents may be dominant in you or me, as any of the sixteen 

 of theirs, and so on: with increasingly minute chance accordingly 

 that your direct descent from the Conqueror, as still less mine from 

 Kenneth Macalpine centuries earlier, is in any way effective in us! 

 Hence, too, where descendants of a number of such selected ancestors 

 have mated together for ages, as among leading roj^al families of 

 Europe, the result in talent or genius is by no means so distinguished 

 as was constantly hoped. Still, from a careful genealogic monograph 

 of these families — and that fortunately by an American investigator, 

 detached from all European loyalties accordingly — the fact appears, 

 for their after all moderate numbers through recorded ages, that 

 their percentage of recognised talent, and even that of occasional 

 genius, is notably and undeniably higher than usual: witness the 

 Medici, the Stuarts, etc., etc. Yet democracy can now do better, as 

 the above-chosen examples show; and the more since it is less 

 weighted down by mere manages de convenance such as have too 

 often deteriorated royal strains, and sometimes even to ruin. 



Enough, however, to show that eugenists are not afraid of scientific 

 work; and that they are not to be content till they have extended 

 its inquiries throughout all classes of their peoples. So what now of 

 the desired applications? Too numerous for more than briefest 

 mention here. First of all, the damning proof of the dysgenic results 

 of war; and of the last Great War as extreme case, for Western 

 Europe, with consequent insistency for peace accordingly. Yet 

 peace in no mere passive sense; since thus involving urgent and 

 speedy consideration of ways and means of increase of the eugenic 

 types; and, frankly too, the decrease of the dysgenic breeds, since 

 at present it is the former which ebb, while the latter flow. Every 

 form of existing social, economic, and political endeavour thus needs 

 criticism from this eugenic viewpoint, so essential to the continuance 

 and improvement of breed and civilisation alike, and these from 

 villages to nations, even to races. So not only eugenic papers but 

 volumes are ever appearing for each aspect of the subject. The 

 improvement of sexual selection and mating is often urged; and 

 these from simplest everyday choice, by good looks and points 



