1326 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



generally, to fullest inquiries, as for organic vigour, and up to 

 ancestral longevity, similarly for mentality and character ; each and 

 aU tending to replace the long customary insistence on money or 

 social status alone, save when backed by true achievement. Here, 

 then, the practical ideal is to make "ordinary" matings be consid- 

 ered, not less but more seriously, then have patrician and royal ones. 

 Immigration selections and restrictions, racial restrictions also, have 

 not only been much before the American mind, but are now — however 

 roughly — embodied in its policy. The like passage from thought to 

 action is in progress for many communities, witness segregations of 

 the defective and diseased; and in some States even sterilisation of 

 certain criminals, those of sex especially, but not exclusively. Birth 

 control is, of course, in active progress in Europe and America 

 alike. And though this be so far often dysgenic, since so much 

 resorted to where least desirable, the post-war abatement of Euro- 

 pean trade, and the nearing of agricultural limits and yields for still 

 increasing populations, are alike plainly increasing this; it may be 

 even before long more and more widely. Yet this can be no panacea; 

 and it is of importance here to note that the whole modern inquiry 

 of Eugenics has arisen and its policy been in development, long after 

 birth-control has been practised and advocated throughout Western 

 Europe and America. 



The eugenist's essential doctrine and endeavours towards race- 

 improvement, and this not only organic but psychic also, are so 

 fundamentally excellent, that it is no small delay of social progress 

 that his teaching and his efforts progress so slowly; once more, how- 

 ever, we can but plead that he extend these as not only as regards 

 woman and marriage, by actively progressive and constructive 

 measures of encouragement of the best matings, and so even as one 

 of the best accelerations of public sentiment towards the discourage- 

 ment of the inferior and the positively evil ones. 



With extreme family histories and their biographies before us, 

 we tend to judgments strict and stern; hence many eugenic writers 

 have too simply re-expressed in their writings the sculptures over 

 so many medieval church portals, with the damned falling, the 

 blessed rising, respectively to left and right of their inexorable 

 judge. But in ordinary life, and its inheritances, the matter is not 

 quite so simple, as the Church's gentler traditions show, and as 

 criminologist and psycho-analyst are again learning and teaching 

 (and even from lives which seemed worst fallen). And so, too, as to 

 families and breeds ; for, with all respect to such a f amity as Jonathan 

 Edwards', who has not seen inferior and even defective individuals 

 appearing in families otherwise eugenic of best? Many years ago, 

 when eugenists were still callow in experience, and thus thinking 

 their problems simpler, their applications easier, than now, there 

 appeared a forcible reminder from one of the best and fullest of then 



