1328 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



and health, in beauty and happiness, from homes to regions and 

 villages, towns and cities, which they are beginning to think of as 

 required. And as for the insistence, however biologically and psycho- 

 logically sound, on selection of the fittest families, and towards 

 racial betterment accordingly, they remain distrustful. And here 

 not without some justice. With real respect for the gist of Francis 

 Galton's Hereditary Genius, can one avoid sometimes smiling at the 

 naivete with which successful lawyers and business men and more 

 are mentioned as transmitting success and prosperity to their sons, 

 with little- mention of their social advantages as compared with 

 sons of the people! So would not eugenists profit by a book like 

 Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, which seems seldom known to 

 them? Again, are eugenists abreast of Mendelian progress, and of 

 that of the Freudian school? Individually often yes: but fresh 

 eugenic presentments seem needed. 



Return, however, to the public, say the man on the bus, the 

 woman inside. He is reading the evening paper, for its outdoor 

 interests, from sport to weather, and for his business ijiterest, 

 thereafter political matters, accidents and minor incidents, snippets 

 and jokes. But when a woman takes to the papers, births, deaths, 

 and marriages often take the first place; and then the personal 

 news, from doings of the royal family to the latest passional incident, 

 as of divorce or crime. As commonly as a young man chooses the 

 paper with most news of sport, so the young girl turns as instinct- 

 ively to the story papers; and among these not usually those of 

 adventure or detective marvels, read first by the men-folk; those of 

 her choice involve the love-theme, fundamental to her organic 

 anticipation of mating. But these papers have practically no articles 

 on eugenics: how shall we get their editors to desire them? How 

 give the subject a fresher and wider appeal? 



The eugenist may reply and so far truly, that while man normally 

 mates for love of the woman, and she so far for that of the man, 

 she has also a far deeper-lying longing for the child. Granted: yet 

 this is as yet more implicit than explicit: so his science does not 

 appeal to her so far. So much then for the fish, and why they are not 

 taking. They are interested in expressing their lives, in expliciting 

 their immediate dreams, and not readily in restraining either their 

 own or those of others, as the eugenist cannot but desire. 



What then is to be done? The eugenist must abate his hopes 

 from the State, at any rate till he has converted a sufficient public. 

 And also his conviction and feeling of class, so ingrained from home, 

 school and university alike, and career as continued afterwards. 

 In the London or older Oxford atmosphere (which reach far beyond) 

 this class-feeling readily colours eugenic conversation: and the 

 element of justification appears as we roam the surrounding villages; 

 for there depressive mfluences and selections through a long past 



