BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1329 



are manifest. But in France or in Scotland far less: thus writing 

 now in the latter, and through life in fuller touch with their villagers 

 than London or Oxford as easily afford, we honestly fail to see any- 

 thing like the same degree of difference, biological or psychological, 

 in people of normal life; in fact, we can make out no distinct in- 

 feriority of our rural neighbours to our academic and otherwise 

 cultivated ones, or in the potentialities of their families either. We 

 see the selection of picked individuals, and the (more serious) 

 emigration of able families, which even if not yet manifestly lower- 

 ing the value of the village populations, can hardly but be in that 

 direction. To maintain and improve those values is obviously the 

 eugenic need : but who as yet sees clearly enough what social changes 

 are needed, much less to devise them? — even then, with what 

 prospects of execution? — and after all, with what certainty of 

 result? Here surely the sociologist is needed, and with his surveys 

 carried deeper. The best novelists are here our exemplars, and will 

 do better still as our scientific questionings reach them. 



With the preceding difficulties and more, it is no wonder that 

 eugenics makes slow advance, even as doctrine, let alone as practice. 

 So again, what is to be done? Here at least is one practical sugges- 

 tion, far from new yet too little developed; and promising more 

 consideration, and even trial, than it has yet had. It is not towards 

 abating eugenic interest, since eugenics cannot be too fully prose- 

 cuted; but of increasing our eugamic interest, that in good matings, 

 such as we can truly congratulate, and with wishes genuinely 

 hopeful. Does the eugenist reply that he has done that all along, 

 and does so still? Doubtless yes, in thought and appreciation: but 

 as yet little in practice worthy of his knowledge and sympathy, 

 towards aiding the process of mating, and towards better, and best ; 

 a problem daily re-opening in the present, and on which successful 

 improvement towards the eugenic future so immediately depends. 

 Is it replied that scientific societies do not enter practical life? 

 Eugenics is practical ; it is the highest branch of genetics in particular, 

 and of biotechnics in general: so it simply has to strive towards 

 experimental realisation of its aims, or abandon them. Is every 

 Eugenic Society then to become a "matrimonial agency"? As a 

 matter of name, of course not : but as a matter of fact, yes ; and the 

 more the better. Without using that vulgarised name, what else is 

 so fundamental to "the London season"? So too, every gathering of 

 young folks, for an excursion and a picnic, for an afternoon tea let 

 alone an evening dance, and still more for presenting a play, is doing 

 that already. Every university of mingled sexes brings about some 

 percentage of pairings; and proportionately still more a summer 

 school, a field club excursion, a collective tour with its fresh and un- 

 familiar groupings; likewise a church society, a mixed choir; and 

 yet more again, a civic pageant or a masque, with its larger numbers, 



VOL. II QQ 



