310 APPENDIX 



convention are loosened. In revolutions, wars, and riots prim- 

 itive human nature bursts through the thin veneer of civiliza- 

 tion. 



If, in conclusion, we agree that there has been a well-defined 

 historical tendency away from harsh social selection toward mild 

 societal selection, we are obliged to admit that the bulk of social 

 adaptation is no longer capitalized in instinct and race traits, but 

 is taken out in adjustments on the slippery ground of habit and 

 custom. Biologically speaking, social adaptation is in modifica- 

 tion, not in congenital variation. If it is true that the modern 

 social order develops no new social instincts, only new habits, then 

 the wild orgy of counterselection we have indulged in throughout 

 Europe should arouse us to the imperative need of more rational 

 social selection. Although we stand committed against a return 

 to the selective death-rate, we may yet consistently favor a 

 selective birth-rate guided by the principles of the new science of 

 eugenics. But, granted that we establish rational social selection 

 in the form of the selective birth-rate of eugenics and mold a new 

 race, how do we know that future conditions will suit this race? 

 It may be said in answer that it is not a question of the future, 

 but of the present. Natural and social selection have been re- 

 stricted for so many centuries that man's present equipment in 

 instinct (notably in the pugnacious, self-assertive, and acquisitive 

 instincts) is adapted to conditions of long ago. There is need 

 that the gap be reduced and that our equipment in instinct be 

 caught up to modern re(iuirements and responsibilities. This is 

 all that rational social selection working in the form of a eugenic 

 selective birth-rate proposes to do — to work out a better adapta- 

 tion to contemporary conditions. 



