336 GENETICS 



9. THE MORAL 



Race-preservation, not self-preservation is the first 

 law of nature. Because the laws of heredity work re- 

 lentlessly within predetermined limits is iio reason for 

 branding eugenics with the mark of a fatalistic philo- 

 sophy that would avoid personal responsibility. The 

 Florida orange-grower who uses his intelligence and 

 plants frost-resisting varieties to replace those over- 

 taken by frost does not blame fate for his losses. It 

 is never fatalistic to seek to find out the true determin- 

 ing causes of a disaster and to apply the obvious 

 remedy. As Osborn has said: "To know the worst 

 as well as the best in heredity; to preserve and select 

 the best, these are the most ^essential forces in the 

 future evolution of human society." 



Our hereditary endowment may be something given 

 us without our consent and connivance and the accident 

 of our birth may determine very largely the environment 

 in which we must work out our salvation but there 

 lies a sleeping giant of possibility in everyone, and, 

 whether we have one talent or five or ten, the individual 

 response we make is our own and we alone are respon- 

 sible for it. 



Finally, to quote the wise^words of Huxley, "To 

 learn what is true in order to do what is right" is the 

 summing up of the whole duty of man, for all VhoTtlre 

 not able to satisfy their mental hunger with the east 

 wind of authority." 



