Control of Heredity: Eugenics 



2. No Improvement in Human Heredity within Historic 

 Times. The improvement of environment and of opportunity for 

 individual development enables men at the present day to get 

 more out of their heredity than was possible in the past. Advance 

 of civilization has meant only improvement of environment. But 

 neither environment nor training has changed the hereditary ca- 

 pacities of man. There has been no perceptible improvement in 

 human heredity within historic times, nothing comparable with 

 the changes which have occurred in domesticated animals. In- 

 deed no modern race of men is the equal of certain ancient ones. 

 Galton has pointed out the act that in the little country of At- 

 tica in the century between 530 and 430 B.C. there were pro- 

 duced fourteen illustrious men, one for every 4,300 of the free 

 born, adult male population. In the two centuries from 500300 

 B. C. this small, barren country with an area and total popula- 

 tion about equal to that of the present State of Rhode Island but 

 with less than one-'fifth as many free persons produced at least 

 twenty-five illustrious men. Among statesmen and commanders 

 there were Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, 

 Phocion; among poets ^Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristo- 

 phanes ; among philosophers and men of science Socrates, Plato, 

 Aristotle, Demetrius, Theophrastus ; among architects and artists 

 Ictinus, Phidias, Praxiteles, Polygnotus ; among historians Thucy- 

 dides and Xenophon; among orators ^Eschines, Demosthenes, 

 Isocrates, Lysias. In this small country in the space of two cen- 

 turies there appeared such a galaxy of illustrious men as has 

 never been found on the whole earth in any two centuries since 

 that time. 



These illustrious men came from a remarkable race composed 

 of individuals drawn together from all the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean by a process of unconscious but severe selection. Athens 

 was the intellectual and social capital of the world and to it the 

 most ambitious and most capable men were irresistibly drawn. 

 It was good immigration as well as good native stock that made 



