296 Heredity and Environment 



in the human breed. Society is in some respects such a power 

 and can do what the individual, because of self-interest, short life 

 or lack of ability, cannot accomplish. In matters of public health 

 and comfort, security of life and property society is superior in 

 power to the individual; in matters of the perpetuation of the race 

 the individual is still supreme. In animal societies the race, the 

 breed, is to the swift and strong and fit, and the same was prob- 

 ably true of primitive men. But it is impossible to return to the 

 conditions of primitive society in this respect, and the social 

 body itself must in some way control the breeding of men. 



There are millions of men in civilized countries whose mental 

 equipment places them on a plane with barbarians or savages, 

 and they have on the average more offspring than their civilized 

 contemporaries. There are millions of others who are so ser- 

 iously defective in body or mind, owing to hereditary causes, that 

 they can never take care of themselves and must always be a 

 charge upon the state, and yet in many civilized countries they 

 are permitted to perpetuate their kind and produce a never-ending 

 supply of mental and moral defectives, whose maintenance must 

 seriously interfere with the proper education and development of 

 the normal population and whose unrestrained existence con- 

 stantly threatens to pollute purer streams of heredity. The prac- 

 tice of society regarding marriage and reproduction up to the 

 present has been to 'allow all sorts, good, bad and indifferent, to 

 propagate with the belief that good environment and training will 

 make up for deficiencies of birth. But recently the conviction 

 has been growing that good environment is far less important 

 than good heredity and that in some way society must influence 

 the race of men at its source. This is the doctrine of eugenics, 

 which Galton defines as follows : 



The science of improving stock, which is by no means confined 

 to questions of judicious mating but which, especially in the case 

 of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however 

 remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of 



