314 Heredity and Environment 



the new conditions of affluence and luxury for more than three 

 generations it may become more or less adapted to the new con- 

 ditions. 



Birth Control No eugenical reform can fail to take account 

 of the fact that the decreasing birth rate among intelligent people 

 is a constant menace to the race. We need not " fewer and better 

 children" but more children of the better sort and fewer of the 

 worse variety. There is great enthusiasm today on the part of 

 many childless reformers for negative eugenical measures; the 

 race is to be regenerated through sterilization or birth control. 

 But unfortunately this reform begins among those who because 

 of good hereditary traits should not be infertile. Sterlity is too 

 easily acquired ; what is not so easily brought about is the fertility 

 of the better ones. Galton was far wiser than most of his follow- 

 ers for he realized the necessity of increasing the families of the 

 better types as well as of decreasing those of the worse. 



What Bernard Shaw regards as the greatest discovery of the 

 nineteenth century, viz., the means of artificially limiting the size 

 of families, may prove to be the greatest menace to the human 

 race. If it were applied only to those who should not have chil- 

 dren or to those who should for various reasons have only a few 

 children it would be a blessing to mankind. But applied to those 

 who could and should have many children it is no gift of the gods. 

 No one denies that the chief motive for limiting the size of fam- 

 ilies is personal comfort and pleasure rather than the welfare of 

 the race. The argument that people should have no more chil- 

 dren than they can rear in comfort or luxury assumes that en- 

 vironment is more important than heredity, which is contrary to 

 all the biological evidence. In the breeding of horses or cattle or 

 men heredity is more potent than environment; and it is more 

 important for the welfare of the race that children with good in- 

 heritance should be brought into the world than that parents 

 should live easy lives and have no more children than they can 

 conveniently rear amid all the comforts of a luxury-loving age. 



