8 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



ment favour worthy qualities, the fittest are also the 

 worthiest, and all is well. But if the environment be 

 such that bad qualities are an advantage to their 

 possessor, those bad qualities secure a preponderating 

 reproduction, and the racial progress may be downhill. 

 Hence once more we see the need of scrutinizing pro- 

 posed changes in the environment from the point of 

 view of natural selection and heredity. 



But it is in modifying the external conditions of life 

 that the dominion of men on this globe has registered 

 its greatest successes, and it is unfortunately possible 

 for a time artificially to create circumstances in which 

 the least admirable qualities can thrive and secure a 

 preponderating reproduction quite as easily as to main- 

 tain those where industry, foresight and ability receive 

 their due reward. 



Natural selection and the survival of the fittest, then, 

 will not of themselves perform miracles of regenera- 

 tion. They represent the method followed by the 

 workings of heredity. Where the human race is con- 

 cerned, men have now the power consciously to direct 

 them into barren or into profitable channels. The 

 whole fate of civilization hangs on the question of 

 whether this mighty engine of construction or destruc- 

 tion is to be used for good or evil. 



It is not a mere phrase to say that our knowledge 

 of the workings of natural selection, our conceptions 

 of the range and influence of heredity, have advanced 

 by leaps and bounds during the past twenty years. 

 There is no branch of scientific inquiry which has 

 attracted keener and better equipped brains to its 

 service, or of which the results are more fraught 



