NURTURE VERSUS NATURE 



continue there would not be standing room in the 

 world for the human population in the year 4000 

 A.D. If the population of the United States were 

 to increase as rapidly in the coming century as it 

 has in the past century, starvation would stare the 

 main body of our great-grandchildren in the face. 



In a word, the great menace of the moment is 

 not race suicide but race repletion. 



And, as we have seen, it is the less desirable 

 members of the race who are most prolific. Hence 

 the human garden is in danger of being choked 

 with human weeds. There is eminent need of 

 cultivation akin to that which Mr. Burbank prac- 

 tices when he would improve a race of plants 

 instead of allowing them to run wild and 

 deteriorate. 



Yet, as I said before, it must be admitted that 

 at the present stage of social development no 

 very definite remedies, on the side of positive eu- 

 genics, can be suggested as capable of immediate 

 application. The most that can be hoped, per- 

 haps, is that knowledge of the laws of heredity 

 may be spread broadcast, until the average in- 

 telligent citizen is sufficiently informed to have 

 logical opinions on this most important topic. 

 When the time comes that a larger number of 

 cultivated men and women have as comprehensive 

 a knowledge of heredity as is now possessed by a 

 small number of breeders of plants and special 

 types of domesticated animals, and when the 

 public at large realizes that the same laws of 

 heredity apply to man as to all his fellow-beings, 



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