296 



GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



comes more complex family life sinks into a subordinate 

 position. The more intellectual and cultured the individual 

 is, the more does he find outside the home to interest and 

 attract him. The consequence is that home life suffers. It 

 is slighted or shunned altogether by those who are best quali- 

 fied to be parents, and the rearing of children is left to those 

 considered too dull for other activities. In consequence the 

 majority of the children produced in a cultured and progres- 

 sive city population are produced by its least cultured and 

 progressive members. This is the condition which today 

 confronts the leading nations of the world and has given rise 

 to the eugenics movement. If this condition is interpreted 

 from the standpoint of the animal breeder, it means that the 

 average capacity of the population for intellectual pursuits, 

 for culture and for progress is bound to decline. For this 

 amounts to selecting for breeding, not the best, but the culls 

 of the flock, and every breeder knows that this means 

 deterioration. 



If a great city can in each generation import a fresh stock 

 of youths from the country or from foreign countries, all 

 may go well, but it is questionable whether this can continue 

 indefinitely. Already many of our rural New England com- 

 munities are said to be running out of good human stock. 

 For generations they have been sending their best to the 

 cities and to the developing West. Many of those left be- 

 hind are lacking in energy or ambition, perhaps also in 

 intelligence, and a European peasant population is rapidly 

 replacing them. Will this new population be a fit substitute 

 for the old Anglo-Saxon stock ? Time alone will tell. If it 

 is a sound stock which has hitherto lacked opportunity to 

 rise in the social scale, we may now expect it to do so, oppor- 

 tunity being offered. But if it is inherently a feeble stock, it 

 will not replace the old New England stock in supplying our 

 cities with the bright youths whom they require but are un- 

 able to produce in sufficient numbers. A time of storm and 

 stress like that which now distracts the world may at some 

 future day decide our fitness to survive as a race. 



