304 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



his opinion that while we should welcome and support a 

 eugenic movement tending to limit the birth of feeble-minded 

 and defective children and encouraging the birth of those 

 that are well endowed, it appears that under the existing 

 conditions of knowledge, law and sentiment, we can probably 

 accomplish more for science, civilization and racial advance 

 by selecting from the thirty million children of the country 

 those having superior natural ability and character, by train- 

 ing them and giving them opportunity to do the work for 

 which they are fit. We waste the mineral resources of the 

 country and the fertility of the soil, but our most scandalous 

 waste is of our children, most of all of those who might be- 

 come men and women of performance and of genius. 



' "Eugenics may become the most important of all applied 

 sciences, but at present its scientific foundations must be laid 

 by the study of comparative genetics, on the one side, and the 

 study of human conduct, on the other. There is more im- 

 mediate prospect of improving our civilization than our germ- 

 / plasm. It is easier to decrease or eliminate typhoid fever by 

 hygienic measures than to attain racial immunity, although 

 this is not equally the case for tuberculosis and still less for 

 cancer. We can increase to anv desired extent from the 

 existing population by proper selection and training the 

 number of scientific workers in the United States. The 

 number capable of exhibiting genius is limited, but many of 

 them are lost through lack of opportunity. It is our business, 

 it should be our principal business, to improve our civiliza- 

 tion by giving opportunity to those who are fit, while at the 

 same time investigating the conditions which will give us a 

 better race." 



Writers on sociology have shown that himian progress is 

 largely limited and determined by the social environment and 

 that it is even possible for social progress to occur in spite of 

 biological deterioration. If this idea is correct, one argument 

 for control of human matings by the state or some other 

 central agency has been frequently over-emphasized. Racial 

 progress does not require a constantly advancing biological 



