HEREDITY AND ' rnVSlCAL DF=:r; EN ERATH >N 05 



the subject, but it also is exceedingly comforting. 

 Were we compelled to believe that a representative 

 section of the Aryan race, such as ourselves, is under- 

 going an hereditary, racial degeneration, either owing 

 to some maleficence of the environment whioh made 

 the fittest of Spencer's formula the worst according 

 to our ordinary standards, or owing to the abrogation 

 of the law of the survival of the fittest, or owintj to 

 a racial senility, then the conclusion would be that 

 the white race as a whole is probably docjmed to 

 extinction — perhaps hastened by th& incursion of 

 the Mons^ol. There would thus be raised issues of 

 planetary significance. If however, the action of 

 heredity be excluded, we have to face a very much 

 smaller and very much more hopeful problem ; this, 

 namely, that certain conditions of the environment, 

 such as city life, bad feeding, alcohol, foul air, and so 

 forth, are causinsr a certain number of individuals in 

 each generation to undergo a physical deterioration 

 in the course of the individual lifetime. Of these a 

 certain number may possibly add hereditary de- 

 generates to the next generation, but the law of 

 natural selection — if it be still in action — ensures 

 that their race soon dies out. 



Let us then revise our terminology. The word 

 degeneration — a coming " do\vn from the genus" — 

 is certainly applicable to a progressive condition in 

 which each generation produces, in virtue of heredity, 

 another worse than itself This is just the condition 

 which, as I believe, does not hold in the ciuse under 

 discussion. The term deterioixiticm, on the other 

 hand, meaning simply "a beeoming worse," is more 

 fitted to the case as 1 believe it to be. A racial 



