INTRODUCTORY. u 



the political union that binds us together is 

 another. 



The Knowledge we possess regarding the Laws of 

 Racial Change. 



A knowledge of the individual must be obtained 

 before we can fitly study the facts observable when 

 individual succeeds individual, making the generations 

 to follow each other, and thereby building up the 

 history of a race of men. The facts of individual 

 development, both in the case of man and of the 

 lower animals, have already been minutely studied. 

 We know much of the life-histories of many species, 

 and can say what conditions are favourable and what 

 are inimical to healthy and active individual exist- 

 ence. Much of this information has been turned to 

 practical uses, and preventive medicine has arisen as 

 a noble art, which, by its application, permits of a 

 successful war against disease and even against 

 death itself. We have also learned much of that 

 longer history which traces out the life of a 

 species, generation after generation, and noted those 

 changes for the better or for the worse which occur in 

 the characteristics of groups of the individuals of 

 those species as they succeed each other. We have 

 of late years accumulated in government returns vast 

 quantities of exact statistical information, so that by 



