THK CAVKNDISH LKCTURE 29 



we can only progress as a race, mentally and physically, by a 

 stringent selection for parenthood ; we must resolve that the fit 

 shall not only be parents, but have a fertility which entirely 

 dominates the fertility of the unfit. Unless we have a firm 

 belief that man differs in toto from every other type of life with 

 which we are acquainted — and there is no basis for such a 

 belief in our experience of the influence of environment on 

 man — then the acceptance of the eugenic standpoint is, I am 

 convinced, the only way in which we can safely reconcile medical 

 progress with racial progress. We cannot make a fine race of 

 men — as Mr. John Burns seems to believe — by simply reducing 

 the infantile death-rate ; that death-rate is selective, and if we 

 check Nature's effective but roughshod methods of race betterment, 

 we must take her task into our own hands and see to it that the 

 mentally and physically inferior have not a dominant fertility. In 

 the organised and conscious race-betterment of the future I 

 believe that medicine and eugenics will advance hand in hand, 

 for their missions, if not identical, will, I venture to think, be in 

 complete sympathy. 



In replying to a vote of thanks proposed by the President, the 

 Lecturer heartily thanked his audience for their careful and pro- 

 longed attention ; it was the first medical audience he had known in 

 which professional duties had not called away at least one or two 

 members. 



AULAKD .\ND SO.N', IMPR., LONDON AND UOKKING. 



2 



