go Heredity, Variation and Genius 



production there are several inevitable mis- 

 chances ? The good which he represents in the 

 family stock from which he proceeds, and the evil 

 which his less fortunate kin disclose, alike tend in 

 the order of reproductive events to fall back to 

 the mean of the species. Meanwhile the species 

 profits by the impulse of his work and the family 

 eventually rights itself or, if not, suffers a natural 

 decay and extinction. It is a bold conceit that 

 man can yet interfere successfully in the compli- 

 cated business and prescribe strict rules of good 

 breeding whereby the genius shall be reproduced 

 generation after generation, and the anti-social 

 being eliminated from the social economy. 



VI. 



Experimental results of a course of selective 

 breeding to produce perfect men and women 

 might not fail gravely to disappoint optimistic 

 expectation, even if a common standard of per- 

 fection were agreed upon ; which might not be 

 easy among so many different human types, each 

 thinking itself the best. In the long run it is 

 perhaps better for the species that there is here 

 and there a family stock of such constitutional 

 instability and tendency to variation, even though 

 variation fated to go astray, than it would be 

 for every stock to rest in the stable equilibrium 

 of a set adaptation to its surroundings, bee-like in 



