50 SCIENCE AND THE STATE 



at least, that the few geniuses I have in mind are 

 drawn from no exclusive hierarchy or caste, but 

 appear in the cradles of the world as capriciously 

 as the wind which bloweth where it listeth, and 

 according to laws, if such there be, that hitherto 

 have defied the search of the new-born science of 

 eugenics. 



My statement is novel only in one respect. The 

 geniuses I have in mind are the creative geniuses of 

 science, rather than those of literature or art. In 

 this field, the statement is as commonplace as regards 

 Shakespeare or a Michael Angelo. Its novelty, if it 

 is novel, is that it applies to the practical values of 

 the everyday world, the measure of which is money, 

 as much as to aesthetical and ethical values, which 

 cannot be measured in the current coin. I know I 

 shall be told, though probably not by you, that these 

 latter things are of more value than money, that a 

 man may gain the whole world and lose his own soul, 

 and so on. You, at least, will not be over- impressed 

 by this talk about the dangers of materialism, which 

 comes appropriately enough from those that neither 

 toil nor spin. You will have sufficient acquaintance 

 with the realities of the world in which you live to 

 know that, for every soul slain by over-indulgence 

 and luxury, thousands perish besotted by the lack 

 of the bare necessities of a decent existence, and that 

 the animalising influence of want, and a hopeless, 

 unremitting battle for the primal needs of the body, 

 must be faithfully dealt with before you can even 

 begin to think of the higher spiritual and social 

 aspirations of humanity, rather than of the few. 

 Before the advent of science such universal aspira- 

 tions were not capable of being satisfied. 



So if I choose this ground the ground of practical 

 everyday life rather than that of the visionary and 

 dreamer it is not because it is the only aspect of 



