A Dilemma 43 



huge stock farm, and rigorously adopt for our ideal 

 toward the race the scientific methods of stock breeding. 

 Man's emotions, you will find, bring us to the point 

 where we must regard the race rather as one great 

 human family, where kindlier methods are to prevail. 

 True, governmental force in the family life appears to 

 be likewise a necessity in the extreme case of degenerate 

 members who otherwise would assail or destroy the 

 organism as a whole. But you can readily see how, 

 where love rules, law will be administered not in a 

 cold-blooded, scientific spirit (which would probably 

 defeat its own ends), but with a desire to conserve 

 through proper reforming agencies the family life 

 entire including, when possible, that of the offender 

 himself. Unless, however, human society can be per- 

 suaded or induced somehow to accept this enlarged 

 family ideal as its method of dealing with the world's 

 present problem of vice, crime, and parasitism, it would 

 seem as if logically and ultimately the race would find 

 itself compelled, as a matter of pure self-defense, to 

 assist Nature in obliterating all these decadent breeds 

 which militate against the general welfare. If the social 

 organism were to-day following out solely its intellec- 

 tual beliefs to their rigorous logical conclusion, it would 

 even now be engaged in this relentless, ruthless task. 

 The welfare of the general must apparently be preferred 

 to that of the individual. If, therefore, the individual 

 is guilty of incorrigible insubordination, if he is perma- 

 nently unwilling to subordinate himself to the good of 

 the general, then the general will have to do it for him. 



