122 PART II.- SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



as it can depend at every juncture on already verified classes 

 of facts, without which its path leads straight into a morass of 

 idle suppositions, as the last Section has shown. 



The layman who does not pretend to originate or exhaus- 

 tively scrutinise scientific theories, cannot be invited to verify 

 everything he hears, and the chief responsibility rests hence 

 on the experts who are either the inventors or the protagonists 

 of a theory. For instance, during the last generation, a move- 

 ment has become fairly popular which demands that since 

 natural and artificial selection is the law which governs advance 

 in the animal world, this law should be respected in regard to 

 the human species; and, consequently, this movement maintains, 

 the utmost should be attempted to encourage the fit 1 to pro- 

 duce abundance of offspring and the unfit' 2 to produce none. 

 Taking their stand on this doctrine, some extremists deductively 

 argue that the "lower" races and "lower" classes (according 

 to them four-fifths of mankind perhaps) should be sternly re- 

 pressed and legislated against, whilst other champions of this 

 view contend that scientific breeding and regimentation should 

 replace marriage and family life. In this place we are only 

 concerned with the initial deduction, and we therefore ask our- 

 selves whether it has been solidly proven that, first, in the 

 animal world generally selection is the principal law, and, se- 

 condly, that this law partly or wholly applies to the human 

 world. Assuming the first as settled affirmatively, we may 

 consider it legitimate to infer tentatively that selection should 

 not be disregarded in the human species; but scientific pro- 

 cedure requires proof that the human species does not con- 

 stitute an exception. This, however, has not been seriously 

 attempted by the teachers and preachers of eugenics, and the 

 position is that, without scientific warrant, grave and far-reaching 

 social proposals are confidently put forward, proposals which 

 withdraw all protection from the poor and give carte blanche 

 to the well-to-do. As we have endeavoured to indicate in our 

 Preliminary Considerations and in other places, especially in 

 Conclusion 13, the human- individual is primarily adapted for 

 the specio-psychic state, that is, he is part of a complex pan- 

 human civilisation developed through the ages by the inventions 

 and discoveries of the mass of men and women, and per- 

 petuated solely by traditions, imitation, and teaching. Human 

 progress, in consequence, depends first and foremost on cultural, 

 and not on biological, advance. A small dose of Baconian con- 

 tempt for haphazard and unverified generalisations and deduc- 

 tions would have delivered mankind from this theory and from 

 legions of kindred ones, and methodologists cannot but deplore 

 the many superfluous and extravagant theories which clog the 

 wheel of human progress. It is, therefore, indispensable that 



1 and - See 143 for a definition of these terms. 



