THE PROBLEM OF THE FUTURE I5 



or in politics ? Nay, when we talk among ourselves, and 

 not in the world's market-place, are we not rather con- 

 scious of a present dearth of national ability ? — of an 

 uncomfortable doubt as to whether we have leaders who 

 lead, writers who can write so as to stir national feeling 

 and national conscience, or sufficient men able to preserve 

 by feats of enterprise and daring the old racial reputation 

 for endurance and strength ? If we look back on the 

 more than fifty years during which the betterment of 

 nurture has been our chief policy, can we honestly assert 

 that the nation has grown — relatively to other nations — 

 in its number of able men of all types, in its power of 

 action, in its self-control, in its enterprise and its origin- 

 ality ? Yet I do not think there is any single nation 

 which since 1840 has so continuously and successfully 

 worked at improving environment as our own country. 

 Might we not on the basis of such doubts legitimately 

 demand that the problem of nurture and nature should 

 receive closer attention ; that we should not for another 

 fifty years confine our attention to nurture ? 



But beyond such generalities we can point at once 

 to whole series of cases, where the neglect of the nature 

 factor, the blind belief in nurture, is leading to immediate 

 national deterioration. I will illustrate what I mean 

 by drawing your attention to the following pedigrees : — 



My first pedigree ^ is one of congenital cataract. We 

 start with a woman of whom all we know is that she was 

 blind in old age ; when she became blind we do not know ; 

 her two daughters became blind at forty. Of her fi\'e grand- 

 children only one escaped, the other four were blind by 

 thirty. Of her fifteen great-grandchildren thirteen had 

 cataract. Of the forty-six great-great-grandchildren, who 



^ Gjersing's case, Treasury of Human Inheritance, Part IV, Fig. 372. 



