28 NATURE AND NURTURE 



to show that the terrible fall in our birth-rate since 1877 

 has been a differential fall. It is a fall which concerns 

 chiefly the fitter members of all classes. The fitter of all 

 classes, from the artisan to the executive, have fewer and 

 fewer children, but the unfit maintain their old numbers ; 

 nor is the reason hard to seek, income and wages are no 

 longer proportional to physical or mental fitness. The 

 man and woman who cannot afford to marry are now 

 taxed for the education, the sanitation, the medical pro- 

 vision, and very often the nutrition of the offspring of 

 those who ought not to marry. The policy of bettering 

 the environment has been carried out regardless of the 

 fact that it has checked the reproduction of the essentially 

 abler and more desirable members of the community. 

 Our ignorance of the relative intensity of nature and 

 nurture has led us in political and philanthropic action 

 to disregard nature in the belief that improved nurture 

 must involve steady racial progress. If the view I have 

 attempted to put before you to-night be a correct view, 

 then we have spent our energies on grindstone and oil- 

 stone, when the first need was good steel, 



I do not think it too late to rectify this mistake, but 

 I believe that the change of policy required will not be 

 an easy matter. It is not the politician we have got to 

 educate ; his opinions and his actions are in the main 

 dictated by what the mass of the electors desire ; he gives 

 bettered environment, a larger navy, old age pensions, 

 or franchise to women, not because he has studied what 

 makes for or mars national welfare, but because he has 

 studied the number of votes these grants will produce. 

 You cannot expect him to do otherwise, when his political 

 life depends on his plurality of votes. 



The person we have to educate is the voter, and although 



