202 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



the best will survive ; it means that that survives 

 which best fits into the environment. Hence it 

 often indicates degeneration as well as, under 

 other circumstances, progress. We control the 

 survival of the best by our control of the environ- 

 ment. ' ' Nature never gives a final verdict in favor 

 of good or bad, but only and always in favor of 

 the fit. Let the conditions change, so that rapacity 

 fits them better than righteousness, . . . and 

 the thing we call high will go before the thing we 

 call low. . . . These laws enthroned and de- 

 throned the civilization of the past : they have en- 

 throned and may dethrone us. But this end is not 

 inevitable, since man and this is his great char- 

 acter not merely reacts on his environment, as 

 all creatures must, but can create and re-create it. 

 The business of eugenics or race-culture is to cre- 

 ate an environment such that the human charac- 

 ters of which the human spirit approves shall in it 

 outweigh those of which we disapprove. Make it 

 fittest to be best, and the best will win not be- 

 cause it is the best, but because it is the fittest: 

 had the worst been the fittest it would have won. " 

 (Saleeby: "Parenthood and Race Culture," 53.) 

 In the struggle of the different elements in 

 human nature we may arrange for the mastery 

 (survival) of the higher or the lower, according as 

 we create surroundings in which the higher or the 

 lower will be brought most into exercise. In an 

 atmosphere of physical ideals we may expect phys- 

 ical activities to grow large and strong, and spir- 



