11G ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



the inborn characters, mental and moral, are the 

 highest, and entrusting solely to them the duty of 

 producing the next generation; whilst the indi- 

 viduals mentally and morally inferior were forcibly 

 prevented from reproducing their inferiority. This 

 would be to take a leaf out of Nature's book, by a 

 deliberate application of the principle of natural 

 selection. Nature effects the survival of the physi- 

 cally fittest ; why should not we effect the survival 

 of the morally and mentally fittest ? 



Appropriately enough, it is Mr. Francis Galton, 

 the cousin of Charles Darwin, who has devoted 

 himself to a consideration of these possibilities, and 

 is now engaged in teaching us how we may apply 

 the Darwinian principle to the highest of conceivable 

 ends. This new study Mr. Galton has called 

 eugenics — literally, good breeding — and I propose 

 here to consider it in some detail. Mr. Galton 

 imparts some measure of his own enthusiasm — 

 which no accumulation of years can chill — to any 

 one who is fortunate enough to be honoured by his 

 confidence, but his innumerable ideas prove their 

 inherent vitality in that they thrive even when 

 removed from the invigorating atmosphere which 

 surrounds the person of their begetter. Take them 

 away, subject them to the breath of criticism, 

 and they flourish more than ever. No kind of 

 criticism has been lacking for Mr. Galton's idea 

 of Eugenics; Mr. Wells, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. 

 Chesterton, have made pretty play with it; whilst, 

 at the other extreme, serious students like Weismann 

 and Westermarck and Archdall Reid have contri- 

 buted that constructive criticism which commonly 



