AN INTRODUCTORY ORIENTATION 3 



arisen various selective agencies which tend to favor or reduce the 

 prevalence of certain types of inherited traits according to the 

 nature of the institutions that occur at any particular time and 

 place. The first systematic discussion of those agencies forms 

 the subject-matter of Lapouge's Les Selections Sociales (1896), a 

 work which, although not very critical, has had a considerable 

 influence in stimulating the study of selection in man. Lapouge 

 has described the operation of several forms of social selection, 

 i. e., military, political, religious, moral, legal, economic and sys- 

 tematic, all of which are brought into play as a consequence of 

 the development of civilization. Military selection, according to 

 the author, eliminates the best of the race; political selection, 

 through the effects of civil war, the prison, the scaffold, and exile, 

 gets rid of the more independent spirits and tends thereby to 

 render the population submissive and tractable; religious selec- 

 tion, through the celibacy of the clergy and by persecution, tends 

 to effect the elimination of the more intelligent and independent 

 minds; moral and legal selection in general produce dysgenic 

 effects; and economic selection, while operating in many different 

 ways, acts, on the whole, in the most destructive manner upon 

 the superior elements of the race. As civilization becomes more 

 advanced the evil effects of the various forms of social selection 

 become more intense. The racial influence of civilization is there- 

 fore bad. Progress may be achieved in science, art, literature and 

 in the development of institutions, but this carries with it the 

 seeds of its own destruction. The relatively feeble force of natural 

 selection which still operates on human beings is powerless to stay 

 the havoc which is being wrought by the selective agencies which 

 result from the development of civilization. 



Such, in brief, is the rather sombre prospect which Lapouge has 

 held up to our view. There is only one way by which these de- 

 structive forces may be overcome, and that is by conscious, sys- 

 tematic selection, or, as we should now call it, eugenics; but 

 Lapouge is not sanguine over the prospect that human beings will 

 ever bring themselves to supply this remedy in a really effective 

 manner. 



