XXIII HUMAN SELECTION 513 



Proposals for the Improvement of the Bace. 



Among the modern writers who have dealt with this 

 question the opinions of Mr. Galton are entitled to be first 

 considered, because he has studied the whole subject of 

 human faculty in the most thorough manner, and has 

 perhaps thrown more light upon it than any other writer. 

 The method of selection by which he has suggested that 

 our race may be improved is to be brought into action by 

 means of a system of marks for family merit, both as to 

 health, intellect, and morals, those individuals who stand 

 high in these respects being encouraged to marry early by 

 state endowments sufficient to enable the young couples 

 to make a start in life. Of all the proposals that have 

 been made tending to the systematic improvement of our 

 race, this is one of the least objectionable, but it is also 

 I fear among the least effective. Its tendency would 

 undoubtedly be to increase the number and to raise the 

 standard of our highest and best men, but it would at the 

 same time leave the bulk of the population unaffected, 

 and would but slightly diminish the rate at which the 

 lower types tend to supplant or to take the place of the 

 higher. What we want is, not a higher standard of per- 

 fection in the few, but a higher average, and this can best 

 be produced by the elimination of the lowest of all and a 

 free intermingling of the rest. 



Something of this kind is proposed by Mr. Hiram M. 

 Stanley in his article on " Our Civilization and the 

 Marriage Problem," already referred to. This writer 

 believes that civilizations perish because, as wealth and 

 art increase, corruption creeps in, and the new gener- 

 ations fail in the work of progress because the renewal of 

 individuals is left chiefly to the unfit. The two great 

 factors which secure perfection in each animal race — 

 sexual selection by which the fit are born, and natural 

 selection by which the fittest survive — both fail in the 

 case of mankind, among whom are hosts of individuals 

 which in any other class of beings would never have been 

 born, or, if born would never survive. He argues that, 



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