40 HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 



mired virtue just as much as he despised cant. Of all my long and noble 

 list of scientific acquaintances I can think of no one who would have so 

 shuddered and revolted against the chemico-mechanical concept of future 

 society as pictured in such unsparing, bold colors by his grandson. To the 

 elder Huxley as to Goethe and far back in time to Cicero, nature was the 

 supreme court of appeal; as in the following epitome of Huxley's natural 

 code: 



The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those- 

 who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game 

 infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played 

 for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his 

 or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, 

 the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is 

 hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we 

 know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for 

 ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of 

 overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who 

 plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse. 



I owe to Thomas Huxley the two outstanding principles of my own natu- 

 ralistic philosophy; first, that nothing which is true can be harmful to the 

 body, to the mind or to the soul; second, that whatever is natural in the 

 wondrous and beautiful order of nature can not be fraught with danger. 

 On the contrary, whatever is unnatural may not be essentially immoral but 

 may be fraught with hidden dangers. Herein lies my general purpose and 

 standpoint with regard to the main subject of this article. Birth-selection 

 is natural; it is in the order of nature. Birth control is not natural and 

 while undoubtedly beneficial and benevolent in its original purpose, it is 

 fraught with danger to society at large and threatens rather than insures 

 the upward ascent and evolution of the human race. 



Such ascent, it seems to me, is the greatest responsibility with which we 

 biologists and eugenists are charged to-day. I returned from my world 

 tour more impressed than ever with the Galtonian principle of "not more 

 but better and finer representatives of every race." 



To begin at home, "not more but better Americans," which raises the 

 question, What is an American? recently debated in the New York Times 

 (January 17, 1932) with a number of my distinguished compatriots. The 

 substance of my contention in this symposium was that the "Simon-pure" 

 American is not hyphenated. He has all the strong and all the weak points 

 of the ancestral Nordic as well as of the more recent Alpine and Mediterra- 

 nean stocks. He is possessed of certain qualities which make him far 



