HEREDITY AND EUGENICS. 287 
and, possibly, to the mental dispositions: the Naturalists urge 
that by far the principal part of the whole nature is inherited. 
The Personalist holds that the offspring of parents themselves 
deficient or diseased or even immoral have an original and 
central core in their mental nature which may enabie them to 
shake themselves loose from such defects as are transmitted to 
them and to develop eminent ability, healthy feeling, and high 
moral character. The Naturalist says that the stock is all- 
important, the limits of influence of training and environment 
very narrow: the Personalist says that the inherited stock is 
of much less account than is claimed because from the point of 
view of mental and moral character it is superficial, that it is the 
power of education, training, and opportunity for the inner soul 
that is the important source of assistance to the formation 
of high and happy character. The Naturalist, finding that 
variations due to the individual perish with him, ceases to 
regard lim as the principal end and object of social action; the 
Personalist declines to relinquish the hard-won conception of 
the infinite value of the soul, and holds that Society itself 
depends upon the inherent sacredness of its individual members 
being never subordinated to the supposed welfare of the 
whole. 
If we review the course of civilization we find that its 
advance has been along the lines of an ever-growing respect 
for Personality, an ever-increasing confidence in its inherent 
powers, and a constant enlarging of its privileges and rehts. 
Social evolution, or civilization, is not produced after the 
manner of biological processes but by the conscious inter- 
position of ideas and ideals, of which personality is the seat. 
In so far therefore as Eugenics is advocated on grounds which 
ignore personality, or at least reduce the ranve of its powers 
and its rights, we have evidently before us an endeavour to 
stem the tide of civilization as we know it, and to reverse the 
course which it has taken by a resort to social action which 
places a slight estimate on individuality, a resort which is in 
many respects a recurrence to the methods of society in times we 
thought we had passed through, in Europe at least. The senti- 
ment of individuality so slowly formed is being challenged once 
more; the claims of the race are being reasserted as supreme, 
and the guidance of human life in its tenderest and most 
intimate relationships is being removed from the range of 
Personal to that of Collective wisdom and responsibility. So 
ereat a revolution in moral and social policy must divide men 
into opposing camps, and | can see sigus of an approaching 
