AucGusT 27, 1914] 
NATURE 
677 
the consequences are in civilised countries much what 
they would be in the kennels of the dog-breeder who 
continued to preserve all his puppies, good and bad: 
the proportion of defectives increases. The increase 
is so considerable that outside every great city there 
is a smaller town inhabited by defectives and those 
who wait on them. Round London we have a ring of 
such towns with some 30,000 inhabitants, of whom 
about 28,000 are defective, largely, though of course 
by no means entirely, bred from previous generations 
of defectives. Now, it is not for us to consider 
practical measures. As men of science we observe 
natural events and deduce conclusions from them. I 
may, perhaps be allowed to say that the remedies pro- 
posed in America, in so far as they aim at the eugenic 
regulation of marriage on a comprehensive scale, 
strike me as devised without regard to the needs either 
of individuals or of a modern State. Undoubtedly if 
they decide to breed their population of one uniform 
puritan grey, they can do it in a few generations; but 
I doubt if timid respectability will make a nation 
happy, and I am sure that qualities of a different sort 
are needed if it is to compete with more vigorous and 
more varied communities. Everyone must have a pre- 
liminary sympathy with the aims of eugenists both 
abroad and at home. Their efforts at the least are 
doing something to discover and spread. truth as to 
the physiological structure of society. The spirit of 
such organisations, however, almost of necessity suffers 
from a bias towards the accepted and the ordinary, 
and if they had power it would go hard with many in- 
gredients of society that could be ill-spared. I notice an 
ominous passage in which even Galton, the founder 
‘of eugenics, feeling perhaps some twinge of his Quaker 
ancestry, remarks that ‘‘as the Bohemianism in the 
nature of our race is destined to perish, the sooner it 
goes, the happier for mankind.” It is not the eugenists 
who will give us what Plato has called divine releases 
from the common ways. If some fancier with the 
catholicity of Shakespeare would take us in hand, well 
and good; but I would not trust even Shakespeares 
meeting as a committee. Let us remember that 
Beethoven’s father was an habitual drunkard and that 
his mother died of consumption. From the genealogy 
of the patriarchs also we learn—what may very well 
be the truth—that the fathers of such as dwell in tents, 
and of all such as handle the harp or organ, and the 
instructor of every artificer in brass and iron—the 
founders, that is to say, of the arts and the sciences— 
came in direct descent from Cain, and not in the pos- 
terity of the irreproachable Seth, who is to us, as he 
probably was also in the narrow circle of his own 
contemporaries, what naturalists call a nomen nudum. 
Genetic research will make it possible for a nation to 
elect by what sort of beings it will be represented not 
‘very many generations hence, much as a farmer can 
decide whether his byres shall be full of shorthorns or 
Herefords. It will be very surprising indeed if some 
nation does not make trial of this new power. They 
may make awful mistakes, but I think they will try. 
Whether we like it or not, extraordinary and far- 
reaching changes in public opinion are coming to pass. 
Man is just beginning to know himself for what he is 
—a rather long-lived animal, with great powers of 
enjoyment if he does not deliberately forgo them. 
Hitherto superstition and mythical ideas of sin have 
predominantly controlled these powers. Mysticism 
will not die out: for those strange fancies knowledge 
is no cure; but their forms may change, and mysticism 
as a force for the suppression of joy is happily losing 
its hoid on the modern world. As in the decay of 
earlier religions Ushabti dolls were substituted for 
human victims, so telepathy, necromancy, and other 
harmless toys take the place of eschatology and the 
NG. 2330, VOL. 93] 
inculcation of a ferocious moral code. Among the 
civilised races of Europe we are witnessing an emanci- 
pation from traditional control in thought, in art, and 
in conduct which is likely to have prolonged and 
wonderful influences. Returning to freer or, if you 
will, simpler conceptions of life and death, the coming 
generations are determined to get more out of this 
world than their forefathers did. Is it then to be 
supposed that when science puts into their hand means 
for the alleviation of suffering immeasurable, and for 
making this world a happier place, that they will 
demur to using those powers? The intenser struggle 
between communities is only now beginning, and with 
the approaching exhaustion of that capital of energy 
stored in the earth before man began it must soon 
becomes still more fierce. In England some of our 
great-grandchildren will see the end of the easily 
accessible coal, and, failing some miraculous dis- 
covery of available energy, a wholesale reduction in 
population. There are races who have shown them- 
selves able at a word to throw off all tradition and 
take into their service every power that science has 
yet offered them. Can we expect that they, when they 
see how to rid themselves of the ever-increasing weight 
of a defective population, will hesitate? The time 
cannot be far distant when both individuals and com- 
munities will begin to think in terms of biological 
fact, and it behoves those who lead scientific thought 
carefully to consider whither action should lead. At 
present I ask you merely to observe the facts. The 
powers of science to preserve the defective are now 
enormous. Every year these powers increase. This. 
course of action must reach a limit. To the deliberate 
intervention of civilisation for the preservation of in- 
ferior strains there must sooner or later come an end,. 
and before long nations will realise the responsibility 
they have assumed in multiplying these ‘cankers. 
of a calm world and a long peace.”’ 
The definitely feeble-minded we may with propriety 
restrain, as we are beginning to do even in England,. 
and we may safely prevent unions in which both 
parties are defective, for the evidence shows that as. 
a rule such marriages, though often prolific, com- 
monly produce no normal children at all. The union 
of such social vermin we should no more permit than. 
we would allow parasites to breed on our own bodies. 
Further than that in restraint of marriage we ought 
not to go, at least not yet. Something too may be 
done by a reform of medical ethics. Medical students 
are taught that it is their duty to prolong life at what- 
ever cost in suffering. This may have been right 
when diagnosis was uncertain and interference usually 
of small effect; but deliberately to interfere now for 
the preservation of an infant so gravely diseased that. 
it can never be happy or come to any good is very 
like wanton cruelty. In private few men defend such 
interference. Most who have seen these cases linger- 
ing on agree that the system is deplorable, but ask 
where can any line be drawn. The biologist would 
reply that in all ages such decisions have been made 
by civilised communities with fair success both in 
regard to crime and in the closely analogous case of 
lunacy. The real reason why these things are done 
is because the world collectively cherishes occult views 
of the nature of life, because the facts are realised by 
few, and because between the legal mind—to which 
society has become accustomed to defer—and the 
seeing eye, there is such physiological antithesis that 
scarcely can they be combined in the same body. So 
soon as scientific knowledge becomes common p7ro- 
perty, views more reasonable and, I may add, more 
humane, are likely to prevail. 
To all these great biological problems that modern 
society must sooner or later face there are many 
