October 7, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



313 



ment in the prevention and spread of disease, 

 it must also enlighten government in the 

 prevention of the spread and multiplication 

 of worthless members of society, the spread 

 of feeblemindedness, of idiocy, and of all 

 moral and intellectual as well as physical 

 diseases. 



I would not anticipate the findings of any 

 of the four sections into which the work of 

 the Congress is divided, but I would express 

 my opinion that the monogamous family, i.e., 

 one husband, one wife, is to be maintained 

 and safeguarded by the state as well as by re- 

 ligion as a natural and hence as a patriotic 

 institution. In Doctor Lowie's very able re- 

 cent work, " Primitive Society," it is shown 

 that in general the family is safeguarded; 

 that the natural instinct so widely prevalent 

 among all social lower orders of animals to 

 preserve the family at all costs dominates 

 the elementary morals of primitive races. It 

 is not an exaggeration to say that many tend- 

 encies in recent social development, as distin- 

 guished from racial evolution, are against this 

 natural mandate regarding the family. The 

 wisdom of British biologists, expressed by 

 Tennyson in his memorable lines: 



So careful of the type . . . 

 So careless of the single life, 



has been transmuted into the fatal reverse 



So careful of the single life . . . 

 So careless of the type. 



The closing decades of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury and the opening decades of the twentieth 

 have witnessed what may be called a rampant 

 individualism — not only in art and literature, 

 but in all our social institutions — an individu- 

 alism which threatens the very existence of 

 the family; this is the motto of individual- 

 ism: let us obey our own impulses, let us 

 create our own standards, let each individual 

 enjoy his own rights and privileges — for to- 

 morrow the race dies. In New England a 

 century has witnessed the passage of a many- 

 child family to a one-child family. The 

 purest New England stock is not holding its 

 own. The next stage is the no-child marriage 

 and the extinction of the stock which laid the 



foundations of the republican institutions of 

 this country. 



It is questions of this kind which are being 

 set forth before this Congress so that they 

 may be disseminated among our people. Let 

 us endeavor to discard all prejudices and to 

 courageously face the facts. Eecent works 

 by Bury and Inge on human progress are 

 regarded in some quarters as pessimistic. I 

 do not regard them as pessimistic, because to 

 my mind the pessimist is one who will not 

 face the facts, and these writers, especially 

 Inge, look at the worst as well as at the best. 

 I regard an optimist as one who faces the 

 facts but is never discouraged by them. The 

 optimist in science is one who delves afresh 

 into nature to restore disordered and shat- 

 tered society. This was the constructive 

 spirit of Francis Galton, founder of the 

 science of eugenics. I trust it will be the 

 keynote of this Congress. To know the worst 

 as well as the best in heredity; to preserve 

 and to select the best — these are the most es- 

 sential forces in the future evolution of hu- 

 man society. 



Heney Fairfield Osborn 



THE AIMS AND METHODS OF EUGENI- 

 CAL SOCIETIES 



International congresses are organized no 

 doubt mainly with the object of enabling work- 

 ers in the same field both to become personally 

 acquainted with each other — a far-reaching 

 benefit — and to exchange information and 

 ideas. We who have just crossed the Atlantic 

 have come to a land in which many notable 

 institutions have long been engaged in the 

 study of biology and genetics, these being the 

 pure sciences on which the applied science of 

 eugenics is based, and where human racial 

 problems have also long been keenly investi- 

 gated. So much has been done in all these 

 directions here that when I was honored with 

 an invitation to address you I felt great diffi- 

 culty in selecting a subject which I could dis- 

 cuss with any reasonable prospect of promoting 

 our common aim, namely the improvement of 

 the racial qualities of future generations. It 

 is, however, not only scientific information 



