May 31, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



847 



can not help being a benefactor to Ms own 

 race and to himself in particular. 



No individual whatever can try to divest 

 himself of any of the above-mentioned 

 attributes or functions of life, without 

 jeopardizing in some degree or another the 

 progress of his race. 



Let us imagine, for an instant, a society 

 only composed of four distinct classes : one, 

 wealth-producing but vicious; a second, 

 very moral but inactive; a third, very in- 

 telligent but bodily weak; while a fourth 

 class would be composed of physical ath- 

 letes, very stupid. Fortunately for the 

 welfare of our race, in such a heterogene- 

 ous society, free intermarriage would tend 

 to offset the one-sided grouping of these 

 abnormal individuals or specialists— to call 

 them by another name— and would bring 

 about more homogeneity for their descend- 

 ants. Furthermore, education— the great 

 leveler of one-sided tendencies— would 

 prove another active factor for accomplish- 

 ing this result. "When I speak here of 

 education, in its broadest sense, I do not 

 merely limit myself to so-called school edu- 

 cation ; but I include in this term all influ- 

 ence towards mental development, proceed- 

 ing from any source whatsoever, as, for 

 instance, self-culture and environment. 

 But, whenever education tends to develop 

 one of our faculties beyond reasonable 

 necessity and to the detriment of other 

 functions, we drift towards mental de- 

 formity— a freak; and this in about the 

 same manner as a particular muscle exer- 

 cised beyond normal requirements wiU 

 leave the remainder of the body insuffi- 

 ciently developed and out of harmony with 

 the other anatomical parts. 



Many fundamental errors have been com- 

 mitted by such men as spoke or wrote of 

 the culture or the civilization of a given 

 nation, without according full importance 

 to above considerations. Moreover, history 

 teaches us that a one-sided or specialized 



education has been the defect of nations of 

 the past, even to a greater extent than it 

 occurs in our present civilization. Many 

 examples can we give to show that such a 

 one-sided culture was largely to blame for 

 the downfall of at one time powerful races. 

 The Greeks, in their overspecialization of 

 art, neglected beyond measure the study of 

 nature. Had her philosophers steadied 

 their thoughts by giving more attention to 

 the careful observation of natural phe- 

 nomena, instead of dreamingly searching 

 a solution for all problems by analytical 

 reasoning, they would not have been led 

 astray into casuistry and sophistry and 

 skepticism. The great laws of nature 

 might have opened their minds to a better 

 understanding of equity and rights of 

 man ; while now history has to record that 

 even the most progressive and radical 

 Greek philosophers proclaimed chattel 

 slavery as an indispensable institution of 

 society. In the same way, a large part of 

 their literature was devoted to beautifully 

 sounding, well polished sentences, dealing 

 mostly with imagination. The Greek 

 writers, in their search for effect, gave 

 their fancy full play whenever they de- 

 scribed the war exploits of their heroes, 

 with the result that they put themselves on 

 record in history as the biggest braggarts 

 in prose and in rhyme. 



As another example of one-sided culture 

 let me remind you of the inhabitants of 

 India, who became overawed by the concep- 

 tion of the immensity of the universe, and 

 the relative insignificant smallness of man. 

 Exaggerating this feeling, they too failed 

 to grasp the full meaning of harmony in 

 nature and so neglected to give sufficient 

 attention to the material development of 

 their race. This doomed to stagnation an 

 otherwise very intellectual people; it ren- 

 dered possible their subjugation under the 

 strong and forceful arm of warlike tribes, 

 morally less developed, but physically bet- 



