292 EUGENICS 
the human race on the principles of the stud farm the 
objection holds good which was put forward by Huxley: 
“Who is competent to do the necessary selecting ? 
How can the pigeons be their own Sir John Sebright ?’ 
‘ The points of a good or of a bad citizen,’ says Huxley, 
‘are really far harder to discern than those of a puppy 
or a short-horn calf. Many do not show themselves 
before the practical difficulties of life stimulate man- 
hood to full exertion. And by that time the mischief 
is done. The evil stock, if it be one, has had time to 
multiply, and the selection is nullified.’ And there is 
another objection. . The ruthlessness necessary for the 
carrying out of the method of deliberate selection is 
in itself so unsocial a quality that, if it were ever to 
arise, society would probably be far worse off than 
before. The method is in itself directly opposed to 
the development of the higher social qualities. 
The student of Eugenics must therefore endeavour 
to devise other methods, both for encouraging the 
fertility of the better stock and for discouraging that 
of the inferior stock. A considerable number of 
specific suggestions have already been made. ‘ Not 
a few medical men,’ writes Heron, ‘ are urging that 
propagation among the obviously unfit—those affected 
with definite hereditary taints: the imbeciles, the 
idiotic, the sufferers from syphilis and tuberculosis, 
should be authoritatively restrained.’ Can it be urged 
that such a proceeding would be unduly tyrannous ? 
Surely if these people understood the irrevocable laws 
of heredity—if they only knew—they would be them- 
selves unwilling to hand on a tainted existence to 
