AN INTRODUCTORY ORIENTATION 3 
arisen various selective agencies which tend to favor or reduce the 
prevalence of certain types of inherited traits according to the 
nature of the institutions that occur at any particular time and 
place. The first systematic discussion of those agencies forms 
the subject-matter of Lapouge’s Les Sélections Sociales (1896), a 
work which, although not very critical, has had a considerable 
influence in stimulating the study of selection in man. Lapouge 
has described the operation of several forms of social selection, 
7. é., military, political, religious, moral, legal, economic and sys- 
tematic, all of which are brought into play as a consequence of 
the development of civilization. Military selection, according to 
the author, eliminates the best of the race; political selection, 
through the effects of civil war, the prison, the scaffold, and exile, 
gets rid of the more independent spirits and tends thereby to 
render the population submissive and tractable; religious selec- 
tion, through the celibacy of the clergy and by persecution, tends 
to effect the elimination of the more intelligent and independent 
minds; moral and legal selection in general produce dysgenic 
effects; and economic selection, while operating in many different 
ways, acts, on the whole, in the most destructive manner upon 
the superior elements of the race. As civilization becomes more 
advanced the evil effects of the various forms of social selection 
become more intense. The racial influence of civilization is there- 
fore bad. Progress may be achieved in science, art, literature and 
in the development of institutions, but this carries with it the 
seeds of its own destruction. The relatively feeble force of natural 
selection which still operates on human beings is powerless to stay 
the havoc which is being wrought by the selective agencies which 
result from the development of civilization. 
Such, in brief, is the rather sombre prospect which Lapouge has 
held up to our view. There is only one way by which these de- 
structive forces may be overcome, and that is by conscious, sys- 
tematic selection, or, as we should now call it, eugenics; but 
Lapouge is not sanguine over the prospect that human beings will 
ever bring themselves to supply this remedy in a really effective 
manner. 
