382 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
For most civilized countries, therefore, the necessity for further 
restriction of the birth rate must sooner or later become impera- 
tive. If this should occur mainly in people of better endowments 
who already have a low birth rate the deterioration of our racial 
inheritance will go on at an accelerated pace. 
The birth rate of different stocks would become more nearly 
equalized by economic reforms which would effect a more equi- 
table distribution of wealth and by the greater diffusion of educa- 
tion which would be favored by such reforms. An ignorant and 
poverty-ridden proletariat will multiply rapidly through sheer 
lack of restraint. It is a most fortunate circumstance that the 
third estate continues to include many people of excellent heredi- 
tary qualities; in course of time, however, they tend to rise and 
become sterile, and thus the great breeding ground from which 
they emerged is impoverished. It is the very inadequancy and 
incompleteness of this sifting process which has thus far tended to 
keep racial deterioration in check. A social system in which 
human beings are rewarded by education and position according 
to their inborn capacity has often been held up as a desideratum. 
But lest the racial effect of such a régime should prove to be 
more destructive than our present system, some means must be 
instituted for encouraging race suicide among those to whom 
Nature has been grudging in her distribution of desirable endow- 
ments. 
It is doubtless feasible to do much through education toward 
the accomplishment of this purpose, but the advantages conferred 
by elimination, however extensively it may be carried out, are of 
less value than those resulting from an increase in the highest 
types of inheritance. The best blood of a nation is its most 
priceless possession. It cannot be increased by any artificial or 
arbitrary methods as these would not commend themselves to 
modern ethical standards. Education to whose influence many 
dysgenic effects may now be justly charged is, after all, the essen- 
tial basis for the realization of any project of racial improvement. 
To be effective it must include the inculcation of a sense of 
responsibility for the hereditary qualities of future generations. 
