SELECTION: OEGANIC AND SOCIAL 233 



that we should look with favour on the marriage 

 of deaf-mutes ? Let us admit that many of the 

 unfit may be only modificationally unfit — ill- 

 nourished plants in the crowded garden — ^requiring 

 only new soil. Many criminals are simply ana- 

 chronisms — people out of time and out of place — 

 who need, not incarceration, but transplantation. 

 Cure the poacher by making him a collector. But 

 this will tiot cover all. 



Let us admit, too, that very bad stock — such 

 as the uncontrolled alcohoHo type — tends to work 

 itself out. Taints may be swamped, just as ex- 

 cellences often are. 



Prof. Bifien has bred into a good stock of 

 corn the quality of immunity to rust which a 

 poor stock had, and perhaps — perhaps — the 

 future has in store for us analogous ways of 

 getting a clean thing out of an unclean in human , 

 kind. 



Meanwhile, what is to be done ? Many gentle 

 measures are possible — fostering pride of race, 

 encouraging the marriage of desirables, developing 



for degeneracy. Every method is curative which tends to decrease 

 the fertility of the unfit and to emphasise that of the fit. We may 

 find it difficult to define the socially fit, although physique and 

 abiUty will carry us far ; but when we turn to the habitual criminal, 

 the professional tramp, the tuberculous, the insane, the mentally 

 defective, the alcoholic, the diseased from birth or from excess, 

 there can be little doubt of their social unfitness. Here every 

 remedy which tends to separate them from the community, every 

 segregation which reduces their chances of parentage, is worthy of 

 consideration. ... Is not something more to be insisted upon with 

 regard to the increase of good stock 7 ... A clean body, a sound 

 if slow mind, a vigorous and healthy stock, a numerous progeny — 

 these factors were largely representative of the typical Englishman 

 of the past ; and we see to-day that one and all these characteristics 

 can be defended on scientific grounds ; they are the essentials of an 

 imperial race." 



