236 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



have celibate fellowships at the colleges, or adver- 

 tise for a gardener " without encumbrances," or 

 dismiss women teachers on marriage, or refrain 

 from marrying till we have ten times the income 

 our father had when he begat us — the list can be 

 continued ad nauseam — we are ignoring the funda- 

 mental laws of good breeding or eugenics, just as 

 we are when we refrain from condemning the 

 marriage of the feeble-minded or from protesting 

 against certain charitable devices which create 

 more misery than they reUeve. 



By way of illustration, let us think for a moment 

 of China — a country of extraordinary interest 

 to the biologist. It has kept up a continuity of 

 state organisation and culture for four thousand 

 years ; the people have big brains and marvellous 

 physique ; they are very fertile, the aristocracy 

 not less than the unlearned ; they have genuine 

 old famihes, going back to Confucius, and not 

 decadent ; they are in many ways very moral ; 

 and so on. 



Now there are many reasons for all this, but 

 two strike the biologist: (1) To an extent quite 

 impossible for us, the Chinese allow natural selec- 

 tion in famine and disease, etc., to go on with- 

 out hindrance. Here we cannot imitate them. 

 (2) For thousands of years, on the other hand, 

 the Chinese have paid great attention to breeding, 

 to family histories, to family hfe, to family feeling, 

 and honour of ancestry. Ages ago they used to 

 send a poUceman to eligible bachelors with a notice 

 to marry. In their positive eugenic practices the 

 Chinese are worthy of our imitation. 



And what is the conclusion of all this talk ? 

 Nothing new. More and more our human societies 



