EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS 493 
To one who cannot see beyond the immediate consequences of an 
action, such figures as the above indeed give quite a different idea of 
the effects of an infant mortality campaign, than that which we have 
just tried to create. And it is a great misfortune that euthenics so 
often fails to look beyond the immediate effect, fails to see what 
may happen next year, or 10 years from now, or in the next generation. 
We admit that it is possible to keep a lot of children alive who 
would otherwise have died in the first few months of life. It is being 
done, as the New York figures, and pages of others that could be 
cited, prove. The ultimate result is twofold: 
1. Some of those who are doomed by heredity to a selective death, 
but are kept alive through the first year, die in the second or third or 
fourth year. They must die sooner or later; they have not inherited 
sufficient resistance to survive more than a limited time. If they are 
by a great effort carried through the first year, it-is only to die in the 
next. This is a statement which we have nowhere observed in the 
propaganda of the infant mortality movement;. and it is perhaps a 
disconcerting one. It can only be proved by refined statistical 
methods, but several independent determinations by the English 
biometricians leave no doubt as to the fact. This work of Karl 
Pearson, E. C. Snow, and Ethel M. Elderton, was cited in our chapter 
on natural selection; the reader will recall how they showed that 
nature is weeding out the weaklings, and in proportion to the strin- 
gency with which she weeds them out at the start, there are fewer 
weaklings left to die in succeeding years. 
To put the facts in the form of a truism, part of the children born 
in any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to an early 
death; and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in the 
succeeding year, and vice versa. Of course there are in addition 
infant deaths which are not selective and which if prevented would 
leave the infant with as good chance as any to live. 
In the light of these researches, we are forced to conclude that 
baby-saving campaigns accomplish less than is thought; that the 
supposed gain is to some extent temporary and illusory. 
2. There is still another consequence. If the gain is by great 
exertions made more than temporary; if the baby who would other- 
wise have died in the first months is brought to adult life and repro- 
duction, it means in many cases the dissemination of another strain 
of weak heredity, which natural selection would have cut off ruthlessly 
