504 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
parental duty. Is not this a beatific and beautifully sagacious system 
for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British Isles?” 
Apart from the point as to wholesome law rather than the educa- 
tion of opinion as the eugenic means, the foregoing passage must win 
the assent and respect of every eugenist. It indicates the promise of 
race-culture as it appeared to John Ruskin. The passage has been 
quoted in full, not for the benefit of the ordinary thoughtful reader but 
for that of the professional literary man who, in this remarkable age, 
so far as I can judge, reads nothing but what he writes, and thus quali- 
fies himself for dismissing Spencer or Darwin or Galton by any casual 
phrase. 
Race-culture and human variety.—Now let us turn to another 
question. Let it be asserted most emphatically that, if there is any- 
thing in the world which eugenics or race-culture does not promise or 
desire, it is the production of a uniform type of man. This delusion, 
for which there has never been any warrant at all, possesses many of 
the critics. of eugenics, and they have made pretty play with it, just 
as they do with their other delusions. Let us note one or two facts 
which bear upon this most undesirable ideal. 
In the first place, it is unattainable because of the existence of 
what we call variation. No apparatus conceivable would suffice to 
eliminate from every generation those who varied from the accepted 
type. 
In the second place, this uniformity is supremely undesirable from 
the purely evolutionary point of view, because its attainment would 
mean the arrest of all progress. All organic evolution, as we know, 
depends upon the struggle between creatures possessing various varia- 
tions and the consequent selection of those variations which con- 
stitute their possessors best adapted or fitted to the particular environ- 
ment. If there is no variation there can be no evolution. To aim at 
the suppression of variation, therefore, on supposed eugenic grounds 
(which would be involved in aiming at any uniform type of mankind) 
would be to aim at destroying the necessary condition of all racial 
progress. The mere fact that all the critics of race-culture attribute 
to evolutionists, of all people, the desire to suppress variation, is a 
pathognomonic symptom of their critical quality. 
And, of course, quite independently of the evolutionary function of 
variation—though this is cardinal and must never be forgotten by the 
politician of any school, since what we call individuality is variation 
on the human plane—the value of variation in ordinary life is wholly 
