508 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
into pillars of salt, but teaches us that the best is yet to be, and how 
alone it is to be attained. 
Elsewhere the optimistic argument of Wordsworth is quoted. 
Here also John Ruskin: 
“There is as yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of person 
and mind which the human creature may attain, by persevering 
observance of the laws of God respecting its birth and training.” 
And Herbert Spencer: 
“What now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected 
eventually to characterize all. For that which the best human nature 
is capable of, is within the reach of human nature at large.” 
_- And Francis Galton: 
“‘There is nothing either in the history of domestic animals or in 
that of evolution to make us doubt that a race of sane men may be 
formed, who shall be as much superior, mentally and morally, to the 
modern European, as the modern European is to the lowest of the 
Negro races. 
“Tt is earnestly to be hoped that inquiries will be increasingly 
directed into historical facts, with the view of estimating the possible 
effects of reasonable political action in the future, in gradually raising 
the present miserably low standard of the human race to one in which 
the Utopias in the dreamland of philanthropists may become practical 
possibilities.” 
Conclusion—eugenics and religion.—In an early chapter it was 
attempted to show that eugenics is not merely moral, but is of the 
very heart of morality. We saw that it involves taking no life, that, 
rather it desires to make philanthrophy more philanthropic, that, at 
any rate so far as this eugenist is concerned, it recognizes and bows 
to the supreme law of love; and claims to serve that law, and the 
ideal of social morality, which is the making of human worth. Eugen- 
ics may or may not be practicable, it may or may not be based upon 
natural truth, but it is assuredly moral; though I, for one, would pro- 
claim eternal war between this real morality and the damnable sham, 
which approves the unbridled transmission of the most hideous 
diseases, rotting body and soul, in the interests of good. 
And if religion, whatever its origin and the more questionable 
chapters in its past, be now ‘morality touched with emotion,” 
I claim that eugenics is religious, is and will ever beareligion. Else- 
where I have attempted to show that religion has survived and will 
survive because of its survival-value—its services to the life of the 
