262 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
no one is able as yet wisely to say what course is 
to be pursued in improving the race. But the prob- 
lem is so interesting and its outcome so overwhelm- 
ingly important that men will never cease striving to 
know, and may, before many years, begin wisely to 
guide us in our efforts to provide a finer stock. 
Heretofore our efforts at improving the strain have 
been confined to cattle, chickens and plants. An al- 
most unalterable repugnance rises as soon as we 
speak of improving the human strain. Visions, if 
not stories, start up at once, of experimental matings 
of human beings, and of all other unspeakable abomi- 
nations which no decent man expects to happen or 
even wishes to attempt. If there is one thing in hu- 
man society the value of which has been demon- 
strated through the unending ages, it is the mono- 
gamic marriage. All ideal workers must point to 
the life-long union of a strong, vigorous, clean- 
minded and clean-lived man with a similarly fine, 
strong, clean-minded and clean-lived woman. Such 
an ideal may be slow in its attainment, but he aims 
too low who aims to secure anything less than this. 
The long struggle out of bestiality into pure monog- 
amy has been so slow, so gradual, so noble in its 
attainments, and is still so far from perfection, that 
it would be an inconceivably stupid blunder to let 
go a single point that has been gained. Whether 
