I70 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



this instance, at any rate, we cannot wage successful 

 war against Nature. Whether we help or oppose 

 Nature will do her work. If we oppose, she will 

 cause a maximum of suffering. If we help, since 

 Artificial Selection is so much more swift and 

 certain than Natural Selection, she will do it with 

 a minimum of pain. There need then be no 

 relaxation of temperance effort so far as it involves 

 the saving of individual drunkards, provided always 

 that we forbid children to them. Let us by all 

 means save the individual, but let us also safeguard 

 the species.^ 



Did we abolish drink, we could not discover 

 the drunkard. The above scheme therefore of 

 necessity involves some drunkenness. It is on 

 that account, horrible, but, from the nature of the 

 case, we must in any case have drunkards till no 

 one enjoys being drunk. An ill thing is not ren- 

 dered worse by being bravely confronted. An 

 unavoidable evil is not made more evil by being 

 turned to good account. By popular decree all 

 Malthusian schemes are immoral. But what the 

 people condemn in public they practise in private, 

 as witness the great and otherwise inexplicable fall 

 in the birth-rate. Malthusianism, however much 



1 It has been suggested to the writer that, since posterity has done 

 nothing for us, we need not concern ourselves about posterity. No 

 epithets can adequately characterise the cruelty and selfishness of 

 this attitude. Our children are dear to us, and their children will be 

 dear to them. Shall we wantonly wreck their happiness ? 



