126 Heredity and Environment 



interfered with leading to survival of the fittest. Why, 

 in the long ages of conflict, it was oftener the best that 

 were killed and the unfittest that survived. Complaint 

 is sometimes made that by our humanitarian methods 

 we are keeping alive numbers who in early times would 

 have been exterminated. It is forgotten that in earlier 

 times disease killed men of the highest type, men of 

 genius, who, had they been born in our day, would be 

 saved for the benefit of civilisation. By all means let 

 eugenists grapple with the problem of heredity, but do 

 not let them overlook the vast importance of environ- 

 ment." This is exactly what Professor Karl Pearson 

 and Miss Elderton have done in regard to the Edin- 

 burgh statistics. They are so obsessed by " heredity " 

 that they cannot see the real factor — environment. 

 They want associated with them in such work a 

 medical man of experience and wide outlook who would 

 be able to point out their fallacies and direct them to 

 the true cause of our social evils. 



Humanity has therefore every reason to hope, " to 

 greet the unseen with a cheer," for who can limit the 

 summit of attainment when a perfect environment has 

 become possible to all members of the species, by means 

 of the operation in men's minds of the sublime thought 

 and altruism of the New Testament, directing the 

 progressive spiritual evolution of the race ? May we 

 not in its completion be able to say of the whole human 

 family, to borrow the sublime apostrophe of Hamlet : 

 " What a piece of work is Man ; how noble in reason ; 

 how infinite in faculty ; in form, in moving, how 

 express and admirable ; in action, how like an angel ; 

 in apprehension, how like a god ; the beauty cf the 

 world ; the paragon of animals ! " 



