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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



worse, memory than the average ; the child superior in observation is 

 superior in inference; scholarship is prophetic of success out of school; 

 a good mind means a better than average character. The fifty greatest 

 warriors of the world will be above the average man as poets. The fifty 

 greatest artists of the world will be better scientists than the average. 

 Genius of a certain type does, via the nervous temperament, ally itself 

 to eccentricities of a certain type ; and very stupid men can not be rated 

 as insane because they are already idiots; but on the average the most 



Chart 6. The Relation between Intellect and Morality in 

 European Royal Families. After Woods. 



intellectual tenth of the population would, under equal conditions of 

 strain, furnish fewer lapses into insanity than its proportional quotum. 



Selective breeding for superior intellect and character does not then 

 require great skill to avoid injurious by-products or correlatives of 

 intrinsically good traits. Intrinsically good traits have also good cor- 

 relatives. Any method of selective breeding, then, which increases the 

 productivity of intellectually or morally good stock over that of poor 

 stock, will improve man, with one possible added requirement — that 

 breeding should be for fertility as well, should not be suicidal, should 

 not make the race better, but at the same time put an end to it 

 altogether ! 



It might be that there was a necessary inverse correlation in human 

 nature between fecundity and high intellectual and moral station 

 whereby, the better men became, the fewer offspring they would have; 

 and whereby, at a certain limit of super-manhood, reproduction would 

 cease. Certain changes of the birth-rate with time, and certain varia- 



