134 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



improvement in the human stock. The task is only the usual one of 

 any rational idealism — to teach people to want a certain thing that 

 they ought to want, and to change social usages so as to satisfy this new 

 want. The same sort of tuition whereby men are learning to want those 



4 — 



Chart 8. 



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who are alive with them to be healthier, nobler and more capable, will 

 serve to teach us to want those who are to live with our children's chil- 

 dren to be healthier, nobler and more capable. Provided certain care 

 is taken to favor the sane, balanced type of intellect rather than the 

 neurotic, any selective breeding which increases the fecundity of superior 

 compared to inferior men, and which does not produce deterioration 

 in the physical and social conditions in which men live, will serve. 



The danger of deterioration in physical and social conditions from 

 breeding for intellect and morals is trivial. The effect is almost certain 

 to be the opposite — an improvement in physical and social conditions. 

 The more rational the race becomes, the better roads, ships, tools, 

 machines, foods, medicines and the like it will produce to aid itself, 

 though it will need them less. The more sagacious and just and humane 

 the original nature that is bred into man, the better schools, laws, 

 churches, traditions and customs it will fortify itself by. There is no 

 so certain and economical a way to improve man's environment as to 

 improve his nature. 



Each generation has of course to use what men it has to make the 

 world better for them; but a better world for any future generation is 

 best guaranteed by making better men. Certain worthy customs of 

 present civilization may be endangered by rational control of who is to 

 be born, though this seems to me unlikely. In any case, we may be sure 

 that if the better men are born they will establish better customs in 

 place of those whose violation made their birth possible. 



