A PROBLEM IN EDUCATIONAL EUGENICS 359 



expect all who surmounted them to be prodigies of genius. The hindrances would 

 form a system of natural selection, by repressing all whose gifts were below a 

 certain very high level. . . . The hindrances undoubtedly form a system of nat- 

 ural selection that represses mediocre men, and even men of fair powers. ... If 

 a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability, eagerness to work, and power of 

 working, I can not comprehend how such a man should be repressed. (Hered. 

 Gen., p. 38, etc.) 



Eugenics. — ISTo more fundamental and commanding factor of modern 

 biology is current than that of heredity. This has been long understood 

 in its applications to various details of husbandry. Only of late has it 

 become fairly subject to control and direction. Nearly ten years ago in 

 an address before the Association of Academic Principals I gave expres- 

 sion to its educational implications in the following words : 



Of all the equipments which go to fit pupils for the larger life before them 

 none is more fundamental and imperative than that most vital of all biological 

 factors — generation and heredity. If the highest level of human vigor and per- 

 fection is ever to be realized it must be by critical regard for, not defiance of, 

 those simple and fundamental laws of biology which underlie heredity in gen- 

 eration. How long shall we continue to look with admiration and pride upon 

 the rich fruition of an intelligent application of these laws to the endlessly 

 varied products of field and stable, and at the same time pretend to bewail the 

 endless lines of human degeneracy, pauperism and imbecility? Just so long as 

 we ignore or defy the potency of these same laws in human generation! 



It was in the light of just this truth that Dr. Holmes in answer to 

 the query " when should a child's education begin," replied, "one hun- 

 dred years before it is born " ! And in a somewhat facetious paraphrase 

 of the idea a later writer has said, " In the light of science it is up 

 to children to be extremely cautious in selecting their grandparents." 

 Waiving all the apparent paradox of the one, or the cynicism of the 

 other, the present message of biology to every sane and serious man or 

 woman in relation to progeny would be similar — due attention to selec- 

 tion of children. If the Eoman adage, " a sound mind in a sound 

 body," has any significance for education to-day it is just in the above 

 sense. It is strangely significant that Plato conceived a similar ideal 

 as the basis of his Eepublic; and had he known as do we to-day the 

 directing and controlling power of heredity that Eepublic, instead of an 

 Utopia, might have been an abiding reality, as glorious as the imperish- 

 able art and literature of its golden age ! 



Let it not be insinuated that eugenics as a program is as utopian as 

 Plato's unless forsooth one turn skeptic concerning all laws of life. In 

 the language of a recent authority 



We may enunciate as a law of social evolution that a race possessing social 

 culture will be victorious in the struggle for existence over a race devoid of 

 social culture, the physical strength of either being equal. But it would be a 

 grievous error to suppose that social culture by itself is any guaranty of stability. 

 Athens had social culture unequalled by any of its rivals; but Athens fell. 

 Social culture without biological fitness is as useless as biological fitness without 



