360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



social culture. The law may be stated as follows: Biological fitness is to be 

 estimated not only by the capacity of physical endurance, but by the capacity of 

 reproduction, by the capacity of adaptation to new conditions of social life, and 

 by the power to resist the importation of foreign vices and diseases. (Chatterton- 

 Hill, p. 358.) 



Pearson postulates two fundamental biological conditions as to 

 human betterment : 



1. That the relative weight of nature and nurture must not a 'priori be as- 

 sumed but must be scientifically measured; and thus far our experience is that 

 nature dominates nurture, and that inheritance is more vital than environment. 

 Environment may and does modify the bodily characters of the existing genera- 

 tion, but not certainly the germ plasms of the next generation. At most it can 

 provide a selection of which germ plasms among the many provided shall be 

 potential and which shall remain latent. 



2. All human characteristics are inherited in a marked and probably equal 

 degree. If these ideas represent the substantial truth, you will see how the whole 

 function of the eugenist is theoretically simplified. He can not hope by nurture 

 and by education to create new germinal types. He can only hope by selective 

 environment to obtain types most conducive to racial welfare and to national 

 progress. The widely prevalent notion that bettered environment and improved 

 education mean a progressive evolution of humanity is found to be without any 

 scientific basis. 



Improved conditions of life mean better health for the existing population; 

 greater educational facilities mean greater capacity for finding and using exist- 

 ing ability; they do not connote that the next generation will be either physically 

 or mentally better than its parents. Selection of parentage is the sole effective 

 process known to science by which a race can continuously progress. The rise 

 and fall of nations are in truth summed up in the maintenance or cessation of 

 that process of selection. Where the battle is to the capable and thrifty, where 

 the dull and idle have no chance to propagate their kind, there the nation will 

 progress, even if the land be sterile, the environment unfriendly and educational 

 facilities small. 



The growth of the eugenics movement, both in Europe and America, 

 within the recent decade is one of the most hopeful signs of the day, and 

 far more eloquent than mere words or theories. Its intrinsic value for 

 education is unmistakable. Herein, as I see the problem, is an open 

 field for social betterment of the highest type, which in itself is of large 

 promise as a basis from which it is not too much to anticipate means for 

 augmenting any unit character of intellect as well as body. Just here 

 is the hope for that increment of power, both innate and cultural, ade- 

 quate for recovery of lost arts, and for carrying forward the race to 

 higher achievement in every department of endeavor. If great poets, 

 artists, statesmen and prophets are born not made, why not set into 

 operative activity the only machinery through which such divine birth- 

 heritages may become realities ? 



The problem is not occult. It is so simple that boys and girls may 

 learn it even in the nursery, surely in the school. If a state may charter 

 its special train in an educational propaganda to teach farmers the 



