468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



twelve or fifteen, can we wonder that at present the candidate for an 

 advanced university degree has often passed his thirtieth birthday? 

 We should rather marvel at the elasticity of the mind's response to new 

 needs. We know that Quaternary man sometimes possessed artistic 

 ability — perhaps as great ability as the modern European; but what a 

 difference in the product. We can not conceive a medieval musician — 

 to go no further back — producing or comprehending our operas and 

 symphonies; but who would say that native ability in music has grown 

 in the meantime? Are we not then driven to the admission that no 

 principle of selection has for a long time been sufficiently active to raise 

 the level of mental endowment? We live on capital gathered and 

 hoarded by the race. Suppose that we turn spendthrift ! Francis 

 Galton reckons that England at its best falls two grades below the 

 highest intellect of Athens ; that England produces one man of supreme 

 eminence where the older culture produced two hundred. Suppose that 

 by improving the breed our mental endowment should recover those 

 two grades. The effect, direct and indirect, upon the race is not easily 

 estimated. It is conceivable that it should give to every generation a 

 Homer or a Dante or a Shakespeare, and to each of the European states 

 and America a dozen Newtons and Darwins. Eugenics rests upon a 

 scientific basis and it proposes a well-considered program for future 

 activity. Whatever differences of opinion we may hold regarding the 

 probable success of its methods, we must agree that civilized man may 

 not indolently regard himself as " God's domestic animal " ; that he 

 will, on the contrary, do well to examine and to estimate the hereditary 

 factor in his own mental development and to seek to combine for his 

 improvement the conjoint forces of nature and nurture. 



