CONTROL OF HEREDITY: EUGENICS 453 



also may undergo a slow adaptation in this 

 regard to conditions of high civilization. Some 

 royal families of Europe go back six or eight 

 hundred years, and in general if a family 

 survives the new conditions of affluence and 

 luxury for more than three generations it may 

 become more or less adapted to the new 

 conditions. 



No eugenical reform can fail to take account 

 of the fact that the decreasing birth rate among 

 intelligent people is a constant menace to the 

 race. We need not "fewer and better chil- 

 dren" but more children of the better sort and 

 fewer of the worse variety. " There is great 

 enthusiasm to-day on the part of many child- 

 less reformers for negative eugenical meas- 

 ures; the race is to be regenerated through 

 sterilization. But unfortunately this reform 

 begins at home among those who because of 

 good hereditary traits should not be sterile. 

 Sterility is too easily acquired; what is not so 

 easily brought about is the fertility of the bet- 

 ter lines. Galton was far wiser than most of 

 his followers for he realized the necessity of 



