EDUCATION FOR SCHOLARSHIP 
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learned about heredity than had been discovered in all the 
preceding centuries. This subject has been studied chiefly in 
the case of plants and the lower animals, and iriuch of practical 
value has been learned concerning it. We are now able, through 
a knowledge of some of the laws of heredity, to breed animals 
and plants better adapted to agricultural needs than any which 
existed before. We know how to produce any desired combina- 
tion of characters in our animals and plants, provided we can 
first discover the characters which it is desired to combine. 
We know, too, that these same laws which govern heredity in 
plants and animals govern heredity also in man. Whatever 
theory we hold about the past of man, about his origin, we cannot 
fail to see that this knowledge of heredity places in the hands 
of the human race the possibility of controlling in a measure its 
own future. So far as the laws of heredity are concerned the 
human race could be moulded to an improved type as easily as 
our cultivated plants and domestic animals can be. Our knowl- 
edge of human heredity is yet too incomplete to warrant the sug- 
gestion of specific measures, except in a very tentative way, but 
it is time that we began thinking about the subject, and placing 
it before the minds of our students as a subject for investigation. 
Common observation tells us that some races of mankind are 
better endowed physically, mentally or morally, than others. 
The same is true of families in a community. We have in 
America about every racial stock in existence poured into the 
melting pot, and we have a good opportunity to compare them 
and estimate their racial values. Shall we let them all come with- 
out restraint or shall we make a selection of the ingredients? A 
student of heredity who desired to improve the human stock on this 
continent would have no hesitation in favoring selective restric- 
tion. Even within our own borders, there occur human strains 
of low mentality, or loose morals, usually both, that the commu- 
nity would be better off without. The animal husbandman sees 
to it that inferior strains do not increase. Can human society 
do the same? 
Then there are good human strains, no less than bad ones, 
families which generation after generation produce men of good 
