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I Introductory 1

II Heredity, Environment 13

V Possibilities of Race Improvement 55

VI Education, Eugenics 69

Appendices

A. State Endowment of Motherhood 120

INTRODUCTORY

The aim of this little volume is to interest the American public in an important and neglected subject. The writer has her own views on art, politics, religion and other topics which divide mankind, she does not intrude those opinions here, although conscious that "to see life steadily and see it whole" much more is wanted than a single branch of study, however vital. It is not possible, however, to remain silent and, at least passively, acquiescent when the interests of the race are in danger of neglect. Need for apology is not considered when great and influential journals, magazines and volumes dissipate their powers on all the feeble foolings of the hour. There are many honourable exceptions. There are organs of opinion in nearly all directions of intellectual speculation, education and philosophy and there are of course necessary volumes of information on cooking, travel, dress and amusement. Every material interest except the basic material interest of our human existence is represented in our periodical press. An expedition to the pole, a prodigious attempt to attract the attention of Martian observers whose very existence is denied by more than half our scientists, or a commission to inquire into the relative merits of various manurial nitrates, for these time and money, private enterprise and state aid are readily forthcoming. Professorial chairs are easily financed for lectures on every necessary and unnecessary subject other than that of direct race improvement. Churches, universities and other institutions have been endowed for the sake of schisms which have no direct bearing on any human need.

I deny that people do not care what becomes of the race. There never has been a time in the history of the world when parents would not rather have a healthy progeny than an unhealthy. The nation would always prefer to be able to boast of improvement instead of blushing for its deteriorating citizenship. As long as Mothers love their own young and as long as the average man sympathises with undeserved suffering there will be perpetual possibilities for rousing interest in the most promising of all sciences, Eugenics.

Eugenics is a word invented by Francis Galton to cover the philosophy, collection of facts, the science, whatever we can call it, which regards race improvement as a desirable and practicable process. Stirpiculture is an older word for a similar idea. New descriptive or misleading phrases will be invented from time to time, sometimes by friends, sometimes by enemies of the movement. It may be well from the first to clear away some misinterpretations. Accusations against new ideas commonly take the form of attempting to show that the new and possibly good idea is irretrievably committed to some other idea, generally an older and discredited one. It is the universal rule, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, to regard sex-relationships as so sacrosanct that merely to mention them is to outrage modesty and shock morality. Fortunately or otherwise we have had to overcome this silly secretiveness. The horrible white-slave traffic, the loathsome increase of venereal diseases, the frequent revelations such as the Thaw case forced on the public, the necessity for protecting children from outrage--all these and other things have made not only possible but obviously desirable that decency, wisdom and humanity should make their voice heard. The time has come when we will not tolerate the daily scandal of having our newspapers polluted with details of sexual abnormalities while we are refused the opportunity of educating the people in the direction of purity, health, and efficiency in the sexual relation. Eugenics is concerned primarily and materially with the normal sex relationship, which in modern civilised lands means the ordinary legal monogamic marriage. It is perfectly true that there have been pioneer reformers, to whom the world owes much who have linked their ideals of race improvement to an advocacy of freer sex relationships. Modern eugenists have no such divided council. They aim at encouraging the best births and discouraging the worst, and all details of their propaganda must be subordinate to this great aspiration. Seeing then that through monogamic marriage the Anglo-Saxon race must overwhelmingly flow now and in all the sighted future, we resolutely direct our attention to this institution as we find it. On the lines of which the race has approved we shall proceed for our reforms. The United States great in a thousand ways, although often the despair of the reformer, offers the most promising field of the whole world in the direction of Eugenics. Comprising within her catholic embrace many varieties of monogamic marriage she possesses contrasts, comparisons, examples and warnings, which will be of infinite use in the Eugenist's laboratory. Well may we be content to show from these differences how on the present basis of marriage a nobler race may be reared. It is of course only one aspect of marriage that interests Eugenists, but as according to the teaching of most Churches and the theory of most governments the origin, basis and reason of marriage is procreation, it will be seen that race improvement does not look on the least important side of marriage. In other words it is in its public and universal relations that marriage will be regarded by Eugenists. In comparatively socialised States like ours where education and a hundred other concerns of every child are the constant care of representative institutions it would be retrogression if we did not now begin to consider the child as having from its birth a public interest. Seeing the advance being made in our understanding of some of the laws of heredity it must not be considered wonderful that this public interest in the future citizen should begin even before birth. For this purpose it is not at all necessary, I hold it to be eminently undesirable, that the State or any outside authority should attempt the ridiculous task of organising who shall marry and mate, or dictate by law or force the conditions of marriages which satisfy the contracting parties. But this laisser faire doctrine obviously has no applicability to the much more disputable proposition that the State has no right to deal with the source of its future responsibilities, the root by which may arrive human wrecks for which the State must provide in the days to come. This brings me to a further protest. It has been suggested that Eugenists are anarchists, tearing up the roots of government, blindly striking at civilised institutions, putting a bomb to the foundations of Church, State, and Family. Let it be said here and now in such clear phrase as may be that Eugenics is the antithesis of anarchy. It means order. Eugenics opposes chaos in the interests of the race. It is the most profoundly patriotic proposition ever laid before the people of these United States. Its conception is for the national good. American Eugenists will never rest until our race becomes the fittest on earth. Other nations shall teach us if they can, we will better their instruction. Monarchical old world peoples, restrained by traditions, tied down by red tape, drugged by the dread of progress, may justify their own inertia, we cannot sink with them. We are leaders and pioneers. In the United States respect is still accorded to those who have new truths to teach for the benefit of the race. If "national efficiency" has to some extent failed in its appeal, if the answer has been an admission of unaccomplished desires, the reason must be ascribed to the limited scope of the inquiry. The nation has to take itself seriously in hand. We need to get beyond the citizen of to-day, we have to consider the citizen of to-morrow.

As to religion, I appeal both to those who love God and to those who love their fellow-man. It is futile at this time of day to quote against the living race the dictates of a dead age. It is monstrous also to slander the noble men and women who are at present engaged in the secular activities of our Churches by pretending to believe that they are not most keenly anxious to aid in any uplifting work for the regeneration of the world. Every institution which is teaching, feeding or otherwise helping children is a nucleus for Eugenic enterprise. The neglect of Eugenics in the last generation has clogged the wheels of progress in this generation. We cannot and must not forget the victims of our national neglect, but we can do greatest honour to our philanthropists and workers for the general uplift by seriously endeavouring to eliminate from the coming generation the hopelessly unfit and by encouraging the multiplication of the efficient.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

Eugenics is not committed to the Darwinian doctrine of evolution, although it would probably never have reached the stage of practical politics but for the encouragement given to all systematic scientific studies by Darwin's magnificent generalisations. Eugenics takes its stand on the ascertained fact of heredity, and it owes an immense debt to the patience with which Lamarck, the Darwins, Weissman and others have piled instance upon instance to illustrate the fact that "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" and "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." The doctrine of heredity has never been more resonantly expressed than in these words although they show only one side and that not the better side of heredity. We are indeed "begotten not made." Nurture, or environment, has its place, and an important one, in race improvement, but the overwhelming fact remains that more than three-fourths of the elements which build up a human soul are in its nature, not its nurture. The formative factor of greatest importance in the making of human life and character is heredity.

Mankind has hitherto failed to grasp the full significance of this admission. Horticulturists have made it the starting point of their experiments until to-day the Luther Burbanks can almost create what they will in plant life. Cattle-breeders, dog-fanciers, and horse-farmers, are able to raise the value of their breeds to a wonderful degree. Ornithologists have been equally successful; from the original stock a hundred varieties come at the touch of the scientific magician's wand. In each case even where at first quantity was considered of no importance compared with quality, there has been a steady and unmistakable increase in the effective numbers side by side with a gigantic development of those elements of strength or beauty which have been arrived at. Race suicide is a metaphysical phrase not easily open to definition, but two things may be said about it at this stage. Race improvement is utterly inconsistent with any intelligent conception of race suicide. An increasing birthrate is not in itself a guarantee of progress and may indeed be the means of a nation's retrogression. Experience and logic lead to the confident conclusion that increased vitality means increased fecundity.

The first need then for Eugenic study is some systematic collection of the ascertainable facts as far as they relate to human beings. This implies sufficient scientific interest in the phenomena of parentage to encourage widespread earnest patient desire to exchange information and to steadily accumulate enough knowledge to justify experiment in positive and negative Eugenics. No sane Eugenist advocates universal State action based on the existent records, but it would be against all good precedent if the absence of sufficient knowledge on a vital subject were allowed to stultify the efforts of those who seek for fuller information. Nothing but good will ensue if positive experiments are boldly labelled as such, instead of pretending that our twilight of investigation is the full light of perfect knowledge. Experiments in positive Eugenics will take various forms. They began with the most ordinary baby-shows; they proceeded through municipal prizes for the healthiest offsprings. An important stage arose when premiums in some cities began to be offered to all parents whose babies survived the critical first year of life. These were elementary experiments, based on the right motive but ignoring the element of heredity. The experiments of the future must be on a surer foundation. The current criteria of judgment are sound enough as far as they go, they encourage careful nurture, but the limitations of the experiments are those of an unscientific age. Obviously the next step in the same direction is to discriminate. The haphazard chance that of fifty children properly nourished one may be distinguished by its superior physique does not materially help us to solve our problem if we stop at this phase. Having found our healthiest child we might at least try to discover the hereditary history of its progenitors and take steps to encourage further offsprings from so promising a source. Imagine a scientific cattle-breeder possessing a perfect bull, contented that one of its offsprings should take a single prize! Not to unduly strain the analogy we might with all decorum and wisdom circulate what knowledge we can glean of those facts which have made perfection possible. Are we to be everlastingly contented with news of the romantic, sensational, abnormal and criminal phenomena of sex while our newspapers and official records are silent concerning ordinary and desirable experiences, their causes and their results? Heredity as the basis of legislation is never dreamt of, while our statute books are crowded with laws passed in a panic, laws which bear no ratio to essential facts, and laws which look at the elementary passions of mankind through the refractory media of prejudice, ignorance and well-meaning misconception. It rarely if ever occurs to legislators that a scientific system of society demands an acquaintance with the recently accepted conclusions of our greatest thinkers. We are suffering to-day from a pre-Darwinian government in almost all our States. "Authorities" of all kinds are quoted in support of and against any given proposal, but the "authorities" are seldom the fittest. In earlier days latin tags were considered a worthy conclusion to a speech in Senate or Legislature. Nowadays poetry or literature is called into requisition. Darwin, Spencer and Galton should at least have taught us to take trouble to learn all about the subject in hand and what bearing the scientific discoveries of our generation have upon particular problems. It is a disease of the age that we are conscious of our national short-comings in only the vaguest possible way. We are ignorant of the full extent of our misfortunes and we do not apply to them the time, trouble and money which are a preliminary necessity to discovering a remedy, and we forget the dynamic difference which must be made in our treatment of race problems as soon as we accept heredity as the controlling factor. But the preliminaries must be insisted on. Investigation, collation, classification, generalisation, and legislation, must be taken in their right order.

Environment when properly subordinated to and illuminated by heredity does not cease to be important. Environment may provide wings to fly with and an atmosphere capable of sustaining weight, even when it cannot provide the will to fly. To return to our agricultural symbolism: environment cannot make or change the nature of the seed, it is the soil, the sunshine and the succulence, but it has to take the seed as it is. Heredity is inside the seed and goes behind the seed to the mother plant. Heredity is what our ancestors meant when they said predestination, necessity, destiny.

Philosophers of pre-Darwin days have lured mankind into the pleasant but dangerously untrue belief that human nature is essentially and universally good. This crude generalisation of Rousseau's gospel does some injustice to that great man's philosophy which represented a necessary revolt from the soul-destroying perversion of heredity which described man as uniformly "born in sin and shaped in iniquity." Experience has revolted against both extremes. The Heavenly father is no longer a Fiend who destines "one to heav'n and ten to hell," and the Earthly Parent emerges from his ancient unimportance. Man is in neither case fortuitous, his nature, potentiality and destiny are writ large in the study of his heredity. We are all, like poets, born not made; as we are: we remain: we develop on lines long ago laid down for us by other forces than those environment can control and it is still impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. This consideration puts into proper perspective the things which matter, and warns us to cease vain expenditure on unscientific philanthropy. The efforts wasted on watering weeds might have made the garden smile with fragrant flowers. Environment means opportunity. We shall understand better how and why environments need reconstruction when we recognise the superior importance of heredity. We shall begin to realise the uselessness of forcing qualities into the human organism, and become all the more anxious to afford opportunity for developing whatever utilisable qualities are already there existent. We shall learn to educate, in the old sense of the word. We shall bring out the maximum of the good within. We will no longer tolerate the cruelties and crudities of abortive attempts to instil properties and qualities of character which not being inherent can never be successfully inoculated.

THE CHILD AND ITS HERITAGE

The previous chapter suggests that unless due regard is given to heredity an increased population will merely aggravate the existing social problems. It is necessary also to emphasise the importance of watching our death statistics as well as our birth returns. Obviously a nation with a low percentage of births compared with its population may be increasing the latter much more largely as well as more healthily than a nation with a much larger percentage of births. The pulse of each hand must be felt. Infant mortality is as easily ascertainable and is of at least equal importance. Infant efficiency is unfortunately less easily ascertainable statistically. Subject to these qualifications the Eugenics school welcomes Mr. Roosevelt's protests against Race Suicide, and gladly identifies itself with any religious, political or social effort to bring to our citizens a sense of what we owe to the commonwealth. It is not a matter to be dismissed with a speech or a magazine article when we see almost every career in the world glorified, and parentage alone sneered at. Believers in Eugenics regard with a horror based on a certainty of evil consequence when they contemplate a State in which the noble task of motherhood is left to the poor while the rich evade their duties. It is stupid as well as abominable to reproach heroic but uninstructed mothers of the less wealthy classes. Year after year they think they are fulfilling their destined purpose in life by adding to their families a burden difficult to bear. In the long run, after Nature has exercised a cruel elimination, this burden of the individual becomes the glory of the race, the very bloom and blossom of the future. Neither can reproach be given to the parents in the slums. Nature here seems to be prodigal indeed. The children come, only the doctors know the terrible tale of them. To the registrar they are but a name, to the statistician a number, but to the City and the State they mean cemeteries, hospitals, prisons, asylums, as well as barracks. But I am not dealing here with the whole problem of poverty. Eugenics aims at breeding the fittest from the fittest and it sees

"How many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear."

Even in the most unpromising surroundings one sees noble sparks of life not to be quenched by poverty or any other vital enemy. The Christ continues to be born in a stable.

It is when we reach the exclusive circles of the rich that we see how the race is decaying. Children are at a discount. Parentage is coming to be considered a waste of time. A man cannot spare his wife from social functions. Dressmakers agree that the coming of a child destroys symmetry and prevents fashionable tight-lacing. Besides there are other pastimes to consider. Neither the State nor the individual will make the public believe that the production of healthy children is as important as baseball, horse-racing or stamp collecting. Millions of dollars are spent on securing the best breeds of horses. Seven thousand dollars recently was the price of a single four-cent stamp. Dogs, in the highest circles, have luxuries of food, clothing and housing which the servants who feed them never possessed. Dog-cemeteries exist where more money is spent on the tombstone of a dead dog than would keep a live human family for a year. "Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests" but the children of the poor starve and the rich prefer the pastime of the moment to the permanent interests of the race.

Degeneracy is not a disease by specific intention, it is an attribute to our social neglect, it is the result of our inattention to vital issues, it is a sign that we are no longer keenly anxious to elevate the race. Race improvement requires, under modern conditions of life, eternal vigilance and deliberate aim. The prolific character of the degenerate type has often been remarked. It finds expression in the homely proverb "Ill weeds grow apace." But the "growth" is in the undesirable direction--they do not grow better. If it were not for the wasteful cruelty of it all one would see some gleam of satisfaction in the admitted fact that many of these breeds of degenerates are almost as short-lived as they are prolific. The handsome villain of contemporary romance, healthy in physique and mentally alert is a misleading picture entirely at variance with fact. The degenerate child is neither beautiful, robust nor mentally sound. While the number of children per family is four on the average, Dr. Tredgold tells us that the average of births in a degenerate family is over seven, in addition to the still-born who in the case of the degenerates amount to about fifteen per cent of the children born. Almost every prison in the civilised world bears record to the direct injury inflicted on the community by the degenerate class. The feeble-minded alone amount to an appreciable percentage of the ordinary population of our prisons, and, if to these are added other victims of hereditary degeneracy, there will be left only what may be described as the "Criminals by accident." I am not claiming too much for the science when I say that Eugenics is capable of revolutionising these terrible conditions. The hereditary nature of the taint of criminality is proved by the history and bodily characteristics of its unhappy victims. Eugenists as such have no special remedy for the present day criminality. Their work is to point to the breeding of the criminal and to urge the importance of stopping his multiplication. As soon as society begins to take steps towards cutting off the supply of the degenerate there will be no object in perpetuating cruel punishments whose only object was deterrence.

Alcoholism may be treated as a separate phase of this great question or it may be regarded as but a manifestation of feeble-mindedness. In either case it can be shown that the children of degenerates are those most often prone to the drink evil. It is not a fact that a drunkard's children necessarily grow up drunkards. This assertion which is sometimes met with in Temperance literature is based on a misconception of what heredity is and a misunderstanding of what alcoholism is. Alcoholism tends to eliminate the alcoholic. The children of the drunkard may not be drunkards but they may exhibit weaknesses, cravings for destructive media or absence of self-control which at length terminate their generation. There is only one final cure for national intemperance and that is a more humane imitation of Nature's own plan. Nature seems cruel in its work because its effectiveness is not hindered by moral or humane considerations. Man cannot and must not imitate Nature's ruthlessness even if the process of elimination becomes a slower one. We can imitate Nature's methodical incisiveness without following Nature's murderous indifference. In some directions we may even accelerate Nature's processes, not by increasing the pains and penalties which she inflicts on a gradually disappearing progeny, but by narrowing the circle of the victims; by declining to longer tolerate the procreation of a hopeless generation.

I do not deny that temperance and similar effort at moral suasion form a valuable buttress against the worst phenomena of alcoholism. It serves the same purpose of help that bread does to the starving destitute, it does not solve the problem but it is a necessary work all the same, a valuable adjunct to a radical cure, and only objectionable if it stands in the way of prevention which is better than cure.

If I have emphasised the evils which are the heritage of so large a number of our children, it must never be forgotten that great as is the proportion of the unfit, we have not yet reached the stage when there are more unfit than fit. The heritage of evil represents the need for Eugenics in its negative aspect. We are perfectly well aware of the characteristics which we desire to eliminate, and this is of very great importance, not only because of the active harm which a decadent type represents in our civilisation, but there is the further consideration that ninety-nine per cent of the reformative effort of our legislative and social crusades, and of the philanthropic side of our religious life, is concentrated on this appalling problem. The release of much of this effort would tend towards enlightening the nation in other directions. It is not at all wonderful that we should recognise our national agreement about the types we would gladly eliminate while we disagree very widely about the types we would most value. This arises largely from the fact that our attention for many years has been riveted on "the submerged tenth," on "degeneracy" on "the criminal classes" and on the various other descriptions of the undesirable. What a little share in our organised study of man has the best type had. We have fed the unfit and left the healthy unheeded. Actually while we have been discussing the problem of improvement we have seen the destruction and disappearance through war, disease and poverty of representatives of types which stood in no need of improvement but only of perpetuating. But in the main if we do not agree as to the most desirable heritage a child should have there is very much common ground between us all. We believe that every child has the right to a good constitution. We regard as a misfortune every obstacle which renders healthy parents unwilling or unable to add their contribution to the welfare of the State by increasing the number of happy children growing into efficient men and women. Why wonder at the anti-social elements to be found in every city? What claim has the State on its children when the State has neglected the duty of a parent. To be a citizen is too great an honor to bestow on the hopeless children of degenerate parents. These children's heritage is sorrow, the nation's remorse is unavailing, Nemesis overtakes the neglectful State.

MARRIAGE

Forty years ago it would have been possible to say that all encouragements to marriage necessarily meant increasing the birth rate. Economic and other causes contribute to the decline of both marriage and birth-rates. In this chapter I am not concerned with the discouragements to race increase. I remark elsewhere on the absence of national inspiration to race improvement. I am at present concerned only with marriage as the medium for procreation, no other aspect of marriage is the concern of Eugenists. To encourage those marriages which will tend to produce a noble race might well befit the consideration of a great people. The views uttered here, while I think they would be largely shared by Eugenists as a whole, are more or less personal to the writer who alone is responsible for their statement. The legitimatisation in some way of the illegitimate seems to me a necessary, urgent duty of the State. The stigma, implying moral blame and sometimes meeting with actual ill-treatment on that account, is as unjust and undeserved as anything that can be imagined. To overcome the difficulty by making the marriage of the parents the sole method of removing the reproach seems to me as unjust as it is illogical. There is no sense in making a child suffer unnecessarily. The absence of a home with a pair of loving parents is often the natural sufferings inflicted on a "natural" child. We ought not to encourage any discrimination between the adopted and the unadopted illegitimate child. Public opinion must learn to regard all children from the moment of their birth as having an inherent right to the best possible welcome and the treatment best fitted to make them desirable citizens. Eugenics studies the parents and on occasion challenges their right to produce seed, and one of its basic reasons for doing so must inevitably be that there can be no post-natal challenge to the child's right to exist.

Eugenics is so seriously concerned with the race that it cannot accept the pretentious puerilities which so often masquerade under the title of marriage-law reforms. The mere refusal of a marriage certificate to couples who cannot pass certain medical shibboleths, while their offspring is unconsidered seems to be a mockery of a serious subject. The marriage of the unfit is the concern of the Eugenists primarily because deception on either side may lead to terrible evil. Physical examinations and medical certificates before marriage are an urgent necessity--not as a bar to marriage but as a hindrance to deceit. Wives must know the man they are marrying. Men must be informed what kind of wife is hidden beneath the attractive dress. A danger of marriage is that a perfectly capable healthy person may unsuspectingly marry an impotent, barren or deformed consort. Love capable of conquering a wholesome physical repulsion is one thing; love, blinded by custom, delivered bound into the hands of disease is a vile thing incapable of defence. Partners for life can even now demand a certificate on the portal of marriage, but public opinion and legislation must make such certificates an essential preliminary to the marriage contract. All legal barriers to breaking an engagement on grounds of physical and mental ill-health must be swept away, and the enlightened public must be led to learn that some promises are better broken than kept. If these ante-matrimonial conditions are observed Eugenists will look with a charitable if discouraging glance at marriages of the unfit. Marriage between two "unfit" persons can be defended on very many grounds so long as children are not born. It is, generally speaking, improbable that the unfit at their worst will either be drawn to each other or that they will wish to enter on any career which may tend to deprive them of what vitality they still possess. Most often such unions would be inevitably fruitless whatever vain attempts were made to make the dry bones live. Such unions would in nearly every instance simply mean that to prevent scandal a form of marriage is gone through and thereafter two weaklings give each other the comfort of communion; their common diet is suited to their needs, they live in an atmosphere adapted to their complaint. I do not envy the state of soul of their critics who would mar the placid satisfaction of mutual comfort which would solace their declining childless days.

The union of the fit and the unfit is a calamity or a catastrophe in cases of knowledge, it is a crime where the victim is deceived into ignorance. The union of two unfit persons entered into in complete knowledge will be an infinitely smaller evil.

To make marriage attractive we must very greatly increase the facilities for unmaking it, and we must lay down some general principles for its healthy continuance. The absolute right of a woman to her own person, and her prerogative to refuse to bear children, seem elementary conditions of civilised wedlock. Woman must be protected from outrage, be she wife or not. A married woman must have the same right over her own person and her own children that an unmarried woman has over hers. It is an unmistakable slight on marriage to compel a woman to relinquish any of the legal or social rights she would enjoy if unmarried. We cannot afford to throw these obstacles in the way of marriage, we want the best women to marry and not to abstain on account of the altogether unnecessary and unnatural disabilities which laws and men have made.

Eugenists are willing to concede that divorce should be cheap, easy and free from shameful scandal. This can only be done however without grave injustice to women and the race if, apart from religious and moral considerations, the family is made the first consideration. The problem is largely an economic one. It is not likely that the State willingly intends to take upon itself the burden of maintaining thousands of wives unable to maintain themselves discarded by husbands wealthy enough to incur new responsibilities and expense. Whether marriage should be regarded as giving a claim to equal shares in the property and income of either partner is worthy of discussion. It is likely enough that the thinking woman of the present day and her successors will insist on wages for wives, wages for motherhood, and wages for housekeeping, and that these stipulations will receive the sanction of State law wherever they are reasonably scheduled and definitely approved. The children of divorced parents occupy an onerous position. Mr. Henry James, in "What Maisie Knew," has touched convincingly on this point. It cannot be dismissed as unimportant for there is hardly a single good environment in children's lives so potent as that of a happy home in which the two parents' love for each other is only rivalled by their united love for the young lives their love has so miraculously created. But there is no worse condition for children than the home of hate. Divorce may be horrid, but the atmosphere of love turned to indifference and hate is hell for all who breathe there.

While marriage does not exhaust all the possibilities of increasing the race it may be said to be not only the best but the only socially desirable way. Preventing divorce, or railing marriage round with difficulties not only encourages illicit relations outside marriage, it inevitably tends to prevent marriages being as fecund as the interests of the race demands. There is no need to sigh for a uniform marriage-law. If the ideal rule could be discovered it would be a pity not to make it universal. States which have experimented under present conditions become valuable examples or warnings, and the only need is that the least enlightened State should come into line with the most advanced without undue delay. Fortunately already there has been a number of very interesting enterprises by individual States, and the time is ripe for the more general adoption of those marriage laws which have given general satisfaction where tried.

The "age of consent" and the age of marriage must be brought to a common minimum. If a girl is mature enough for one she is mature enough for the other. The condition of parental consent seems at first glance an anachronism, but may have some Eugenic value if modified to mean that the age of consent can be pre-dated in exceptional cases.

No husband or wife should be tied for life to a person who develops symptoms of such diseases as tuberculosis, syphilis, chronic alcoholism and the like. Felony and even incurable laziness or incapacity should be good grounds for divorce. There is no necessary connection between Socialism and Eugenics but neither is there any essential antagonism. Eugenics recognises the responsibilities of parenthood and to that extent is individualistic; it claims also that the children born to all men, rich or poor, are bound to be born as healthy as advancing science can make them. That is why Eugenics is sometimes regarded as socialistic, but we have long ago decided that health is a national concern and therefore the State builds hospitals, passes sanitary laws and insists on the notification of certain diseases. In a Republic it ought not to be necessary to say that classes should not exist. At the risk of accentuating the socialistic accusation it has to be made plain that matrimonial selection must ignore distinctions of wealth and class and creed. The fit must wed the fittest, that is the keynote of Eugenics. Eugenics speaks with no uncertain voice on the "Colour question"--every race must work out its own salvation, and in the interests of each race there must be no intermarrying. It is a healthy and natural objection which causes a white woman to shudder at the idea of a mixed marriage. The mating of a black woman with a white man is seldom a wedding, it generally means degradation to both and excessive suffering to the victims--the woman and the child.

POSSIBILITIES OF RACE IMPROVEMENT

It is unnecessary to argue the desirability of race improvement. It is the avowed ultimate object of every religious, moral, social and individual reform. In the light of history we know that race improvement is possible. Degeneration is the scientists' formula for the theologian's "fall from grace," evolution is the Darwinian phrase for

"That far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves."

The Eugenist does not say that religion, morality, and education are ineffective, he only claims that these great forces should apply to the foundations of society instead of being spent and dissipated in a thousand less important directions.

Eugenics is not a step in the dark. The theory is based on observation and its practice on a selection of the innumerable experiences of mankind. Since the first man married the first bride mankind has been unconsciously offering an accumulation of experiments in improvement, deterioration and stagnation of the race. It is only inexplicable reticence which has diverted man's study from these phenomena. Failure to appreciate relative values, the prejudice arising from a debased or immature morality, the bigotry of misunderstood religion and the dread of wounding prudish susceptibilities have led competent writers to devote to pigs and sheep volumes which should have had man for their subject. "The noblest study of mankind is man," but our naturalists have not advertised it sufficiently. Charles Darwin, whose powers of minute observation are admitted to have been supreme even by those who dispute his conclusions, recognised the racial bias against "the noblest study." Writing to A. R. Wallace in 1857 he said: "You ask whether I shall discuss 'man.' I think I shall avoid the subject, as so surrounded with prejudice; though I admit it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist."

The old attempts to divide mankind into good and bad have failed beyond recall. The first lesson we can learn from a study of the past is to recognise the probably infinite variety of type which exists, not only in the attainments, but in the potentialities of various types of man and woman. We no longer wonder at differences of mentality when we know the variations in bodily form and structure. We see that some are capable of endurance, some are physically weak, some are almost leonine in strength. Each variation in strength may be united with differing degrees of other qualities, of sight, of motion, of temperament--there is no end to the combinations. We are well on the road to the elements of Eugenics when we have grasped two facts, the analysable distinctions between individuals, and the fact that broadly speaking a child is endowed with its essential characteristics from birth. The qualifications of the hereditary principle need not be set forth here. Darwin's theory is being modified in our day on important but not vital details. Eugenics is only interested in so far as we admit this broad generalisation to which no scholar of to-day would substantially demur.

We cannot in every case disentangle human characteristics with sufficient precision to warrant us in saying which combinations are desirable and which are undesirable. We can, however, get into our minds the idea that one good quality may be happily supplemented by another, or that certain characteristics might prove irreconcilable in combination. For instance strong sexuality allied to moral responsibility would prove an admirable combination, but the former quality in conjunction with weak mentality would work for certain ill. The marriage of near relations has been demonstrated to stereotype existent combinations, the evil is not as was once feared that the act was in itself categorically immoral and therefore followed by Nature's punishment. It amounted to the same thing in many cases because Nature's law is progress or retrogression; to stand still is to stultify the law of the universe. The highest and noblest physically, morally and mentally are the most complicated, and there is little danger that they will find their match amongst those with whom they are likely to marry. The risk of like marrying like is more inherently probable amongst the commonplace and mediocre. The danger becomes a terrible one when the lowest rung of the ladder is reached and it is here that intermarriage is most common if not invariable. The lowest degenerates, the most vulgar criminals the absolute failures, the "creatures who once were men" rarely have sexual unions of any sort or kind outside their own degraded circle. The unfit breed more of their kind and do not improve. The commonplace may by happy chance or on wise information mingle just those characteristics which raise the race to a higher level. The highest like those in the last category, may in the next generation lead to still higher heights or they may maintain their standard of efficiency, or their caste may sink to lower circles. In any of these cases of course there is the alternative that their race may be extinguished. All this is merely to state the case as it stands. There are few who dispute the facts, the Eugenic remedy is either not appreciated or it is ignored. It cannot be a subject of indifference whether the best types increase or the worst. It must matter to the race, it must seriously affect the present generation, it must be of increasing importance to each generation. Cruel, harsh, severe, repressive laws have been discarded as ineffective and inhuman. We cannot go back to an abortive policy which failed even a Torquemada. On the contrary we have repressed natural checks to population and must increasingly continue to do so wherever we discover new methods of foiling Nature's indiscriminate destructiveness. The stream of tendency cannot be dammed, we must adapt our social mill-wheels to the new channels which the river of time has cut in the fields of experience.

We look not only at the worst but also at the best when we ask ourselves can the Race be improved? The highest type of man known to men must be our model. We must constantly and actively believe that what man has been man may be. If mankind be truly one we are linked to the Grants as well as to the Guiteaus, to the saviours as well as to the assassins of society. Our kinship with the lowest must make us more merciful, our kinship with the highest may make us more ambitious to be contented with nothing short of the best.

EDUCATION AND EUGENICS

A healthy wave of reaction seems setting in against the old ideal of "cramming" which once masqueraded as education. Already signs are apparent that in order to have a healthy mind a healthy body is necessary. A sentiment in favour of physical education is slowly arising and may some day be translated into statutes and administrative rule. At present the sentiment is a vague one and is not wholly free from the suspicion of ulterior motives connected with national defence. It cannot be gainsaid that the army and navy will gain in strength and efficiency by the improvement of the racial physique but the same forces might be equally increased by some new discovery in aviation, some new invention in machinery or some new combination in explosives peculiar to America. Methods of education must justify themselves first and last by their conformity to the physical, and moral and intellectual needs of the human basis of society. They must not be devoted to the development of a healthy manhood only, the interests of the race demand that healthy womanhood shall be the care of any truly national system of education. Until we have built up the body we are little likely to succeed in creating a race of pure-thinking, pure-living men and women. This is the universal need. Higher education, the highest intellectual culture is for the few, not for the wealthy few--but for the proved fit, for those whose antecedents and character show that their brain is capable of receiving and their powers are capable of using a fully developed education which would otherwise be a ridiculously wasted acquisition.

The intellectual education of the future will probably average a higher standard than at present but we must revise our criterion of judgment. We must realise that our current ideals tend rather towards making a nation of priggish inefficients than of happy, healthy home builders.

If our teachers have aimed in the past at cramming comparatively useless knowledge into every brain independent of individual capacity, it is not strange that our educational faults have been to neglect the physical side and to ignore the vital teaching which might have led our scholars in the direction of their own physical development. These two things must inevitably stand or fall together. If you neglect physical training it will be because you do not realise its importance. If you realise its importance you will not only devote your principal educational efforts towards its universal practice in the schools but you will see that nothing is left undone to induce the young to adopt in the privacy of their own lives the principles which make for physical perfection.

Co-education, the schooling together of boys and girls until puberty, is a step in the right direction. It familiarises children with each other in quite the best and most innocent manner; it is no more likely to create evil results than the daily life at home of the perfect family of boys and girls meeting under the protection of their own parents.

Co-education renders unnecessary that departing into separate schools which is so mysterious in early life. It aims at giving girls the benefit of boys' play, encouraging them in the boys' code of honour, and tending to prepare them for a citizenship they have to share with the boys whom they may even now regard as "chums." For boys the familiarity with girls' ways and girls' characteristics will help them to be courteous without being weak and to lose that shamefaced sex-consciousness which is the opposite to a healthy knowledge of the existence of another sex.

In the early years of infancy only the parents can impart information about sex to their own offspring, and generally speaking only the mother will be the desirable source of information. This in itself justifies the necessity of the Eugenist demand for educationally preparing girls for motherhood. In the nursery the time for teaching intimate things may be left to date itself. The earliest questions of a child fix the time when the earliest information must be given. When a child asks questions you either tell him the truth or a lie. The truth can be told so delicately that no one need blush to repeat it. A lie may be directly more indelicate and in its future results may be a source of deadly demoralisation. Children ask about the "secret" of birth when a baby brother or sister is born. Their questions and our answers are a frequent subject for jest, when the only reasonable excuse for our failure to impart accurate knowledge is either our own unfitness to teach, or our child's incapacity to understand. If the first is not incurable it should be the object of immediate study with a view to reform. The incapacity of youthful intelligence to grasp elementary facts is greatly exaggerated, but anyhow it is no excuse for deliberate deception. The immature mind can wait for knowledge, its development need not be prejudiced before it begins to know anything. If we cannot feed it on facts at least do not fill it with falsehood.

On entering school the children are introduced to a person whose profession is to teach. How easy now it would be to obtain a child's confidence, how easy to lead a child to believe that there is no hidden knowledge, no subject which is taboo, no function of a healthy body which is unhealthy, and no process of Nature which cannot be made an interesting and helpful study. To impart an unnecessary sense of shame to a child is a shocking outrage from which a sensitive soul never recovers. Exceptional children will require exceptional care but the average child need never know from experience the meaning of sexual shame. Healthy boys and girls will learn that as their parents made them they will one day themselves qualify for all those joys, pains, excitements and interests which are so intimately wrapt round the functions of parenthood. To prepare boys and girls to become parents may seem a big proposition. I am convinced it is practicable, desirable and in the best interests of the race. The human relationship, the human parentage, the human processes should be the foundation of natural history lessons. Botany and biology should be interesting because of their relation to humanity. Information about the human processes of life and sex should not be made contingent on the possibility of divulging it in scattered fragments incidental to remarks on the habits of polar bears or the functions of the stamen and pollen of the flower.

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