Page:Personal Beauty and Racial Betterment.djvu/72

 the extreme selection as carried out in stock-breeding, where a definite, narrowly defined character (such as speed, milk secretion, or color) is desired, even at the expense of other characters; but the elimination of the obviously unfit, and the promotion of the breeding of a wide range of more fit types. In so far as positive selection, as contrasted with elimination, is concerned, this can safely by accomplished by facilitating and fructifying the natural process of sexual selection rather than by arbitrary regulation.

In considering elimination, two questions are equally important: first, what classes of individuals should theoretically be eliminated? and second, what machinery of elimination is possible, and how far is it safe to allow this machinery to operate?

If we do not allow the second question to disturb us, the first question may readily receive a partial answer. Feeble-mindedness, hereditary insanity, and hereditary criminal tendencies (if such occur) should be nipped in all the buds they show. Individuals showing these traits definitely should not be allowed to reproduce. Diseases and organic weaknesses which are transmissible to offspring (if there be such diseases) should come under the same rigid ban. Although additions would need to be made to this list, the program indicated