Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/28

16 way to supply its place is discovered and adopted; and the first step in this direction is to prove by actual experiment that the race can he modified by selection like any other species of organism.

The researches of Professor Bell, which show that a race of deaf-mutes is actually growing up in the United States through an unfortunate application of the law of selection, therefore have a very great scientific value, which is entirely independent 'of the warning they give of a danger which threatens us.

In the paper which is quoted above he renders the community an important service by pointing out this danger; but it seems to me that the chief value of his work is not in this direct practical bearing, but in the convincing proof which he furnishes to show that the law of selection does place within our reach a powerful influence for the improvement of our race, for, as soon as the truth is borne home to all men by facts like those which Professor Bell has brought together, some effective means of applying it to mankind will certainly be devised.

Mankind will not submit to any direct interference with personal liberty; but, if it is true that desirable characteristics can be perpetuated and developed by selection, indirect methods of influencing the choice of husbands and wives could undoubtedly be devised and employed.

If all the children which exhibit the desired peculiarity could be brought together as early as possible, and could be made to live together during their youth, carefully guarded from the possibility of making acquaintance with any other children, and if this restriction could be continued through the period when acquaintances and friendships and attachments are most easily established, this would be a great step toward selective breeding; for all the children with the desired peculiarity would become intimately acquainted with one another, while they would have few outside friendships. If, after the children had grown up and become scattered, they were encouraged to hold periodical reunions for promoting social intercourse between them in adult life, and if they were provided with newspapers and periodicals of their own, which should make a specialty of "personals" relating to them, giving a full account of their conventions and reunions, and keeping their readers informed of all their movements, their employments, their marriages, deaths, etc., the chances of intermarriage among them would be greatly increased.

If they were taught to speak and think in a language of their own, and were furnished with a literature of their own in this language, they would be very effectively cut off from intercourse with outsiders, and would be compelled to look to their own numbers for their companions and acquaintances; and there can be no doubt that, if all these influences were employed together generation after generation, they would soon lead to the establishment of a race sharply marked off