Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/398

392 ability not correlated with such want of mental balance has descended through five generations.

Yet apart from this, to the true man of science, nothing is impure or repulsive. His mission is to study all phases of life; and in the case before us to determine their relation to national fitness and racial degeneracy. I can not put it better than in the words of Francis Bacon:

But for unpolite or even sordid particulars which, as Pliny observes, require an apology for being mentioned, even these ought to be received into natural history, no less than the most rich and delicate; for, natural history is not defiled by them any more than the sun, by shining alike on the palace and the privy; and we do not endeavor to build a capitol or erect a pyramid to the glory of mankind, but to found a temple in imitation of the world, and consecrate it to the human understanding, so that we must frame our model accordingly; for whatever is worthy of existence is worthy of our knowledge; but ignoble things exist as well as the noble.

Those who have not the courage, or it may be the strength to face life as it is, must avoid science; or at least the portion of it termed national eugenics. Those who fear to know humanity in its degradation, as well as in its nobler phases, will scarce reach the standpoint of knowledge from which they can effectively help the progress of our race. They will be ignorant of the essential factors which alone can determine whether a nation shall be sound in mind and body. Disease and health, vigor and impotence, intelligence and stupidity, sanity and insanity, conscientiousness and irresponsibility, clean living and license—all things which make for strength and weakness of character—must be studied, not by verbal argument, but be dissected under the statistical microscope, if we are to realize why nations rise and fall, if we are to know whether our own folk is progressing or regressing. Only by such examination can we understand the disease; only by such means can we suggest a valid cure where we find there is that in any