Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/411

Rh This is the next point concerning which eugenics may have something to tell us. In order that natural selection should be suspended, it is not sufficient to reduce the selective death rate; it is necessary that the relative fertility of the unfit should be higher than that of the fit. If the unfit variations leave to any state their heritage of unfitness, what can save that state from degeneracy, what hinder a catastrophe when that state has to prove its only title-deed to seizinseizing [sic] of the earth?

In Table IX. I have placed the fertility of deaf-mute, tuberculous, criminal and insane stocks, and below them the fertility of more normal classes in the community. It is at once obvious that degenerate stocks under present social conditions are not short-lived, they live to have more than the normal size of family. Natural selection is largely suspended, but not the inheritance of degeneracy nor the fertility of the unfit. On the contrary, there is more than a suspicion of the suspension of the fertility of the fit. If further evidence be needful, look at the results in Table X, for the correlation between all that makes for unfitness and the number of children per married woman under fifty-five. Mr. Heron has indeed shown us that the survival of the unfit is a marked characteristic of modern town life. Every condition