Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/418

412 physical have done for more than a century; when they shall aid him in completing his mastery of his organic development, as the physical sciences have largely taught him to control his inorganic environment. To bring this about we need above all two factors. First: a knowledge of inheritance, variation, selection and fertility in man, and the relation of these results to racial efficiency. To this special branch of biology, Francis Galton has given the name of the science of national eugenics, and in founding the Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics in the University of London he has been the pioneer in asserting that even from the academic standpoint "the proper study of mankind is man." Eighty years ago there were no physical laboratories in the universities of this country, sixty years ago there were no physiological laboratories, thirty years ago there were no engineering laboratories. To-day there is only one laboratory for national eugenics. I believe that every university twenty years hence will offer its students training in the science that makes for race-efficiency and in the knowledge which alone can make a reality of statecraft. The eugenics laboratory then will require no apology, it will be too well recognized a part of university equipment. The second factor which seems to me needful is an altered tone with regard to those phases of our sexual life upon which the health and welfare of the nation as a whole so largely depend. In this matter I think we can learn from the spirit of our youngest allies, the Japanese, and from the practise of our oldest allies, the Jews. With both, race-preservation and race-betterment have assumed the form of a religious cult. And one aim of my lecture to-day is that I may appeal to the younger members of my audience, on whom responsibility for forming opinion will shortly fall, to weigh these things well, for they touch closely our national safety. On the one hand, I do not raise an alarmist picture of our coming decadence, nor, on the other hand, would I leave you without insisting that there is grave occasion for earnest thought. I would raise interest in a new and, I believe, potent branch of science; I would call for a strengthening of racial conscience, and a scientific basis for conduct, as our growing civilization stems natural selection as the purifier of the state. Thus it is that eugenics passes from science into practise, from knowledge to a creed of action. This can not be expressed better than by Francis Galton's concluding words in his "Eugenics as a Factor of Religion":

Eugenic belief extends the function of philanthropy to future generations, it renders its actions more pervading than hitherto, by dealing with families and societies in their entirety, and it enforces the importance of the marriage covenant by directing serious attention to the probable quality of the future offspring. It sternly forbids all forms of sentimental charity that are harmful to the race, while it eagerly seeks opportunity for acts of personal kindness, as some equivalent to the loss of what it forbids. It brings the tie of kinship into prominence and strongly encourages love and interest in family and race. In brief, eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to many of the noblest feelings of our nature.