Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/73

Rh natural, selection. Sexual selection, though operating somewhat more beneficially as civilization progresses, is still far from ideal, and needs to be placed upon a basis of ethics and judgment rather than caprice and convention. Fecundal selection is in a still more unsatisfactory condition owing to the steady diminishing of families among the better stocks and the consequent propagation of the race by inferiors. Though certain social devices would be of some advantage, our main hope again must be in raising the ethical standard, by placing child production as a goal of manhood and womanhood.

It has been shown that, while improvement of the race in innate quality is almost a sine qua non for permanent social advancement, the factors which make for it frequently fail to coincide with the influences tending toward social progress. Pearson says:

The eugenicist urges, therefore, scientific investigation as preliminary to action. He proposes, first, that the registration laws of both federal and state governments be so amended as to make vital statistics reliable and comprehensive, and, second, that the students of biological and sociological laboratories be encouraged to wider and more accurate study of the laws of human heredity according to the methods of Galton and Pearson.

Like all contributions to the sum of social ideas, eugenics must work by the successive steps of invention, generalization and tradition, corresponding to the biological processes of variation, survival of the fittest and heredity. Invention, or discovery of the laws of eugenics, is here the part of the laboratory specialist, and should loom high in the attention of the sociologists of this generation.

We must not wait, however, for full knowledge before proceeding to the next step, for full knowledge can never be attained. The exact concontribution of the parents or degree of inheritableness need not be ascertained before we begin work, for we know already a certain number of characteristics possessing a high degree of inheritability. Though cattle breeders know little quantitatively of the inheritance of milk production, they have acted upon this little for many years with marvelous results; if, on the contrary, they had waited for elaborate statistical investigation and experimentation, we should now be using goats for milk instead of cows.