Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/142

138 forms the best introduction to the general problem of the limits to human racial improvement. I regret that time is lacking to describe these studies of heredity within one "pure line." It is from such that eugenics may hope to learn valuable lessons in economy of effort and exactness of expectation. I have, however, already taken too much of your time with the problems of the exact laws whereby good men have good offspring and whereby breeding for strength, wisdom and virtue may be most effective.

In the few minutes that remain let me sum up what might perhaps have been entitled the A B C of eugenics in the realm of mind.

I have tried to show that, in intellect and character, men differ, by original nature, in some sort of correspondence to the ancestry whence they spring, so that by selection of ancestry the intellect and character of the species may be improved; to show also that injurious by-products of such selective breeding are very easily avoided, if indeed they occur at all; and, finally, to state some of the problems whose answers will inform us of just how the original intellect and character of one man does correspond with that of his ancestors, and so of just the best ways to discover the best strains and to perpetuate them.

I hope to have made it clear that we have much to learn about eugenics, and also that we already know enough to justify us in providing for the original intellect and character of man in the future with a higher, purer source than the muddy streams of the past. If it is our duty to improve the face of the world and human customs and traditions, so that men unborn may live in better conditions, it is doubly our duty to improve the original natures of these men themselves. For there is no surer means of improving the conditions of life.

It is no part of my office to moralize on these facts. But surely it would be a pitiable thing if man should forever make inferior men as a by-product of passion, and deny good men life in mistaken devotion to palliative and remedial philanthropy. Ethics and religion must teach man to want the welfare of the future as well as the relief of the cripple before his eyes; and science must teach man to control his own future nature as well as the animals, plants, and physical forces amongst which he will have to live. It is a noble thing that human reason, bred of a myriad unreasoned happenings, and driven forth into life by whips made aeons ago with no thought of man's higher wants, can yet turn back to understand man's birth, survey his journey, chart and steer his future course, and free him from barriers without and defects within. Until the last removable impediment in man's own nature dies childless, human reason will not rest.