Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/264

 A sanguine preacher in "The Popular Science Monthly" holds out a hope that duty and desire may be ultimately blended through an adroit application of eugenics. What we need, and have not got, is a race which "instinctively and spontaneously" does right. Therefore it behooves us to superinduce, through grafting and transplanting, "the preservation and perpetuation of a human stock that may be depended upon to lead moral lives without the necessity of much social compulsion." It sounds interesting; and though Mr. Chesterton loudly asserts that eugenics degrade the race, we are too well accustomed to these divergencies on the part of our preachers to take them deeply to heart.

Mr. Chesterton has also used strong language (understatement is not his long suit) in denouncing "the diabolical idiocy that can regard beer or tobacco as in some sort evil or unseemly";