raise up each new generation out of the flower of the old. Negative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Positive Eugenics perpetuates the fit.

The field of Negative Eugenics has been well explored. No question exists as to the transmission through heredity of feeble mindedness, idiocy, insanity and certain forms of criminality. “There is one way, only one way, out of this difficulty. Modern society ... must declare that there shall be no unfit and defective citizens in the State.”[8] The Greeks eliminated unfitness by the destruction of defective children; though we may deplore such a practice in the light of our modern ethical codes, we recognize the end as one essential to race progress. By denying the right of parenthood to any who have transmissible disease or defect, our modern knowledge enables us to accomplish the same end without recourse to the destruction of human life.

Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the science of Eugenics, writes, in his last important work, “I think that stern compulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble-mindedness, habitual criminality and pauperism.”[9] Yet society, in dealing with hereditary defect, presents some of its most grotesque inconsistencies. “It is a curious comment on the artificiality of our social system that no stigma attaches to preventable ill-health.” An empty purse, or a ruined home may mean social ostracism, but “break-down in person, whatever the cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and silence.”[10]

Certain defects are known to be transmissible by heredity from parent to child, until the crétin of Balzac’s Country Doctor is reproduced for centuries. The remedy for this form of social self-torture lies in the denial of parenthood to those who have transmissible defects. Individually, such a denial works hardships in this generation: socially, and to the future generations, it means comparative freedom from individual, and hence from social defect.

The problem of Positive Eugenics presents an essentially different aspect. As Ruskin so well observes—“It is a matter of no final concern, to any parent, whether he shall have two children or four; but matter of quite final concern whether those he has shall or shall not deserve to be hanged.” The quality is always the significant factor. Whether in family or national progress, an effort must be made to insure against hanging, or against any tendency that leads gallowsward.

Positive Eugenics is the science of race building through wise mating. “As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion of able offspring is a certainty.”[11] What prospective parent does not fondly imagine that his children will be at least near-great? Yet how many individuals, in their choice of a mate, set out with the deliberate intention of securing a life partner whose qualities, when combined with his own, must produce greatness?

The Darwin-Galton-Wedgwood families boast sixteen men of world fame in five generations; in the Bach family there were fifty-seven musicians of note in eight generations; Wood’s study of Heredity in Royalty shows the evident transmission of special ability; yet men and women of ability, anxious for able offspring, mate without any rational effort to secure the end which they desire. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred our mathematician marries a woman whose family did not count a single astronomer, physicist or other mathematical mind among it members. The result of such a union is what could be expected. Although genius does not generally die out right away in the first generation, it decreases by half, and further dilutions soon bring it down to nothingness.”[12]

This, in brief, is the problem of Negative and of Positive Eugenics. Both defect and ability are transmitted by heredity; both are the product of the mating process known as marriage; since society can and does control marriage, it may, through this control, exercise a real influence upon the character of future generations.

The science of Eugenics is in its infancy, yet, widely established and vigorously applied, it may revolutionize the human species. The Super Race may come, because “looked at from the social standpoint, we see how exceptional families, by careful marriages, can within even a few generations, obtain an exceptional stock, and how directly this suggests assortative mating as a moral duty for the highly endowed. On the other hand, the exceptionally degenerate isolated in the slums of our modern cities can easily produce permanent stock also: a stock which no change of environment will permanently elevate, and which nothing but mixture with better blood will improve. But this is an improvement of the bad by a social waste of the better. We do not want to eliminate bad stock by watering it with good, but by placing it under conditions where it is relatively or absolutely infertile.”[13]

“But what of love?” wails the sentimentalist; “in your scheme Eugenics outweighs Cupid!” Perhaps, but what of it? Cupid has proved in the past a sad bungler, whose mistakes and failures grimace from every page of our divorce court records. Far from hindering his activities, however, Eugenics will assist Cupid by bringing together persons truly congenial—hence capable of an enduring love. Too many men have married a natty Easter bonnet, or a cleverly tailored suit. Too many women have fallen a prey to a tempting bank account or a pair of glorious mustachios. Blind Cupid limps but lamely over the rugged path of matrimonial bliss. The questionable success of his best efforts proves his sure need of a guide.

Eugenics represents an effort to bring together those people who have complementary qualities and complementary interests; who are capable of maintaining congenial relationships in the present; and creating able offspring in the future. Selection and parenthood are the cradle of the future. Hence the individual who, in the exercise of his choice, overlooks their significance overlooks one of his most important racial responsibilities.

Society is interested in Eugenics, because it is through Eugenics that the hereditary traits of the Super Race are perpetuated and perfected. Eugenics, rightly understood and applied, is a social asset of unexcelled value. How long, then, shall our society continue to feed on the husks, neglecting the grain which lies everywhere ready at hand?

Eugenics is indeed one means of race salvation, yet what care do we take to perfect eugenic measures? “If through sheer chance, some great