mathematician is evolved one day out of the crowd, the state—who should be ever on the watch for such events and whose main care should be to preserve and increase such sources of light, progress and national glory—does nothing to protect the man of genius against care, disease or anything likely to shorten life nor to multiply the splendid thinking machine.”[14] A great state must have for its component parts great men and women. Did we truly seek greatness, how many measures for its attainment lie neglected at our very doors!

Every well regulated state of antiquity eliminated defectives in the interest of the group, and of the future. What more effective means of social preservation could be imagined than some measure through whose operation the defective classes in society would be eliminated, and the social structure, bulwarked by stalwart manhood and womanhood, made proof against the ravages of time. How serious a thing is the propagation of defect! Murder is a crime, punishable by death, yet a murderer merely eliminates one unit from the social group. The destruction of this one life may cause sorrow; it may deprive society of a valued member; but it is, after all, a comparatively insignificant offense. The perpetuation of hereditary defect is infinitely worse than murder. Consider, for example, a marriage, sanctioned by church and state, between two persons both having in their blood hereditary feeble-mindedness.

Investigations of thousands of feeble-minded families show that, in such a case, every one of the offspring may be and probably will be feeble-minded—a curse to himself and a burden to society. Pauperism, crime, social dependence, vice, all follow in the train of mental defect, and the mentally defective parents hand on for untold generations their taint—sometimes in more, sometimes in less virulent form, but always bringing into the world beings not only incapable of caring for themselves, but fatally capable of handing on their defect to the future. The murderer robs society; the mentally defective parent curses society, both in the present and in the future, with the taint of degeneracy. The murderer takes away a life; but the feeble-minded parent passes on to the future the seeds of racial decay.

The first step in Eugenics progress—the elimination of defect by preventing the procreation of defectives—is easily stated, and may be almost as easily attained. The price of six battleships ($50,000,000) would probably provide homes for all of the seriously defective men, women and children now at large in the United States. Thus could the scum of society be removed, and a source of social contamination be effectively regulated. Yet with tens of thousands of defectives, freely propagating their kind, we continue to build battleships, fondly believing that rifled cannon and steel armor plate will prove sufficient for national defense.

This is but a part, and by far the least important part, of the eugenic programme. The elimination of defect prevents degeneracy, but does not insure the physical normality, mental capacity, aggressiveness, concentration, sympathy and vision of the Super Man. While the elimination of defect is imperative, it is after all only the first step toward the creation of positive qualities.

Positive Eugenics may be as obvious as Negative Eugenics, but the promulgation of its doctrines is not equally easy. A series of legislative enactments will prevent the mating of the hereditarily defective; nothing but the most painstaking education can be relied upon to secure the mating of those eugenically fit. Nevertheless for that modern state which seeks to persist and dominate, no lesser measure will suffice. After all, why should not society educate its youth to a sense of wisdom in mating? The United States spends each year some four hundred millions of dollars in public education, teaching children to read, to spell, to sew, to draw. The importance of these studies is obvious, yet, from a social standpoint, they cannot compare in significance with such training in the laws of heredity and biology as will insure wise choice in mating. The state, in its efforts at self preservation, cannot lay too much emphasis on the training for eugenic choice.

Biology, through the laws of heredity, applied in the science of Eugenics, holds out every hope for the coming of the Super Man and of the Super Race. Not in our knowledge of its laws, but in the practice of its precepts, are we lacking.

Eugenics, it is true, in its negative and positive phases, holds out a great hope for the future. But Eugenics alone will not suffice. The science of Eugenics must be coupled with the science of Social Adjustment to insure the production of a Super Race. The necessity of this union is well recognized by the students of heredity, while the students of Social Adjustment found their theories on premises essentially biologic in origin. One of the most widely known writers on heredity concludes a recent book with the statement that—“At present, we can only indicate that the future of our race depends on Eugenics (in some form or other), combined with the simultaneous evolution of eutechnics and eutopias. ‘Brave words,’ of course; but surely not ‘Eutopian’!”[15] Thus the knowledge and practice of the laws of heredity must be supplemented by a knowledge and practice of the laws of Social Adjustment.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT—THE SCIENCE OF MOLDING INSTITUTIONS

After a gardener has produced his seed, guaranteeing a good heredity by breeding together those individual plants which possess in the highest degree the qualities he desires to secure, he turns his attention to the seed bed. First of all, the location must be good—the bed must be on a southern slope, where it will benefit by the first warm rays of the spring sun; then the soil must be finely pulverized, in order that the tiny rootlets may easily force their way downward, finding nourishment ready at hand; when the seeds have been planted, in ground well prepared and fertilized, they must be watered, cultivated, weeded; and as they develop into larger plants, thinned, transplanted, pruned and sprayed. The wise gardener considers environment as well as heredity. By sowing choice seeds in well prepared soil, he ensures the excellence of his crop.

Modern society may well be compared to a garden. The plants are living, moving beings, with some freedom to act on their own initiative. Moreover, it is they who make and tend the gardens in which they grow. Like the gardener in the story, they must look to environment as well as to heredity. The seed bed must be carefully prepared, and the young plants, as they appear, must be given all the attention which science makes possible. Modern society is a garden of which the products are men and women. The sowing, weeding, cultivating—carried forward through social institutions—determines by its character whether the race shall decay, as other races have done, or progress toward the Super Man.

The science of social gardening—Social Adjustment—has been given a great impetus, in recent years, by the increased knowledge of the