The individual, for self preservation, demands self expression; for self perpetuation he demands that the standard of his children be higher than his own. As a member of the social group, he looks to Eugenics, Social Adjustment, and Education as the immediate means of raising social standards, and the ultimate means of providing a Super Race.

Such are the abstract ideals—how may they be practically applied? How shall the individual express, through Eugenics, Social Adjustment, and Education his desire for the development of a Super Race?

Do you, sir, enjoy living in the neighborhood of vandals and thieves? Well, hardly. One could not be expected to take so frivolous a view of life, therefore you will in self defense take every possible precaution to suppress vandalism and thievery? Never, my dear sir, never! You must take every possible precaution to reduce the spirit of vandalism and of thievery. The acts are in themselves unconsequential—they are but the product of a diseased mind or an indifferent training. The spirit, here as elsewhere, is all important.

Are you a scientist? Do you admire Pasteur and Herbert Spencer? You are a “practical” man—see what Edison has done for you. As a statesman, you revere Lincoln and Daniel Webster. You cannot, as an artist, overlook the portraits of Rembrandt or the water scenes of Ruysdael. You must agree with me that these and a thousand others that I might mention—men called geniuses by their contemporaries or their descendants—have contributed untold worth to the society of which they were a part. They chose rightly. They are looked upon, and justly, as the salt of the earth. You admit the value of geniuses, in civilization, and you would, of course, do anything to increase their number? Then, let me say to you that the first thing for you to decide is that your own children shall be neither vandals nor thieves. The second thing for you to decide is that they shall, in so far as you are able to determine the matter, possess all of your good qualities, coupled with the good qualities which you lack, supplied by an able mate. In short, you must choose your life partner with a view to the elimination of anti-social tendencies, on the one hand, and on the other to the development of the qualities which distinguish the Super Man.

How obvious is this statement, yet how haphazard has been the production of greatness. Only once in a generation does a man, in his choice of a wife, follow the example of John Newcomb. In a truly scientific spirit he enumerated on paper the qualities which he possessed; placed opposite them the qualities in which he was lacking; and then set out to find the woman who should supply his deficiencies. When he had located his future helpmeet, playing hymn tunes on an organ in a little red school house, and upon further acquaintance, had assured himself that she really possessed the needed qualities, he married her, with the determination that their first child should be a great mathematician. Their first child was Simon Newcomb, one of the leading astronomers of the nineteenth century.

John Newcomb was a village school master, and his wife a village maiden, but in their choice they combined two sets of qualities which would inevitably produce a Super Man. John Newcomb was a pioneer eugenist. He chose a mate with the thought of the future foremost in his mind.

Too often, however, the men of parts follow the example of the brilliant professor who married a “social butterfly.” “Why in the world did you do it?” asked an old friend. “Oh, well,” answered the professor, “I felt that I had brains enough for both.”

True, professor, but according to the Mendelian law of heredity, those brains of yours will be halved in each of your children, and quartered in each of your grandchildren. Why should not the future be at least as brilliant as your own generation?

Human marriage is ordinarily a hit or miss affair. Men and women, inspired by the loftiest motives, and animated in most matters by supreme good sense, not infrequently grope blindly toward matrimony; often marry uncongenially; and finally bring disgrace upon their own heads, and misery upon their families. Stevenson, with such marriages in mind, writes to the average prospective bridegroom—

“What! you have had one life to manage, and have failed so strangely, and now can see nothing wiser than to conjoin with it the management of some one else’s? Because you have been unfaithful in a very little, you propose yourself to be a ruler over ten cities. You are no longer content to be your own enemy; you must be your wife’s also. God made you, but you marry yourself; no one is responsible but you. You have eternally missed your way in life, with consequences that you still deplore, and yet you masterfully seize your wife’s hand, and blindfold, drag her after you to ruin. And it is your wife, you observe, whom you select. She, whose happiness you most desire, you choose to be your victim. You would earnestly warn her from a tottering bridge or bad investment. If she were to marry some one else, how you would tremble for her fate! If she were only your sister and you thought half as much of her, how doubtfully would you entrust her future to a man no better than yourself!”[18]

Here, then, lies the path of eugenic activity for the individual—clear, straight, unmistakable. In the first place, he must never transmit to the future any defect. If he has a transmissible defect, he must have no offspring. This seems but reasonable—an obligation to bring no unnecessary misery into a world where so much already exists. But the individual—free to choose—must go one step further, and in his selection, must seek a mate with the qualities which are complementary to his own.

Looked at from the standpoint of society, there is no single choice which compares in importance to the choice of a mate; for on that choice depend the qualities which this generation will transmit to the next, and from which the next generation must create its follower. Furthermore, there is no choice which, in modern society, is more completely individual—more freed from social interference, than the choice of a life mate. The man in choosing his life partner, chooses the future. Civilization hangs expectant on his decision. The Super Race, dim and indistinct, may be made a living reality by a eugenic choice in the present—a choice for which each man and woman who marries is in part responsible. With the advance of woman’s emancipation, with the increasing range of her activity, comes an ever increasing opportunity to exercise such a choice. She, as well as the man, may now assist in the determination of the future. She as well as the man may now be held accountable for the non-appearance of the Super Race.

Does the burden of Eugenic Choice rest heavily upon the shoulders of the individual? Does he hesitate to assume the responsibility of the future race? The burden of shaping Social Adjustments is no less onerous.

Briefly, then, what changes may the individual make in institutions to develop the qualities of the Super Man? The social institutions with which the average man comes into the most intimate contact are:

1. The Home.
2. The School.
3. The Government.

The home as an institution must provide for the Super Man enough food,