our newspapers and official records are silent concerning ordinary and desirable experiences, their causes and their results? Heredity as the basis of legislation is never dreamt of, while our statute books are crowded with laws passed in a panic, laws which bear no ratio to essential facts, and laws which look at the elementary passions of mankind through the refractory media of prejudice, ignorance and well-meaning misconception. It rarely if ever occurs to legislators that a scientific system of society demands an acquaintance with the recently accepted conclusions of our greatest thinkers. We are suffering to-day from a pre-Darwinian government in almost all our States. "Authorities" of all kinds are quoted in support of and against any given proposal, but the "authorities" are seldom the fittest. In earlier days latin tags were considered a worthy conclusion to a speech in Senate or Legislature. Nowadays poetry or literature is called into requisition. Darwin, Spencer and Galton should at least have taught us to take trouble to learn all about the subject in hand and what bearing the scientific discoveries of our generation have upon particular problems. It is a disease of the age that we are conscious of our national short-comings in only the vaguest possible way. We are ignorant of the full extent of our misfortunes and we do not apply to them the time, trouble and money which are a preliminary necessity to discovering a remedy, and we forget the dynamic difference which must be made in our treatment of race problems as soon as we accept heredity as the controlling factor. But the preliminaries must be insisted on. Investigation, collation, classification, generalisation, and legislation, must be taken in their right order.

The difficulties in the way of investigating the laws which govern heredity have as usual led to shirking the issue altogether. Even when we look the difficulty straight in the face, we pass it by. We have made a god of environment. Our best social efforts hitherto in legislation, social conventions, conduct and educational ideals (and in modern times even our religions), have come to consider environment as of paramount importance. But take environment at its highest it can only be the best soil for the best seed. That is a Eugenic ideal also but it cannot convert a disease germ into a desirable citizen. Over-emphasis of reform dependent on improved environment implies that a deadly upas tree, if transplanted and properly watered and "given a better chance," will reward society with a plentiful harvest of edible nourishing fruit. The heartless school which on principles hates all reform derives its chief support from the fact that the reform which regards only environment too often descends to veneering vice with respectability or dissipates itself in futilities of a grandmotherly kind. The reformer of the future must study causes as well as phenomena. The skilled physician regards symptoms as of importance only to the extent that they assist the diagnosis of disease. Accurate analysis must consider hereditary causes as well as local symptoms.

Environment when properly subordinated to and illuminated by heredity does not cease to be important. Environment may provide wings to fly with and an atmosphere capable of sustaining weight, even when it cannot provide the will to fly. To return to our agricultural symbolism: environment cannot make or change the nature of the seed, it is the soil, the sunshine and the succulence, but it has to take the seed as it is. Heredity is inside the seed and goes behind the seed to the mother plant. Heredity is what our ancestors meant when they said predestination, necessity, destiny.

Philosophers of pre-Darwin days have lured mankind into the pleasant but dangerously untrue belief that human nature is essentially and universally good. This crude generalisation of Rousseau's gospel does some injustice to that great man's philosophy which represented a necessary revolt from the soul-destroying perversion of heredity which described man as uniformly "born in sin and shaped in iniquity." Experience has revolted against both extremes. The Heavenly father is no longer a Fiend who destines "one to heav'n and ten to hell," and the Earthly Parent emerges from his ancient unimportance. Man is in neither case fortuitous, his nature, potentiality and destiny are writ large in the study of his heredity. We are all, like poets, born not made; as we are: we remain: we develop on lines long ago laid down for us by other forces than those environment can control and it is still impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. This consideration puts into proper perspective the things which matter, and warns us to cease vain expenditure on unscientific philanthropy. The efforts wasted on watering weeds might have made the garden smile with fragrant flowers. Environment means opportunity. We shall understand better how and why environments need reconstruction when we recognise the superior importance of heredity. We shall begin to realise the uselessness of forcing qualities into the human organism, and become all the more anxious to afford opportunity for developing whatever utilisable qualities are already there existent. We shall learn to educate, in the old sense of the word. We shall bring out the maximum of the good within. We will no longer tolerate the cruelties and crudities of abortive attempts to instil properties and qualities of character which not being inherent can never be successfully inoculated.

CHAPTER III

THE CHILD AND ITS HERITAGE

The previous chapter suggests that unless due regard is given to heredity an increased population will merely aggravate the existing social problems. It is necessary also to emphasise the importance of watching our death statistics as well as our birth returns. Obviously a nation with a low percentage of births compared with its population may be increasing the latter much more largely as well as more healthily than a nation with a much larger percentage of births. The pulse of each hand must be felt. Infant mortality is as easily ascertainable and is of at least equal importance. Infant efficiency is unfortunately less easily ascertainable statistically. Subject to these qualifications the Eugenics school welcomes Mr. Roosevelt's protests against Race Suicide, and gladly identifies itself with any religious, political or social effort to bring to our citizens a sense of what we owe to the commonwealth. It is not a matter to be dismissed with a speech or a magazine article when we see almost every career in the world glorified, and parentage alone sneered at. Believers in Eugenics regard with a horror based on a certainty of evil consequence when they contemplate a State in which the noble task of motherhood is left to the poor while the rich evade their duties. It is stupid as well as abominable to reproach heroic but uninstructed mothers of the less wealthy classes. Year after year they think they are fulfilling their destined purpose in life by adding to their families a burden difficult to bear. In the long run, after Nature has exercised a cruel elimination, this burden of the individual becomes the glory of the race, the very bloom and blossom of the future. Neither can reproach be given to the parents in the slums. Nature here seems to be prodigal indeed. The children come, only the doctors know the terrible tale of them. To the registrar they are but