follows:

Artists 4.30
Well-to-do Commercial Classes 4.27
High Officials 4.00
University Professors (excluding theological) 3.50
23 Scholars and Artists of the first rank 2.60

It is not hard to see that the next generation in Holland is likely to
have proportionately fewer gifted individuals than has the present one.

Fortunately, it is very probable that the differential birth-rate is not
of such ominous import in rural districts as it is in cities, although
some of the tribes of degenerates which live in the country show
birth-rates of four to six children per wife.[70] But in the more highly
civilized nations now, something like a half of the population lives in
urban districts, and the startling extent to which these urban
populations breed from the bottom involves a disastrous change in the
balance of population within a few generations, unless it is in some way
checked.

Just how great the change may be, statistically, has been emphasized by
Karl Pearson, who points out that "50% of the married population provide
75% of the next generation," owing to the number of deaths before
maturity, the number of celibates and the number of childless
marriages. "The same rule may be expressed in another way: 50% of the
next generation is produced by 25% of the married population." At this
rate in a few generations the less efficient and socially valuable, with
their large families, will overwhelm the more efficient and socially
valuable, and their small families.

Fecundal selection is at work to-day on a large scale, changing the
character of the population, and from a eugenic point of view changing
it for the worse. Fortunately, it is not impossible to arrest this
change.

But, it may be objected, is not this change merely "the survival of the
fittest?" In a sense, yes; and it is necessary that the more intelligent
classes should make themselves "fitter" to survive, by a change of
attitude toward reproduction. But the dying-out of the intellectually
superior part of the population is a pathological condition, not a part
of normal evolution; for barring artificial interference with the
birth-rate, fertility has been found to go hand in hand with general
superiority. This demonstration is due to F. A. Woods' study[71] of 608
members of the royal families of Europe, among whom, for reasons of
sta