bvious
that the racial result of this process will depend on what kind of
people bear and rear the most children; and it has been shown that in
general the larger families are in the section of the population that
makes fewer contributions to human prosperity and happiness, while those
endowed with great gifts, who ought to be transmitting them to their
children, are in many cases not even reproducing their own number.

Natural selection raised man from apehood to his present estate. It is
still operating on him on a large scale, in several ways, but in none of
these ways is it now doing much actually to improve the race, and in
some ways, owing to man's own interference, it is rapidly hastening race
degeneracy.

CHAPTER VII

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT

"Eugenics," wrote Francis Galton, who founded the science and coined the
name, "is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or
impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or
mentally." The definition is universally accepted, but by its use of the
word "study" it defines a pure science, and the present book is
concerned rather with the application of such a science. Accepting
Galton's definition, we shall for our purposes slightly extend it by
saying that applied eugenics embraces all such measures, in use or
prospect either individually or collectively, as may improve or impair
the racial qualities of future generations of man, either physically or
mentally, whether or not this was the avowed purpose.

It is one of the newest of sciences. It was practically forced into
existence by logical necessity. It is certainly here to stay, and it
demands the right to speak, in many cases to cast the deciding vote, on
some of the most important questions that confront society.

The science of eugenics is the natural result of the spread and
acceptance of organic evolution, following the publication of Darwin's
work on _The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection_, in 1859.
It took a generation for his ideas to win the day; but then they
revolutionized the intellectual life of the civilized world. Man came to
realize that the course of nature is regular; that the observed
sequences of events can be described in formulas which are called
natural laws; he learned that he could achieve great results in plant
and animal breeding by working in harmony with these laws. Then the
question logically arose, "Is