se persons who are most fit, or
most unfit, to carry on the race.[151] Unless they are full and frank such
records are useless. But it is obvious that for a long time to come such
a system of registration must be private. According to the belief which
is still deeply rooted in most of us, we regard as most private those
facts of our lives which are most intimately connected with the life of
the race, and most fateful for the future of humanity. The feeling is no
doubt inevitable; it has a certain rightness and justification. As,
however, our knowledge increases we shall learn that we are, on the one
hand, a little more responsible for future generations than we are
accustomed to think, and, on the other hand, a little less responsible
for our own good or bad qualities. Our fiat makes the future man, but,
in the same way, we are ourselves made by a choice and a will not our
own. A man may indeed, within limits, mould himself, but the materials
he can alone use were handed on to him by his parents, and whether he
becomes a man of genius, a criminal, a drunkard, an epileptic, or an
ordinarily healthy, well-conducted, and intelligent citizen, must depend
at least as much on his parents as on his own effort or lack of effort,
since even the aptitude for effective effort is largely inborn. As we
learn to look on the facts from the only sound standpoint of heredity,
our anger or contempt for a failing and erring individual has to give
way to the kindly but firm control of a weakling. If the children's
teeth have been set on edge it is because the parents have eaten sour
grapes.

If, however, we certainly cannot bring legal or even moral force to
compel everyone to maintain such detailed registers of himself, his
ancestral stocks, and his offspring--to say nothing of inducing him to
make them public--there is something that we can do. We can make it to
his interest to keep such a record.[152] If it became an advantage in
life to a man to possess good ancestors, and to be himself a good
specimen of humanity in mind, character, and physique, we may be sure
that those who are above the average in these matters will be glad to
make use of that superiority. Insurance offices already make an
inquisition into these matters, to which no one objects, because a man
only submits to it for his own advantage; while for military and some
other services similar inquiries are compulsory. Eugenic certificates,
according to Galton's proposal, wo