trol it involves, has made it possible to
accept this suggestion seriously.[22] The difference is that whereas the
flowers of our gardens are bettered only by the control of an arbitrary
external will and intelligence, our human flowers may be bettered by an
intelligence and will, a finer sense of responsibility, developed within
themselves. Thus it is that human culture renders possible Social
Hygiene.

Three centuries ago an inspired monk set forth his ideal of an ennobled
world in _The City of the Sun_. Campanella wrote that prophetic book in
prison. But his spirit was unfettered, and his conception of human
society, though in daring it outruns all the visions we may compare it
with, is yet on the lines along which our civilization lies. In the City
of the Sun not only was the nobility of work, even mechanical
work,--which Plato rejected and More was scarcely conscious of,--for the
first time recognized, but the supreme impulse of procreation was
regarded as a sacred function, to be exercised in the light of
scientific knowledge. It was a public rather than a private duty,
because it concerned the interests of the race; only valorous and
high-spirited men ought to procreate, and it was held that the father
should bear the punishments inflicted on the son for faults due to his
failure by defects in generation.[23] Moreover, while unions not for the
end of procreation were in the City of the Sun left to the judgment of
the individuals alone concerned, it was not so with unions for the end
of procreation. These were arranged by the "great Master," a physician,
aided by the chief matrons, and the public exercises of the youths and
maidens, performed in a state of nakedness, were of assistance in
enabling unions to be fittingly made. No eugenist under modern
conditions of life proposes that unions should be arranged by a supreme
medical public official, though he might possibly regard such an
official, if divested of any compulsory powers, a kind of public trustee
for the race, as a useful institution. But it is easy to see that the
luminous conception of racial betterment which, since Galton rendered it
practicable, is now inspiring social progress, was already burning
brightly three centuries ago in the brain of this imprisoned Italian
monk. Just as Thomas More has been called the father of modern
Socialism, so Campanella may be said to be the prophet of modern
Eugenics.

By "Eugenics" is meant the scientific study of