and scholars, and therefore the yet larger influence they might be
expected to have if they were directed not to thwart but to
harmonise with natural inclination, by promoting early marriages in
the classes to be favoured. I also showed that a powerful influence
might flow from a public recognition in early life of the true value
of the probability of future performance, as based on the past
performance of the ancestors of the child. It is an element of
forecast, in addition to that of present personal merit, which has
yet to be appraised and recognised. Its recognition would attract
assistance in various ways, impossible now to specify, to the young
families of those who were most likely to stock the world with
healthy, moral, intelligent, and fair-natured citizens. The stream
of charity is not unlimited, and it is requisite for the speedier
evolution of a more perfect humanity that it should be so
distributed as to favour the best-adapted races. I have not spoken
of the repression of the rest, believing that it would ensue
indirectly as a matter of course; but I may add that few would
deserve better of their country than those who determine to live
celibate lives, through a reasonable conviction that their issue
would probably be less fitted than the generality to play their part
as citizens.

It would be easy to add to the number of possible agencies by which
the evolution of a higher humanity might be furthered, but it is
premature to do so until the importance of attending to the
improvement of our race shall have been so well established in the
popular mind that a discussion of them would be likely to receive
serious consideration.

It is hardly necessary to insist on the certainty that our present
imperfect knowledge of the limitations and conditions of hereditary
transmission will be steadily added to; but I would call attention
again to the serious want of adequate materials for study in the
form of life-histories. It is fortunately the case that many of the
rising medical practitioners of the foremost rank are become strongly
impressed with the necessity of possessing them, not only for the
better knowledge of the theory of disease, but for the personal
advantage of their patients, whom they now have to treat less
appropriately than they otherwise would, through ignorance of their
hereditary tendencies and of their illnesses in past years, the
medical details of which are rarely remembered by the patient,