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"But how are you going to improve the human race?" some one asks. "Who is to decide what qualities the human race should possess? You can develop horses that will run well, or draw heavy loads, and cows that will be excellent for milk or butter production, but who is to pick out the type of man to be developed?"

The eugenist replies that those possessing the most desirable natural qualities from the human point of view should be mated with families of normal character which have demonstrated capacity for maintaining their numbers. He takes a page out of the conservationist's book and argues regarding the human protoplasm. In the words of Saleeby: "There is no wealth but life; and if the inherent quality of life fails, neither battleships, nor libraries, nor symphonies, nor free trade, nor tariff reform, nor anything else will save a nation,"

In England it has been demonstrated that for some reason 12 per cent of the individuals of one generation are producing one-half of the children of the succeeding generation, the other half being the progeny of the remaining 88 per cent. This proportion apparently holds good in the different levels of society. In other words, a small group of each class possesses unusual fertility.

The eugenist asks: Is there any relation between this superfertility and the possession of desirable or undesirable characteristics? It has been asserted that in England to-day here is a dearth of youthful ability in various walks of life. The number of murders and homicides to a million persons in reported to have nearly trebled in the last fifteen years. In that country the "defective" classes doubled in number in the period between 1874 and 1896, and in 1901 more than one-third of the idiots and lunatics were legally married and free to reproduce their kind.

In the United States the ratio of insane in the total population was 225 in 100,000 in 1903, as compared with 183 in the same number as 1880. About 30,000 were supposed to be unsegregated. Two-thirds of the paupers in institutions are reported to have children and to be themselves deficient. The rough total of defective and dependent has been estimated to be 3,000,000 or about 3 per cent of the population of he United States. It has been shown in recent years, in England in particular, that the middle and upper classes, which supply the thinkers, leaders and organizers, are decreasing in numbers and hat the net fertility of the undesirables is greater than the net fertility of the normal types of the more capable classes.

Investigation suggests that ability can be transmitted. The class lists of Oxford for ninety-two years showed that 36 per cent of those who won first honors had had fathers who had won first or second honors; that 22 per cent of the second honor men were the sons of men who had taken first or second honors in their day, and that of the ordinary degree men only 14 per cent had fathers of this class. It has also been found that marriage between two families inheriting ability will result in a greater proportion of children of ability than where one side of the house is mediocre.

There are not a few famous illustrations of the transmission of particular ability, such as the Bach family, which produced musicians for eight generations. Of this family, twenty-nine, more or less generally known, assembled at one gathering. The family of Titan (Vicelli) included nine painters of merit. In the Darwin family there were: Erasmus: his grandson, Charles, the famous expounder of the theory of evolution: Francis Galton, who carried the idea of his cousin, Charles Darwin, forward to the point of conscious selection and set people to thinking of "eugenics," or the "improvement of the human stock": a mathematical astronomer of high rank, a professor of plant physiology at Cambridge University and an inventor of scientific instruments of precision.

In this country the Adams family, the Abbot family and the Beecher family are notable. Particularly remarkable in this category is the family of Jonathan Edwards. Of the 1,394 descendants identified in 1900, according to Winship's account of that family, 205 were college graduates, 13 presidents of our greatest colleges and 65 professors in colleges, besides many who were principals of other important educational institutions: 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; more than 100 clergymen, missionaries or theological professors; 75 officers in the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited; more than 100 lawyers, of whom one was 'our most eminent professor of law,' and 30 judges; 80 held public office, of whom 1 was Vice-President of the United States; 3 were United States Senators; others were governors, members of Congress, framers of state constitutions, mayors of cities and ministers to foreign courts, and 15 railroads, many banks, insurance companies and large industrial enterprises have been indebted to their management.