l at graduation
only one in fourteen pupils remains to the end, we feel that this
author is right when he says that "Society suffers less from the race
suicide of the capable than from the non-utilization of the
well-endowed."

[Illustration]

=Eugenics.=--When Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and one of
the first to apply to human beings the ideas of "selection for better
breeds," published in 1873 his article on "Hereditary Improvement," he
used the word "Stirpiculture" as indicating the application of
evolution to the method of improving mankind by the selection of the
superior in the process of reproduction. He later changed the
designation to "Eugenics," which is now held as the term best applying
in this connection. In 1891 Dr. Lester Ward himself said, "Artificial
selection has given to man the most that he enjoys in the organic
products of earth. May not men and women be selected as well as sheep
and horses? From the great stirp of humanity with all its multiplied
ancestral plasms--some very poor, some mediocre, some merely
indifferent, a goodly number ranging from middling to fair, only a
comparatively few very good, with an occasional crystal of the first
water--why may we not learn to select on some broad and comprehensive
plan with a view to a general building up and rounding out of the race
of human beings?" So keen an observer and philosophic thinker as
Doctor Ward, however, could not long accept the first allurement of
this idea. He soon began to show with his convincing power that "the
control of heredity is possible only to a master creature. Man is the
master creature of the animal world. Society is the master of its
defectives. But normal people are their own masters. Any attempt on
the part of society to control the choice of partners in the marital
relation would be tyranny." Recognizing the need for "negative
eugenics" fully, and declaring in its name that "mental and physical
defectives of society should be kept from perpetuating their defects
through propagation," he insisted that "eugenists must recognize and
admit the enormous force of personal preference" in marriage.

Doctor Ward gives a figure--as above--which might be used to indicate
the conclusions of Galton, in his _Hereditary Genius_, and of Ribot
and others. Doctor Galton himself gave in his volume on the _Social
Order_ a chart somewhat more discriminating. In any case, however, the
eugenists must depend upon the mass of