entioning some of the steps in the development of the present
eugenic movement, we may describe some of the conditions which give us
human beings pause and lead us to appreciate the necessity for a
reconsideration of much that enters into our present social
organization and conduct.

Shortly before the publication of "The Origin of Species," Darwin was
asked by Alfred Russell Wallace whether he proposed to include any
reference to the evolution of man. Darwin's reply was: "You ask
whether I shall discuss man. I think I shall avoid the whole subject,
as so surrounded with prejudices; though I fully admit that it is the
highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist." This
prejudice which Darwin knew would preclude a just consideration of the
subject of man's origin and evolution, grew out of the former and long
current conception of the position occupied by man in the whole scheme
of Nature--of "Man's Place in Nature."

This conception, happily obsolete now among thinkers, though
occasionally seen lurking in out of the way corners shaded from the
light of modern philosophy and science, placed Man and the rest of
the universe in separate categories. Man was one, all the rest
another. It was for Man's benefit or pleasure that the rains
descended, that the corn grew and ripened, that the sun shone, the
birds sang, the landscape was spread before the view. For Man's
warning or punishment the lightning struck, comets appeared, disease
ravaged, insects tormented and destroyed. It was certainly very
natural that Man should regard himself as a thing apart, particularly
since he was able to control and to regulate Nature, and to take
tribute from her so extensively. But the scientist regarded man
differently; from him the world learned to recognize man as an
integral factor in Nature--as one with Nature, possessing the same
structures, performing the same activities, as other animals; subject
to much the same control and with much the same purposes in life and
in Nature as other living things. There is to-day no necessity to
enlarge upon this view. As Ray Lankester puts it: "Man is held to be a
part of Nature; a being, resulting from and driven by the one great
nexus of mechanism which we call Nature."

But the echoes of the older naive view of Man and his Nature sounded
long after the rational scientific conception had become dominant. It
is not so very long ago that psychology was little more than human
psychology;