e in effect to raise
individuals from one of the lower groups up to or toward the average.
Millions of dollars and an incalculable amount of time and energy are
spent annually in striving to accomplish this kind of result. How
immeasurably greater would be the benefit to society if the same
amount of energy and money were spent in moving individuals from the
middle classes on up toward the higher. In the development of our
societies we need to use every possible means to carry individuals
from positions near the average to positions above the average, and
the farther this remove is above the average both in its starting
point and its stopping point, the better for the social group.
Elevation from mediocrity to superiority has far greater effect upon
the social constitution than has elevation from inferiority to
mediocrity.

As the Whethams have written recently: "Of late years, the duty of the
State to support the falling and fallen has been so much emphasized
that its still more important duty to the able and competent has been
obscured. Yet it is they who are the real national asset of worth, and
it is essential to secure that their action should not be hampered,
and their value sterilized, by the jealousy and obstruction of the
social failures, and of others whom pity for the failures has blinded.
Mankind has been shrewdly divided into those who do things and those
who must get out of the way while things are being done, and if the
latter class do not recognize their true function in life, they
themselves will suffer the most. The incompetent have to be supported
partially or wholly by the competent, and, even for their own good,
it would be worth while for the incompetent to encourage the freedom
of action and the preponderant reproduction of the abler and more
successful stocks. It is only where such stocks abound that the nation
is able to support and carry along the heavy load of incompetence kept
alive by modern civilization."

In discussing the general subject of variation and variability in
this connection, we must take always into account the biological
distinction between variation and functional modification, between
innate and acquired traits. Only the former are of real and primary
value in evolution. The distinction is familiar and we cannot dwell
upon it here; but it is of particular importance in dealing with
social improvement and we shall return to it in the next chapter.
Many "social variations"