ly to be so brilliant as their
parents, and the offspring of inferior people are somewhat better than
their parents. This "drag of the race" or "pull of ancestors" is no doubt
due to the fact that selection has never been practiced, hence the
two-thousand nearby ancestors were most likely an average lot of people,
and the "pull" is from the higher towards the lower level. The "pull" is a
help to the children of inferior parents but is a handicap to the superior.

If long-continued selection of parents were practiced, the regression
would disappear and the "pull" would be upward. Selection of parents
possessing superior elements of character and the prevention of the unfit
and the criminal from propagating their kind, seem the surest hope we have
of producing a permanently higher type.

It is well known that the extremes of the race are less fertile than the
means; and since fertility is the chief factor in fixing the type, in the
absence of selection and repression, the race appears doomed to remain at
the dead level of mediocrity. The tremendous significance of this fact is
that the welfare of the race--the gradual substitution of a superior for
the present mediocre type--rests absolutely upon the willingness and
ability of the superior class to do their full share in propagating the
race.

LESSON II

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What is the principle of heredity as discovered by Mendel? Explain by
illustrating how it works out in plants and animals.

2. What practical application is made of this law in producing better seed
and better breeds?

3. Illustrate Galton's law.

4. What significance has these laws in the improvement of the human race?

5. Account for the variability of children in the same family.

6. Why are some children inferior, some superior to their parents?

7. Illustrate the "pull of ancestors."

8. How might this "pull" be made upward instead of downwards, as it now
seems to be?

9. What sacred responsibility rests upon superior people to propagate the
race?

10. What are the gospel teachings regarding mixed marriages and the rearing
of families?

11. What practical steps can and should be taken to prevent feeble-minded
and vicious people from propagating their kind?

_Reference_: The Jukes-Edwards family by Dr. A.E. Winship. If this book be
available, have some member of the class make a report on it. "Training the
Human Plant," and "Being Well Born," will also be found