rtance of environment. This
influence upon human lives is within our control, and it is a grave
error to neglect what lies clearly within our power and to bemoan what
does not. Science has wrought no benefits greater than those which
result from drawing a clear line between heredity bugaboos and heredity
truths. An overemphasis on the hereditary factor in development at the
expense of the environmental factor, I call a heredity bugaboo; and it
is a tendency which cannot be too strongly condemned. To fight against
the sins and penalties of one's grandfather is a forlorn task that
quickly discourages. To overcome diseases of environment, of shop and
street, of house and school, seems, on the contrary, an easy task.
Heredity bugaboos dishearten, enervate, encourage excesses and neglect.
Heredity truths stimulate remedial and preventive measures.

We may well watch with interest the progress of eugenics, that new
science which biologists and sociologists hope will some day remake the
very living stuff of the human race. But meanwhile let us take up with
hope and courage and enthusiasm the great hemisphere of human fate
which lies within our grasp. Good food and fresh air, well-built
cities, enlightened schools and well-ordered industries, stable and
free and expert government,--given these things, we can transform the
world with the means now at our disposal. We can reap, if we will,
splendid possibilities now going to waste, and by intelligent
biological and sociological engineering we can hand on to the next
generation an environmental inheritance which will make their task far
easier than ours.

"Physical deterioration" is a bugaboo that is discovered by some in
heredity and by others in modern industrial evils. The British director
general called attention a few years ago to the fact that from forty to
sixty per cent of the men who were being examined for military service
were physically unfit. A Commission on Physical Deterioration was
appointed to investigate the cause, and to learn whether the low
physical standard of the would-be Tommy Atkins was due to inherited
defects. The results of this study were published in a large volume
called _Report on Physical Deterioration, 1904_, in which is set forth
a positive programme for obtaining periodically facts as to the
physique of the nation. In the course of the commission's exhaustive
investigation there was found no evidence that any progressive
deterioration was goin