of sheep or a herd of cattle by letting all the individuals breed;
whether each individual has a small number or a large number of offspring
makes comparatively little difference. The way to improve the flock or
herd is to breed only from _the best_ and eliminate the unfit as breeding
material. Changes in environment may improve or deteriorate the
individuals of one generation, but such changes are not inheritable,
excepting in the case of venereal disease. Syphilis, _e.g._, may damage
the germ-cells of a man's body, and thus lead to his procreating diseased
and damaged offspring--idiots, imbeciles, mental or moral deficients, and
so forth, who unfortunately are fertile. Thus the prevention of venereal
disease is a eugenic force. It is in fact the _only_ eugenic force in
operation at present. Generally speaking, it is the well-developed and
high-spirited and enterprising young men who travel most, and who,
therefore, are most likely to contract and spread venereal disease. They
come in contact with a much larger number of women than those who stay at
home instead of wandering abroad. These well-to-do young travellers often
marry the finest of our women, and later in life damage or sterilise them
through latent or chronic venereal disease. Hence many one-child
marriages--due not to the use of contraceptives, but to the action of the
gonococcus transferred to the body of the wife.

But there is this hope. It is among the mentally alert and well-informed
men and women that birth-control is first understood and applied, and it
is among this very same class that the medical prevention of venereal
disease is also first understood and applied. Thus, there will tend to be
less disease among this class than among the mentally torpid and
ill-informed masses of the community. This in itself will not _improve_
the race, but it will prevent the deterioration of certain classes and
increase their numbers. Nevertheless, so long as the irresponsible and
feeble-minded and diseased are permitted to multiply indiscriminately, as
at present, they must ultimately outnumber and overwhelm the classes which
are practising self-restraint or applying birth-control. This process may
even be hastened by a political enfranchisement, which enables twelve
feeble-minded persons to outvote two wise men six times over. Thus, to
succeed democracy must raise and maintain the general average of brains
and character throughout the community. In so far as it p