eces all oddly shaped, which, when lying in a heap, look
hopelessly unfitted for union; but put them properly together,
compress them with a tire in the one case and with hoops in the other,
and a remarkably enduring organisation will result. A wheel with a
ton weight on the top of it in the waggons of South Africa will jolt
for thousands of miles over stony, roadless country without
suffering harm; a keg of water may be strapped on the back of a
pack-ox or a mule, and be kicked off and trampled on, and be
otherwise misused for years, without giving way.

I do not propose to enter further into the anthropometric
differences of race, for the subject is a very large one, and this
book does not profess to go into detail. Its intention is to touch
on various topics more or less connected with that of the
cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with "eugenic" [1]
questions, and to present the results of several of my own separate
investigations.

ENERGY.

Energy is the capacity for labour. It is consistent with all the
robust virtues, and makes a large practice of them possible. It is
the measure of fulness of life; the more energy the more abundance
of it; no energy at all is death; idiots are feeble and listless. In
the inquiries I made on the antecedents of men of science no points
came out more strongly than that the leaders of scientific thought
were generally gifted with remarkable energy, and that they had
[2] inherited the gift of it from their parents and grandparents. I
have since found the same to be the case in other careers.

[Footnote 2: That is, with questions bearing on what is termed in
Greek, _eugenes_, namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with
noble qualities. This, and the allied words, _eugeneia_, etc., are
equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a
brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no
means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which,
especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences
that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable
races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily
over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word
_eugenics_ would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a
neater word and a more generalised one than _viriculture_, which I
once ventured to use.]

Energy is an attribute of the higher races, being favoured beyond
al