ow more than the rest of us about this or that
accident or pain or pest, we cannot count on the appearance of great
cosmic philosophers; and only such men can be even supposed to know
more than we do about normal conduct and common sanity. Every sort of
man, in short, would shirk such a responsibility, except the worst
sort of man, who would accept it.

I pass on, in the next chapter, to consider whether we know enough
about heredity to act decisively, even if we were certain who ought to
act. Here I refer the Eugenists to the reply of Mr. Wells, which they
have never dealt with to my knowledge or satisfaction--the important
and primary objection that health is not a quality but a proportion of
qualities; so that even health married to health might produce the
exaggeration called disease. It should be noted here, of course, that
an individual biologist may quite honestly believe that he has found a
fixed principle with the help of Weissmann or Mendel. But we are not
discussing whether he knows enough to be justified in thinking (as is
somewhat the habit of the anthropoid _Homo_) that he is right. We are
discussing whether _we_ know enough, as responsible citizens, to put
such powers into the hands of men who may be deceived or who may be
deceivers. I conclude that we do not.

In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I
believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the
Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they
want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the
establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official
and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is
only research and not discovery. In short, they want a new kind of
State Church, which shall be an Established Church of Doubt--instead
of Faith. They have no Science of Eugenics at all, but they do really
mean that if we will give ourselves up to be vivisected they may very
probably have one some day. I point out, in more dignified diction,
that this is a bit thick.

And now, in the second half of this book, we will proceed to the
consideration of things that really exist. It is, I deeply regret to
say, necessary to return to realities, as they are in your daily life
and mine. Our happy holiday in the land of nonsense is over; we shall
see no more its beautiful city, with the almost Biblical name of Bosh,
nor the forests full of mares' nests, nor