cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation,
of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be
found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion
too controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too
seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into
a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism
and strict social organisation.

And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might
well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one,
and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And,
anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style.
Scientific officialism and organisation in the State which had
specialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of
Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be
hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless.
As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it
grew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State was
not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would
ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I
thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.

I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has
gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling
classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia
is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine
years old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal
older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same
bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors
that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For
that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and
publish these papers.

G.K.C.

CONTENTS

PART I

The False Theory

CHAPTER PAGE

1. WHAT IS EUGENICS? 3

2. THE FIRST OBSTACLES 12

3. THE ANARCHY FROM ABOVE 22

4. THE LUNATIC AND THE LAW 31

5. THE FLYING AUTHORITY 46

6. THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE