with that object, avoided going into details in not a few cases
where I should otherwise have written with fulness, especially in
the Anthropometric part. My general object has been to take note of
the varied hereditary faculties of different men, and of the great
differences in different families and races, to learn how far
history may have shown the practicability of supplanting inefficient
human stock by better strains, and to consider whether it might not
be our duty to do so by such efforts as may be reasonable, thus
exerting ourselves to further the ends of evolution more rapidly and
with less distress than if events were left to their own course. The
subject is, however, so entangled with collateral considerations
that a straightforward step-by-step inquiry did not seem to be the
most suitable course. I thought it safer to proceed like the
surveyor of a new country, and endeavour to fix in the first
instance as truly as I could the position of several cardinal points.
The general outline of the results to which I finally arrived became
more coherent and clear as this process went on; they are brieflv
summarised in the concluding chapter.




VARIETY OF HUMAN NATURE.

We must free our minds of a great deal of prejudice before we can
rightly judge of the direction in which different races need to be
improved. We must be on our guard against taking our own instincts
of what is best and most seemly, as a criterion for the rest of
mankind. The instincts and faculties of different men and races
differ in a variety of ways almost as profoundly as those of animals