concerned with the precise behavior, during a series of generations, of
these specific unit characters. This behavior, as the study of Genetics
shows, may be determined in lesser organisms by experiment. Once
determined, they are subject to prophecy.

The problem of human heredity is now seen to be infinitely more complex
than imagined by Galton and his followers, and the optimistic hope of
elevating Eugenics to the level of a religion is a futile one. Most of
the Eugenists, including Professor Karl Pearson and his colleagues of
the Eugenics Laboratory of the University of London and of the biometric
laboratory in University College, have retained the age-old point
of view of "Nature vs. Nurture" and have attempted to show the
predominating influence of Heredity AS OPPOSED TO Environment. This
may be true; but demonstrated and repeated in investigation after
investigation, it nevertheless remains fruitless and unprofitable from
the practical point of view.

We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for
critical and diagnostic investigations. It demonstrates, not in terms of
glittering generalization but in statistical studies of investigations
reduced to measurement and number, that uncontrolled fertility is
universally correlated with disease, poverty, overcrowding and the
transmission of hereditable taints. Professor Pearson and his associates
show us that "if fertility be correlated with anti-social hereditary
characters, a population will inevitably degenerate."

This degeneration has already begun. Eugenists demonstrate that
two-thirds of our manhood of military age are physically too unfit
to shoulder a rifle; that the feeble-minded, the syphilitic, the
irresponsible and the defective breed unhindered; that women are driven