clearly ascertained. The foundations, therefore, on which the
arguments for the organic perfectibility of man rest, are
unusually weak, and can only be considered as mere conjectures.
It does not, however, by any means seem impossible that by an
attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement, similar to
that among animals, might take place among men. Whether intellect
could be communicated may be a matter of doubt: but size,
strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps even longevity are in a
degree transmissible. The error does not seem to lie in supposing
a small degree of improvement possible, but in not discriminating
between a small improvement, the limit of which is undefined, and
an improvement really unlimited. As the human race, however,
could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the bad
specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an attention to
breed should ever become general; indeed, I know of no
well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family
of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in
whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by
prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with
Maud, the milk-maid, by which some capital defects in the
constitutions of the family were corrected.

It will not be necessary, I think, in order more completely
to shew the improbability of any approach in man towards
immortality on earth, to urge the very great additional weight
that an increase in the duration of life would give to the
argument of population.

Many, I doubt not, will think that the attempting gravely to
controvert so absurd a paradox as the immortality of man on