Multiplication of the Unfit, a phrase never properly explained, and I
must confess that the transitory presence of this instructive little
magazine in my house, month after month (it is now, unhappily, dead),
did much to direct my attention to the gaps and difficulties that
intervene between the general proposition and its practical application
by sober and honest men. One took it up and asked time after time, "Why
should there be this queer flavour of absurdity and pretentiousness
about the thing?" Before the _Humanitarian_ period I was entirely
in agreement with the _Humanitarian's_ cause. It seemed to me then
that to prevent the multiplication of people below a certain standard,
and to encourage the multiplication of exceptionally superior people,
was the only real and permanent way of mending the ills of the world. I
think that still. In that way man has risen from the beasts, and in
that way men will rise to be over-men. In those days I asked in
amazement why this thing was not done, and talked the usual nonsense
about the obduracy and stupidity of the world. It is only after a
considerable amount of thought and inquiry that I am beginning to
understand why for many generations, perhaps, nothing of the sort can
possibly be done except in the most marginal and tentative manner.

If to-morrow the whole world were to sign an unanimous round-robin to
Mr. Francis Galton and Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin, admitting
absolutely their leading argument that it _is_ absurd to breed our
horses and sheep and improve the stock of our pigs and fowls, while we
leave humanity to mate in the most heedless manner, and if, further,
the whole world, promising obedience, were to ask these two to gather
together a consultative committee, draw up a scheme of rules, and start
forthwith upon the great work of improving the human stock as fast as
it can be done, if it undertook that marriages should no longer be made
in heaven or earth, but only under licence from that committee, I