organized in these matters until we are much clearer than we are at
present in our ideas about them, and that a public body devoted to
education has no business either to impose celibacy, or subsidize
families, or experiment at all in these affairs. Not only in the case
of elementary teachers, but in the case of soldiers, sailors, and so
on, the State may do much to promote or discourage marriage and
offspring, and no doubt it is also true, as Mr. Wallas insists, that
the problems of the foreign immigrant and of racial intermarriage, loom
upon us. But since we have no applicable science whatever here, since
there is no certainty in any direction that any collective course may
not be collectively evil rather than good, there is nothing for it, I
hold, but to leave these things to individual experiment, and to
concentrate our efforts where there is a clearer hope of effective
consequence. Leave things to individual initiative and some of us will,
by luck or inspiration, go right; take public action on an insufficient
basis of knowledge and there is a clear prospect of collective error.
The imminence of these questions argues for nothing except prompt and
vigorous research.]

That, however, is only one aspect of this question. There are others
from which the New Republican may also approach this problem of the
quality of the birth supply.

In relation to personal conduct all these things assume another colour
altogether. Let us be clear upon that point. The state, the community,
may only act upon certainties, but the essential fact in individual
life is experiment. Individuality is experiment. While in matters of
public regulation and control it is wiser not to act at all than to act
upon theories and uncertainties; while the State may very well wait for
a generation or half a dozen generations until knowledge comes up to