There may also be a wholesome reaction from the two chief forms of national weakness, and an endeavor to improve the conditions which tend to increase these. All this will make for progress, as long as it is clearly recognized that veneering does not make bad wood sound. So far as improved nurture induces the fuller development of a good inheritance, or guards life from gratuitous infection or inhibition, or prevents the tare seeds in our inheritance from germinating, it is to be welcomed.
(2) In the second place this is a time of vivid national self-consciousness and of freshened idealism, and it is possible that the spiritual momentum of this may enable us to go ahead. It is just possible that we may be brought by the war nearer the idea and the actuality of a positive peace, of entering more fully into our kingdom. We must agree with Professor Patrick Geddes that the peace times we have known have often been more accurately states of latent war.
(3) A third consideration is also full of hope, that one of the almost certain results of the war will be an increased sense of solidarity among the various self-governing Dominions of the British Empire. We are going to know and to like one another better, having fought together, rejoiced and sorrowed together; we are going to see more of one another as distance-annihilating devices increase and cheapen. Perhaps we shall evolve a great confederate organization for the common tasks of peace. Is there not here a eugenic prospect of great interest, of larger experiments in out-breeding and in the influences of novel nurture? Perhaps we may discover in greater frequency of environmental and functional change, which is so potent in keeping the individual young, a possible source of variational stimuli, rejuvenating even the germ-plasm, which may be apt to get a little stodgy in one small island.
Perhaps we should not ever pass from a eugenic outlook without remembering that it is partial. In building a wall the mason uses plumb-line, level, and square, and so we have to employ other criteria besides that of the conservation and evolution of life. As eugenists we are concerned with the natural inheritance and its nurture, which is fundamental, as men we are also concerned with our social heritage, which is supreme. The social organizations and institutions in whose life we share, the traditions of honor, veracity and justice, the treasures of literature and art, memories, such as we honor to-night, which ever beckon us to follow after valor and understanding—these and much more form our social heritage, to be wrought for and fought for as keenly as the embodied health of the race. We cannot end without expressing the hope that even if the natural inheritance of our race must suffer impoverishment through the tragic sifting of this most terrible war, we shall win through in the end with our social heritage enriched.
