minated, and it will no longer be necessary to think of them as possible dangers to human life. Thus, in England, by the universal practise of muzzling the dogs for a sufficiently long period, hydrophobia has been eliminated; in the tropics by the quite feasible if somewhat difficult plan of destroying the mosquitoes, yellow fever and malaria may be utterly stamped out in some regions. Other diseases are much less easily controlled, but it does not appear more difficult to destroy them than it once did to get rid of the wolves in England.
Along with the development of the medical and agricultural sciences, we may hope for great advances in social organization, reducing to a minimum the tremendous waste of life and property which goes on to-day. It is not too much to expect that every individual will be assured all the air, food, clothes and shelter necessary for a normal existence, and will find ample opportunities for exercising such talents as he may possess. Liberty will be curtailed in so far as it permits antisocial activities, but it will be tremendously extended, in the form of practical opportunities to develop ordinary or special abilities. All this may be a long way ahead, and there may exist great differences as to the program for the near future; but I suppose that few will deny that some such outcome as that indicated should logically follow from indefinite advance in the direction we are even now taking.
If we picture human society thus relatively perfected, and free from many of the ills which now so fearfully decimate it, what have we left to desire? Very much, I venture to think. Is there one of us who could honestly say that, if he had been born into such a society, he would be without any serious defects of mind or body? In other words, given as good an environment as could well be devised, should we then be perfect? It is exceedingly obvious that we should not.
Those who are enthusiastic, and very justly, concerning the possibilities of social reform, are somewhat too apt to assume that all deficiencies noted in people to-day are due to adverse external conditions. The student of heredity—even the farmer, when he is dealing with his crops—knows better than that. Figs do not grow on thistles, for all the fertilizers in the country. There is no doubt whatever that every year there are born thousands of persons who are not merely unfitted to succeed in the world as it now is, but would never be successful in any complete sense in any world which could be devised or imagined. Some of those who recognize this fact see in it the doom of all social amelioration. If to-day the tremendous destruction of the unfit which takes place leaves us so many incapables, what would happen if most of those who perish were to survive? Would not society be buried beneath a load of incompetency, which would make even such organization as we have impossible? To this gloomy suggestion it may be replied, in the first place, that much of the present-day elimination is of those who
