Other instances of the applicability of genetic philosophy to social problems might be given were space available. Under the circumstances I must content myself with the suggestion that it would be desirable to have intelligence tests as part of the physical examination of would-be immigrants.

The United States has been, and is, an extraordinarily prosperous nation. To what does it owe this good fortune? I have seen plenty of answers in the public press - the type of government, the influence of religion, tariff, sound money, and so on - but none touches the mark. Given its natural resources, the pattern of a country's career is set by its small group of trained men of high intelligence, the men who deal masterfully with the problems of science, art, politics, and business. The rest of us need not fool ourselves, we are simply the chorus of this drama. But these grade A people are rare, as are also the feeble intellects which lie at the other end of the curve, the grade E people. People of grades B and D are somewhat more common; people of grade C are commonest of all.

In other words, the individuals composing our population exhibit enormous differences in innate capacity, the distribution of intelligence being such that a high-peaked symmetrical curve is formed, with mediocrity holding the center position. And it is the exceptional few at one end who mark out our path in the world. If sufficient data were available, the distribution of intelligence among the nationals of other countries would be found to be very similar in character. There might be slight differences in average capacity; such differences would be small, however, when compared with the great spread of differences within each group.

It is not difficult to see that the future progress of any nation, our own included, depends upon the proportion of people of grades A and B. If they increase, the country will prosper; if they decrease, the country will decay. There are two ways to shift the average. One may try to promote the survival of the grade A people and to retard the survival of the grade E people who are citizens of the country, which is the method ordinarily proposed by eugenicists; or one may try to promote the entrance of grade A people and to prevent the entrance of grade E people as immigrants, which is the suggestion made here.

The reader will note the avoidance of eugenic proposals in what has been said regarding problems in the sociological field. With the eugenic procedure suggested by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 everyone must have the most profound sympathy; for he defined his purpose as "the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally." Even the mediaeval mind of G. K. Chesterton would have difficulty in discovering the evil character of such an ideal. But one may also confess to no wild enthusiasm for the small-knowing souls who offer social salvation in impracticable programs based on that vaguely conceived formula"the survival of the fit."The creed itself is sound enough, since social progress depends primarily upon the genetic constitution of the people of which society is composed. The irritating point in such schemes, apart from any question of feasibility, is the emotionalism so evident in the average segregation of the sheep from the goats. The fit would be for Bishop Cannon the Dry, for Hilaire Belloc the Catholic, for Pat Harrison the Democrat, for the Reverend Doctor Massee the Fundamentalist; they might not be so fit for Mencken, Joseph McCabe, Senator Vare, and Clarence Darrow. For these reasons, one is justified in feeling, regarding eugenics, much as did Charles Darwin when he wrote to Galton on the subject in virtually these words: The object is a grand one, and it is the sole feasible plan of improving the human race; yet the difficulties which stand in the way of any practical procedure are so great as to make it, I fear, Utopian.

Genetics should do more than furnish the factual foundation for projects of direct racial improvement, even though some such measures may be both sound and profitable. It has in it the makings of a broad and practical social philosophy applicable to numerous questions connected with public health, penology, education, suffrage, and immigration - to mention only a few. The keystone of this philosophy is the proper recognition of the precise significance of genetic constitution, environment, and experience as determining factors in human behavior. I venture the opinion that the twentieth century concept of the gene as the unit of inheritance will have as much influence in directing our approach to sociological questions in a scientific manner as the nineteenth century doctrine of evolution had on the problems of technical biology.