le Art of Life Series 
 
 %e Super "Race 
 
 By Scott Nearing 
 
^f)e ilifcrar j> 
 
 of tbe 
 
 This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the 
 last date stamped under "Date Due." If not on hold it may be 
 renewed by bringing it to the library. 
 
 DATE 
 DUE 
 
 RET. 
 
 ^Axs^efe m 
 
 RET. 
 
 ^cn ^ 9. 1987 
 
 -JUi- 
 
 n 7 mh 
 
 i.0 
 
 * jir'i!'' 
 
 -mu 
 
 -nss 
 
 '*^U 
 
 N' 
 
 W 
 
 tel' — 
 
 Hi ft 
 
 KJ82fi?^!!^S2HiW)(!!!iliSSiMHira»K»S»i;R»'rifMRRf!i!i;(£i 
 
 
Il=........». 
 
 10002036093 
 
 In) 
 
 coo 
 
 CD -O 
 
 ^ s*> Cm 
 
 ^ ^ r-^ r** r-1 nC O ^-J w U. v-^ *- "-' 
 
 ccaooo<^ 
 
 KO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 ENDOWED BY THE 
 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 :Qmgyoz{. 
 
^' r 
 
The Art of Life Series 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/superraceamericaOOnear_0 
 
The Super Race 
 
THE ART OF LIFE SERIES 
 
 Edward Howard Griggs, Editor 
 
 The Super Race 
 
 AN AMERICAN PROBLEM 
 
 fr-'^ ySt> 
 
 BY 
 SCOTT NEARING, Ph.D. 
 
 WHARTON SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT," ETC. 
 
 '--'«; 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 B. W. HTJ^BSCHv 
 
 1919 
 
Copyrig-ht, 1912, by 
 B W. HUEBSCH 
 
 First printing, May, 1912 
 Second printing, May, 1919 
 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
TO THE 
 
 MOTHERS AND FATHERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SUPER RACE 
 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 For ages men have sought to perpetu- 
 ate their memories in enduring monuments 
 of brass and of stone. Yet, in their efforts 
 to build lasting memorials they have neg- 
 lected the most endliring monument of all 
 — the Monument of Posterity. These 
 farseeing ones have overlooked their 
 real opportunity ; for in posterity — in the 
 achievements of their children's children, 
 men may best hope to reflect a lasting 
 greatness. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Call of the Super Race . . 13 
 II Eugenics — ^The Science of Race 
 
 Culture 26 
 
 III Social Adjustment — The Science 
 
 of Molding Institutions . . 44 
 
 IV Education — ^The Science of Indi- 
 
 vidual Development .... 55 
 V The American Opportunity . . 75 
 
The Super Race 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CALL OF THE SUPER RACE 
 
 As a very small boy, I distinctly remem- 
 ber that stories of the discovery of Amer- 
 ica and Australia, of the exploration of 
 Central Africa and of the invention of the 
 locomotive, the steamboat, and the tele- 
 graph made a deep impression on my 
 childish mind; and I shall never forget go- 
 ing one day to my mother and saying : — 
 
 " Oh, dear, I wish I had been born be- 
 fore everything was discovered and in- 
 vented. Now, there is nothing left for 
 me to do." 
 
 Brooding over it, and wondering why it 
 should be so, my boyish soul felt deeply 
 the tragedy of being born into an unevent- 
 ful age. I fully believed that the great 
 achievements of the world were in the 
 past. Imagine then my joy when, in the 
 
14 The Super Race 
 
 course of my later studies, It slowly dawned 
 upon me that the age in which I lived was, 
 after all, an age of unparalleled activity. 
 I saw the much vaunted discoveries and 
 inventions of by-gone days in their true 
 proportions. They no longer preempted 
 the whole world — present and future, as 
 well as past, but, freed from romance, they 
 ranged themselves in the form of a foun- 
 dation upon which the structure of civili- 
 zation is building. The successive steps 
 in human achievement, from the use of 
 fire to the harnessing of electricity, consti- 
 tuted a process of evolution creating 
 " a stage where every man must play 
 his part " — a part expanding and broad- 
 ening with each succeeding generation; and 
 I saw that I had a place among the actors 
 in this play of progress. The forward 
 steps of the past need not, and would not 
 prevent me from achieving in the present 
 — nay, they might even make a place, if 
 I could but find it, for my feet; they might 
 hold up my hands, and place within my 
 grasp the keen tools with which I should 
 do my work. 
 
 The school boy, passing from an atti- 
 
The Super Race 15 
 
 tude of contemplation and wonder before 
 the things of the past into an attitude of 
 active recognition of the necessities of the 
 present, passed through the evolutionary 
 process of the race. The savage, Sir 
 Henry Maine tells us, lives in a state of ab- 
 ject fear, bound hand and foot by the say- 
 ings and doings of his ancestors and 
 blinded by the terrors of nature. The 
 lightning flashes, and the untutored mind, 
 trembling, bows before the wrath of a jeal- 
 ous God; the harvest fails, and the savage 
 humbly submits to the vengeance of an 
 incensed deity; pestilence destroys the peo- 
 ple, and the primitive man sees in this 
 catastrophe a punishment inflicted on him 
 for his failure to propitiate an exacting 
 spirit — in these and a thousand other 
 ways uncivilized peoples accept the phe- 
 nomena in which nature displays her 
 power, as the expressed will of an omnipo- 
 tent being. One course alone is open to 
 them ; they must bow down before the un- 
 known, accepting as inevitable those forces 
 which they neither can understand nor 
 conquer. 
 
 Civilization has meant enlightenment 
 
1 6 The Super Race 
 
 and achievement. In lightning, Franklin 
 saw a potent giant which he enslaved for 
 the service of man; in famine, Burbank 
 discovered a lack of proper adjustment be- 
 tween the soil and the crops that men were 
 cultivating — thereupon he produced a 
 wheat that would thrive on an annual rain- 
 fall of twelve inches; in pestilence, Pasteur 
 recognized the ravages of an organism 
 which he prepared to study and destroy. 
 Lightning, famine and pestilence are, to 
 the primitive man, the threatening of a 
 wrathful god; but to the progressive 
 thinker they are merely forces which must 
 be utilized or counteracted in the work of 
 human achievement. 
 
 As a boy, I believed my opportunities 
 to be limited by the achievements of the 
 past. As a man, I see in these past 
 achievements not hindrances, but the foun- 
 dation stones which the past has laid down, 
 upon which the present must build, in or- 
 der that the future may erect the per- 
 fected structure of a higher civilization. 
 I see all of this clearly, and I see one 
 thing more. In the old days which I had 
 erstwhile envied, one event of world im- 
 
The Super Race 17 
 
 port might have been chronicled for each 
 decade, but in the nineteenth andi twentieth 
 centuries, such an event may be chronicled 
 for each year, or month or even for each 
 day. The achievements of the past were 
 noteworthy: these of the present are stu- 
 pendous. 
 
 The process of social evolution reveals 
 itself in these progressive steps. Because 
 the past has built, the present is building 
 — building in order that the future may 
 stand higher in its realization of potential 
 life. The past was an age of uncertain, 
 hesitating advance. The present, an age 
 of dynamic achievement, leads on into the 
 future of human development. 
 
 In the twentieth century: 
 
 1. Knowledge provides a basis for 
 
 activity. 
 
 2. The social atmosphere palpitates 
 
 with enthusiastic resolve and 
 abounds in noble endeavor. 
 
 3. There is work for each one to 
 
 perform. 
 
 The despondent boy has thus evolved 
 
iB The Super Race 
 
 into the enthusiastic worker whose watch- 
 word is " Forward! " — forward towards 
 a new goal, whose very existence is made 
 attainable through the achievements of the 
 past: a goal before which the triumphs of 
 bygone ages pale into insignificance. 
 
 The past worked with things. Pyra- 
 mids were built, cities constructed, moun- 
 tains tunneled, trade augmented, fortunes 
 amassed. Hear Ruskin's comment on 
 this devotion to material wealth: *' Never- 
 theless, it is open, I repeat, to serious ques- 
 tion, .... whether, among na- 
 tional manufactures, that of souls of a good 
 quality may not at last turn out a quite lu- 
 crative one. Nay, in some far-away and 
 yet undreamed of hour, I can even imagine 
 that England ... as a Christian 
 mother, may at last attain to the virtues 
 and the treasures of a heathen one, and be 
 able to lead forth her sons, saying: 
 * These are my jewels.' " ^ 
 
 The past worked with things: the fu- 
 ture, rising higher in the scale of civiliza- 
 tion, must work with men — with the plas- 
 
 iJOHN RusKiN, Unto this Last — Essay 11. 
 
The Super Race 19 
 
 tic, living clay of humanity. As Solomon 
 long ago said, ** He that ruleth his own 
 spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." 
 The men of the past built cities and took 
 them. They brought the forces of nature 
 into subjection and remodeled the world 
 as a living place for humanity, yet, save 
 for a shadow in Rome and an echo from 
 Greece, there is scarcely a trace in history 
 of a consistent attempt to evolve nobler 
 imen. 
 
 Material objects have cost the nations 
 untold effort, but human fiber — the life 
 blood of nations — has been overlooked 
 or forgotten. The world Is weary of this 
 emphasis on things and this forgetfulness 
 of men; the ether trembles with the clamor 
 for manhood. The fields, white to har- 
 vest, are awaiting the laborers who, build- 
 ing on the discoveries and inventions of 
 things in the past, will so mold the hu- 
 man clay of the present that the future 
 may boast a society of men and women 
 possessing the qualities of the Super Race. 
 
 What is a Super Race ? Nothing more 
 nor less than a race representing, in the ag- 
 gregate, the qualities of the Super Man — 
 
20 The Super Race 
 
 the qualities which enable one possessing 
 them to live what Herbert Spencer de- 
 scribed so luminously as a " complete life/' 
 namely, — 
 
 1. Physical normality. 
 
 2. Mental capacity. 
 
 4. Concentration 
 
 3. Aggressiveness 
 
 5. Sympathy. 
 
 6. Vision. 
 
 These characteristics of the Super Man 
 express themselves in his activity : 
 
 1. Physical normality provides energy. 
 
 2. Mental capacity gives mental grasp, 
 
 "i. Aggressiveness.) ., ^ . 
 
 ^ ^^ ^ . y produce emciency. 
 
 4. Concentration, j ^ -' 
 
 5. Sympathy leads to harmony with 
 
 things and cooperation with men. 
 
 6. Vision shows itself in ideals. 
 
 The energy to do; and the mental grasp 
 to appreciate; together with the capacity 
 to choose efficiently, furnish the basis for 
 achievement. Achievement, however, is 
 
The Super Race 4i 
 
 not in Itself a guarantee of worth unless 
 its course is shaped by sympathy and di- 
 rected toward a goal which is determined 
 by the prophetic power of vision. Such 
 are the characteristics which, combined in 
 one individual, insure completeness of life. 
 About them, philosophers have reasoned 
 and poets have sung. They are the acme 
 of human perfection- — the ideal of indi- 
 vidual attainment. 
 
 Though they have been thus idealized, 
 these qualities are not new. They have 
 existed for ages, as they exist to-day, oc- 
 casionally combined in one individual but 
 usually appearing separately in members 
 of the social group. They form part of 
 the heritage of the human race, and in 
 spite of neglect and lack of fostering, they 
 are widespread in all sections of the popu- 
 lation. The production of a race of men 
 and women, a great majority of whom 
 shall possess these qualities, will mean the 
 next great step in human achievement. 
 
 The Super Man has lived for ages. 
 The Greeks traced the descent of their 
 heroes and heroines — their Super Men 
 *— from the Gods. It was thus that they 
 
22 Whe Super Race 
 
 explained exceptional ability. Exceptional 
 men live to-day, as they did in ancient 
 Greece, directing the thought and work 
 of the times. They possess the qualities 
 of the Super Man — physical normality, 
 mental capacity, aggressiveness, concentra- 
 tion, sympathy and vision ; and, above all, 
 we now understand that they are not the 
 offspring of the gods, but the sons of men 
 and women whose combined parental qual- 
 ities inevitably produced Super Men. 
 The Super Man is not a theory, nor an 
 accident, but a natural product of natural 
 conditions. 
 
 Though the Super Man may be met 
 with occasionally in modern society, and 
 though the qualities ascribed to him are 
 manifest everywhere among those who 
 have had an opportunity for their devel- 
 opment; opinions still differ as to the pos- 
 sibility of producing a Super Race. An 
 even greater difference of opinion is en- 
 countered when an attempt is made to for- 
 mulate the means which should be adopted 
 to secure such an end; yet there can be 
 little difference of o^plnion as to the de- 
 sirability, from a national as well as from 
 
The Super Race 23 
 
 an individual standpoint, of creating a race 
 of Super Men. 
 
 The call of the present age for a Super 
 Race Is thus voiced by Yeats,^ 
 
 ** O Silver Trumpets! Be you lifted up, 
 And cry to the great race that is to come. 
 Long throated swans, amid the Waves of Time, 
 Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the World 
 It waits, and it may hear and come to us." 
 
 We long for the coming of the Super 
 Race. We aim toward this goal. Can 
 it be compassed in finite time? Is 
 Nietzsche right when he says, — ** I teach 
 you beyond-man." *' All beings hitherto 
 have created something beyond them- 
 selves." ** What is great in man is that 
 he is a bridge and not a goal." '* Not 
 whence ye come, be your honor in the fu- 
 ture, but whither ye go ! " ** In your chil- 
 dren ye shall make amends for being your 
 father's children. Thus ye shall redeem 
 all that is past." ^ 
 
 2V^iLLiAM B. Yeats, Poetic Works, Vol. II, p. 407. 
 Macmillan Co., N. Y. 
 
 3 Frederick Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 
 5-296. Macmillan Co., N. Y. 
 
24 The Super Race 
 
 Shall we make amends to the future? 
 Come, then, let us reason together con- 
 cerning the measures which must be 
 adopted to raise the standard of succeed- 
 ing generations. There are three means 
 which lie ready at hand: three sciences 
 which lend themselves to our task: three 
 tools with which we may shape the Super 
 Race. They are: 
 
 1. Eugenics — ^The science of race 
 
 culture. 
 
 2. Social adjustment — The science 
 
 of molding institutions. 
 
 3. Education — The science of in- 
 
 dividual development. 
 
 The science of Eugenics treats of those 
 forces which, through the biologic proc- 
 esses of heredity, may be relied upon to 
 provide the inherited qualities of the Su- 
 per Race. The science of Social Adjust- 
 ment treats of those forces which, through 
 the modification of social institutions, may 
 be relied upon to provide a congenial en- 
 vironment for the Super Race. The sci- 
 ence of Education aims to assist the child 
 
The Super Race 2^ 
 
 in unfolding and developing the hereditary 
 qualities of the Super Man, provided, 
 through eugenic guarantees. Hence, Eu- 
 genics, Social Adjustment and Ediucation 
 are sciences, the mastery of which is a 
 pre-requisite to the development of the 
 Super Race. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 EUGENICS — THE SCIENCE OF RACE CUL- 
 TURE. 
 
 The object of Eugenics is the conscious 
 improvement of the human race by the ap- 
 plication of the laws of heredity to human 
 mating. Eugenics is the logical fruition 
 of the progress in biologic science made 
 during the nineteenth century. 
 
 The laws of heredity, studied in minute 
 detail, have been applied with marvelous 
 success in the vegetable and animal king- 
 doms. '* Is there any good reason," de- 
 mands the eugenist, '* why the formulas 
 which have operated to re-combine the 
 physical properties of plants and animals, 
 should not in like measure operate to 
 modify the physical properties of men and 
 women? '' 
 
 The studies which have been made of 
 eye color, length of arm, head shape, and 
 other physical traits show that the same 
 26 
 
The Super Race 27 
 
 laws of heredity which apply In the ani- 
 mal aiid vegetable kingdoms apply as well 
 In the kingdom of man. Since the species 
 of plants and animals with which man has 
 experimented have been Improved by se- 
 lective breeding, there seems to be no good 
 reason why the human race should not be 
 susceptible of similar Improvement. What 
 Intelligent farmer sows blighted potatoes ? 
 Where Is the dog fancier who would 
 strive to rear a St. Bernard from a mon- 
 grel dam? Neither yesterday nor yet to- 
 morrow do men gather grapes of thorns. 
 Those who have to do with life In any 
 form, aware of this fact, refuse to permit 
 propagation except among the best mem- 
 bers of a species : hence with each succeed- 
 ing generation the ox Increases In size and 
 strength: the apple In color; the sweet 
 pea In perfume; and the horse In speed. 
 Is this law of Improving species a uni- 
 versal law? Alas, no! It rarely if ever 
 applies In the selection of men and women 
 for parenthood. The human species has 
 not, during historic times, Improved either 
 in physique. In mental capacity, in aggres- 
 siveness, In concentration, In sympathy or 
 
28 The Super Race 
 
 in vision. Nay, there are not wanting 
 thoughtful students who affirm that in al- 
 most every one of these respects the exact 
 contrary holds true. 
 
 There appears to be some question as to 
 whether the best of the Greek athletes ex- 
 ceeded in strength and skill the modern 
 professional athlete, but there is no doubt 
 at all that the average citizen of Athens 
 was a more perfect specimen physically 
 than the average citizen of twentieth cen- 
 tury America. 
 
 Some students insist that the level of in- 
 tellectual capacity has been raised, yet Gal- 
 ton, after a careful survey of the field, 
 concludes in his Hereditary Genius that 
 the average citizen of Athens was at least 
 two degrees higher in the scale of intel- 
 lectual attainment than the average Eng- 
 lishman; Carl Snyder^ boldly maintains 
 thati the intellectual ability of scientific men 
 is less to-day than it was in past centuries ; 
 while Mrs. Martin,^ in a study more novel 
 
 1 Carl Snyder, The World Machine, New York, 
 Longmans, Green & Co., 1907. 
 
 2 Prestonia MIann Martin, Is Mankind Advancing? 
 New York, Baker & Taylor Co., 1911. 
 
The Super Race 29 
 
 than scientific, insists that the genius of 
 the modern world is on a level distinctly 
 below that of the genius of Greece. 
 
 Perhaps American commercial aggres- 
 siveness IS equal to the military aggressive- 
 ness of the Romans, the early Germans, 
 and the followers of Attila. We have 
 concentrated most of our efforts upon in- 
 dustry, yet even here, our concentration 
 is no greater than that of the poets of the 
 Elizabethan era, or the religious zealots 
 of the Middle Ages. Our sympathy with 
 beauty is at so low an ebb that we fail 
 even to approach the standard of past 
 ages. Neither in art, in sculpture, nor 
 in poetry do our achievements compare 
 with those of the earlier Mediterranean 
 civilizations ; while our knowledge of men 
 as revealed in our literature is not above 
 that of the Romans or the Athenians. As 
 for vision, we still accept and strive to 
 fulfill the commandments of the Prophet 
 of Nazareth. In all of these fields, twen- 
 tieth century America is equaled, if not 
 outdone by the past. 
 
 Thus the distinctive qualities of the Su- 
 per Man appear in the past with an intens- 
 
30 The Super Race 
 
 ity equal if not superior to that of the pres- 
 ent. History records the transmutation 
 of vegetable and animal species, the revo- 
 lution of industry, the modification of so- 
 cial institutions, and the transformation of 
 governmental systems; but in all historic 
 time, it afSrms no perceptible improvement 
 in the qualities of man. '' We must re- 
 place the man by the Super Man," writes 
 G. Bernard Shaw.^ '' It is frightful for 
 the citizen, as the years pass him, to see 
 his own contemporaries so exactly repro- 
 duced by the younger generation." 
 
 Nevertheless, the possibility of race im- 
 provement exists. ** What now charac- 
 terizes the exceptionally high may be ex- 
 pected eventually to characterize all, for 
 that which the best human nature is capa- 
 ble of is within the! reach of human nature 
 at large." ^ After years of intensive 
 study, Spencer thus confidently expressed 
 himself. Since he ceased to work, each 
 bit of scientific data along eugenic lines 
 serves to confirm his opinion. Armed 
 
 3 G. Bernard Shaw, Man arid Super Man, P. 218- 
 219. N. Y., Brentano's. 
 
 ^ Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics, Para. 97. 
 N. Y., D. Appleton & Co., 1893. 
 
The Super Race 31 
 
 with such a belief and with the assurance 
 which scientific research has afforded, we 
 are preparing in this eleventh hour to ful- 
 fill Spencer's predictions. 
 
 There are two fields in which eugenics 
 may be applied — the first, Negative, the 
 second, Positive. Through the establish- 
 ment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will 
 be restrained from mating and perpetuat- 
 ing their unfitness in the future. Through 
 Positive Eugenics the fit may be induced 
 to mate, and by combining their fitness in 
 their offspring, to raise up each new gen- 
 eration out of the flower of the old. Neg- 
 ative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Posi- 
 tive Eugenics perpetuates the fit. 
 
 The field of Negative Eugenics has been 
 well explored. No question exists as to 
 the transmission through heredity of feeble 
 mindedness, idiocy, insanity and certain 
 forms of criminality. ** There is one way, 
 only one way, out of this difficulty. Mod- 
 ern society . . . must declare that 
 there shall be no unfit and defective citi- 
 zens in the .State." ^ The Greeks elimin- 
 
 s Saml. Z. Batten, The Redemption of the Unfit, 
 American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 14, p. 242 (1909). 
 
32 The Super Race 
 
 ated unfitness by the destruction of defec- 
 tive children; though we may deplore such 
 a practice in the light of our modern ethical 
 codes, we recognize the end as one essential 
 to race progress. By denying the right of 
 parenthood to any who have transmissible 
 disease or defect, our modern knowledge 
 enables us to accomplish the same end 
 without recourse to the destruction of hu- 
 man life. 
 
 Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the 
 science of Eugenics, writes, in his last im- 
 portant work, *' I think that stern com- 
 pulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the 
 free propagation of the stock of those who 
 are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble- 
 mindedness, habitual criminality and pau- 
 perism." ^ Yet society, in dealing with 
 hereditary defect, presents some of its most 
 grotesque inconsistencies. '* It is a curi- 
 ous comment on the artificiality of our so- 
 cial system that no stigma attaches to pre- 
 ventable ill-health." An empty purse, or 
 a ruined home may mean social ostracism, 
 but '* break-down in person, whatever the 
 
 6 Francis Galton, Memoirs of My Life, p. 311. N. 
 Y., E. P. Dutton, 1909. 
 
The Super Race 33 
 
 cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and 
 silence." '^ 
 
 Certain defects are known to be trans- 
 missible by heredity from parent to child, 
 until the cretin of Balzac's Country Doctor 
 is reproduced for centuries. The remedy 
 for this form of social self-torture lies in 
 the denial of parenthood to those who 
 have transmissible defects. Individually, 
 such a denial works hardships in this gen- 
 eration : socially, and to the future genera- 
 tions, it means comparative freedom from 
 individual, and hence from social defect. 
 
 The problem of Positive Eugenics pre- 
 sents an essentially different aspect. As 
 Ruskin so well observes — *^ It is a mat- 
 ter of no final concern, to any parent, 
 whether he shall have two children or four ; 
 but matter of quite final concern whether 
 those he has shall or shall not deserve to be 
 hanged." The quality is always the sig- 
 nificant factor. Whether in family or na^ 
 tional progress, an effort must be made to 
 insure against hanging, or against any 
 tendency that leads gallowsward. 
 
 ■^ Arnold White, Efficiency and Empire, p. 97. Lon- 
 don, Methuen & Co., 1901. 
 
34 The Super Race 
 
 Positive Eugenics is the science of race 
 building through wise mating. " As long 
 as ability marries ability, a large propor- 
 tion of able offspring is a certainty." ^ 
 What prospective parent does not fondly 
 imagine that his children will be at least 
 near-great? Yet how many individuals, 
 in their choice of a mate, set out with the 
 deliberate intention of securing a life part- 
 ner whose qualities, when combined with 
 his own, must produce greatness? 
 
 The Darwin-Galton-Wedgwood fam- 
 ilies boast sixteen men of world fame 
 in five generations; in the Bach family 
 there were fifty-seven musicians of note in 
 eight generations; Wood's study of Hered- 
 ity in Royalty shows the evident transmis- 
 sion of special ability; yet men and women 
 of ability, anxious for able offspring, mate 
 without any rational effort to secure the 
 end which they desire. ^' Ninety-nine times 
 out of a hundred our mathematician mar- 
 ries a woman whose family did not count a 
 single astronomer, physicist or other mathe- 
 matical mind among its members. The re- 
 
 8 W. C. & C. D. Whetham, The Family and the Na- 
 tions, p. 85. N. Y., Longmans, 1909. 
 
The Super Race 35 
 
 suit of such a union Is what could be ex- 
 pected. Although genius does not gener- 
 ally die out right away in the first genera- 
 tion, it decreases by half, and further dilu- 
 tions soon bring it down to nothingness." ^ 
 
 This, in brief, is the problem of Nega- 
 tive and of Positive Eugenics. Both de- 
 fect and ability are transmitted by hered- 
 ity; both are the product of the mating 
 process known as marriage; since society 
 can and does control marriage, it may, 
 through this control, exercise a real in- 
 fluence upon the character of future gen- 
 erations. 
 
 The science of Eugenics is in its in- 
 fancy, yet, widely established and vigor- 
 ously applied, it may revolutionize the hu- 
 man species. The Super Race may come, 
 because '' looked at from the social stand- 
 point, we see how exceptional families, by 
 ,careful marriages, can within even a few 
 generations, obtain an exceptional stock, 
 and how directly this suggests assortative 
 mating as a moral duty for the highly en- 
 dowed. On the other hand, the excep- 
 
 9 GusTAVE MiCHAUD, Shall We Improve Our Race, 
 The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 72, p. 77 (1908). 
 
36 The Super Race 
 
 tionally degenerate isolated in the slums 
 of our modern cities can easily produce 
 permanent stock also: a stock which no 
 change of environment will permanently 
 elevate, and which nothing but mixture 
 with better blood will improve. But this 
 is an improvement of the bad by a social 
 waste of the better. We do not want to 
 eliminate bad stock by watering it with 
 good, but by placing it under conditions 
 where it is relatively or absolutely infer- 
 tile." ^« 
 
 *' But what of love?'* wails the senti- 
 mentalist; '* in your scheme Eugenics out- 
 weighs Cupid!" Perhaps, but what of 
 it? Cupid has proved in the past a sad 
 bungler, whose mistakes and failures 
 grimace from every page of our divorce 
 court records. Far from hindering his ac- 
 tivities, however, Eugenics will assist Cu- 
 pid by bringing together persons truly con- 
 genial — hence capable of an enduring 
 love. Too many men have married a 
 natty Easter bonnet, or a cleverly tailored 
 suit. Too many women have fallen a prey 
 
 i<>J. A. Thompson, Heredity, p. 331. N. Y., G. P. 
 Putnam's Sons, 1908. 
 
The Super Race 37 
 
 to a tempting bank account or a pair of 
 glorious mustachios. Blind Cupid limps 
 but lamely over the rugged path of matri- 
 monial bliss. The questionable success of 
 his best efforts proves his sure need of a 
 guide. 
 
 Eugenics represents an effort to bring 
 together those people who have comple- 
 mentary qualities and complementary in- 
 terests; who ^are capable of maintaining 
 congenial relationships in the present; and 
 creating able offspring in the future. Se- 
 lection and parenthood are the cradle of 
 the future. Hence the individual who, in 
 the exercise of his choice, overlooks their 
 significance overlooks one of his most im- 
 portant racial responsibilities. 
 
 Society is interested in Eugenics, be- 
 cause it is through Eugeniics that the hered- 
 itary traits of thei Super Race are perpetu- 
 ated and perfected. Eugenics, rightly un- 
 derstood and applied, is a social asset of 
 unexcelled value. How long, then, shall 
 our society continue to feed on the husks, 
 neglecting the grain which lies everywhere 
 ready at hand? 
 
 Eugenics is indeed one means of race 
 
38 The Super Race 
 
 salvation, yet what care do we take to per- 
 fect eugenic measures? ^' If through 
 sheer chance, some great mathematician Is 
 evolved one day out of the crowd, the 
 state — who should be ever on the watch 
 for such events and whose main care should 
 be to preserve and increase such sources 
 of light, progress and national glory — 
 does nothing to protect the man of genius 
 against care, disease or anything likely to 
 shorten life nor to multiply the splendid 
 thinking machine." ^^ A great state 
 must have for its component parts great 
 men and women. Did we truly seek 
 greatness, how many measures for Its at- 
 tainment lie neglected at our very doors ! 
 
 Every well regulated state of antiquity 
 eliminated defectives in the interest of the 
 group, and of the future. What more 
 effective means of social preservation 
 icould be imagined than some measure 
 through whose operation the defective 
 classes in society would be eliminated, and 
 the social structure, bulwarked by stalwart 
 manhood and womanhood, made proof 
 
 11 Gust AVE Michaud, Shall We Improve Our Race? 
 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 72, p. ^^ (1908). 
 
The Super Race 39 
 
 against the ravages of time. How serious 
 a thing is the propagation of defect! 
 Murder is a crime, punishable by death, 
 yet a murderer merely eliminates one unit 
 from the social group. The destruction 
 of this one life may cause sorrow; it may 
 deprive society of a valued member; but 
 it] is, after all, a comparatively insignificant 
 offense. The perpetuation of hereditary 
 defect Is infinitely worse than murder. 
 Consider, for example, a marriage, sanc- 
 tioned by church and^ state, between two 
 persons both having in their blood hered- 
 itary feeble-mindedness. 
 
 Investigations of thousands of feeble- 
 minded families show that, in such a case, 
 every one of the offspring may be and 
 probably will be feeble-minded — a curse 
 to himself and a burden to society. Pau- 
 perism, crime, social dependence, vice, all 
 follow in the train of mental defect, and 
 the mentally defective parents hand on for 
 untold generations their taint — some- 
 times In more, sometimes in less virulent 
 form, but always bringing Into the world 
 beings not only incapable of caring for 
 themselves, but fatally capable of handing 
 
40 The Super Race 
 
 on their defect to the future. The mur- 
 derer robs society; the mentally defective 
 parent curses society, both in the present 
 and in the future, with the taint of degen- 
 eracy. The murderer takes away a life; 
 but the feeble-minded parent passes on to 
 the future the seeds of racial decay. 
 
 The first step in Eugenics progress — 
 the elimination of defect by preventing the 
 procreation of defectives — is easily stated, 
 and may be almost as easily attained. 
 The price of six battleships ($50,600,000) 
 would probably provide homes for all of 
 the seriously defective men, women and 
 ^children now at large in the United States. 
 Thus could the scum of society be removed, 
 and a source of social contamination be 
 effectively regulated. Yet with tens of 
 thousands of defectives, freely propagat- 
 ing their kind, we continue to build battle- 
 ships, fondly believing that rifled cannon 
 and steel armor plate will prove sufficient 
 for national defense. 
 
 This is but a part, and by far the least 
 important part, of the eugenic programme. 
 The elimination of defect prevents degen- 
 eracy, but does not insure the physical nor- 
 
The Super Race 41 
 
 mality, mental capacity, aggressiveness, 
 concentration, sympathy and vision of the 
 Super Man. While the elimination of de- 
 fect is imperative, it is after all only the 
 first step toward the creation of positive 
 qualities. 
 
 Positive Eugenics may be as obvious as 
 Negative Eugenics, but the promulgation 
 of its doctrines is not equally easy. A 
 series of legislative enactments will pre- 
 vent the mating of the hereditarily defec- 
 tive; nothing but the most painstaking edu- 
 cation can be relied upon to secure the 
 mating of those eugenically fit Never- 
 theless for that modern state which seeks 
 to persist and dominate, no lesser measure 
 will suffice. After all, why should not so- 
 ciety educate its youth to a sense of wis- 
 dom in mating? The United States 
 spends each year some four hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars in public edtication, teach- 
 ing children to read, to spell, to sew, to 
 draw. The importance of these studies is 
 obvious, yet, from a social standpoint, they 
 cannot compare in significance with such 
 training in the laws of heredity and biol- 
 ogy as will insure wise choice in mating. 
 
42 The Super Race 
 
 The state, in its efforts at self preservation, 
 cannot lay too much emphasis on the train- 
 ing for eugenic choice. 
 
 Biology, through the laws of heredity, 
 applied in the science of Eugenics, holds 
 out every hope for the coming of the Su- 
 per Man and of the Super Race. Not in 
 our knowledge of its laws, but in the prac- 
 tice of its precepts, are we lacking. 
 
 Eugenics, it is true, in its negative and! 
 positive phases, holds out a greatj hope for 
 the future. But Eugenics alone will not 
 suffice. The science of Eugenics must be 
 coupled with the science of Social Adjust- 
 ment to insure the production of a Super 
 Race. The necessity of this union is well 
 recognized by the students of heredity, 
 while the students of Social Adjustment 
 found their theories on premises essentially 
 biologic in origin. One of the most widely 
 known writers on heredity concludes a re- 
 cent book with the statement that — '' At 
 present, we can only indicate that the fu- 
 ture of our race depends on Eugenics (in 
 some form or other) , combined with the 
 simultaneous evolution of eutechnics and 
 eutopias. 'Brave words,' of course; but 
 
The Super Race 43 
 
 surely not * Eutopian ' ! " ^^ Xhus the 
 knowledge and practice of the laws of 
 heredity must be supplemented by a knowl- 
 edge and practice of the laws of Social 
 Adjustment. 
 
 12 J. Arthur Thompson, Heredity, p. 308. N. Y., 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT THE SCIENCE OF 
 
 MOLDING INSTITUTIONS 
 
 After a gardener has produced his seed, 
 guaranteeing a good heredity by breeding 
 together those individual plants which pos- 
 sess in the highest degree the qualities he 
 desires to secure, he turns his atten- 
 tion to the seed bed. First of all, the lo- 
 cation must be good — the bed must be on 
 a southern slope, where it will benefit by 
 the first warm rays of the spring sun; then 
 the soil must be finely pulverized, in order 
 that the tiny rootlets may easily force their 
 way downward, finding nourishment ready 
 at hand; when the seeds have been planted, 
 in gix)und well prepared and fertilized, 
 they must be watered, cultivated, weeded; 
 and as they develop into larger plants, 
 thinned, transplanted, pruned and sprayed. 
 The wise gardener considers environment 
 as well as heredity. By sowing choice 
 44 
 
The Super Race 45 
 
 seeds in well prepared soil, he ensures the 
 excellence of his crop. 
 
 Modern society may well be compared 
 to a garden. The plants are living, mov- 
 ing beings, with some freedom to act 
 on their own initiative. Moreover, it is 
 they who make and tend the gardens in 
 which they grow. Like the gardener in 
 the story, they must look to environment 
 as well as^ to heredity. The seed bed 
 must be carefully prepared, and the young 
 plants, as they appear, must be given all 
 the attention which science makes possible. 
 Modern society is a garden of which the 
 products are men and women. The sow- 
 ing, weeding, cultivating — carried for- 
 ward through social institutions — deter- 
 mines by its character whether the race 
 shall decay, as other races have done, or 
 progress toward the Super Man. 
 
 This science of social gardening — So- 
 cial Adjustment — has been given a great 
 impetus, in recent years, by the increased 
 knowledge of the relative influences of 
 heredity and environment in determining 
 the status of the individual. This knowl- 
 edge has led us to a belief in men. 
 
46 The Super Race 
 
 Earlier beliefs conceived of the majority 
 of men as utterly depraved. Some indeed 
 were among the elect, but the remainder, 
 born to the lowest depths of the social 
 gehenna, were outcasts and pariahs, help- 
 less in this world and hopeless in the next. 
 This doctrine of total depravity set at 
 nought all progressive effort. Here 
 stands a man — society has called him a 
 criminal. Last year he attempted to steal 
 an automobile, less than three weeks after 
 his release from serving a two-year sen- 
 tence for grand larceny. To-day he is in 
 court again, charged with entering a lodg- 
 ing house and stealing three pairs of 
 trousers and an overcoat. The man is on 
 trial for burglary* — what shall be the so- 
 cial verdict regarding him? 
 
 '* Alas," mourns the advocate of total 
 depravity, *' God so made him. It is not 
 our right to interfere." 
 
 " Wait," says the social scientist, '* until 
 I investigate the case." 
 
 The case is held over while the scientist 
 imakes his investigation. After careful 
 inquiry, he reports that the young man's 
 criminal record began at the age of nine, 
 
The Super Race 47 
 
 when he was arrested for stealing bananas 
 from a freight car. Locked up with older 
 criminals, he soon learned their tricks. 
 He was V nimble " and could *' handle 
 himself," so his prison mates taught him 
 the science of pocket picking, and initiated 
 him into the gentle art of '* shop lifting." 
 Hel was released, after two months of this 
 schooling, and slipping out into the big, 
 black city, he tried an experiment. Suc- 
 ceeding, he tried again, and yet again. 
 Before the month was out, he was de- 
 tected stealing a silk handkerchief, and was 
 back in prison. There his education wasi. 
 perfected, and he entered the world to try 
 once more. From the world to jail, from 
 jail to the world — this boy's life history 
 from the age of nine, had been one long at- 
 tempt to learn his trade; fortunately or un- 
 fortunately, he was somewhat of a bungler, 
 and sooner or later he was always caught. 
 When he was a boy, he sneaked up a 
 dingy court, and three pairs of dirty stairs 
 to a landing where, in the rear of a bat- 
 tered tenement, was an abode which he 
 had been taught to call home. His father, 
 a dock laborer, earned, on the average, 
 
48 The Super Race 
 
 about $300 a year. Sometimes he worked 
 steadily, day and night, for a week, and 
 earned $25 or $30; then there would be 
 no work for ten days or perhaps two 
 weeks ; the money would run out ; the gro- 
 cer would refuse credit; and the family 
 would be hungry. It was during one of 
 these hungry intervals that the nine-year- 
 old urchin made his descent on the bananas 
 in the freight car, and received his first 
 jail sentence. 
 
 His mother, good hearted but woefully 
 ignorant, made the best of things, taking 
 in! washing, doing odd jobs here and there, 
 tending to her children, when opportunity 
 offered, and at other times letting them 
 run the streets. 
 
 *' There," concludes the social scientist, 
 '' is the story of that boy's life. His only 
 picture of manhood is an inefficient father 
 who cannot earn enough to support his 
 family; his concept of a mother expresses 
 itself in good hearted ignorance; his view 
 of society has been secured from the rear 
 of a shabby tenement, the curb of a nar- 
 row street and a cell in the county jail. 
 The seed bed has been neither prepared, 
 
The Super Race 49 
 
 watered, nor tended, and the young shoot 
 has grown wild." 
 
 The social scientist has not been content 
 with an analysis of social maladjustment; 
 going further, he has transplanted the 
 young shoots from the defective seed bed 
 to better ground. Dr. Bernardo organ- 
 ized a system for taking the boy criminals 
 out of the slums of English cities, and 
 sending them to farms in Australia, South 
 Africa and Canada. Nearly 50,000 boys 
 have been thus disposed of. Though in 
 their home cities many of them had already 
 entered a criminal life, in their new sur- 
 roundings less than two per cent, of them 
 showed any tendency to revert to their 
 former criminal practices. A little tend- 
 ing and transplanting into a congenial en- 
 vironment, proved the salvation of these 
 boys, who would otherwise have thronged 
 the jails of England. 
 
 Careful analysis has convinced the so- 
 cial scientist that, in the absence of mal- 
 formation of the brain, or of some other 
 physical defect, the average man is largely 
 made by his environment. As serious 
 physical defect is quite rare, being present 
 
50 The Super Race 
 
 in less than five per cent, of the popula- 
 tion ; and as only a small percentage of the 
 population, perhaps two or threel per cent., 
 is above the average in ability, more than 
 nine-tenths of the people remain average 
 
 — shaped by their environment; capable 
 of good or of evil, according as the good 
 or evil forces of society influence their 
 youth and early maturity. 
 
 The eighteenth century philosophers 
 had embodied the same conclusion in the 
 doctrine that all men are created free and 
 equal. Victor Hugo, in the first half of 
 the nineteenth century, based most of his 
 inspiring novels on the theory that in every 
 man there is a divine spark — a conscience 
 
 — which will be developed by a good en- 
 vironment or crushed and blackened by a 
 bad one. 
 
 Each year added new proofs of the 
 theory of universal capacity, until Ward 
 was able to write his Applied Sociology , 
 demonstrating that opportunity is the key- 
 note of social progress.^ For, says he, 
 up to the present time nine-tenths of the 
 
 1 Lester F. V^ard, Applied Sociology, pp, zz^-zZi, 
 Boston, Ginn & Co., 1906. 
 
The Super Race 51 
 
 men, and ten-tenths of the women (nine- 
 teen twentieths of society) have been de- 
 nied a legitimate opportunity for develop- 
 ment. Grant this opportunity, and at 
 once, without any change in hereditary 
 characteristics, you can increase, nineteen 
 fold, the achievements of society. 
 
 Ward's estimate may be or may not be 
 exactly correct. His contention that uni- 
 versalized opportunity would greatly aug- 
 ment social achievement is, however, fun- 
 damentally sound. Social Adjustment 
 aims, through the shaping social institu- 
 tions, to provide every individlial with an 
 opportunity to secure a strong body, a 
 trained mind, an aggressive attitude, the 
 power of concentration, and the vision of 
 a goal toward which he is working.^ In 
 short, the object of Social Adjustment is 
 the provision of universal opportunity. 
 
 The dark unfathomed caves of ocean 
 bear many a gem- of purest ray serene. 
 Even the most gifted individual, thrown 
 into an adverse environment, will either 
 
 2 For a more complete statement of the problem, see 
 Social Adjustment, Scott Nearing, New York : Macmil- 
 lan Company, 1911. 
 
52 The Super Race 
 
 fail utterly to develop his powers, or else 
 will develop them so incompletely that 
 they can never come to their full fruition. 
 Thomas A. Edison cast away on an island 
 in the South Pacific would be useless to his 
 fellows. Abraham Lincoln, living among 
 the Apache Indians, would have left small 
 impress on the world. A sculptor, to be 
 really great, must go to Rome, because it 
 is in Rome that the great works of sculp- 
 tured art are to be found. It is in Rome, 
 furthermore, that the great sculptors work 
 and teach. A lawyer can scarcely achieve 
 distinction while practicing in a backwoods 
 county court, nor can a surgeon remain 
 proficient in his science unless he keep in 
 constant touch with the world of surgery. 
 '^ I must go to the city," cried a woman 
 with an unusual voice. *' Here in the 
 country I can sing, but I cannot study mu- 
 sic." She must, of necessity, go to the 
 city because in the city alone exists the 
 stimulus and the example which are neces- 
 sary for the perfection of her art. 
 
 A congenial environment is necessary 
 for* the perfection of any hereditary talent. 
 Lester F. Ward concludes, after an ex- 
 
The Super Race 53 
 
 haustive analysis of self-made men, that 
 such men are the exception. That they 
 exist he must admit, but that their abilities 
 would havq come to a much more complete 
 development in a congenial environment 
 he clearly demonstrates. 
 
 The rigorous persecution of the Middle 
 Ages eliminated any save the most daring 
 thinkers. Men of science, who presumed 
 to assert facts in contradiction of the ac- 
 cepted dogmas of the Church, were ruth- 
 lessly silenced, hence the ages were very 
 dark. The nineteenth century, on the 
 contrary, through its cultivation of science 
 and scientific attainments, has reaped a 
 harvest of scientific achievement unparal- 
 leled in the history of the world. Men 
 to-day enter; scientific pursuits for the same 
 reason that they formerly entered the mili- 
 tary service — because every emphasis is 
 laid on ^scientific endeavor. The nine- 
 teenth century scientist is the logical out- 
 come of the nineteenth century desires for 
 scientific progress. 
 
 The environment shapes the man. Yet, 
 equally, does the man shape the environ- 
 ment. A high standard individual may 
 
54 The Super Race 
 
 be handicapped by social tradition, but, in 
 like manner, progressive social institutions 
 are inconceivable in the absence of high 
 standard men and women. 
 
 The institutions of a society — its 
 homes, schools, government, industry — 
 are created by the past and shaped by the 
 present. Institutions are not subjected to 
 sudden changes, yet one generation, ani- 
 mated by the effort to realize a high ideal, 
 may reshape the social structure. Can 
 one conceive of a paper strewn campus 
 in a college where the spirit is strong? 
 Parisians believe in beauty, hence Paris is 
 beautiful. Social institutions combine 
 the achievements of the past with the 
 ethics of the present. 
 
 ** Let me see where you live and I will 
 tell you what you are,'' is a true saying. 
 The social environment, moldable in each 
 generation, is an accurate index to the 
 ideals and aspirations of the generation in 
 which It exists. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EDUCATION — THE SCIENCE OF INDIVID- 
 UAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 Eugenics provides the hereditary quali- 
 ties of the Super Man; Social Adjustment 
 furnishes the environment in which these 
 qualities are to develop ; there still remains 
 the development of the individual through 
 Education, a word which means, for our 
 purposes, all phases of character shaping 
 from birth-day to death-day. 
 
 The individual has been rediscovered 
 during the past three centuries. He was 
 known in some of the earlier civilizations, 
 but during the Middle Ages the place that 
 had seen him knew him no more. He was 
 submerged an the group and forced to sub- 
 ordinate his interests to the demands of 
 group welfare. The distinctive work of 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has 
 been a reversal of this enforced individual 
 oblivion and the formulation of a demand 
 55 
 
56 The Super Race 
 
 for individual initiative and activity. The 
 individual, pushed forward In politics, in 
 religion, and in commerce has freely as- 
 serted and successfully maintained his right 
 to consideration, until the opportunities of 
 the twentieth century free citizen far ex- 
 ceed those of the convention-bound citizen 
 of the middle ages. The twentieth cen- 
 tury citizen is free because he makes ef- 
 ficient choices. The continuance of his 
 freedom depends upon the continued wis- 
 dom of his choice. 
 
 The chief objective point of modern en- 
 deavor has been individual freedom of 
 choice. The laissez-faire doctrine in com- 
 mercial relations, democracy in politics, 
 the natural philosophy and natural theol- 
 ogy of the eighteenth century are all ex- 
 pressions of a belief in equality. When 
 men are made free to choose, they are 
 placed on a basis of equality, since they 
 have a like opportunity to succeed or fail. 
 The man who chooses rightly wins suc- 
 cess — the man who chooses wrongly fails. 
 
 Thus the freedom to choose is for the 
 average man a right of inestimable value, 
 because it places in his hands the oppor- 
 
The Super Race 57 
 
 tunity to achieve. Rights do not, how- 
 ever, come alone. The freeman is bound 
 in his choices to recognize the law that 
 rights are always accompanied by duties. 
 
 Each right is accompanied by a propor- 
 tionate responsibility — -there is no dinner 
 without its dishwashing. To be sure, you 
 may shift the burden of dishwashing to the 
 maid, and the burden of voting to the 
 " other fellow," but the responsibility is 
 none the less present. Garbage is still 
 garbage, even when thrown into the well, 
 and your responsibilities, shifted to the 
 maid and the other voter, return to plague 
 you in the form of a servant problem and 
 of vicious politics. Men who have a right 
 to choose have also a duty to fulfill, and 
 this right and this duty are inseparable. 
 
 The eighteenth century began the dis- 
 covery of the individual man; the nine- 
 teenth century — at least the latter half of 
 it — was /responsible for the discovery of 
 the individual woman. Even to-day in 
 many civilized lands, the woman is merely 
 an appendage. Men innumerable write in 
 the hotel register '^ John Edwards and 
 Wife," yet if the *truth were told they 
 
58 The Super Race 
 
 should often write '^ Jane Edwards and 
 John Edwards," and perhaps sometimes 
 ** Jane Edwardsi and husband." 
 
 Western civilization, a good unthinking 
 creature, has insisted bravely on the devel- 
 opment of the individual man, while largely 
 overlooking the existence of the individual 
 woman; yet the studies of heredity show 
 very clearly that at least as many qualities 
 are inherited from the female as from the 
 male. Nay, further, since the female is 
 less specialized, the distinctive race quali- 
 ties are inherited from her, rather than 
 from the more specialized male. In short, 
 the Super Man will have a mother as well 
 as a father. 
 
 The fact that the average man has as 
 many female as he had male ancestors is 
 very frequently overlooked. lYet it is a 
 fact that inevitably carries with it the im- 
 putation, that if his ancestors were thus 
 equally apportioned, he must have inher- 
 ited his qualities from both sexes. There- 
 fore, in the production of the Super Man, 
 the qualities of the woman are of equal 
 importance with the qualities of the man. 
 
 The individual is the goal and Educa- 
 
The Super Race 59 
 
 tion the means, since Education is 
 the science of individual development 
 Through Education, we shall enable the 
 individual to live completely. But what 
 is complete life? How shall we compass 
 or define it? 
 
 Two laws are laid down as fundamental 
 in nature — the laws of self preservation 
 and of self perpetuation. With the devel- 
 opment of society, and social relations, the 
 individual must recognize himself, not as 
 an individual only, but likewise as a unit 
 in a social group. Hence, for him, self 
 preservation and self perpetuation neces- 
 sarily Involve group preservation and 
 group perpetuation. His code of life 
 must therefore formulate itself In this 
 wlse^ — ■ 
 
 THE OBJECTS OF 
 ENDEAVOR 
 
 Immediate Ultimate 
 
 iNDiviDUAi Self Expression Super Man 
 
 Eugenics 
 Social Social Adjustment Super Race 
 
 Education 
 
 I 
 
 The Individual, for self preservation, 
 
6o The Super Race 
 
 demands self expression; for self perpetua- 
 tion he demands that the standard of his 
 children be higher than his own. As a 
 member of the social group, he looks to 
 Eugenics, Social Adjustment, and Educa- 
 tion as the immediate means of raising 
 social standards, and the ultimate means 
 of providing a Super Race. 
 
 Such are the abstract ideals — how may 
 they be practically applied? How shall 
 the individual express, through Eugenics, 
 Social Adjustment, and Education his de- 
 sire for the development of a Super Race? 
 
 Do you, sir, enjoy living in the neigh- 
 borhood of vandals and thieves? Well, 
 hardly. One could not be expected to take 
 so frivolous a view of life, therefore you 
 will in self defense take every possible pre- 
 caution to suppress vandalism and thiev- 
 ery? Never, my dear sir, never! You 
 must take every possible precaution to re- 
 duce the spirit of vandalism and of thiev- 
 ery. The acts are in themselves unconse- 
 quential — they are but the product of a 
 diseased mind or an indifferent training. 
 The spirit, here as elsewhere, is all im- 
 portant. 
 
The Super Race 6i 
 
 Are you a scientist? Do you admire 
 Pasteur and Herbert Spencer? You are 
 a ** practical '' man — see what Edison has 
 done for you. As a statesman, you revere 
 Lincoln and Daniel Webster. You can- 
 not, as an artist, overlook the portraits of 
 Rembrandt or the water scenes of Ruys- 
 dael. You must agree with me that these 
 and a thousand others that I might men- 
 tion — men called geniuses by their con- 
 temporaries or their descendants — have 
 contributed untold worth to the society of 
 which they were a part. They chose 
 rightly. They are looked upon, and justly,* 
 as the salt of the earth. You admit the 
 value of geniuses, in civilization, and you 
 would, of course, do anything to Increase 
 their number? Then, let me say to you 
 that the first thing for you to decide is 
 that your own children shall be neither 
 vandals nor thieves. The second thing 
 for you to decide is that they shall, in so 
 far as you are able to determine the mat- 
 ter, possess all of your good qualities, 
 coupled with the good qualities which you 
 lack, supplied by an able mate. In short, 
 you must choose your life partner with a 
 
62 The Super Race 
 
 view to the elimination of anti-social tend- 
 encies, on the one hand, and on the other 
 to the development of the qualities which 
 distinguish the Super Man. 
 
 How obvious is this statement, yet how 
 haphazard has been the production of 
 greatness. Only once in a generation does 
 a man, in his choice of a wife, follow the 
 example of John Newcomb. In a truly 
 scientific spirit he enumerated on paper the 
 qualities which he possessed; placed oppo- 
 site them the qualities in which he was 
 lacking ; and then set out to find the woman 
 who should supply his deficiencies. When 
 he had located his future helpmeet, playing 
 hymn tunes on an organ in a little red 
 school house, and upon further acquaint- 
 ance, had assured himself that she really 
 possessed the needed qualities, he married 
 her, with the determination that their first 
 child should be a great mathematician. 
 Their first child was Simon Newcomb, one 
 of the leading astronomers of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 John Newcomb was a village school mas- 
 ter, and his wife a village maiden, but in 
 their choice they combined two sets o'f 
 
The Super Race 63 
 
 qualities which would inevitably produce 
 a Super Man. John Newcomb was a pi- 
 oneer eugenist. He chose a mate with the 
 thought of the future foremost in his mind. 
 
 Too often, however, the men of parts 
 follow the example of the brilliant pro- 
 fessor who married a *' social butterfly." 
 *^ Why in the world did you do it? " asked 
 an old friend. ** Oh, well," answered the 
 professor, '^ I felt that I had brains enough 
 for both." 
 
 True, professor, but according to the 
 Mendelian law of heredity, those brains 
 of yours will be halved in each of your chil- 
 dren, and quartered in each of your grand- 
 children. Why should not the future be 
 at least as brilliant as your own genera- 
 tion? 
 
 Human marriage is ordinarily a hit or 
 miss affair. Men and women, inspired by 
 the loftiest motives, and animated in most 
 matters by supreme good sense, not infre- 
 quently grope blindly toward matrimony; 
 often marry uncongenially; and finally 
 bring disgrace upon their own heads, and 
 misery upon their families. Stevenson, 
 with such marriages in mind, writes 
 
64 The Super Race 
 
 to the average prospective bridegroom — 
 ** What! you have had one life to man- 
 age, and have failed so strangely, and now 
 can see nothing wiser than to conjoin with 
 it the management of some one else's? Be- 
 cause you have been unfaithful in a very 
 little, you propose yourself to be a ruler 
 over ten cities. You are no longer content 
 to be your own enemy; you must be your 
 wife's also. God made you, but you marry 
 yourself; no one is responsible but you. 
 You have eternally missed your way in life, 
 with consequences that you still deplore, 
 and yet you masterfully seize your wife's 
 hand, and blindfold, drag her after you to 
 ruin. And it is your wife, you observe, 
 whom you select. She, whose happiness 
 you most desire, you choose to be your vic- 
 tim. You would earnestly warn her from 
 a tottering bridge or bad investment. If 
 she were to marry some one else, how you 
 would tremble for her fate ! If she were 
 only your sister and you thought half as 
 much of her, how doubtfully would you en- 
 trust her future to a man no better than 
 yourself! " ^ 
 1 Robert Louis Stevenson^ Virginibus Puerisque, 
 
The Super Race 65 
 
 Here, then, lies the path of eugenic ac- 
 tivity for the individual — cleat, straight, 
 unmistakable. In the first place, he must 
 never transmit to the future any defect. 
 If he has a transmissible defect, he must 
 have no offspring. This seems but reason- 
 able — an obligation to bring no unneces- 
 sary misery into a world where so much 
 already exists. But the individual — free 
 to choose — must go one step further, and 
 in his selection, must seek a mate with the 
 qualities which are complementary to his 
 own. 
 
 Looked at from the standpoint of soci- 
 ety, there is no single choice which com- 
 pares in importance to the choice of a mate ; 
 for on that choice depend the qualities 
 which this generation will transmit to the 
 next, and from which the next generation 
 must create its follower. Furthermore, 
 there is no choice which, in modern society, 
 is more completely individual — more 
 freed from social interference, than the 
 choice of a life mate. The man in choos- 
 ing his life partner, chooses the future. 
 Civilization hangs expectant on his de- 
 cision. The Super Race, dim and indis- 
 
66 The Super Race 
 
 tinct, may be made a living reality by a 
 eugenic choice In the present — a choice 
 for which each man and woman who mar- 
 ries Is In part responsible. With the ad- 
 vance of woman's emancipation, with the 
 Increasing range of her activity, comes an 
 ever Increasing opportunity to exercise 
 such a choice. She, as well as the man, 
 may now assist In the determination of 
 the future. She as well as the man may 
 now be held accountable for the non-ap- 
 pearance of the Super Race. 
 
 Does the burden of Eugenic Choice 
 rest heavily upon the shoulders of the in- 
 dividual? Does he hesitate to assume 
 the responsibility of the future race ? The 
 burden of shaping Social Adjustments Is 
 no less onerous. 
 
 Briefly, then, what changes may the in- 
 dividual make in institutions to develop 
 the qualities of the Super Man? The 
 social Institutions with which the aver- 
 age man comesi Into the most intimate con- 
 tact are : 
 
 1. The Home. 
 
 2. The School. 
 
 3. The Government. 
 
The Super Race 67 
 
 The home as an institution must provide 
 for the Super Man enough food, clothing 
 and shelter to guarantee him a good phy- 
 sique; enough training in cooperation and 
 mutual helpfulness to give him the vision 
 of a Super Race; and a supply of enthusi- 
 asm sufficient to enable him to work with 
 increasing energy for the fulfillment of 
 those things in which'he believes. In order 
 that the home may supply these things, 
 it must have an income sufficient to provide 
 all of the necessaries and some of the com- 
 forts of life. It must further be domi- 
 nated by a spirit of sympathetic democ- 
 racy. 
 
 While the present system of wealth dis- 
 tribution is so grotesquely unscientific that 
 men are forced to rear families on incomes 
 that will not provide the necessaries, to say 
 nothing of the comforts, of life, no true 
 home can be established nor can a Super 
 Race be produced. If the child is an asset 
 to the state, the state should support the 
 child, guaranteeing to it an income suf- 
 ficient to provide for its material welfare. 
 
 Why prate of home virtue? Why dis- 
 course learnedly on the possibilities of a de- 
 
68 The Super Race 
 
 veloped manhood to a father earning nine 
 dollars a week? If you can guarantee 
 such a man an income of three dollars a 
 week for each child, in addition to the nine 
 dollars for his wife and himself, you may 
 well air your views regarding a Super Race ; 
 but until your lowest income is high enough 
 to guarantee the necessaries of life to a 
 family of five; or until the state guarantees 
 an income to each child in its early life, 
 '* You may as well go stand upon the beach 
 and bid the main flood bate his usual 
 height," as to demand that a man, working 
 for starvation wages, provide a home in 
 which Super Men can be reared. 
 
 When income has been provided; when 
 there is food for every mouth, warm cloth- 
 ing for every back, enough fuel for winter, 
 and a few pennies each week for recrea- 
 tion, then indeed you may begin to speak in 
 terms of social improvement Then, and 
 then only, you may tell the father and the 
 mother that upon their efforts during the 
 first seven years of their children's lives 
 depends the attitude which those children 
 will assume when they go out into the 
 world; that the home in which tyranny is 
 
The Super Race 69 
 
 unknown, in which the family rules the 
 family, will produce the noblest citizensi 
 for the noblest state; that the home is still 
 the most fundamental institution in civiliza- 
 tion, the conservator of our ideals, and 
 visions of the better things that are to come 
 in the future — these things you may say, 
 emphasizing the fact, that without a well 
 rounded home-training in youth, even the 
 noblest talents cannot come to their full 
 fruition. 
 
 The school is a specialized form of 
 home. In early days, when life was sim- 
 ple, and specialization was unknown, edu- 
 cation was given almost wholly in the 
 home; but with the growth of specialized 
 tasks, the home could no longer fulfill its 
 function as educator and the school was 
 introduced. Education, whether given in 
 the home or in the school, has as its ob- 
 ject a complete life. The purpose of edu- 
 cation is to enable the pupil to live com- 
 pletely — to be a rounded being, in what- 
 ever station; he may be called upon to fill. 
 
 Would you mold the school to fit the 
 needs of the children? Then, the system 
 of education must be so shaped that chil- 
 
70 The Super Race 
 
 dren are prepared to live their lives com- 
 pletely. They must understand them- 
 selves. *' Know thyself " is a command 
 worthy of their attention. The child's 
 body, in the period of change from child- 
 hood to adulthood, is an organism of the 
 most delicate nature, barely reaching ad- 
 justment under the most auspicious condi- 
 tions, and more than frequently failing 
 signally from a lack of knowledge, or from 
 the absence of sympathetic understanding. 
 The child — - the father of the man — 
 must be taught to appreciate the human 
 machine of which he is given charge. It is 
 in the school, with its corps of specialists, 
 that this work can be most effectively done. 
 Then, one by one, the school may take 
 up and foster the qualities of the Super 
 Man. Physique must come first. It is 
 blatant mockery to speak of educating 
 minds that dwell in ansemic bodies. 
 Every boy and girl has a right to a strong, 
 well knit frame, and the school must teach 
 the best methods of securing it. Mental 
 grasp — the power to see and judge a situ- 
 ation or combination of facts, may also 
 come through the school. In fact, the 
 
The Super Race 71 
 
 school course, as at present organized, 
 aims to secure that and little else. As the 
 science of education advances, the same 
 material which now comprises the entire 
 course will be taught in less time and in 
 wiser ways, so that the child shall be free 
 to learn some of those other things so im- 
 portant to his souFs welfare. Aggressive- 
 ness and concentration are methods rather 
 than ends, and can be made a part of every 
 game, every competition, and every study, 
 so that the child absorbs them as he ab- 
 sorbs the atmosphere, without knowing 
 that they become a part of his being. 
 Whether the school can instill sympathy 
 and inspire vision is a question that the 
 future alone must decide. Both may be 
 given by individual teachers, and both may 
 be possible to the school, though, if the 
 home is doing its work, these things will 
 come more effectively there than through 
 the school. Most or all of the essential 
 qualities of the Super Man can and will 
 come through a well organized arid prop- 
 erly directed educational system. 
 
 The government — providing the ma- 
 chinery of state administration, furnishing 
 
72 The Super Race 
 
 the school, the playground, and the library; 
 affording an opportunity for the exercise of 
 citizenship and the expression of those ad- 
 vancing ideas which must gradually re- 
 mold the social institutions of each age in 
 response to the demands of the new genera- 
 tion — affords one of the most potent 
 forces for the development of the Super 
 Man. 
 
 The school is the big home ; the govern- 
 ment is the big school. The child leaves 
 the home, and enters the school ; leaves the 
 school and enters the state. In the home 
 hd is acted upon; in the school he, himself, 
 begins to act; but in the government he is 
 the sole actor — he is the state. A home 
 must be higher than the children ; the school 
 must be more advanced than the pupils; 
 but the state reflects exactly the character 
 of its citizens. It is in the state that the 
 Super Man, crystallizing his convictions 
 and beliefs into the form of legislative 
 enactments, must prepare the way for the 
 Super Race. 
 
 The Super Race is the produce of hered- 
 ity, of social environment, and of individ- 
 ual development. Heredity supplies the 
 
The Super Race 73 
 
 raw material — the individual human be- 
 ing, while, education and social environ- 
 ment, operating upon this raw stuff, de- 
 ^ termine the course of its development. 
 Steel is not made from bee's wax, nor is 
 the Super Man created out of a defective 
 heredity. In like manner, since those 
 who are in Rome do as the Romans do, 
 the raw material, no matter what its qual- 
 ity, is shaped by its surroundings. The 
 old saying ** as the twig is bent, the tree's 
 inclined," should be modified in this one 
 particular — the force which bends the 
 twig must continue in the tree, else the 
 latter will turn and grow toward the sky. 
 
 The stock of the Super Man will be se- 
 cured by the mating of persons possessing 
 the Super-Race qualities; yet, reared in an 
 unfavorable environment, these qualities 
 cannot produce the highest result. 
 
 Neither biologic nor social forces are 
 alone adequate to develop the Super Race. 
 Physique, mental capacity, aggressiveness, 
 concentration, sympathy and vision are the 
 products of heredity, social environment 
 and training. The system of human 
 mating must be perfected and the status of 
 
74 The Super Race 
 
 social institutions must be raised in order 
 that the individuals produced in each gen- 
 eration may attain an additional increment 
 of the qualities which will, in the end, pro- 
 duce the Super Race. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE AMERICAN OPPORTU.NITY 
 
 Here^ in brief compass, are laid down the 
 general principles upon which a nation must 
 rely for the raising of its standard of hu- 
 man excellence. In general, we are con- 
 vinced that the Super Race is possible. 
 Specifically — and here is the next point 
 — there are more possibilities for the de- 
 velopment of the Super Race in the United 
 States to-day than there have been in any 
 nation of the past; or than there are in any 
 nation of the present. The Super Race 
 is America's distinctive opportunity. 
 
 The factors which may play so signifi- 
 cant a part ini establishing a Super Race in 
 the United States are here set down in an 
 order which permits of sequential treat- 
 ment — » 
 
 1. Natural resources. 
 
 2. The stock of the dominant races. 
 
 3. Leisure. 
 
 75 
 
76 The Super Race 
 
 4. The emancipation of women. 
 
 5. The abandonment of war. 
 
 6. A knowledge of race making. 
 
 7. A knowledge of Social Adjust- 
 
 ment. 
 
 8. A widespread educational ma- 
 
 chinery. 
 
 Natural resources are an indispensable 
 element in] national progress. A congenial 
 climate is a pre-requisite to social develop- 
 ment. No permanently successful civili- 
 zation can be erected on the shores of Hud- 
 son Bay, or in the torrid heat of the Ama- 
 zon Valley. The temperate zones, with 
 their variable climate, and their wide 
 range of vegetable products, seem to pro- 
 vide the foundation for the successful civ- 
 ilizations of the immediate future. No 
 less necessary to civilization are harbors 
 for the maintenance of commerce; and an 
 abundance of minerals, the sinews of indus- 
 try; and most important of all, fertile ag- 
 ricultural land. 
 
 In its possession of these natural re- 
 sources, the United States is unexcelled. 
 Its climate, while generally temperate, 
 varies sufficiently to give an excellent range 
 
The Super Race 77 
 
 of products; harbors and rivers are abun- 
 dant; forests and minerals are scattered 
 everywhere; and the agricultural land, 
 rich and well watered, is as extensive and 
 as potentially productive as any equivalent 
 area in the world. So far as natural re- 
 sources provide a basis for a Super Race, 
 the United States occupies a position of 
 almost unique prominence. 
 
 The stock of the dominant races may or 
 may not be a cant phrase. Notwithstand- 
 ing the effective work done by Ripley in his 
 Races of Europe ^^ an impression still 
 prevails that certain races are, from their 
 racial characteristics, specially fitted to 
 dominate others. Woodruff, in his Ex- 
 pansion of Races,^ takes this view, strongly 
 urging the claim of the northwest- 
 ern European to the distinction of 
 world ruler. Whether race be a matter of 
 supreme or of little concern, in determin- 
 ing the development of a Super Race, the 
 United States possesses an admirable 
 
 iWm. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe. N. Y., D. Ap- 
 pleton & Co., 1899. 
 
 2 C. E. Woodruff, The Expansion of Races, N. Y., 
 Rebman, 1909. 
 
78 The Super Race 
 
 blending of the western European peoples 
 who now occupy the dominant position in 
 the commercial and military affairs of the 
 world. If racial stock be a matter of no 
 importance, it requires no emphasis; if, on 
 the other hand, it be a significant factor in 
 the creation of the Super Race, then the 
 United States holds an enviable position 
 in its racial qualities. 
 
 Thus the raw materials of nation build- 
 ing — the natural resources and the racial 
 qualities, are possessed by the United 
 States in generous abundance. Has our 
 use of them tended toward the develop- 
 ment of the Super Race? 
 
 Leisure is an opportunity for the pursuit 
 of a congenial avocation. It; must be care- 
 fully differentiated from the idleness with 
 which it is so often considered synonymous. 
 Satan still finds mischief for idle hands. 
 The man who idles in leisure time is as 
 likely now as ever in the past to find him- 
 self breaking several of the command- 
 ments. Leisure merely provides an oppor- 
 tunity for free choice. Unwisely used, it 
 leads to individual dissipation and social 
 degeneracy. Wisely employed, it is a 
 
The Super Race 79 
 
 most important means for the promotion 
 of social progress. 
 
 Most of the great things of the world 
 have been done in leisure time. A poet 
 cannot create, nor can a mechanic devise, if 
 ' he is forced during twelve hours each day 
 to struggle for the bare necessities of life. 
 A study of the lives of those who have 
 made notable achievements in art, science, 
 literature, and diplomacy shows that they 
 were free, for the most part, from the 
 bread and butter struggle. They had es- 
 tates, they were the recipients of pensions, 
 but they did not submit to the soul- 
 destroying monotony of repeating the same 
 task endlessly through the long reaches of 
 a twelve hour day. 
 
 Primitive society demands the service 
 of even its immature members. Children 
 are adults before their childhood is well 
 begun. Civilization, recognizing the pos- 
 sibility of self preservation through length- 
 ened youth, has said to the child " Play." 
 
 Long youth means long life. Play time 
 — leisure — for the youth is the bone and 
 sinew of a high standard maturity. Lei- 
 sure in youth for play, leisure in mature 
 
8o The Super Race 
 
 life for reflection and creation — these are 
 two of the most precious gifts of civiliza- 
 tion to social progress. 
 
 The United States has led the nations 
 in providing opportunity for leisure time. 
 Labor saving devices have been brought 
 to a higher perfection there than in any 
 other part of the world. Nowhere are 
 children kept longer from assuming the re- 
 sponsibilities of adult life; in few countries 
 is the workday shorter for adults. 
 
 Probably no other people in the world 
 can supply themselves with the necessaries 
 of life in so short a working time as can 
 the inhabitants of the United States. If 
 every able bodied adult engaged for five 
 hours each day in gainful activity, enough 
 economic goods could be created to provide 
 all the necessaries and many of the com- 
 forts of life. The leisure obtained 
 through American industry, if rightly di- 
 rected, may provide for every child born a 
 thorough education — an ample opportu- 
 nity to express the qualities which are la- 
 tent in him — and a thorough preparation 
 for life. 
 
 The emancipation of women is another 
 
The Super Race 8i 
 
 force which may be directed toward the 
 improvement of race qualities. Women 
 bear the race in their bodies; at least half 
 of the qualities of the offspring are inher- 
 ited from them; as mothers, they educate 
 the children during the first six years of 
 their lives, and then, as school teachers 
 and mothers they play the leading part in 
 education until the children reach the age 
 of twelve or fourteen. The youth of the 
 race is in women's keeping. They shape 
 the child clay. The twig is bent, the tree 
 is inclined by women's hands. 
 
 The emancipation of woman means her 
 individualization. Both in primitive cus- 
 tom arid in early law her individuality is 
 merged in that of the man. *' Wives," 
 wrote Paul, '' be obedient unto your hus- 
 bands, for this is the law." Mohammedan 
 women wear veils that they may not be 
 seen; Chinese women bind their feet that 
 they may not escape; the women of conti- 
 nental Europe spend their lives in minister- 
 ing to the comfort of their liege lords. 
 They are dependent — almost abject. 
 From such a sowing, what must be the 
 reaping? Into the hands of these subject 
 
82 The Super Race 
 
 creatures, men have committed the train- 
 ing of their sons. 
 
 Can a corrupt tree bring forth good 
 fruit? If women are inferior to men, can 
 they be worthy to train their future su- 
 periors — their sons? If they are of a 
 lower mentality than men, how is it that, 
 in the school as well as in the home, men 
 have given into their hands the power to 
 shape the destinies of the race? 
 
 Would you have your sons trained by a 
 free man or by a slave? Do noble civic 
 ideals flow from a citizen of a free com- 
 monwealth, or from the subjects of a des- 
 pot? Only the woman who is a human 
 being, with power and freedom to choose, 
 may teach the son of a free man. Eman- 
 cipation has given to women the power of 
 choice. 
 
 The women of America have been par- 
 tially emancipated. In some states, they 
 may vote, sue for divorce, collect their 
 own wages, hold property, and transact 
 business. Everywhere they are filling the 
 high schools and colleges; participating in 
 industry and entering the professions. 
 American women are independent beings 
 
The Super Race 83 
 
 — distinctive units in a great organic so- 
 ciety. 
 
 In so far as the qualities of the Super 
 Man are developed and perfected by the 
 teachings of women, they will be more 
 effectually rounded by the emancipated 
 woman than by the serf. The mothers of 
 America are prepared to teach their sons 
 and daughters because they have been 
 taught to think the noblest thoughts and 
 do the strongest things. 
 
 The abandonment of war removes one 
 of the most destructive forces of the past, 
 because war has always tended to eliminate 
 the best of every race. In the flower of 
 their manhood, the noblest died on the field 
 of battle — their lives uncompleted; their 
 tasks unfinished — leaving, perhaps, no 
 offspring to bear their qualities in the suc- 
 ceeding generation. Although the law of 
 nature is the survival of the fittest, *' In the 
 red field of human history the natural proc- 
 ess of selection is often reversed." ^ The 
 best perish in war, leaving the less fit to 
 carry forward the affairs of state, and to 
 
 3 D. S. Jordan, The Human Harvest, p. 54. Boston, 
 American Unitarian Association, 1907. 
 
84 The Super Race 
 
 propagate. '* The man who is left holds 
 in his grasp the history of the future," ^ 
 and if, as is frequently the case, he is the 
 one least fitted to survive, the race is con- 
 stantly breeding from the unfit rather than 
 from the fit. Where the human harvest 
 is bad, the nation must perish. So long as 
 war persisted, so long as the best left their 
 bones on the battle field, while the worst 
 left their descendants to man the state, a 
 bad human harvest was inevitable. War 
 ate into the heart of national vitality by 
 destroying the nation's best blood. 
 
 War, however, has practically ceased. 
 The movement for peace, in which the 
 United States, both by precept and prac- 
 tice. Is a leader, stands as one of the signal 
 achievements of the new -century. The 
 abandonment of war has laid a basis for 
 the Super Race by permitting the most fit 
 to live and to hand on their special quali- 
 ties to coming generations. 
 
 In the United States, as elsewhere in the 
 civilized world, the science of race making 
 has recently undergone great development. 
 While the movement began in England, it 
 
 ^Ibid, p. 48. 
 
The Super Race 85 
 
 has spread rapidly, until at the present 
 time its significance is universally recog- 
 nized by scientists. The principles of ar- 
 tificial selection have been applied in the 
 creation of vegetable and animal prodigies ; 
 the knowledge of biologic and selective 
 principles is wide-spread; and the educated 
 men and women of the United States gen- 
 erally understand the potency of these 
 forces. 
 
 Important steps have already been taken 
 to prevent the propagation of the unfit. 
 Born criminals are in some states de- 
 prived of the power of reproduction; in 
 most of the states, the marriage of dis- 
 eased persons is prohibited; here and there 
 attempts have been made to prohibit the 
 marriage of any suffering from a trans- 
 missible defect. On the other hand, men- 
 tally defective persons are being segregated 
 in institutions — guarded against the dan- 
 gers which beset the men and particularly 
 the women of weak mind. During the 
 past two decades great strides have been 
 made in educating the American public to 
 a higher standard of health and efficiency. 
 Though the science of race making, as such. 
 
86 The Super Race 
 
 has not been given a prominent place in 
 public discussion, the principles on which 
 race making is based have formed an im- 
 portant element in public education. The 
 desire to make a Super Race in America 
 is as yet in its infancy, but the ground has 
 been thoroughly prepared, and a founda- 
 tion laid upon which such a super-structure 
 of desire for race making can be speedily 
 and effectively erected. 
 
 Meanwhile, the science of Social Adjust- 
 ment has occupied the most prominent 
 place in American thought. If the Amer- 
 ican people have under-emphasized Euge- 
 nics they have over-emphasized Social Ad- 
 justment. From ocean to ocean, the coun- 
 try has been swept, during the past three 
 decades, by a whirlwind of legislation di- 
 rected toward the adjustment of social in- 
 stitutions to human needs. Trusts, fac- 
 tories, food, railroads, liquor selling and 
 a hundred other subjects have been kept 
 in the foreground of public attention. 
 The American people might almost plead 
 guilty to adjustment madness. 
 
 From the foundation of the earliest col- 
 onies, the basis, in theory at least, was laid 
 
The Super Race 87 
 
 for the development of the individual. 
 The colonists believed in the worth-while- 
 ness of men, they lived in an age of natural 
 philosophy; they were the products of an 
 effort to secure religious and political free- 
 dom; they therefore emphasized the indi- 
 vidual conscience, and the right of the in- 
 dividual to think and act for himself. 
 Each individual was a man, to be so re- 
 garded, and so honored. Their new life 
 was a hard one. Nature presented an as- 
 pect on the rocky, untilled New England 
 coast different from that in the civilized 
 countries of the old world. There was 
 but one way to meet these new conditions 
 — the individual must carve out his own 
 future. 
 
 Throughout the United States, the 
 watchword of the people has been oppor- 
 tunity. Without opportunity, the people 
 perish — hence opportunity must stand 
 waiting for each succeed^ing generation. 
 In the turmoil of commercial life, in the 
 ebb and flow of the immigrant' tide, the re- 
 ality has been frequently lost; yet the ideal 
 of opportunity remains as firmly rooted as 
 ever. 
 
88 The Super Race 
 
 The worth-whileness of men, the social 
 control of the environment, and a free op- 
 portunity for the development of the indi- 
 vidual constitute the basis for social ad- 
 vance in the United States. The ideal is 
 firmly rooted; the possibility of its realiza- 
 tion is an everpresent reality. 
 
 With a boundless wealth of natural re- 
 sources; bulwarked by the stock of the 
 dominant races; with abundant leisure; 
 granting freedom and individuality to 
 women; foregoing war; cognizant of the 
 principles of race making; Social Adjust- 
 ment and of Education, the American na- 
 tion is thrown into the foreground, as the 
 land for the development of the Super 
 Race. The American people have within 
 their grasp the torch of social progress. 
 Can they carry it in the van, lighting the 
 dark caverns of the future ? Can they de- 
 velop a race of men who shall set a stan- 
 dard for the world — men of physical and 
 mental power, efficient, broadly sympa- 
 thetic, actuated by the highest ideals, striv- 
 ing toward a vison of human nobleness? 
 
 The answer rests with this and the suc- 
 ceeding generations. Given ten talents of 
 
The Super Race 89 
 
 opportunity, are we as a nation worthy to 
 be made the rulers over ten cities? Pro- 
 vided with the raw stuff of a Super Race, 
 can we mold it into ** A mightier race than 
 any that has been?" The past worked 
 with things: the present works with men. 
 '' We stand at the verge of a state of cul- 
 ture, which will bd that of the depths, not, 
 as heretofore, of the surface alone; a stage 
 which will not be merely a culture through 
 mankind, but a culture of mankind. For 
 the first time the great fashioners of cul- 
 ture will be able to work in marble instead 
 of, as heretofore, being forced to work in 
 snow." ^ Bulwarked by this pregnant 
 thought, and assured by Ruskin that, 
 '' There is as yet no ascertained limit to 
 the noblesse of person and mind which the 
 human creature may attain," we press for- 
 ward confidently, advocating and practic- 
 ing those measures which will create the 
 energy, mental grasp, efficiency, sympathy 
 and vision of the Super Man and the Super 
 Race. 
 
 5 Ellen Key, Love and Marriage, p. 53. N. Y., Put- 
 nani) 1911.