of nature into channels of human advantage. But those channels belong to the environment.

SPONTANEOUS VARIATION

Darwin recognized the existence of spontaneous variation. In fact, he admitted that it must be called in to explain the first step in natural selection. Without it there would be nothing for natural selection to lay hold of. Enamored of the great principle of natural selection, biologists have fallen under the illusion that it explains everything. But spontaneous variation is a more fundamental principle. It is prior in order, and it is universal in nature. It goes on along with natural selection and in perfect harmony with it. It explains great numbers of facts that natural selection is powerless to explain. This latter can explain the biologically advantageous only, while those changes which are devoid of utility can be explained by spontaneous variation only. I long ago emphasized this fact and illustrated it by striking examples from my own special field. I called it "fortuitous variation," but the phrase was due to the impression under which I then labored that Darwin himself had used it. But it is the same as his "spontaneous variation," simply emphasizing the fact, which so strongly appealed to me, that such variations take place, as it were, by chance, and not because they are useful. In point of fact, as I have repeatedly shown, they are due to that inherent impulse of the whole organic world, which is perpetually pressing in all directions, and striving to lift all life to higher levels, and which really brings about organic evolution.

THE ENVIRONMENT

It turns out, then, that after all the discussion of heredity, and the hopes hung upon the idea of utilizing it in the interest of race improvement, it is a fixed quantity which no human power can change, while the environment, which Galton affected to despise,

* See a brief abstract, all that was ever published, of my paper on "Fortuitous Variation in the Genus Eupatorium," in Nature, London, for July 25, 1889, XI, 310. On account of the importance of the idea, even for sociology, and the completely buried condition of this note, I reproduced the essential part of it in Pure Sociology. See pp. 241-42.

is not only easily modified, but is in reality the only thing that is modified in the process of artificial selection, which is the essential principle of eugenics itself. All the improvement that can be brought about through any of the applications of that art must be the result of nurture, and cannot be due to any change in nature, since nature is incapable of change.

I

There is a sense in which the environment may be regarded as representing opposition. It is the environment in the widest sense that resists the upward pressure of the life-force, and holds all nature down. That force is like an elastic spring coiled up beneath a mass of environmental débris, and needing only to be freed in order to unfold spontaneously and lift the organic world to higher and ever-higher planes. In the human field the mind-force is added to the life-force, and both vital and psychic powers press forward together toward some exalted goal. The environment lies across the path of both and obstructs their rise. The problem everywhere is how to unlock these prison doors and set free the innate forces of nature.

THE ORGANIC ENVIRONMENT

Darwin has taught us that the chief barrier to the advance of any species of plants or animals is its competition with other plants and animals that contest the same ground. And therefore the fiercest opponents of any species are the members of the same species which demand the same elements of subsistence. Hence the chief form of relief in the organic world consists in the thinningout of competitors. Any species of animals or plants left free to propagate at its normal rate would overrun the earth in a short time and leave no room for any other species. Any species that is sufficiently vigorous to resist its organic environment will crowd out all others and monopolize the earth. If nature permitted this there could be no variety, but only one monotonous aspect devoid of interest or beauty. Whatever we may think of the harsh method by which this is prevented, we cannot regret that it is prevented, and that we have a world of variety, interest, and aesthetic attractiveness.

1 See Applied Sociology, pp. 123-28, 233-34.

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

It is not generally realized that in this respect the social environment does not essentially differ from the organic environment. It is true that Malthus taught us this more than a century ago, but we go on deploring the action of this law in the human race, and striving to nullify it by all manner of artificial devices. That rational man has the power through his intelligence to rob this law of its harsh, painful features is beyond question, but whenever this is attempted there is a general outcry against it, and those who attempt it are accused of an unpardonable sin against nature, and usually of a sin against God.

RACE SUICIDE

On April 12, 1901, Dr. Edward A. Ross, in his annual address before the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Philadelphia, speaking of the displacement of the American by the foreign population in this country, uttered these words:

There

For a case like this I can find no words so apt as “race suicide." is no bloodshed, no violence, no assault of the race that waxes upon the race that wanes. The higher race quietly and unmurmuringly eliminates itself rather than endure individually the bitter competition it has failed to ward off by collective action.2

The phrase "race suicide" was immediately taken up and echoed throughout the civilized world. “Race suicide” was loudly and widely condemned, and branded as a mark of decadence. Chief among those to make a public use of it and indulge in its wholesale condemnation was Theodore Roosevelt, who lost no opportunity to weave it into his speeches and warn his audiences against its insidious dangers to mankind. He was credited with the authorship of the phrase, and the press took it up and scattered it broadcast over the world. Books with it as their title have been written, and the literature of foreign countries is now replete with translations of it into all languages.

The use of quotation marks here was probably not intended by Dr. Ross, as the words were not quoted, and were here used for the first time.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, XVIII (July, 1901), 88.

THE FALLING BIRTH-RATE

All this is simply the latest aspect of the general alarm that has come into the world at the manifest decline in the birth-rate of civilized countries. Many see in it the approach of the end of the human race itself, and are filled with all manner of sinister forebodings. In France, where it is most extreme, and where a stationary condition of the population has almost been reached, thorough scientific inquiries into the causes have been instituted by the government, with the general result of establishing the fact that the limitation of families is in the main voluntary and purposeful. There are many elements that must be considered in the complete understanding of the problem, but the great truth stands clearly forth that people are no longer willing to contribute to the population at the rate prescribed by nature.

THE LAW OF POPULATION

Further investigations in all countries have shown that the movement is general, and although the problem is complicated by a large number of special influences, there comes forth from amid it all a great law, which may be called the law of population. It is very distinct from Malthus' "principle of population," and may be stated in this simple form: population is inversely proportional to intelligence.

What is the meaning of this law? It means that man, in proportion to his intelligence, is learning to mitigate the cruel law of the organic environment, which consists, as already stated, in reproducing greatly in excess of the possibility of existence, and then killing off the surplus. By whatever name we may call it, this law has in fact applied to mankind in all the ages past. It still applies to the uncivilized races, and it no less applies to the lower classes of civilized society. These still remain prolific. They furnish the proles, and constitute the proletariat. But nature knows how to keep down population, and they are still the victims of the organic law. And in so far as the population of civilized countries is permitted to increase, it must be from the proletariat. The enlightened classes refuse longer to furnish soldiers to gratify the ambition of military chieftains. They seek comfort and happiness, and have learned how to obtain them. They prefer quality

to quantity, and demand multum non multa. They are accomplishing the same end as nature, viz., numerical uniformity, but they are doing it without destruction and without pain. Their remedial agent is a prophylactic. They have solved the Malthusian problem by the discovery of restraints to population of which Malthus never dreamed.

EUDEMICS1

There are many who look with alarm at the fact that population is being to so great an extent recruited from the base, i.e., from the lower classes. Such apprehensions are due to the almost universal error that those classes are inferior to the middle and higher classes. This is not the place to refute this error, and I have done it elsewhere, but could it be removed, all grounds for alarm would be dispelled. If there are signs of decadence anywhere they are not in the proletariat. They are to be found among the pampered rich and not among the hampered poor. These, though ill bred, are well born; their infusion into the population imparts to it a healthy tone. It constitutes the hope of society.

On a former occasion3 I emphasized this fact in language which I could not now improve, and which, therefore, as a concluding word, I will ask permission to repeat:

The paper of this morning treats the problem to which Galton, Karl Pearson, Ribot, Lombroso, Ferri, and many others have devoted so much

This word, so far as I am aware, has thus far appeared only three times in print, viz., first, in the paper of Professor J. Q. Dealey on "The Teaching of Sociology," read before the American Sociological Society, on December 31, 1909, and published in the American Journal of Sociology for March, 1910, XV, 662, and in the Publications of the society, IV, 182; second, in a review of Professor C. B. Davenport's Eugenics, by Mr. Carol Aronovici, in the American Journal of Sociology for July, 1910, XVI, 122; and, third, in Professor Dealey's recent work, The Family in Its Sociological Aspect, Boston, 1912, p. 128; each time in a footnote only, but also each time credited to Professor H. L. Koopman, Librarian of Brown University. Professor Koopman informs me that he suggested the word to Professor Dealey in conversation, and Professor Dealey admits this to be the origin of it. But the word seems to be needed, derived as it is from the Greek duos, "the people at large," and signifying a science or doctrine of the welfare of the masses. It alliterates well with the other two words, "eugenics" and "euthenics," and yet it has a distinct meaning of its own, greatly expanding the whole field of discussion.

2 See Applied Sociology, pp. 95-110, 129-81.

3 Remarks on a paper by Professor D. Collin Wells on "Social Darwinism," read before the American Sociological Society on December 29, 1906. See the American Journal of Sociology for March, 1907, XII, 709–10, and the Publications of the society, I, 131-32.