Were there, indeed, no other means of improving the race and eliminating its at present inherent faults, it might be different, and, perhaps, one could hardly say that society might not take upon itself the responsibility of the actual outrooting of these faults by drastic measures; but other ways are open to it. At present society claims the right to exterminate the murderer, and a few decades back the life of the thief was also taken. But while these lives were taken by a custom which is the survival of retribution, and in which the State takes the place of the injured person or family, there is a growing feeling that such a motive is not of the best or highest, and that the only excuse for the disposal of the life or person of the individual is that of the seeking of the general well-being of the State. When we consider the enormous sacrifice in modern times of what were at one period thought to be personal rights (such as the right of every man to ill-treat and neglect his wife or children, or to live in whatever insanitary house or room he pleases, or to work as long as he wishes, etc. etc.), we can hardly draw, even in imagination, a line beyond which the State may not, at some future time, see its way to make claim upon the individual. It is, however, very improbable that the advanced politicians of any century will ever call for a general battue upon the inveterate drunkards or consumptives, nor is there any likelihood of the work of preventive medicine abating for one single instant, even for the sake of the race. The love of the individual is antecedent, both in the history of humanity and in the life history of each individual, to any regard for the race, and the latter is but an extension of the former feeling. While, therefore, there are certain and sure means of improving the race by simple and unheroic measures, no one would for a moment dream of depriving the individual of all that modern medicine and civilisation can do for him. _The Necessity for replacing One Selective Agency by Another._