It would be well once more to emphasise the difference between what is meant by racial preservation and the preservation of political organisation. It would be quite possible for our empire to crumble away from us. It is a political organisation depending upon ties of mutual advantage and sentiment, and likewise upon the tolerance and weakness of other nations. But we may lose our colonies, and be stripped of our prestige, and yet remain, man for man, as fine individually as when we gained them; for bones, muscle and brains are one thing, whilst the political union that binds us together is another. _The Knowledge we possess regarding the Laws of Racial Change._ A knowledge of the individual must be obtained before we can fitly study the facts observable when individual succeeds individual, making the generations to follow each other, and thereby building up the history of a race of men. The facts of individual development, both in the case of man and of the lower animals, have already been minutely studied. We know much of the life-histories of many species, and can say what conditions are favourable and what are inimical to healthy and active individual existence. Much of this information has been turned to practical uses, and preventive medicine has arisen as a noble art, which, by its application, permits of a successful war against disease and even against death itself. We have also learned much of that longer history which traces out the life of a species, generation after generation, and noted those changes for the better or for the worse which occur in the characteristics of groups of the individuals of those species as they succeed each other. We have of late years accumulated in government returns vast quantities of exact statistical information, so that by comparing the facts obtained at one decade with those of another we can observe many racial changes as they take place.