Why is it that man has not learned to rid himself of this lower fringe of degeneracy as is done in the case of every other species of animal? It is mainly because the superstition of an out-worn theology has so muddled his brains that he has been unable to see that the laws of Nature are as applicable to himself as to all other creatures. He has always fancied himself as occupying a higher plane than that on which Nature has her laboratory. So he has always depended on “divine” laws, not those of “carnal nature,” to plant his feet on higher ground. And we see the result. Notwithstanding his high intellectual and moral faculties, as a race, he is the most defective animal on earth. What is the remedy? If we would solve this pressing problem we must apply the laws of Nature to man in some such manner as they have always applied to the rest of the animal kingdom. The unfit must be prevented from reproducing its kind. How? There are only two methods: Nature’s, by bringing about the death of the unfit prospective parent, and man’s, the sterilization method. But among the better traits of man which have been slowly evolved in his agelong struggle reaching back to an immemorial past is sympathy, mercy. This bars him from using Nature’s method of preventing undesirable offspring; nor can he use the sterilization method except in extreme cases. Born criminals, perverts, and other abnormal misfits who persist in indulging their selfish passions in detriment of the Common Good--for such, comprising perhaps 5 to 10 per cent of the race, sterilization is the quickest and surest preventive. Once the milder type of defectives are made to realize the heinous crime of bringing degenerate children into the world they would in most cases refrain from marriage and procreation. Wise restrictive laws and an awakened public opinion would do the rest. This eugenical system is the only one that promises hope for the salvation of the race. From generation to generation, owing to the fecundity of the less fit and their proneness to “let Nature take her course,” their numbers increase, and so, too, the danger increases of their swamping the fitter. * * * * * From the exposition of natural selection it will be seen that all the laws of organic development--either of individuals, varieties or species--fall under two heads: those of heredity (the harking back to ancestral characters) and those of environment (all outside influences). Variation, which seems so contradictory of the law of “like producing like,” is in reality a result of heredity. Offspring inherit traits, more or less repressive in one or both parents, in different degrees--this is variation.