The gist of the matter is: heredity transmits to environment the ancestral traits or characters, good and bad, of each creature. From these inherited traits environmental laws select and nourish those best fitted to each particular environment, and neglect, repress or destroy the less fit. At the birth of the individual heredity has done its work, for good or ill; then environment receives the legacy bequeathed by its ancestry and completes the job--whether for the individual’s weal or woe depends both upon the quality of the material heredity handed down, and upon the character of the particular environment that works upon the material. As prior to birth heredity is the only factor in producing the individual, the absolute necessity of preventing the reproduction of the unfit, the inferior, becomes apparent; as after birth environment is the only factor, or sum of factors, in his production, the making the best possible environment for every one is the one absolute essential. The individual man, no less than other organisms, is a creature of heredity and environment. This is as true of his intellect and of his moral character as of his body. He is not a thing separate and apart, but a link in the chain of cause and effect. He is orbit-bound as planets are. Every thought of his brain, every desire of his heart, every deed of his hand is a natural and (circumstances considered) unavoidable result of the laws of Nature working in and through him--as surely as every cause produces an effect and that every cause is itself an effect of a prior cause. In cases where opposing forces or influences tend to move the will in different directions it obeys the stronger--follows the path of least resistance. It cannot do otherwise--no more than Newton’s apple could have moved toward the moon. Scientists are generally agreed that none but “inborn” traits, the inherited ones, are transmissible to posterity--though Dr. Krammerer has recently furnished some evidence to the contrary. If the generally accepted view be the true one, then of course “acquired” characters--the “improvements” of environment--die with the individual. Certainly, environment cannot put into the individual what it had no capacity for at birth; it can only develop what is already there. Hence the conclusion: We may, we must, improve the environment for the good of the living generations as they arise; but above all, prevent the reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable benefit of the countless generations that are now waiting their turn in the womb of the future. * * * * * Man is such an egotistical creature--being a near relative of the gods, as he imagined, and being specially created and made lord over the other creatures--that he has always regarded himself as above and beyond Nature and not subject to her laws, or only so far as his body was concerned--that being the one link connecting him with Nature.