=Education as to the principle of selection.=--Further, the hope may be warranted that, though education, as such, will not achieve the ideal of true race-culture, and though it has never hitherto averted the ultimate failure of all civilisations, yet the case may be different to-day, in that our acquired or traditional progress, transmitted by the process of education accumulating from age to age--not in our blood and bone and brain, but mainly in books, whereby the non-transmission of the results of education is circumvented in a sense--has reached the point at which the laws of racial or inherent progress have been revealed to us, as to none of our predecessors.[38] Having the knowledge of these laws it is possible that we may avert our predecessors' fate by putting them into force. If we do not, we must ultimately become “one with Nineveh and Tyre.” Fifty years have now elapsed since the principle of natural selection was demonstrated for all time by the genius of Darwin. We must not be guilty of starting to tell the story of organic evolution and leaving out the point. So long as we supposed that man was created as he is, the idea of racial progress was an absurdity. It is the correct thing now-a-days to decry the possibility of human perfection. This possibility is rightly to be decried if it be assumed that ideal education of the present material or anything like it would realise perfection. We have seen that it would not. It is the principle of selection, in which Darwin has educated us, that must be taught to all mankind, and thus education may indeed become the factor of an effective race-culture. =The power of individual opinion.=--Since ultimately opinion rules the world, it is for us to create sound opinion. That is the purpose of this book. But every individual may be a centre of eugenic opinion, and the time has assuredly come for attempting to realise this ideal, though a thousand years should pass before the facts of heredity are completely ascertained and understood. The main principles are of the simplest character, and can be readily imparted to a child. Especially does the responsibility fall upon parents and those who are in charge of childhood.