NATIONAL EUGENICS: MR. BALFOUR ON DECADENCE (1) “If the various checks specified in the two last paragraphs, and perhaps others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, the vicious, and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has too often occurred in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule. It is very difficult to say why one civilised nation rises, becomes more powerful, and spreads more widely, than another; or why the same nation progresses more quickly at one time than at another. We can only say that it depends on an increase in the actual number of the population, on the number of the men endowed with high intellectual and moral faculties, as well as on their standard of excellence. Corporeal structure appears to have little influence, except so far as vigour of body leads to vigour of mind.”--Darwin, _The Descent of Man_, 1871. (2) Referring to “the rates with which the various classes of society (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed to the population at various times, in ancient and modern nations,” Mr. Francis Galton said “there is strong reason for believing that national rise and decline is closely connected with this influence.”--Galton, _Sociological Papers_, 1904, p. 47. (3) “The inexplicable decline and fall of nations following from no apparent external cause receives instant light from the relative fertility of the fitter and unfitter elements combined with what we now know of the laws of inheritance.”[82]--Pearson, 1904. (4) To the question, What were the causes of the fall of Rome? Mr. Balfour replies, “I feel disposed to answer, Decadence.”[83]--Balfour, 1908. The lecture of which the previous chapter is the written form was prepared and delivered before I had an opportunity of seeing Mr. A. J. Balfour's lecture on “Decadence” delivered a few days before. That has since been printed, and is well worthy of our attention. In Mr. Balfour we have a representative political thinker, an experimental statesman and, furthermore, a former President of the British Association, deeply interested in, and favourably disposed towards, scientific enquiry and the scientific method. Further, this lecture has been widely noticed, though all the criticisms I have seen seem to me to miss the point. No apology, then, is necessary for a special discussion of this most suggestive lecture in direct relation with the foregoing theory of its subject.