In its form of what we have called _negative_ eugenics, the practice of our principle would assuredly reduce to an incalculable extent the amount of human defect, mental and physical, which each generation now exhibits. This alone, as has been said, would be far more than sufficient to justify us. A world without hereditary disease of mind and body, and its grave social consequences, would alone warrant the hint of Ruskin that posterity may some day look back upon us with “incredulous disdain.” Yet, assuming that this could be accomplished, as it will be accomplished, what more is to be hoped for? Must race-culture cease merely when it has raised the average of the community by reducing to a minimum the proportion of those who are thus grossly defective in mind or body? Such disease apart, are we to be content, must we be content, with the present level of mediocrity in respect of intelligence and temper and moral sentiment? Can we anticipate a London in which the present ratio of musical comedy to great opera will be reversed, in which the works of Mr. George Meredith will sell in hundreds of thousands, whilst some of our popular novelists will have to find other means of earning a living? Can we make for a critical democracy which no political party can fool, and which will choose its best to govern it? Yet more, can we undertake, now or hereafter, to provide every generation with its own Shakespeare and Beethoven and Tintoretto and Newton? What, in a word, is the promise of _positive_ eugenics? It is to this aspect of the question that Mr. Galton has mainly directed himself. Indeed he was led to formulate the principles and ideals of the new science by his study of hereditary genius some four decades ago. Let us now attempt to answer some of these questions. =The production of genius.=--And first as to the production of genius. It is this, perhaps, that has been the main butt of the jesters who pass for philosophers with some of us to-day. It may be said at once that neither Mr. Galton nor any other responsible person has ever asserted that we can produce genius at will. The difficulties in the way of such a project--at present--are almost innumerable. One or two may be cited. In the first place, there is the cardinal--but by no means universal--difficulty that the genius is too commonly so occupied with the development and expansion of his own individuality that he has little time or energy for the purposes of the race. This, of course, is an example of Spencer's great generalisation as to the antagonism or inverse ratio between individuation and genesis.