It is really one of the great advantages of eugenics that it cannot proceed upon any cut-and-dried scheme, but will have to be guided by the results of experiment and the fruits of experience, each of which will be followed and discussed by an intensely interested public. For the difficulties of eugenics are all difficulties of detail, and intelligent attention to detail may overcome them all. Thus the dysgenical working of civilized society, which has come about unintentionally through the unfortunate convergence of a number of tendencies, may be altered similarly, by changing the incidence of social forces. IX If scientific eugenics can put a stop to the contra-selection incidental to civilization, Man will recover the plasticity and the progressiveness he once possessed, and will be able to evolve further--in whatever direction seems to him best. We need not take alarm at this possibility, for with his superior knowledge he may surely be trusted to make a better job of his evolution than the _Lemur_ and the _Pithecanthropus_, who were our progenitors and managed to evolve into modern man. But the process will necessarily be a slow one, even though a comprehensive scheme of eugenics will be providing simultaneously _two_ sources of improvement, by the elimination of defectives at the bottom of the social scale, and by the increase of ability at the top. As, moreover, time presses, and sheer destruction may overtake us before eugenics have made much difference, it would be highly desirable if some means could be found to accelerate the change of heart required. For this purpose, I am much less inclined to put my trust in the advance of pharmacology than Mr Haldane and Mr Russell.[D] Hitherto new drugs have only meant new vices, sometimes (like cocaine) of so fascinating a character as to distract the whole police force from their proper function of repressing crime. So it seems legitimate to be very sceptical about moral transformation scenes to be wrought by pills and injections.