Civilisation replaces these modes of selection, which make for improvement of the racial qualities of peoples, by a number of modes of social selection, nearly all of which must have been, so far as we can see, negative or reversed selections—that is, selections making for deterioration of the mental qualities of the civilised peoples. In place of natural selection, group selection, and sexual selection, we have had at work, within each people in increasing degrees, various forms of social selection—military selection, selection by the towns, selection by the church, political selection with its exiles and its colonial system, and lastly economic selection, which has become exceedingly influential in recent years among ourselves. And all these, so far as can be seen, have operated mainly, among some peoples and in some ages very powerfully, to diminish the fertility of the best elements of the population and so to produce actual retrogression of the average intellectual capacity of peoples, and especially to deprive them of eugenic stocks, the stocks which were most fertile in individuals of exceptional capacity on whom the progress of civilisation and the relative power of nations chiefly depend. M. de Lapouge’s investigations of the matter have led him to a very melancholy conclusion. He attaches especial importance to urban selection, as he calls it, in weeding out the best stocks. He writes—“There is no more agonising question than that of the exhaustion of our intellectual reserves by the influence of city-life. The public and our statesmen do not suspect it. But nevertheless it is the great danger of modern societies and especially of France. Of all the devastating influences which we have called social selections, selection by the town makes most powerfully for deterioration of peoples. Our towns are destroying all of the intelligent and energetic that have been spared us by the long centuries of disastrous selections. France has lost in the past almost all her dolicho-blond elements, and now are disappearing those of mixed stock and the best of the short-headed type. In all the continent of Europe the hour is at hand when there will remain only the inert and used up débris of our dead nations, pitiable remnants who will be the prey of unknown conquerors. Thus perished the Hellenic world, thus will perish the whole of our civilisation, if man does not make application of his knowledge of the principles of heredity, that tremendous power which to-day is bringing death and stagnation, but by the control of which science will enable us to secure safety and national vigour[138].”