ABSTRACT
It was inevitable that man, the great changer of his environment and the transformer of plants and animals by domestication, the seeker after a better future for self, and the care-taker of the younger generation, should dream of a superior, improved race of human beings. With the coming of the age of scientific culture, this dream took the form in the mind of Galton of an ideal, and an inquiry into the means that might be used to accomplish it. Since his time, there has been a growing interest in this problem—which is now associated with the name “ eugenics ”. This science is primarily concerned, not with the improvement that may be made in individuals after birth, but with securing the birth of better types of the human species. Galton considered heredity as the chief direct means to be used in producing a better race.
