620. [boxed text] The Science of Eugenics The Improvement of the Human Race as Applied to the Responsibility of Bringing Children in the World - Weeding out Degeneracy - Efficiency of Marriage - Physical and Mental Attributes Requisite - Heredity from Parents and Remote Ancestry, Selection, Elimination and Environment - Infancy to Maturity the Critical Period. [end boxed text] Part I. Chapter I. The Science of Eugenics We are at a critical period in the history of civilization. Signs of weakness, degeneracy, increase of vice and crime, inadequacy of power to perform physical and social duties abound on every hand. We can not return to the ancient, or Spartan method of weeding out incompetents by extinction, but the proper breeding of men may be regulated and directed with as much success and profit as that of plants and animals. The tendency of plants, animals, and man, as the highest in rank in the animal kingdom, if left to themselves is backward to an original uncultivated type. This is usually called "degeneracy" for want of a better name. It is the beginning, or "scrub" stock which it has taken so many pains to raise to perfection by arduous and careful cultivation, in breeding and elimination. Who would suspect that the luscious tomato of our markets sprang from the deadly nightshade, and if left to 1