BIOLOGY AND HUMAN SOCIETY.
67
whose power to promise and ability to speak are more marked
than their grasp of affairs and strength of purpose. Man now
thinks interest in purity of descent an indication of defective
citizenship. Human Society regards as chimerical the dangers
of non-Eugenic mating: Prejudice, for the moment, treats the
warnings of Biology as unsocial.
In one respect Man differs from the useful organisms he
exploits, or enslaves, or domesticates, and resembles some of
those regarded by Human Society as negligible or noxious. From
the parasites that live at the expense of Man and other organisms,
and from the saprophytes that subsist on the litter left when
Man and other organisms die, Man as an animal differs mainly
in sharing the qualities of both. His acceptance of the advice
of Physical Science to turn, some of his industrial waste to
economic account, and his readiness to exploit on behalf of
Human Society natural accumulations of nitrate or peat and
deposits of coal or petroleum, reveal his saprophytic powers: his
treatment of the animals and plants he exploits or enslaves or
domesticates shows his parasitic ones. It is largely because of
his parasitic capacity that Man, himself subject to exploitation
and enslavement by Human Society, nevertheless believes he
is the lord of creation.
The reluctance of Human Society to admit the need for
Eugenic Study in the case of Man as an. animal is not the only
indication that particular generations are apt to care more for
their immediate interests than for their obligations to posterity.
The attitude of Human Society towards the exploitation of
useful animals and plants has on many occasions revealed the
same peculiarity. When the exploitation of natural products
like coal and petroleum, which cannot be renewed, have been
under discussion, Human Society has at times exhibited signs
of uneasiness as regards the legitimate interests of generations
yet to come. When the exploitation of useful animals and
plants capable of perpetuating their kinds is in question, Human
Society too often shows a tendency to assume that supplies must
be inexhaustible. How baseless this assumption may be,
Human Society learned just in time to prevent the extermina-
tion of the beaver and the bison in North America, but learned
too late in the case of the great auk, the dodo, the moa and the
quagga. Happenings of this kind have caused Human Society