breed the domestic animals. Unfortunately, it would seem, the suggestion that he might improve his own stock has received little consideration. The term "Eugenics" is hardly understood in America, though better known in England. Here is a vast field for study. I can only suggest that it is doubtful if it can be shown that during all historic time the human race has made any material change via the road of heredity.

Race is another hobgoblin. We all know what a race is, yet no one can tell where one race stops and another begins, physically— that is, legally we often accomplish the impossible. What are race differences, physical or social? What are the effects of race crossings? These are tremendously important questions for us to-day. In many states certain inter-race marriages are prohibited by law. Why? Because of physical or social results? There may be important physical differences between the races. I know not. I only venture to state that no one has yet shown what they are. If this be so, then popular discussion should yield to scientific inquiry.

Race differences aside, the problem of maintaining a sound physical stock confronts us. For a century we have boasted, vaingloriously, of our wonderful progress, of our physical as well as mental superiority. Suddenly we find our faith challenged. AngloSaxon in civilization we may remain, but not in stock. Our ancestors first "fell on their knees and then on the aborigines," and prevailed because of their superiority. Now their descendants claim that the inferior peoples of Europe are destroying them. How can such a paradox be explained? Can it be that the virtues of the old stock were due to the development caused by the outdoor frontier life? It must not be forgotten that the earlier immigrants found their opportunities in the open, while those coming to-day find theirs in the crowded industrial centers. The significance of this is more apparent when we reflect that every study shows that great groups of our people are living and working under improper conditions. In our haste we say that they come here from stocks of low vitality, but is it not possible that the trouble lies in our own social institutions? When it is found that the backward children in our schools are physically sub-normal better methods of instruction alone will not suffice. The serious problems of immigration are then apparently due to social differences rather than to inherited physical differences.

So far we have considered the problem from the side of heredity. Recognizing that there are many unsolved questions, it would seem clear that our first duty is the elimination of the unfit, that they may not become parents. Next comes the attempt to improve the race stock by paying some attention to biological factors underlying matrimony. Personally, I believe we are safe in assuming that the great majority of children in America are born normal and with average possibilities.

Normal growth requires more than mere adaptation to environment. Social progress in large measure consists in controlling the environment in ever-increasing measure. Contagious diseases no longer rank among the properties of the germ cells nor do we charge them to divine Providence. Knowing them, now, to be of bacterial origin, we attack them and conquer them one by one. But progress starts reaction against itself. There are those so affected by the statement that forty million bacteria may exist in a drop of milk that they prefer diseased milk to such knowledge. Prudery prevents the open and frank discussion of those venereal diseases which so vitally affect the human race. Such opposition must not prevail.

It is increasingly evident that the conditions of life and labor of the workers of the world-children, men and women-are of fundamental importance. Better a slow development than one purchased at the expense of the future efficiency of child laborers. Fatal to progress is the continued existence of large groups under conditions causing physical or mental breakdown. Self-evident, you say? Granted, by everyone in theory, but often denied in fact. Vested interests, private profit, selfishness are here the handicaps.

Evident, too, it appears to the student that many old social institutions must be speedily and perhaps radically changed to meet new conditions if continued prosperity is to be ours. Our schools must prepare the ninety-five per cent. for life, not the five per cent. for college, for instance. Here the handicap is conservatism.

In a word, we live and think too much in vicious circles. Men and women live and work under bad conditions. The children are poorly nourished and sadly neglected. Low ideals are inculcated -result, inefficiency, poverty, vice, crime. In another group opposite conditions prevail, opposite results follow. Popular opinion of the successful group says heredity-blood tells; that of the

other says environment, exploitation, lack of opportunity. I know of no better way of contrasting the philosophy of the so-called upper and lower worlds.

To such loose thinking an increasing protest is arising. Unconscious, perhaps, of its full significance, many of those now grappling with social problems are condensing their statement of causes into the one word, "maladjustment." In a word, we create the evil as well as the good. Nature is impersonal. To an increasing degree man determines. The race stock remains practically unchanged. Each generation starts on the same physical level. Are conditions such that physical strength will be conserved or exhausted? Will children become robust men and women or weaklings? Do social institutions provide opportunities or check ambition by some form of privilege?

In America we must face the issue. God cares no more for us than for other nations. The problems of vice, crime, poverty are ours. Only by intelligent study of the situation, only by effective coöperation in remedial and constructive measures can ultimate downfall be averted. As individuals we are helpless.

In my judgment the situation is hopeful. To realize that our problems are chiefly those of environment which we in increasing measure control; to realize that, no matter how bad the environment of this generation, the next is not injured provided that it be given favorable conditions, is surely to have an optimistic view. Shall not our ideal be, then, a sound body as the necessary basis of a sound mind, a healthy, progressive race?

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A SOUND PHYSIQUE

BY DUDLEY ALLEN SARGENT, M. D.,

Director Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Juvenal's dictum of "a sound mind in a sound body" is a brief description of a happy state in this world, but how few of us realize its practical significance. Our bodies as they exist to-day are the results of struggles and conflicts that have gone on through the ages, in which the ability to stand erect and to use the trunk and limbs in lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, striking, walking, running, jumping, swimming, etc., have played a most important part in enabling man to maintain a footing in the world and to compete for existence with other species of the animal kingdom. Yet there is hardly one of these physical activities in which man has not been surpassed by some of the lower animals. Therefore if we would account for man's supremacy among animated creatures we must look for it in the superior development of his brain and the more intelligent use of his hands and fingers.

This fact has become so evident during the past few centuries that nearly all the schools and colleges founded for the education of the young have given much attention to the training of the mind and paid little attention to the training of the body. It is only within a very few years that technical schools for training in the manual arts have come into existence, and there is no school or college that I know of where the education of the body as such is made an essential part of the curriculum. To sustain this theory as to the superiority of the mind over the body the young are frequently told of the great work that has been done by Pascal, Darwin, Spencer, Marcus Aurelius, William Wilberforce, Robert Louis Stevenson and others, though they all had inferior physiques, as contrasted with the mental and moral efforts of the world's champion oarsmen, matadors, pugilists and athletes with their splendid bodies.

These exceptional cases only serve to illustrate the extent to which nature will go in her variations from the normal when special development for any purpose is required. Danger lies in the

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direction of the extremes, and unsoundness, disease and extermination are the inevitable results of too great a departure from the mean. In mental and physical development nature always tends toward the normal. In refusing to perpetuate the extremes she keeps down the number of freaks and anomalies. In seeking for man's success in competing with rivals and contending with the forces of nature we have not been sufficiently mindful of what he owes to the division of labor and the ability to coöperate with others. This is now becoming very apparent in the building of a community or nation—it is equally apparent in the building of a sound physique.

One of the first difficulties encountered in trying to develop the muscles of any particular part of the body is that a limit in size and power in these muscles is soon reached. If these muscles are on the calf of the leg, for instance, and one is desirous of making them larger and stronger, it is often found necessary to develop the muscles in other parts of the body before the calf muscles will increase beyond their first limitation. Finally a stage of development is soon reached in each individual beyond which no amount of further use or practice will carry it. This was for some time a paradox-now the same law is known to apply to all the other organs and tissues of the body. Larger muscles in a limb would not only call for larger bones, tendons and connective tissues, but for larger blood vessels, a better developed heart, lungs, nervous system, etc.

The interdependence of one part of the body upon another has been brought about largely through a differentiation of the tissues and organs. In the lowest forms of animal life, as in the amoeba, for instance, the little animal feels, moves, breathes, catches and digests food, although it consists of but one cell. The higher animals perform their functions by means of different cells set apart in special organs. Thus we have bony tissue, cartilaginous tissue, muscular tissue, respiratory tissue, nerve tissue, etc., each having special duties to perform. The physiological division of labor among the higher animals has resulted in the better performance of the specific functions of the various organs and tissues of the body, and consequently in the development of the highest species as represented by man. The development of the higher animals has been greatly favored by the establishment of the heart, lungs, blood