PROGRESS BY W. DUNCAN MCKIM, M.D., PH.D. "'T is an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature, Hamlet. NEW YOR Each man in whom dissatisfaction is aroused by institutions which HERBERT SPENCER, G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON PREFACE PROFOUNDLY convinced of the inefficiency of the measures which we bring to bear against the weakness and depravity of our race, I venture to plead for the remedy which alone, as I believe, can hold back the advancing tide of disintegration. With the flood of light recently thrown upon the nature of man by the researches of mental pathology and criminology, and with the independence of judgment induced by the methods of modern science, it is a marvel that we halt in indecision before that greatest of all practical problems-how to stem stem the ever-strengthening torrent of defective and criminal humanity. Religion, philanthropy, and the law have in this - shown themselves powerless. If civilization cannot devise more efficient means of self-protection, its progress will continue to be leaden-footed or even, as we may fear, be gradually transformed into retrograde motion. History shows by many examples how, through inadequate self-regulation, mighty nations wane and vanish. The remedy here proposed is in part a very old idea, but so modified and expanded as to differ profoundly from its prototype. Some recent writers have hinted that, in the near future, this old idea |