WCP2449

[1]¹

16 Canynge Road, Clifton

8^th Feb. 1892

Dear M^r. Wallace,

Many thanks for the Arena.² You told me that you were going to deal with this question therein. I have much enjoyed reading your article. Your estimate of the value of physical elimination through natural selection is higher than mine — but still not high — I do not think we are here very far apart. We both too, believe in the effects of selective mating as it should be. But I fear that, as things are now and as they are likely to be for some generations to come, this will not be operative [2] on a very large scale. You deny the inheritance of acquired faculty — I have left the matter as unproven and built nothing on its possible effects. So I do not think we are very far apart.

In my Psychogenesis paper² I did not draw out the practical implications at length — leaving that for a future paper. I may send such a paper to the editor of the Arena.

In brief I should say — granted that natural selection has no good effect; that selective mating is at present a hope and an aspiration; that uses inheritance is disproved — Still there is no cause to despair. Human progress is still possible. The growth of [3] the individual minds of our masses is minimized & stunted by their being moulded to a low & degraded environment. Raise the environment of ideas and ideals and you will improve the individual character by giving every opportunity for the development of the better qualities and by starving the lower qualities in the early stages of the (individual) development (e.g. street arabs taken to the colonies. Arena p. 156). We must mainly rely on the plasticity of the individual, especially the young individual.

The social ideal tends more and more to constitute ^leaven the natural environment; and that environment is improving by the elimination of the incongruous. Half the incongruities of our social system are permitted only through sheer ignorance. In [4] the light of education (intellectual and moral) will melt away like fogs in the suns [sic] rays. Perceived incongruity is eliminated.

Social progress is to be effected by the improvement of the social environment of ideas and ideals through the elimination of the incongruous. The mean level of the environment not the mean level of native capacity must first be raised. Individual development will be higher in reaction to the higher environment.² There selective mating will be a more & more important factor — and perhaps physicals elimination will be socially brought to bear by in some way preventing the (proved) vicious from contributing to the continuation of the race.

I fear I have put my ideas very baldly.

I hope the bronchitis will quite soon leave you.

With renewed thanks | yours truly | C. Lloyd Morgan³ [signature]