Many present trends are helping to lay a base for the development of a eugenic form of society. There are trends toward the equalization of educational opportunity, so that hereditary ability wherever found will have a better chance to show itself. There is an increase in social and occupational mobility, so that each individual will more easily find the work for which his particular heredity most fits him. Finally, there is the trend discussed above, the one toward more well-considered mate selection and assortative mating, which will make for the improvement of special types and make possible an increase in selection. These trends provide the framework for eugenic policies which would increase the diversity of human stocks at a constantly higher level of ability, selected only by the pressures of an environment favoring the survival of those whose achievement exceeds that of their immediate neighbors. Such policies envisage a form of unselfconscious selection not unlike the natural selection that took place throughout the long period of man's evolution.

Eugenic policies for improving the hereditary base of intelligence and character must thus take into account the conditions under which men live and work and lead their daily lives, insofar as these conditions affect the survival of different family lines. The aim of eugenic proposals is an increase in the proportion of children born to the individuals who are most successful in their particular environment, and a decrease in the proportion of children born to the least successful in their environment. Eugenics seeks conditions under which no able stocks would be neglected, wherever they may be found, and in which every social, occupational, and educational group would in each succeeding generation have a larger proportion of children with a better than average capacity for success in their particular environment.

Measures for improving the hereditary base of intelligence and character can be made effective on a voluntary basis without arousing in the individual any conscious concern for eugenic results. It is well that this is so. Eugenic goals are most likely to be attained under a name other than eugenics. It is not a good thing for individuals to classify themselves or others by gradations of hereditary superiority. Out of a long experience, the public has an instinctive distrust of any assumption of superiority by any individual, class or race. Such assumptions have long been used to maintain the status quo, and to prevent ability from rising in a static society.

The policies now generally accepted by students of eugenics in the United States are different from those that were proposed in the nineteen-thirties and are still associated in the public mind with the word eugenics. The old proposals had no solid scientific base; the newer eugenic policies are based on recent large-scale studies of population trends in this country and on the recent findings of geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists. Many of the old proposals sprang from emotional bias, with racial or class overtones; they did violence to American ideals and were contrary to existing habits and attitudes. The new eugenic policies do not give offense to the habits and customs established in the long experience of mankind; they are compatible with the highest American ideals; they propose to reinforce trends that are already under way and to reinforce them in ways which the public is wholly willing to accept. Everyone wants children to be wanted children, born to parents who will give them homes where they will have the best and most affectionate care and a fine parental example. Achievement in building a home as well as success in other aspects of life constitutes a eugenic criterion today just as it did during the long period of man's evolution when achievement meant survival. Proposals based on such criteria are the best we can be sure of at present. They are fully acceptable to the public. Every advance of science will modify and enlarge them.

These are not dramatic proposals. It would be hard to make a rallying cry for a great eugenic movement out of ideas most of which have long been accepted for purely environmental reasons. Yet these simple and generally unobjectionable proposals, now directed to a eugenic purpose, would, if properly carried out, not only increase the proportion of children brought up in a better-than-average home environment, but would at the same time raise the average hereditary potential of each succeeding generation. Every occupational group, every social group, and every educational group would be affected and improved, and a greater variety of improved abilities would be made available for the innumerable various tasks of our complex civilization.

The measures envisaged by the eugenist for raising the genetic level are also measures envisaged by the environmentalist for raising the level of the environment in which children are reared. It makes no difference which is the more important, both are taken into account. Each improvement in genetic capacity enables the individual to take better advantage of the improved environment, and the average of developed and measurable intelligence and character is raised accordingly in each generation. Change in the average is accompanied by an even greater change at the extremes. There would be a much increased proportion of people at the highest levels of intelligence and character, and a much diminished proportion of people at the lowest levels of intelligence and character. No other improvement in human society could so greatly affect the future of man.