friends in return for all their spiritual fortification and nourishment, the defense would have to be, that we give back to them in ample measure what they give to us. If we are their friends, we are stimulating them as they are stimulating us. They will find that they talk with unusual brilliancy when they are with us. And we may find that we have, perhaps, merely listened to them. Yet through that curious bond of sympathy which has made us friends, we have done as much for them as if we had exerted ourselves in the most active way. The only duty of friendship is that we and our friends should live at our highest and best when together. Having achieved that, we have fulfilled the law.

A good friendship, strange to say, has little place for mutual consolations and ministrations. Friendship breathes a more rugged air. In sorrow the silent pressure of the hand speaks the emotions, and lesser griefs and misfortunes are ignored or glossed over. The fatal facility of women's friendships, their copious outpourings of grief to each other, their sharing of wounds and sufferings, their half-pleased interest in misfortune, all this seems of a lesser order than the robust friendships of men, who console each other in a much more subtle, even intuitive way, - by a constant pervading sympathy which is felt rather than expressed. For the true atmosphere of friendship is a sunny one. Griefs and disappointments do not thrive in its clear, healthy light. When they do appear, they take on a new color. The silver lining appears, and we see even our own personal mistakes and chagrins as whimsical adventures. It is almost impossible seriously to believe in one's bad luck or failures or incapacity while one is talking with a friend. One achieves a sort of transfiguration of personality in those moments. In the midst of the

high and genial flow of intimate talk, a pang may seize one at the thought of the next day's drudgery, when life will be lived alone again; but nothing can dispel the ease and fullness with which it is being lived at the moment. It is, indeed, a heavy care that will not dissolve into misty air at the magic touch of a friend's voice.

Fine as friendship is, there is nothing irrevocable about it. The bonds of friendship are not iron bonds, proof against the strongest of strains and the heaviest of assaults. A man by becoming your friend has not committed himself to all the demands which you may be pleased to make upon him. Foolish people like to test the bonds of their friendships, pulling upon them to see how much strain they will stand. When they snap, it is as if friendship itself had been proved unworthy. But the truth is that good friendships are fragile things and require as much care in handling as any other fragile and precious things. For friendship is an adventure and a romance, and in adventures it is the unexpected that happens. It is the zest of peril that makes the excitement of friendship. All that is unpleasant and unfavorable is foreign to its atmosphere; there is no place in friendship for harsh criticism or fault-finding. We will 'take less' from a friend than we will from one who is indifferent to us.

Good friendship is lived on a warm, impetuous plane; the long-suffering kind of friendship is a feeble and, at best, a half-hearted affair. It is friendship in the valley and not on the breezy heights. For the secret of friendship is a mutual admiration, and it is the realization or suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other that swiftly breaks the charm. Now this admiration must have in it no taint of adulation, which will wreck a friendship as soon as suspicion will.

But it must consist of the conviction, subtly expressed in every tone of the voice, that each has found in the other friend a rare spirit, compounded of light and intelligence and charm. And there must be no open expression of this feeling, but only the silent flattery, soft, and almost imperceptible.

And in the best of friendships this feeling is equal on both sides. Too great a superiority in our friend disturbs the balance, and casts a sort of artificial light on the talk and intercourse. We want to believe that we are fairly equal to our friends in power and capacity, and that if they excel us in one trait, we have some counterbalancing quality in another direction. It is the reverse side of this shield that gives point to the diabolical insight of the Frenchman who remarked that we were never heartbroken by the misfortunes of our best friends. If we have had misfortunes, it is not wholly unjust and unfortunate that our friends should suffer too. Only their misfortunes must not be worse than ours. For the equilibrium is then destroyed, and our serious alarm and sympathy aroused. Similarly we rejoice in the good fortune of our friends, always provided that it be not too dazzling or too undeserved.

It is these aspects of friendship, which cannot be sneered away by the reproach of jealousy, that make friendship a precarious and adventurous thing. But it is precious in proportion to its precariousness, and its littlenesses are but the symptoms of how much

friends care, and how sensitive they are to all the secret bonds and influences that unite them.

Since our friends have all become woven into our very selves, to part from friends is to lose, in a measure, one's self. He is a brave and hardy soul who can retain his personality after his friends are gone. And since each friend is the key which unlocks an aspect of one's own personality, to lose a friend is to cut away a part of one's self. I may make another friend to replace the loss, but the unique quality of the first friend can never be brought back. He leaves a wound which heals only gradually. To have him go away is as bad as having him pass to another world. The letter is so miserable a travesty on the personal presence, a thin ghost of the thought of the once-present friend. It is as satisfactory as a whiff of stale tobacco smoke to the lover of smoking.

Those persons and things, then, that inspire us to do our best, that make us live at our best, when we are in their presence, that call forth from us our latent and unsuspected personality, that nourish and support that personality, those are our friends. The reflection of their glow makes bright the darker and quieter hours when they are not with us. They are a true part of our widest self; we should hardly have a self without them. Their world is one where chagrin and failure do not enter. Like the sun-dial, they only mark the shining hours.'

THE dream of a perfect race in a perfect world is both Greek and Hebrew. It has furnished material for philosophy, beauty for poets, and best of all-noble visions for the prophets of the race. Plato, in the Republic, proposed to make a better race, founded upon a new organization of society. The Book of Deuteronomy was written with the same end in view, but, noblest of them all, Isaiah painted pictures of a better time, the finest message of faith and hope this weary world has ever heard.

The Republic was a new exhibition of Socratic irony, and was probably never meant to be taken seriously; but the victory of righteousness and faith was the only real thing in all the world to the old prophet. Many interpretations have followed these ancient teachings, and from the island of Utopia to the Anatomy of Melancholy, through a widely extended company of lesser rank than More and Burton, the subject has continued its fascination. It has remained for our time to make a definite effort to take the dream of the nations, rob it of its poetry and its hope, and interpret it in terms of biology. The modern movement declares that it is quite worth while to produce a better man, and this is to be done by making him an animal of a finer breed. See, the new teachers say, what Mendel did with sweet peas, and from his observations learn also the laws of human growth. What wonders have been accomplished with pigs and cattle; try the same methods, have patience, and

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you will produce a race of saints and heroes. The boldness of the programme is equaled only by the naïve faith, which has a certain charm.

It is only fair to add that no movement of recent times has spread so rapidly, has been so prolific in suggestion, so daring in social proposals.

It was in 1904 that Francis Galton introduced to the notice of the London Sociological Society the word 'Eugenics,' in an arresting address proposing a study of race-conditions, an effort for better control of racial tendencies, and expressing the hope that ‘it might be introduced into the national conscience like a new religion.' Later he furnished a definition of what is called 'National Eugenics': 'The study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.'

Numbers of disciples were won to the leader, and students of Eugenics were soon found, not only in England, but in all the principal countries of the world. The caution of the master has not always been imitated by his followers, and the impression of the movement upon the public is that it contains a belief that the perfect race may be obtained upon rather easy terms. All the defects of personality are found in the germ-plasm, and society has only to select and kill off the unfit for a single generation and the world will be happy ever after. The programme does not promise that we shall be rid of the danger of accidents and some few

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recurrent evils, but these need cause no great concern. See what wonders have been accomplished in the poultry yard! Let society control marriage and birth, and though the process may be somewhat longer, results will be equally for

tunate.

Students of sociology, I think, are most of them inclined to be skeptical of any easy road to social success. They have learned to look at social facts in a long perspective, and they are ready to remind the biologist that they have little faith in the permanence of rapid revolutions. Most of them also have given up the biological interpretation of society. Man as an animal was existent in the primitive times, but in proportion as his animalism was great, his civilization was small. Conventions, ideas, passions, common purpose and action, and a whole complex of what may be called psychical apparatus, protect the cultivated social group from both the vital and the physical conditions of the savage.

In spite of the caution of the sociologist, the eugenist is with us, and has ways of finding access to the public. It is remarkable that in eight years after the address by Francis Galton there should be held in the City of London the first International Eugenics Congress. A large company of people representing six nations met under the auspices of the University of London, and under the direct management of a committee containing names eminent in politics, education, literature, and religion.

London is the natural home of such congresses, and one or more gatherings occur each year. The management of the Eugenics Congress surpassed all recent efforts to attract public notice. The meeting opened with a great banquet, at which were assembled, besides the members of the congress, men and women representative

of the best there is in England. The principal address was made by the Right Honorable A. J. Balfour. The list of great names, the able presidency of Major Leonard Darwin, and the skill with which the interest of the public press had been aroused, conspired to give the word 'Eugenics' a fresh significance. The management had also provided an unusual number and variety of social entertainments, conspicuous among them being a great reception at the historic residence occupied by Ambassador Reid.

The programme consisted of thirtytwo papers, followed by discussion, and the range of the topics can be discovered between the limits of two American papers, the one on 'The Inheritance of Fecundity,' based upon a study of the domestic fowl, and the other on 'Eugenics and Militarism,' urging the racial danger from military service and a direct racial modification of a sinister character. In such a bewildering variety it could not be expected that all the members of the congress would be of one mind. At the same time the dominant note was very evident, and Major Darwin in his closing address cautioned the congress with respect to future activities. He thought there should be a distinct line drawn between the functions of philanthropy and those of Eugenics; he begged his hearers to be strictly scientific, and to beware of enthusiasms. It is not unfair to say that the victorious creed of the congress, so far as numbers were concerned, gathered about the fortunes of the human germ-plasm. In that lay the promise and potency of all the good and evil among the sons and daughters of men. This dominant school of eugenists may be reminded that they have moved far away from the definition of Francis Galton whom they still love to call master. His definition was sufficiently wide to include the study

of all agencies under social control, and to enlist in the work of making a better world, every rational remedy for physical or mental evils.

The public interest in the new science arises from the frankness of its suggestions. The leaders are not content with the study of the facts for half a century through the united effort of the great nations, but propose immediate legislation for ridding society of the losses and burdens it suffers through the pathological classes. In several American states, legislation and practice have already gone forward for the elimination of the unfit by methods. which many lawyers believe to be unconstitutional and many social workers think do more harm than good. We cannot afford to forget that compassion is a social asset of immense value. Human freedom is not without difficulties and defeats, but it is the only hope of the race, and the statesman will always have the problem of deciding how far paternalism can safely go, and how much direct social service should be accepted from the state.

It is to be doubted whether those most active in the movement are aware of all that it implies, both with respect to the conduct of the individual and the character of social organization. It may be suggested that the study of normal life is likely to furnish the most rational guidance for social structure, and that the pathological classes present special problems which are in effect quite apart from the interests of society as a whole. The danger to the movement is in losing the wise caution and the broad catholicity proposed by Francis Galton himself.

For more than three hundred years the Anglo-Saxon world was under the spell of a certain Frenchman known as John Calvin. He furnished for the world what all men will agree was a difficult, and some men will assert was a

devilish creed. The burden of original sin and total depravity made man tremble lest perchance he fall into the hands of an angry God. It was a gloomy faith, but at any rate it was rooted in righteousness. It bade the sinner fear God and not man, and it nourished some of the most sturdy men and women this world has ever seen. Not without cost have we thrown off the creed, banished hell, and on the whole learned to breathe a little more easily.

The materialistic school of eugenists presents a form of scientific fatalism in the presence of which human character and responsibility alike crumble, and from every point of view so dreary that, in comparison, the blackest form of Calvinism were like a soft day in June. Of course the London society and its disciples in other countries were not the authors of the movement, nor are they now without many allies.

The doctrine of a dominant physical heredity as the interpretation of a human being and the inescapable ruler of his fate owes a great deal to the medical profession. Slowly the physicians have retreated from the old and easy explanation that diseases 'run in families,' as they have gained wider knowledge of what disease is, and precisely in proportion as they have lost faith in the fatality of disease-inheritance, have they become pioneers in a braver battle for human health. The greatest enemy of the race, greater even than its ignorance, has always been its fear. The fight against tuberculosis is only one illustration. We are relieved to find that the worst that can happen to us is to inherit a tendency to some disease on account of the weakness of the whole or a part of the body. A real man can struggle against a weakness, but only a god can fight against fate.

Literature has found in the recurrent note of doom, generation after