this book was originally published in 1927...prescient...
"We are hearing a great deal nowadays, those of us who deal in such speculations, about the threatened collapse of civilization. We are hearing that man, at any rate western man, is outrunning, in the complexity, power and subtlety of his mechanical inventions, his common sense in their use and application. We are hearing too that ability is being sterilized in our democracies, the mediocrity and inferiority are multiplying because it is the nature of democracy to foster these qualities and to penalize the capacities which separate the individual from the herd; and that the ratio of capacity to incapacity in our body politic is thus constantly diminishing the very while our need for more and more intrelligence is constantly increasing, owing to the growing numbers and intricacy of our society. Presently, as it is said, within a very few generations, we shall face a bankruptcy of brains that will cause our food and water supplies to become uncertain, epidemics to sweep our crowded cities, and our whole, vast complicated fabric of life to decompose in such a welter of blood and misery as the world has never seen.
There are many more such forecasts; as for example that the East is "waking up" and falling prey to the same diseases that afflict the West, and that if the East too collapses, there remain no reserves of barbaric but virile manhood to enter the ruins and rebuild the fallen structure. The days of barbarian intrusion upon effete societies are over; and if our present civilization fails, it is all too probable that the race of man will perish from the earth at just that moment when certain of us are looking with most complacency toward a future of auto busses ever more "de-luxer" and neighbors ever more similarly regimented in a distinction lacking image.
Assuming that we have the courage to face the questions and inquire into the facts, we shall certainly find that these "perils" are all too real for comfort. And we shall come to understand the growing demand among the remnants of thinkers in our demcracies, for bigger and better men.
Unfortunately, not only is this demand somewhat vague in definition of the kind of men needed, but it is equally uncertain concerning the means of obtaining them. The most general impression seems to be that by some legerdomain of education we may achieve a solution; the only other proposal is eugenic, and it must surely be admitted that fro a pressing, present necessity this answer to our problems cannot be practicable."
C.Daly King The Butterfly
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