times. The National Assembly had just enacted a new civil code, having taken over without modification that of Switzerland, but it would not go into effect until its provisions could be made known to the people and official machinery for its enforcement set up. Registration offices were already established, and in a few weeks the civil marriage would be performed precisely as it is in Europe. Naturally the parties would be free to have a religious ceremony also if they so desired.

In Galib Bey's case, however, the mother did not negotiate for the bride, as was formerly the custom, nor was there the traditional haggling over the man's wedding presents and the bride's dowry. No, Galib Bey had courted Meliah Djemil Hanem, with whom he fell in love at first sight, frankly and openly, after a preliminary period of shyness which he blushingly confessed to me, and had asked her personally for her hand.

Kiasim Pasha thought that young people in Turkey were getting very modern indeed, and that courtships were now just as sentimental as they were in Germany. Getting married was no longer buying a pig in a poke. The new civil code also makes divorce very difficult, just as it is in Europe. In the old times, all that was necessary was for a man to say to his wife, 'We are divorced,' and she had no other re

course but to leave his house. Now the marriage contract provides, among other things, a definite amount of alimony for the wife in case of separation. To-day Turkish women enjoy the same rights as their European sisters. They need no longer live in constant fear of divorce, and be the docile slaves of their husbands.

Galib Bey's marriage was a dry ceremony. When I was returning to Angora, however, I passed a couple of merry wedding parties whose members were in a state of bibulous exhilaration, for Thursday is the usual day for marriage in Turkey. The brides and grooms and the guests were in gayly decorated carriages and motor cars, and were accompanied by horsemen. All the wedding presents and household effects of the new couple were displayed in an open cab, where the public could see them embroidered pillows, kitchen utensils, and even a wardrobe. A friend who was with me remarked: 'That will soon stop. Such exhibitions, and others like them, will no longer be permitted after the new code goes into effect. I mean, particularly, exhibiting these household goods in public. After this only five carriages are to be allowed to a wedding procession, and riding wildly around on horseback and discharging firearms in the public streets as a feu de joie will be prohibited.'

[WE print below some of the more significant paragraphs from the 'Gloomy Dean's' lecture before the Royal College of Physicians at London on November 19. The address provoked wide discussion in Great Britain, and was quoted at length in several other publications.]

THIS is the second time in one year that I have been honored by being appointed to give a lecture to the medical profession and their friends. I have accepted because those who invited me must know my limitations, and will not expect from me what I am obviously incompetent to give. In my Fison lecture at Guy's, a few months ago, I spoke of the philosophy of science, of the relation of philosophy, particularly the philosophy of religion, to science. Though my treatment of the subject was necessarily cursory, I could not give a second address on the same topic, especially as my lecture has been published.

So I have decided to take as my subject to-day one aspect of a branch of science in which I have been keenly interested for many years, ever since, as a near neighbor of Sir Francis Galton in Rutland Gate, I learned from that fine old man to feel some of his own enthusiasm about the possible improvement of the human stock.

For me this has, of course, been a 1 From the Lancet (London medical weekly), November 27

hobby rather than a rigorous study, and I should not dream of supposing that any utterances of mine on these abstruse and difficult studies can have any value as contributions to knowledge. They will deal rather with the borderland between strict science and practical social hygiene. Politics ought to be a branch of social hygiene, though at present social hygiene is hardly even a branch of politics. Salus populi suprema lex, as the proverb says; and we may give salus its commonest meaning of bodily and mental health.

Natural selection, in a humane and highly civilized country like our own, has almost ceased to operate; if we do not provide some rational substitute for it, Nature will punish us for interfering with her methods of social hygiene without providing anything to take their place.

'To understand what has happened, and even what will happen,' said Buffon, 'it is only necessary to examine what is happening.' But when ce qui arrive is what we want to know, that which has happened is our best guide. All science is based on the belief that in natural laws 'there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning.' This does not exclude what Bergson calls 'creative evolution,' Lloyd Morgan 'emergent evolution,' and chemists 'creative synthesis,' though in this process there is an unexplained mystery. Biological progress means increasing complexity of structure and function, increasing specialization and coöperation of parts; and what we call human progress is no more than this. Specialization always means limitation in some directions. We cannot have both wings and arms (until we become angels); if our limbs are good for running, we cannot swim like a fish. Highly differentiated organisms are fit only for certain conditions; when these are changed the organism must perish or return to a less differentiated type. It is only the least differentiated organisms, like the germ cells, which are potentially immortal.

So there are different paths which evolution may take. In our species we may say that there have been three stages - greater complexity of bodily structure, greater intelligence, and greater social organization; and it is broadly true that when a new stage begins the earlier stage becomes less active. If we judge from other living organisms on the earth, stability seems to be the rule, change the exception; though some scientists think that periods of mutation and of stability alternate with each other. It is probable that the four ice ages, divided by long interglacial periods, have had a great deal to do with the evolution of humanity. Perhaps Nature has expended nearly all her ingenuity; there have been no new classes since the appearance of mammals and birds in very early times.

Even social evolution seems to have come to an end with the bees and ants. State socialism can no further go than in these suffragette utopias, governed and run by maiden aunts. These societies are an awful warning; perfect coöperation has sacrificed the individual completely. Fortunately there are physiological limits to specialization; men consisting almost entirely of swelled heads, like H. G. Wells's 'Grand Lunar,' could not live.

Man has been a distinct species for

probably more than a million years, but anything like civilization is a matter of the last ten thousand years or so. This is a very short time for him to adapt himself to revolutionary changes in his habits; we need not wonder that what Metchnikoff calls maladaptations or disharmonies, bodily as well as mental, exist to plague us in our health and conduct. I suppose that pathology is mainly concerned with such disharmonies; it is instructive to observe how very small a part disease plays in the lives of wild animals, which are completely adjusted to their environ

ment.

It is sometimes said that evolution is rapid to start with, when some climatic or other change sets it going, and that it then slows down till it stops. But it seems doubtful whether physical changes are not now going on in our bodily structure as rapidly as ever: only unfortunately they seem to be mainly degenerative, such as the decreasing size of the little toe, increase in the size of the great toe; decrease in the size and strength of the teeth; and probably a gradual lowering of the perfection of the sense-organs. Dentists, I believe, agree that our jaws are becoming too small for our teeth; the sharp and narrow nose of the Northern European may be a new feature, with some value as a protection against respiratory diseases; baldness in middle life is perhaps increasing; and something seems to be happening to that now useless organ, the appendix. I believe additions might be made to this list. As regards the organs of sense, I cannot help thinking that our eyesight has deteriorated rapidly. Very few middleaged men can read a closely written or printed mediæval book without glasses; though the ancient Greeks, a singularly long-lived race, went on reading and writing till extreme old age without mechanical aid.

Any physical changes other than degenerative are inhibited by the use of tools and other inventions. Digestion as well as mastication is made too easy; having clothes and weapons, we need neither fur nor claws. And, as I shall show, nearly all the aptitudes which distinguish the handy man from the simpleton are now becoming superfluous. We may some day have a generation who can neither walk nor write; they will rely on the cycle or car for the first, and on the typewriter for the second. 'You press the button; we do the rest.' Nature will say, 'Very well, I will leave you just enough intelligence to press the button.'

It seems very doubtful whether human intelligence has advanced in the last five thousand years. Look at the Egyptian of three thousand years before Christ. 'Already,' says Austin Freeman, 'he is living in large and well-ordered communities with all the machinery of a complex civilization. He has an established government, a system of jurisprudence, a complex religion, and a wealth of myths and traditions. Though unacquainted with iron, he is an expert metallurgist in the less refractory metals, with the aid of which he works - and works magnificently - granite, porphyry, syenite, and other of the hardest stones. Not only can he smelt metal; he can work it in every way - draw it into wire, beat it into sheets, cast it, emboss, chase, engrave, and even inlay and enamel it. He has invented the lathe and the potter's wheel, and can make, glaze, and enamel beautiful earthenware. He is an expert woodworker, joiner, and carver. He is an admirable sculptor, draftsman, and painter. He has developed a great architectural style, and his stone buildings are not only the greatest in size ever erected, but are of unsurpassed excellence of workmanship. He is a builder of sea

going ships of considerable burthen and is a capable coastwise navigator. He has invented the loom, and produces textiles of fine quality. He has a rich language, and has devised a system of written characters, the handsomest ever produced, with a convenient and practical cursive script. He makes excellent paper, and has an extensive, dignified, and beautiful literature. He has numerous musical instruments, including the harp, lute, viol, drum, sistrum, cithern, dulcimer, flute, recorder, trumpet. He has established something approaching a metal currency; has a number of weapons — sword, spear, bow and arrow, sling, boomerang; and has invented most of the hand tools now in use. He has domesticated the ox, sheep, goat, horse, camel, dog, cat, pig, and various birds, and is an expert agriculturist. He makes furniture of unsurpassed excellence of design and workmanship, and can cut and polish precious stones and set them in beautiful jewelry in short, he is already acquainted with the essentials of all the arts and crafts, and in many of them he is to this day unexcelled if not unequaled.'

I will not go so far as Sir Francis Galton in estimating the comparative intelligence of the ancient Athenian and the modern European; but there can be little doubt that the Greek was our superior. All the great religions, and I think all the great philosophies too, were born in the thousand or twelve hundred years before the death of Mohammed.

Civilization is mainly the result of accumulated knowledge and experience. Each generation stands on the shoulders of the last, and has the chance of climbing higher from that point. Most of our acquisitions are in the custody of a very few persons. Some of them are trade secrets; others can only be mastered by many years of application. This explains how civilizations occasionally die; it is also an argument for a widely diffused education. A great convulsion, like the breach of the dykes which protected the GræcoRoman world from the barbarians of the north and east, may break the tradition, and cause the total loss of the higher arts and sciences. It is well known that at the Renaissance it was necessary to go back to the fragments which had survived from classical antiquity. In medicine, for example, Celsus and Galen were far in advance of the superstitious and ignorant practice of the Dark Ages. It is unlikely, but not inconceivable, that such a disaster may occur again. In Russia the nation has been almost literally decapitated. When that nation recovers a civilized government it will have to go to Germany and other countries for the arts and sciences which have been almost extinguished at home. A world-wide revolution of the same kind, such as might follow another great war, would be the end of our civilization, and the beginning of a new Dark Age which might last for centuries. It might then be found that the present population of the world is less inventive and alert in intelligence than, for example, the Europeans of the Renaissance.

Analogy suggests that, where the weight of sustaining civilization is thrown upon tradition, other faculties, by which man slowly raised himself from savagery, are likely to become partially atrophied. Whether such atrophy can be inherited is, of course, a vexed question among biologists, into which I, as an outsider, shall be wise not to enter. The problem is mainly about the manner of the changes conditioned by environment, for there is no doubt that the whale has lost its hind legs by living in the water. But it cannot be disputed that those qualities

which were once essential to progress have no longer the same survival value under civilizations of the modern type.

Among primitive races, natural selection operates actively. Nomads are obliged to leave diseased and feeble members of the tribe behind on their long marches. Superstitious fear causes deformed children to be destroyed. Sexual selection frequently works for race improvement. The African chief, who monopolizes half the women of the tribe and is the father of his people in the most literal sense, is usually a man of gigantic stature and strength, and of great vigor of character. Among the Chippewa Indians anyone may challenge another to wrestle, and if he wins may carry off his wife as a prize. Savage war tends to an increase of the best stock, since the better fighter kills the worse. On the other hand, among civilized races, natural selection is reduced in some cases, and probably increased in others. In the upper and middle classes marriage is not universal, and, though many of the best men and women unfortunately die childless, there is a certain selection against men who cannot make good as salary-earners, and against women who are not likely to make satisfactory mothers. But meanwhile the State and private charity keep alive multitudes who by their misfortune or fault are lifelong parasites on the community, and who in many cases are suffering from heritable defects. This dysgenic selection affects a much larger number than the slightly eugenic selection among the well-to-do. Civilized war, in contrast to savage war, eliminates the best. Immer der Krieg verschlingt die Besten. This is true, in so far as the unfit are not called to the colors. Such evidence as is available goes to show that considerable injury has been done to the European racial stocks by the Great War. Lastly, in place of the greater fecundity