suitable material, and became a brisk fire, burning freely by itself, and again because I have had much to do with its progress quite recently.
The word ‘Eugenics’ was coined and used by me in my book Human Faculty, published as long ago as 1883, which has long been out of print; it is, however, soon to be re-published in a cheap form.1 In it I emphasized the essential brotherhood of mankind, heredity being to my mind a very real thing; also the belief that we are born to act, and not to wait for help like able-bodied idlers, whining for doles. Individuals appear to me as finite detachments from an infinite ocean of being, temporarily endowed with executive powers. This is the only answer I can give to myself in reply to the perpetually recurring questions of ‘Why? whence? and whither?’ The immediate ‘whither?’ does not seem wholly dark, as some little information may be gleaned concerning the direction in which Nature, so far as we know of it, is now moving—Namely, towards the evolution of mind, body, and character in increasing energy and co-adaptation.