unity of the organism is an uncommonly testing touchstone of conduct.

(d) As to the economic value of healthfulness all are agreed. The loss to the output of the community through unnecessary illnesses is enormous, and every hard-working man or woman knows how the pitch of their health affects what they can get through in a day. But the influence of health is qualitative as well as quantitative, as has been proved experimentally in the artist's studio as well as in great productive enterprises.

We must now turn to one of the great scientific steps of the 20th century, the discovery of the ductless glands, such as the thyroid, the supra-renal, and the pituitary. This has changed the whole face of physiology and its applications to medicine. These ductless glands have subtle regulative functions which promote harmony of life by means of potent chemical messengers which are carried by the blood to all the holes and corners of the body. There are hormones that excite and chalones that quiet down. They are swept about like invisible floating keys, finding closed locks which they open and open locks which they proceed to close. They regulate development and growth; they affect sex and maternity; they influence body and mind.

If a child suffer from thyroid deficiency it remains arrested in development both bodily and mental-a cretinoid caricature of humanity. By the use of thyroid extract or even by eating the thyroid gland of some mammal like a sheep, the handicap of natural deficiency can be in some measure removed. This is one of the miracles of modern medicine. Sometimes a promising youth comes to grief as he comes of age, and wilts away, or lingers better dead, all because of some perturbation in the regulatory system. Yet in other cases the sicklied youth is tided over the crisis into strong manhood. This is a medical business, but there is a broad biological consideration to which brief reference must be made in the discussion of health.

It may be taken as established that a change in the normal efficiency of the regulatory glands may change the whole tenor of a life, altering mind and mood, character and conduct, as well as the state of health. The possibility of things going wrong is the tax we have

to pay on our equipment with such a wonderful regulatory system which generally secures that things go right. It is also certain that a notable inborn aberration in the activity of one or other of the regulatory glands may affect the whole development, giving rise not merely to unhealthy giants and dwarfs (to be distinguished from the healthy ones), but to arrests and exaggerations and disturbances of many kinds. Thus has arisen the heresy that the glands determine the personality-a heresy which illustrates the false simplicity of what we venture to call an illegitimate biologism.

In some cases, as we have admitted, the inborn disturbance of the ductless glands is so serious that it cannot be more than alleviated by any treatment. In most cases, however, the diversities of the endocrine glands are within narrow limits, and can be counteracted. They determine in some measure man's moods and temperaments, but to say that they determine the personality is a gross exaggeration. The ductless glands correspond to accelerators and brakes; but there are not less important factors in the inheritance-the nimble brain, the strong heart, the active liver, not to speak of controlling power and good-will. We protest against the fatalism of the theory that all is settled by the inborn balance of the glands. This is only true in extreme pathological cases. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, nor make bricks without straw, yet careful nurture can make much of not too promising hereditary nature. The personality is made as well as born, and it is for a man, who is not content to drift, to adjust himself to the deficiencies and exaggerations of his ductless glands. Beyond a certain limit, he must dree his weird; up to that limit he is master of his fate and captain of his soul. But he must seek after health and pursue it diligently.

How, then, are we to steer amid this sea of troubles ? The first answer, always disappointing to the impatient, is that we must understand the case better before we hurry with our prescriptions. We do not know enough about what is wrong. We need more facts. Secondly, we must be more clear-headed and more unanimous in

regard to what we want. We want progress, of course, but what is progress? It is easy to say that a particular

change, such as more light, is progressive, but what is progress as a whole? Must we not agree, when we think quietly, that progress is a balanced movement of society as a whole towards fuller embodiment of the supreme values (the good, the beautiful, and the true) in circumstances which increasingly realise the fundamental physical and biological pre-conditions of stability and persistence (namely, wealth and health), and in lives which are increasingly satisfactions in themselves, both individually and socially? This is indeed long-winded, but what we mean is that real progress concerns the big things-the good, the beautiful, and the true, as enrichments of society as a whole, and yet that these cannot be securely attained without a certain amount of wealth, meaning by that, of course, command of natural energies, nor without a much higher degree of positive health. To give one's strength to a particular progressive movement is always worth while, but concerted action is greater, and it depends on a unanimous coveting of the best gifts. Just as the biologist feels sure that stable progress towards the health of the organism must be associated with improved function and environment, so we must recognise that the health of the body is inseparable from the health of the mind, inseparable also from an enthusiasm for the higher values here and now.

Yet it is the way of progressive evolution to work in virtuous circles. Enthusiasm for the good, the beautiful, and the true is sure to make for better health; and this better health will raise the pitch of the higher enthusiasms. Bad health and sub-health, on the other hand, must on the whole tend to shackle aspiration. But what practical proposals may be suggested towards more positive health? There is a true tale of a great statesman who summoned a distinguished man of science and suddenly confronted him with the rottenness of the state of Denmark. What would science suggest should be done to secure an Al society? The man of science had no counsel to offer and went away cursing himself as a fool. What was really wrong was that he was too wise. But suppose one got such an opportunity, what would one answer to the question: What can be done to raise the health-rate of our nation?

In our recommendations we shall not say anything

about sanitation or preventive medicine in its various forms, since these measures are in active operation and have in some cases reaped a deserved reward. Nor shall we say anything about the detailed ways of improving our personal health. Information on this subject is within the reach of all. What, then, is our counsel ?

First, we recommend to the Ministry of Health the discovery and utilisation of itinerant apostles, men and women who are living health-advertisements, whose encouraging presence makes health appear eminently desirable. By their daily walk and conversation, as well as by their doctrine, these apostles would point the way to better health. Some biologists might accompany them as bad examples.

Second, we should start or revive in every town and village a Beautifying Society, with no destructive powers, but with every encouragement to make the bad better and the good best. Its constitution would be Emerson's poem on Art. For a good many years it would be busy with house-hiding devices, for which it would be necessary to plant groves of fig-trees.

Third, we should plead for more conscientious criticism of consumption. That is to say, when we buy something that we are not forced to buy, we should ask ourselves: Did the production of this promote health? This is farreaching. To buy flowers makes for the healthy occupation of gardening. To buy line-caught fish, if one has a chance, rather than trawled fish, makes for the continuance of a fine race of men, the line fishermen, who are dying out rapidly. To buy a picture for a wedding present, rather than cut glass, promotes the well-being of the artists, who are the salt of the earth. Criticism of consumption is much more important than legislation.

Fourth, we should recommend more selection for health. As we all understand, the dilemma of civilisation, as Spencer called it, is that Man has thrown off the yoke of Natural Selection, but has not put in its place any adequate system of rational or social selection. We cannot get past Spencer's words: The law that each creature shall take the benefits and the evils of its own nature has been the law under which life has evolved so far.

Any arrangements which, in a considerable

degree, prevent superiority from profiting by the rewards of superiority, or shield inferiority from the evils it entails-any arrangements which tend to make it as well to be inferior as to be superior, are arrangements diametrically opposed to the progress of organisation and the reaching of a higher life.' Now, we cannot cease trying to save life; and though we shall probably have to do something more to prevent the multiplication of the obviously undesirable, we cannot surgically get rid of our social liabilities, and we do not know enough to warrant us in much nipping of buds. These are difficult and debatable questions, but we can all agree in this to select whenever we can in favour of the healthy. Continually we have to choose between our fellows, as they amongst us. Other things equal, let health tip the balance. In business and in production there is continual selection for efficiency: what we plead for is considering positive health as one of the most reliable of criteria.

Fifth, and that very seriously, we should institute an order of merit for outstanding health. No doubt health brings its own reward, but social recognition should be added. There should be an aristocracy of health. Of course there should be different grades and some differential treatment, for there are some necessary occupations in which the risks of impaired health are great. But, to take an example, there might well be social recognition of a workman who for years is never off work on grounds of health, just as there begins to be for a never-absent school-child. And the most distinguished aristocrats of health would be men and women superbly healthy, not only in themselves, but in their children.

Sixth, the last word, 'children,' leads us to make a plea for practical eugenics-the science and art of breeding well. Wisely, we think, the pioneer society working in this direction has called itself The Eugenics Education Society, for we do not, as yet, know enough to be eugenically bold. But it is not premature to educate ourselves towards breeding well-one of the oldest of ambitions; in fact, it is over-due. What, however, can be called practicable Eugenics? In the first place, though we cannot select our parents, we do to