Some useful discussions took place in the course of the
International Eugenics Congress, which was held under the presidency of Major Leonard Darwin, and came to an end on Tuesday. But perhaps the most interesting event was Mr. Balfour's speech at the inaugural dinner at the Hotel Cecil on Wednesday week. After remarking that the task of the Congress was to draw attention both to the importance and to the difficulty of the subject, Mr. Balfour discussed the meaning of the phrase "the survival of the fittest" and the bearing of natural selection upon the future of the human race. By "fittest" was merely meant "biologically fittest" and not " ethically fittest," and accordingly the business of eugenics was to combat natural selection. "It is all-important to remember," he said, "that we are not going to imitate, that we do not desire to imitate, natural selection, which no doubt produces wonderful things, wonderful organisms, in the way of men, but has also produced very abominable things by precisely the same process." Mr. Balfour added that it was a most shallow view of a most difficult question to suppose that You could get a perfect society by merely considering certain questions as to the ancestry, and health, and physical vigour of the various component members of the society.
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