The story of the eugenics movement in this country affords a striking illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with which innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain acceptance, and of the fact that this rapidity is by no means conclusive proof that their progress will be continuous.  The one thing clear is that there is a large, active, and influential element in the population that is extremely hospitable to such ideas, and manifests a naive, an almost childish, readiness to put them into immediate execution.  Since, in the nature of things, this element is lively and active—­since, too, what is novel and in motion is more interesting than what is old and at rest—­at first there is almost sure to be produced a deceptive appearance that the new thing is sweeping everything before it.  Just now there is evidently a lull in the onward march of legislative eugenics.  This is sufficient proof of the conservatism of the people as a whole; we may be quite sure that anything beyond a very restricted application of eugenical notions will take a long time to get itself established in our laws or even in our customs.  Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that even the more extreme forms of eugenical doctrine are not forces to be reckoned with as affecting practical possibilities of a not distant future.  Though no results may appear on the surface, the leaven is working.  It is consonant with tendencies which in so many directions are becoming more and more dominant.  So long as those tendencies continue in anything like their present strength, there can be little doubt that the idea of control in the direction of eugenics, like that of the regulation of human life in other fundamental respects, will continue to make headway, and may at any time become one of the central issues of the day.

To adduce prohibition as an illustration of this same character in the thought and the tendencies of our immediate time may seem like forcing the point.  It is true, it may be said, that there has been within the past few years a rapid spread of prohibition in almost every part of the country; but the thing itself is sixty years old, has had its periods of advance and recession, and is now, in the fullness of time, reaping the fruits of two generations of agitation, investigation, and education.  But to say this is to overlook the distinctive feature of the present situation regarding prohibition in the United States.  A Constitutional amendment providing for the complete prohibition of the sale of liquor throughout the Union is pending in Congress.  A year ago—­probably six months ago—­there was hardly a human being in the United States, other than those in the councils of the Anti-saloon League, who had so much as thought of national prohibition as a question of present-day practical politics.  Suddenly it is announced that there is a distinct possibility of a prohibition amendment being passed by Congress in the near future; and one of the foremost representatives