If the eugenic action cannot yet strive directly against hereditary transmission of anomalies, it can fight successfully against the causes of degeneration which act during the development of the individual.
Physical and social environment influences these causes, which, on account of their growing complexity, create more and more obstacles to the normal evolution of the individual, while at the same time they force him to acquire greater and more varied aptitudes.
To thwart the prejudicial action of the environment on the development of the individual, the systematic organization of this development seems to be of first importance.
The control of the development of the children, at the different phases of their evolution, is strictly necessary to assure the education of the individual and to check the degeneration of the race.
The control is already established for certain classes of children, and during limited periods of their development. Nurslings, school children, and labourers can already, sometimes compulsorily, be submitted to control.
But the insufficiency of the actual organization is very evident, and the results are, from the eugenic standpoint, unsatisfactory.
In order to be really effective and to contribute to the improvement of the individual and to the betterment of the race, the control of the development should, as far as possible, be exerted over all children, and it should last during the whole period of their evolution. This control should be compulsory, as well as education; it should be exercised by an institution, the frequentation of which, as well as that of school, might be forced upon all children whose development is not submitted to an effective control in their homes. Private initiative should create such institutions everywhere, and thus prepare legislative interference.
These methodically organized eugenic institutions should, in the future, be the development of the administrative institutions, which actually establish the civil state of individuals. They would tend to facilitate the education of individuals and public bodies; at the same time they would assure the strict application of the laws concerning the protection and education of childhood.
They would collect the documents necessary to the scientific knowledge of the facts of heredity, and would supply precise information concerning the effective work of different social institutions on transformation of the race.