EUGENICS 233 



that the human race contains so many defectives. Galton ^ said, "Our hu- 

 man stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than any 

 other species of animals, whether wild or domestic." 



Unquestionably this greater imperfection of modern man is the result 

 of nullifying the law of natural selection, so far as that is possible, and of 

 failing to replace it by intelligent human selection. Throughout the course 

 of past evolution, the perfecting principle by means of which animals and 

 plants have been prevented from deterioration, and have been adapted to 

 changing environments, has been the continual elimination of the less fit 

 and the perpetuation of the more fit, that is, the Darwinian principle of 

 natural selection. But by means of his intelligence and inventiveness, mod- 

 ern man has often succeeded in preventing the elimination of the unfit, 

 and by the most extraordinary efforts has preserved the lives of the dis- 

 eased, defective, delinquent, and insane, and has permitted them to breed 

 as freely as they can, with the result that, whenever any of these defects 

 are hereditary, they are passed on to future generations. Thus arise fam- 

 ilies and stocks characterized by hereditary feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, 

 dementia, deaf-mutism, some types of blindness, haemophiha, muscular 

 atrophy, and numerous other defects of practically every organ-system of 

 the body. 



To eliminate such defective stocks by their ruthless destruction, as 

 occurs in nature and as was practiced in ancient Sparta, would violate our 

 social sentiments of mercy, compassion, and charity. But the preservation 

 of the hves of the unfit does not necessarily require that they should be 

 permitted to leave offspring and thus to perpetuate hereditary defects. 

 It is right and proper that society should care for those of unfortunate 

 inheritance and thus set aside the hard rule of the elimination of the unfit, 

 but it should replace the ruthless process of natural selection by the hu- 

 mane method of intelligent human selection of those who are permitted 

 to procreate their kind. This is the program of eugenics, and although we 

 hear less about this now than we did a few years ago, there is much evi- 

 dence that it is making progress, not merely in legislation providing for the 

 segregation or sterilization of defectives, but much more in the general 

 and serious concern of prospective parents that their children shall be 

 "well born." The increasing burden of caring for defectives will surely 

 lead to increasing efforts to protect society from this burden, and to more 

 rational customs of preventing the propagation of hereditary defects, and 

 thus to more scientific methods of population control. 



This is a program which is already in force in many enlightened socie^ 

 ties. Persons showing the most serious hereditary defects are in many states 

 prevented from passing these on to offspring by segregation of the sexes 

 in public institutions, or more rarely by sterilization. But those enthusiasts 

 who think that a new and better race can be produced in this way do not 



1 Francis Galton, Essays in Eugenics, 1909. 



