EUGENICS 235 



from the best stock. So far as the human species is concerned this is a 

 counsel of perfection, but at least a gain would be registered if the fashion 

 could be established in society that leaders in thought and action would 

 be expected to have large families, and that, when they do not, it would 

 be generally recognized that they carry some secret hereditary defect. 

 That such a social consciousness or fashion can be established is shown in 

 many countries of the East, where the continuance of the family is held to 

 be the highest social and even religious obligation, but where too little 

 attention is paid to hereditary quality. 



A radical system of both negative and positive eugenics was introduced 

 by the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930's. It was based on the best 

 technique of animal breeders and with little regard to social traditions or 

 moral considerations. In so far as it provided for the legal sterilization of 

 the most defective human beings it was not unlike methods proposed, but 

 rarely enforced, in other countries, but in the field of positive eugenics 

 it showed all the faults and dangers of prejudice, intolerance and ignorance 

 that might be expected in a dictatorship. There is no reason to think that 

 the ideals of such dictators, as to what constitutes the best human types, 

 are progressive, wise, or just. There are too many unknown factors as to 

 what may be needed in the near or distant future, even if their ideals were 

 the very highest possible at present. Furthermore good and bad hereditary 

 traits are so mixed in all men and the possible permutations of these in 

 offspring are so numerous that their transmission is wholly incalculable. 

 Add to this the well-known fact that slight and incalculable changes in 

 environment and training have profound influences on development, and 

 we see that no one is wise enough to foretell what the physical, intellectual, 

 or social worth of his own children may be. Who would have been able 

 to predict from their hereditary antecedents and their early environment 

 and training the development of such men of genius as Beethoven, Schu- 

 bert, Keats, Faraday, Franklin, Lincoln? And when we add to all these 

 impossibilities of predicting who will be the fittest to inherit the earth, 

 the prejudices of family and class, or race pride and arrogance among 

 those who would attempt to control the breeding of men, we may be 

 thankful that nature has so successfully concealed her methods of pro- 

 ducing genius. 



Long ago Darwin ^ expressed to Galton his doubts as to the feasibility 

 of any satisfactory method of selecting the best human stocks, and Huxley * 

 pointed out the difficulties and dangers of permitting any individual or 

 class of individuals to decide which human families are the most fit. He 

 wrote: 



8 Charles Darwin, More Letters, Vol. "2," p. 43. Appleton, New York, 1903. 

 *T. H. Huxley, "Evolution and Ethics, Prolegomena." Collected Essays, Vol. 9, 

 p. 39, Appleton and Co., New York, 1898. 



