HEREDITY 289 



not meet with much success. It could be maintained that 

 Darwin owed much of his accomplishment to his education, his 

 surroundings, and his private means, the last permitting him 

 to pursue his life-long studies unhampered by the necessity of 

 earning a living. Likewise it might be truly said that a large 

 part of the misfortunes of the Juke family could be laid to the 

 miserable environment in which they lived. But admitting 

 that environment plays a large part in the achievement of 

 success in life, it must not be forgotten that all the evidence 

 points to the fact that heredity plays a greater part in one's 

 destiny because it fixes limitations. All men are not born equal 

 in a biological sense. A Juke would never make a Darwin. 



Program of Eugenics. — In animal breeding man establishes 

 an arbitrary standard, in the selection of which the animal has 

 no part. In human breeding such a procedure is impossible 

 except to the extent of legally preventing reproduction of the 

 least desirable members of human society. A eugenics program 

 at the present time can have no particular individual in mind 

 as an ideal type for whose attainment human breeding should 

 be controlled and regulated, but it can aim at the general adop- 

 tion of a policy that will gradually eliminate the hereditarily 

 unfit. Practical steps toward this end seem to be: 



1. The promotion of eugenic marriages, i.e., marriages between 

 persons of sound mental and physical stock. 



2. The forbidding of marriages between persons suffering 

 from diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis. 



3. The prevention of reproduction among the mentally and 

 socially unfit. At the present time (1938) some 27 states of the 

 Union legalize the sterilization of social offenders of low men- 

 tality by the performance of simple surgical operations. In the 

 male, vasectomy is performed by removing a small section of each 

 vas deferens, thus preventing the egress of spermatozoa. In the 

 female, by a similar operation known as tubectomy, a small piece 

 of each Fallopian tube (oviduct) is excised, so that eggs cannot 

 reach the uterus or be fertilized. 



The ultimate adoption of a eugenics program rests largely upon 

 education. Ignorance of facts forms the bulwark of resistance 

 to such a program, which on mature consideration proves to be 

 merely an honest attempt to raise the general physical and mental 

 level of society as a whole and with it the individual happiness 

 of its members. 



