314 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



undeniable that the profit system leaves little place for children. In 

 general, they are not profitable investments : their cost is excessive, the 

 dividends from them are uncertain, they are likely to depreciate in 

 value, are practically non-transferable, and they do not mature soon 

 enough." 



What should be done ? Direct subsidies to parents have not worked 

 very well in those countries that have tried them. Taxation more 

 steeply graduated in inverse ratio to family size, and the multiplicity 

 of social services rendered directly to children, or to expectant or 

 nursing mothers, seem to provide one answer. 



Eugenics, although based on the science of genetics, is not itself a 

 science, for it must above all concern itself with social values, with the 

 question. Whither mankind? Perhaps general agreement could be 

 reached that freedom from gross physical or mental defects, somid 

 health, high intelligence, general adaptability, integrity of character, 

 and nobility of spirit are the major goals toward which eugenics should 

 aim; perhaps, too, that diversity of nature is better than uniformity 

 of type. But how far ought selective reproduction to interfere with 

 human freedom ? Genetically, as in other respects, "there is so much 

 bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us" that it is 

 hard to assess the worth of the manifest hereditary characteristics of 

 a pei-son; and the numerous hidden genes make it quite impossible. 



Nor can anyone determine to what extent a person's manifest char- 

 acteristics are the product of environment, particularly as to those 

 qualities that are eugenics' major concern — sound health, high intelli- 

 gence, and the like. The Jukes and Kallikaks were horrible examples 

 of degenerate humanity, but what might they have been in a better 

 world? Was their alcoholism, their crime, their vice an inescapable 

 product of their genes ? It seems very doubtful. Only the experiment 

 of putting them from earliest infancy into an optimum environment 

 could possibly yield an answer. 



It will be easier to define the essentials of an optimum environment — 

 not forgetting that it need not be alike for everyone — than to modify 

 gene frequencies by wise selection. Once mankind has produced an 

 approximation of that optimum environment, the eugenic task will be 

 simpler. In fact, the natural selection exerted by such an environment 

 may make other eugenics quite unnecessary. 



The moral is very plain. Today man, in the shape of the geneticist 

 as well as in the shape of the physicist, possesses more power than wis- 

 dom. He could, as I have said elsewhere, "crystallize human society 

 into a changeless rigidity dominated by reason armed with infinite 

 scientific knowledge." He might even breed "a ruling caste of a rela- 

 tively few individuals, evolving higher and higher levels of intelli- 

 gence, and a helot or robot caste of workers, chained by their instincts 



