A DISCUSSION OF POPENOE AND 
JOHNSON'S 
“APPLIED” EUGENICS 
AND THE QUESTION OF HEREDITY VS. ENVIRONMENT 
Mr. Paut POPENOE, 
Washington, D. C. 
DEAR SIR: 
Your publishers have been kind 
enough to send me a copy of ‘Applied 
Eugenics,” by yourself and Professor 
Johnson, and I have been reading it with 
a great deal of interest and satisfaction. 
I was a student of Galton many years 
ago, and have since, from time to time, 
read such works on eugenics as seemed 
most significant. I have always given 
the subject a large place in my teaching 
and have regarded it as of equal prac- 
tical importance with sociology proper. 
Your book I think much the best 
that has appeared for my purposes, and 
mainly for two reasons. First, it con- 
tains a much larger body of well-con- 
sidered social applications, and, second, 
there is evident throughout a non- 
partisan spirit and a desire to come to 
an understanding with students of the 
social sciences. It is especially in this 
latter connection that I have felt 
inclined to write you. 
Without doubt eugenics has as yet 
made a far slighter impression upon 
students of the social sciences than its 
intrinsic importance entitles it to make. 
Why is this? While mere ignorance 
may largely account for it, I think that 
with intelligent people an equally im- 
portant factor has been the narrow and 
particularistic spirit in which eugenics 
has commonly been advocated. The 
eugenists have seemed not so much to 
be proposing a line of research and 
practice supplementary to history, eco- 
nomics, sociology, education and the 
like, as striving to depreciate and prac- 
tically to supplant these branches of 
learning. A specialist in one of them 
would take up a book or article on 
eugenics and, observing that the class 
of facts with which he was most familiar 
were ignored or scoffed at, would 
naturally conclude that the author was 
some kind of a crank whose ideas could 
have no serious interest for himself. 
There has been ground for this im- 
pression, it seems to me, even in the case 
of the ablest eugenists. Take Galton, 
for example. I would not call anything 
that he wrote sociology, properly speak- 
ing, or admit that he saw anything from 
a sociological standpoint. He collected 
facts of individual and family biography 
to throw light on his biological theories, 
but I do not think he ever shows that 
conception of social organization and 
development as a living whole which, I 
should say, was the essential thing in 
sociology, or, for that matter, in history, 
economics, etc. Accordingly learned 
and open-minded men, like James, 
Bryce and many others, were unfavor- 
ably impressed with his views and 
perhaps did them less than justice. 
I take it that the misunderstanding 
between biological and social science is 
one that can hardly be healed by an 
appeal to specific facts, because it rests 
rather on a difference in the presupposi- 
tions, the points of view, hypotheses and 
problems which control the perception 
and interpretation of facts. I seldom 
quarrel with the facts put forth by a 
eugenist, but can very often see an 
entirely different interpretation of them. 
Now let me make one or two con- 
structive suggestions. I think one thing 
necessary is a clearer fundamental 
theory of the underlying relation be- 
tween the social and biological processes, 
in which, perhaps, might be found a 
1A nplied Eugenics,” by Paul Popenoe, former editor of THe JouRNAL or Herepity now 
Gen’l Sec’y American Social Hygiene Assn., and Roswell H. Johnson, University of Pitts- 
burg. Pp. 459, with illus., charts, etc. MacMillan & Co., New York, 1918. 
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