94 



The Journal ot Heredity 



means confined to questions of judicious mat- 

 ing, but which, especially in the case of man, 

 takes cognizance of all influences that tend in 

 however remote a degree to give to the more 

 suitable races or strains of blood a better chance 

 of prevailing speedily over the less suitable 

 than they otherwise would have had. The 

 word eugenics would sufficiently express the 

 idea; it is at least a neater word and a more 

 generalized one than viriculture, which I once 

 ventured to use." 



Eugenics, like other sciences, draws 

 heavily upon related bodies of knowl- 

 edge and methods of study. While it 

 seeks aid from allied sciences and is, in 

 turn, called upon by them, its own 

 special and borrowed knowledge is so 

 systematized that it is entitled to a 

 place of independent recognition. 

 Indeed this independence on the one 

 hand and this inter-dependence on the 

 other is, paradoxical as it may seem, a 

 characteristic of every science, no mat- 

 ter how highly specialized or how old 

 it may be. 



A reproduction of the certificate 

 which was awarded by the President 

 and the Committee on Exhibits of the 

 Second International Congress of Eu- 

 genics to persons who exhibited eugeni- 

 cal material of merit at the Congress, 

 appears on an accompanying page. 

 The figure^ at the top shows graphically 

 the relation of eugenics to its allied 

 sciences. It shows that particularly 

 genetics, anthropology, statistics or 

 demography, and genealogy and biog- 

 raphy contribute great quantities of 

 facts and principles to eugenics. 



All metaphors have their limitations, 

 but this one of the tree is correct to the 

 extent of indicating that the substances 

 drawn from the roots are reorganized 

 and assimilated. It is improper to 

 designate eugenics as subordinate to 

 any one of its three or four principal 

 contributory sciences, such as genetics 



or demography, or to any of the score of 

 essential but less quantitatively con- 

 tributing sciences. If, however, one 

 were to construct a similar diagram 

 showing education, statistics, genetics, 

 history, medicine, psychiatry or other 

 allied science or system as a tree, it 

 would be necessary to show eugenics as 

 constituting a root of considerable im- 

 portance. This reminds us that all 

 groups of knowledge are interwoven, 

 and that each science secures its ma- 

 terial from two sources, first, selectively 

 from the whole mass of human knowl- 

 edge and the known laws of nature, and 

 second, by research into problems dis- 

 tinctively its own. 



II THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF 

 EUGENICS 



Eugenics is the self-direction of 

 human evolution. By its study, man- 

 kind seeks to find out the laws that 

 govern the direction of human evolu- 

 tion. By its practical application, each 

 of the several nations which constitute 

 the species Homo sapiens, strives to 

 direct its own evolution along those 

 lines which seem to it most profitable. 

 It is commonly agreed, for our own 

 nation at least, that this family de- 

 velopment of inborn traits must be 

 along the lines, principally, of greater 

 hardihood, longer period of individual 

 elihciency, greater output of energy,'* 

 higher intellectual level, more highly 

 specialized talents, finer social and 

 moral adjustments, and with all a 

 better natural balance of these qualities 

 within the individual. The principal 

 basis for confidence in eugenics as a 

 practicable thing is derived from the 

 success which mankind has had in 

 directing the evolution of domestic 

 races of plants and animals. Man is 



' The plan of this diagram is the working out schematically of the substance of a paper on the 

 "Relation of Eugenics to Other Sciences." (H. H. Laughlin, the Etigenics Review, London, July, 

 1919.) The drawing was made by Miss Alice M. Hellmer. 



■* Concerning human energy, Galton writes, "Energy is the capacity for labour. It is consistent 

 with all the robust virtues, and makes a large practice of them possible. It is the measure of ful- 

 ness of life; the more energy the more abundance of it; no energy at all is death; idiots are feeble 

 and listless. . . . Energy is an attribute of the higher races, being favoured beyond all other 

 qualities by natural selection. ... In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important 

 quality to favour; it is, as we have seen, the basis of living action, and it is eminently transmissible 

 by descent." ("Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development," pp. 17, 18, 19. Second 

 edition 1907, Reprint of 191 l.j 



