2 



The Eugenists desire and hope for what 

 all people worthy to be called human have 

 desired and hoped for — the coming of nobler 

 and finer men and women— the disappear- 

 ance of disease and ugliness, misery and 

 vice, the making- of a better world, and the 

 dawn of that Golden Age which, often 

 spoken of in fable, is so heartily to be 

 desired. 



Having started with such high ideals, 

 it was manifestly necessary that the prac- 

 tice should follow the principles, and here 

 Eugenics had to call in the aid of science 

 in order to mark out the lines on which 

 they proposed to attain these objects, and 

 as it i& granted that the chief point is the 

 making of noble individuals, the question 

 arises "What are the factors that make 

 the indiviual noble or base, healthy or 

 diseased, tall or short, clever or stupid, 

 kind or cruel ? The answer is clear. Every 

 attribute and character of every livi"^g 

 being is the product of what he may con- 

 veniently call nature and nurture. These 

 terras were adopted by Sir Francis Galton, 

 and their significance may be roughly ex- 

 plained thus: Under "Nature" is in- 

 cluded heredity in its ordinary sense, and 

 also everything else given at the indi- 

 vidual's beginning, though it may be un- 

 like anything possessed by the parents. 

 "Nurture" includes all nutrition, from 

 the moment of the formation of the new 

 individual onwards, and all environment, 

 physical, social and s[)iritual. These two 

 terms therefore can be used to include all 

 the forces that make us or any other liv- 

 ing being. Both of these are mutually 

 essential, for if there be no nature, nur- 

 ture is impotent, and if there be uo nur- 

 ture nature comes to nothing. Eugenists 

 maintain that they include in their pro- 

 gramme all the agencies that make for 

 better nurture alike for rich and poor, 

 born and nnboru, and they regard the care 

 of expectant motherhood as essential, and, 

 in this fact and their special regard for 

 the question of heredity, lies the difference 

 between them and other social reformers 

 and philanthropists. The Eugenist further 

 asserts that the statement that "All men 

 are born free and equal " may be a poli- 

 tical fact, but is not biologically true; the 

 two must not be confounded. Vitally 

 speaking, all men are not born free and 

 equal. AH men and women are different, 

 and some are as certainly doomed by their 

 nature to inferiority and slavery (not poli- 

 tical slavery), as others to superiority and 

 freedom. If all children began life alike, 

 and if the differences between men were 

 simply d\ie to nurture, then nurture would 

 coverthe whole question of Eugenics. But 

 if children differ inherently, and if these 

 differences are not accidental, but are the 

 result of law, and if these range from the 

 criminal lunatic to the saintly genius, from 

 the blight of hereditary disease to the per- 

 fection of health, then clearly nurture is 



only a stage in the formation of a man or 

 a woman, and is not even the first stage 

 but the second. Now, this argument is 

 born out by the experience of the last 

 seventy or eighty years, in which so much 

 has beer done for social reform, including 

 the nationalization of education for the 

 latter half of the period, and yet the 

 record cannot be said to be satisfactory as 

 regards the ennoblement of life. Better 

 housing and drainage, diet and water sup- 

 ply, have brought about enormous im- 

 pToveraents, and together with education 

 of a certain kind, have perhaps encouraged 

 us to thiuk we have met with partial suc- 

 cess, but too much yet remains to be done. 

 We have certainly made efforts to attend to 

 these and other similar matters, but the 

 important, i.e., the primary matters of the 

 law of life, have been forgotten, according 

 to the Eugenist. Take one marked ex- 

 ample : we care for the feeble-minded girl 

 when she gets into trouble, and also for 

 her feeble-minded child when she, in her 

 turn, gets into trouble, and we now have 

 all three generations sometimes living to- 

 gether in the same workhouse. No doubt 

 it is a fine workhouse, well ventilated, with 

 large grounds which provide for its expan- 

 sion. And mark you, we have taken good 

 care to ensure that its expansion should 

 shortly be required, for have we not actu- 

 ally devoted ourselves to nurture in such 

 a fashion as to ensure, guarantee, and mul- 

 tiply the cjuantity of defective "nature" 

 in each succeeding generation ? The Eu- 

 genist asserts that this is one instance in 

 which the factor of heredity or nature has 

 been forgotten, and unless care is taken it 

 would be quite pojisible to abuse nurture 

 in such a way as to bring about a speedly 

 degeneration of the race. We may, and 

 certainly do, take great care of defective 

 children, and of the defective babies of 

 defective mothers^ as we ought to do; but 

 we also neglect myriads of healthy babies 

 and healthy mothers, and it appears to be 

 demonstrable that in many instances we 

 ensure the survival of a much larger pro- 

 portion of feeble-minded than of normal 

 children. If, then, we admit that nature 

 is so important, and the degree of its im- 

 portance becomes more and more evident as 

 investigation goes on, and if the experience 

 of all who breed cattle or roses, horses or 

 peas, confirms this as true, are we, or are 

 we not, bound to apply our knowledge to 

 the far higher task of obtaining the high- 

 est type of men and women? This the Eu- 

 genist regards as our duty. A nd how is 

 this duty to be carried out? 



We see that while many people agree 

 about the nurture of the adult, e.g., as to 

 housing or the nurture of the adolescent 

 and school child, and while lately public 

 opinion has discovered the infant, the Eu- 

 genist alone is emphasising the well-known 

 but neglected fact that every one of us is 

 alive for nine months before we are born. 



