Cook: Eugenics and Breeding 



33 



To specialize on the dysgenic features 

 and leave the constructive eugenic 

 ideas out of account is to neglect the 

 most important lessons of organic evo- 

 lution, as well as the best reasons for 

 taking interest in eugenics. Higher 

 appreciation of human nature in its 

 nomial perfection might be trusted to 

 inspire the strongest motives of eugenic 

 behavior, both in the individual and in 

 the race. To develop eugenic per- 

 ceptions and instincts is even more im- 

 portant than to magnify the idea of 

 eugenic responsibilit^^ There is no 

 reason why eugenic appreciation of the 

 perfection of human life should fall be- 

 hind the artist's joy in painting pictures 

 or carving ideal forms in stone. 



Young men and women who prize 

 life highly enough will not be tempted 

 to choose weak, diseased or defective 



partners, or to take the risk of bringing 

 crippled or weak-minded children into 

 the world by marrying into families 

 that have shown hereditary abnor- 

 malities. If our young people saw 

 clearly and felt deeply that healthy, 

 intelligent, affectionate children are the 

 most precious of all possessions, they 

 would perceive also the suicidal nature 

 of dysgenic behavior. They would see 

 that in disregarding the facts of hered- 

 ity, now that the inheritance of de- 

 fects is definitely known, they are 

 forfeiting the right to the supreme 

 happiness of life that normal children 

 may bring. To the enlightened eugenic 

 conscience it will be plain that the sins 

 of the father are not visited on the 

 children alone, but upon the parents as 

 well. 



More Knowledge Necessary 



Except in very few cases, our knowledge of heredity in man is at present far too 

 slight and uncertain to base legislation upon. — Professor R. P. Punnett, Cambridge 

 University, England. 



Eugenic Instinct Natural 



The natural man and the natural woman are Eugenists at heart. Each of them 

 prefers, in members of the opposite sex, youth and matiuity rather than senility, 

 beauty (which has a high degree of correlation with health) rather than ugliness, 

 straightness and efificiency of limbs and feature rather than deformity, optimism 

 rather than pessimism, intelligence, good temper, sympathy rather than their 

 opposites. There is indeed, speaking in popular language, a eugenic sense; and the 

 business of those who undertake the great task of education for parenthood is to 

 educate — that is, to lead forth and develop — this sense, and, in the first place, to 

 oppose and if possible destroy all those agencies, chiefly servants of mammon, by 

 which the growth of this most precious element in our nature is vitiated or arrested. 

 — C. W. Saleeby: The Methods of Race-Regeneration (1911). 



