THE REASON FOR EUGENICS 



Religious Duty of Man to Assist the Course of Evolution and Endeavor to Make it 



Less Slow and Painful — His Power to do so Shown by the 



Results of His Half Unconscious Efforts in the Past. 



Francis Galton/ 



OUR ignorance of the goal and 

 purport of human life, and the 

 mistrust we are apt to feel of 

 the guidance of the spiritual 

 sense, on accoimt of its proved readiness 

 to accept illusions as realities, warn us 

 against deductive theories of conduct. 

 Putting these, then, at least for the 

 moment, to one side, we find ourselves 

 face to face with two great and indis- 

 putable facts that everywhere force 

 themselves on the attention and compel 

 consideration. The one is that the 

 whole of the living world moves steadily 

 and continuously towards the evolution 

 of races that are progressively more and 

 more adapted to their complicated 

 mutual needs and to their external 

 circumstances. The other is that the 

 process of evolution has been hitherto 

 carried out with, what we should reckon 

 in our ways of carrying out projects, 

 great waste of ~ opportunity and life, 

 and with little if any consideration for 

 individual mischance. Measured by 

 our criterion of intelligence and mercy, 

 which consists in the achievement of 

 result without waste of time or oppor- 

 timity, without unnecessary pain, and 

 with equitable allowance for piu*e mis- 

 take, the process of evolution on this 

 earth, so far as we can judge, has been 

 carried out neither with intelligence 

 nor ruth, but entirely through the 

 routine of various sequences, commonly 

 called "laws," established or necessitated 

 we know not how. 



An incalculable amoimt of lower life 

 has been certainly passed through 

 before that human organization was 

 attained, of which we and our genera- 

 tion are for the time the holders and 



transmitters. This is no^mean heri- 

 tage, and I think it should be considered 

 as a sacred trust, for, together ■ with 

 man, intelligence of a sufficiently high 

 order to produce great results appears, 

 so far as we can infer from the varied 

 records of the prehistoric past, to have 

 first dawned upon the tenantry of the 

 earth. Man has already shown his 

 large power in the modifications he has 

 made on the surface of the globe, and 

 in the distribution of plants and ani- 

 mals. He has cleared such vast regions 

 of forest that his work that way in 

 North America alone, during the past 

 half century, would be visible to an 

 observer as far off as the moon. He 

 has dug and drained; he has extermi- 

 nated plants and animals that were 

 mischievous to him ; he has domesticated 

 those that serve his purpose, and 

 transplanted them to great distances 

 from their native places. Now that 

 this new animal Alan finds himself 

 somehow in existence, endowed with a 

 little power and intelligence, he ought, 

 I submit, to awake to a fuller knowledge 

 of his relatively great position, and 

 begin to assume a deliberate part in 

 furthering the great work of evolution. 

 He may infer the course it is bound to 

 p-ursue from his observation of that 

 which it has already followed, and he 

 might devote his modicum of power, 

 intelligence and kindly feeling to render 

 its future progress less slow and painful. 

 Man has already furthered evolution 

 very considerably, half unconsciously, 

 and for his own personal advantages, 

 but he has not yet risen to the convic- 

 tion that it his religious duty to do so 

 deliberatelv and svstematicallv. 



'These words of the founder of the science of eugenics are part of his chapter on "The Observed 

 Order of Events" in Inquiries into Human Facility, first pubUshed in 1883. The book is now 

 obtainable at a cost of 35 cents, in "Everyman's Librarj^", and should be in the possession of 

 everyone who has even the slightest interest in eugenics. 



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