EUGENICS vs. CACOGENICS 



An Ethical Question of Importance to the Movement — Attention Should Be 

 Centered on Factors of Absolute Value, Not on Those of 

 Merely Relative Value.' 



Dr. E. E. Sol'thard, 

 Member of the Board of Scientific Directors of the Eugenics Record Office; Director of 



the State Hospital, Boston, Mass. 



ABSTRACT. 



'I'he attitude of social workers to eugenics. 

 The attitude of plant and animal breeders. 

 Eugenics and utilitarianism, — 



of the egoistic form; 



of the altruistic form. 

 Eugenics and Malthusianism. 



Evolutionistic or developmental ethics and eugenics. 

 Interracial difficulties solved by racial development. 



"Relative" or "view-point" eugenics, i. e., eugenics for Race A is cacogenics for Race B, and 

 L'ice versa. 



Possibility of defining "absolute" as opposed to "relative" eugenics. 

 Two conceptions of absolute eugenics: 



(a) a metric conception, in which eugenic conditions range by degrees from the worst (cakisto) 

 through bad (caco) to good (en) up to the best {aristogenic) conditions; 



(b) a conception in terms'of survival-values, in which eugenic conditions would depend on 

 germ-plasm tendencies to improvement, deterioration, or death for intrinsic or extrinsic 

 reasons. ' '■ ■ - 



Examples of absolute cacogenic factors, logically possil)le though not yet thoroughly demon- 

 strated : 



(1) germ-plasm senescence. 



(2) gametes prepotently poisonous to the zygote. 



(3) gametes themselves altered, e.g., by alcohol or syphilis. 



EUGENICS, as the science of Accordingly, eugenics is being taken 



im])roving man through his more on its merits. Despite bitter 



heredity, is now in its thirtieth logical quarrels (or even in consequence 



year and, as a name and prop- of these) over the scope of the statistical 



aganda, is already becoming known to (biometric) and the intensively analy- 



a new generation, unbiased by the tical (Mendelian) methods in the general 



splendid personality of its founder and field, the term eugenics has been 



no longer mended by the early ]jrejudice ado])ted by both sides to these contro- 



of those who pigeonholed eugenics with versies, and those controversies thcm- 



socialistic, paternalistic, or Utopian selves have come to be regarded as 



programs, with a philosophy of pruden- questions of technicitu- rather llian of 



tial (rather than emotional) marriages, aim. 



with free love tenets, or with a plan to The new generation is taking stock 



debase man by showing him subject of eugenics in the light of new and wider 



to the same laws as ])lants and animals, views of social service, and of preventive 



' Presidential address delivered before the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders' Associa- 

 tion at the ninth annual meeting, in Columbia, South Carolina, January 24, 1913; h^'ing contribu- 

 tion from State Board of Insanity, Massachusetts, Number 21 (1914.1). (Bibliogniphiral note. The 

 previous S. B. I. Contribution Number 20 (1913.20) was by L. Vernon Briggs. entitled "Three 

 Months without and Three Months with a Social Worker in the Mental Clinic at the Boston 

 Dispensary"). 



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