MISCELLANEA 203 



Natural or Instinctive Eugenics. 



When one considers tUe errors committed by beings who boast 

 the possession of rational powers, especially the misdeeds of 

 politicians and social reformers, involuntarily one sometimes 

 wishes that men were less like themselves and more like ants. 

 When we contemplate the great army of foolish people for whose 

 preservation an even greater army of officials is being created at 

 immense national expense, the mind of one reared in Victorian days 

 — when the bibUcal instructions of the Old Testament played a 

 larger part in national life than they do to-day — quite naturally 

 recalls the exhortation in Proverbs vi. : " Go to the ant, thou 

 sluggard ; consider her ways and be wise : Which having no 

 guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the Summer, and 



gathereth her food in the harvest Yet a little sleep, a 



little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep : So shall thy 

 poverty come as one that travelleth." 



The whole trend of our unbiological legislation and of the 

 social sentiment of a few fearsome or designing persons whose 

 clamant utterances are altogether out of proportion to their 

 importance, either in number or in merit, is to rear and per- 

 petuate a race of sluggards, who can achieve in life nothing more 

 than a " little folding of the hands," whose existence is one 

 " long slumber," and who can neither " gather food in the harvest 

 nor provide meat in the Summer." 



So at last, awakened to the calamity awaiting the nation, 

 some citizens are endeavouring to educate the community to a 

 sense of its responsibiUty and to direct its policy along sounder 

 biological lines. Under prevailing circimistances this is, of 

 course, a wise and desirable course, always providing that the 

 attempt to educate does not extend beyond its legitimate limits. 

 For if it is intended by legislation, to enforce eugenic education 

 upon persons whose intellects and general capacities are incapable 

 of appreciating it, disaster, and not triumph, lies ahead for the 

 gospel of Eugenics. Any attempt to issue "marriage certificates," 

 for instance, would be fatuous, and would meet with the 

 ridicule which it deserves. 



One must deplore the fact that civilisation has carried us so 

 low in social and moral perception that it is now necessary to 

 teach Eugenics at all. How much more virile and free 

 our people would be, if the eugenic conception were an instinct, 

 born with us at our birth, and guiding us through life. Better 

 the inherent instinct than the necessarily incomplete fruit, 

 laboriously begotten, of a prolonged and expensive education. 

 There seems little eugenic instinct in civiUsed peoples at the pre- 

 sent time. One marvels when one looks at some mens' wives. 



