14 WHAT IS EUGENICS? 



Thus, when studying the e£fect of surroundings we are 

 not studying eugenics. But such studies, as we shall 

 see, have important indirect bearings on our subject. 

 When groups of men have free dealings or intercourse 

 with each other, this we may describe as social contact. 

 Now social contact is never a one-sided affair. When a 

 group, which is morally or mentally superior in any way, 

 comes in contact with an inferior group, that inferior 

 group will be benefited by that contact. The superior 

 group generally realizes this quite sufficiently. But 

 it is equally certain that the inferior group tends to drag 

 down the superior, and this is a fact which is often over- 

 looked. Social contact, no doubt, tends very slowly to 

 bring all the groups affected to a common level or condition. 

 And that level will be above the bottom and below the top. 

 Social contact always has a levelling effect. 



Now, persons living in poor homes cannot have the 

 same opportunities of improving their minds as have the 

 well-to-do. As a rule, the children of the day labourer, 

 for example, must be at some disadvantage as compared 

 with the children of the skilled artizan. No doubt all that 

 is practicable should be done to put the different classes 

 on an equality as regards such opportunities ; provided 

 that the results would be on the whole beneficial and not 

 demoralizing. But reforms of this kind often do good 

 but very slowly; and we may ask whether some other 

 methods of improving the lot of all classes cannot be 

 simultaneously set in operation. 



Families appearing in poor homes are at the present 

 time larger than those found amongst the better paid 

 classes. As compared with the parent generation, the 

 children born in better-equipped homes are, therefore, 

 outnumbered by those coming from worse surroundings. 

 The result of social contact between the classes must in 

 consequence now be a downward drag on the nation as a 

 whole in regard to all qualities thus affected. Ought we 

 not to try to reverse this state of things ? If the weU- 

 to-do had the big families and the poor the small ones. 



