88 WHAT IS EUGENICS? 



As in previous chapters, we here find that to spread 

 abroad noble ideas is the surest way of promoting racial 

 progress. Wise marriages based on affection will thus be 

 promoted, and foolish ones rendered less probable. Great 

 sacrifices in regard to marriage and parenthood, producing 

 beneficial results, will be more often made. Some needed 

 reforms would involve the infliction of suffering ; and, when 

 this is the case, it is far pleasanter to push all such dis- 

 agreeable subjects out of our minds. Without moral 

 courage no advance will bo made. 



What has just been said is true not only as regards 

 marriage, but as to all the other problems which have here 

 been discussed. As to the scientific questions involved, it 

 is greatly to be desired that all men and women would so 

 control their minds as to be able to look into them without 

 either passion or prejudice. Ignorance is always the enemy 

 of progress, and ignorance would thus best be overcome. 

 Selfishness is, however, an even greater enemy to hiunan 

 welfare. Our first aim must be to arouse moral sentiments, 

 including true patriotism, to the highest possible pitch. 

 This would make members of bad stock ready to make that 

 great and noble sacrifice which would deprive them of some 

 or all of the joys of family life. In the same way, the well- 

 to-do would be made to be willing to sacrifice personal 

 comfort, so as to enable them to supply their share of 

 recruits to the coming generation; recruits who will then 

 be needed to fight the good fight for peace and progress. 

 Again, the politician might thus be so stimulated that he 

 would be willing even to sacrifice a few votes in consequence 

 of his advocacy of racial safeguards destined to benefit his 

 nation for countless generations in the future. 



Eugenics rests on pure science for its foundations of fact. 

 But it is on religion, including all the promptings of the 

 inner man towards better things, that eugenics must rely 

 for the motive force needed in the long struggle for human 

 progress which lies before us. 



