5o8 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



into pillars of salt, but teaches us that the best is yet to be, and how 

 alone it is to be attained. 



Elsewhere the optimistic argument of Wordsworth is quoted. 

 Here also John Ruskin: 



"There is as yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of person 

 and mind which the human creature may attain, by persevering 

 observance of the laws of God respecting its birth and training." 



And Herbert Spencer: 



''What now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected 

 eventually to characterize all. For that which the best human nature 

 is capable of, is within the reach of human nature at large." 



And Francis Galton: 



"There is nothing either in the history of domestic animals or in 

 that of evolution to make us doubt that a race of sane men may be 

 formed, who shall be as much superior, mentally and morally, to the 

 modern European, as the modern European is to the lowest of the 

 Negro races. 



"It is earnestly to be hoped that inquiries will be increasingly 

 directed into historical facts, with the view of estimating the possible 

 effects of reasonable political action in the future, in gradually raising 

 the present miserably low standard of the human race to one in which 

 the Utopias in the dreamland of philanthropists may become practical 

 possibilities." 



Conclusion — eugenics and religion. — In an early chapter it was 

 attempted to show that eugenics is not merely moral, but is of the 

 very heart of morality. We saw that it involves taking no life, that, 

 rather it desires to make philanthrophy more philanthropic, that, at 

 any rate so far as this eugenist is concerned, it recognizes and bows 

 to the supreme law of love; and claims to serve that law, and the 

 ideal of social morality, which is the making of human worth. Eugen- 

 ics may or may not be practicable, it may or may not be based upon 

 natural truth, but it is assuredly moral; though I, for one, would pro- 

 claim eternal war between this real moraUty and the damnable sham, 

 which approves the unbridled transmission of the most hideous 

 diseases, rotting body and soul, in the interests of good. 



And if religion, whatever its origin and the more questionable 

 chapters in its past, be now "morality touched with emotion," 

 I claim that eugenics is religious, is and will ever be a religion. Else- 

 where I have attempted to show that religion has survived and will 

 survive because of its survival-value — its services to the Hfe of the 



