Science and Citizenship 

 XXVII 



A new Secular order of biologists is beginning to 

 appear in the Eugenists, who seek to develop and 

 apply Mr. Francis Galton's doctrine of Eugenics. 

 It belongs to this doctrine to rescue the "perfect 

 man" from the lumber of archaic survivals, and 

 restore it, not as an idol of a Golden Past, but as 

 a legitimate ideal of the future. Taken over from 

 theology by political philosophers of the eighteenth 

 century, the idea of the Fall of Man from a state 

 of primordial perfection became a powerful solvent 

 of economic and political institutions. An abortive 

 and premature attempt was then made by early 

 biologists and sociologists to use the doctrine as 

 a constructive ideal by transforming it into the 

 conception of a future perfectibility of type. But 

 in the generation which witnessed the classic 

 demonstration of organic evolution by Spencer 

 and Darwin, by Haeckel, Wallace, and Galton, 

 the very idea of perfectibility was discredited. 

 Nevertheless the language of the Fall persisted, 

 and of necessity had its unconscious influence on 

 thought. It was therefore quite natural, if not 

 inevitable, that the place of Man in the animal 

 series should be worked out in terms of descent 

 and not ascent. But the idea of potency latent in 

 organic evolution was bound to manifest itself. 



It was Francis Galton who first and most fully 

 made the change from the cosmic and naturalist 

 to the humanist and idealist mood in organic 

 evolution. His doctrine of Eugenics shifts the 



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