504 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



parental duty. Is not this a beatific and beautifully sagacious system 

 for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British Isles?" 



Apart from the point as to wholesome law rather than the educa- 

 tion of opinion as the eugenic means, the foregoing passage must win 

 the assent and respect of every eugenist. It indicates the promise of 

 race-culture as it appeared to John Ruskin. The passage has been 

 quoted in full, not for the benefit of the ordinary thoughtful reader but 

 for that of the professional hterary man who, in this remarkable age, 

 * so far as I can judge, reads nothing but what he writes, and thus quali- 

 fies himself for dismissing Spencer or Darwin or Galton by any casual 

 phrase. 



Race-culture and human variety. — Now let us turn to another 

 question. Let it be asserted most emphatically that, if there is any- 

 thing in the world which eugenics or race-culture does not promise or 

 desire, it is the production of a uniform type of man. This delusion, 

 for which there has never been any warrant at all, possesses many of 

 the critics of eugenics, and they have made pretty play with it, just 

 as they do with their other delusions. Let us note one or two facts 

 which bear upon this most undesirable ideal. 



In the first place, it is unattainable because of the existence of 

 what we call variation. No apparatus conceivable would suffice to 

 eliminate from every generation those who varied from the accepted 

 type. 



In the second place, this uniformity is supremely undesirable from 

 the purely evolutionary point of view, because its attainment would 

 mean the arrest of all progress. All organic evolution, as we know, 

 depends upon the struggle between creatures possessing various varia- 

 tions and the consequent selection of those variations which con- 

 stitute their possessors best adapted or fitted to the particular environ- 

 ment. If there is no variation there can be no evolution. To aim at 

 the suppression of variation, therefore, on supposed eugenic grounds 

 (which would be involved in aiming at any uniform type of mankind) 

 would be to aim at destroying the necessary condition of all racial 

 progress. The mere fact that all the critics of race-culture attribute 

 to evolutionists, of all people, the desire to suppress variation, is a 

 pathognomonic symptom of their critical quahty. 



And, of course, quite independently of the evolutionary function of 

 variation— though this is cardinal and must never be forgotten by the 

 politician of any school, since what we call individuahty is variation 

 on the human plane— the value of variation in ordinary Hfe is wholly 



