CHAPTER VI 



SOCIAL AND WORLD ASPECTS OF 



EUGENICS 



While the observation and study of the innumerable 

 alternative differences in man is a theme of great 

 interest, yet it lies for the most part outside the range 

 of practical eugenics, for great numbers of these 

 differences, aside from abnormalities, are, as far as 

 our present knowledge goes, innocuous in nature, 

 being neither advantageous nor detrimental in their 

 effects, but lending a pleasing and desirable variety 

 to the huinan race. The aim of practical eugenists 

 would, then, be rather so to direct selection by con- 

 trolling the conditions w^hich determine selection 

 as to eliminate the obviously undesirable or anti- 

 social traits ; and to improve, through public opinion 

 or otherwise, the chances of perpetuation and in- 

 crease of their kind on the part of the better qualified 

 members in every stratum of society. This aim, 

 though easily stated, is obviously almost infinitely 

 difficult of achievement in a complex civilisation. 

 And it is rendered all the more difficult by the fact 

 that eugenics aims, not to establish and improve a 

 single type, as in breeding, for example, racehorses, 

 but at the infinitely more complex result of improv- 

 ing innumerable more or less inter-breeding strains 

 simultaneously, weeding out their more defective 

 members or qualities, and at the same time main- 

 taining the diversity of t3^pes in the whole population. 

 A world of Shakespeares or Newtons or Goliaths, 

 even if attainable, would not be an econgmic success. 



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