RESPONSE TO PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 27 



view as a chapter of Genetics applied to man, or worse still, of experimental 

 Genetics applied to man, and by neglecting all other problems, so vast, 

 complex and delicate, which it embraces, we do not attain the aim of 

 assuring for our national and international organizations the support of the 

 majority of biologists, who may feel justified, on the strength of such a view- 

 point, in considering Eugenics as absorbed by Genetics, and that we lose, 

 on the other hand, the support of the students of social sciences who may 

 find that the eugenists are not sufficiently prepared to face the ultimate 

 and most difficult problems of their field or endeavor. I feel it my duty to 

 emphasize here this warning not only on my behalf but on behalf also of the 

 Italian Eugenic and Genetic Society, and as a unanimous expression of the 

 feeling of the Italian Delegation. 



Although its prevalently sociological character does not allow Eugenics 

 to be merged with Genetics, yet it is undoubtedly true that the science of 

 Eugenics must obtain from that of Genetics many of the fundamental facts 

 on which to base its theories and their applications. This is true even, 

 indeed especially, if Eugenics is to outstrip, as in my opinion it will have to, 

 its old program, limited to the negative purpose of eliminating beings inferior 

 by heredity, and to the positive purpose of increasing the reproductivity of 

 the best, and if it is to acquire, as in my presidential address at the Sec- 

 ond Italian Congress of Genetics and Eugenics (Rome 1929) I expressed the 

 hope it would, the character of regenerative Eugenics. Regenerative 

 Eugenics has the special purpose of studying, through series of successive 

 generations, how new stocks rise, what circumstances determine their 

 formation in the midst of the obscure mass of the population — a formation 

 which can hardly be explained by the heredity of superior factors heretofore 

 non-extant — and what importance may be ascribed in their formation to 

 the influence of happy combinations arising from cross-breeding and favored 

 by natural selection, such as the change of environment caused by emigra- 

 tion, or the selection of the original populations which occurs in emigration. 



If we thus enlarge the horizon of Eugenics, it becomes evident on the 

 one hand, that its work cannot be based solely on laboratory research but 

 will demand wide research in the field of history controlled by statistics. 

 Statistics above all, if I am not blinded by the affection due to long famil- 

 iarity with that branch of knowledge, together with Genetics, brings an 

 indispensable contribution to Eugenics. Genetics and Statistics appear 

 to me to be the foundations on which rest, as on a bridge built between the 

 biological and social sciences, the whole structure of Eugenics. If Genet- 

 ics supplies, on the one hand, the foundations and directing principles 

 of Eugenic research and programs, Statistics on the other hand enables us 



