32 HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN 



DISTINCTION BETWEEN BIRTH CONTROL AND BIRTH SELECTION 



First, let us clearly distinguish between birth selection and birth control. 



Birth selection is the cardinal principle of the whole eugenic movement 

 as first propounded by the great biologist Francis Galton, defined in 1884 

 as follows: "Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control which 

 may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either 

 physically or mentally." Birth selection is directly in the order of the 

 Darwin-Spencer law of the survival of the fittest. Birth selection is 

 known as "positive" eugenics, of which eugenically administered birth 

 control should be only a subsidiary "negative" principle. As conceived by 

 Galton it is an ameliorative, curative and positive force in the advancement 

 of mankind and the uplifting of society as a whole by improving human 

 quality as distinguished from quantity. It aids and encourages the survival 

 and multiplication of the fittest; indirectly, it would check and discourage 

 the multiplication of the unfittest. As to the latter, in the United States 

 alone it is widely recognized that there are millions of people who are acting 

 as dragnets or sheet-anchors on the progress of the ship of state. Some 

 radicals propose that they should all be sterilized so as to inhibit the multi- 

 plication of their kind. This would be the negative or birth control method 

 of birth selection. 



Birth control, primarily designed to prevent the over-population of the 

 unfittest or dysgenic, may prove to be a two-edged sword eliminating alike 

 the fittest and the unfittest. Whatever its benefits in limiting the unfittest, 

 birth control is always in danger still more of limiting the fittest and thus 

 becoming positively dysgenic or against the interests of the race as a 

 whole in which it is practiced. I have in mind the French, among whom 

 birth control has been practiced in the upper classes for centuries, with 

 disastrous racial results. My doubts about the present propaganda and 

 purpose of the birth control movement are that they are so largely negative 

 and death-dealing rather than positive and birth-encouraging. Only by 

 some wise and selective means of limiting the number of births can the 

 world find a solution for its disturbed economics. I return from a tour 

 around the world more impressed than ever with the principle of "not 

 more but better and finer representatives of every race." I hold that true 

 for America as well as for foreign stocks. 



For the time at least, I am very doubtful about birth control. In fact, 

 on eugenic as well as on evolutionary lines I am strongly opposed to many 

 directions which the birth control movement is taking, chiefly because I 

 believe them to be fundamentally unnatural and hence destined sooner or 

 later to fail of their original more or less benevolent purposes. 



