342 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1053 



records, but where they will be available in 

 the biological interests of the human race, 

 for both advice in marriage selection and 

 for studying the inheritance of traits. 

 Such a bureau actually exists in the Eu- 

 genics Record Office. The obvious necessity 

 of depositing the family history in a cen- 

 tral bureau, if it is to be available for eu- 

 genical purposes offers for many an in- 

 superable obstacle. They may enjoy re- 

 cording facts concerning themselves and 

 other members of their family but they 

 could not think of letting them out of their 

 possession. I can sympathize with this 

 feeling. One does not publish the details 

 of one's family history, because, as society is 

 at present constituted, certain of these facts 

 might, if known, interfere with one's stand- 

 ing or advancement in one's social world. 

 This is owing to the presence of scandal- 

 mongers and others of pathological and 

 antisocial instincts who like to hold it up 

 against one that he has certain limitations. 

 The fact that the records are held as con- 

 fidential ought really to meet this objection. 

 And we may hope that society is nearly 

 ready to take a saner view about one's per- 

 sonal responsibility for one's traits. I am 

 in no way responsible for my racial traits, 

 whether they are due to innate tendencies 

 in development or to peculiar conditions of 

 development, for over neither of these have 

 I, in last analysis, any control. And what 

 a strange spectacle does mankind exhibit, 

 each hiding from others, as far as he can, 

 his personal and family traits, like a lot of 

 little children around a Christmas tree, each 

 hiding from the others the gifts he has re- 

 ceived lest it appear that his are not as 

 good as another's. This attitude might be 

 regarded as merely childish and trivial 

 were it not that one's personal and family 

 traits do not belong to oneself, but, in so 

 far as one has, or hopes to have, children 

 and grandchildren, they belong to society. 



For each one of us is a mosaic of racial 

 traits that have come from a union of vari- 

 ous germplasms in the past and some of 

 which will pass into the germplasms of fu- 

 ture generations, and organized society has 

 a right to know the racial qualities of its 

 human breeding stock, for organized soci- 

 ety is the only agency to which can be en- 

 trusted the guardianship of the quality of 

 the germplasm of the future. The scien- 

 tific genealogy of the future will afford 

 society that knowledge of the racial qual- 

 ities of its breeding stock. Thus the value 

 of scientific genealogy to humanity lies 

 above all in this that it will make it pos- 

 sible to utilize a knowledge of the racial 

 characters carried by the individual for the 

 advancement of the race. 



Chas. B. Davenport 



COLDSPEING HAKBOB, N. T., 



December 28, 1914 



THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT AS A PUBLIC 

 SERVICE 



It is coming to be a commonplace state- 

 ment that we have paid more attention to 

 the production of high-grade breeds of 

 sheep, cattle, swine, and so forth, than we 

 have to that of effective human beings, and 

 this statement gains popular strength as 

 we awaken one by one to the fact that man 

 is, after all, a member of the animal kingdom 

 and subject to its laws. The idea that soci- 

 ety should concern itself directly with the 

 improvement of human offspring emanated, 

 as you well know, from Francis Galton, and 

 the movement thus initiated has for some 

 time been known as the eugenics movement. 

 In clearing the ground by way of prepara- 

 tion for actual work, the eugenist has made 

 certain important discoveries. It appears 

 that in many of our civilized populations 

 to-day, the defective classes are increasing 

 more rapidly than any other constituent of 

 the community and that quite aside from 

 the enormous cost that their care entails 



