He can learn to
comply with these laws; he can, therefore, take an active share in
furthering the process of evolution toward a higher life.
That, briefly, is the scope of the science of eugenics, as its founder,
Sir Francis Galton, conceived it. "Now that this new animal, man, finds
himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and
intelligence," Galton wrote 30 years ago, "he ought, I submit, to awake
to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to
assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He
may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that
which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power,
intelligence and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow
and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half
consciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet
risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so,
deliberately and systematically."
But, it may well be asked, how does this sudden need for eugenics arise,
when the world has gone along without it for hundreds of millions of
years in the past, and the human race has made the great ascent from an
ape-like condition in spite of the fact that such a science as eugenics
was never dreamed of?
For answer recall that natural selection, which is mainly responsible
for bringing man to his present situation, has worked chiefly through a
differential death-rate.
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