Nature lets a multitude of individuals be born and
kills off the poorer ones; eugenics proposes to have fewer poor ones and
more good ones born in each generation.
Any means which tends to bring about one of those ends, is a part of
Applied Eugenics.
By this time the reader will have seen that eugenics has some definite
ideals not only as to how the race can be kept from deteriorating
further, under the interference with natural selection which
civilization entails, but as to how its physical, mental and moral level
can actually be raised. He can easily draw his own conclusions as to
what eugenics does _not_ propose. No eugenist worthy of the name has
ever proposed to breed genius as the stockman breeds trotting horses,
despite jibes of the comic press to the contrary. But if young people,
before picking out their life partners, are thoroughly imbued with the
idea that such qualities as energy, longevity, a sound constitution,
public and private worth, are primarily due to heredity, and if they are
taught to realize the fact that one marries not an individual but a
family, the eugenist believes that better matings will be made,
sometimes realized, sometimes insensibly.
Furthermore, if children from such matings are made an asset rather than
a liability; if society ceases to penalize, in a hundred insidious ways,
the parents of large and superior families, but honors and aids them
instead, one may justifiably hope that the birth-rate in the most useful
and happy part of the population will steadily increase.
Pages:
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279