There can be no doubt but that sanitation and
hygiene, prenatal care and intelligent treatment of mothers and babies,
are truly euthenic and desirable. At the same time, as has been shown,
these euthenic measures result in the survival of inferior children, who
directly or through their posterity will be a drag on the race. Euthenic
measures of this type should be accompanied by counterbalancing measures
of a more eugenic character.
Barring these two types, euthenics forms a necessary concomitant of the
eugenic program; and, as we have tried to emphasize, eugenics is
likewise necessary to the complete success of every euthenic program.
How foolish, then, is antagonism between the two forces! Both are
working toward the same end of human betterment, and neither can succeed
without the other. When either attempts to eliminate the other from its
work, it ceases to advance toward its goal. In which camp one works is
largely a matter of taste. If on a road there is a gradient to be
leveled, it will be brought down most quickly by two parties of workmen,
one cutting away at the top, the other filling in the bottom. For the
two parties to indulge in mutual scorn and recrimination would be no
more absurd than for eugenics and euthenics to be put in opposition to
each other.
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