Woman & womanhood : a search for principles / by C.W. Saleeby.

  • Caleb Saleeby
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Woman & womanhood : a search for principles / by C.W. Saleeby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/416 (page 10)
    fifty years ago. It is only in our own time that we are learning the measure of the natural differences be- tween individuals, it is only lately that we have come to see that races cannot rise by the transmission of acquired characters from parents to offspring, since such transmission does not occur, and it is only within the last few years that the relative potency of heredity over education, of nature over nurture, has been dem- onstrated. Not one in thousands knows how cogent this demonstration is, nor how absolutely conclusive is the case for the eugenic principle in the light of our modern knowledge. At whatever cost, we see, who have ascertained the facts, that we must be eugenic. This argument was set forth in full in the predeces- sors of this book, which in its turn is devoted to the interests of women as individuals. But before we pro- ceed, it is plainly necessary to answer the critic who might urge that the separate questions of the individual and the race cannot be discussed in this mixed fashion. The argument may be that if we are to discuss the character and development and rights of women as individuals, we must stick to our last. Any woman may question the eugenic criterion or say that it has nothing to do with her case. She claims certain rights and has certain needs; she is not so sure, perhaps, about the facts of heredity, and in any case she is sure that individuals—such as herself, for instance— are ends in themselves. She neither desires to be sac- rificed to the race, nor does she admit that any in- dividual should be so sacrificed. She is tired of hear- ing that women must make sacrifices for the sake of