What is eugenics? / by Major Leonard Darwin.

  • Leonard Darwin
Date:
[1937]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: What is eugenics? / by Major Leonard Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    64 WHAT IS EUGENICS? more quicHy as compared with those classes containing artizans, clerks, and all drawing higher salaries. To illustrate what is now taking place, reference may again be made to a game at cards. First let it be noted that the hands dealt out are never the same in two successive deals ; and yet the pack as a whole remains unaltered. In somewhat the same way, although no individual in any one generation is ever exactly like any individual in any succeeding generation, yet the group to which they belong may remain quite unaltered. That is to say, there may be no change in the probabihty of superior or inferior persons being bom. This is, however, but a rough analogy, and it may be as well to get nearer to the actual facts of life. Man develops from a germ, and each such germ contains a number of things called genes. The qualities of a man depend largely on these genes. Some genes tend to promote good qualities, and these may be called good genes. Other genes have an opposite effect, and these may be called bad genes. These genes always go in pairs, one of each pair coming from the father, and one from the mother. Т\Ъеп a new generation is being formed by the union of a male and female germ, half the genes in each of the parent germs, one from each pair, are thrown away, as it were, these dis¬ carded genes being selected by chance. Thus in every generation the genes in the germs remain in pairs. An exceptional number of good genes—like an exceptional number of good cards—may come together by chance in a germ. Then the person developing from that germ will be exceptionally intelligent or efficient. If his parents are labourers, he may rise out of that class. He will be lost to the labourer group, and his good genes will go with him. In subsequent generations these good genes cannot reappear in that group, and in it ever afterwards remarkable men will in consequence be less likely to appear. As long as the labourer group continues thus to lose large numbers of its best men, so long will it continue to deteriorate. Its numbers may not diminish, because the gaps in its ranks may be filled up by its high birth-rate.
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