Eugenics, euthenics and love : how they go hand in hand / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.
- Date:
- [1914]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Eugenics, euthenics and love : how they go hand in hand / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![of mind of the public toward the question of the relations of the sexes was far more Puritanical than it is at present. Many causes have conspired to change public sentiment; and the very fact that the name “eu- genics” has made its way so rapidly, proves that the intelligent moiety of the public has become pre- pared to give recognition to the idea that man may conceivably exercise a directive influence in the breeding of his own race such as he has all along exercised in the breeding of the animals that he has domesticated. The argument that Nature herself is the ideal matchmaker is seen on the slightest critical in- spection to be utterly fallacious; in particular since it has come to be known that hundreds of thou- sands of children are born into the world fore- doomed to disease or to defective mentality by the mismating of their parents. In the older conception, heredity was fatal- istic. So long as it was believed that all the char- acteristics of a parent are transmitted to all his children, it seemed inevitable that the sins of the parents must be visited upon the children, in strict accordance with the biblical mandate. But the new knowledge of Mendelian heredity makes it clear that the hereditary factors in the germ-plasm of an individual may be potent or impotent in [2]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33628439_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
