What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin.

  • Leonard Darwin
Date:
1928
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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

    100/104 page 88
    88 WHAT IS EUGENICS? As in previous chapters, we here find that to spread abroad noble ideas is the surest way of promoting racial progress. Wise marriages based on affection will thus be promoted, and foolish ones rendered less probable. Great sacrifices in regard to marriage and parenthood, producing beneficial results, will be more often made. Some needed reforms would involve the infliction of suffering ; and, when this is the case, it is far pleasanter to push all such dis¬ agreeable subjects out of our minds. Without moral courage no advance will be made. What has just been said is true not only as regards marriage, but as to all the other problems which have here been discussed. As to the scientific questions involved, it is greatly to be desired that all men and women would so control their minds as to be able to look into them without either passion or prejudice. Ignorance is always the enemy of progress, and ignorance would thus best be overcome. Selfishness is, however, an even greater enemy to human welfare. Our first aim must be to arouse moral sentiments, including true patriotism, to the highest possible pitch. This would make members of bad stock ready to make that great and noble sacrifice which would deprive them of some or all of the joys of family life. In the same way, the well- to-do would be made to be willing to sacrifice personal comfort, so as to enable them to supply their share of recruits to the coming generation; recruits who will then be needed to fight the good fight for peace and progress. Again, the politician might thus be so stimulated that he would be willing even to sacrifice a few votes in consequence of his advocacy of racial safeguards destined to benefit his nation for countless generations in the future. Eugenics rests on pure science for its foundations of fact. But it is on religion, including all the promptings of the inner man towards better things, that eugenics must rely for the motive force needed in progress which lies before us.
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