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.

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    76 WHAT IS EUGENICS? forced to face the perilous risks of the Great War, all our best citizens were ready to send their sons forth to face death for their country's sake. Duty and patriotism are now calling to them just as loudly, if they could only hear it, to supply the men and women needed to maintain our nation in the future in the paths of peace and industry. Surely persons of good stock should feel ashamed to know that parents of bad stock are fulfilling this duty better than themselves. Here one cannot but ask, What are the reasons which make so many worthy citizens limit the size of their families to such an extent as to tend to wipe out their breed? Some of their reasons are meritorious, though mistaken, whilst some are definitely bad. As to the bad reasons, families are very often limited merely as the result of the love of pleasure. We have nothing to say to the men who put beer before babies, or to the women who rank dress and dances before daughters. If their stock dies out, so much the better. Ambition is the main cause of small families; and ambition is of two kinds. First there is the desire of parents to rise in the world. This is only bad if it is carried too far. We all see that ambition must not lead to a selfish disregard of the rights of others. Neither must it lead to a disregard of the needs of the nation in the future. To have no more than one or two children in order to make it easy to mount the social ladder should be unsparingly condemned. Snobbishness and the desire for social advancement are found in all ranks of society ; and the snobbishness which favours the limitation of families amongst the well-to-do is now doing a deadly injury to the race. There is certainly one reason for the limitation of the size of the family which is worthy of respect, and that is the desire to make sure that the children already bom can be placed in as good positions as is possible. In the following chapters something will be said as to how it could be made more possible in the future to satisfy this ambition of parents where there are several children. But in any case
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