Eugenics in race and state.

  • International Congress of Eugenics
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Eugenics in race and state. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    432/534 (page 416)
    416 A. В. WOLFE is due to a considerable extent to the limitations imposed by class lines. How far assortative mating is responsible for the perpetuation of hidebound, unsocial, reactionary and selfishly conservative attitudes in one class, and headlong, emotional, pugnacious revolt attitudes in another, it is im¬ possible to say. It might be worth investigation. Be that as it may, the bad effects of assortative mating are perpetuated not alone through organic heredity but far more, probably, through the perpetuation of unstimulative and depressing family environments and undesirable acquired attitudes. In view of such considerations as I have tried to suggest, necessarily in merest outline, it appears to me that the main attention of eugenists—of all but the most highly specialized genetic investigators—should now be directed primai'ily to the environmental causes of these obstructive social attitudes, and to the cultural means to their elimination. Such a shifting of attention and effort will by no means be contrary to the broader spirit of eugenics as conceived by its founder. For we need to keep in mind that Francis Galton defined eugenics not only as the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of the race but also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage.^ Inasmuch as Galton's work, and the work of most of the men who took their inspiration from his leadership, fell within the period when biology was going through its most striking development and when it was having a most profound influence on sociological theory and social ideals, it is not strange that Galton and his followers lost sight of the second half of his definition and that some contemporary scholars like Pearson in England and Davenport in America have practically denied significance to environmental influence and ontogenetic development. Today, however, with the advances con¬ tinually being made in behavioristic psychology, social psychology, and psychoanalysis, we should be more than unscientific did we not turn atten¬ tion back to the neglected half of the definition and of the task of eugenics in this broader sense. The psychology of today is largely a psychology of motivation and at¬ titude. While we may agree with Pearson^ that natural capacity—good steel, is restricted mainly to a relatively small part of the population, or with Ward® that it is widely distributed, we are in position to see that whatever its amount and distribution, much of it not only fails to be dis¬ covered and utilized, but that even when sharpened and polished it is put to uneconomical and unsocial uses through wrong motivation, wrong atti¬ tudes, and archaic philosophies. ' Eugenics; Its Definition, Scope, and Aims, in Sociological Papers, 1904, p. 45. 2 The Groundwork of Eugenics, 2d edition, 1921, pp. 36 ff. * Lester F. Ward, Applied Sociology, 1906, chs. 9, 10.