Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster.

  • Schuster, Edgar.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    236 EUGENICS under the best possible conditions of parent¬ age, and the minimum under the worst. Therefore, in considering the methods by which the social control is or possibly can be brought to bear on the agencies which im¬ prove and impair the racial qualities of future generations, this classification will not be used, but the methods will be grouped accord¬ ing to the manner in which the control is exercised. The most important class com¬ prises marriage laws and customs. Marriage Laws and Customs It is sometimes urged by persons opposed to Eugenics that it can only proceed by enforcing restrictions in marriage, and that such restrictions are either impossible or undesirable in that they would lead to worse results than those which they were designed to prevent. Two answers may be made to this objection ; first, that restrictions in marriage form no necessary part of an Eugenic policy; secondly, that such restric¬ tions may be and have been enforced with ease and without friction. In a paper on the subject, read by Sir Francis Galton before the Sociological Society in 1905, he reviews certain laws and customs which interfere with the free selection of a mate. The first of these is monogamy, a restriction not imposed by natural instinct, but owing its