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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    EUGENICS excessively conservative the desirability of teaching a subject so unlike any included in the old-fashioned school curriculum might seem a task of considerable difficulty; but it is lightened by the fact that already a strong movement is on foot among them for introducing instruction in * sexual hygiene,* which is itself of direct Eugenic value. The object of this movement is to guard growing boys and girls from the unhealthy and vicious habits and thoughts into which they may be led during the development of their sexual instincts. Into lessons in sexual hygiene, if they are found to be valuable and practicable, Eugenics might well enter, as these lessons would form a fitting introduction to it, while it would supply them with a larger and more spiritual aim, such as might well commend itself to those whose time of life renders them particularly susceptible to the appeal of all that is spiritual and altruistic. By the Eugenic ideal Love must be guided, and to it baser motives for marriage must be subjected. Those who are carelessly contented with our present manners and customs or fear too much the difficulty of modifying them are in the habit of expressing in hack¬ neyed proverbs the view that Love cannot be guided or controlled. They say that ' Love is blind.* The original meaning of this must be that the blind god shoots his arrows at random, and thus the mutual attractions