The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski].

  • Harold Laski
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/10 page 27
    1910. 27 The Scope of Eugenics. ance as to give us pause. The increase in mental and physical de¬ ficiency, in unemployment, and its correlative pauperism, is so great as to cause all thoughtful men to turn their attention to its arrest. Indeed, the most optimistic of us could hardly fail to observe the existence of a certain decadence at the present time. There may be little cause for pessimism, but there is no reason for congratula¬ tion. Like unskilful physicians, our statesmen do not attempt to ascertain the cause of the malady, and check it at its root. We feel its presence; we have a dim suspicion that our attempts at cure are but fleeting remedies at best, and not a panacea for our ills. And the gravity of the problem renders it impossible for us to wait in the hope that it will solve itself. The science of Eugenics has been ably defined as the study of those social agencies that may improve or impair the mental and physical characteristics of the race. It is at once a study of national deterioration and of national progress. It is an attempt adequately to estimate the extent of the social problem in its bio¬ logical aspect, and an indication of the scientific means for its solution. It has been objected that the material for such a science does not exist. Stress has been laid on the impossibility of human experiment. Since we cannot deal with men as we deal with rab¬ bits or with mice, it has been claimed that our knowledge of human genetics must be correspondingly defective. Professor Pearson has disposed of that argument, and we cannot do better than sum¬ marise his conclusion. Your science, objectors will say, pre¬ supposes the existence of a super-man, who is to society what Sir John Sebright was to pigeons, or, like Luther Burbank, seems to have some almost miraculous control over the productions of nature. We may meet that objection by a simple denial of its relevancy. No Eugenist claims to have faculties in any degree superior to those of the ordinary man. He has no wish actively to experiment on human society. On the contrary, he realises that the ceaseless flow of human energy provides him with more than sufficient material for his purpose. Different kinds of men are born; the average healthy being, the man of exceptional ability, the feeble-minded, and the epileptic. Each type, in due time marries and tends to beget its like. It is an iron law of inheritance that the outstanding traits of the parents5 characters are handed on in some remarkably similar degree to their children. Bad stock produces bad stock; the able produce the able; the strong produce the strong. This is true, of course, only of man¬ kind in the mass; it is a law to which there are individual excep¬ tions. The physician, further, provides the Eugenist with a record of the experiments that are continually and unconsciously being
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