(3) Fabian Essays in Socialism. p. 21.
(4) Uncontrolled Breeding, By Adelyne More. p. 84.
(5) For a sympathetic treatment of modern psychological
research as bearing on Communism, by two convinced
Communists see "Creative Revolution," by Eden and Cedar
Paul.
(6) Neo-Malthusianisme et Socialisme, p. 22.
CHAPTER VIII: Dangers of Cradle Competition
Eugenics has been defined as "the study of agencies under social control
that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations,
either mentally or physically." While there is no inherent conflict
between Socialism and Eugenics, the latter is, broadly, the antithesis
of the former. In its propaganda, Socialism emphasizes the evil effects
of our industrial and economic system. It insists upon the necessity of
satisfying material needs, upon sanitation, hygiene, and education to
effect the transformation of society. The Socialist insists that healthy
humanity is impossible without a radical improvement of the social--and
therefore of the economic and industrial--environment. The Eugenist
points out that heredity is the great determining factor in the lives
of men and women. Eugenics is the attempt to solve the problem from the
biological and evolutionary point of view. You may bring all the changes
possible on "Nurture" or environment, the Eugenist may say to the
Socialist, but comparatively little can be effected until you control
biological and hereditary elements of the problem. Eugenics thus aims
to seek out the root of our trouble, to study humanity as a kinetic,
dynamic, evolutionary organism, shifting and changing with the
successive generations, rising and falling, cleansing itself of
inherent defects, or under adverse and dysgenic influences, sinking into
degeneration and deterioration.
"Eugenics" was first defined by Sir Francis Galton in his "Human
Faculty" in 1884, and was subsequently developed into a science and into
an educational effort. Galton's ideal was the rational breeding of human
beings. The aim of Eugenics, as defined by its founder, is to bring
as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause the useful
classes of the community to contribute MORE than their proportion to the
next generation. Eugenics thus concerns itself with all influences that
improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop
them to the utmost advantage. It is, in short, the attempt t
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