eugenics who adhered to the idea of a wholesale surgical campaign. A few
reformers have told the public for several years of the desirability of
sterilizing the supposed 10,000,000 defectives at the bottom of the
American population. Lately one campaigner has raised this figure to
15,000,000. Such fantastic proposals are properly resented by socialists
and nearly every one else, but they are invariably associated in the
public mind with the conception of eugenics, in spite of the fact that
99 out of 100 eugenists would repudiate them. The authors can speak only
for themselves, in declaring that eugenics will not be promoted by
coercive means except in a limited class of pathological cases; but they
are confident that other geneticists, with a very few exceptions, hold
the same attitude. There is no danger that this surgical campaign will
ever attain formidable proportions, and the socialist, we believe, may
rest assured that the progress of eugenics is not likely to infringe
unwarrantably on the principle of individual freedom, either by
sterilization or by coercive mating.

2. Eugenists are further charged with ignoring or paying too little
attention to the influence of the environment in social reform. This
charge is sometimes well founded, but it is not an inherent defect in
the eugenics program. The eugenist only asks that both factors be taken
into account, whereas in the past the factor of heredity has been too
often ignored. In the last chapter of this book we make an effort to
balance the two sides.

3. Again, it is alleged that eugenics proposes to substitute an
aristocracy for a democracy. We do think that those who have superior
ability should be given the greatest responsibilities in government. If
aristocracy means a government by the people who are best qualified to
govern, then eugenics has most to hope from an aristo-democratic system.
But admission to office should always be open to anyone who shows the
best ability; and the search for such ability must be much more thorough
in the future than it has been in the past.

4. Eugenists are charged with hindering social progress by endeavoring
to keep woman in the subordinate position of a domestic animal, by
opposing the movement for her emancipation, by limiting her activity to
child-bearing and refusing to recognize that she is in every way fitted
to take an equal part with man in the world's work. This objection we
have answered elsewhere, particularl