uarded from degradation. A man who
has been degraded and embittered by an enforced castration might not be
dangerous to posterity, but might very easily become a dangerous member of
the society in which he actually lived. With due precautions and
safeguards, castration may doubtless play a certain part in the elevation
and improvement of the race.[451]

The methods we have been considering, in so far as they limit the
procreative powers of the less healthy and efficient stocks in a
community, are methods of eugenics. It must not, however, be supposed that
they are the whole of eugenics, or indeed that they are in any way
essential to a eugenic scheme. Eugenics is concerned with the whole of the
agencies which elevate and improve the human breed; abortion and
castration are methods which may be used to this end, but they are not
methods of which everyone approves, nor is it always clear that the ends
they effect would not better be attained by other methods; in any case
they are methods of negative eugenics. There remains the field of positive
eugenics, which is concerned, not with the elimination of the inferior
stocks but with ascertaining which are the superior stocks and with
furthering their procreative power.

While the necessity of refraining from procreation is no longer a bar to
marriage, the question of whether two persons ought to marry each other
still remains in the majority of cases a serious question from the
standpoint of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for the normal
marriage cannot fail to involve children, as, indeed, its chief and most
desirable end. We have to consider not merely what are the stocks or the
individuals that are unfit to breed, but also what are these stocks or
individuals that are most fit to breed, and under what conditions
procreation may best be effected. The present imperfection of our
knowledge on these questions emphasizes the need for care and caution in
approaching their consideration.

It may be fitting, at this point, to refer to the experiment of
the Oneida Community in establishing a system of scientific
propagation, under the guidance of a man whose ability and
distinction as a pioneer are only to-day beginning to be
adequately recognized. John Humphrey Noyes was too far ahead of
his own day to be recognized at his true worth; at the most, he
was regarded as the sagacious and successful founder of a sect,
and his attempts to ap