9]

It is here that the ideals of Eugenics may be expected to work
fruitfully. To insist upon the power of heredity was once considered to
indicate a fatalistic pessimism. It wears a very different aspect
nowadays, in the light of Eugenics. "To the eugenist," as Davenport
observes, "heredity stands as the one great hope of the human race: its
saviour from imbecility, poverty, disease, immorality."[40] We cannot,
indeed, desire any compulsory elimination of the unfit or any centrally
regulated breeding of the fit.[41] Such notions are idle, and even the
mere fact that unbalanced brains may air them abroad tends to impair the
legitimate authority of eugenic ideals. The two measures which are now
commonly put forward for the attainment of eugenic ends--health
certificates as a legal preliminary to marriage and the sterilization of
the unfit--are excellent when wisely applied, but they become
mischievous, if not ridiculous, in the hands of fanatics who would
employ them by force. Domestic animals may be highly bred from outside,
compulsorily. Man can only be bred upwards from within through the
medium of his intelligence and will, working together under the control
of a high sense of responsibility. The infinite cunning of men and women
is fully equal to the defeat of any attempt to touch life at this
intimate point against the wish of those to whom the creation of life is
entrusted. The laws of marriage even among savages have often been
complex and strenuous in the highest degree. But it has been easy to
bear them, for they have been part of the sacred and inviolable
traditions of the race; religion lay behind them. And Galton, who
recognized the futility of mere legislation in the elevation of the
race, believed that the hope of the future lies in rendering eugenics a
part of religion. The only compulsion we can apply in eugenics is the
compulsion that comes from within. All those in whom any fine sense of
social and racial responsibility is developed will desire, before
marriage, to give, and to receive, the fullest information on all the
matters that concern ancestral inheritance, while the registration of
such information, it is probable, will become ever simpler and more a
matter of course.[42] And if he finds that he is not justified in aiding
to carry on the race, the eugenist will be content to make himself, in
the words of Jesus, "a eunuch for the kingdom of Heaven's sake,"
whether, under modern conditions, that