Plato proposed to destroy the family, and to “practise every art that no mother should know her own child.” He also approved of infanticide. Nevertheless, this fifth book of the Republic is interesting and valuable reading, and it is especially well to note that this pioneer of Utopianism and Socialism possessed the idea which almost all living Socialists, except Dr. A. R. Wallace and Professors Forel and Pearson, lack, that we must first make the Utopian and Utopia will follow.
The Family. (1906.) By Elsie Clews Parsons.
This recent, scholarly and lucid book, of which any living man might well be proud, may follow the reading of the utterly unconcerned and taken-for-granted fashion in which Socrates and Plato proposed to destroy the family. Lecture VIII., on “Sexual Choice,” is brief, but the references following it are extremely valuable and complete. It is evident that one of the books which will have to be written on eugenics in the near future must deal with the whole question of marriage and human selection both in its historical and in its contemporary aspects.
“The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment.” Nature, 1901, p. 659; Smithsonian Report, Washington, 1901, p. 523. By Francis Galton.
This was the Huxley Lecture of the Anthropological Institute in 1901, and the contemporary interest in eugenics may be said to date from it.
“Eugenics, its Definition, Scope and Aims.” (Sociological Papers. 1904.) By Francis Galton.
This remarkable lecture constituted a further introduction of the subject, and it is somewhat of the nature of an impertinence for the professional jester, who is not acquainted with a line of it, to dismiss eugenics with a phrase as if this lecture had never been written or were unobtainable. Mr. Galton there defined eugenics as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race....” The definition given in the Century Dictionary is unauthoritative, incorrect, and misses the entire point.
An extremely valuable discussion follows this lecture, and it is absolutely necessary for the student to acquaint himself with the whole of these pages (45–99).
Restrictions in Marriage: Studies in National Eugenics: Eugenics as a Factor in Religion. By Francis Galton.
These are memoirs communicated to the Sociological Society in 1905, and published together with the subsequent discussions in Sociological Papers (1905). The three memoirs are also published separately under one cover.