Eugenics is not simply sex hygiene, as many have come to consider it, owing to the liberal use of the word Eugenics by the sex hygienists. Sex hygiene is, of course, one of the considerations in eugenic improvement.
Eugenics is not, furthermore, the science of improving the physical organism only, as has been erroneously assumed by certain uninformed publicists, a point of view which has been promoted by cartoonists, who find it good sport for their pens.
Eugenics does not require the old Spartan practise of infanticide, nor does Eugenics propose to do violence in any other way to humanitarian or religious feeling.
Eugenics does not mean, as some have imagined, compulsory or government-made marriages.
Nor is Eugenics the science of improving the human stock by matings that are academically ideal, but which lack the element of individual attraction and instinctive love.
Discovery of Hereditary Laws
There was a time when the inherent personality of a man, the color of his eyes, the capacity of his mind, the quality of his character, seemed clearly subject to the caprice of forces beyond the reach of mortal perception. In attempting to trace the source of a personality, hereditarily, no constancy could be detected in its relation to the lives from which it arose. A child was never absolutely like brother, sister, mother, father or grandparent.
An epoch-making discovery in 1865 by an Austrian monk named Mendel,[57] and later discoveries by a number of other scientists, revealed the subdivisibility of each individual into many distinct units or traits, the hereditary sources of which were clearly traceable, leading to various individuals of the family line, and not to one individual alone. Furthermore, it was found that the lack of a certain trait sometimes appears as a trait in itself, just as darkness seems like a condition in itself rather than as an absence of light.
These discoveries changed the whole current of thought regarding heredity, and the constancy of its action, as well as its controllability. It also emphasized the fact that it does make a difference whom one marries as to the character of the resulting offspring. Their makeup is not subject to the caprice of forces beyond human perception, but is in some degree subject to control.
Out of these discoveries has arisen the science of Eugenics. Sir Francis Galton, of England, was the first to start a world movement for its application toward conscious betterment of the human stock.