Eugenics is a word invented by Francis Galton to cover the philosophy, collection of facts, the science, whatever we can call it, which regards race improvement as a desirable and practicable process. Stirpiculture is an older word for a similar idea. New descriptive or misleading phrases will be invented from time to time, sometimes by friends, sometimes by enemies of the movement. It may be well from the first to clear away some misinterpretations. Accusations against new ideas commonly take the form of attempting to show that the new and possibly good idea is irretrievably committed to some other idea, generally an older and discredited one. It is the universal rule, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, to regard sex-relationships as so sacrosanct that merely to mention them is to outrage modesty and shock morality. Fortunately or otherwise we have had to overcome this silly secretiveness. The horrible white-slave traffic, the loathsome increase of venereal diseases, the frequent revelations such as the Thaw case forced on the public, the necessity for protecting children from outrage—all these and other things have made not only possible but obviously desirable that decency, wisdom and humanity should make their voice heard. The time has come when we will not tolerate the daily scandal of having our newspapers polluted with details of sexual abnormalities while we are refused the opportunity of educating the people in the direction of purity, health, and efficiency in the sexual relation. Eugenics is concerned primarily and materially with the normal sex relationship, which in modern civilised lands means the ordinary legal monogamic marriage. It is perfectly true that there have been pioneer reformers, to whom the world owes much who have linked their ideals of race improvement to an advocacy of freer sex relationships. Modern eugenists have no such divided council. They aim at encouraging the best births and discouraging the worst, and all details of their propaganda must be subordinate to this great aspiration. Seeing then that through monogamic marriage the Anglo-Saxon race must overwhelmingly flow now and in all the sighted future, we resolutely direct our attention to this institution as we find it. On the lines of which the race has approved we shall proceed for our reforms. The United States great in a thousand ways, although often the despair of the reformer, offers the most promising field of the whole world in the direction of Eugenics. Comprising within her catholic embrace many varieties of monogamic marriage she possesses contrasts, comparisons, examples and warnings, which will be of infinite use in the Eugenist's laboratory. Well may we be content to show from these differences how on the present basis of marriage a nobler race may be reared. It is of course only one aspect of marriage that interests Eugenists, but as according to the teaching of most Churches and the theory of most governments the origin, basis and reason of marriage is procreation, it will be seen that race improvement does not look on the least important side of marriage. In other words it is in its public and universal relations that marriage will be regarded by Eugenists. In comparatively socialised States like ours where education and a hundred other concerns of every child are the constant care of representative institutions it would be retrogression if we did not now begin to consider the child as having from its birth a public interest. Seeing the advance being made in our understanding of some of the laws of heredity it must not be considered wonderful that this public interest in the future citizen should begin even before birth. For this purpose it is not at all necessary, I hold it to be eminently undesirable, that the State or any outside authority should attempt the ridiculous task of organising who shall marry and mate, or dictate by law or force the conditions of marriages which satisfy the contracting parties. But this laisser faire doctrine obviously has no applicability to the much more disputable proposition that the State has no right to deal with the source of its future responsibilities, the root by which may arrive human wrecks for which the State must provide in the days to come. This brings me to a further protest. It has been suggested that Eugenists are anarchists, tearing up the roots of government, blindly striking at civilised institutions, putting a bomb to the foundations of Church, State, and Family. Let it be said here and now in such clear phrase as may be that Eugenics is the antithesis of anarchy. It means order. Eugenics opposes chaos in the interests of the race. It is the most profoundly patriotic proposition ever laid before the people of these United States. Its conception is for the national good. American Eugenists will never rest until our race becomes the fittest on earth. Other nations shall teach us if they can, we will better their instruction. Monarchical old world peoples, restrained by traditions, tied down by red tape, drugged by the dread of progress, may justify their own inertia, we cannot sink with them. We are leaders and pioneers. In the United States respect is still accorded to those who have new truths to teach for the benefit of the race. If "national efficiency" has to some extent failed in its appeal, if the answer has been an admission of unaccomplished desires, the reason must be ascribed to the limited scope of the inquiry. The nation has to take itself seriously in hand. We need to get beyond the citizen of to-day, we have to consider the citizen of to-morrow.
As to religion, I appeal both to those who love God and to those who love their fellow-man. It is futile at this time of day to quote against the living race the dictates of a dead age. It is monstrous also to slander the noble men and women who are at present engaged in the secular activities of our Churches by pretending to believe that they are not most keenly anxious to aid in any uplifting work for the regeneration of the world. Every institution which is teaching, feeding or otherwise helping children is a nucleus for Eugenic enterprise. The neglect of Eugenics in the last generation has clogged the wheels of progress in this generation. We cannot and must not forget the victims of our national neglect, but we can do greatest honour to our philanthropists and workers for the general uplift by seriously endeavouring to eliminate from the coming generation the hopelessly unfit and by encouraging the multiplication of the efficient.
There is no immorality in our proposals, as a glance at these pages will abundantly prove. The Family of the future is going to be sweeter, purer and nobler. It may even be more numerous, for while Eugenists resolutely set themselves to discourage the national burdening by debt, danger and decay which inevitably follow in the footsteps of a deteriorating race, we have nevertheless no opinions whatever as to whether a numerically large or small family is best. Race suicide is no worse than race murder. We cannot imagine a nobler sight than an enormous and increasing race of the vitally fit. A temporary and deliberate discouragement of certain unwelcome elements may be momentarily embarrassing, but this is only half the story. Our ports of entry are firmly closed in the face of undesirable aliens, not for the purpose of reducing our population, far from it. Our stability, our greatness, our very existence depend on the success with which we have attracted to our shores those immigrants whose children to-day are our boast and pride. Eugenics, it cannot be too often said, is no mere phase of Malthusianism. It is not a population question it is the population question. It dismisses Malthus as a spent force, as a prophet whose message was only half delivered, as a Jeremiah who would have deprived the world of its saviours as well as of its betrayers. Of Malthus it may truly be said that in forbidding those who would "wade through slaughter to a throne" he "shut the gates of mercy on mankind." No philosophy to-day can meet the needs of to-day if it indiscriminately decreases both. Both methods are evil. We must weigh as well as count. The Sphinx of civilisation sits waiting our answer to her riddle. We have mingled the seeds of evil with the seeds of good. Mere mechanical multiplication only accentuates the evil because weeds are always of quicker growth than the flower plants which they deprive of their due share of light and air. Patient division of the seeds, careful sorting, subtracting as far as possible the contaminating elements, and giving all the needful attention to the sturdy but perverse, encouraging those seeds which in various ways will one day grow into perfect trees so as to show flower; to bear fruit, give shade, make timber or in any other way serve the multifarious needs of the nation.
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
Eugenics is not committed to the Darwinian doctrine of evolution, although it would probably never have reached the stage of practical politics but for the encouragement given to all systematic scientific studies by Darwin's magnificent generalisations. Eugenics takes its stand on the ascertained fact of heredity, and it owes an immense debt to the patience with which Lamarck, the Darwins, Weissman and others have piled instance upon instance to illustrate the fact that "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" and "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." The doctrine of heredity has never been more resonantly expressed than in these words although they show only one side and that not the better side of heredity. We are indeed "begotten not made." Nurture, or environment, has its place, and an important one, in race improvement, but the overwhelming fact remains that more than three-fourths of the elements which build up a human soul are in its nature, not its nurture. The formative factor of greatest importance in the making of human life and character is heredity.
Mankind has hitherto failed to grasp the full significance of this admission. Horticulturists have made it the starting point of their experiments until to-day the Luther Burbanks can almost create what they will in plant life. Cattle-breeders, dog-fanciers, and horse-farmers, are able to raise the value of their breeds to a wonderful degree. Ornithologists have been equally successful; from the original stock a hundred varieties come at the touch of the scientific magician's wand. In each case even where at first quantity was considered of no importance compared with quality, there has been a steady and unmistakable increase in the effective numbers side by side with a gigantic development of those elements of strength or beauty which have been arrived at. Race suicide is a metaphysical phrase not easily open to definition, but two things may be said about it at this stage. Race improvement is utterly inconsistent with any intelligent conception of race suicide. An increasing birthrate is not in itself a guarantee of progress and may indeed be the means of a nation's retrogression. Experience and logic lead to the confident conclusion that increased vitality means increased fecundity.
To acknowledge the law of heredity with its concomitant scientific implications, must inevitably change our mental outlook in many directions. Accordingly as we relatively place heredity or environment first, our views on social politics will be fundamentally sound or unsound. Taking a large view of society it must make an abysmal difference whether we think the race can or cannot be improved (not merely polished or even enlightened but really changed) by modifications of environment. We can no longer pursue the same and by the same means if we come to the conclusion that the individual is either born a potential asset to society or "damned into existence," a permanent drain on his fellows' comfort and wealth, even a possible miasma of infectious criminality.