An understanding of the nature of the problem will show that present methods of dispensing justice, giving charity, dealing with defectives and working for social betterment need careful examination and numerous modifications, if they are not to be ineffectual or merely palliative, or worse still, if they are not to give temporary relief at the cost of greatly aggravating the social disease in the end.
In the past America has given and at present still gives much thought to the individual and little, if any, to posterity. Eugenics does not want to diminish this regard for the individual, but it does insistently declare that the interests of the many are greater than those of the few, and it holds that a statesmanlike policy requires thought for the future as well as the present. It would be hard to find a eugenist to-day who would propose, with Plato, that the infants with bad heredity should be put to death, but their right to grow up to the fullest enjoyment of life does not necessarily include the right to pass on their defective heredity to a long line of descendants, naturally increasing in number in each generation. Indeed a regard for the totality of human happiness makes it necessary that they should not so continue.
While it is the hope of eugenics that fewer defective and anti-social individuals shall be born in the future, it has been emphasized so much that the program of eugenics is likely to be seen in false perspective. In reality it is the less important side of the picture. More good citizens are wanted, as well as fewer bad ones. Every race requires leaders. These leaders appear from time to time, and enough is known about eugenics now to show that their appearance is frequently predictable, not accidental. It is possible to have them appear more frequently; and in addition, to raise the level of the whole race, making the entire nation happier and more useful. These are the great tasks of eugenics. America needs more families like that old Puritan strain which is one of the familiar examples of eugenics:
"At their head stands Jonathan Edwards, and behind him an array of his descendants numbering in 1900, 1,394, of whom 295 were college graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges; 65 professors in colleges, besides many principals of other important educational institutions; 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; 100 and more clergymen, missionaries, or theological professors; 75 were officers in the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited; 33 American states and several foreign countries, and 92 American cities and many foreign cities have profited by the beneficent influences of their eminent activity; 100 and more were lawyers, of whom one was our most eminent professor of law; 30 were judges; 80 held public office, of whom one was vice president of the United States; three were United States senators; several were governors, members of Congress, framers of state constitutions, mayors of cities and ministers of foreign courts; one was president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; 15 railroads, many banks, insurance companies, and large industrial enterprises have been indebted to their management. Almost if not every department of social progress and of the public weal has felt the impulse of this healthy and long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them was ever convicted of crime."
Every one will agree that the nation needs more families like that. How can it get them? Galton blazed the way in 1865, when he pointed to selective breeding as the effective means. The animal breeder knows what marvels he can accomplish by this means; but it is not practicable to breed human beings in that direct way. Is there any indirect method of reaching the same ends?
There are, in our opinion, a good many such means, and it is the principal purpose of this book to point them out. The problem of constructive or positive eugenics, naturally divides itself into two parts:
1. To secure a sufficient number of marriages of the superior.
2. To secure an adequate birth-rate from these marriages.
The problem of securing these two results is a complex one, which must be attacked by a variety of methods. It is necessary that superior people first be made to desire marriage and children; and secondly, that it be economically and otherwise possible for them to carry out this desire.
It may be of interest to know how the Germans are attacking the problem, even though some of their measures may be considered ineffective or inadvisable.