What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin.

  • Darwin, Leonard, 1850-1943.
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    20 WHAT IS EUGENICS? is elastic. By further efforts, or by being placed in better surroundings, our lot can always be improved somewhat. In all circumstances the cable tying us to our hereditary anchor can be stretched a bit more by pulling harder. This is so, although it would be practically impossible to go on lengthening it for ever. In the same way, we vaguely know that, as regards all things that we are striving for, there is a limit beyond which we cannot expect to go. Yet this practically unattainable limit to our hopes should not and does not fill us with despair. If we look to future generations, however, another story has to be told. If an improvement in the breed of the race comes to be made, this will be as if those who come after us will find their anchors of heredity cast further in advance. Such an improvement in natural qualities would mean that our successors would have a better start in life. They would be able to do as well as we have done with less exer¬ tion. With efforts equal to those which we have made, their lives would be more profitable than ours. The cables attached to their fixed anchors would not drag them back to the same extent. With no more trouble than we have taken, they would be superior to us in mind and body. That these results in the future can actually be obtained by reforms adopted to-day is the hope held out to us by eugenics. Is not this an inspiring hope ì