The limits of eugenics / by Albert Galloway Keller.

  • Keller, Albert Galloway, 1874-1956.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The limits of eugenics / by Albert Galloway Keller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    they give up close inbreeding; a tendency towards exogamy has been an advantage in the conflict of races. For this reason it has passed naturally into the folkways. How might eugenics take a similar course? Suppose—a thing which is true—that the races of the present day differ in their observance of eugenic principles, in their toleration of counterselective agencies, and the like. If then, ill-breeding and counterselection are great handicaps, the races that depart from them already possess a substantial advantage, which must some day tell. If it does, then eugenics is sure to crystallize into a policy of successful living, that is, to get into the customs and habitudes of control¬ ling groups. Having become by demonstration a heritage of unquestioned value, it is then a candidate for religious sanction. It is hard to see how eugenics can receive wide-spread acceptance without some such conflict and survival. Perhaps in these later ages it will not be riecessary to go through all the crudity and cruelty of the race-struggle; perhaps such selection can be avoided or anticipated by the taking of thought. But if eugen¬ ics can, even within centuries, as a result of rational analysis and demonstration, and of propaganda based thereon, come to stand for a ‘national religion,’ then it must be admitted that there has come about a qualitative change in the ways of men— the folkways. For it is into the body of these that eugenics must penetrate, if it is to become such a force as its founder hopes.”1 This is the great and vital limit of eugenics. It would seem, in thinking of certain of the folkways—for example, fashion— that their alteration might be possible without invoking such an elemental process as the one described; and this is true. But the folkways are alterable in proportion as they are new and superficial and are the more persistent as they are the more in¬ veterate, deep-seated, and elemental. And eugenics deals ultimately with the union of the sexes, and the establishment of new ways in that which has to do with the great passion that ensures society’s self-perpetuation. Hence it seems reasonable to draw the case at its hardest; and I believe experience would here support theory. 1 The preceding paragraphs are from Yale Review, August, 1908, pp. 153-155.