The scope and importance to the state of the science of national eugenics / by Karl Pearson.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

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

Credit: The scope and importance to the state of the science of national eugenics / by Karl Pearson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    IO SCOPE AND IMPORTANCE TO THE STATE Yet if we come to analyse these secondary conditions, we shall find in each case that their realization depends on the fulfilment of our primary condition. Without high average soundness of body and soundness of mind, a nation can neither be built up nor an empire preserved. Permanence and dominance in the world passes to and from nations even with their rise and fall in mental and bodily fitness. No success will attend our attempts to understand past history, to cast light on present racial changes, or to predict future development, if we leave out of account the biological factors. Statistics as to the prevalence of disease in the army of a defeated nation may tell us more than any dissertation on the genius of the commanders and the cleverness of the statesmen of its victorious foe. Lost provinces and a generation of hectoring may follow to the conquered nation whose leaders have forgotten the primary essen¬ tial of national soundness in body and mind. Francis Galton, in establishing a laboratory for the study of National Eugenics in the University of London, has defined this new science as ' the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally'. The word eugenic here has the double sense of the English wellbred, goodness of nature and goodness of nurture. Our science does not propose to confine its attention to problems of inheritance only, but to deal also with problems of environment and of nurture. It may be said that much social labour has already been spent on investigating the condition of the people ; there have been Royal Commissions, Parliamentary and Departmental Committees, and much independent effort on the part of philanthropists, medical