Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster.

  • Schuster, Edgar.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/280 (page 10)
    10 EUGENICS essentially the same end. They endeavour to accomplish it by enabling each individual born into the world to develop the best that is in his nature, both of the body and of the mind, so that his life may be lived with satisfaction to himself and profit to the community, and that it may be unspoilt by accident or disease and unhampered by ignorance or vice. At present, 'the best that is in his nature' is often a poor thing. Eugenics aims at making it a little better by whatever means may prove practicable. In this it differs from, and goes farther than, the agencies enumerated, whose efforts it seeks to supple¬ ment, but not to supersede. Eugenists form no homogeneous sect or party, recognise no common leader, are confined to no country, and differ widely in their methods and beliefs ; but they appear to the present writer to subscribe implicitly, if not explicitly, to a common creed, which may be outlined as follows :—Each individual, as he passes through life to its end in death, derives his active qualities at each moment, of what¬ ever nature they may be, from the inter¬ action of two separate, yet not wholly independent, causes. The one may be called his inborn potentiality or capacity for development; the other the environment, or the mental, moral, and physical surround¬ ings in which his life is spent.