The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski].

  • Harold Laski
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1910. ;ay - iff* THE SCOPE OF EUGENICS. The scientific advance of the last half-century has profoundly altered the aspect of sociology. We are no longer compelled to force conclusions derived from purely theoretical reasoning on an unwilling populace. We have at last come to understand that biology is really the science of life, and that its utility is to be determined by its value to human society. There is no finer or truer aphorism to be found in all Huxley than his remark that science is systematised common-sense. It may have its technical terminology, but its purport is none the less clear. It aims at the discovery and utilisation of truth. We are beginning nowadays to apply scientific formulae to national problems. The statesman, somewhat to his surprise, has discovered that they have political value. It is by the standard of the man of science that the legis¬ lation of the future will be tested, and political theories have undergone a profound change since the acceptance of Darwinian conceptions. Science has revolutionised the art of the engineer, and it is becoming of increased importance to the manufacturer and the farmer. Cotton is dependent on chemistry, and it is to Mendelism that the agriculturist will turn in the future. This greater importance of science in the practical world is a sign, per¬ haps, of an awakened interest in life; a realisation that man, in Meredith’s phrase, must become master of the event. We are no longer leaving the world to that divinity that shapes our ends despite our efforts to rough-hew them to our own will. We are becoming certain that whilst the results of natural selection were wholly beneficial in early society, the complex political organism, of which each of us is part, has to no small extent lessened the force of that great weapon of progress. We have practically sup¬ planted Nature; we are no longer content to let her go her own way; nor do we put a blind confidence in her. She rooted out the weaklings; the battle was ever to the strongest, the race to the swiftest of foot. But we have refused any longer to tolerate her Spartan methods. We have demanded her abdication; or, at least, a constitutional rule. We are now, to drop the metaphor, consciously or unconsciously fostering the weaker part of man¬ kind, until its numbers have become a positive danger to the com-