Mankind at the crossroads / by Edward M. East.

  • East, Edward M. (Edward Murray), 1879-1938.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Mankind at the crossroads / by Edward M. East. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/380 (page VI)
    vi PREFACE the genetics of the humbler organisms—if one admits the truth—would have flagged severely. Biologists would have turned their attention largely to the ways of human heredity, in spite of the fact that the difficulties encountered would have rendered progress slow and uncertain. Since this was not the case, since the laws ruling the inheritance of the denizens of the garden and the inmates of the stable were found to be applicable to prince and potentate as well, one could shut himself up in his laboratory and labor to his heart's content, feeling certain that any truth which it fell to his lot to discover had a real human interest, after all. This intensive work has been rewarded. Knowledge of man's nature and nurture in health and disease has been rounded out by knowledge of his racial prospects. We are therefore entering upon a new epoch of civilization with our social problems clearly and rigorously defined and with the natural laws controlling our destiny recorded on the statute-books a deal more precisely than those contributed by bar and bench. The present need is for ways and means in the practical application of this knowledge that are cau¬ tious and deliberate without being weak and infirm of pur¬ pose. Proper direction of himaan evolution is a worthy objective, a high ideal which no one should censure; for whether we will or no, our complex social organization founded for the protection of the many has set at naught many of the im¬ portant factors of natural evolution. But one must walk carefully and speak softly when considering recommenda¬ tions along these lines. There has been too great a tendency to push ahead of the facts. Eugenics, a one-sided ill-con¬ sidered eugenics, has been a veritable honey-pot for the dilettante and the amateur. They have buzzed around, circulating propaganda of a singularly pernicious type, plausible fallacies alleged to have a scientific background. Such misplaced enthusiasm does much harm to a cause fimdamentally good.