Being Well-Born: An Introduction to EugenicsGuyer, Michael F. (Michael Frederic)
Philosophy
Being Well-Born: An Introduction to Eugenics
Guyer, Michael F. (Michael Frederic)
Eugenics; Genetics
absolutely sure of the normality of the strain into which it is proposed
to marry. The great difficulty is in determining whether or not there is a
defective ancestry in a given stock. We have at present no criteria for
identifying normal individuals who have defective germ-plasm. As a
practical test, however, if no defect has appeared in the stock for three
or four generations back, the marriage would be relatively as safe as are
the marriages of our average population to-day.
=Corrective Mating Presupposes Knowledge of Eugenics.--=But such a scheme
of corrective mating presupposes a relatively high degree of intelligence
and judgment on the part of the participants, and this is just what we do
not have and in the nature of things can not get, in the types of
feeble-minded, epileptic and degenerate strains we are striving to
eliminate. All our evidence shows that when unrestricted there is a marked
tendency for feeble-minded to mate with feeble-minded, degenerate with
degenerate. About sixteen per cent. of the feeble-minded, in fact, come
from consanguineous marriages. If we try to legislate them into specific
types of marriage then we encounter the same futility pointed out under
our discussion of restrictive legislation, they will produce offspring
without the formality of marriage.
In certain cases of insanity and in other than neuropathic defects one can
see how the system might be inaugurated with greater prospects of success,
but even then a knowledge of the principles of eugenics would be necessary
to the participants, or in other words we could only accomplish our end
through our fifth proposition, education.
=Segregation Has Many Advocates.--=As to the third proposition,
segregation during the reproductive period, this seems to have a larger
number of advocates than any other coercive measure. While on theoretical
grounds it is plausible enough, when we face the actual putting of the
method into practise we are confronted by the fact that tremendous sums of
money would be required to sequestrate and maintain colonies or industrial
refuges.
When one realizes that no state now provides for more than a small
minority of its defectives, and knowing also of the pressure that must be
brought to bear on legislatures to secure sufficient funds to provide for
these cases of extremest urgency, one can not be overly optimistic about
the practicability of extensive sequestration.
E. R. Johnstone, the superintendent of a large training school for
feeble-minded in New Jersey, points out that no state in the Union is
providing for many more than one-tenth of her feeble-minded and
epileptics. If his estimate is true, to place in institutions, treat and
train all its feeble-minded and epileptics would even now almost swamp any
state treasury. But what _will_ it be in the future if we permit this
unrestricted nine-tenths to go on and multiply their kind?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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