At first glance this seems to be the logical thing to do, especially as
the effects of heredity can no more be doubted in man than in animals.
Still there are important questions to be asked and grave dangers to be
encountered. When we say that the well-bred Berkshire hog is better than
the "razor-back," we mean that it will produce more meat for food. In
other words the hog is better for man. If we were to ask which would be
the better, if the hog were to be considered, the answer would probably
be the "razor-back." The fact that the food consumed by the Berkshire
produces a large quantity of fat, makes him unfitted to live if he were
living for his own sake. Turn both hogs out to run wild, and the
"razor-back" will live and the Berkshire die. Nature will make her
selection and adapt the hog to his environment. The Berkshire will
produce more lard, but it will not run so fast; it has no more brains
and cannot adapt what it has so well to the preservation of life. The
same thing is doubtless true of other animals and likewise of plant
life. The Jersey cow would not survive in a natural state. She gives too
much milk and for too long a time. Man has made of her a milk-machine.
Turn all thoroughbred horses out on the plains to shift for themselves,
and they would either die or gradually be modified until they were
adapted to the free and wild life of the plains. This would not be so
good for man, but would be better for the horses. In plants and animals,
man can by selection breed or cultivate any characteristics that he may
choose, but he cannot produce a horse which is both a draft horse and a
running horse; he cannot produce cattle that are the best both for milk
and beef. He is urged to try scientific breeding on the human race. How
would he have man changed? Would he experiment for more intellect, or a
bigger and stronger physique? Would he breed for art and civilization or
would he breed for strength and physical endurance? What qualities are
desirable for the human race? This would be a very hard question even to
entrust to a popular vote. While the capacity of cattle to produce milk
can be increased, cattle cannot increase their own capacity or improve
their own quality. This can be done only by the slow and patient
processes of Nature in the line of adapting the animal to its
environment. The rapid change that is to come about by breeding must be
directed and controlled by man. The cattle have nothing to say about the
process. No doubt a higher order of beings who could control man might,
and perhaps would change him by selective mating. How they would change
him would depend on the use they wished to make of him, not on what the
man himself would like to do. The contemplation of a higher order of
beings experimenting with the human race is not a pleasant one for
intelligent men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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