There is yet another existing form of princely benevolence which might
be so extended as to exercise a large effect on race improvement. I mean
the provision to exceptionally promising young couples of healthy and
convenient houses at low rentals. A continually renewed settlement of
this kind can be easily imagined, free from the taint of patronage, and
analogous to colleges with their self-elected fellowships and rooms for
residence, that should become an exceedingly desirable residence for a
specified time. It would be so in the same way that a good club by its
own social advantages attracts desirable candidates. The tone of the
place would be higher than elsewhere, on account of the high quality of
the inmates, and it would be distinguished by an air of energy,
intelligence, health and self-respect and by mutual helpfulness.
_Prospects._—It is pleasant to contrive Utopias, and I have indulged in
many, of which a great society is one, publishing intelligence and
memoirs, holding yearly elections, administering large funds,
establishing personal relations like a missionary society with its
missionaries, keeping elaborate registers and discussing them
statistically with honest precision. But the first and pressing point is
to thoroughly justify any crusade at all in favour of race improvement.
More is wanted in the way of unbiased scientific inquiry along the many
roads I have hurried over, to make every stepping-stone safe and secure,
and to make it certain that the game is really worth the candle. All I
dare hope to effect by this lecture is to prove that in seeking for the
improvement of the race we aim at what is apparently possible to
accomplish, and that we are justified in following every path in a
resolute and hopeful spirit that seems to lead towards that end. The
magnitude of the inquiry is enormous, but its object is one of the
highest man can accomplish. The faculties of future generations will
necessarily be distributed according to laws of heredity, whose
statistical effects are no longer vague, for they are measured and
expressed in formulæ. We cannot doubt the existence of a great power
ready to hand and capable of being directed with vast benefit as soon as
we shall have learnt to understand and to apply it. To no nation is a
high human breed more necessary than to our own, for we plant our stock
all over the world and lay the foundation of the dispositions and
capacities of future millions of the human race.
EUGENICS: ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS.[3]
Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the
inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the
utmost advantage. The improvement of the inborn qualities, or stock, of
some one human population, will alone be discussed here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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