Eugenics and Other EvilsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Philosophy
Eugenics and Other Evils
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Eugenics
That, however it may be, does not concern my argument. I mention the
case of the strong-minded variety of the monstrous merely to give one
out of the hundred cases of the instant divergence of individual
opinions the moment we begin to discuss who is fit or unfit to
propagate. If Dr. Saleeby and I were setting out on a segregating trip
together, we should separate at the very door; and if he had a
thousand doctors with him, they would all go different ways. Everyone
who has known as many kind and capable doctors as I have, knows that
the ablest and sanest of them have a tendency to possess some little
hobby or half-discovery of their own, as that oranges are bad for
children, or that trees are dangerous in gardens, or that many more
people ought to wear spectacles. It is asking too much of human nature
to expect them not to cherish such scraps of originality in a hard,
dull, and often heroic trade. But the inevitable result of it, as
exercised by the individual Saleebys, would be that each man would
have his favourite kind of idiot. Each doctor would be mad on his own
madman. One would have his eye on devotional curates; another would
wander about collecting obstreperous majors; a third would be the
terror of animal-loving spinsters, who would flee with all their cats
and dogs before him. Short of sheer literal anarchy, therefore, it
seems plain that the Eugenist must find some authority other than his
own implied personality. He must, once and for all, learn the lesson
which is hardest for him and me and for all our fallen race--the fact
that he is only himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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