Eugenics and Other EvilsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Philosophy
Eugenics and Other Evils
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Eugenics
One does not, as I have said, need to deny heredity in order to resist
such legislation, any more than one needs to deny the spiritual world
in order to resist an epidemic of witch-burning. I admit there may be
such a thing as hereditary feeble-mindedness; I believe there is such
a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in
mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits;
believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to
suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. All that is mere
rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance and
terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but denies
there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who admits
there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists. Yet I should
certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly
simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The
reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches, and quite
another to believe in witch-smellers. I have more respect for the old
witch-finders than for the Eugenists, who go about persecuting the
fool of the family; because the witch-finders, according to their own
conviction, ran a risk. Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the
strong-minded--the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a
raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a
righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of
sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and
despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a
war upon the weak. It ended by being what Eugenics begins by being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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