Eugenics and Other EvilsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Philosophy
Eugenics and Other Evils
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Eugenics
that corporation which men permit to employ compulsion; and this area
can only be the area of sexual selection. I mean somewhat more than an
idle jest when I say that the policeman will generally be found in
that area. But I willingly admit that the policeman who looks after
weddings will be like the policeman who looks after wedding-presents.
He will be in plain clothes. I do not mean that a man in blue with a
helmet will drag the bride and bridegroom to the altar. I do mean that
nobody that man in blue is told to arrest will even dare to come near
the church. Sir Oliver did not mean that men would be tied up in
stables and scrubbed down by grooms. He meant that they would undergo
a less of liberty which to men is even more infamous. He meant that
the only formula important to Eugenists would be "by Smith out of
Jones." Such a formula is one of the shortest in the world; and is
certainly the shortest way with the Euphemists.
The next sect of superficial objectors is even more irritating. I have
called them, for immediate purposes, the Casuists. Suppose I say "I
dislike this spread of Cannibalism in the West End restaurants."
Somebody is sure to say "Well, after all, Queen Eleanor when she
sucked blood from her husband's arm was a cannibal." What is one to
say to such people? One can only say "Confine yourself to sucking
poisoned blood from people's arms, and I permit you to call yourself
by the glorious title of Cannibal." In this sense people say of
Eugenics, "After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying
a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists." Again one
can only answer, "Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as
are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may exult in
the title of Eugenist, all the more proudly because that distinction
will be rare." But surely anyone's common-sense must tell him that if
Eugenics dealt only with such extravagant cases, it would be called
common-sense--and not Eugenics. The human race has excluded such
absurdities for unknown ages; and has never yet called it Eugenics.
You may call it flogging when you hit a choking gentleman on the back;
you may call it torture when a man unfreezes his fingers at the fire;
but if you talk like that a little longer you will cease to live among
living men. If nothing but this mad minimum of accident were involved,
there would be no such thing as a Eugenic Congress, and certainly no
such thing as this book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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