Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
them by the way, and at present the earnest study of heredity produces
none of these bye-products. It lies before the New Republican to tilt
the balance in this direction.
There are, no doubt, already a number of unselfish and fortunately
placed men who are able to do a certain amount of work in this
direction; Professor Cossar Ewart, for example, one of those fine,
subtle, unhonoured workers who are the glory of British science and
the condemnation of our social order, has done much to clarify the
discussion of telegony and prepotency, and there are many such medical
men as Mr. Reid who broaden their daily practice by attention to
these great issues. One thinks of certain other names. Professors Karl
Pearson, Weldon, Lloyd Morgan, J. A. Thomson and Meldola, Dr. Benthall
and Messrs. Bateson, Cunningham, Pocock, Havelock Ellis, E. A. Fay
and Stuart Menteath occur to me, only to remind me how divided their
attention has had to be. As many others, perhaps, have slipped my
memory now. Not half a hundred altogether in all this wide world of
English-speaking men! For one such worker we need fifty if this science
of heredity is to grow to practicable proportions. We need a literature,
we need a special public and an atmosphere of attention and discussion.
Every man who grasps the New Republican idea brings these needs nearer
satisfaction, but if only some day the New Republic could catch the
ear of a prince, a little weary of being the costumed doll of grown-up
children, the decoy dummy of fashionable tradesmen, or if it could
invade and capture the mind of a multi-millionaire, these things might
come almost at a stride. This missing science of heredity, this unworked
mine of knowledge on the borderland of biology and anthropology, which
for all practical purposes is as unworked now as it was in the days of
Plato, is, in simple truth, ten times more important to humanity than
all the chemistry and physics, all the technical and industrial science
that ever has been or ever will be discovered.
So much for the existing possibilities of making the race better by
breeding. For the rest of these papers we shall take the births into the
world, for the most part, as we find them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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