Race Improvement; or, Eugenics: A Little Book on a Great SubjectBaker, La Reine Helen McKenzie
Philosophy
Race Improvement; or, Eugenics: A Little Book on a Great Subject
Baker, La Reine Helen McKenzie
Eugenics
While drastic experiments must be left to democracy acting through its
elected governors, there is ample scope for other features of positive
Eugenics. One of these is the endowment of worthy young couples too
poor otherwise to marry. The ideal of celibacy stands self-condemned.
Where successful it means race-suicide, where unsuccessful it means
hypocrisy and a thousand other horrors. What then can we think of the
fact that millions of dollars have been spent in endowing monasteries,
nunneries, brotherhoods and all the other ancient and modern forms of
celibate stultification of probably perfectly potential parents. Add
to these millions the other millions spent in endowing the worst and
least capable in prisons, asylums and in often demoralising charities.
Then bear in mind that the endowment of the healthy for Eugenic
purposes, for the regeneration of mankind, is absolutely unknown. A
millionaire who loves his kind could scarcely do better with his money
than the establishment, under proper supervision, of a fund which would
encourage human efficiency. There is no fame so lasting as the glory
which would attach to such a fund. It would be greater than a Nobel
name, its prizes would be more keenly competed for than for "Marathon"
or "America" cups. Its winners would become a new aristocracy, and
for the first time in the history of the world noble families would be
founded on a blending of ancestral and personal merit, aristocratic,
indeed, because the best become personally powerful, but absolutely
democratic in that neither class, caste nor creed are allowed to
count in the selection. From this aristocracy a new knighthood might
be formed. Degeneration would mean exclusion. Improvement would mean
increased honours. New standards of efficiency, mental, moral and
physical, would be evolved for the guidance of the race. An American
model of this kind would speedily find imitators abroad. The real
struggle for race supremacy would be concentrated on the Eugenic
groups. Competitions, challenges and contests between national
groups might eclipse in interest all the other exhibits in future
International Expositions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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