The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 1 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies — John Shaqi
The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 1 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better BabiesHague, W. Grant (William Grant)
Science
The Eugenic Marriage, Volume 1 (of 4): A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies
Hague, W. Grant (William Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage
It is not necessary to waste the reader's time in an effort to prove,
simply from an argumentative standpoint, the logic of the eugenic idea.
There is no existing economic problem that has established itself so firmly
in the hearts of the people who understand it, as has the study of race
culture. It is not the subject, but its scope of application, that is new.
Biologically, we see the manifestations of eugenics on every side. In the
flower garden we breed for beauty, in the orchard for quality. In the
poultry yard and on the stock farm the same process weeds out the unfit and
cultivates the desirable. The value of the eugenic idea is most strikingly
illustrated in the cultivation, or breeding, of the horse from a primitive
creature into the splendid animals which represent the various types of
equine present-day perfection. It has taken generations of the most [10]
painstaking intelligence to understand the traits which had to be evolved
in scientific mating to reach the present standard. If the same rules, or
lack of rules, applied to the mating of horses as applied to ourselves,
there would be few, if any, "thoroughbreds" among them. The principle which
we must recognize is that "Life is the only wealth."
Progress and efficiency will be ensured and of an enduring character, when
all human effort is consecrated to this fundamental principle as a basic
law, and not till then.
To cultivate the human race on prescribed scientific principles will be the
supreme science of all the future, the object and the final goal of all
honest governmental jurisprudence, and the ultimate judge of all true
constructive legislation.
THE EUGENIC PRINCIPLE
The eugenic principle is, that "the fit only shall live." This does not
mean that the unfit must die, but that only the fit shall be born.
Occasionally, as a product of bad environment, or faulty training, or
eccentricity, a horse gives evidence of vicious traits, but the scientific
breeder never mates him. He is allowed to die out. If he were permitted to
father a race, his progeny would develop murderous characteristics that
would retard the type for generations.
THE FIT ONLY SHALL BE BORN.--This implies the exclusion of those, as
parents, who are incapable of creating fit children. Fit children are
children who are physically and mentally healthy. Parents who are unfit to
create physically and mentally healthy children are those diseased in body
or mind, especially if the disease is of the type which science has proved
to be transmissible, or which directly affects the vitality of the child.
In such a category we place those who are deaf, dumb, blind, epileptic,
feeble-minded, insane, criminal, consumptive, cancerous, haemophilic,
syphilitic, or drunkards, and those known to be victims of disease of [11]
any other special type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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