Eugenics; Eugenics -- United States; Euthenics -- United States
The Super Man has lived for ages. The Greeks traced the descent of their
heroes and heroines--their Super Men--from the Gods. It was thus that
they explained exceptional ability. Exceptional men live to-day, as they
did in ancient Greece, directing the thought and work of the times. They
possess the qualities of the Super Man--physical normality, mental
capacity, aggressiveness, concentration, sympathy and vision; and, above
all, we now understand that they are not the offspring of the gods, but
the sons of men and women whose combined parental qualities inevitably
produced Super Men. The Super Man is not a theory, nor an accident, but a
natural product of natural conditions.
Though the Super Man may be met with occasionally in modern society, and
though the qualities ascribed to him are manifest everywhere among those
who have had an opportunity for their development; opinions still differ
as to the possibility of producing a Super Race. An even greater
difference of opinion is encountered when an attempt is made to formulate
the means which should be adopted to secure such an end; yet there can be
little difference of opinion as to the desirability, from a national as
well as from an individual standpoint, of creating a race of Super Men.
The call of the present age for a Super Race is thus voiced by Yeats,[2]
"O Silver Trumpets! Be you lifted up,
And cry to the great race that is to come.
Long throated swans, amid the Waves of Time,
Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the World
It waits, and it may hear and come to us."
We long for the coming of the Super Race. We aim toward this goal. Can it
be compassed in finite time? Is Nietzsche right when he says,--"I teach
you beyond-man." "All beings hitherto have created something beyond
themselves." "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal."
"Not whence ye come, be your honor in the future, but whither ye go!" "In
your children ye shall make amends for being your father's children. Thus
ye shall redeem all that is past."[3]
Shall we make amends to the future? Come, then, let us reason together
concerning the measures which must be adopted to raise the standard of
succeeding generations. There are three means which lie ready at hand:
three sciences which lend themselves to our task: three tools with which
we may shape the Super Race. They are:
1. Eugenics--The science of race culture.
2. Social adjustment--The science of molding institutions.
3. Education--The science of individual development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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