Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster.

  • Schuster, Edgar.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Eugenics / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/280 (page 11)
    EUGENICS 11 The inborn potentiality may have a material basis in the chemical or mechanical constitution of the body, or some part or parts of it, or may depend on some mysterious property of living matter, unknown entirely to physical science. We need form no opinion of its ultimate nature, yet may agree that it is largely derived from a similar capacity inherent in the parents or ancestry. This is the true meaning of heredity. We have no direct means of judging what poten¬ tialities are present in any individual case, but can only observe what active qualities of body or mind present themselves, and accordingly the outward manifestation of heredity is the similarity shown between parents and children, ancestors and descend¬ ants, with regard to these. The inborn potentiality has been called 'nature,* while the term 'nurture' has been used to denote the environment which works on it as it unfolds into recognisable qualities. Both these terms lack something in precision, and have degenerated into catch-words; yet, as there is nothing better to substitute for them, they will be used in the senses just defined. Eugenists differ from others who may equally have the good of mankind at heart, in that they assign a greater relative weight to nature; they believe that the greatest good of the greatest number may be achieved