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.

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    EUGENICS 19 classes would be of very slight interest. The problem can be stated more easily by giving concrete examples. It is said that the higher social classes reproduce themselves at a lower rate than the rest, and thus that society is always recruiting itself from below. Let us grant that we know this for certain, yet in order to determine whether it is a fact of Eugenic value as tending to improve mentally and physically the racial qualities of future generations, or dysgenic in its action as tending to impair them, it is neces¬ sary to determine whether or no the higher classes have a heritable superiority in body or mind. Similarly, when we are told that Roman Catholics have larger families than Protestants, we want to know whether their religious beliefs are merely accidental or whether they spring in part from some inborn intellectual or emotional peculiarity. If the latter is the case, we must further ascertain whether such characteristics are likely by their perpetuation and multiplication to benefit mankind or not. In the study of these questions Eugenics must borrow from physical anthropology and the modern psychology, which proceeds by observation and experiment ; and, above all things, it must endeavour to determine the relative parts played by 'nature' and •nurture.' We thus get back again to a branch of the subject that has already been