The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski].

  • Laski, Harold J. (Harold Joseph), 1893-1950.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The scope of eugenics / [H.J. Laski]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    munity. The reports of the Royal Commissions on the feeble¬ minded and the Poor Laws are not the only signs of a danger, the gravity of which it is difficult to exaggerate. Nor, as has been suggested, is this social problem merely economic. Its answer cannot be found either in individualism or collectivism. It is not too much to say that the whole of our national welfare is bound up with its adequate solution. Perhaps the keynote of the past fifty years has been an exuberant optimism. There have been moments, indeed, of de¬ pression. The South African War seemed an indication of decad¬ ence ; we conquered by the weight of superior numbers alone ; and the recent success of Japan must have warned us to distrust mere quantity. We refused, however, to regard that warning. Failing to understand aright our position, we trusted to the blind force of nature for our redemption. In our enthusiasm for the theoretical advance resultant on Darwin’s work, we did not realise that our social instincts militated against the force of natural selection. We were told that nature invariably selected the fittest for survival, and, unthinkingly, we looked forward to national perfectibility in the near future. But our artificial civilisation prevented any real advance; we could not let our weaker brethren go to the wall. We trusted to a biology that was often more reminiscent of Exeter Hall than of Darwin or of Weismann. Ours was a happy exist¬ ence. Even if we had degenerates, the force of education would improve them ; and that kindly but thoughtless humanitarianism so characteristic of the last age would do the rest. But half a century has passed; and the problem, greater with the growth of years, is still with us. We are beginning to realise that our life has not been based on a sound scientific foundation; and we have a feeling of trouble and dismay. Slowly, but surely, science has evolved a solution to this problem. It is now more than fifty years since the publication of the “ Origin of Species,” and we can look back with feelings of satisfaction on the theoretical progress that has since been made. We are beginning really to understand the mysterious workings of heredity, and to realise how the chain that links father to son is forged. Statisticians, like Karl Pearson, naturalists like Professor Bateson, have really attained to an adequate conception of the meaning of Darwinism. It is not a mere branch of science. It is not only a path acquaintance with which is the high-road to a University degree. It is a series of biological laws which simplify the question of man’s origin, and are of great value in the deter¬ mination of his future development. The work that has been accomplished by Galton and Pearson, the likelihood that Mendelian hypotheses are applicable to man, are surely of such great import-