: The Super Race: An American Problem by Nearing Scott - Eugenics; Eugenics United States; Euthenics United States

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enics, Social Adjustment and Education are sciences, the mastery of which is a pre-requisite to the development of the Super Race.

EUGENICS--THE SCIENCE OF RACE CULTURE

The object of Eugenics is the conscious improvement of the human race by the application of the laws of heredity to human mating. Eugenics is the logical fruition of the progress in biologic science made during the nineteenth century.

The laws of heredity, studied in minute detail, have been applied with marvelous success in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. "Is there any good reason," demands the eugenist, "why the formulas which have operated to re-combine the physical properties of plants and animals, should not in like measure operate to modify the physical properties of men and women?"

The studies which have been made of eye color, length of arm, head shape, and other physical traits show that the same laws of heredity which apply in the animal and vegetable kingdoms apply as well in the kingdom of man. Since the species of plants and animals with which man has experimented have been improved by selective breeding, there seems to be no good reason why the human race should not be susceptible of similar improvement. What intelligent farmer sows blighted potatoes? Where is the dog fancier who would strive to rear a St. Bernard from a mongrel dam? Neither yesterday nor yet to-morrow do men gather grapes of thorns. Those who have to do with life in any form, aware of this fact, refuse to permit propagation except among the best members of a species: hence with each succeeding generation the ox increases in size and strength; the apple in color; the sweet pea in perfume; and the horse in speed. Is this law of improving species a universal law? Alas, no! it rarely if ever applies in the selection of men and women for parenthood. The human species has not, during historic times, improved either in physique, in mental capacity, in aggressiveness, in concentration, in sympathy or in vision. Nay, there are not wanting thoughtful students who affirm that in almost every one of these respects the exact contrary holds true.

There appears to be some question as to whether the best of the Greek athletes exceeded in strength and skill the modern professional athlete, but there is no doubt at all that the average citizen of Athens was a more perfect specimen physically than the average citizen of twentieth century America.

Perhaps American commercial aggressiveness is equal to the military aggressiveness of the Romans, the early Germans, and the followers of Attila. We have concentrated most of our efforts upon industry, yet even here, our concentration is no greater than that of the poets of the Elizabethan era, or the religious zealots of the Middle Ages. Our sympathy with beauty is at so low an ebb that we fail even to approach the standard of past ages. Neither in art, in sculpture, nor in poetry do our achievements compare with those of the earlier Mediterranean civilizations; while our knowledge of men as revealed in our literature is not above that of the Romans or the Athenians. As for vision, we still accept and strive to fulfill the commandments of the Prophet of Nazareth. In all of these fields, twentieth century America is equaled, if not outdone by the past.

Thus the distinctive qualities of the Super Man appear in the past with an intensity equal if not superior to that of the present. History records the transmutation of vegetable and animal species, the revolution of industry, the modification of social institutions, and the transformation of governmental systems; but in all historic time, it affirms no perceptible improvement in the qualities of man. "We must replace the man by the Super Man," writes G. Bernard Shaw. "It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger generation."

Nevertheless, the possibility of race improvement exists. "What now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterize all, for that which the best human nature is capable of is within the reach of human nature at large." After years of intensive study, Spencer thus confidently expressed himself. Since he ceased to work, each bit of scientific data along eugenic lines serves to confirm his opinion. Armed with such a belief and with the assurance which scientific research has afforded, we are preparing in this eleventh hour to fulfill Spencer's predictions.

There are two fields in which eugenics may be applied--the first, Negative, the second, Positive. Through the establishment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will be restrained from mating and perpetuating their unfitness in the future. Through Positive Eugenics the fit may be induced to mate, and by combining their fitness in their offspring, to raise up each new generation out of the flower of the old. Negative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Positive Eugenics perpetuates the fit.

Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the science of Eugenics, writes, in his last important work, "I think that stern compulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble-mindedness, habitual criminality and pauperism." Yet society, in dealing with hereditary defect, presents some of its most grotesque inconsistencies. "It is a curious comment on the artificiality of our social system that no stigma attaches to preventable ill-health." An empty purse, or a ruined home may mean social ostracism, but "break-down in person, whatever the cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and silence."

The problem of Positive Eugenics presents an essentially different aspect. As Ruskin so well observes--"It is a matter of no final concern, to any parent, whether he shall have two children or four; but matter of quite final concern whether those he has shall or shall not deserve to be hanged." The quality is always the significant factor. Whether in family or national progress, an effort must be made to insure against hanging, or against any tendency that leads gallowsward.

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