Caleb Williams Saleeby

Progress of Eugenics Caleb Williams Saleeby

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE PEOPLE CALLED EUGENISTS The people called Eugenists believe that "the soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul"; that, since individuals are mortal, the quality and quantity of parenthood are the dominant factors in the destiny of any people ; that the culture of the racial life is the vital industry of mankind, everywhere and always ; that every child who comes into the world should be planned, desired and loved in anticipation ; that the function of government is the production and recognition of human worth, and the extirpation of human unworth; and that to these incomparable ends, for which, if for any, the world was made, all powers of man and of Nature, all forces, spiritual and material, must be made subservient. Thus they desire and hope for what all people worthy to be called human have desired and hoped for?the coming of nobler and finer men and women, the disappearance of disease and ugliness and stupidity and misery and vice, themaking of a better world, the dawn of the Golden Age which poets fabled in the past, but towards which we know our feet are pressing. Nature and nurture.?Now if our object be the making of noble individuals, we must first of all ask ourselves: What are the factors that make the individual noble or base, healthy or diseased, wise or foolish, clever or stupid, kind or cruel ? The answer is clear. Every attribute and character of every living being is the product of what we may conveniently call " nature" and " nurture." Nature includes everything given at the individual's beginning, and nurture includes all nutrition from the moment of the formation of the new individual onwards?all environment, physical, social, spiritual. These two cover between them, if they be properly understood, the whole of the forces...