< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu
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391
PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMIT OF EUGENICS

Again:

Perhaps the best definition of feeble-minded would be: "deficient in some socially important trait," and then the class would include also the sexually immoral, the criminalistic, those who can not control their use of narcotics, those who habitually tell lies by preference, and those who run away from home and school.[1]

Again:

A settlement worker in New York City inquired into the meaning of a particularly unruly and criminalistic section of his territory and found that the offenders came from one village in Calabria known as the "home of brigands."[2]

The implication here is that the germ plasm in Calabria is bad. Finally, comparing the influence of the criminals who were sent to Virginia from England he says:

Soon better blood crowded into Virginia to redeem the colony. Upon the execution of Charles I. a host of royalist refugees sought an asylum here and the immigration of this class continued even after the Eestoration. By this means was enriched a germ plasm which easily developed such traits as good manners, high culture and the ability to lead in all social affairs—traits combined in a remarkable degree in the first families of Virginia.[3]

Please remember that I am not denying a great deal of good in this movement, but too little attention has been given to either psychology or sociology by the eugenists, and unjustifiable conclusions have been drawn. The vogue of these conclusions is likely to delay progress by putting our thinking back twenty years, since which time the sociologists have been patiently building up the data of social psychology.

After the theory of evolution had been pretty thoroughly understood, the Spencerian idea of its universal application was eagerly appropriated. It was simple and comprehensive. If we found a condition of social inferiority the explanation was, "a lower stage of evolution." A race was less enlightened and thus proved its biological inferiority. It was a fine case of reasoning post hoc ergo propter hoc. In my opinion the reasoning in the quotations I have just given is of the same sort. "A band of brigands, a bad heredity." No one would be more glad than the sociologist to find a simple explanation of social phenomena, but there is none, and, to the minds of most sociologists, I venture to say that, instead of being the one hope, eugenics barely touches the problem of fundamental race improvement, although it has a definite place.

In 1893 Huxley in his lecture on "Evolution and Ethics" sounded the warning against making too close connections between the physical and the social values. He said:

  1. ↑ P. 9.
  2. ↑ P. 183.
  3. ↑ P. 207.
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