FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101  
102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   >>  
of virtue and not of grace they belong more naturally to the sphere of morals. But here they certainly need to go far deeper than the mere intelligence of the mind can take them. They cannot become guides to conduct until their injunctions have been printed on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. The demands of the race must speak from within us, in the voice of conscience which we disobey at our peril. When that happens with regard to ascertained laws of racial well-being we may know that we are truly following, even though not in the letter, those great spirits, like Galton with his intellectual vision and Ellen Key with her inspired enthusiasm, who have pointed out new roads for the ennoblement of the race. II It may be well, before we go further, to look a little more closely into the suspicion and dislike which eugenics still arouses in many worthy old-fashioned people. To some extent that attitude is excused, not only by the mistakes which in a new and complex science must inevitably be made even by painstaking students, but also by the rash and extravagant proposals of irresponsible and eccentric persons claiming without warrant to speak in the name of eugenics. Two thousand years ago the wild excesses of some early Christians furnished an excuse for the ancient world to view Christianity with contempt, although the extreme absence of such excesses has furnished still better ground for the modern world to maintain the same view. To-day such a work as _Le Haras Humain_ ("The Human Stud-farm") of Dr. Binet-Sangle, putting forward proposals which, whether beneficial or not, will certainly find no one to carry them out, similarly furnishes an excuse to those who would reject eugenics altogether. Utopian schemes have their value; we should be able to find inspiration in the most modern of them, just as we still do in Plato's immortal _Republic_. But in this, as in other matters, we must exercise a little intelligence. We must not confuse the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with the well-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the sober possibilities of actual life in our own time. People who are incapable of exercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are in the habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoid touching the delicate problems connected with practical eugenics. There is one prejudice already mentioned, due to lack of clear thinking, which d
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101  
102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   >>  



Top keywords:
eugenics
 

proposals

 

excuse

 

excesses

 

furnished

 

intelligence

 
modern
 
forward
 

similarly

 
beneficial

putting

 

extreme

 
absence
 

ground

 

contempt

 

Christians

 

ancient

 

Christianity

 
maintain
 
Humain

furnishes

 

Sangle

 
immortal
 
affairs
 

emptying

 

commonsense

 

shrewd

 
People
 

incapable

 

exercising


touching

 

mentioned

 

thinking

 

prejudice

 
problems
 

delicate

 
connected
 

practical

 
actual
 

possibilities


inspiration

 

altogether

 

reject

 
Utopian
 

schemes

 

Republic

 

solitary

 

excursion

 

thinker

 
grounded