nd there has
in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and
abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we
all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they
are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics
itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas
exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming
quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a
thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no
more to be bargained about than poisoning.

It is not really difficult to sum up the essence of Eugenics: though
some of the Eugenists seem to be rather vague about it. The movement
consists of two parts: a moral basis, which is common to all, and a
scheme of social application which varies a good deal. For the moral
basis, it is obvious that man's ethical responsibility varies with his
knowledge of consequences. If I were in charge of a baby (like Dr.
Johnson in that tower of vision), and if the baby was ill through
having eaten the soap, I might possibly send for a doctor. I might be
calling him away from much more serious cases, from the bedsides of
babies whose diet had been far more deadly; but I should be justified.
I could not be expected to know enough about his other patients to be
obliged (or even entitled) to sacrifice to them the baby for whom I
was primarily and directly responsible. Now the Eugenic moral basis is
this; that the baby for whom we are primarily and directly responsible
is the babe unborn. That is, that we know (or may come to know) enough
of certain inevitable tendencies in biology to consider the fruit of
some contemplated union in that direct and clear light of conscience
which we can now only fix on the other partner in that union. The one
duty can conceivably be as definite as or more definite than the
other. The baby that does not exist can be considered even before the
wife who does. Now it is essential to grasp that this is a
comparatively new note in morality. Of course sane people always
thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the
glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; but whether they
counted such children as God's reward for service or Nature's premium
on sanity, they always left the reward to God or the premium to
Nature, as a less definable thing. The only person (and this is the
point) towards who