Books with title Eugenics and Other Evils Lib/E

Excerpt from Eugenics and Other EvilsThe second part of the definition, the persuasive or coercive methods to be employed, I shall deal with more fullyintbesecondpartofth'nbook. Butsome such summary as the following may here be useful.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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When the concept of eugenics -- the practice of selecting for desirable traits in the larger population by encouraging gifted and/or attractive people to breed -- began to take hold in the early twentieth century, British thinker and writer G.K. Chesterton took a stance contrary to that of many intellectuals of the period and denounced it as evil in this bold, engaging series of essays.

During the first three decades of the 20th century, eugenics, the scientific control of human breeding, was a popular cause within enlightened and progressive segments of the English-speaking world. The New York Times eagerly supported it, gushing about the wonderful "new science." Prominent scientists, such as the plant biologist Luther Burbank, were among its most enthusiastic supporters. And the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations generously funded eugenic research intended to distinguish the "fit" from the "unfit." This prophetic volume counters the intellectual nihilism of Nietzsche, while simultaneously rebuking Western notions of progress - biological or otherwise. Chesterton expands his criticism of eugenics into what he calls "a more general criticism of the modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization."

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Before he has turned over half-a-dozen pages of Mr. Chesterton's book, the reader will feel as if he had been out in a high wind. Not, of course, the cold, steady-blowing north-easter that turns your clothes to paper, that blues your nose and finger-tips and temper. Never for one moment could the storm that rages between the covers of Eugenics and Other Evils be likened to that sort of thing. The book is chiefly concerned to oppose the segregation of the feeble-minded, and the principal argument brought forward by Mr. Chesterton is that, in the case of the proposed and current legislation about feeble-mindedness, we are treating this state in exactly the same way as we treat lunacy, whereas, says he, insanity is a definite state, "an isolated thing like leprosy." There is an abysmal distance between the lunatic and the ordinary man, but when we come to feeble-mindedness there is no such line of demarcation.

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In the second decade of the twentieth century, an idea became all too fashionable among those who feel it is their right to set social trends. Wealthy families took it on as a pet cause, generously bankrolling its research. The New York Times praised it as a wonderful "new science." Scientists, such as the brilliant plant biologist, Luther Burbank, praised it unashamedly. Educators as prominent as Charles Elliot, President of Harvard University, promoted it as a solution to social ills. America's public schools did their part. In the 1920s, almost three-fourths of high school social science textbooks taught its principles. Not to be outdone, judges and physicians called for those principles to be enshrined into law. Congress agree, passing the 1924 immigration law to exclude from American shores the people of Eastern and Southern Europe that the idea branded as inferior. In 1927, the U. S. Supreme Court joined the chorus, ruling by a lopsided vote of 8 to 1 that the sterilization of unwilling men and women was constitutional. That idea was eugenics and in the English-speaking world it had virtually no critics among the "chattering classes." When he wrote this book, Chesterton stood virtually alone against the intellectual world of his day. Yet to his eternal credit, he showed no sign of being intimidated by the prestige of his foes. On the contrary, he thunders against eugenics, ranking it one of the great evils of modern society. And, in perhaps one of the most chillingly accurate prophecies of the century, he warns that the ideas that eugenics had unleashed were likely to bear bitter fruit in another nation. That nation was Germany, the "very land of scientific culture from which the ideal of a Superman had come." In fact, the very group that Nazism tried to exterminate, Eastern European Jews, and the group it targeted for later extermination, the Slavs, were two of those whose biological unfitness eugenists sought so eagerly to confirm.

I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like briefly to emphasise and make clear. Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when eugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies) sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr. Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation, of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion too controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organisation. And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one, and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And, anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style. Scientific officialism and organisation in the State which had specialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of Christendom.