"
This peculiarly Victorian reticence may be inherited from the founder of
Eugenics. Galton declared that the "Bohemian" element in the Anglo-Saxon
race is destined to perish, and "the sooner it goes, the happier for
mankind." The trouble with any effort of trying to divide humanity
into the "fit" and the "unfit," is that we do not want, as H. G. Wells
recently pointed out,(5) to breed for uniformity but for variety. "We
want statesmen and poets and musicians and philosophers and strong
men and delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the
weaknesses of the other." We want, most of all, genius.
Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to eliminate many of the
great geniuses of the world who were not only "Bohemian," but actually
and pathologically abnormal--men like Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Poe,
Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte, Guy de Maupassant,--and how many others?
But such considerations should not lead us into error of concluding that
such men were geniuses merely because they were pathological specimens,
and that the only way to produce a genius is to breed disease and
defect. It only emphasizes the dangers of external standards of "fit"
and "unfit."
These limitations are more strikingly shown in the types of so-called
"eugenic" legislation passed or proposed by certain enthusiasts.
Regulation, compulsion and prohibitions affected and enacted by
political bodies are the surest methods of driving the whole problem
under-ground.
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