The aim and scope of eugenics / by Sir James Barr.

  • Barr, James, Sir, 1849-1938.
Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The aim and scope of eugenics / by Sir James Barr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/24 (page 15)
    and fertility. Her influence will gradually level up men to her social standard, and it lies with her to say what that standard is to be.” The followers of Calvin and John Knox should all be Eugenists, because the teaching of those great men on fore¬ ordination and predestination fits in exactly with modern views on inheritance from the germ plasm. I was brought up in this school myself, but although I have shaken off the fetters attached to such stereotyped beliefs, I still retain my eugenic ideals. Men’s and women’s character and ability are just as much inherited as the shape of their noses or the colour of their hair. We are no doubt told that man is prone to do evil as the sparks fly upwards, but the ideals of the Eugenists is to get rid of the evil tendencies by a process of artificial selection, and to have the good qualities so ingrained in the germ plasm that there may be in time no regression, but a steady evolution of the higher and nobler nature of man. Eugenists attribute the predestination of the individual to the progenitors, and do not go so far back as a Great First Cause. There are some individuals with superficial views on the laws of inheritance who are very ready to lay their misdeeds and misfortunes to the account of their progenitors. With such John Knox and Calvin would have dealt very summarily, and have told them that now we know you are damned already the sooner we get rid of you the better; but the Eugenist is much more humane. To such individuals we would say that we know you are not responsible for your appearance on this earth, you had no voice in the selection of your parents, but, now we know that you have inherited some very undesirable qualities, we will keep our eye on you, and prevent you from transmitting those qualities to another generation; so far as you are individually concerned, you will be well treated and well cared for, but with you your breed must come to an end: you will now and forever be denied the privilege of parenthood. It is entirely a question for society to determine what are to be the limitations of parenthood.