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Show EUGENIC AMBITIONS. American riches are always in readiness readi-ness to finance movements of social value. Religion, education, medicine, science, charities have been financed on a grand scale. Now the young science of eugenics is to have its chance. First of all, it is necessary to give Mrs. Harriman and the scientists who are to direct the perfecting of the human hu-man race in the United States credit for sincerity and genuine philanthropy. Then it is essential to assume the role of sceptic. Indubitably eugenics is to attain at-tain great triumphs and is to accomplish much good, but like aviation, it wijl bring disasters and melancholy disillusion disil-lusion before it assumes its proper place among the more or less positive sciences. The production of perfect men and women is not merely a physical process. All that is expected of a horse or a dog is physical perfection. Perhaps all that is expected of a pri7.e fighter is physical perfection. But when materialism draws no distinction between a being endowed with an Intellect and a soul and beings which have no intellect in any real sense it has departed from the secure moorings moor-ings of science and has ventured upon a soa of imaginative speculation. C it were possible to produce perfect men and women by eugenics, then eugenics would be more valuable to the human race than religion or moral' ity. Religion has been trying for thousands thou-sands of years to achieve the same result re-sult and has neglected tho physical idea of perfection. Religion emphasized the fact that man was a spiritual being with an immortal soul and that the salvation of the soul was important, the salvation of the body unimportant. In the future re-ligiou re-ligiou perhaps will pay more attention to the physical well-being of the human race in this temporal abode, but it is hardly possible that mankind will reject re-ject spiritual culture altogether in the hope of obtaining perfection by means of eugenics. To say that the devotees of eugenics hope to produce the perfect man by their science is no exaggeration. They boldly declare that such is their purpose, and they leave no doubt that by perfection they mean not merely physical perfection, perfec-tion, but moral perfection. They consider con-sider crime and sin the consequences of hereditary traits that can be bred out of the race. Everything depends upon heredity, these pseudo-scientists would have you believe. If a man has a tendency ten-dency toward theft he is merely the victim of heredity. Therefore, he should have no progeny. His pious neighbors will pass judgment upon his fitness and will make it impossible for him to procreate. pro-create. Would it not be terrible if some of his pious neighbors were to have hereditary he-reditary traits of murder stowed away in their systems while they were passing judgment upon him. Or suppose that they had hereditary traits of hypocrisy tucked away in the northwest lobes of their cerebellums. Hypocrisy, selfishness, selfish-ness, narrowness and phariseoism have done perhaps as much harm to the world as robbery and murder, but they are less overt in their actiou and therefore more difficult to deal with. These defects cannot can-not be cured until long after thieving and murderous tendencies have been bred out of the race by eugenics. And what if they could not be bred out at all by meaus of eugenics! We have suggested some of these doubts not for the purpose of discredit irjg scientific eugenics, but to place in a true light the pseudo-science which is beginning to take in too much territory. If the pseudo-science is to be financed with millions, what is to become of the real science! Also, what is to become of individual liberty? ' |