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http://www.emmerich1.com/EUGENICS.htmDEFINITION
Eugenics is the study of methods to improve the human race by controlling reproduction . The word was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton believed that the proper evolution of the human race was thwarted by philanthropic outreach to the poor when such efforts encouraged them to bear more children. Charity upset the mechanism of natural selection. Hence, the human race needed a kind of artificial selection: eugenics. The word is from Greek for good birth. Galton wanted eugenics to develop from a science to a policy to a religion.
A Study ...
Galton defined eugenics as
"the science of improvement of the human race germ plasm through better breeding." He also said: "Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally." This definition was used for years on the cover of the Eugenics Review, a journal published by the Eugenics Education Society.
A Program ...
The American Journal of Eugenics (1906) defined it as "the science of good generation" and noted that the Century Dictionary defined it (rather primly) as "the doctrine of Progress, or Evolution, especially in the human race, through improved conditions in the relations of the sexes."
In 1970, I. I. Gottesman, a director of the American Eugenics Society, defined it in this way:
"The essence of evolution is natural selection; the essence of eugenics is the replacement of 'natural' selection by conscious, premeditated, or artificial selection in the hope of speeding up the evolution of 'desirable' characteristics and the elimination of undesirable ones." A Religion ...
Eugenics has had a religious dimension. Galton suggested that it should function as a religion, and this proposal was echoed by George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russel and others. In the United States shortly after the turn of the century, the American Journal of Eugenics advertised itself by noting that it was "formerly known as Lucifer the Light Bearer."
A pungent assertion of the religious character of eugenics comes from Julian Huxley, the first Director-General of UNESCO and a member of the English Eugenics Society : "We must face the fact that now, in this year of grace, the great majority of human beings are substandard: they are undernourished, or ill, or condemned to a ceaseless struggle for bare existence; they are imprisoned in ignorance or superstition. ... We must see to it that life is no longer a hell paved with unrealized opportunity.... In this light, the highest and most sacred duty of man is seen as the proper utilization of the untapped resources of human beings."
Huxley continued, "I find myself inevitably driven to use the language of religion. For the fact is that all this does add up to something in the nature of a religion: perhaps one might call it Evolutionary Humanism. The word religion is often used restrictively to mean belief in gods; but I am not using it in this sense ... I am using it in a broader sense, to denote an overall relation between man and his destiny, and one involving his deepest feelings, including his sense of what is sacred. In this broad sense, evolutionary humanism, it seems to me, is capable of becoming the germ of a new religion, not necessarily supplanting existing religions but supplementing them."
The Population Council, one of the new eugenic organizations that emerged after World War II, no longer spoke of eugenics as a religion (in fact, avoided the word eugenics altogether), but launched "studies relating to the social, ethical and moral dimensions" of population studies, recognizing that these questions involve matters "of a cultural, moral and spiritual nature." The new field of bioethics is a response to issues raised by eugenics. Bioethics is based on situation ethics, which was developed largely by Joseph Fletcher, a member of the American Eugenics Society.
In a recent book, the confusion over the term is discussed by Diane B. Paul, who notes that some definitions describe it as a science or a study, but that study alone would not have aroused grave concerns; the word must also refer to social policy. That is, the word refers not only to the methods to improve the human race, but also the deliberate intent to improve. She also notes that some people use the word to refer to the consequences of an action, regardless of intent. She does not allude to the religious or even ethical content of eugenics.
HISTORY OF EUGENICS
In 1798, an English clergyman and economist named Thomas Robert Malthus published the Essay on the Principle of Population. The central idea of the book is that population increases exponentially and will therefore eventually outstrip food supply. If parents failed to limit the size of their families, then war or famine would kill off the excess. The idea has been remarkably resilient, although the specific predictions that Malthus made were wrong. Malthus argued that the island of Britain could not sustain a population of 20 million, but 150 years later the population was more than triple Malthus' ceiling.
Charles Darwin, the biologist, was immensely impressed by Malthus' ideas, and the Malthusian theories are embedded in Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection (The Origin of Species, 1859, and the Descent of Man, 1871). But after Darwin borrowed ideas from economics and inserted them into biology, his cousin reversed the process and discovered ideas in biology that could be applied to humans. This is one of the first tricks that amateur magicians learn, like "finding" a coin in a child's ear. The amazing thing about Galton's stunt is that it has fooled so many people for so long.
At least one contemporary understood what Galton was doing. Friedrich Engels, a collaborator with Karl Marx, was contemptuous of the way Malthus' ideas about economics were inserted into biology and then retrieved as gospel: "The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes' doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes and of the bourgeois doctrine of competition together with Malthus' theory of population. When this conjurer's trick has been performed ... the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved. The puerility of this proceeding is so obvious that not a word need be said about it."
It is noteworthy that this ideology of arrogance proved to be appealing on the right (Galton), then the left (British Socialists), then the right (German National Socialists), then the left (American environmentalists), then the right (see The Bell Curve debate). Galton's work is still used today. He used statistical methods, including the now-famous "bell curve," to describe the distribution of intelligence within a population. He devised various methods for measuring intelligence, and concluded that Europeans are smarter than Africans, on average. And he suggested systematic studies of twins to distinguish the effects of heredity from the effects of environment.
Galton's work was carried on, especially at the University of London, where he endowed a Chair of Eugenics. According to eugenics scholar J. Philippe Rushton, Galton's work was carried on especially by: Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman, then by Cyril Burt, and in our time by Raymond Cattell, Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen. However, these academics were carrying on work that was built specifically on Galton's theories. The eugenics ideology spread far beyond this core of true believers.
EUGENIC SOCIETIES
In 1904, Galton endowed a research chair in eugenics at University College, London University. In Germany in 1905, Dr. Alfred Ploetz and Dr. Ernst R6din founded the Gesellschaft f6r Rassenhygiene, or Society of Race-Hygiene.
In 1907 in England, the Eugenic Education Society (later the Eugenics Society) was founded.
In 1910, the Eugenic Record Office (ERO) was founded in the United States. The ERO had a different emphasis from the Birth Control League which sought "fewer children for laboring classes." The ERO felt that "ultimate economic betterment should be sought by breeding better people, not fewer of the existing sort."
The First International Eugenics Congress was held at London University in 1912. Although representatives came from a number of nations, the congress revealed the strength of the movement especially in England, Germany and the United States.
In October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Several months later, she founded the Birth Control Review. She and her co-workers incorporated the American Birth Control League in 1922. (The organization was renamed the Birth Control Federation of Americain 1939, and in 1942 was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.) She wrote: "Birth control is thus the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator ... the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit' is admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization ... The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective."
In 1922, the American Eugenics Society was founded. Founders included: Madison Grant, Henry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Fairfield Osborn, and Henry Crampton. Grant was the author of The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and wrote the preface to The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Laughlin was the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1921; he was later President of the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist organization that is still functioning today. Fisher, who taught economics and political economy and economics at Yale University for 40 years, said that the purpose of the society was to "stem the tide of threatened race degeneracy" and to protect the United States against "indiscriminate immigration, criminal degenerates, and race suicide." Fairfield Osborn was the president of the American Museum of Natural History from 1908 to 1933; he wrote about evolution in From the Greeks to Darwin. In 1923, during a national debate on restricting immigration, Osborn spoke enthusiastically about the results of intelligence testing carried out by the Army: "I believe those tests were worth what the war [World War I] cost, even in human life, if they served to show clearly to our people the lack of intelligence in our country, and the degrees of intelligence in different races who are coming to us, in a way which no one can say is the result of prejudice. ... We have learned once and for all that the negro is not like us."
This list of organizations is far from exhaustive. The point here is simply that eugenics in the first part of the 20th century was not an academic exercise. Eugenicists were organizing, particularly in Germany, England and the United States, to implement policies consistent with their theories. The work of the eugenicists included: racism and white supremacy, promoting birth control among the dysgenic, restricting immigration, sterilizing the handicapped, promoting euthanasia, and seeking for ways to increase the number of genetically well-endowed individuals.
HITLER'S EMBRACE
A key program of the eugenicists was cleansing the human race by sterilizing the "unfit." By 1931, sterilization laws had been enacted in 27 states in the United States, and by 1935 sterilization laws had been enacted in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. But the efficiency of the German eugenicists caused trouble.
Galton's ideas had been taken up in Germany by Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century. Then Ploetz and R6din laid the foundations of an effective eugenics program in Germany. In 1922, two men, a lawyer and a psychiatrist, Karl Binding, J. D., and Alfred Hoche, M.D. cooperated on a short book entitled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Permission to Destroy Life Devoid of Value). The book encouraged Austrian physicians who were beginning to practice euthanasia illegally. And then Adolf Hitler, who had described his own eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf, came to power.
Hitler's determination to establish his "Master Race" was embraced by German eugenicists. And eugenicists elsewhere failed to criticize the Germans. In the United States, the Birth Control Review praised the effectiveness of the Germans, and published articles by R6din and others.
In the United States today, there is a great deal of confusion about Hitler's view of abortion. Pro-lifers denounce abortionists furiously for imitating Hitler, who legalized abortion, and proponents of abortion denounce pro-lifers furiously for imitating Hitler, who outlawed abortion. In fact, both sides are half right. Hitler was a eugenicist, and he outlawed aborting Aryan babies for eugenic reasons, but encouraged aborting Slavs and Jews also for eugenic reasons.After Hitler had killed millions of people, including one third of the Jews in the world, he lost the war. The name of his political party became and remains one of the most offensive words in the language, and ideas that are tightly associated with him are universally condemned. So the idea of building a master race became extremely unpopular. However, the eugenics movement did not die.
EUGENICS AFTER WORLD WAR II
Most people have never heard of eugenics, and most of those who have heard of it think it died with Hitler. Of the few people who are aware that eugenics was still a force after World War II, many believe that its remnants were reformed. In fact, the eugenics movement continued to thrive, without reform. The development and promotion of birth control was a major eugenic success. The discovery of the population explosion and the hysteria about the need to control it was a major eugenic success. The field of genetics grew faster than fruit flies in the 1950s, and although the accumulating knowledge was valuable, the field was dominated by eugenicists, who could use their knowledge for eugenic purposes. UNESCO, founded in 1948, was directed by Julian Huxley, a determined eugenicist who used his global platform very effectively. The welfare state in Britain was based largely of the work of Richard Titmuss, John Maynard Keynes and William Henry Beveridge, members of the Eugenics Society.
Historians who rely too heavily on the eugenicists themselves will overlook a great deal. Daniel Kevles, for example, makes the post-war eugenics movement sound like a group of dusty academics. But one of their activities in Britain beginning in the 1960s was running a flourishing abortion business. Beginning in the 1960s, a few members of the Eugenics Society built and controlled almost the entire private abortion industry. Whether you think abortion is killing a child or exercising a fundamental liberty, this bloody and emotional activity is not the work of dusty academics: at least some of the eugenicists were activists.
The influence on the eugenicists on abortion in America is perhaps best seen by comparing Roe v. Wade and a book by Professor Glanville Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law. The book is cited repeatedly in the 1973 abortion decision, but the numerous citations do not reveal the full extent of the influence. Justice Blackmun lifted his whole argument from Williams, including the history of abortion, ancient attitudes, the influence of Christianity, common law, Augustine's and Aquinas' teaching, canon law and English statutory law. And Williams was a member of the Eugenics Society. Roe v. Wade was based on eugenics.
John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe
January, 1995
