Eugenics

Abstract

Galton foresaw that a better “average quality” would mean a better-informed populace less likely to be swayed by biased electioneering. Democracy would be strengthened. However, he stressed the “actuarial” aspects of the underlying science, rather than genetics. Positive eugenics would favor those deemed more likely to contribute to “national efficiency,” while negative eugenics (e.g., sterilization of criminals) would disfavor those deemed less likely to contribute. H. G. Wells welcomed the new genetic approach but advised that those who had attained “superior positions” in society, and the so-called “criminal classes,” might not necessarily be distinguishable. While stressing the power of nature over nurture in Man and Superman, Shaw later explored the power of nurture over nature in Pygmalion. Bateson doubted the wisdom of those who would determine “civic worth.” Furthermore, self-marketing devices (mimicry) could conceal what was really a “congenital want of aptitude.” While hailing the inventor of the steam engine as a “remarkable mutation,” he delighted at the range of human types and saw the challenge as that of harmonizing diversity. Through knowledge of genetics, men would take “more natural views of themselves.” Nevertheless, Bateson predicted that in the not-too-distant future, even though genetics “gives no clear sanction,” in some countries, eugenic measures would be tried. Lines would more likely be drawn correctly in a world that no longer cherished “occult views of the nature of life” or was imbued with “superstition and mythical ideas of sin.” But in democratic societies to draw lines appropriately was often politically incorrect. Thus, “we may have made the world safe for democracy, but we have made it unsafe for anything else.”

Democracy is the combination of the mediocre and inferior to restrain the more able.

William Bateson (1919)