This book, a first attempt to survey and define the whole field of eugenics, appears in the year which finds us celebrating the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the jubilee of the publication of The Origin of Species. It is a humble tribute to that immortal name, for it is based upon the idea of selection for parenthood as determining the nature, fate and worth of living races, which is Darwin's chief contribution to thought, and which finds in eugenics its supreme application. The book is also a tribute to the august pioneer who initiated the modern study of eugenics in the light of his cousin's principle. A few years ago I all but persuaded Mr. Galton himself to write a general introduction to eugenics, but he felt bound to withdraw from that undertaking, and has given us instead his Memories, which we could ill have spared.

The present volume seeks to supply what is undoubtedly a real need at the present day—a general introduction to eugenics which is at least considered and responsible. I am indebted to more than one pair of searching and illustrious eyes, which I may not name, for reading the proofs of this volume. My best hopes for its utility are based upon this fact. If there be any other reason for hope it is that during the last six years I have not only written incessantly on eugenics, but have spoken upon various aspects of it some hundreds of times to audiences as various as one can well imagine—a mainly clerical assembly at Lambeth Palace with the Primate in the Chair, drawing-rooms of title, working-class audiences from the Clyde to the Thames. It has been my rule to invite questions whenever it was possible. Such a discipline is invaluable. It gives new ideas and points of view, discovers the existing forms of prejudice, sharply corrects the tendency to partial statement. It is my hope that these many hours of cross-examination will be profitable to the present reader.

It has been sought to define the scope of eugenics, and my consistent aim has been, if possible, to preserve its natural unity without falling into the error, which I seem to see almost everywhere, of excluding what is strictly eugenic. Our primary idea, beyond dispute, is selection for parenthood based upon the facts of heredity. This, however, is not an end, but a means. Some eugenists seem to forget the distinction. Our end is a better race. If then, beyond selecting for parenthood, it be desirable to take care of those selected—as, for instance, to protect the expectant mother from alcohol, lead or syphilis—that is strict eugenics on any definition worth a moment's notice. It then appears, of course, that our demands come into contact with those prejudices which political parties call their principles. A given eugenic proposal or argument, for instance, may be stamped as “Socialist” or as “Individualist,” and people who have labelled their eyes with these catchwords, which eugenics will ere long make obsolete, proceed to judge eugenics by them. But the question is not whether a given proposal is socialistic, individualistic or anything else, but whether it is eugenic. If it is eugenic, that is final. To this all parties will come, and by this all parties will be judged. The question is not whether eugenics is, for instance, socialist, but whether socialism is eugenic. I claim for eugenics that it is the final and only judge of all proposals and principles, however labelled, new or old, orthodox or heterodox. Some years ago I ventured to coin the word eugenist, which is now the accepted term. With that label I believe any man or woman may well be content. If this be granted, the old catchwords and the bias they create forgotten, we may be prepared to consider what the scope of eugenics really is.

Eugenics is not, for instance, a sub-section of applied mathematics. It is at once a science, and a religion, based upon the laws of life, and recognising in them the foundation of society. We shall some day have a eugenic sociology, to which the first part of this volume seeks to contribute: and the sociology and politics which have not yet discovered that man is mortal will go to their own place.

Only when we begin to think and work continuously at eugenics is its range revealed. The present volume is a mere introduction to the principles of the subject: the full elucidation of its practice is a problem for generations to come. Nor is it easy to set logical limits to our inquiry. We may say that eugenics deals with conceptions: and that the care of the expectant mother is outside its scope: but of what use is it to have a eugenic conception if its product is thereafter to be ruined by, for instance, the introduction of lead into the mother's organism? Again, the care of the individual is, in part, a eugenic concern: for if we desire his offspring we desire that he shall not contract transmissible disease nor vitiate his tissues with such a racial poison as alcohol. Plainly, everything that affects every possible parent is a matter of eugenic concern: and not only those factors which affect the choice for parenthood.

It follows that the second portion of this volume, which deals with the practice of eugenics, cannot be more than merely indicative. In the available space it has been attempted to define certain constituents of practical eugenics, but in any case the entire ground has not been surveyed. The concept of the racial poisons may be commended to special consideration. Whether a poison be so-called “chemical,” as lead, or made by a living organism, as the poison of syphilis, is of great practical importance, because of the infection involved in the second case: but, in principle, both cases belong to the same category. Sooner or later, eugenists must face the transmissible infections, and repudiate as hideous and devilish the so-called morality which discountenances any attempt to save unborn innocence from a nameless fate. He or she who would rather leave this matter is placing “religion” or “morality” or “politics” above the welfare of the life to come, and therein continuing the daily prostitution of those great names.

Again, the practice of eugenics may be commended and accepted as the business of the patriot: and two chapters have been devoted to the question as seen from the national point of view. I am of nothing more certain than that the choice for Great Britain to-day is between national eugenics and the fate of all her Imperial predecessors from Babylon to Spain. The whole book might have been written from this standpoint, but such a book would have been beneath the true eugenic plane, which is not national but human. I believe in the patriotism of William Watson, who desires the continuance of his country because, as he addresses her,

This is a patriotism as splendid and vital as the patriotism of the music-halls and of the political and journalistic makers of wars is foul and fatal: and it is only in terms of such patriotism that the appeal to love of country is permissible in the advocacy of eugenics, which is a concern for all mankind.

The prophet of that kind of Imperialism which has destroyed so many Empires, has lately approved the emigration of our best to the Colonies, on the ground that “it is good to give the second eleven a chance.” But as students of history know, it is at the heart that Empires rot. The case of Ireland is at present an insoluble one because the emigration of the worthiest has had full sway. So with the agricultural intellect: the “first eleven” having gone to the towns. Rome sent her “first eleven” to her Colonies: if you were not good enough to be a Roman soldier you could at least remain and be a Roman father: and the children of such fathers perished in the downfall of the Empire which they could no longer sustain. I can imagine no more foolish or disastrous advice than this of Mr. Kipling's, in commending that transportation of the worthiest which, thoroughly enough persisted in, must inevitably mean our ruin.

The national aspect of eugenics suggests its international aspect, and its inter-racial aspect. Not having spent six weeks rushing through the United States, I am unfortunately dubious as to the worth of any opinions I may possess regarding the most urgent form of this question to-day. I mistrust not merely the brilliant students who, unhampered by biological knowledge, pierce to the bottom of this question in the course of such a tour, but also the humanitarian bias of those who, like M. Finot, or the distinguished American sociologist, Mr. Graham Brooks, would almost have us believe that the negro is mentally and morally the equal of the Caucasian. Least of all does one trust the vulgar opinions of the man in the street. Wisdom on this matter waits for the advent of real knowledge. Similarly in the matter of Caucasian-Mongolian unions. I question whether any living man knows enough to warrant the expression of any decided opinion on this subject. Merely I here recognise miscegenation in general as a problem in eugenics, to which increasing attention must yearly be devoted. But it would have been ridiculous to attempt to deal with that great subject here. As for the marriage of cousins, to take the opposite case, I always reply to the question, “Should cousins marry?” that it depends upon the cousins. The good qualities of a good stock, the bad qualities of a bad stock, are naturally accentuated by such unions: I doubt whether there is much more to be said about them.

In the following general study of a subject to which no human affair is wholly alien, it has been impossible to deal adequately with the great question of eugenic education—that is to say, education as for parenthood. If only to emphasise its overwhelming importance, one must here insist upon the argument. There is, I believe, no greater need for society to-day than to recognise that education must include, must culminate in, preparation for the supreme duty of parenthood. This involves instruction regarding those bodily functions which exist not for the body nor for the present at all, but for the future life of mankind. The exercise of these functions depends upon an instinct which I have for some time been in the habit of terming the racial instinct—a name which at once suggests to us that we are to represent this instinct, to the boy or girl at puberty, not as something the satisfaction of which is an end in itself—that is the false and degrading assertion which will be made by the teachers whom youth will certainly find, if we fail in our duty—but as existing for what is immeasurably higher than any selfish end. Youth must be taught that it is for man the self-conscious, “made with such large discourse, looking before and after,” as Hamlet says, to deal with his instincts in terms of their purpose, as no creature but man can do. The boy and girl must learn that the racial instinct exists for the highest of ends—the continuance and ultimate elevation of the life of mankind. It is a sacred trust for the life of this world to come. We must teach our boys what it is to be really “manly”—the fine word used by the tempter of youth when he means “beast-ly.” To be manly is to be master of this instinct. And the “higher education” of our girls, as we must teach ourselves, will be lower, not higher, if it does not serve and conserve the future mother, both by teaching her how to care for and guard her body, which is the temple of life to come, and how afterwards to be a right educator of her children. The leading idea upon which one would insist is that the key to any of the right and useful methods of eugenic education is to be found in the conception of the racial instinct as existing for parenthood, and to be guarded, reverenced, educated for that supreme end. It is for the reader who may be responsible for youth of either sex with this key to solve the problem on the lines best suited to his or her particular case.

By the application of mathematical methods to statistics we can ascertain their real meaning, if they have any. If, as frequently happens, they have none, mathematical analysis is worse than useless. Mr. Galton is the pioneer of this study, which Professor Karl Pearson has named biometrics. Biometrics is not eugenics, as some have supposed, but is a branch of scientific enquiry which, like genetics, obstetrics and many more, contributes to the foundations of eugenics. In the Appendix reference is made to various publications, mostly inexpensive, which deal with biometrics. In the text I have availed myself of biometric, genetic and other results impartially. Differences of opinion between this school and that of scientific workers are to be regretted by the eugenist; but it is for him to accept and use knowledge of eugenic significance no matter by what method it has been obtained. Directly he fails to do so he ceases to be a eugenist and becomes the ordinary partisan. No reference is made in the following pages, for instance, to the law of ancestral inheritance, formulated by the Master to whom the volume is dedicated and of whom all eugenists are the followers. I believe that law, despite its beauty, to be without basis in fact and incompatible with demonstrated Mendelian phenomena: and though the book is dedicated to Mr. Galton, it is more deeply dedicated to the Future. This, indeed, is the Credo of the eugenist: Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi.

Woman is Nature's supreme instrument of the future. The eugenist is therefore deeply concerned with her education, her psychology, the conditions which permit her to exercise her great natural function of choosing the fathers of the future, the age at which she should marry, and the compatibility between the discharge of her incomparable function of motherhood and the lesser functions which some women now assume. Obstetrics, and the modern physiology and psychology of sex, must thus be harnessed to the service of eugenics, and I hope to employ them for the elucidation, in a future volume, of the problems of woman and womanhood, thus regarded.