What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin.

  • Darwin, Leonard, 1850-1943.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: What is eugenics? / by Leonard Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MAN'S ANCESTORS 7 The strongest opposition to this belief in the lowly ancestry of man is based on religious scruples. AJI such scruples must be treated with respect, provided we do not flinch from stating what we ourselves believe to be true. Every man who condemns this beKef in the evolution of his race should remember that he himseK unquestionably has developed from a small jelly-like object, very like some of the simplest creatures now living on earth. From such an apparently simple germ each one of us developed before birth into something shaped like an animal which could not be distinguished from a pig or a sheep when at that same early stage of development. After birth we were for a time far more helpless and far less intelligent than a monkey. As children we had little seK-control. Every individual man has gone through a process of development which in some respects resembles the way in which the race of man has sprung from some lowly kind of living beings. Since no one can deny his own development, no one thinks of being ashamed of it. Why should we be any more ashamed of the somewhat similar descent of our race from some bygone race of primitive ancestors ? Should we not rather rejoice at the thought that we have been so long on the upward march ? Granted that all the different kinds of animals which have appeared on earth in the past were descended from some older kinds by the ordinary methods of reproduc¬ tion, we next must ask what it was which brought about this slow change in their appearances and habits. Here again the story is too long to tell in full. Only a few main points can now be mentioned. When food is short the numbers of any kind of animal will be reduced by starvation. When food is plentiful, on the other hand, there will be an exceptional increase in numbers. But, generally speaking, the numbers of any kind of wüd animal do not alter greatly as time goes by. Now, when numbers are not changing, and when one couple die, they must be replaced by one other couple, no more and no less. If each couple had two offspring, ?