F. Houssay.Practical Eugenics.161
descendants of those who have raised themselves to the highest social
position—is not this a social evil by reason of the failure in progress which
they represent, by reason of the loss of great potential forces?
In my opinion the social losses, though not expressible in identical
terms, are of equal importance at the two extremities of the ladder—
extreme wealth and extreme poverty—and in the quest for a remedy, we
ought to keep in mind all cases equally, because they all appear to have
the same natural origin.
But what can we say of voluntary or enforced sterilization if it is to be
applied to wealthy degenerates? Perhaps they would often be easier to
persuade into sterilization than paupers. For the rest, the voluntary re
striction of families, brought about by considerations of quite another kind,
and specially to conserve and concentrate their hoarded wealth—acts, no
doubt, in a eugenic sense, in not multiplying the incapables who would in a
short time scatter their wealth, already reduced by sub-division, and would
become a surcharge on the public more palpable but not more real than
before. As for the enforced sterilization which we have said ought to be faced
and legitimatised as a penalty, the rich degenerates would escape, as now,
solely by reason of their wealth, they escape most of the penalties which
fall upon their poorer brethren. These can now certainly commit thefts and
swindles with impunity, for which the poor pay with imprisonment, just
because an indemnity will stop the prosecution. In the same way, all per
sonal violence, short of murder, can almost always be atoned by a money
payment. These rich degenerates will slip out of the penalty of sterilization
as they now slip out of all the others. It would be desirable, highly desir
able, that they should come under the grip of such a law, but in actual
reality there is reason to fear that they would not.
The inequality which thus comes to light when one seeks to extinguish
degenerate stocks equally in the two extreme cases disappears if our motive
is to struggle, whether in one case or the other, against the appearance of
defect, to hinder the production of its known evolution, to struggle against it
before it is inveterate and as soon as it is recognised.
The social problem which Eugenics seeks to unravel would, on this view,
become salved on hygienic and moral lines more efficiently and extensively
than by the proposed penalty alone.
In this way the various biological principles, which sometimes seem
opposed to each other and to moral principles, would become convergent,
and would find in Eugenics a ready reconciliation, a common field of useful
labour, and a reasonable precedence suited to their respective importance. M
