Tensas gazette. [volume] (St. Joseph, La.) 1886-current, 1914-07-03
copyright. 1914. by A. S. Cray
EUGENIcs.

Lester Ward declares that aversion
In the relations between man and
woman means that their union will re.
suit in some defect or imperfection in
the offspring. And our knowledge OF
the laws of heredity and Of environ
ment prove this must be true.
Environment counts for fully 80 per
cent in the development of the indi-
vidual, and q family distraught by
pickering, misunderstanding, and the
lack Of mutual consideration and for
bearance, cannot well be considered
favorable environment in which to de-
velop normal children.
Sex selection and the survival of the
f1ttest appears to have been RESPONSE
BILE for the course of human evolution
up to the time of the ancient Greeks,
and II the fragments of that early civil
lization indicate anything. obviously
they indicate a plane of pure and log
zeal thought we have yet to attain.
Sex selection means the choice of
superior mates, and therefore the pro-
duction Of superior qualities in pos
terity. Free, natural selection has
been the uplifting power that has de-
veloped and conserved the race. The
primitive selection inspired by natural
instinct and maintained by strong
arms and a stone club undoubtedly
bred men and women relatively superb
or to many of today. and vastly superb
or to those certain to result from like
number of generations with choice
largely governed by the power Of
property accumulated through more or
less devious methods.
What Is there in all recorded his
tory that we can point to in evidence
Of our ability to improve on the forces
that brought us from the primal cell
to Thales. Anaximander. Hippocrates
and Euclid. intellects that still actuate
the minds of men after more than
twenty centuries?
Granting that beings vary among
themselves generation after genera
ton. granting only the fit survive,
granting the survivors tend to trans
init their qualities, then 1t follows that
evolution is now going on and that we
are either ascending or descending.
We know It to be within our power
to go In either direction, and therefore
that we can develop a vastly superior
and a happier race in a few genera
lions II we will to do SO. But what
rational steps are being taken to this
end? We laugh at the childish ef-
forts to stay natural forces by i'm
perial or legislative edict recorded in
earlier ages; but are recent legisla-
tive enactments in the name of eu-
genics any more logical or do they
promise to be any more effective than
Emperor Caligula's command that the
tide cease to rise?
The simple and disagreeable truth
Is that modern business has destroyed
the fundamental principle of natural
selection. Making women economic
ally dependent on men eliminates the
lifting power of woman's choice-and
there can be no choice without free
dom and no freedom except It be
grounded in economic independence.
Because of woman's dependence and
humanity's mental. sympathetic and
social refinements. the fundamental
principles Of natural selection and the !
survival of the fittest" through the
struggle for existence have been |
forced into the background. creating an
artificial condition certain to be cor.
rected by self-destruction. Hence
this cry for eugenics.
Eugenics cannot become a vital
power in any nation until sufficient
body Of the people become imbued
with the true principles, and this is a
impossible to attain through
legislation. and is only to be achieved
by individual effort and mental and
physical development. No sane par
ents will knowingly deliberately con-
denim their children or their children's
to poverty, the insane asy.
lum or worse; and the means of pre-
vention lie in knowledge.
II every child were given a prac-
.ical working knowledge of physics,
chemistry and biology, studies that
urnish material for true thought and
understanding, the pres.
mt unhealthy condition would auto
correct itself. and there
would be no more talk Of eugenics.