The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-02-21
.EUGEN|CS AND COMMON SENSE
A HEALTHY BODY LESS IMPOR-
TANT THAN A HEALTHY SOUL
-EUGENTC RESTRICTIONS ON
MARRIAGE.

A discouraging feature of all at
tempts at public betterment is the
harm so often done by well-meaning
people who run good ideas into the
ground, writes Hon. Charles J. Bona
parte in the Baltimore Evening Sun.
A word of caution may be timely just
now to the advocates of what has
come to be known as "eugenics." In
"eugenics," nationally understood and
reasonably applied, the writer is a
firm believer-that is to say, he thinks
nothing can be more important to the
permanent welfare of any community
than the assurance of a healthy, in
telligent, virtuous and numerous prog
eny, and the scientific study by COM
petent persons of appropriate means
to this end is of great value to the
public and deserves encouragement.
Nor is he frightened when told that
this may involve the application of
theories and principles of the stock
farm to human society: some "prin-
ciples and theories of the stock
farm" are universally applicable, and
their application to human affairs
would be eminently wise and salu-
tary. But here, as elsewhere, there is
urgent need to exhibit the uncommon
quality known as common sense. Les
sons of value to mankind may be and
have been drawn from the experience
of stock-raisers and veterinarians, but
between man and the domestic ami
mails there is always the momentous
difference between persons and
things. The colt or calf or lamb
doesn't exist to be happy itself; it
exists to make it's owner happy; but
the welfare of the weakest and most
infirm of human beings is just as
precious as that of the strongest. Men
do not come into the world to make
the State, as a corporate body, happy;
the State exists that it may make
them happy. Moreover, in dealing
with our four-footed or feathered
may happen to them in the Happy
Hunting Grounds; the good Lord will
take care of that; but our actions may
make a man miserable, not for time
only, but for eternity; and while we
exercise individually, without hesita-
ton or scruple, power of life and
death over animals, wholly different
conditions confront us when called
upon to thus deal with our own kind
Eugenicists (f this term be not too
odious barbarism), or, at all events,
some of them, seem to the writer in
danger of attaching too great conse-
quence to the purely physical, as OPP
posed to the intellectual and moral
nature of man. Undoubtedly, this is
a matter of consequence: that a man
should have a clean, strong, healthy
body is, perhaps, but little less impor-
tant than that he should have clean,
strong, healthy soul to dwell in it;
nevertheless, the former is the less
important of the two. The death of
a misshapen, sickly infant, may rob
the world of a great teacher, great
inventor, great poet, great states
man, even a great warrior. In no field
of human excellence would merely
bodily powers seem to be so clearly
of predominant weight as in warfare;
and yet Napoleon I, who was certainly
no idealist and who, as certainly,
spoke with knowledge, said that in
war moral qualities were to physical
as three TO one. In one of the most
striking passages of his History of
England Macaulay speaks as follows
of the battle of Landen, in which Mar
shall Luxembourg commanded the
French and King William III, the
English and their allies:
"At Landen two poor sickly beings,
who, in rude state Of society, would