There are two fields in which eugenics may be applied--the first, Negative, the second, Positive. Through the establishment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will be restrained from mating and perpetuating their unfitness in the future. Through Positive Eugenics the fit may be induced to mate, and by combining their fitness in their offspring, to raise up each new generation out of the flower of the old. Negative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Positive Eugenics perpetuates the fit.
The field of Negative Eugenics has been well explored. No question exists as to the transmission through heredity of feeble mindedness, idiocy, insanity and certain forms of criminality. "There is one way, only one way, out of this difficulty. Modern society ... must declare that there shall be no unfit and defective citizens in the State."[8] The Greeks eliminated unfitness by the destruction of defective children; though we may deplore such a practice in the light of our modern ethical codes, we recognize the end as one essential to race progress. By denying the right of parenthood to any who have transmissible disease or defect, our modern knowledge enables us to accomplish the same end without recourse to the destruction of human life.
Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the science of Eugenics, writes, in his last important work, "I think that stern compulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble-mindedness, habitual criminality and pauperism."[9] Yet society, in dealing with hereditary defect, presents some of its most grotesque inconsistencies. "It is a curious comment on the artificiality of our social system that no stigma attaches to preventable ill-health." An empty purse, or a ruined home may mean social ostracism, but "break-down in person, whatever the cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and silence."[10]
Certain defects are known to be transmissible by heredity from parent to child, until the _crétin_ of Balzac's _Country Doctor_ is reproduced for centuries. The remedy for this form of social self-torture lies in the denial of parenthood to those who have transmissible defects. Individually, such a denial works hardships in this generation: socially, and to the future generations, it means comparative freedom from individual, and hence from social defect.