The object of Eugenics is the conscious improvement of the human race by the application of the laws of heredity to human mating. Eugenics is the logical fruition of the progress in biologic science made during the nineteenth century.
The laws of heredity, studied in minute detail, have been applied with marvelous success in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. "Is there any good reason," demands the eugenist, "why the formulas which have operated to re-combine the physical properties of plants and animals, should not in like measure operate to modify the physical properties of men and women?"
The studies which have been made of eye color, length of arm, head shape, and other physical traits show that the same laws of heredity which apply in the animal and vegetable kingdoms apply as well in the kingdom of man. Since the species of plants and animals with which man has experimented have been improved by selective breeding, there seems to be no good reason why the human race should not be susceptible of similar improvement. What intelligent farmer sows blighted potatoes? Where is the dog fancier who would strive to rear a St. Bernard from a mongrel dam? Neither yesterday nor yet to-morrow do men gather grapes of thorns. Those who have to do with life in any form, aware of this fact, refuse to permit propagation except among the best members of a species: hence with each succeeding generation the ox increases in size and strength; the apple in color; the sweet pea in perfume; and the horse in speed. Is this law of improving species a universal law? Alas, no! it rarely if ever applies in the selection of men and women for parenthood. The human species has not, during historic times, improved either in physique, in mental capacity, in aggressiveness, in concentration, in sympathy or in vision. Nay, there are not wanting thoughtful students who affirm that in almost every one of these respects the exact contrary holds true.
There appears to be some question as to whether the best of the Greek athletes exceeded in strength and skill the modern professional athlete, but there is no doubt at all that the average citizen of Athens was a more perfect specimen physically than the average citizen of twentieth century America.