Can we imagine men, through government, forcibly experimenting with each other? Who would settle the kind of man that was to be evolved or the specific changes that would be required? Or, what was to be done and how? Who could prophesy what man would be like when he should be made over in the likeness of something else? Who are the people with the breadth and tolerance and infinite wisdom, in whose hands it would be safe to place the remodeling of man? It is hard to conceive that it can be seriously considered.
Nature in her own way is a eugenist. By her slow processes she is continually wiping out the unfit and adapting man to the environment where he must live. Perhaps by saving too many of the unfit man is more or less interfering with the processes of Nature, and it may be that the interference with her method of work is bad. But Nature is mindful of this tendency and if it is not in accordance with the profoundest laws of being, Nature will have her way in spite of man's meddling. Any change that can be brought about by selective mating must come by natural processes aided by the education of each individual through a closer study of the origin and evolution of life. This must leave everyone free to do his own selecting, rather than to trust it to the state. Society can do much toward giving man an environment which will more or less be adjusted to his heredity. To give him a heredity that will conform to his environment is quite another thing and probably must be kept practically free from the theories, vagaries and experiments of man. It would seem so absurd and dangerous as not to be worth discussing except for the fact that the movement, both for sterilizing and some degree of control of mating has already gone far in some of the states. There is no limit that fanaticism or hatred will respect.
No doubt the popular opinion that in some way crime and pauperism are inherited has been strengthened by the literature concerning the family that has been given the name of "The Jukes." The first extensive study of this family was made by Richard L. Dugdale, who was connected with the New York Prison Association. It was first published in 1877 and may almost be regarded as the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of the scientific study of crime in America.