Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1912 — CONFESS EUGENICS A PUZZLE [ARTICLE]

CONFESS EUGENICS A PUZZLE

Modern Scientists, Arrogant as They Have Become, Admit That Subject Is Beyond Them. Already the professors of eugenics are moliylng their viewws. They are confessing that It la yet too early to lay down any laws of heredity, ao far as human beings are concerned, and that many years—perhaps generations —must be spent in merely accumulating facts before any laws can be formulated. As tbe Medical Record says, all our older learning concerning heredity must be submitted to Mendeli&n testa. It appears at tbe .outset, says the Medical Record, “that families, like individuals, do not bear prosperity well, and deteriorate as their material resources improve, and also that the menace of the unfit is not so great as It might at first thought seem, because here the death rate lu the resulting progeny Is phenomenally high." Nature has an excellent way of holding the balance even and there are thoughtful men of science who view with misgiving the efforts of philanthropists to upset the plan of nature by preventing the early death of the unfit. ' In the second June number of Popular Science, the editor sounds a warning against ‘‘lrresponsible eugenists,” and says: “We believe that we can breed out feeble-mlndness, „ because that is simple, but we know that we cannot produce genius by any lystem. not'even if we could treat mankind as Mendel treated peas, because genius is complicated and proportionately beyond our control.”