La Reine Helen McKenzie Baker

“ Taking a large view of society it must make an abysmal difference whether we think the race can or cannot be improved (not merely polished or even enlightened but really changed) by modifications of environment. We can no longer pursue the same and by the same means if we come to the conclusion that the individual is either born a potential asset to society or "damned into existence," a permanent drain on his fellows' comfort and wealth, even a possible miasma of infectious criminality. ”

“ Man is in neither case fortuitous, his nature, potentiality and destiny are writ large in the study of his heredity. We are all, like poets, born not made; as we are: we remain: we develop on lines long ago laid down for us by other forces than those environment can control and it is still impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. ”

“ Year after year they think they are fulfilling their destined purpose in life by adding to their families a burden difficult to bear. In the long run, after Nature has exercised a cruel elimination, this burden of the individual becomes the glory of the race, the very bloom and blossom of the future. ”

“ It is impossible for any view of Eugenics in relation to education to ignore the terrible danger of child-labour. Economic consideration of this subject is common enough; it is time that Eugenics made its voice heard in denunciation of a system which cannot fail to demoralise the race if persisted in. The energy of a growing youth is required for building up his own constitution, and if his early labours are spent in occupations inconsistent with physical development he becomes a stunted weakling from whose loins we cannot expect the issue of a noble race. ”

“ The failure of all other attempts to improve the race may force upon the public the necessity of Eugenic experiments. As has been said more than once, philanthropy has failed, politics has failed, rescue work has failed, perhaps Eugenics may not fail, for it is based on the impregnable rock of science, it proceeds on the sound lines of prevention, it aims to start at the beginning of things, to build up a new race if not of supermen at least of sound healthy human beings. ”

“ But from human birth and sex, the mysteries of creation in their divinest form, from these branches of the study of heredity the flaming sword of prudery warns us away. The subject of human sex has been the play-ground of neglect, ignorance, bigotry, superstition, persecution and every other foe to inquiry. ”

“ It is the antithesis to the idea of Eugenics. The state which can contemplate child-murder without horror is far indeed from being a humane State. Sensitiveness to suffering is a sign of civilisation. Wherever we find a live human being, however hopeless its condition may appear, universal experience has shown us that man's advance from savagedom depends on his using all his resources to save the final spark of life which remains. "While there's life there's hope" is a maxim which is based on the greatest need of mankind. ”

“ State regulation of vice, with its corollary, State examination of women, is nowadays opposed by medical authorities because of the illusory security from infection which it implies, and is bitterly resented by all reformers as an intolerable tyranny applicable only to a single sex.
If I have emphasised the evils which are the heritage of so large a number of our children, it must never be forgotten that great as is the proportion of the unfit, we have not yet reached the stage when there are more unfit than fit. The heritage of evil represents the need for Eugenics in its negative aspect. ”

“ It may even be more numerous, for while Eugenists resolutely set themselves to discourage the national burdening by debt, danger and decay which inevitably follow in the footsteps of a deteriorating race, we have nevertheless no opinions whatever as to whether a numerically large or small family is best. Race suicide is no worse than race murder. We cannot imagine a nobler sight than an enormous and increasing race of the vitally fit. ”

“ The union of two unfit persons entered into in complete knowledge will be an infinitely smaller evil.
To make marriage attractive we must very greatly increase the facilities for unmaking it, and we must lay down some general principles for its healthy continuance. The absolute right of a woman to her own person, and her prerogative to refuse to bear children, seem elementary conditions of civilised wedlock. Woman must be protected from outrage, be she wife or not. ”

“ Our ports of entry are firmly closed in the face of undesirable aliens, not for the purpose of reducing our population, far from it. Our stability, our greatness, our very existence depend on the success with which we have attracted to our shores those immigrants whose children to-day are our boast and pride. Eugenics, it cannot be too often said, is no mere phase of Malthusianism. It is not a population question it is the population question. ”

“ It is the only final alternative to Eugenics. It means that man has failed. It has neither sense, sentiment, nor science for its justification. It substitutes murder for moral method. Eugenics on the other hand starts out with the principle that there is nothing so sacred as life. That the lethal chamber for the aged, diseased, infirm, and unfit is barbarous and immoral, that it is utterly indefensible, and would be absolutely ineffective if not ridiculously impracticable. There is not much need to waste further consideration on a project from which every healthy citizen naturally revolts. ”

“ It cannot be dismissed as unimportant for there is hardly a single good environment in children's lives so potent as that of a happy home in which the two parents' love for each other is only rivalled by their united love for the young lives their love has so miraculously created. ”

“ The tragedy of the woman's life is when either her own or her husband's unfitness to bear anything but a tainted stock is disregarded by law, custom and the brutality of lustful bestiality. She who might be, as she desires to be, the guardian of the nation's truest interests, is overpowered and compelled to be the medium of national pollution. ”

“ Co-education renders unnecessary that departing into separate schools which is so mysterious in early life. It aims at giving girls the benefit of boys' play, encouraging them in the boys' code of honour, and tending to prepare them for a citizenship they have to share with the boys whom they may even now regard as "chums." For boys the familiarity with girls' ways and girls' characteristics will help them to be courteous without being weak and to lose that shamefaced sex-consciousness which is the opposite to a healthy knowledge of the existence of another sex. ”

“ Truth at least will gain, pretence will give place to reality and we shall be capable of postulating a new and better morality based on the essential facts of life. To the consideration of the best possible life for men and women must be added the Eugenic claims of the race. We live and die but the race continues, heirs of our perfection, inheritors of our defects. We pass, but we must think of those to whom this heritage passes. The strong woman mated to the strong man is proud of a posterity which will do them honour. ”

“ It is not in the interests of the race that mothers should be in any doubt as to their immunity from financial worry during child-birth pains, or that they should have to consider any merely sordid question in deciding whether or not a perfectly healthy mother should increase the nation's stock of perfectly fit citizens. The position of a wealthy man's wife in the present day is often an anomalous one. Where the husband was rich at the time of his wedding, marriage-contracts usually protect the wife's interests to some extent. ”

“ Sexual disease should be referred to, like all other sexual questions, as incidental to the whole subject of the body and its functions, abuses and diseases. The idea that any disease may justly be regarded as a fitting "punishment" for any particular crime, is as evil in its effect as it is vicious in its principle. To encourage the notification of every disease, especially the worst, is a public duty we can only evade at enormous cost in innocent lives. ”

“ I am a Eugenist because I believe that the nature we have received from hereditary sources transcends in effectiveness all the nurture which follows birth. Eugenics means seeking for facts and applying them to solve the greatest of all problems—looking for light by which the race may control its destiny. Heredity in the animal and vegetable world may be considered dispassionately enough. ”

“ Science gathers increasing information about all other things and we spend our millions on investigating the prevention of utilisation of waste, shall we not hope that this great institution of marriage may too in its turn be the subject of our scientists', philosophers' and statisticians' concern. Marriage has its origin in the profoundest needs of social man. The raison d'etre of marriage is human happiness now and in the generations to follow. Throwing legislative obstacles in the way of marriage has never had any effect except the increase of illegitimacy. ”

“ It has never been claimed that culture should be withheld from a man, as inconsistent with fatherhood; motherhood must not be made an excuse for denying education. The safest policy is to make preparations for Life independent of preparations for a Career. The don and the bluestocking have to live, so have the cowboy and the cook. All must have the universal knowledge whereby they may serve their race as healthy parents of healthy children, even though the college, the study, the ranch and the kitchen have their own particular technicalities to be mastered by the interested individuals. ”

“ Environment when properly subordinated to and illuminated by heredity does not cease to be important. Environment may provide wings to fly with « 25 » and an atmosphere capable of sustaining weight, even when it cannot provide the will to fly. To return to our agricultural symbolism: environment cannot make or change the nature of the seed, it is the soil, the sunshine and the succulence, but it has to take the seed as it is. Heredity is inside the seed and goes behind the seed to the mother plant. Heredity is what our ancestors meant when they said predestination, necessity, destiny. ”

“ We must discard the old unscientific view of existence as an inexplicable riddle, of marriage as a lucky bag, of crime as a mere chance occurrence, of genius as a "sport," of events as casualties or accidents and of goodness as accessible to all and badness the deliberate choice of the wilful. ”

“ Divorce may be horrid, but the atmosphere of love turned to indifference and hate is hell for all who breathe there.
While marriage does not exhaust all the possibilities of increasing the race it may be said to be not only the best but the only socially desirable way. ”

“ The heartless school which on principles hates all reform derives its chief support from the fact that the reform which regards only environment too often descends to veneering vice with respectability or dissipates itself in futilities of a grandmotherly kind. The reformer of the future must study causes as well as phenomena. The skilled physician regards symptoms as of importance only to the extent that they assist the diagnosis of disease. ”