The hormonic balance in men and women is unlike; the
generative ferments of the ductless glands work to different ends.[3]
Masculine qualities and feminine qualities are fundamentally and
eternally distinct and incommensurate. Energy, struggle, daring,
initiative, originality, and independence, even though sometimes combined
with rashness, extravagance, and defect, seem likely to remain qualities
in which men--_on the average_, it must be remembered--will be more
conspicuous than women. Their manifestation will resist the efforts put
forth to constrain them by the feminising influences of life.
Such considerations have a real bearing on the problem of Eugenics. As
I view that problem, it is first of all concerned, in part with the
acquisition of scientific knowledge concerning heredity and the
influences which affect heredity; in part with the establishment of sound
ideals of the types which the society of the future demands for its great
tasks; and in part--perhaps even in chief part--with the acquisition of a
sense of personal responsibility. Eugenic legislation is a secondary
matter which cannot come at the beginning. It cannot come before our
knowledge is firmly based and widely diffused; it cannot come until we
are clear as to the ideals which we wish to see embodied in human
character and human action; it cannot come until the sense of personal
responsibility towards the race is so widely spread throughout the
community that its absence is universally felt to be either a crime or a
disease.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99