Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/312

 296 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

FROM MR. F. CARREL : I should like to ask Mr. Galton whether the general practice of eclectic mating might not tend to the production of a very inferior residual type, always condemned to mate together until eliminated from an existence in which they would be too unfitted to participate ; and, if so, whether such a system can be adopted without inflicting suffering upon the more or less slowly disappearing residuum.

PROFESSOR YVES DELAGE, 13 in a letter to Mr. Galton, wrote : I am delighted with the noble and very interesting enterprise which you are undertaking. I have no doubt that if in all countries the men who are at the head of the intellectual movement would give it their support, it would in the end triumph over the obstacles which are caused by indifference, routine, and the sarcasms of those who see in any new idea only the occasion for exercising a satirical spirit in which they cloak their ignorance and hardness of heart

We should translate " eugenics " into French by eugonie or cugenese. Could you not, while there is still time, modify the English term into " eugenics " or " eugenesis," in order that it might be the same in both languages ?

I see with pleasure that you have had the tact to attack the question on the side by which it can be determined. Many years ago I had myself examined the subject that you prosecute at this moment, but I had thought only of compulsory,

or rather prohibitive, means of attaining the object You are entirely right

in laying aside, at least at the outset, all compulsory or prohibitive means, and in seeking only to initiate a movement of opinion in favor of eugenics, and in trying to modify the mental attitude toward marriage so that young people, and especially parents, will think less of fortune and social conditions, and more of physical perfection, moral well-being, and intellectual vigor. Social opinion should be modified so that the opprobrium of mesalliance falls, not on the union of the noble with the plebeian, or of the rich with the poor, but on the mating of physical, intellectual, and moral qualities, with the defects of these. , As you have so well put it, public opinion and social convention have a con- siderable prohibitive force. You will have rendered an incalculable service if you direct these toward eugenics.

The thing is difficult, and will need sustained effort. To impress the public, not only men of science must be asked to -help, but those of renown in literature in all countries.

18 Professor of biology in the University of Paris.