Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/159

 Thus it is essential that the eugenist, dealing with the hereditary factor of life, and the social reformer or socialist, dealing with the environmental factor, should supplement each other’s work. Neither can attain his end without the other’s help, for the eugenist alone cannot overcome the environmental factor, even perhaps increases it if he is an individualist in the narrow sense, and the socialist alone cannot overcome the bad hereditary factor, and will even increase it if he is no more than a socialist. The more socialist our State becomes the more essential becomes at the same time the adoption of eugenic practices as a working part of the State. “Socialism and eugenics must go hand in hand.”

Perrycoste from his own point of view has independently reached the same conclusions. He is not, indeed, concerned with any “Socialist” community of the future but with the dangerous results which must inevitably follow the already established methods of social reform in our modern civilised States unless they are speedily checked by effective action based on eugenic knowledge. “If,” he observes, “the community is to shoulder half or three-quarters of the burden of sustaining those degenerates who, through no fault of their own, are congenitally incompetent to maintain themselves in decent comfort, and is to render the life-pilgrimage of these unfortunates tolerable instead of a dreary