Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/161

 scientific knowledge must be our guide. Premature legislation, rash and uninstructed action, will not lead to progress but are more likely to delay it. Yet even with imperfect knowledge, it is already of the first importance to evoke interest in the great issue here at stake and to do all that we can to arouse the individual conscience of every man and woman to his or her personal responsibility in this matter. That is here all taken for granted.

It seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics because that aspect is frequently invoked, and a man’s attitude towards this question is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers that Individualism or Socialism demands. We see that when the question is driven home our political attitude makes no difference. It is only a shallow Individualism, it is only a still more shallow Socialism, which imagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racial questions can be left to answer themselves.

Many years before the Great War, in all the most civilised countries of the World, there were those who raised the cry of “Race-Suicide!” In America this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice of Theodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voices