Page:The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics.pdf/27

OF THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 23 eternal laws, and guided the course of his being by that knowledge? Realize that the most valuable part of that knowledge is scarcely two hundred years old. And when we turn to biology—to the biological factors which control man’s life and its relations to that of other organisms—are we not yet at the very dawn of discovery,—a dawn whose actual storm-drifts foretell the coming flood of light?

Plato, in the Fifth Book of the Laws, describes what he terms a purification or purgation of the state. Permit me for my weakness, not yours, to cite it from Jowett’s translation :—

"‘The shepherd or herdsman, or breeder of horses, or the like, when he has received his animals will not begin to train them until he has first purified them in a manner which befits a community of animals; he will divide the healthy and unhealthy, and the good breed and the bad breed, and will send away the unhealthy and badly bred to other herds, and tend the rest, reflecting that his labours will be vain and without effect, either on the souls or bodies of those whom nature and ill-nurture have corrupted, and that they will involve in destruction the pure and healthy nature and being of every other animal, if he neglect to purge them away. Now, the case of other animals is not so important:—they are only worth mentioning for the sake of illustration, but what relates to man is of the highest importance; and the legislator should make inquiries, and indicate what is proper for each in the way of purification and of any other procedure. Take, for example, the purification of a city—there are many kinds of purification, some easier and others more difficult; and some of them, and the best and most difficult of them, the legislator, if he be also a despot, may be able to effect; but he who, without a despotism, sets up a new government and laws, even if he attempt the mildest of purgations, may think himself happy if he can complete the work. The best kind of purifica-"