When Resolute Men Stood Against Wishful Men

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

At the Beginning There Was Darkness

“Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage” – Francis Galton, 1904 (qtd. in Chesterton, p. 14).

The origins of Eugenics are deeply rooted or subtly covered in the evolutionary theory of Darwin, who tried to immediately go a step further (outside the orbit of his observations and conclusions on birds) to propose that the workings of nature, together with its incomprehensible for the human mind complexities, to naturally design human species could be actually substituted, or even corrected, by people themselves. A predetermined outcome for the next generation became possible, and it only would take some time before the perfect individual was designed by humans alone. The time when human species could fully control -- fully to the extent human minds were naturally designed to think -- their destinies was just at the corner.

Although Darwin was only an observer of birds on an island, a place where nature’s presence was unquestionable and influence unrestricted, he seemed to quickly forget, overpowered by his ambition, the ultimate power and presence of Nature in any form of life on earth and thus decided to disregard nature as the only creator of human life on earth. Natural selection immediately lost its intrinsic meaning -- nature’s superiority alone to form different kinds of species -- and became a tool in the hands of a few who twisted the meaning and propagated it as highly dependable on human decisions and actions. If people are merely a single outcome of the natural selection process, this does not mean that they are and will know, have, and thus control the inputs to this intricate process. However, the real danger for Darwin to extend and conduct his experiment, although later in his life he did refuse to call himself an eugenist, was the protection a democratic country offered its citizens: “But it is quite certain that no existing democratic government would go as far as we Eugenists think right in the direction of limiting the liberty of the subject for the sake of the racial qualities of future generations” – Leonard Darwin, Cambridge University Eugenics Society, 1912 (qtd. in Chesterton, p. 13).

Nature never decided to limit the inborn power, depth, and breadth of actions of the birds Darwin observed, but he, together with other famous eugenists, was too eager to disregard the example of nature and decided that to compel a whole nation to accept the new experiment, which was believed to bring down the Paradise on earth, he needed a new law; moral standards; and different human perceptions of reality. Since the new movement was taking tangible form and quite an extreme deterministic purpose, although vague in perspective, eugenists needed two things for it to be successful and not emerge stillborn: first, a fair tale and, second, listeners to swallow it. However, it turned out that not the people were the problem to come along but the fair tale: it was fairer than fair to believe since it lacked a solid and well-practiced base to be sustained in its form of abstraction and lack of clear perspective. Eugenists were walking on an unknown path; a path of experiment that did not have a clear beginning to have a positive end.

Evolution and Eugenics or Evolution vs. Eugenics

How Ms. Pride, walking in its condescending gait, became a wish; how a wish became a science; and how this science, in order to survive the attack of critics, became a religion.

“We [eugenists] can distinguish between the right to live and the right to become a Parent … We can do our best for the life that is, but can follow Nature and transcend her by mercifully forbidding it to reproduce its defect.” – C.W. Saleeby, 1914 (qtd. in Chesterton, p. 36, emphasis added).

The defect of nature turned out not to be natural, excluding any mentally retarded people, but was man-made. The prosperity of the rich was dependent on the destitute of the poor. Those men who refused to look back to their past and acknowledge their deliberate commitment to labor discrimination and inhuman treatment of other men, instead decided to correct the future in order to forget the past. But the past was alive, taking a new, usually dreadful, form of human appearances and conditions. Suddenly, the prosperous men became afraid of being surrounded by men and women of highly different (abnormal) physical characteristics and mental abilities. They saw a real danger in the new body of citizens that was forming before their eyes: citizens who had been legally forbidden for some time to enjoy the liberties, life, and economic perspectives the rich did. The eugenist rose on the horizon and offered an immediate solution not only to the current social problem but also to the future since he promised to control the defects of nature and thus predict a better outcome for the next generation. Therefore, the pride of the eugenist, or the vanity of his philosophical status, emboldened him to aim high but for an invisible target.

Without having any practical experience or theoretical knowledge, the eugenist suddenly engrossed on the difficult task of changing human nature for better. He, endowed with the rare enthusiasm of a maniac, had enough human bodies to dissect in order to continue as long as possible or necessary to prove what he had boldly claimed on the first place to know by a ‘scientific’ fact. However, his knowledge and intent was as hollow as his claims since he had been scratching on the surface and could not possible reach to the bottom of human nature: “they [eugenists] have studied everything but the question of what they are studying… heredity undoubtedly exists, or there would be no such thing as a family likeness… every simple heredity can never be simple; its complexity must be literally unfathomable, for in that field fight unthinkable millions…these instant inundations of experiences, come together according to a combination that is unlike anything else on earth” (Chesterton, p. 52).

Such a combination could not possibly be the formula offered by the eugenist since he was just embarking on a task impossible to comprehend. Since the impossibility to accomplish the task, as predicted, started to resemble a wish, the eugenist -- this greatest savior of the human race -- had to rely on a new alternative: infuse eugenics with a religious spirit so that it would be difficult to disapprove of or if it would have, as every religion, it would stay in the society for good: “[Eugenics] must be introduced into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become orthodox religious tenet off the future, for eugenics co-operate with the working of nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races” Francis Galton, 1904 (qtd. in Chesterton, p. 57). No longer was the eugenist against Nature: he was working with it for the perfection of the human race.

However, eugenics could not be an ordinary religion since its origins were totally different from those of any religious philosophy. Encouraged by his ‘imaginary’ imaginations, the eugenist was lost in vague speculations of the perfect human race although he did not exactly know how to get there: “They do not know what they want, except that they want your soul and body and mine in order to find out. They are quite seriously, as they themselves may say, the first religion to be experimental instead of doctrinal” (Chesterton, p. 61). This powerful combination -- the lack of knowledge and the strength of personal conviction -- propelled the eugenist to go further than his brothers of past religious sects could get: “The old Inquisitors tortured to put their own opinions into somebody. But the new Inquisitors [eugenists] tortured to get their own opinions out of him. They do not know what their own opinions are, until the victim of vivisection [eugenic experiments] tells them… The old prosecutor is trying to teach the citizen, with fire and sword. The new prosecutor is trying to learn from the citizen, with scalpel and germ-injector” (Chesterton, p. 60). As a result, it seemed that it would be a long and difficult task for the eugenist to push his new teachings in the mindset of society. However, there were laws that could help to promote the enterprise; after all, every religious teaching has its own laws and moral norms that uncompromisingly oblige its followers to abide by.

Eugenics as the New Morality or Is It the New Morality?

Since the external environment for the eugenist was not responsible for the creation or shaping of the human being -- this was the original and intrinsic meaning of the process of natural selection -- he decided to shift his ‘scientific’ attention exclusively to the human being, and most importantly on marriage. If the next generation could have been designed the eugenist had to legalize his ‘scientific’ experiment to drive his ‘angelic’ scalpel through the rotten society. If it was not possible to recreate human nature, the eugenist did not mind destroying it one way or another as long as his hands were full with some task: “Fifteen States in the U.S.A. enacted sterilization laws before the year 1920” – Dr. Marie Stopes, Birth Control News, Nov. 1992 (qtd. in Chesterton, p. 39). Law, the social power that had to preserve and enhance human existence and experience, became a major weapon in the hands of the eugenist against the race he happened to dislike for one reason or another.

Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is a constructive experience that leads to personal gratification and happiness of existence; it is a natural given right or gift to be realized. Now, the eugenist decided to exercise control or confine human nature by designing laws: if nature had somehow restricted the evolution of Darwin’s birds, as the eugenist did, Darwin would not have drawn his conclusions. The eugenist tried to somehow impose his wish without knowing who or what allowed him to play with human nature as if it had been a toy: “[eugenists] cannot define who is to control whom; they cannot say by what authority they do those things. They cannot see the exception is different from the rule – even when it is misrule, even when it is an unruly rule” (Chesterton, p. 35). However, the eugenist did not have any qualms in breaking basic human rights but instead he continued indulging in his ‘scientific’ experiments.

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