Citation

Harding TS. Am. J. Sociol. 1937; 42(5): 672-681.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1937, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/217543

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The assumption that modern science protects the weak from early extinction and produces a race of weaklings because they inherit the bad qualities of their weak progenitors merits further examination. Since experts cannot agree upon a definition of heredity it is a little early to conclude that the human race is being bred either up or down the scale of perfection. The so-called "science of eugenics" is, as yet, largely hypothetical. Biologists do not know enough to state positively that sanitation and hygiene, modern science and medicine, tend to produce a race of weaklings. Although it might be possible to establish a race invulnerable to disease, yet ill health and disease do not always a argue poor physical stock per se. It is impossible to tell back stock merely by looking it over. Even the anti-eugenic effects of war and of disease have been exaggerated. War does, in a sense, tend to kill off our finest men, yet it leaves the genes required to produce such men intact in the female, counteracting the disastrous effects of war upon inheritance.