HUMANITY IN THE MAKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14644, 1 April 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

HUMANITY IN THE MAKING.

BT TOOTTNGA. HcKANrxx in the making has to endure a lot of hard squeezing and painful perapparently because ; there is no other way of moulding into presentable shape species which will not believe that fire is hot without fingering it or that eating when you're not hungry is the cause of sleepy days and wakeful nights. By drought and flood, by-cold and heat, by disease and pestilence, by hunger and thirst, by misery and despair, by battle, murder, and hidden death, all Life ie tested and tried, Mankind with the rest of creation. Hough is the "procetis and hard the school, but it has been sc fax successful that the blue-eyed girl looks curiously down upon the sisterhoods of the barbarian, and the fair-haired lad holds his unnoted ancestry to be more royal than the graven pedigree of alien kings.'/,.. ', •-_;' Christianity has been made what it is because the pitiless and inexorable working out of Cause aid Effect, the irresistible thrust and stroke of supreme and unalterable natural laws, have crushed and destroyed the weak, the unstable, and the unfit in the course of their struggle for existence against the fit, " the stable, and the strong. The. growing sensitiveness .of Humanity shrinks from the ferocious pain involved in this struggle, and shrinks all the more because the nerwvworn faculties of civilised men and women , become dulled to the thrill and throb of the exalting joys I which inspire and sustain, ; the simpler I peoples. We have no longer. the passionate delight in the, strong baby which made our long-dead mothers IcoS proudly on while our unfearing fathers tossed their ! new-born to the -sloping thatch, where the clutching baby-hands decided between life and death. We no longer prize strong arm and steady wit a* they did when Anglo-Saxondom condemned the " niddering" to the collar of the serf. We hate Pain largely because we are "dulled to Joy; but, in any case, we have decided to avoid Pain wherever we can*, wherefrom arises the science called " Eugenics." Humanity being still in the making, Eugenics; proposes to enable the strong and the competent,;the tit and the determined, : the law-making end the law-abiding to increase and multiply and replenish the earth without any positive pain or suffering being inflicted upon those who must inevitably be crushed out in the battle of living. Modern humanitarians are salving their hatred of pain by giving the unfit a better chance to inherit the earth than the fit of i; their own *nation-;which is merely cutting the national throat, is paving the way for the submergence of civilisation by the less foolish barbarians who prowl like wolves outside the fold. Humanity has been made by the persistent extermination of the weak, of the ugly, of the deformed, ; of : the imbecile, of the frivolous, :of the lawless, of the badly bred; and ho nation can hope to survive in the battle of nations which devotee itself to the encouragement and multiplication of these undesirables. Eugenics seeks to continue the extermination upon humane and civilised . lines, to preserve the inheritance ' for the strong and the sound, the clean-blooded and' the sure-witted, while saving even the', weakest and' most worthless front hanger »ad, destitution, from misery, degradation, and despair. In a phrase, Eugenics means that " Life is for all; parentage ( only for, the fit." ' When discussing Eugenics it should always be borne in mind that in any case Nature will look to it that the unfit are wiped out sooner or later. When we encourage defective person? to increase and multiply by preserving them from the starvation and destitution which would speedily settle the . question under "natural" conditions; when our care for the criminal enables the reckless criminal to propagate his kind faster than the cautious law-abider; when our social order restricts marriage among those whose ideals arc high and ignores marriage . among those whose ideals are low; we only increase the number of those upon whom destruction must come. We are only doing what is done 'by every foolish father or mother who spoil? a —accumulating pain and sorrow ;an unavoidable day of reckoning. .-; There is no creature more to be pitied than a spoiled child, ahead of whom lies the world of men and the battle of life. There is no generation more to be pitied than the generation of weaklings, criminals, imbeciles, and incompetents, to whom the mistaken humanitariunism of a paineick people'has'given life. If the process goes on Society is crushed beneath the increasing load; the entire people perishes before the onslaught of a nation unweakened by Humanitarian ism or taves itself by tossing off its burden and leaving.to' the ' pitiless processes of " Nature" the solution of the difficulty. Eugenics would not allow the unfit to increase and multiply. It Would hot starve them or fail in any > Christian f duty towards them, but would not' alliiw their multiplication. It is :; ah - expression 'in scientific form of the absorbing desire of civilisation— de- ' sire|tbhaJ?e progress without pain. "It is an attempt to remove Humanity in the. , making ' from C the brutal and the uncon- ■ scious to Ifche conscious and the intellectual plane. ' u i _ . ' . "Can Eugenics succeed?" may be ' asked. And in return " Why , not?" Even while we may,bo satisfied with the • price which wo ourselves have paid and ■ are paying for the gift of Life and the joy of living we are dissatisfied with the price . which others /seem to be paying, ' particularly when we .love the very air they ' breathe, the very earth they ~:tread on. ,-' We know"that r *. nation needs a sound and virile ; body •in which to carry the sound ■ and virile mind which is the, outward' and visible sign of a beautiful soul. And we know, in our hearts, that without •health - and ; strength and'- soundness and ' virility the torch of the national- life should not be passed' from hand to hand, from generation to ; generation. , A material view of Life, some may say. ;Of course,/ were it thy whole view. But the ; nhysical chalice must be kept sound and beautiful in order that it may he fit ' to hold the strong wine of the spiritual .being. Physical parentage, : mental ; parent- ' age even, we can see and estimate and : govern, but who shall know or tell how * the spiritual \ essence ; comes - and 7, goes? ,' Was Plato childless—whose thoughts move ; us to-day ?- Did Shakespere die out, whose ' words whisper in our- ears, sleeping and j waking,.living and dying? Has-Nelson-no children among the men of the sea and the women who love them? Has Florence ' Nightingale nursed' nothing at her breasts 1 given 'none of her spiritual blood'to con- ; : tinue the work that she made great? ] Assuredly. The spirit is greater than the J body, and the children of the spirit are ! the i salt of the earth land ■ the hope of the ' world— children whose inward being * it shaped,/ whose dominant i instincts are determined, by; trie influence of i men long ' dust, by the passionate cravings of child- ' less mothers who have swayed the ■ thoughts of -i men as the ~; . '; moon, ; riding ' serene in high heaven, scatters the cloud- : 'i drifts arid lifts the ocean against the ' land. And, surely, the more we under- * stand this the more we peer through the { dim glass that divides the. seen from the '• unseen, the physical from the:spiritual, * the mora we must'love and tend the fair 3 body that is the garment of the r spirit, the * clear mind that is the window of the ecoW.l * ;,, ' , - '> , ' ■ T, iM i 'i; 1-1— ( • 4 I 1 i » i!' , , , j >