Eugenics and Other EvilsFrom the introduction: "I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like briefly to emphasise and make clear. Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before the war ...." |
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admit ages allowed already anarchy answer authority become begin believe better called capitalist certainly chapter Church citizen claim classes clear common consider course deal deny difference doctor England English equality Eugenics Eugenist evil exception exists experiment eyes fact Father field give head heredity hope human idea ideal individual industrial instance interesting kind least leave less liberty live look marriage marry matter mean merely mind moral nature never opinions pass person poor powers practical prevent probably question reason rich rule seems sense serf simply slave Socialism Socialists society sort speak spirit story Suppose talk tell thing thought treat tree true turn understand whole wrong
Popular passages
Page 171 - I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth have smiled, And made me in these Christian days A happy English child.
Page 41 - Now, that specialists are valuable for this par-, ticular and practical purpose, of predicting the ap-l proach of enormous and admitted human calamities,] nobody but a fool would deny. But that does not bring us one inch nearer to allowing them the right to define what is a calamity ; or to call things calamities which common sense does not call calamities. We call in the doctor to save us from death ; and, death being admittedly an evil, he has the right to administer the queerest and most recondite...
Page 77 - The thing that is really trying to tyrannize through Government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen — that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics.
Page 44 - What is the good of telling people that if they marry for love, they may be punished by being the parents of Keats or the parents of Stevenson ? Keats died young ; but he had more pleasure in a minute than a Eugenist gets in a month.
Page 164 - In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a Capitalist State. For the vital point is that it did not in the smallest degree diminish the...
Page 137 - ... tools of Mammon much more than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that there is one thing he doesn't think. He doesn't think, "This man might be as jolly as I am, if he need not come to me for work or wages," That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is...
Page 141 - ... English duke to an American parvenu of semi-Jewish extraction ? .What would happen ? We have here an unexplored field. It remains unexplored not merely through snobbery and cowardice, but because the Eugenist (at least the influential Eugenist) half-consciously knows it is no part of his job; what he is really ' wanted for is to get the grip of the governing classes on to the unmanageable output of poor people.
Page 45 - Stevenson. This, however, is not the essential point ; with Stevenson it is not merely a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he got. If he had died without writing a line, he would have had more red-hot joy than is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I owe so much, let the day perish wherein he was...
Page 20 - Indeed, the first definition of "feeble-minded" in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the phrase " feeble-minded " itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about " persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable circumstances " (as if anyone could earn his living J!
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Eugenics and Other Evils Volume 230 of Collins' standard collection of British and American authors |
| Author | Gilbert Keith Chesterton |
| Publisher | Cassell, 1922 |
| Original from | Harvard University |
| Digitized | Oct 19, 2005 |
| ISBN | 1612983383, 9781612983387 |
| Length | 188 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |