Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/156

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
150
LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE

draw on the powers of the fit and equally its duty to care for the unfit. In this way, Perrycoste, whose attitude is that of the Rationalist, is led by science to a conclusion which is that of the Christian. We are all members each of the other, and still more are we members of those who went before us. The generations preceding us have not died to themselves but live in us, and we, whom they produced, live in each other and in those who will come after us. The problems of eugenics and of birth-control affect us all. In the face of these problems it is the voice of Man that speaks: “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me.” However firmly we base ourselves on the principles of Individualism we are inevitably brought to the fundamental facts of eugenics which, if we fail to recognise, our Individualism becomes of no effect.

But it is the same with Socialism, or by whatever name we chose to call the Collectivist activities of the community in social reform. Socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments. It is the more necessary to point this out since it is on the Socialist and Democratic side, much more frequently than on the Individualist side, that we find an indifferent or positively hostile attitude towards eugenic considerations. Put