"Less Eugenics, More Love."
"Less eugenics and more old-fashioned love is what the race needs," said a physician, speaking before a meeting of doctors.
More love, by all means, and of the old-fashioned variety, though, so far as I have observed, the new fashions in love are just the same as the old. But why less eugenics?
What is eugenics?
It is the science of race improvement. Less race improvement? That is a queer cry for a physician to raise.
What he had in mind, perhaps, in his sweeping statement was the present-day application of eugenics to marriage, requiring a physician's certificate before a couple will be permitted to marry, the certificate stating that the man and the woman are free from certain diseases whose presence would transform the marriage into one of the most terrible of tragedies.
How any sound-minded person, least of all a physician, can object to such a law passes my comprehension. It is the most necessary of safeguards. If it is passed by all our legislatures and enforced strictly, it will do more to bless the world, to make men pure and women happy, than all the other laws that have been placed upon the statute books for a generation.
It is possible that the speaker who pleaded for less eugenics had in mind the teaching of sex hygiene in the public schools. It is a matter for debate whether this subject should be taught in the public schools, but it ought not to be a matter for debate whether it should be taught. Children of public-school age know about these subjects. It is best that they should learn about them from wise parents; but not all parents are wise, and many, perhaps the majority, do not know how to handle such subjects in a way helpful to children. Certainly it is better that these most important themes should be treated by specialists well instructed how to treat them, than that the children should be left to gain their first impressions regarding sex from the minds of the impure among their own number. Many a life has thus been befouled at the outset.
Less eugenics. Is this what the physician objects to? If so, then his "less eugenics" is sure to mean less "love of the old-fashioned kind."
Let us not be fooled by all this cheap talk about eugenics. Let us consider just what is aimed at by the reform, and how eugenic principles are to be applied. They will better the old-fashioned love, making it sounder and sweeter and safer. They are to the immense advantage of home life. They mean sound minds in sound bodies, and in both a love that is pure and strong and true.