LECTURE ON EUGENICS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1176, 11 July 1911, Page 7

LECTURE ON EUGENICS.

BR. MASON'S MODERATE VIEWS. To an audience that was very appreciative and of satisfactory dimensions, Dr. J. M. Mason lectured last night in the Municipal Concert Chamber on "Eugenics." Professor H. B. Kirk, president of the local Eugenics Society, took the chair. It-'was'the first of this winter's Public Library free lectures, v .' Dr. Mason defined eugenics as the science which deals with all things that improve the inborn qualities of the race and those which develop them to the fullest extent. One of the paramount duties of the new society was to collect data, and after that to suggest measures of improvement. Much gocd could be

done by members setting out faithfully their own family record?. He was, however, inclined to think —differing herein from many other scientists—that environment was even more important than heredity. Education and surroundings told as surely as blood. He questioned whether those who, were deemed unfit ought to be entirely prevented from propagating their species. Some of the men who had done most for the race had sprung from stock some people—the modern moralist, for instance—would have called unsafe and unclean. '•

The ordinary selective task of the stockbreeder, who had only physical qualities to consider, was sufficiently difficult, but it was as nothing to the problem that would face, anybody who attempted the corresponding task with beings who had minds, morals, and intelligence. The fixing of it standard of human fitness could never be the simple thing that the reformer in his haste had suggested it to' be. There would be no difficulty in saving that the flagrantly criminal, the insane, and those suffering' from' certain diseases should not be. allowed to propagate, but when one heard people gravely suggesting that people suffering from consumption should he denied, the best and most helpful of partnerships—marriage— ono could only hold up one's hands in amazement. The human race might have gained more from the refined disposition that often wont with a low power of resistance to the tubercle bacillus than from the irascible disposition that often accompanied a high-bldod pressure!Nearly ' every lecture on eugenics included 'an exhortation about the declining birth-rate, but this lecture would ho ah exception. Tie did not suppose that President Roosevelt's trumpet-like message to Australia had resulted in a single infant being added to the population. , If love of children did- not bring children, ho had no hope that pride of nationality, ,or patriotism, or even fear of a Chinese or Japanese invasion would cause families to grow larger. .They would be on far surer ground if they joined with those who woro giving their time and substance to keep alive the children that were born i for the State.

The thanks of the audience for an admirable lecture were expressed by hearty acclamations.