Eugenics
Eugenics began with SIr Francis Galton’s assumption that desirable traits could be selected for in humans by selectively breeding the population. Galton coined the term “eugenics” in 1883, derived from the Greek word for “well-born,” as a name for the “science” that would “improve the human stock” by giving “the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had.” It was to be a science devoted, in large part, to dividing the human race into two classes, the eugenic and the cacogenic (or poorly born). The latter group would be tagged as having inherited bad germ plasm, and thus as a group that, at the very least, should not breed. Galton saw eugenics as a new religion, and indeed, it was a science that would have eugenicists, in essence, playing God. “What Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly,” he boasted.
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2002). Mad in America Chapter 3. UNFIT TO BREED (p. 72). New York, NY: Basic Books.