Loading…

Eugenics and Other Evils is unavailable, but you can change that!

Chesterton wrote during the height of the eugenics movements in the early twentieth century. This volume counters the intellectual nihilism of Nietzsche, while simultaneously rebuking Western notions of progress—biological or otherwise. Chesterton expands his criticism of eugenics into what he calls “a more general criticism of the modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social...

arm was a cannibal.” What is one to say to such people? One can only say “Confine yourself to sucking poisoned blood from people’s arms, and I permit you to call yourself by the glorious title of Cannibal.” In this sense people say of Eugenics, “After all, whenever we discourage a schoolboy from marrying a mad negress with a hump back, we are really Eugenists.” Again one can only answer, “Confine yourselves strictly to such schoolboys as are naturally attracted to hump-backed negresses; and you may
Page 15