Page 635 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

A photograph of a
1914 eugenic
training class

Darwin's Legacy to His Cousin Galton: Eugenics

The foundations of the perversion of eugenics were actually laid by Malthus and Darwin. Malthus's
Essay, Darwin's source of inspiration, contained the basic ideas that would come to constitute eugenics.
For example, Malthus claimed that human beings could multiply by means of the same methods as

those used for breeding animal stock:

It does not, however, by any means, seem impossible that, by an attention to breed, a certain degree of im-
provement similar to that among animals might take place among men. Whether intellect could be commu-
nicated may be a matter of doubt; but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and, perhaps, even longevity, are

in a degree transmissible. 104
From this and a great many other statements, Malthus clearly regarded human beings as a kind of

animal. His twisted perspective influenced Darwin, who made a number of predictions containing the
disaster that was to become eugenics. In The Descent of Man, he expressed concern that thanks to vari-
ous social practices, the weak were not being eliminated and that this could lead to a biologically back-
ward trend. According to Darwin, the flawed ones among "savage peoples" and animals were swiftly

eliminated, but it was a grave error for such members among civilized people to be protected by medi-
cine and do-gooders. In the same way that animal breeders improved their stock lines through artificial
selection, by eliminating the weak and sickly, human societies needed to do the same:

No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious
to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degenera-

tion of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow
his worst animals to breed. 105

With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a
vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimi-
nation; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our med-
ical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. … Thus the weak members

of civilised societies propagate their kind. 106
These words, the work of a diseased mentality, formed the basic encouragement for racists, propo-

nents of eugenics and supporters of war; and eventually inflicted terrible catastrophes on humanity. At
the end of The Descent of Man, Darwin made a great many more unscientific claims, including that the
"struggle for existence" benefited humanity, in that the more gifted would be more successful in the bat-

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