Introduction

The story of the various national eugenics and racial hygiene movements has been told many times, and it is not my intention to reproduce these histories here. My interest is in the relationship between these movements and Social Darwinism. As I argued in the introduction, eugenics and Social Darwinism should not be conflated for it was possible to endorse one and not the other. Nevertheless, Darwin himself prefigured the concerns of the eugenics movements. In his Descent Darwin signalled his anxiety about the possibility of biological decline caused by social practices that cushioned the unfit from the impact of natural selection. Whereas among ‘savages’ mentally and physically defective individuals were quickly eliminated, in civilised societies such persons were sustained by various medical and charitable practices:

In the closing pages of the book Darwin returned to this topic to suggest that ‘all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children’, pointing out that ‘if the prudent avoid marriage whilst the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society’.