Eugenics … death of the defenceless

The legacy of Darwin’s cousin Galton

By Russell Grigg

Few ideas have done more harm to the human race in the last 120 years than those of Sir Francis
Galton. He founded the evolutionary pseudo-science of eugenics. Today, ethnic cleansing, the
use of abortion to eliminate ‘defective’ unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, and the harvesting
of unborn babies for research purposes all have a common foundation in the survival-of-the-
fittest theory of eugenics. So who was Galton, what is eugenics, and how has it harmed
humanity?
Francis Galton

Photos Darwin by TFE Graphics, Hitler and Galton by Wikipedia.org

Francis Galton (featured on right in photo montage, right) was born into a Quaker family in
Birmingham, England, in 1822. A grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his mother’s side and so a
cousin of Charles Darwin (pictured above left), he shared the Darwinian agnosticism and
antagonism to Christianity for most of his adult life.

As a child, he had learned the alphabet by 18 months, was reading by age 2½, memorizing
poetry by five, and discussing the Iliad at six.1 In 1840, he began studies at Cambridge
University in medicine and then in mathematics, but, due to a nervous breakdown, succeeded in
gaining only a modest B.A. degree, in January 1844.2 When his father died that same year, he
inherited such a fortune that he never again needed to work for a living.

This gave the wealthy young Galton free time not only for ‘amusement’, but also to dabble in a
number of fields, including exploration of large areas of South West Africa, his reports of which
gained him membership of the Royal Geographic Society in 1853, and three years later of the
Royal Society. In that year, Galton married Louisa Butler, whose father had been Headmaster at
Harrow School.
 From Nott, J.C. and Gliddon, G.R., Indigenous Races of
As an amateur scientist of boundless the Earth, J.B. Libbincott, Philadelphia, USA, 1868.
curiosity and energy, he went on to write
some 14 books and over 200 papers.3 His
inventions included the ‘silent’ dog
whistle, a teletype printer; and various
instruments and techniques for measuring
human intelligence and body parts; and he
invented the weather map and discovered
the existence of anticyclones.

Interaction with Charles

Darwin

The publication of Darwin’s Origin of

Species in 1859 was undoubtedly a turning
point in Galton’s life. In 1869 he wrote to
Darwin, ‘[T]he appearance of your Origin
of Species formed a real crisis in my life;
your book drove away the constraint of my
old superstition [i.e. religious arguments
based on design] as if it had been a
nightmare and was the first to give me
freedom of thought.’4 Pseudoscientific illustration of alleged evolution of
human ‘races’.
Galton ‘was among the first to recognize
the implications for mankind of Darwin’s An allegedly ‘scientific’ illustration from 1868 showing that blacks
were less evolved than whites by suggesting similarities with a
theory of evolution.’5 He believed that
chimpanzee.
talent, character, intellect, etc. were all
Even the famous evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould commented that the
inherited from one’s ancestors, as was also
chimpanzee skull is falsely enlarged and the ‘negro’ jaw falsely
any lack of these qualities. Thus the poor
extended to suggest that ‘negros’ rank even lower than apes. This
were not hapless victims of their demonstration was not from racist or ‘fringe’ literature but from one
circumstances, but were paupers because of the leading scientific textbooks of its time. Today’s militant
they were biologically inferior. This was evolutionists like to conveniently evade the social implications of
contrary to the prevailing scientific view their ideas, but history demonstrates otherwise.

that all such qualities were due to

environment, i.e. how and where a person was brought up.6 Galton believed that humans, like
animals, could and should be selectively bred. In 1883, he coined the term ‘eugenics’ [Greek: εύ
(eu) meaning ‘well’ and γένος (genos) meaning ‘kind’ or ‘offspring’] for the study of ways of
improving the physical and mental characteristics of the human race.

Galton’s views left no room for the existence of a human soul, the grace of God in the human
heart, human freedom to choose to be different, or even for the dignity of the individual. In his
first published article on this subject, in 1865,7 ‘He denied … that man’s rational faculties are a
gift to him from God; he denied that mankind has been cursed with sinfulness since the day of
Adam and Eve’; and he viewed religious sentiments as ‘nothing more than evolutionary devices
to insure the survival of the human species.’8

Concerning the sense of original sin, he wrote that ‘[this] would show, according to my theory,
not that man was fallen from a high estate, but that he was rapidly rising from a low one … and
that after myriads of years of barbarism, our race has but very recently grown to be civilized and
religious.’9

In Hereditary Genius (1869), Galton enlarged on all these ideas and proposed that a system of
arranged marriages between men of distinction and women of wealth would eventually produce
a gifted race. When Charles Darwin read this book, he wrote to Galton, ‘You have made a
convert of an opponent in one sense for I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did
not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work … .’5 Galton’s ideas undoubtedly helped
him extend his evolution theory to man. Darwin did not mention Galton in his Origin, but
referred to him no less than 11 times in his Descent of Man (1871).

Three International Eugenics Congresses were held in 1912, 1921 and 1932, with eugenics
activists attending from Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, India, Japan,
Mauritius, Kenya and South Africa. Notables who supported the ideas pre–World War II
included Winston Churchill, economist John Maynard Keynes, science fiction writer H.G.
Wells10 and US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge. Galton received the Huxley
Medal from the Anthropological Institute in 1901, the Darwin Medal from the Royal Society in
1902, the Darwin–Wallace Medal from the Linnaean Society in 1908, and honorary degrees
from Cambridge and Oxford Universities; he was knighted in 1909. Despite these ‘honours’, in
life Galton was not his own best advocate for his theories. He had many long-lasting bouts of
illness, and notwithstanding his and his wife’s good intellectual pedigrees, they produced no
children of their own to carry on his name and heritage. After his death in 1911, his will provided
for the funding of a Chair of Eugenics and the Galton Eugenics Laboratory at the University of
London.

Eugenics in action
Image Wikipedia.org

Eugenics congress logo.

Click here for larger view

The concept of improving the physical and mental characteristics of the human race may seem
admirable at first glance. However, historically the method of achieving it has involved not just
increasing the birthrate of the ‘fit’ by selected parenthood (‘positive eugenics’), but also reducing
the birthrate of those people thought to impair such improvement, the ‘unfit’ (‘negative
eugenics’).11

For example, by 1913, one-third (and from the 1920s on, more than half)12 of the US States had
laws allowing for the compulsory sterilization of those held in custody who were deemed to be
‘unfit’. This resulted in the forced sterilization of some 70,000 victims, including criminals, the
mentally retarded, drug addicts, paupers, the blind, the deaf, and people with epilepsy, TB or
syphilis. Over 8,000 procedures were done at the one city of Lynchburg, Virginia,13 and isolated
instances continued into the 1970s.14,15

About 60,000 Swedish citizens were similarly treated between 1935 and 1976, and there were
similar practices in Norway and Canada.16

In Germany in 1933, Hitler’s government ordered the compulsory sterilization of all German
citizens with ‘undesirable’ handicaps, not just those held in custody or in institutions. This was to
prevent ‘contamination’ of Hitler’s ‘superior German race’ through intermarriage.

Then from 1938 to 1945, this surgical treatment of such ‘useless eaters’ was superseded by a
more comprehensive solution—the eager genocide, by Hitler’s Nazis, of over 11 million people
considered to be subhuman or unworthy of life, as is authenticated and documented by the
Nuremberg Trials records. Those killed included Jews, evangelical Christians,17 blacks, gypsies,
communists, homosexuals, amputees and mental patients.
This was nothing other than rampant Darwinism—the elimination of millions of human beings
branded ‘unfit/inferior’ by, and for the benefit of, those who regarded themselves as being
‘fit/superior’.

The core idea of Darwinism is selection.18 The Nazis believed that they must direct the process of
selection to advance the German race.19 Galton’s naïve vision of a ‘eugenics utopia’ had mutated
into the Nazi nightmare of murderous ethnic cleansing.

Sadly, ideas of racial superiority and eugenics did not die with Hitler’s regime. David Duke,
America’s infamous anti-black and anti-Jew racist, developed his views from reading the
eugenicist writings of Galton, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Keith and others, as well as the early
writings of modern sociobiologists such as Harvard’s E.O. Wilson.20

Eugenics in the 21st century.

Following World War II, eugenics became a ‘dirty word’. Eugenicists now called themselves
‘population scientists’, ‘human geneticists’, ‘family politicians’, etc. Journals were renamed.
Annals of Eugenics became Annals of Human Genetics, and Eugenics Quarterly became the
Journal of Social Biology.21 However today, some 60 years after the Holocaust, the murderous
concept that Galton’s eugenics spawned is once again alive and flourishing, and wearing a lab-
coat of medical respectability.

Doctors now routinely destroy humans, who were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26), by
abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, as well as in fetal/embryonic stem-cell research.

A. Abortion
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, ‘women are increasingly eliminating their unborn children
because of non life-threatening deformities such as deformed feet or cleft lips and palates’, and
‘more Down’s Syndrome babies are now killed than are allowed to be born.’22 Dr Jacqueline
Laing of London’s Metropolitan University commented, ‘These figures are symptomatic of a
eugenic trend of the consumerist society hell-bent on obliterating deformity.’ ‘This is
straightforward eugenics,’ said UK’s Life Trustee, Nuala Scarisbrick. ‘The message is being sent
out to disabled people that they should not have been born. It is appalling and abhorrent.’22

Globally, there are an estimated 50 million abortions each year. That’s one abortion for every
three live births, so any child in the womb, on average, worldwide, has a one in four chance of
being deliberately killed.23

B. Infanticide
China is famous for its coercive one-child-per-family policy. In practice, most families want a
boy, so if a girl is born, she can be at risk. Sometimes the same grisly principle is followed, but
before birth. In India, it’s common to find out the sex of the baby, and a vast majority of
abortions are of girl babies. It makes the feminist support of abortion distressingly ironic.

And disabled babies are at risk as well. ‘Ethicist’ Peter Singer has advocated legalization of
infanticide to a certain age. He writes: ‘[K]illing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to
killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.’24

C. Euthanasia
In May 2001, Holland became the first country to legalize euthanasia, with the law coming into
effect from January 2002. Euthanasia was tolerated in Belgium until May 2002, when it was
legalized. It is tolerated in Switzerland, Norway and Columbia.23

Eugenics and the Scopes Monkey Trial1

Photo Bryan College

Clarence Darrow (left) and William Jennings Bryan

The textbook from which Scopes taught evolution, A Civic Biology by George Hunter,2 and its
companion lab book3 were blatantly eugenic and offensively racist. Hunter divided humanity into
five races and ranked them according to how high each had reached on the evolutionary scale,
from ‘the Ethiopian or negro type’ to ‘the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the
civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America’.4 A Civic Biology asserted that crime and
immorality are inherited and run in families, and said that ‘these families have become parasitic
on society. … If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent
them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the
sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the
possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.’4

This is the book that Darwinists of the day insisted that Scopes had a
right to teach!

All this is documented by Dr David Menton in the DVD Inherently Wind:

a Hollywood History of the Scopes Trial (right).

References and notes

1. The 1925 trial in Dayton, Tennessee, USA, of high-school teacher John T. Scopes,
charged with violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution.
2. Hunter, G., A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, American Book Co., New York,
USA, pp. 195–196, 1914.
3. Hunter, G., Laboratory Problems in Civic Biology, American Book Co., New York, USA, 1916.
4. Ref. 2, pp. 261–265.

Judgment at Nuremberg

Perhaps the most frequently asked question

concerning the eugenics-inspired genocide of the
Holocaust is: ‘How could it have happened?’ In the
1961 MGM film Judgment at Nuremberg, about the
trial of four Nazi war criminals, judges who had
enforced Nazi decrees,1 one of the defendants (Judge
Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster) cries out to
Chief Judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer
Tracy): ‘Those people—those millions of people—I
never knew it would come to that. You must believe
it!’ Haywood’s response was eloquent: ‘It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew
to be innocent.’

Likewise today, eugenic killing of innocent preborn babies because they are thought to be less than perfect
began the first time a doctor consented to kill a handicapped child in the womb. The rest is history.

1. Based on the third Nuremberg Trial (1947), also called the ‘Judges’ Trial’ because it tried Nazi judges and prosecutors for
 imposing the Nazi ‘racial purity’ programme through the eugenic and racial laws. There were a total of 13 Nuremberg Trials.

The photograph (above right) comes from the first Nuremberg Trial (1945–6), the most famous and significant of them because it
tried the main German leaders.
Front row (left-to-right): Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel;
Back row: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel. (Courtesy Wikipedia)

Conclusion

Not all evolutionists are murderers, of course, and Francis Galton may never have conceived that his theories
would lead to the killing of so many millions of people, let alone the onslaught on defenceless unborn babies.
However, such action is totally consistent with evolutionary teaching, namely the survival of the fittest by the
elimination of the weakest. Deeds are the outcome of beliefs. As Jesus said: ‘A bad tree bears bad fruit’; it
‘cannot bear good fruit’ (Matthew 7:17–18).

Contrary to the deadly philosophy of eugenics, every human person has eternal value in God’s sight and has
been created ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:26–27). God also explicitly forbade murder (Exodus 20:13), or
intentional killing of innocent humans. Indeed, God so loved humanity that He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ, to die on the Cross to save us from sin (John 3:16–17), and to transform us into the image of His Son
when we believe on Him (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18). In Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity took
on human nature (Hebrews 2:14), becoming the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), thus becoming the
(kinsman-) Redeemer (Isaiah 59:20) of the race of the first man, Adam.

References and notes

1. Cowan, R., Sir Francis Galton and the study of heredity in the nineteenth century, Garland Publishing Inc., New
York, USA, p. vi, 1985. Return to text
2. Forrest, D.W., Francis Galton: The life and work of a Victorian genius, Paul Elek, London, UK, p. 25, 1974.
Return to text
3. Subjects included twins, blood transfusions, criminality, travel in undeveloped countries, meteorology,
correlational calculus, anthropometry (measurement of the human body), and fingerprints as a means of identity—
first used by Scotland Yard in 1901 and now throughout the world. Return to text
4. Galton to Darwin, 24 December 1869, quoted from ref. 1, p. 74. Return to text
5. Galton, Sir Francis, Encyclopædia Britannica 5:97–98, 1992. Return to text
6. These two views of heredity versus environment have also been labelled ‘nature versus nurture’. Return to text
7. Galton, F., Hereditary talent and character, 2 parts, MacMillan’s magazine 12:157–166 and 318–327, June and
August 1865 (Source: ref. 1, p. 1.). Return to text
8. Ref. 1, p. 75. Return to text
9. Galton, F., Memories of my life, Methuen & Co., London, UK, pp. 317–18, 1908. Return to text
10. Bergman, J., ‘H.G. Wells: Darwin’s disciple and eugenicist extraordinaire’, Journal of Creation 18(3):106–110,
2004. Return to text
11. The last sentence of Galton’s autobiography reads: ‘Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and
wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and
those only of the best stock.’ (Ref. 9, p. 323.) Return to text
12. In 1931, Vermont became the 31st US State to enact a sterilization law (not repealed until 1973). Source:
Washington Post, 8 August 1999, p. A21. Return to text
13. Wieland, C., The lies of Lynchburg, Creation 19(4):22–23, 1997. Return to text
14. ‘Eugenics’, Encyclopædia Britannica 4:593, 1992. Return to text
15. Black, E., War against the weak: Eugenics and America’s campaign to create a master race, Four Walls Eight
Windows, New York/London, 2003; see review by Sarfati, J., Creation 27(2):49, 2005. Return to text
16. Isherwood, J., Payout planned for victims of ‘barbaric’ sterilizations, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 1997, p.
10. Return to text
17. Sarfati, J., Nazis planned to exterminate Christianity, Creation 24(3):47, 2002. Return to text
18. Evolution describes the results of selection. See Stein, G.J., Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism, American
Scientist 76:50–58, January–Februay 1988. Return to text
19. See Bergman, J., Darwinism and the Nazi race Holocaust, Journal of Creation 13(2):101–111, 1999. This is
thoroughly documented in Weikart, R., From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in
Germany, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, USA, 2004; see review by Sarfati, J., Creation 27(4):39, 2005. Return
to text
20. Bergman, J., Darwinism’s influence on modern racists and white supremacist groups: the case of David Duke,
Journal of Creation 19(3):103–107, 2005. Return to text
21. Clay, C. and Leapman, M., Master race: The Lebensborn experiment in Nazi Germany, Hodder & Stoughton,
London, UK, p. 181, 1995. Return to text
22. British abortion rate skyrockets as couples eliminate ‘defective’ children, LifeSite Daily News, for Monday 31 May
2004. Return to text
23. Statistics from Festival of Light, Adelaide, Australia. Return to text
24. Singer, P., Taking life: humans, excerpted from Practical Ethics, 2nd ed., Cambridge, pp. 175–217, 1993. Singer is
Ira. W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Centre for Human Values, Princeton University.