Monday, February 25, 2002

G.K.C. on the "science" of eugenics, which was quite popular at the time:
I never heard a man say: "Anthropology shows that I belong to an inferior race." If he did, he might be talking like an anthropologist [ . . .] I have long hoped that I might someday hear a man explaining on scientific principles his own unfitness for any important post or privelege, say: "The world should belong to the free and fighting races, and not to persons of that servile disposition that you will notice in myself; the intelligent will know how to form opinions, but the weakness of intellect from which I so obviously suffer renders my opinions manifestly absurd on the face of them: there are indeed stately and godlike races-- but look at me! Observe my shapeless and fourth-rate features! Gaze, if you can bear it, on my commonplace and repulsive face!" If I heard a man making a scientific demonstration in that style, I might admit that he was really scientific . . .

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