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Page 20
THE WAY TO FLATLAND
"The next great task of preventive medicine is the inauguration of
universal periodic medical examinations as an indispensable means for the
control of all diseases, whether arising from injurious personal habits,
from congenital or constitutional weakness, or from social and vocational
conditions." That this declaration by the Commissioner of Health of the
city of New York is not the mere expression of an individual opinion,
there is abundant evidence. And no one who has watched the growth of other
movements towards such regulation of life as only a few years ago would
have seemed wholly outside the domain of practical probability can doubt
that the "Life Extension" movement, as thus outlined, will rapidly grow
into prominence. Nor is there much room for doubt that, whether explicitly
contemplated at present or not, compulsion as well as universality is
tacitly implied in the movement.
I say that the movement is sure to grow into prominence, that it is a
thing which must be seriously reckoned with; I do not say that it will
march straight on to victory, or even that it is sure to prevail in the
end. It is instructive, in this regard, to hark back to a recent
experience in a more special, but yet an extremely important, domain.
Several years ago a report on university efficiency was issued under the
auspices--though, it should be added, without the official endorsement--of
the Carnegie Foundation. The central feature of this report lay in its
advocacy of the application to universities of those principles of system
and of standardization which have been successfully applied on a large
scale to the promotion of industrial efficiency, and are generally
referred to by the catch-word, "scientific management." In spite of the
merits of the report in certain matters of detail, and of the high
standing of the expert who wrote it in his own department of industrial
engineering, the report evoked an almost universal chorus of contemptuous
rejection not only in university circles, but also from those organs of
public opinion which have any claim to be regarded as enlightened judges
in questions of education and culture. The thing seemed to have been
laughed out of court. And yet it turned out that a year or two afterwards
a full-fledged scheme for carrying out some of the crudest and most
objectionable features of this "efficiency" program was presented to the
professors of Harvard University, apparently with the expectation that
they would fall in with its requirements without hesitation or protest.
For some days there seemed to be real danger that this would actually
happen. It turned out to be a false alarm; the faculty of the foremost of
American universities were guilty of no such supineness. The project was
ignominiously shelved, with some sort of explanation that the springing of
it on the professors was due to an error or misunderstanding. But that the
attempt should have been made, and in a manner that argued so total a lack
of any sense of its grossness and crudity, is a significant warning of the
extent to which the notions underlying it have fastened upon the general
mind.
The story of the eugenics movement in this country affords a striking
illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with which
innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain acceptance, and of the
fact that this rapidity is by no means conclusive proof that their
progress will be continuous. The one thing clear is that there is a large,
active, and influential element in the population that is extremely
hospitable to such ideas, and manifests a na�ve, an almost childish,
readiness to put them into immediate execution. Since, in the nature of
things, this element is lively and active--since, too, what is novel and
in motion is more interesting than what is old and at rest--at first there
is almost sure to be produced a deceptive appearance that the new thing is
sweeping everything before it. Just now there is evidently a lull in the
onward march of legislative eugenics. This is sufficient proof of the
conservatism of the people as a whole; we may be quite sure that anything
beyond a very restricted application of eugenical notions will take a long
time to get itself established in our laws or even in our customs.
Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that even the more
extreme forms of eugenical doctrine are not forces to be reckoned with as
affecting practical possibilities of a not distant future. Though no
results may appear on the surface, the leaven is working. It is consonant
with tendencies which in so many directions are becoming more and more
dominant. So long as those tendencies continue in anything like their
present strength, there can be little doubt that the idea of control in
the direction of eugenics, like that of the regulation of human life in
other fundamental respects, will continue to make headway, and may at any
time become one of the central issues of the day.
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