Abstract
IN many ways this tiny volume is a more effective plea for a eugenic social policy than the same author's large work, “The Need for Eugenic Reform”. The need for brevity has made him concentrate on essentials and disregard relatively unimportant considerations, while the style is clearer and less involved. Starting with domestic animals and the selection, conscious and unconscious, to which man has subjected them, he leads the reader on naturally to consider man himself as fundamentally kin to them, the product of evolution by heredity and natural selection. The interaction of heredity and environment is explained with simplicity and common sense: and a swift glance, in the light of these biological principles, is given to the nation's racial qualities. The remaining chapters are devoted to the possibility and desirability of eugenic methods. The book is the best brief answer yet published to the question the title asks.
What is Eugenics?
By Major Leonard Darwin. (The Forum Series, No. 9.) Pp. viii + 88. (London: Watts and Co., 1928.) ls. net.
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 124, 686 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124686d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124686d0