31. What is eugenics? Eugenics is an applied science like engineering or medicine. It rests on the two-fold basis of genetics, or the science of heredity, and sociology, or the science of society. It may be defined as the science of genetics applied to the improvement of mankind in accordance with the dictates of sociology.

32. What is genetics? Genetics is the science of heredity, the study of all conditions and processes pertaining to the biological inheritance of living beings.

33. In addition to calling it applied genetics, how else may eugenics be defined? In many ways. It is, for example, the science which seeks (1) to improve the inherited physical, mental, and temperamental qualities of the human family; (2) to apply human intelligence to man's biological evolution; (3) to guard and improve man's inherited characteristics.

34. What is the place of the eugenist in the community? Just as the medical profession guards the community against ill health, so eugenics strives to protect the coming generation against the evils arising from a poor biological inheritance. From the eugenic standpoint, the human germ plasm, which creates the next generation and thus determines its inborn potentialities, is the most priceless of resources.

35. Why is a general knowledge of eugenics one of the greatest needs of our time? Because only through a rational eugenic program can we see any reasonable prospect that future generations will be born with higher and better capacities than those possessed by man today. If such a program had been in effect for a few generations not only would such dangers as hereditary insanity and feeblemindedness be greatly diminished, but parents would be freed from much of their present fear that their children will turn out badly because of unexpected hereditary weaknesses.

36. Has not man's inheritance improved in the past? Yes, very greatly, if we look back tens of thousands of years, but since man became civilized there is no evidence of improvement, and many people think that there is some evidence of degeneration. No complex type of human culture, not even though it be as long-lived as that of China, has ever solved the problem of maintaining and improving the innate qualities of its people. In fact man's increasing control over the processes of nature appears to have introduced tendencies which oppose or even prevent a healthful biological evolution. One of the greatest objectives of eugenics is to correct these tendencies.

37. What is the chief evil that eugenics can correct? The present wrong kind of differential birthrate. People of the social types which display the most intelligence, foresight, thrift, self-control, and other high qualities tend now to have much smaller families than do those of the types most deficient in these qualities. Fortunately there are exceptions. Nevertheless, the families of college graduates, for example, tend to be exterminated, because on the average they do not have more than two children apiece. People who are receiving public aid, on the contrary, especially the less competent types, have two or three times as many.