The methods we have been considering, in so far as they limit the procreative powers of the less healthy and efficient stocks in a community, are methods of eugenics.  It must not, however, be supposed that they are the whole of eugenics, or indeed that they are in any way essential to a eugenic scheme.  Eugenics is concerned with the whole of the agencies which elevate and improve the human breed; abortion and castration are methods which may be used to this end, but they are not methods of which everyone approves, nor is it always clear that the ends they effect would not better be attained by other methods; in any case they are methods of negative eugenics.  There remains the field of positive eugenics, which is concerned, not with the elimination of the inferior stocks but with ascertaining which are the superior stocks and with furthering their procreative power.

While the necessity of refraining from procreation is no longer a bar to marriage, the question of whether two persons ought to marry each other still remains in the majority of cases a serious question from the standpoint of positive as well as of negative eugenics, for the normal marriage cannot fail to involve children, as, indeed, its chief and most desirable end.  We have to consider not merely what are the stocks or the individuals that are unfit to breed, but also what are these stocks or individuals that are most fit to breed, and under what conditions procreation may best be effected.  The present imperfection of our knowledge on these questions emphasizes the need for care and caution in approaching their consideration.

It may be fitting, at this point, to refer to the experiment of the Oneida Community in establishing a system of scientific propagation, under the guidance of a man whose ability and distinction as a pioneer are only to-day beginning to be adequately recognized.  John Humphrey Noyes was too far ahead of his own day to be recognized at his true worth; at the most, he was regarded as the sagacious and successful founder of a sect, and his attempts to apply eugenics to life only aroused ridicule and persecution, so that he was, unfortunately, compelled by outside pressure to bring a most instructive experiment to a premature end.  His aim and principle are set forth in an Essay on Scientific Propagation, printed some forty years ago, which discusses problems that are only now beginning to attract the attention of the practical man, as within the range of social politics.  When Noyes turned his vigorous and practical mind to the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who were not prepared to depart a hair’s breadth from the conventional customs of their time.  The experiment of Noyes, at Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever might be the value of the experiment—­and a first