That is why even the most uncompromising Individualist must recognise an element of altruism, call it whatever name you will, Collectivism, Socialism, Communism, or merely the vague and long-suffering term, Democracy.  One cannot assume Individualism for oneself unless one assumes it for the many.  That is a great truth which goes to the heart of the whole complex problem of eugenics and birth-control.  As Perrycoste has well argued,[22] biology is altogether against the narrow Individualism which seeks to oppose Collective Individualism.  For if, in accordance with the most careful modern investigations, we recognise that heredity is supreme, that the qualities we have inherited from our ancestors count for more in our lives than anything we have acquired by our own personal efforts, then we have to admit that the capable man’s wealth is more the community’s property than his own, and, similarly, the incapable man’s poverty is more the community’s concern than his own.  So that neither the capable nor the incapable are entitled to an unqualified power of freedom, and neither, likewise, are justly liable to be burdened by an unqualified responsibility.  It is the duty of the community to draw on the powers of the fit and equally its duty to care for the unfit.  In this way, Perrycoste, whose attitude is that of the Rationalist, is led by science to a conclusion which is that of the Christian.  We are all members each of the other, and still more are we members of those who went before us.  The generations preceding us have not died to themselves but live in us, and we, whom they produced, live in each other and in those who will come after us.  The problems of eugenics and of birth-control affect us all.  In the face of these problems it is the voice of Man that speaks:  “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me.”  However firmly we base ourselves on the principles of Individualism we are inevitably brought to the fundamental facts of eugenics which, if we fail to recognise, our Individualism becomes of no effect.

[22] F.H.  Perrycoste, “Politics and Science,” Science Progress, Jan., 1920.

But it is the same with Socialism, or by whatever name we chose to call the Collectivist activities of the community in social reform.  Socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments.  It is the more necessary to point this out since it is on the Socialist and Democratic side, much more frequently than on the Individualist side, that we find an indifferent or positively hostile attitude towards eugenic considerations.  Put social conditions on a sound basis, the people on this side often say, let all receive an adequate economic return for their work and be recognised as having a claim for an adequate share in the products of society, and there is no need to worry about the race or about the need for birth-control, all will go well of itself.  There is not the slightest ground for any such comfortable belief.