Review of Applied Eugenics

Abstract

Reviews the book, Applied Eugenics by Paul Popenoe and Roswell H. Johnson (1918). This book, while bound to provoke vehement discussion, is as surely bound to afford no small amount of satisfaction to those who have felt acutely the want of a thorough-going treatment of the principles and program of the eugenic movement, since gross misunderstanding and misuse of the term Eugenics still persists. For the first time we are in possession of a balanced study of adequate length, which escapes being a primer or a profoundly technical volume. It is greatly worth the waiting for. The lay reader will be impressed with the incisive refutation of popular confused assumptions involved in the old debate upon the relative importance of heredity and environment. The authors give a critical resume of the evidence on both sides of the controversy. They further augment the weight of the argument against transmission of acquired characteristics by an admirable critique of the time-honored belief in prenatal culture. In emphasizing the conclusion that eugenics is obliged to concern itself solely with the material in the germ plasm which cannot be permanently modified by external influences, and that hence the only means to race betterment is through changing the birth and death rates to alter the relative proportions of good and bad germ plasm in the race, the authors are by no means scornful of Euthenics. There are certain infelicities of diction and noticeable typographical errors, but it is none the less an admirable specimen of book-making. The interest of the discussion is enhanced by copious and effective illustration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)