Darwin and eugenics

At RedState, Leon has a lengthy post about eugenics, a topic on which he and I are in large agreement upon. However, he introduces the topic by quoting Charles Darwin, and in so doing leaves out critical context. The complete context is as follows (courtesy of Darwin Online):

Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations.

In the last and present chapters I have considered the advancement of man from a former semi-human condition to his present state as a barbarian. But some remarks on the agency of natural selection on civilised nations may be here worth adding. This subject has been ably discussed by Mr. W. R. Greg, and previously by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Galton. Most of my remarks are taken from these three authors. With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

emphasis mine. Leon protested that he did not accuse Darwin of wanting to end humanitarianism, but the omission is highly misleading. In an essay whose thesis is the evils of eugenics, it is relevant that Darwin himself considered it evil.

In fact a very good argument - moral and scientific - could be made against Eugenics, and invoking Darwin on the side of the angels here would lend such an argument immense rigour. Leaving out the quote however tends to imply that eugenics is a logical extension of Darwin's theory of evolution (note: not abiogeneis!). That is a conclusion many readers at RedState might be predisposed towards.

It is also worth noting that Darwin considered marriage an instrument of eugenics that was permissible and non-evil. In one sense there is a continuum of eugenics, with deliberate choice between adults at one end (ie, marriage selection) and outright withholding of humanitarian aid at the other. The middle area is more difficult. Into it fall questions like "designer babies" and the entire abortion debate. There is a vast landscape of debate between tehse extremes, in other words, and Darwin is planted solidly at one end - the end that I myself and Leon both occupy. It is a shame that Darwin's work on evolutionary theory has predisposed social conservatives against him, since in many ways Darwin would be a great ally indeed.

It is also worth noting that Leon invokes the topic as a critique against stem cell research, but frankly I think that the relevance of stem cells to eugenics is poor. There is no culling of certain embryos on the basis of their genetic properties, and no consideration of race whatsoever.