Euthenics, the science of controllable environment a plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiency

Excerpt

FOREWORD

Never has society been so clear as to its several special ends, never has so little effort been due to chance or compulsion.

Ralph Barton Perry, The Moral Economy.

Not through chance, but through increase of scientific knowledge; not through compulsion, but through democratic idealism consciously working through common interests, will be brought about the creation of right conditions, the control of environment.

The betterment of living conditions, through conscious endeavor, for the purpose of securing efficient human beings, is what the author means by Euthenics.

“Human vitality depends upon two primary conditions—heredity and hygiene—or conditions preceding birth and conditions during life.”

Eugenics deals with race improvement through heredity.

Euthenics deals with race improvement through environment.

Eugenics is hygiene for the future generations.

Euthenics is hygiene for the present generation.

Eugenics must await careful investigation.

Euthenics has immediate opportunity.

Euthenics precedes eugenics, developing better men now, and thus inevitably creating a better race of men in the future. Euthenics is the term proposed for the preliminary science on which Eugenics must be based.

This new science seeks to emphasize the immediate duty of man to better his conditions by availing himself of knowledge already at hand. As far as in him lies he must make application of this knowledge to secure his greatest efficiency under conditions which he can create or under such existing conditions as he may not be able wholly to control, but such as he may modify. The knowledge of the causes of disease tends only to depress the average citizen rather than to arouse him to combat it. Hope of success will urge him forward, and it is the duty of lovers of mankind to show all possible ways of attaining the goal. The tendency to hopelessness retards reformation and regeneration, and the lack of belief in success holds back the wheels of progress.

Euthenics is to be developed:

• 1. Through sanitary science.
• 2. Through education.
• 3. Through relating science and education to life.

Students of sanitary science discover for us the laws which make for health and the prevention of disease. The laboratory has been studying conditions and causes, and now can show the way to many remedies.

A knowledge of these laws, of the means of conserving man’s resources and vitality, which will result in the wealth of human energy, is more and more brought within the reach of all by various educational agencies.

The individual must estimate properly the value of this knowledge in its application to daily life, in order to secure efficiency and the greatest happiness for himself and for the community.

Right living conditions comprise pure food and a safe water supply, a clean and disease-free atmosphere in which to live and work, proper shelter, and the adjustment of work, rest, and amusement. The attainment of these conditions calls for hearty coöperation between individual and community—effort on the part of the individual because the individual makes personality a power; effort on the part of the community because the strength of combined endeavor is required to meet all great problems....