A patron saint of atheists and sexual libertines, Bertrand Russell was caught up in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. The idea of human breeding apart from the strictures of marriage was consistent with his admiration for promiscuity. But even sexually “liberated” people should find his “scientific” approach to these matters chilling. This selection from Marriage and Morals shows the racism, moral blindness, and arrogance to which a godless man can easily sink.

Eugenics is of two sorts, positive and negative. The former is concerned with the encouragement of good stocks, the latter with the discouragement of bad ones. The latter is at present more practicable. . . Feeble-minded women, as every one knows, are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly worthless to the community. These women would themselves be happier if they were sterilized . . .

[I]t may easily be that within the next hundred years the sciences of heredity and bio-chemistry will have made such strides as to make possible the breeding of a race which everybody would admit to be superior to that now existing. . . To apply scientific knowledge of this sort, however, would demand a more radical upheaval as regards the family than anything hitherto contemplated in these pages. If scientific breeding is to be carried out thoroughly, it will be necessary to set apart in each generation some two or three per cent of the males and some twenty-five per cent of the females for the purpose of propagation. There will be, presumably at puberty, an examination, as a result of which all the unsuccessful candidates will be sterilized. The father will have no more connection with his offspring than a bull or stallion has at present, and the mother will be a specialized professional, distinguished from other women by her manner of life. I do not say that this state of affairs is going to come about, still less do I say that I desire it, for I confess that I find it exceedingly repugnant. Nevertheless, when the matter is examined objectively, it is seen that such a plan might produce remarkable results. . .

In extreme cases there can be little doubt of the superiority of one race to another. North America, Australia and New Zealand certainly contribute more to the civilization of the world than they would do if they were still peopled by aborigines. It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensable, so that their extermination (apart from questions of humanity) would be highly undesirable. . .

For the future of civilization a new and better sexual ethic is indispensable. It is this fact that makes the reform of sexual morality one of the vital needs of our time. . . It may become quite easily possible for women in the future, without any serious sacrifice of happiness, to select the fathers of their children by eugenic considerations, while allowing their private feelings free sway as regards ordinary sexual companionship. . . The men with the best heredity may come to be eagerly sought after as fathers, while other men, though they may be acceptable as lovers, may find themselves rejected when they aim at paternity. The institution of marriage, as it has existed hitherto, has made any such schemes contrary to human nature, so that the practical possibilities of eugenics have been thought to be very restricted. But there is no reason to suppose that human nature will in future interpose a similar barrier . . .1

Footnotes:
1
Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (New York: Horace Liveright, 1957), 258-271. Originally published in 1929.

article adapted from Kairos Journal

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