GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS UPON "EDUCATION BEFORE PROCREATION."
_Professor at the Faculty; Member of the Academy of Medicine of Paris._
Sir Francis Galton has entitled Eugenics the new science having for its object the study of the causes subject to social control which can improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physical or mental.
Eugenics, thus defined, is nothing else but "Education before Procreation," which has been studied in France for a number of years, and which constitutes the first part of child-culture, "a science having for its object the search for information relative to the reproduction, preservation, and improvement of the human species"([1]).
[Footnote 1: v. De la Puériculture in Revue Scientifique, 1897.]
The Congress ought then to have for its object to work for the investigation of the conditions necessary to secure a favourable procreation. Now, it appears that the word "Eugenics," from the etymological point of view, does not characterise either explicitly or sufficiently the proposed object, while the word "Eugénique," of [Greek: gennaô], at once recalls to the mind the idea of a favourable procreation([2]).
[Footnote 2: Besides, the word "Eugenics" recalls in France a chemical term: eugenic-acid.]
It is part of the duty of our first principal sitting to lay down a rule upon this point.
Certainly, biological, sociological, and historical researches, laws and social customs regarded in their relations with the science of Eugenics, are necessary and will undoubtedly result in extremely interesting data, but from now it is above all things urgent to establish and proclaim eugenic principles.
Researches relating to physiological heredity and pathological heredity ought to be pursued without interruption, but it is necessary to make known as soon as possible to the masses of the people the individual conditions, fully understood, which alone permit a favourable and healthy procreation. In a word, it is necessary, by every means and as soon as possible, to organise a great movement in order to show to the greatest number of human beings the absolute necessity for a conscientious, _i.e._, an enlightened procreation. We must bravely approach the civilising of _the reproductive instinct_, which alone has remained in a barbarous state amongst all the so-called civilised nations from the earliest times.