Tesla and Eugenics
Many leading intellectuals of the early 20th century saw Eugenics as a productive way to improve the world. Many Socialists saw Eugenics as an essential part of achieving their aims. At the same time, and certainly for Tesla, Eugenics was seen as one tool among many to bring happiness to the human race. Over time some supporters of Eugenics, such as H. G. Wells, changed or at least modified their ideas about the practical implementation of it, while some remained strong supporters of the idea. Note that the (very incomplete) list below includes four Noble Prize Laureates and two Nominees.
The social climate into which Eugenic doctrine inserted itself led, for example, to “Better Baby” and “Fitter Family” contests, an unfortunate staple of recreational entertainment that emerged across the regional United States during the early years of the 20th century. Widely promoted as a wholesome public health initiative, the idea of parading good-looking children for prizes (a practice that essentially likened kids to livestock) was one of a number of practices predicated on the notion that better breeding outcomes were in everyone’s best interest. The resulting photos conferred bragging rights on the winning (read “white”) contestants, but the broader message—framing beauty, but especially facial beauty, as a scientifically sanctioned community aspiration—implicitly suggests that the inverse was also true: that to be found “unfit” was to be doomed to social exile and thus restricted, among other things, by fierce reproductive protocols.
Idiot, imbecile, and moron were used in a psychological classification system, and each one was assigned to a fairly specific range of abilities. The definitions below are from Backward and Feeble-Minded Children, by Edmund Burke Huey
Idiots
Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years.
Imbeciles
Those whose development is higher than that of an idiot, but whose intelligence does not exceed that of a normal child of about seven years.
Morons
Those whose mental development is above that of an imbecile, but does not exceed that of a normal child of about twelve years.
Two Quotes Illustrating Tesla’s Conflicted Thinking
“The year 2100 will see Eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct.”
“Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it.”
He also believed that there were four changes necessary for the health and happiness of the human race:
1) Worldwide communication, so that we realize our collective humanity
2) Clean water, since anything else can cause untold disease and death.
3) Eating vegetables and creating unlimited quantities of fertilizer from nitrogen in the air.
4) Controlling the reproduction of our human race to ensure that the world will be filled with intelligent, productive and happy people.
“I will say this: for us to live in a world where millions of children go to bed at night and rise in the morning hungry, when millions of people starve to death, unnecessarily, is a disgrace and destructive to our morals.”
This is not in any way an attempt to justify Tesla’s thoughts on Eugenics but to put them in the context of some of his other ideas and of the time in which he lived.
Some Supporters of Eugenics
“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.”
- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President, 1901-1909
“Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world”.
- Helen Keller, Author, Disability Rights Advocate and Noble Prize nominee
"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes ... constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate.”
- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1940-1945 and 1951-1955 and Noble Prize laureate
“Birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit [and] of preventing the birth of defectives.”
- Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Activist and 10 Time Noble Prize Nominee
Promoted marriage and reproduction within the most desirable group, the “talented tenth,” and wanted to breed out the lowest group, “the submerged tenth.”
- W. E. B. Du Bois, leading African-American Activist and Writer
“The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man”
- George Bernard Shaw, Playwright, Critic Political Activist and Noble Prize laureate
“Through eugenics and euthenics, the mental soundness of the race will be saved.”
- John Harvey Kellogg, Doctor, Nutritionist
and Inventor of Corn Flakes
"In an attempt to solve the problem of irresponsible people and especially those who are poorly endowed genetically having large numbers of unnecessary children ... sterilization is the only answer.”
- Frances Crick, Scientist, Noble Prize laureate
“There shall be no child in America that had not the complete birthright of a sound mind in a sound body."
- Herbert Hoover 31st President from 1929-1933
"The most important and significant branch of sociology.”
John Maynard Keynes, Economist and Noble Prize nominee
“The mentally defective" and "feebleminded" should be sexually sterilized because they "are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly useless to the community.”
- Bertrand Russell, historian, social critic,
political activist and Noble laureate
“It is in the steralizing of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies”
- H G Welles, Writer of Novels and Books on History, Politics and Social Commentary
He defended Eugenic policies of encouraging reproduction of the “intellectual classes” and sterilizing the “unfit.”
- Aldous Huxley, Writer and Philosopher
He supported the campaigns for voluntary sterilization legislation in the early 1930s, and for negative eugenic measures against persons carrying the scientific stigma of “mental defect”.
- Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous and President of the British Eugenics Society, 1959-1962
Darwin’s own opinion about Eugenics is controversial. He published The Descent of Man in 1871. In it, he argues that racial extermination has brought human evolution to where it is today (1871). Darwin suggests that Caucasians were superior to other races, particularly Africans and Aboriginal Australians…although he argued and that men should not be restricted in reproduction by laws…
- Charles Darwin, Author and Naturalist
"The good must be paired with the good, and the bad with the bad, and the offspring of the one must be reared and of the other destroyed; in this way the flock will be preserved in prime condition.”
- Plato, Greek Philosopher