It seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superior person, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pass by on the other side with his nose raised towards the sky.

Modern the science and art of Eugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the Greeks of classic days, as well as their successors to-day, used the word Eugeneia for nobility or good birth.

It was chosen by Francis Galton, less than fifty years ago, to express "the effort of Man to improve his own breed." But the thing the term stands for is, in reality, also far from modern.

It is indeed ancient and may even be nearly as old as Man himself.
Consciously or unconsciously, sometimes under pretexts that have disguised his motives even from himself, Man has always been attempting to improve his own quality or at least to maintain it.

When he slackens that effort, when he allows his attention to be too exclusively drawn to other ends, he suffers, he becomes decadent, he even tends to die out.
Primitive eugenics had seldom anything to do with what we call "birth-control." One must not say that it never had.