Daniel Goldberg calls Oliver Wendell Holmes' statement that 'Three
generations of imbeciles are enough' "infamous", but that is how we
judge it in the present. In its time, it was seen as a courageous and
logical standpoint, and was not only Holmes's opinion, but of the
almost unanimous Supreme Court. So his/their decision shouldn't, in
my opinion, so much be admired ('Holmes was nevertheless ready,
willing, and able to utter the infamous line') as understood in its
context.

"We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon
the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could
not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for
these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concer
ned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is
better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate
offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility,
society can prevent those who are mani festly unfit from continuing
their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is
broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. (Jacobson v.
Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11.) Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Generally this is the only part of the Court's opinion in _Buck v.
Bell_ that is cited (or some extract of it), but the Court's opinion
continues and ends with the following line:
"But, it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were applied
generally, it fails when it is confined to the small number who are
in the institutions named and is not applied to the multitudes
outside. It is the usual last resort of constitutional arguments to
point out shortcomings of this sort. But the answer is that the law
does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a
policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within
the lines all similarly situated so far and so fast as its means
allow. Of course so far as the operations enable those who otherwise
must be kept confined to be returned to the world, and thus open the
asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached."

In the 1920s this kind of argumentation was used by several eminent
American and European men, frequently with a reference to the many
thousands of young, vigorous men who had died or who were mutilated
during the devastating Great War. In 1920, in Weimar Germany, the
renowned jurist Karl Binding and physician Alfred Hoch pleaded with
this and other arguments for the 'euthanasia' for so-called lives
unworthy of life (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten
Lebens), and Adolf Hitler did the same in 1924 in the first part of
_Mein Kampf_.

This doesn't of course mean that Nazism was founded on Darwinism.
There is no direct link, but indirectly one can trace a kind of
reasoning about asocial, marginal 'elements' in one's community, the
community that was thought of as of much greater importance than any
individual. The people (Volk), the nation, the body of the nation
(Volkskörper in German) had to be saved from the contaminated, rotten
cells/individuals it contained. This kind of thinking appeared in
Great Britain, shortly before Darwin wrote _On the origin of species_
(1859) - in the work of Herbert Spencer for instance. And after the
publication of _Origin_, more and more thinkers, such as Francis
Galton, adopted it. Now that the motor of evolution, natural
selection, had been discovered, one was afraid that biological
evolution, the progress of the human species, was impeded or even
stopped by Civilisation. A civilisation with its poor laws, hygiene,
medicine, hospitals and asylums kept alive marginal human beings, who
would normally have been eliminated by the harsh competition in
Nature, that "civilisation" made it possible that these "unfit" would
breed and multiply at a much faster rate then the fittest specimens
of the nation.

Gie van den Berghe
Prof. in ethics, University of Ghent, Belgium

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