George Eliot Quotes
Breed is stronger than pasture.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner. William Blackwood and Sons, 1861.
Some opponents of genetic engineering and Xenotransplantation (creating new animals by combining parts of different animals or adding parts of one animal species to another) cite this Biblical passage in their efforts to stop these new technologies. Yet both are well established and most people, including the opponents often do not even realize instances of it. For example, a large proportion of heart valve repairs in humans is accomplished by Xenotransplantation—replacing the defective heart valve with a pig heart valve. An entire line of biological research is being conducted by splicing the genes of a jellyfish that glows green under UV light into monkeys and worms to study the methods of genetic transmission.
This pseudo-scientific organization, in spite of the junk science it was promulgating, actually had a substantial American following and over 20 states actually passed laws to allow forced sterilization who were “UNFIT”. In reality while there is a genetic component to each of the examples it only increases the probabilities and is not determinative. And even f it were and there were selective breeding of humans, these “TRAITS” would not be eliminated in 3 generations,
This pseudo-scientific organization, in spite of the junk science it was promulgating, actually had a substantial American following and over 20 states actually passed laws to allow forced sterilization who were “UNFIT”. In reality while there is a genetic component to each of the examples it only increases the probabilities and is not determinative. And even f it were and there were selective breeding of humans, these “TRAITS” would not be eliminated in 3 generations.
Many modern psychologists would disagree with James as they would argue that the pugnacity is learned from culture and environment.
The Eugenics Movement, which grew quite popular for a while, tried to improve the race of man, not by improving individual people or even a generation of people, but of selective and restrictive breeding of humans. The coercion and bias associated with it caused one of the worst violations of human rights in American History, and then was picked up by Adolf Hitler who carried the ideas to one of the worst atrocities in human history—the murder of “inferior races” so that they could not breed, thereby in their warped theory developing a super race.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a very similar idea over 50 years before Darwin did. See Quotation 643685.
There were a substantial proportion of Americans who believed that mulattoes were per se inferior.
Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels, Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England and most of her works are set there. They are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
