ABSTRACT
The idea of improvement must be pretty well coeval with human speculative thought. In the Olympian conception, men can become like gods; can achieve complete virtue, understanding and peace of mind, but through spiritual insight, not by mastery of the physical world. From the seventeenth century onwards a new vision began to be taken seriously, the Utopian. All three visions have both noble and comic elements, and each has developed its own satirical literature, which is often better known than the work it satirizes. Social Darwinism in the form expounded by Haeckel provided a theoretical justification for the great biological crimes of Fascism, so it is hardly surprising that eugenics fell into complete discredit. Until recent years the dual ambition of the eugenic stockbreeder seemed to be upheld by genetic theory. The somatic and reproductive functions are separated: the eugenic end-product is reproducible at will, but does not reproduce.
