Huxley’s ideas show that, in many ways, our modern understanding of eugenics is overly simplistic. According to the American historian Diane B Paul in Controlling Human Heredity (1995), eugenics ‘was a more diverse movement’ throughout its existence. At some points, radical eugenic policies like forced sterilisation were carried out; at other times, eugenicists in Western nations tried strategies that were more similar to those used by welfare states. Almost all Western countries engaged in multiple forms of ‘improvement’. In Europe, eugenicists often tried strategies that were closer to those used by welfare states than by Nazi Germany. These approaches involved genetic counselling instead of sterilisation and giving money to ‘genetically endowed’ couples so that they could have families. In Britain, eugenics meant many things to many people, and Huxley’s eugenical vision for UNESCO was more nuanced than we might first assume. If we hope to understand his ideas, we need to resist the impulse to immediately equate them with the horrors of Nazi Germany.
Huxley’s vision for UNESCO was rooted in a specific view of evolution, which did not emerge fully formed. His ideas were a product of his heritage and experiences during the first decade of the 20th century, as the Victorian era gave way to a new age. This was a time of intense debates about progress and evolution.
One key figure who was cited in these debates was the English philosopher Herbert Spencer who, decades earlier in the 1870s, had taught that human societies could be understood as natural products of evolution. According to Spencer, competition filtered the best and encouraged evolution, but this did not mean that one individual had to compete with another. He argued that individuals often had better chances of survival if they banded together in groups to outcompete rivals. The best could emerge if the individuals who cooperated were gifted enough to make the cooperation work. This aspect of cooperation was mostly lost on contemporaries, who were taken aback by Spencer’s emphasis on competition and the natural struggle for survival.
Julian’s grandfather felt differently. Thomas Henry Huxley may have been Spencer’s friend, but he could not stomach the philosopher’s emphasis on the struggle for existence in society. Thomas believed that the competition seen in nature should not serve as a guide for human behaviour. Reeling from the premature death of his daughter, he doubted whether nature truly selected out the best. And he made this clear during an impassioned lecture at the University of Oxford in 1893, which also served as a carefully crafted response to Spencer’s ideas: ‘Let us understand, once and for all that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process [including the struggle for existence], still less in running away from it, but in combating it.’ Rather than replicating the sometimes violent competition seen in nature, Thomas believed society ‘requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows.’