1925. Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man(1925) marked the first contribution by an American to the To-day and To-morrow series of popular books, described as ‘pamphlets’ by London publisher Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner (and simultaneously published in New York by E.P. Dutton – see the entry on the To-day and To-morrow series on this website). As expected from the title, it explicitly references eugenics, and offers some cautious, limited support, but Prometheus is one of the first works that would qualify as “reform eugenics” as the term was later coined by Daniel Kevles, and circulated by the wave of latter-day scholars following in the wake of Kevles’ In the Name of Eugenics (1987). Prometheus lacks the strict hereditarian and Nordicist thrusts of earlier eugenics texts by American biologists, and pleads for a shifting of equilibria towards a balanced consideration of environment and heredity, or nurture and nature in the case of man. See title-page in the accompanying picture.

Jennings follows in the footsteps of the early eugenically-themed titles in the series, notably J.B.S. Haldane’s Daedalus (1923), Bertrand Russell’s response: Icarus (1924), F.C.S. Schiller’s Tantalus, or the Future of Man (1924), and F.G. Crookshank’s The Mongol in our Midst (1924). (See separate entries on these volumes on this website.) Jennings makes two very brief (and quite literal) allusions to the mythological character in the title. But his point of view is closer to the watching gods, rather than Haldane’s enthusiastic admiration, and it should be noted that Haldane eulogized Prometheus and his future role in a scientifically-rationalized society in considerably greater detail than Jennings.

Unlike his initial’s inspiration, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) Jennings (1868-1947) is a proto-environmentalist, lacking the firm hereditarian bias with occasional Lamarckian lapses of his British forebears: Spencer, Darwin, Galton; or his Nativist American predecessors: C.B. Davenport, William Castle and H.F. Osborn; but his understanding of human genetics is superior to all of these men, including Daedalus author Haldane, despite his lack of a Nobel Prize, cultural ‘ism,’ or a knighthood. Jennings has been cited as a signal milestone in the “retreat from scientific racism” (Barkan, 1992).

-Michael Kohlman

• Barkan, E. (1992). The retreat from scientific racism: Changing concepts of race in Britain and the United States between the world wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Brain, W.R. (1927). Galatea, or the future of Darwinism. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Carr-Saunders, A.M. (1926). Review of Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man, by H.S. Jennings. Eugenics Review, 17(4), 297-300.

• Castle, W.E. (1912). Heredity and eugenics : a course of lectures summarizing recent advances in knowledge in variation, heredity, and evolution and its relation to plant, animal and human improvement and welfare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Crookshank, F.G. (1925). The mongol in our midst. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Davenport, C.B. (1911). Heredity in relation to eugenics. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

• Haldane, J.B.S. (1923). Daedalus, or science and the future. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.

• Jennings, H.S. (1925). Prometheus, or biology and the advancement of man. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.

• Kevles, D. (1987). In the name of eugenics: Genetics and the uses of human heredity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

• Reuters, E.B. (1926). Review of Prometheus, or Biology and the Advancement of Man, by H.S. Jennings. American Journal of Sociology, 31(5), 692.

• Russell, B. (1924). Icarus, or the future of science. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company.

• Schiller, F.C.S. (1924). Tantalus, or the future of man. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner.