But unlike Galton, Muller began to realize that positive eugenics was achievable only in a society that had already achieved radical equality. Eugenics could not be the prelude to equality. Instead, equality had to be the precondition for eugenics. Without equality, eugenics would inevitably falter on the false premise that social ills, such as vagrancy, pauperism, deviance, alcoholism, and feeblemindedness were genetic ills—while, in fact, they merely reflected inequality.

