When power is discovered, man always turns to it," Bateson wrote darkly. "The science of heredity will soon provide power on stupendous scale; and in some country, at some time not, perhaps, far distant, that power will be applied to control the composition of a nation. Whether the institution of such control will ultimately be good or bad for that nation, or humanity at large, is a separate question." He had preempted the century of the gene.
