So we come to a consideration of temperament, and Burton cites
instances, new to some, old as the hills to others. First he quotes
Bacon, saying: “Where the complexion of the father is corrupt, there
the complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and
so the corruption is derived from the father to the son.” The which
Moses, and many others, taught generations before. Yet it is a truth
constantly lost sight of, as constantly re-discovered. Indeed it seems
to those who have accepted it, so true as almost to be platitudinous.
Almost it would seem that we might accept the truth of heredity as we
accept the truth that 7×7=49. But not so. I pick up Dr. Strahan’s book
_Suicide and Insanity_ to find a passage in which he tells us that
several distinguished writers have, by carefully following the family
history of suicides, been able to demonstrate how frequently suicide
runs in families. “This has been shown by these authorities to occur
with alarming frequency, yet it only touches upon one form of heredity,
the direct, in which heredity is only admitted in those cases where
the abnormal character is identical in both ancestor and descendant.”
Again, in another place: “... we must not confine the term ‘heredity’
to suicides who have had suicidal relations, but to most of those among
whose relatives we discover insanity, epilepsy, idiocy, scrofula and
the like.” Which is very well, but we go to old Burton for something
else. For the old writer, his nose close to the trail, dares and
dares greatly, rising far above considerations of sentimentality and
considering ways to mend matters. He gathers his data, looks at it,
arranges it, studies it and sees that diseased people should not be
allowed to contaminate the race and increase suffering and misery
by propagating unfitness. He looks on mankind from a height, as it
were, just as a chicken breeder looks at his birds. This cock has an
imperfect comb, therefore off goes his head. We want no imperfect
combs. This hen is improperly barred and this chick is what is called
“smutty,” then to the chopping block with them!
More than that, for he perceives what many of our modern legislators
and fanatics and imitation patriots refuse to see--that a people which
has not injected new blood, will degenerate. You stop immigration
in any nation and you make for weakness, not strength. “In all ages
there should be ... once in 600 years, a transmigration of nations, to
amend and purify their blood, as we alter seed upon our lands, and ...
there should be, as it were, an inundation of those northern Goths and
Vandals, and many such like people which came out of that continent of
Scandia, and Sarmatia ... and over ran as a deluge, most part of Europe
and Africa, to alter for our good our complexions, which were much
defaced with hereditary infirmities, which by our lust and intemperance
we had contracted.”
Per contra, Burton would have had something to say in regard to
deportations and those who, in hysterical days, might have stood more
than a fair chance to be thrust oceans away, those in many cases whose
works might have “amended and purified.” Small chance would Percy
Bysshe Shelley have stood to stay with us; nor Edmund Burke; nor Oliver
Cromwell; and W. S. Gilbert would have stood on dangerous ground;
perhaps too William Morris, and certainly Shaw, and Tolstoy, and
Kropotkine, and Ruskin, and Hobbes of the _Leviathan_, and John Stuart
Mill, and Auberon Herbert, and Lord Byron, while Mr. Sumner would have
had Bobbie Burns in trouble in no time. And certainly, Burton would be
far from welcomed by the K. K. K.
Again: “So many ways,” writes Burton, “are we plagued and punished
for our fathers’ defaults,” then goes on to complain, as our students
and teachers of eugenics complain, that a man will not rear a bull or
horse “except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover
a mare, except he be well assured of his breed,” yet, in the raising
of children we take no heed. He quotes Boethius, who, writing of old
Scotland, declared that “if any were visited with the falling sickness,
madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely
to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded;
a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance, having some
such disease, she were found to be with child, she and her child were
buried alive.” Burton ponders over that, then declares himself all
for prevention of the propagation of the unfit in the interests of
humanity. Says he near the end of his rumination, “A severe doom, you
will say, and not to be used among Christians, yet more to be looked
into than it is. For now, by our too much facility in this kind, in
giving away for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence
in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary
disease, no family secure, no man almost free from some grievous
infirmity or other. When no choice is had, but still the eldest must
marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, they be fooled
by dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust
through riot ... they must be wise and able by inheritance; it comes
to pass that our generation is corrupt, we may have many weak persons,
both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging amongst us, crazed
families, _parentes peremptores_, (our fathers the cause of our ruin),
our fathers bad, and we are likely to be worse.” Burton and Havelock
Ellis, you see, stretch hands across the ages. The old timer is very
much akin to the modern eugenist.
The trouble is, and Burton saw it, that while we may realize that our
descendants may pay the penalty for disobeying those principles of the
universe, obedience to which makes for health, we are entirely without
thought for our unborn children and their children’s children. When
pleasure offers, all else is nowhere at all. Indeed, by his very nature
man can have no care for that which does not exist, and he no more
thinks with affection of future generations which may proceed from his
own loins, than he thinks with affection of his remote ancestors that
wallowed in the slime.