THE FAMILY TREE
I. ARE MONKEYS PEOPLE?
Nobody was ever humiliated by the seventh verse of the second chapter
of Genesis, which says, “God formed man of the dust of the ground.”
But when Darwin wrote,[106] “There can ... hardly be a doubt that
man is an offshoot from the Old World simian stems; and that, under
a genealogical point of view, he must be classed with the catarrhine
division,”--when Darwin wrote that the offense was general. Why?
Certainly a catarrhine ape is higher in the scale of being than is the
dust of the ground.
But the Bible account had added, “And [God] breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life.” Darwin left out any saving addition. So those who
say today, “We came from the monkey,” invariably mean that we were
contained in the monkey even as an oak is contained in an acorn.
As a matter of fact, the oak is not contained in the acorn. An acorn is
merely the means through which an oak may eventually become manifest.
It is an instrument which enables an oak to become. The substance of
the oak is still widely scattered when the acorn which is to be its
parent falls from the tree. Some of it is in the soil; some of it is
in the air; some of it is far off in the sun. The acorn is like a lens
through which light bends to a focus. It is something which brings
together parts of the earth, the air and the sun and welds them into
the body of a tree. That something which we call life uses the acorn
as a business man uses a little shop, a going concern which he buys as
the foundation of a great department-store. But the shop could never
become the store did the business man add nothing to it. The question
therefore is, was the catarrhine ape the lens through which the
elements of man were brought together? And what, if anything, was added
which were not added in the case of the ape itself?
So stated, Darwin’s theory loses most of its religious and therefore
its popular significance. For the public in general is not interested
in biology, it is interested only in God and in man’s relation to God.
Even atheists are interested chiefly in God, or they would speak of
other matters and spend less time in denying Him. Even biologists and
psychologists are interested chiefly in God, not in their own subjects.
Otherwise they would not be forever straining to make a theology,
though but a negative or devil’s theology, out of what pretends to be
science.
Whether it is orthodox to believe that we number monkeys among our
ancestors, theologians must decide. Certainly the Church would not have
to alter a single one of its major tenets nor a line of its ritual in
order to include Darwinism among the articles of faith. Whether the
dust of the ground evolved into ape before it evolved into man during
those long periods which the laconic poetry of Genesis allows to slip
by between the lines, or whether the change from dust to man was
immediate, is immaterial to the doctrine of the Fall of Man, which
concerns man’s subsequent history alone.
Darwin, himself, regarded his views of human descent as mere theories,
useful for biological purposes. “Many of the views which have been
[here] advanced,” he wrote[107] “are highly speculative, and some no
doubt will prove erroneous.” Had the modesty of the great scientist
been emulated by his disciples, we would have had no Scopes trial, and
few of us would ever have heard of Evolution.
Even now that we have heard so much, few of us seem willing to take
the trouble to find out what it is, or even to learn to distinguish
between the theory of evolution in general and that particular theory
of evolution which Darwin advocated. Considered broadly, evolution is
merely the idea that living things--and even things which we do not
ordinarily call living, including, perhaps, intangible things, like
thoughts and feelings--appeared on earth in a certain order, the lower
and simpler ones first. This idea is as old as the hills, and was fully
set forth in Moses’ account of creation.
Moses held further that the upward climb was interrupted at a certain
point, and that another cycle, another upward climb, then began. But
as neither the Fall nor Redemption are supposed to be biological, this
line of thought does not concern us here.
A more narrow view of evolution regards the resemblances to be noted
among things as the resemblance of children to parents. According to
this theory, the tie which binds the universe together is the tie of
heredity. Nebulæ give birth to suns, suns to planets, planets to the
lower forms of life, the lower forms to the higher. The notion is
not so popular among astronomers as it used to be, but it is still
dominant among scientists in general and biologists in particular.
Nor can there be any doubt that evolution in this sense has been the
supreme hypothesis of modern times. Curiously enough, the most extreme
Darwinians among our literary scientists usually balk at it, holding
that while man certainly must have had an ape for ancestor, thoughts,
customs and sentiments can be generated spontaneously. They trace their
brains straight back to the amœba, but claim to have minds which are
brand new. They scorn any philosophy which cannot prove that it was
born yesterday--or at least since the present period of prosperity
began in the United States--and born out of nothing. “Men,” says Albert
Edward Wiggam, in “The New Decalogue of Science,”[108] “have never been
really righteous because they did not know how.” Meaning, of course,
that they didn’t know how until the “New Decalogue” was published,
which was in 1922.
Darwinism, itself, is the belief that the different species originated
not only one from another, but that the difference now existing
between one species and another is due to the slow accumulation of
those minute particulars in which children do _not_ resemble their
parents; and further that these differences were preserved and added
one to another through succeeding generations because they were useful
from the first, increasing the likelihood that their possessors would
survive and breed; while those not born with these variations, or had
variations which were useless or perhaps harmful, would be killed off
in the struggle for existence. This selection of fortunate individuals
in a world where there is not room enough for all is called “natural
selection,” and variations which increase the chances of survival
are said to have a “survival-value.” Darwin did not pretend to know
what caused variations. Darwinism is merely the theory that species
originate by the accumulation of useful variations through natural
selection, and that intermediate forms then die out, leaving gaps. Were
none of the links missing from the record Darwin believed that it would
now be impossible to tell where one species began and another left off.
The hypothesis itself was but a variation of an older one. Lamarck
had taught that species originated gradually, but he held that it
was chiefly through the inheritance of “acquired characters.” Now an
acquired character is something we are not born with, as for example,
the ability to play the piano; and if it could have been proved that
such acquirements descend from parent to child, Lamarckianism would
have had smoother sailing.
But great pianists persist in having children born without the ability
to play the piano, children who have to begin at the beginning just
as the great pianists themselves did. Every effort has been made to
demonstrate the contrary, but the facts are stubborn. The best that
can be said for the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters
is that, in some instances, if a single character is acquired by a
sufficient number of generations there is a slight possibility that
eventually it may begin to leave some trace of a hereditary nature.
Hundreds of generations of rats have had their tails cut off without
producing a natural-born tailless rat.
What looks like the inheritance of an acquired character always turns
out to be a phenomenon which can be accounted for by early education.
The Bach family was a family of wonderful musicians, but the Bach
children all received the best of musical training from the moment
they could begin to lisp.
But Darwinism, though it would profit greatly could the heritability of
acquired characters be proven, was especially constructed to get along
with the heritability of inborn characters. To be a Darwinian it is not
necessary to believe that the giraffe originated by the neck-stretching
of a lot of prehistoric calves anxious to feed as high as possible
upon the trees of the pasture. It is enough to believe that the calves
who happened to be born with the longest necks were the most apt to
survive, and that they passed their longer necks on, minus any acquired
stretch, so that in each generation the accidental or unaccountable
long-neck variations could begin at a higher level--and so on down, or
up, to the present.
The theory works very well with the giraffe. Every fractional inch of
additional neck seems to have a survival value. But unfortunately for
Darwin, this is not the case with all variations. Many are useless or
positively harmful until their accumulation has gone on until a new
and workable mechanism is formed, and it is beyond the imagination of
man to devise a way in which they can have been accumulated by natural
selection. Fabre, the great French naturalist, pointed out hundreds of
instincts among insects which could have had no survival value unless
they were complete at the start--whole chains of instincts, each link
positively worthless in itself. We are forced to believe that all the
links arrived on the scene simultaneously and in perfect working order.
The body of man, to take another example, is--in so far as it varies
from an ape’s body--a variation in the direction of weakness. If the
catarrhine, old world Simians began once upon a time to have children
a little more human in body than the catarrhines themselves, they at
that very moment began to have weaker and shorter-armed children, less
well calculated to survive in the struggle for existence. It may be
argued that the half-human children survived because they had better
brains. And it may be argued further that it was the deflection of
energy to the brain which caused the rest of the body to shrink. This
is at least imaginable. What is lacking is any positive evidence that
half-human children ever arrived upon the worldly scene through the
genitals of monkeys. The theory is merely a working hypothesis which
works somewhat less well every day.
Will Durant, writing of Bergson,[109] says that “all his (Bergson’s)
criticism of Darwin has proved effective; the specifically Darwinian
features of the evolution theory are now generally abandoned.” This is
too sweeping a statement. Hilaire Belloc hews closer to the line of
truth when, in “A Companion to H. G. Wells’ ‘Outline of History,’”[110]
he names 41 outstanding scientists who hold with Bateson that “for men
of clear intellect Darwinism has long been dead.” In other words, the
old jolly row is still on, with the anti-Darwinians gaining ground but
the pros still flying their flag. The flag, itself, however, shows some
sign of accumulating variations.
This makes it the more surprising that Sir Arthur Keith should
have seen fit, upon his election to the presidency of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1927, to say in his
Inaugural Address, “So strong has his [Darwin’s] position become that I
am convinced it can never be shaken.” A hypothesis which could not be
shaken would be a unique thing in the history of science. And for his
remark, Sir Arthur received the following congratulatory telegram: “We
hail with joy your uncompromising championship of the ape ancestry of
man. Your boldness and plain speaking will encourage atheists the world
over.”
No, this is not a message from a learned society. It came from The
American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, popularly known
as “The Four A’s,” an incorporation parented by Charles Smith, an
attorney of Oklahoma, and Freeman Hopwood, of New Jersey. It claims
a number of branches or chapters among the undergraduates in various
colleges--chapters bearing such names as “The Damned Souls,” of the
University of Rochester; “The Devil’s Angels,” of Los Angeles, and
the like. From time to time gems of thought reach the world from the
Association’s Headquarters, such as: “Edison believes in a Supreme
Intelligence, but is a vice-president of the Thomas Paine National
Historical Association.” “Aristotle was what today would be called
an atheist.” “No wonder people above the intellectual level of a
paramecium don’t take any stock in Christianity.”
The reckless use of language makes strange bedfellows. Surely Sir
Arthur must have been a little intoxicated with his new honors to speak
so much in the manner of a Grand Kleagle. He even went on and compared
vital activity to what takes place in an automobile factory. “In ...
this factory,” he said, “there is no apprenticeship.... Every employee
is born, just as a hive-bee is, with his skill already developed. No
plans or patterns are supplied; every workman has the needed design in
his head from birth.... There is neither manager, overseer nor foreman
to direct and co-ordinate the activities of the vast artisan armies....
And yet there must be some method of co-ordination.”
This factory without patterns or overseer, co-ordinated by a “method”
with nothing to carry it out, must have been located in Russia in the
days of Lenin. Even there we have yet to see automobiles producing
spontaneous variations of a survival value, or big trucks begetting
little roadsters which grow upon gasoline till they reach the size of
their ancestors. We therefore seem to be a long way from the factory
of life. But instead of myself attempting to take Sir Arthur to
task, I prefer to compile a little dialogue out of extracts from his
speech interlarded with quotations from a review of it written by the
biologist, Francis P. LeBuffe.[111]
_Keith_ (third paragraph of his address): “Owen ... cited evidence
which suggested a much earlier date for the appearance of man on earth
than was sanctioned by Bible records.”
_LeBuffe_ (who is a member of the Society of Jesus): “He [Sir Arthur]
ought to know that whatever calculations as to the age of man have been
made from ‘Biblical records’ are entirely problematical, and that the
6006 years so frequently adduced as Biblical is merely the inference of
scriptural scholars years ago.”
_Keith_: “Darwin ... succeeded in convincing himself that, immeasurable
as are the differences between the mentality of man and ape, they
are of degree not of kind. Prolonged researches made by modern
psychologists have but verified and extended Darwin’s conclusions.
Huxley’s ‘Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature’ ... settled for all time
that man’s rightful position is among the primates and that ... his
nearest living kin are the anthropoid apes.”
_Le Buffe_: “That man is a primate is as true in the doctrine of
immediate creation as it is in the theory of evolution; and while a
non-evolutionist would dispute the statement that the ape is man’s
nearest kin, he would admit that he is the animal that is the most like
him.”
_Keith_: “The evidence of man’s evolution from an ape-like being
obtained from the study of fossil remains is definite and irrefutable.”
_Le Buffe_: “Let us take up the ‘irrefutables’ one by one.”
And he does, describing minutely how the hunt for the “missing link”
now stands. For brevity’s sake I paraphrase his text as follows:
First Irrefutable: _Pithecanthropus erectus_, “one time inhabitant of
Java.” Irrefutable? Then why did Dr. Moir[112] state before the Berlin
Anthropological Society that it did not differ essentially from other
types of human skulls, and that it coincided very closely with that of
Aurignacian man? Scott Elliot says, “The skull is considered a human
skull by six ... celebrated authorities, who for the most part are
English. It is thought to be a missing link by eight, mostly French.
It is considered an ape’s skull by six others, mostly German. Only one
authority makes the femur that of an ape, thirteen consider it human,
and six make it out intermediate.”
Second Irrefutable: Dawson’s “Dawn Man.” Irrefutable? What have we
here? A shattered, imperfect brain-case, part of the mandible and
a canine tooth. Keith says that Sir Arthur Smith Woodward rightly
recognized that the skull and jaw were part of the same individual.
Then how do Waterson and Miller say that the jaw is a chimpanzee’s and
does not belong to that skull? and Hrdlička that it is human, but again
does not belong to that skull? and Ray Lankester, who wrote to one, H.
G. Wells: “I think we are stumped, baffled?”
And so on, until we have Keith repeating with approval the words of G.
Elliot Smith, “The difference between the human and the ape brain is
only quantitative.”
And Le Buffe responding: “Then why did Dr. Arthur S. Woodward say ‘We
cannot of course go by the size, for the Neanderthal man has a larger
brain cavity than some of us at the present day. It is quality not
quantity that counts’? That is surely true, we hope, as the heaviest
brain ever found (weight, 2850 grammes) was that of an epileptic idiot.”
Here is a true picture of the state of modern science as it relates to
man--a few disputed bones and any quantity of disputed conjectures.
Keith’s picture is obviously false. He should visit the excavations at
Glozel, France, where the findings are declared by some savants, “_du
mérite le plus incontesté_,” to be of the “_époque néolithique_”; and
by other savants, “_dont les travaux font authorité dans le monde_,” to
pertain not to the neolithic but to the “_époque néo-fumiste_.”
But what if someone were actually to find the missing link? It would
be merely a skeleton intermediate between that of ape and man. It
would prove nothing; settle nothing. What is needed is the spectacle
of a female monkey in the act of giving birth to a human child; and as
nobody claims that well-bred monkeys do that sort of thing nowadays,
the prospect is not hopeful.
Yet Albert Edward Wiggam says in “The New Decalogue of Science”[113]
that the “Darwinian generalization,” after a “battle with entrenched
opinion, authority, prejudice and vested interests, has at last
received the universal assent of practically all educated men.”
I do not see how a “universal assent” can include “practically all,”
if by that is meant anything different from simply all. But this is
tabloid, pre-digested science, with the hulls of opposing opinion
carefully removed. The implication is that non-Darwinians, however
eminent, are _ipso facto_, ignorant. Those who do not feel themselves
properly brow-beaten must have thicker skulls than _Pithecanthropus
erectus_. But I think Mr. Wiggam is here showing a variation from the
paramecium of very doubtful survival-value.
Since Darwin many efforts have been made to improve his theory by
supplementing it with others. Hugo DeVries, for example, believed
that he had solved the problem of the survival of variations which
need to be complete before they can be useful. He discovered a bank
of evening primroses on an English hillside which seemed to be in the
very act of producing new species--not by degrees but all at once. It
was announced throughout the world that organic evolution had proved
itself experimentally, though not along Darwinian lines. The variations
here were too marked to be called variations, so they were called
“mutations.”
But the primroses were but hybrids, and what had been seen was not
the evolution of new species but the action of the law of mixed
heredity long before formulated by Mendel. The new species were only
throw-backs, revealing hereditary traits which had been latent in their
immediate ancestors, as when a boy resembles not his father but his
grandfather.
More recently a school of biologists has risen whose members call
themselves “Emergent Evolutionists.” According to their idea, the
finger of God occasionally “emerges” so plainly that man can see it.
Here again we have the idea of sudden mutations, where the ordinary
course of events seems at certain points to be broken by the impulse of
a higher law--as when life, sensation, reason, or man first appeared.
Alfred Russell Wallace, Darwin’s co-discoverer of the “law” of Natural
Selection, laid the foundation for this conception as long ago as 1889.
More recently men like Lloyd Morgan; General Smuts; Herbert Spencer
Jennings, of Johns Hopkins University; Sir Bertram C. A. Windel,
professor of anthropology in Saint Michael’s College, Toronto, and many
others, have sought to give Emergency its place among the recognized
hypotheses of science.
But, as far as I am aware, it has never yet been completely stated,
nor any logical reason given why the emergence at one point in the
evolutionary scale differs except in degree from the emergence of any
event, even the most trifling. Once we accept the belief that matter
is a mere instrument in the hands of something which is not matter,
it seems necessary to regard all phenomena as the emergence either of
the direct power of God or of the will of some creature to whom has
been delegated a limited freedom. If this be the underlying idea, then
a special emergence might be defined as one of so marked and rare an
importance that it stands out from every day happenings, forming part
of a broader rhythm whose beat is apparent only when all the great
emergences of which we have evidence are taken together. Or it may go
even beyond this, and stand as an event unique in man’s experience,
constituting what we call a miracle.
The advantage of the theory of emergent evolution is that it furnishes
the evolutionary process with a power capable of bringing it about,
while the idea of matter evolving itself implies a universe trying to
lift itself by its bootstraps. It also removes the difficulties of time
(of which there is never enough for thoroughgoing Darwinians) and of
finding survival value for half-developed mechanisms.
“_Bien des choses s’expliqueraient si nous pouvions connaître notre
genéalogie véritable_,” wrote Flaubert--much more wisely than he knew.
Perhaps not only many things but nearly everything will be explained
from the moment our true genealogy is recognized. But it must be our
true genealogy, not a part of it. Emergent Evolution permits us to have
our place in the natural order, and yet remain children of God. The
soul may be the greatest--or next to the greatest--emergence of all.
Is it such a distressing idea? That should not trouble the realists,
for they notoriously attribute reality to things in proportion to the
amount of unpleasant odor which things exhale. Thus they unite with the
Hindus in considering life a curse. Matter taken by itself certainly
is either painful or boresome, and if one wishes to stop with the half
and consider only matter as real, I know of no way in which one may
logically escape despair.
The trouble with the idea, then, is that it is not distressing. The
moment we agree that something more divine may emerge through matter,
or at least thrust up beneath it till matter rises here and there to
a glorious psychic mountain peak (“emergence” is not quite the right
word, for there still remains the material covering)--from that moment
even evolution loses its repellent features. From that moment the
greatest thinkers of all the ages are on our side--which is sometimes
a comfort. We develop a strange capacity for happiness. Is this an
evidence that we are fools?
“_Le malheur_,” says Paul Bourget in “_L’étape_,” “_démontre l’idée
fausse, comme la maladie la mauvaise hygiène._”[114]
That probably is not conclusive reasoning if you are not convinced
beforehand. But why is happiness any more apt to be the result of
illusion than is misery? We do not say that the best body is the one
which suffers the most pain. Have not the pessimistic philosophers
accustomed us to some strange and monstrous inversion of thought?
Let emergence, then, have its way. We are no longer contained in our
physical ancestors. The man is not even contained in the child. We
change from day to day. There is a continuity, yet it is added to--or
subtracted from. The soul accepts this and rejects that.
So Psyche rebuilds her house, continually tearing it down and
reconstructing it. Sometimes the lighting system gets out of order.
Fuses blow out--and we say she is mad. Sometimes the house falls, or
burns, or succumbs to a flood--and we say she is dead. And from the
dead house some conclude a dead Psyche, or that there never was a
Psyche--which is like concluding that, if the telephone line goes dead,
it proves that there never was anybody talking at the other end except
the batteries and the wires.
No; monkeys are not people, no matter what kind of children they may
have had. Nor are people monkeys--not to the extent which Mr. Wiggam
seems to suppose.
2. BURBANKING THE HUMAN RACE
The effect of Darwinism has been to popularize an exaggerated idea of
the importance of heredity. Darwin, of course, depended quite as much
upon environment to select his variations as he did upon heredity to
hand them down. But it is from Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, that most
people have acquired their Darwinism, and it so happens that Spencer
was not primarily a Darwinian but a Lamarckian. “The Origin of Species”
was not published until Spencer was a middle-aged man.
Therefore an immense amount of confusion has arisen in the minds of
amateur biologists, and a tendency to believe in heredity as the
destiny which shapes our ends. Hence the Eugenists. Hence this Mr.
Albert Edward Wiggam, already referred to.
The idea of dominant heredity is flattering to parents, who like
to think that they live again in their children; who are unwilling
to grant that children have souls of their own. It pleases those
scientists who still hope to prove that acquired characters are handed
down. It pleases determinists, who see here another way of making us
slaves to something. It pleases those naturalists, who have acquired
their ideas of man from the study of animals, plants and insects.
And as animals, plants and insects form the readiest subject for
experiment, it pleases materialistic biologists in general.
But reasoning from lower forms of life to higher is reasoning by false
analogy. Luther Burbank, a great artist with plants, worked wonders in
his garden; and in his book, “The Harvest of the Years,” he expresses
the regret that his methods could not at once be applied to human
beings. But Burbank was not a scientist, not a thinker, but merely
a super-gardener, incapable even of keeping an accurate account of
his innumerable experiments. So it is not remarkable that he failed
to realize that when we say what is sauce for the goose is sauce for
the gander we are speaking of beings of the same order, while man and
plants are not of the same order.
If heredity be dominant in the garden, it does not follow that it is
dominant even in the menagerie, let alone in the street. Conclusions
arrived at in the study of insects are not necessarily true of Indians.
Indeed, there is every reason to believe that man, because of his long
period of infancy, is much less determined by heredity than is any
other form of life. This in itself knocks the foundation from under
nine tenths of the arguments we hear upon the subject.
Even profound changes in the body may be produced by (or with the aid
of) environment. The third generation of immigrants to America are said
to have higher cheek-bones--that is, to be more like redmen--than the
immigrants themselves. The discovery of the functions of the ductless
glands shows how food, or the manner of life, may be at work in cases
where germ-plasm used to get all the credit. The notion that heredity
is destiny has altogether broken down.
[Illustration: ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM
The Devil take the hindmost!]
Says Professor Herbert S. Jennings, of Johns Hopkins, in an article
entitled “Heredity and Environment” in the _Scientific Monthly_ for
September, 1924: “Clearly it is not necessary to have a characteristic
merely because one inherits it. Or more properly, characteristics are
not inherited at all; what one inherits is certain material that under
certain conditions will produce a particular characteristic; if those
conditions are not supplied, some other characteristic is produced.”
Thus heredity becomes a mere capacity--and that we do inherit certain
capacities need not be denied.
The fundamental laws of heredity were first made known in 1866,
when Gregor Mendel, a monk of the Augustinian order, read his now
world-famous paper upon heredity in plants before the Naturalists’
Society of the little town of Brünn, in Moravia. He had made more
than 10,000 observations upon the peas growing in the garden of his
monastery--wonderful observations. Their results, too complicated
to be fully described here, may be sufficiently summarized in a few
words--and in order that there may be no mistake, I shall take the
words from Mr. Wiggam himself,[115] omitting only his running comment:
“If you cross tall peas with dwarf peas the offspring will be as tall
as the parents. The dwarfness has completely vanished. If you cross
these tall offspring back with a dwarf, one-half of the offspring
of this cross will be dwarfs and one-half will be talls. However,
instead of crossing the talls back with dwarfs, if you place capsules
over their blossoms so they will not get crossed, and then sow their
seeds, one-fourth--not one-half--of their seeds will come up dwarf and
three-fourths will come up tall.”
In this case, tallness, because it supercedes dwarfness in the first
generation, is called a “dominant” trait, and dwarfness, because
it disappears, is called a “recessive” trait. As Wiggam correctly
says,[116] the fundamental principle is that “the units contributed by
two parents separate in the offspring without having had any influence
on each other,” or practically none. A trait either shows in the
offspring, or it does not show. And where the inheritance is hybrid,
the reappearance or disappearance of traits may be calculated, given a
sufficient number of instances, by application of the law of greatest
probability.
Everybody knows that one may inherit a Roman nose from a grandfather
even though one’s father’s was a snub and one’s mother’s retroussé.
The mathematical implications are amazing. But all that I wish to call
attention to is the fact that we all are hybrids, and that unless our
ancestry for many generations back is known to the minutest detail
it is utterly impossible to calculate the hereditary phenomena to be
looked for in our children.
Mendel believed in unit characters, but it has been found that unit
characters, such as blue eyes, are far from being units and are made
up of an unknown number of smaller units. This greatly increases the
difficulty of even guessing what hereditary possibilities the children
of any given couple will receive. Nevertheless, twenty-three states
have already, at the behest of eugenists, passed laws permitting the
sterilization of the “unfit” by means of enforced surgical operations.
And under these laws, 6244 operations have actually been performed--and
my statistics are of the year 1927 and not complete at that! What is
the idea? I will let Mr. Wiggam explain.
“The Nordic elements of our population are being forced out by other
races whose representatives in this country are of distinctly lower
average mental alertness and of less social coherence and political
capacity.”[117]
“This race has contributed a vast share of all political wisdom and
scientific discovery to the modern world. It is probably the one race
on earth which has steadily advanced in these respects for the past
several thousand years.”[118]
“Cattell has shown that in America not a single day laborer’s son has
become a man of scientific distinction. The wholesale rise of the
masses to power may be the death knell of their biological progress.
Like a bottle of old wine, which, when uncorked, for a time sparkles
and fumes with life but soon becomes inert and stale, so it seems that
men, when freed from oppression for a time, bubble with genius. But
ambition is sterilized by its own success. Indeed, without biology as
the basis of social processes, success spells failure and achievement
brings decay. Like caged animals, those who rise cease to breed.”[119]
“There were one hundred two Pilgrims who came over in the
_Mayflower_.... No finer stock to found a great national breed of men
and women ever set out to sea.”[120]
“The genealogy of 12,722 New England wives of the old Colonial stocks.
In one hundred twenty years their blood has been vanishing from the
racial stream as follows: 1750-1799, children per family, 6.43 ...
1870-1879, children per family, 2.77.... There is the story of the
decline of the old American stock.”[121]
“In 1920 the school-teachers of America who had had any children
had given birth to 2.2 children per family; the bootblacks had come
within one-tenth of giving birth to four!... This crude birth rate,
however, does not measure to the full the relative contributions of
bootblacks and school-teachers to the citizenship of tomorrow. Nearly
all bootblacks marry and have children, while scarcely half our
school-teachers ever marry at all.”[122]
“In this same year, 1920, the lawyers and judges of America who had
families had 2.2 living children, while janitors and sextons had 3.4;
authors, editors and reporters had 2.1, workers in stone quarries and
gravel pits 3.6.”[123]
“Every school child knows that Burbank, Schull, Hanson, Davenport and
others achieve their triumphs solely by selecting the best specimens
as parents. Farmers ever since Eden have done the same thing.... But,
suppose they bred chiefly from their worst! Well, that is precisely
what America ... is doing.”[124]
There is the situation. School teachers are practicing either celibacy
or birth-control; bootblacks are not. Janitors and sextons and workers
in gravel pits are breeding lawyers, editors, authors and reporters off
the map. The masses are rising, like an uncorked bottle of old wine and
bubbling with genius. Up till now they have not produced their first
distinguished man of science, but there is no saying what may happen if
the bubbling continues. Fecundity is passing from New England wives,
from the captain’s lady, and descending to Mrs. O’Grady. The radio,
invented by the “Nordic” Marconi sends out the S.O.S. What is to be
done?
The remedy is very simple. Castrate as many of the masses as may be
necessary to enable the biologically “superior” to keep up in the race
of life with biologically (and socially) “inferior.”
No, Mr. Wiggam does not openly advocate any such crudely frank
measure. In the first place, the operation is called asexualization,
and leaves the subject free to uplift the morals of the community
by sexual activity complete in every detail except the minor one of
fruitfulness. And in the second, the choice of life-imprisonment is to
be offered in certain instances to the eugenically condemned.
Who is to do the condemning? And what are the requirements for passing
the examination?
“Unless you can measure men you cannot select them,” says Mr.
Wiggam.[125] “It is often said that eugenics is hopeless because it
does not know what it wants in human nature--it has no ideal. To this
Dr. Morton Prince of Boston aptly replied: ‘Yes it has; it wants such
men as William Graham Sumner and William James.’ This certainly sets a
lofty ideal.... Yet, in all soberness it is doubtful if we want a whole
race of such men. Men like these would doubtless clean our streets
and remove our garbage a hundred times better than it is now done,
but they could not at the same time be teachers, writers, lecturers
and philosophers, unless perchance a society of such men would be
so perfect that the street cleaner and philosopher would willingly
interchange their tasks from hour to hour or from day to day. Pending
such a possibility, however, eugenics is content with a much less
but more inclusive ideal, namely, the increase of health, sanity and
energy.”
This is a little obscure to me. It is difficult to picture William
James (or Henry, for that matter) as a superlative street-cleaner. But
the goal of the eugenist seems clear--health, sanity and energy. These
are excellent things. But as Mr. Wiggam estimates--by what method I do
not know--that we owe to heredity fully nine-tenths of what we are, it
would not seem advisable that the name of an invalid should be made to
perish from the land of the living until we are able to know much more
than we can as yet possibly know of the quality of the “germ-plasm” we
are dealing with.
Energy presents another difficulty. The rattlesnake possesses
considerable energy, and is usually in good health. Chicago’s gunmen
are energetic enough in all conscience. Obviously the direction of
energy will have to be taken into consideration. And here again we are
confronted by the question, Who is to decide what directions are right
and what directions are wrong?
“Let us,” says Mr. Wiggam,[126] “see to it that those to whom our
sympathies have extended the privilege of a happy life instead of
sounding for them the death knell of the jungle, shall not have the
high biological privilege, which should always run parallel with social
privilege and always be under social control, namely, the privilege of
reproduction.”
Never before in the history of the world has the idea of special
privilege reached such heights as this. Through our “sympathies” we
have, it appears, extended to certain persons we do not approve of the
“privilege” of a happy life instead of killing them outright as we
perhaps should have done. But we are not to allow our sentimentality to
carry us so far that these persons shall have the further “privilege”
of reproduction.
In “The Fruit of the Family Tree,”[127] Mr. Wiggam, speaking to women
voters, says that he does not care to outline for them “any complete
eugenical program.” Then he continues: “The very nature of the vast
problems themselves ... indicate what such a program is bound to be.
As one first plank in her program, most assuredly, the woman voter
should advocate a survey of the human family.... The pedigree of every
family in America should be put on record.... These family histories
would be among the most priceless archives of the nation, for it is
upon the biological assets of the nation that all truly statesmanlike
legislation must be based.”
Legislation again! Mr. Wiggam does not favor the Eighteenth
Amendment--for the curious reason that he believes alcohol dangerous
to but a small fraction of the population and that indulgence by all
would tend to exterminate those weaklings who do not carry their liquor
well--doubly curious reasoning considering the splendid efficiency of
prohibition liquor as an exterminator. He thinks (as I do, for that
matter) that Prohibition was a great mistake. Yet he is doing more
than any other one man in America today to further another prohibition
movement compared with which Volsteadism is a mere trifle. His books
sell by the tens of thousands. He has become one of the signs of the
times. And he wants legislation to make the “privilege” of having
children run parallel with “social privilege.” Family histories
doubtless contain much interesting information--they have even been
known to contain manufactured information. When they become the _sine
qua non_ of full citizenship the artificial growing of suitable family
trees will doubtless make bootlegging look like a very minor member of
our great national industries.
But we begin to see who is to do the choosing.
“Another plank in woman’s eugenic platform should be the establishment
in every state of a State Board of Heredity and Eugenics. This board
would work in cooperation with the State University, the Boards of
Charities and Correction, the State Prison Board, the Department
of Public Health and indeed with every agency of social uplift and
advancement. It would have on its staff expert psychologists [Freudians
or Behaviorists?] biologists and statisticians for the direction of
measures of public mental hygiene, the mental survey of schools and the
prescription of minimum mental requirements for marriage.”[128]
And these agencies (with of course the coöperation of the Eugenic
Society) will measure our health, sanity and energy. The opportunities
for graft are so staggering that it seems impossible that the more
energetic among us will rest content till the whole plum is theirs--for
as yet eugenic legislation applies only to the inmates of public
institutions, like jails, poor-houses and asylums. Mr. Wiggam has shown
the way to a mine that ought to be worth a mountain’s weight in solid
radium.
Under such circumstances it is perhaps idle to ask what is the
biological warrant for this worship of heredity? We are face to face
with a political and social, not a scientific, movement.
Yet Mr. Wiggam is a good biologist--at least he is able to quote a
great deal of good biology. And so long as he confines himself to
observed facts he is both instructive and interesting. But biology
mingles with the bread of its facts an intolerable deal of the sack
of deduction, guessing, theory and surmise. Mr. Wiggam seems to state
facts merely for the privilege of reveling in subsequent “reasoning.”
And his reasoning is of such a character that for a long time I mistook
him merely for one of those sprightly writers from whose mental
equipment the handicap of logic has been happily left out. But I
wronged him. There is method in his madness. He wishes, I believe, to
camouflage the strong meat of his doctrine so that we babes may not too
abruptly recognize what sort of cuts are being offered us.
Thus he says,[129] “Eugenics is ... not killing off the weaklings. Not
a scheme for breeding supermen.... Not a scheme for breeding human
beings like animals.... Not a departure from the soundest ideas of sex
morals.”
Then what is it?
“Eugenics is a method ordained of God and seated in natural law for
securing better parents for our children.... Modernizing the definition
of its great founder, Sir Francis Galton [who was a cousin of Darwin],
eugenics is the study and guidance of all those agencies that are
within social control which will improve or impair the inborn qualities
of future generations.”[130]
“Guidance,” again--i. e. legislation. But the bitter pill has been
presented in a sugar-coating. And in another place in this same book
he goes so far as to say, “Had Jesus been among us, he would have been
president of the First Eugenics Congress.”[131]
If I may be permitted to extend this gratuitous blasphemy so as to
connect it with facts, I wish to point out that when Christ did live he
was crucified by precisely the healthiest, sanest and most energetic of
his contemporaries, measuring these qualities by eugenic standards. A
bill declaring Him both insane and criminal could unquestionably have
been put through the Jewish Sanhedrim without a dissenting vote.
What is insanity? The sterilization of the insane is the strongest
appearing plank in the whole eugenic platform. Yet even here troubling
questions arise, bidding us stay the knife. And what is crime? For
eugenists are sterilizing criminals also--and in at least one instance
the crime was “drunkenness.”
I once wrote to a prominent eugenist in hopes of finding out what makes
a crime a crime--and I did find out. He told me that the essence of
crime was non-conformity. He had hit the nail squarely on the head.
That is the essence of crime exactly, non-obedience to some law. But
what law? Here my correspondent showed himself to be entirely at sea.
He could refer to nothing but the statute law momentarily in effect in
the place where the crime was committed.
Are we to preserve one sort of germ-plasm in California and another in
Massachusetts? A willingness to conform to any and every statute which
a legislature anywhere may see fit to pass is certainly a curious test
of human virtue, of the right to leave an impress on future generations.
As to the nature of insanity, my correspondent was willing to leave
it to the doctors--more especially as Prof. Lombroso, then quite
prominent, had lately identified it with genius. Mr. Wiggam has a
theory of both crime and insanity which at least removes all vagueness
from the terms. Whose germ-plasm is to be allowed to go on down the
ages? The germ-plasm of those who have been able to get named in “Who’s
Who!”
3. SALVATION BY WHO’S WHO
I admit that this is an exaggeration--at the present moment. Eugenists
assure us that they mean to be very temperate. But we know from
experience how temperate a reform movement is likely to become, once it
is fairly launched.
In substance, the “Who’s Who” theory of unnatural selection is actually
developed in a series of articles by Mr. Wiggam reviewing Professor
Lewis M. Terman’s “Genetic Studies of Genius,” which appeared in _The
World’s Work_ during 1926. As usual, Mr. Wiggam beguiles us for a
time with pleasant writing. In this instance it deals with the old
legend of the poor country-boy and his supposed chance of becoming
distinguished. A formidable array of statistics is brought out to show
that it is not much of a chance. The advantage, it seems, all lies with
city-children--stimulated, as they no doubt are, by breathing the fumes
of gasoline.
Three per cent of the people (and these belong to the “professional
classes”) have in America produced nearly one-half of our artists,
we are told. One third of the population (described as being “above
early struggles”) have been responsible for three-fourths of America’s
writers. Something must be the matter. Too much struggle it would
appear. Writer-bearing strata are to be pampered. Good!
Some, of course, will say that what American literature is waiting for
is a few more words from the two-thirds of the population who are not
above early struggles--that even some of our rich and famous authors
wrote better when they were young and poor. But as I do not know the
pedigree of these objectors I shall pass them by and follow the Wiggam
argument as he finds it in Terman.
“Superior intelligence,” says Professor Terman, himself, “is
approximately five times as common among children of superior social
status as among children of inferior social status.”
The flaw in the argument here is of course forgetfulness of the fact
that, whether intelligence descends or not, tradition undoubtedly does.
This same flaw emasculates the eugenic argument everywhere. It saps
the force from Mr. Wiggam’s eulogy of the Edwards family in the first
chapter of “The Fruit of the Family Tree.” He himself admits that in
Doctor Winship’s study, which he makes the foundation of his own, “the
factor of heredity has not been completely separated from the factor of
environment.”[132] And he goes on:
“One can readily imagine that the twelve college presidents that have
been in the [Edwards] line of descent might not all have been men
who were really great educators or executives. Some of them may have
attained the official position by the fact that their relatives may
have been trustees of the various colleges, and simply voted them into
office. Yet an immense part of the distinction of the Edwards family,
beyond question, has been due to their superior natural qualities. We
know this partly from the great achievements of many of the members;
and also we know from studies of other families, where the factors of
heredity and environment have been adequately separated.”
Great achievements? Certainly. But does not family tradition, pride
and culture play its part in great achievement? Did not Harry Leon
Wilson’s immortal Bunker Bean do wonders spurred on by the mere
illusion that he was descended from an Egyptian mummy? And who has
“adequately separated” the factors of heredity and environment in the
history of any family? If Freud and Watson have done nothing else, they
have shown the immense importance of _very early_ training. The technic
which will separate the effects of blood from those of education and
example has yet to be devised. And tradition, or the lack of it, must
be taken into account before we draw conclusions from the history of
so-called “degenerate” families, the Kallikaks and the Jukses. Who can
pretend to interpret the heredity of such unfortunates when the very
point of the whole argument is the fact that they were prostitutes and
thieves?
Family tradition derives from the inexhaustible springs of human shame
and human pride. The blood even of the super-man tends to get thin,
very thin, through successive generations. “Conification” doubtless
thickens it, for conification is the tendency of like to marry with
like. Mr. Wiggam advocates cousin-marriages to help conification along.
Logically he should advocate incest pure and simple. In discussing the
Pharaohs he does have a good word to say for it, but he warns us that
it is baneful when practiced by any but the best families.
But one’s chief objection to the eugenist’s argument is its deficiency
in good faith. Wiggam admits that he has presented only “star cases.”
What he does not admit is that he has presented them incompletely. Thus
of Elizabeth Tuthill, first wife of Richard Edwards, the Connecticut
lawyer who founded the distinguished branch of the Edwards clan, he
says only[133] that she was “a marvelous girl.” Horatio Haskett
Newman, professor of Zoology in the University of Chicago, in chapter
XLIV of his “Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics,”[134] adds the following
details:
“Elizabeth Tuttle [so he spells the name], grandmother of Jonathan
Edwards ... is described as ‘a woman of great beauty, of tall and
commanding appearance, striking carriage, of strong will, extreme
intellectual vigor and mental grasp akin to rapacity, but with an
extraordinary deficiency in moral sense.’ She was divorced from her
husband on the ground of adultery and other immoralities. The evil
trait was in the blood, for one of her sisters murdered her own son
and a brother murdered his own sister. Richard Edwards married again
after his divorce and had five sons and one daughter, but none of their
numerous progeny rose above mediocrity.”
Mr. Wiggam agrees with this latter estimate, for he says, “Later
in life Richard Edwards married Mary Talcott. She was an ordinary,
every-day, commonplace woman. She had ordinary, every-day, commonplace
children. The splendid heredity of Richard Edwards was swamped by the
mating.”[135]
So, if the eugenists had been in control three hundred years ago,
Mary Talcott would have been allowed to marry. But Elizabeth Tuthill
would have been refused a marriage license even had she escaped a
worse fate. Crime and insanity seemed to have marked her for their
own. And yet it was from her, not from the normal Mary Talcott, that
descended (I quote from “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” page 17):
“Timothy Edwards, one of the founders of Yale University. He was the
father of Jonathan Edwards. From Jonathan Edwards, who married also a
wonderful woman, Sarah Pierpont, have descended 12 college presidents,
265 college graduates, 65 college professors, 60 physicians, 100
clergymen, 75 army officers, 60 prominent authors, 100 lawyers, 30
judges, 80 public officers--state governors, city mayors and state
officials--3 congressmen, 2 United States senators and 1 vice-president
of the United States.” And he goes on to mention other notables in this
line of the family, including Aaron Burr; Mrs. Eli Whitney; Winston
Churchill; Edith Carow [widow of Theodore Roosevelt and mother of his
daughter Ethel and of his four sons]; Robert Paine: the Marchioness of
Donegal; the Fairbanks brothers (of platform-scales fame); Melville W.
Bigelow; Morrison R. Waite (former Chief Justice of the United States);
Bishop Vincent (founder of the Chautauqua movement); George Vincent
(head of the Rockefeller Foundation); Grover Cleveland; and U. S. Grant.
The only thing which Mr. Wiggam omitted was the trifling circumstance
which shows that The Eugenics Society would, if it could, have
inadvertently prevented each and every one of these notables from
coming into being.
Yet he thinks that he has discovered a way of distinguishing between
the influences of heredity and of environment--when applied to families.
“Environment,” he says,[136] “is important in determining character,
but precisely how important I doubt very much if we have any means at
present for determining, when it comes to one individual, whether we
consider one particular act or the sum total of his character.... I
doubt if we shall ever be able to determine whether a particular act
by a particular individual, say whether he takes a drink of alcohol
... or whether he commits a crime, is due to his heredity or to his
environment. The causes are so hopelessly intertwined that no one so
far as I am aware has presented the slightest hope of measuring the
relative influence of the two forces _within the individual_.... For
all we know a man may commit a particular crime or take a particular
drink entirely from environment.... But when it comes to the question
as to which one of two individuals is the more likely to commit a crime
at some time in his life or take to excessive drink, we are in reality
dealing with a different set of scientific problems. And when we come
to the question as to which family is likely to have more members who,
in any one age of the world, will be unable to adjust themselves to
sound social behavior ... we are in a field where we can measure the
factors involved by fairly exact methods.”
That is to say, we can measure results--after they have happened. It
may even be granted that we can calculate roughly a family’s likelihood
of producing distinguished descendants, basing the calculation on past
performance. But obviously this in no way decides between the relative
importance of environment and heredity. The question as to whether the
family’s distinction came from its blood or from its traditions remains
precisely where it was. Mr. Wiggam’s reasoning is quite of a piece with
his reliability. He himself exclaims[137] about “the very, very few
people in the world who can think ... the enormous number of people
who cannot think, but who think they can think, and who mistake their
mystical half-knowledge for social wisdom and act upon it.”
What “mystical half-knowledge” may be I do not know. Mystical
knowledge, being intuitive knowledge of God, is by its very definition
complete knowledge or nothing. One must accept or reject it _in toto_.
Mr. Wiggam also uses this word as a term of reproach when[138] he
says, “Vitalism usually leads its adherents to mysticism.” But he
declares himself to be no mechanist. “I have no personal objection to
a purely mechanistic description of the life process itself. I have
been so far unable to see, however, how stimuli which are inconsistent
and unrelated can build up consistent and controlled behavior.”[139]
And he adds: “While I believe biology has triumphantly demonstrated
the mechanistic nature of the life processes themselves, it has
hopelessly failed so far to explain to me thought and behavior. I see
no explanation of this except some sort of dualistic conception ... a
universe in which there is something which is not aimless mechanical
force. We can call this substance ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ or any other
convenient term.”[140]
This is his perfectly valid objection to Watsonian behaviorism. But he
does not seem to see that the use of such convenient terms as mind or
spirit is in its very essence mystical, nor that admitting a mystic
vitalism puts in his hand a means for freeing himself from the tyranny
both of environment and heredity. If there be spirit, man may have a
soul. It may be the choice of this very soul which controls the strange
selection of traits from the parental “chromosomes,” or carriers of
heredity, which he so eloquently describes. That this choice follows
in the long run the law of the greatest probability is what such a
hypothesis would lead us to expect. Thus Psyche would not only build
and rebuild her house, but in a measure select her building materials
from the very start. Mr. Wiggam thinks that the idea of a dominant
environment flatters parents, just as I think that the idea of a
dominant heredity flatters them. Perhaps we can both unite in believing
that the idea of power-owning individual souls in children flatters
nobody and appeals to something much higher than the instinct of
self-regard.
According to a statement prepared by Professor Irving Fisher, of
Yale,[141] the Second International Congress of Eugenics appointed as
long ago as 1921 a committee (of which he was chairman) to organize
the eugenics movement in the United States. Since then the movement
has been competently engineered, its avowed objects being education,
selective immigration laws, the elimination of defectives, the
“proper direction of research,” and the securing of legislative and
administrative aid.
Professor Fisher says, “The Eugenics Society would like to see every
school, college and Chautauqua give regular courses in eugenics....
Some laws need to be passed and a eugenical code established.... This
depends very largely upon education of the legislators.”
So “education” does not mean a campaign for human betterment through
education. It means a campaign to educate people to vote for human
betterment through eugenic means--such as “the elimination of
defectives,” “selective immigration” and “proper” research. “By cutting
off the defectives,” says Professor Fisher, “the general average of
our people can ... be raised.” We know without telling, from memories
of the prohibition campaign, how legislators can be “educated.”
A “eugenical code” would naturally provide conditions under which
marriage licenses would be granted. We are dealing here with no chimera
but with a party with plenty of power, influence and money already at
its disposal. The question of “who is to choose” seems already to have
been settled. Further to determine who is to be chosen, we may go back
for a moment to the “Who’s Who” method.
Dr. Cyril Burke, the English psychologist, devised a problem (described
by Mr. Wiggam in his review of the Terman volume already referred to)
which he put before various classes of school children. Slum children
required an average of 123 seconds to arrive at a solution, while
merchants’ children took but 91, and “the children of professors
and bishops” (presumably Anglican bishops) only 74. Nor do I wish
to conceal the fact that “in the general run of people there is one
eminent man out of every four thousand,” while “among the sons of
English judges there is one eminent man out of every eight.” Ought we
not to import some germ plasm from the British Bench? Anyway, all of
the famous biologists and psychologists and sociologists upon whose
findings the Wiggam arguments are based, took their successful men
either from “Who’s Who,” from some dictionary of biography, or measured
it frankly in dollars and cents.
It might be suggested that not all desirable human traits are those
which lead to wealth or conspicuous position. No Lives of the Saints
are consulted to show the effect of poverty and self-denial upon the
growth of holiness--holiness, presumably, not being hereditary, perhaps
not even eugenic. Prof. Terman does say that nearly all gifted children
come from good homes. But what is a good home? One which tends to
produce Christians, or Mohammedans, or Methodists, or Christian
Scientists, or Poets, or Plastic Dancers?
Anyway, under democracy, according to Mr. Wiggam, the poor are being
bled white and ever whiter through the opportunity given to the best
of them to mount the ladder to something better still, leaving the
residua to their poverty and shame. “Nothing on earth,” he says in the
course of the _World’s Work_ articles, “would improve the condition
of the poor as much or so permanently as decreasing their numbers....
Just in so far as democracy works successfully in giving the masses
opportunity, it defeats its own end, biologically.... Democracy and
liberalism will fail and plunge men back into a social and intellectual
Dark Ages unless they have the will and vision to provide a constant
and adequate eugenical remedy for the biological disaster brought about
by their own success.”
And in “The New Decalogue” (G. Stanley Hall says “one lays it down with
the feeling that biology is the basis of a new decalogue as important
and as authentic as the old one.”): “Your wise men are searching for
a cure for tuberculosis, insanity, etc.... Should they find such
a panacea ... every biologist would apply it without a moment’s
hesitation. But if you apply that panacea and do nothing else you will
wreck the very race you have saved.”[142]
What else must we do, then? It appears that we must first make the
environment hard, so as to kill off the unfit, and then make it easy
for the survivors. Do you get the point? And it is going to be made
selectively difficult for those not approved of by the Eugenics
Society. An easy environment is safe only for those who have passed
their examinations.[143]
Mr. Wiggam is planning for an army in which all are generals. Poverty,
inconspicuousness, slummishness, are relative terms. No sooner have
you eliminated one grade than you are logically bound to eliminate
another. There will remain no hewers of wood and drawers of water--as
if the world could exist for a day deprived of these blessed and humble
“failures.” But in the eugenic utopia no more shall it be said, “if one
cannot paint, one must grind the colors.” All must paint, or become as
the barren fig-tree.
But if the poor are to be eliminated, why not the recalcitrant? Why
not those, who, in the old phrase of Grover Cleveland, show “offensive
partisanship”--for some cause not approved of by the ruling party?
Granted the principle, why should Protestants tolerate Catholics? Or
Baptists Presbyterians? Or Old-School Baptists New-School Baptists?
Why, even, should Professor Terman and Mr. Wiggam tolerate J. B.
Eggen, who has written, “The long-standing problem of heredity
versus environment has been solved in favor of environment?” Or, for
that matter, Professor Terman Mr. Wiggam himself? If we are to have
uniformity of this sort, let us have it. Let there be a driving from
life’s stage of those who would presume to raise any chickens but
Plymouth Rocks, and may the devil take the hindmost.
Personally, I have nothing to fear. I am myself descended from our
early English settlers--though, as I watch the antics of some of my
remote cousins, I sometimes am anything but proud of the fact. Nor do I
like to think that my blood shall flow down through the generations by
any “privilege” granted by Mr. Wiggam and his ilk.
He speaks of sanity as a test for survival, and then speaks of “the
kind of peace that came to Nietzsche, bravest soul since Jesus.”[144]
Does he not know that the only peace that ever came to Nietzsche was
the peace of final mental decay? And what does he mean when he dares
to exclaim:[145] “Oh, for a Socrates, a Seneca, a Pasteur, a Huxley,
a Nietzsche, a Jesus in every nursery and school-room?” A Nietzsche
and a Jesus! Has Mr. Wiggam never heard of that scourge of small cords
which was once used upon the backs of those who sought to make of the
Father’s house a den of thieves?
FOOTNOTES:
[106] _Vide_ “The Descent of Man,” second edition, Collier and Son,
1905, vol. I, p. 205.
[107] “The Descent of Man,” p. 780.
[108] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 18.
[109] “The Story of Philosophy,” p. 506.
[110] _Vide_ the appendix, pp. 115 to 117.
[111] _Vide_ _America_, September, 17, 1927.
[112] Cf. _Journal of the American Association_, April 22, 1922.
[113] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 91.
[114] “Unhappiness indicates wrong thinking, just as ill health a bad
regimen.”
[115] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” pp. 22 and 23.
[116] _Op. cit._, p. 30.
[117] “The New Decalogue of Science,” by Albert Edward Wiggam, p. 35.
[118] _Loc. cit._
[119] _Op. cit._, p. 38.
[120] _Ibid._, p. 179.
[121] _Ibid._, p. 180.
[122] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 172.
[123] _Ibid._, p. 173.
[124] _Ibid._, p. 173.
[125] _Op. cit._, p. 136.
[126] “The Next Age of Man,” p. 126.
[127] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” p. 300.
[128] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” p. 301.
[129] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 100.
[130] _Ibid._, pp. 100-101.
[131] _Ibid._, p. 110.
[132] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” p. 20.
[133] _Ibid._, p. 16.
[134] Page 602. He is quoting in substance from “Human Conservation
from Genetics,” by Herbert E. Walter.
[135] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” pp. 16-17.
[136] “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” pp. 332-333.
[137] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 275.
[138] “The Next Age of Man,” p. 133.
[139] _Ibid._, p. 132.
[140] _Ibid._, p. 134.
[141] _Vide_ “The Fruit of the Family Tree,” appendix.
[142] “The New Decalogue of Science,” p. 68.
[143] See “A parable of Wheat and Men,” “The Next Age of Man,” p. 21.
[144] “New Decalogue of Science,” p. 253.
[145] _Ibid._, p. 278.