Every truth man has discovered, every sound moral precept, is rooted
in Nature. She is the rough model to be followed by man if his
institutions are to endure. He goes wrong when he opposes her laws; he
is right when he is in agreement with her, refining away her crudeness.
Man creates nothing; he can only imitate, often poorly. He boasts of
his works--really they are the product of Nature working through him,
using him as an instrument.
We have seen that Nature does not hesitate to destroy the individual if
the species to which it belongs is thereby benefitted. She looks beyond
the present generation to the welfare of the race that is to be, thus
teaching us the highest morality we can know, the broadest religion,
i.e., that the good of the race, the COMMON GOOD, is all important, and
that the individual should willingly sacrifice his labor, his life,
when the good of humanity demands it. Jesus Christ, Socrates, and a
host of less known martyrs have proved their devotion to the common
good by making the supreme sacrifice. In so doing they have hewn to the
line chalked out by Mother Nature eons ago when inorganic matter first
felt the stir of life. Jesus was announcing this principle when he
said, “For whosoever will save his life”--strive for self alone--“shall
lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake”--and the sake of
humanity which Jesus himself valued higher than his own life--“shall
find it.” Though only a few will have occasion to suffer martyrdom, the
call to all of us is to live the life of unselfishness, be the end what
it may. To live for the race is just as noble, if less dramatic, as to
die for it.
Thus we find that Nature’s most vital principle is in perfect accord
with the profoundest religious truths. We have been taught that Nature
is cruel, that her hands are red with the blood of the innocent, but
this idea was born of our short-sightedness. We could not see beyond
the outward act to the underlying law and its results.
For man so to shape his life and deeds as to be in harmony with
the great law of natural selection and with the fundamental
principle of religion does not mean self-effacement, the suppression
of individuality. On the contrary, it means self-development,
individuality in the best sense. As a species or a race is composed of
individuals, the more highly developed are the individuals the greater
the species. Self-development is the growth of the individual out of
narrow selfishness and in accord with the laws of human betterment.
Selfishness expanded, refined and ennobled becomes altruism, the love
of others.
That the selfish person defeats his own ends, cheats himself, is a
truism. Only the unselfish person, holding humanity dearer than his own
self, enjoys to the fullest all that belongs to selfhood, for he alone
has the capacity for real enjoyment--or deserves it. The supremely
selfish--the criminal, the grafter, the one who seeks to profit in any
way at the expense of others--stands in the same relation to his race
as the inferior animal to its species--he pulls down the average of the
race, and is at cross purposes with Nature.
To condone in one’s self any of the many forms of selfishness, whether
it be greed, theft, lying, lust, or vanity, is to put one’s self in the
same class with those defective wild creatures which Nature ruthlessly
destroys.
When a great ethical doctrine is grounded on a scientific basis it
becomes doubly convincing. Let the whole truth in regard to each
individual’s duty to the race be taught--the scientific half of it
along with the emotional, idealistic half. No one who feels the full
force of this truth will, in order to “make a living,” take out of the
COMMON GOOD fund more than he puts into it, but less, rather. It should
be instilled into the minds of youth that the welfare of the race is
the supreme duty of each, and that the greatest individual happiness
is attained only through the self-development and self-expression of
the individual along this line. But, alas! the enlightened legislatures
of some of our sovereign states have forbid the teaching of natural
selection to children. The reason given is that it might rob them of
their religion!
The time is near when the conduct of man in every field of endeavor
will be tested by the standard of loyalty and devotion to the common
good. Certain gainful occupations injurious to the common welfare are
already gone or going. Eliminated as unfit will be the greedy parasites
that fasten themselves onto the social body on pretense of aiding some
industry to function, and who give little or nothing in return for
the public pap that fills their maws to repletion--eliminated just
as Nature eliminates the animal that would bring degeneracy to its
species. They will be forced to take up a work wherein their services
shall equal their pay. The route between the producer and the consumer
will be shortened, and the two will stand nearer on a level--as viewed
from the price of the product.
This lesson from the book of Nature we have been studying has a
universal application. Its truths are applicable in every field and
department wherein man and his activities are employed--in private
conduct, religion, government and industry.
* * * * *
Of all animals man is most subject to disease and defect in body and
in mind. Sickly, or mal-formed wild animals are so rare as seldom
to be seen. This is almost as true of domesticated animals, though
epidemics sometimes sweep them off. Animals mentally defective
are almost unknown. But man is assailed with a thousand ailments.
Defective organs, functional disorders, chronic invalidism are common.
Malformations of body, also of brain causing idiocy, stupidity,
insanity and crime, are a hundred times more frequent in man than in
lower animals, wild or domesticated. Why this difference? The answer is
easy for anyone familiar with the laws of evolution.
The sedulous sifting by natural selection of animals in the wild state
has left no sickly or half-witted degenerates to burden the world with
a like progeny. If at rare intervals the law of variation should drop a
mal-formed specimen into Nature’s sieve it would be quickly eliminated
along with the great mass of averages. Practically the same is true of
domesticated animals where the watchful eye of man is substituted for
Nature’s.
As natural selection is hampered in its operation among domesticated
animals by the interference of man, so is it limited on the human
plane. There, we find virtually no selection, neither natural nor
artificial. Hence the degeneracy--physical, mental, moral. Both Nature
and man, in their respective fields of operation, select only a few
of the best for propagating purposes--Nature eliminating the rest by
death, and man by sterilization. But on the human plane man--acting
mercifully toward the individual, mercilessly toward the race--does
his best to thwart Nature. He prolongs the lives of weaklings, of the
maimed-from-birth, of the deaf and dumb and blind, and of the mentally
sub-normal. So far, all is well. But he permits these victims of an
inferior ancestry to marry and procreate almost without limit. What
then can we expect but for the world to be burdened with invalids,
runts, and the mal-formed--cursed with morons, sub-morons, half-wits,
quarter-wits, and predestined criminals? And worse for the entire race,
this class shades upward by imperceptible degrees into all gradations,
mingling its inferior strains with the best. It has always been so;
therefore all of us, far more than wild animals, have a mixed ancestry,
of the good and the less good.
Why is it that man has not learned to rid himself of this lower fringe
of degeneracy as is done in the case of every other species of animal?
It is mainly because the superstition of an out-worn theology has so
muddled his brains that he has been unable to see that the laws of
Nature are as applicable to himself as to all other creatures. He has
always fancied himself as occupying a higher plane than that on which
Nature has her laboratory. So he has always depended on “divine” laws,
not those of “carnal nature,” to plant his feet on higher ground. And
we see the result. Notwithstanding his high intellectual and moral
faculties, as a race, he is the most defective animal on earth. What is
the remedy?
If we would solve this pressing problem we must apply the laws of
Nature to man in some such manner as they have always applied to
the rest of the animal kingdom. The unfit must be prevented from
reproducing its kind. How? There are only two methods: Nature’s, by
bringing about the death of the unfit prospective parent, and man’s,
the sterilization method. But among the better traits of man which
have been slowly evolved in his agelong struggle reaching back to
an immemorial past is sympathy, mercy. This bars him from using
Nature’s method of preventing undesirable offspring; nor can he use the
sterilization method except in extreme cases. Born criminals, perverts,
and other abnormal misfits who persist in indulging their selfish
passions in detriment of the Common Good--for such, comprising perhaps
5 to 10 per cent of the race, sterilization is the quickest and surest
preventive. Once the milder type of defectives are made to realize the
heinous crime of bringing degenerate children into the world they would
in most cases refrain from marriage and procreation. Wise restrictive
laws and an awakened public opinion would do the rest. This eugenical
system is the only one that promises hope for the salvation of the
race. From generation to generation, owing to the fecundity of the less
fit and their proneness to “let Nature take her course,” their numbers
increase, and so, too, the danger increases of their swamping the
fitter.
* * * * *
From the exposition of natural selection it will be seen that all
the laws of organic development--either of individuals, varieties
or species--fall under two heads: those of heredity (the harking
back to ancestral characters) and those of environment (all outside
influences). Variation, which seems so contradictory of the law of
“like producing like,” is in reality a result of heredity. Offspring
inherit traits, more or less repressive in one or both parents, in
different degrees--this is variation.
The gist of the matter is: heredity transmits to environment the
ancestral traits or characters, good and bad, of each creature. From
these inherited traits environmental laws select and nourish those best
fitted to each particular environment, and neglect, repress or destroy
the less fit. At the birth of the individual heredity has done its
work, for good or ill; then environment receives the legacy bequeathed
by its ancestry and completes the job--whether for the individual’s
weal or woe depends both upon the quality of the material heredity
handed down, and upon the character of the particular environment that
works upon the material. As prior to birth heredity is the only factor
in producing the individual, the absolute necessity of preventing
the reproduction of the unfit, the inferior, becomes apparent; as
after birth environment is the only factor, or sum of factors, in his
production, the making the best possible environment for every one is
the one absolute essential.
The individual man, no less than other organisms, is a creature of
heredity and environment. This is as true of his intellect and of his
moral character as of his body. He is not a thing separate and apart,
but a link in the chain of cause and effect. He is orbit-bound as
planets are. Every thought of his brain, every desire of his heart,
every deed of his hand is a natural and (circumstances considered)
unavoidable result of the laws of Nature working in and through
him--as surely as every cause produces an effect and that every cause
is itself an effect of a prior cause. In cases where opposing forces
or influences tend to move the will in different directions it obeys
the stronger--follows the path of least resistance. It cannot do
otherwise--no more than Newton’s apple could have moved toward the moon.
Scientists are generally agreed that none but “inborn” traits, the
inherited ones, are transmissible to posterity--though Dr. Krammerer
has recently furnished some evidence to the contrary. If the
generally accepted view be the true one, then of course “acquired”
characters--the “improvements” of environment--die with the individual.
Certainly, environment cannot put into the individual what it had no
capacity for at birth; it can only develop what is already there. Hence
the conclusion: We may, we must, improve the environment for the good
of the living generations as they arise; but above all, prevent the
reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable benefit of the countless
generations that are now waiting their turn in the womb of the future.
* * * * *
Man is such an egotistical creature--being a near relative of the
gods, as he imagined, and being specially created and made lord over
the other creatures--that he has always regarded himself as above and
beyond Nature and not subject to her laws, or only so far as his body
was concerned--that being the one link connecting him with Nature.
As the little boy evolved from his inner consciousness his idea of
the camel, of which he had never seen even a picture, so man in olden
times evolved his theories of the origin of the world and of himself,
and the part he was to play in life. According to his primitive
way of thinking, the earth--which he regarded as the center of the
universe--was a very small affair, over which Nature presided as a sort
of satrap whose rulership was subject to interference at any time by
the Great King. According to his theory there were two sets of laws,
natural and divine, and they were often in conflict with each other.
But man always had the right to appeal his case to the higher authority
when not satisfied with Nature’s rulings. She had neither part nor
jurisdiction in the human mind or soul--that coming not by way of her
but directly from God.
This was essentially the belief of millions for thousands of years, and
it is the belief of millions today. This is the soil in which nearly
all the creeds of today are rooted.
The old theologians made a distinction between God’s works and Nature’s
works, divine laws and natural laws. It is because of this dual idea of
God and Nature that the most fruitful scientific discovery of all time
is barred from the schools in some states and denounced as “atheism”
from many a pulpit. Those who hold to the old theology do not realize
how completely science has destroyed the foundations of their ancient
belief, nor have they any conception of what an incalculable service
modern thought has been to religion in clearing it of its impediments.
The bringing of science and reason to play in the progress of man, the
bringing of the blind forces of Nature more and more under subjection
to his enlightened intelligence--this is but Nature exalting herself.
Having built up a higher plane, the human plane, Nature works upon that
to refine and ennoble herself--not purposely, or only so far as man
works with a purpose. All, all is Nature.
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious printing errors, such as partially printed letters and
punctuation, were corrected. Full stops missing at the end of sentences
and abbreviations were added.
Spelling in common use at the time of publishing, such as “aligator”
and “agelong”, has been kept as is. Obvious typos have been corrected.