_HEREDITY._
All those to whose lot it has fallen to minister to the wants of
sufferers from nervous disease must have come across cases which they
were expected to benefit, but for whom, manifestly, very little could be
done. So great is human perversity, that though cases of epilepsy and
nervous exhaustion are every day regarded as incurable merely because
the most efficacious modes of treatment remain untried, these persons of
defective nervous system and perverted growth are often supposed capable
of development into ordinary people after a few weeks or months of
special attention on the part of those to whose care they are confided.
It seems useless to point out the wide difference between the two
classes. The non-medical mind cannot or will not understand it. Our
ignorance on such matters is boundless.
It has always appeared to me that these unfortunate defective people are
truly our sin-bearers, for they reap to the full the consequences of our
mistakes; they inherit the results of a pernicious order of affairs. The
parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on
edge. Cursed from their infancy with a fatal blight; expected to arrive
at a moral standard which is wholly beyond them; tormented in childhood
by vain attempts to force them to the level of other children; the small
stock of intelligence--which love, the great educator, might in some
instances have developed to a limited extent--dwarfed and dissipated by
impatient ignorance; objects too often of the heteropathy of which Miss
Cobbe speaks so feelingly in her exquisite work entitled “Duties of
Women;” these unhappy sufferers are surely spectacles fit to move the
pity of gods and men.
Yet, in cases where the nerves, by means of which alone the moral sense
can manifest itself, are altogether wanting, these are the very persons
who are glibly declared to be utterly bad. Just because they are
deficient, just because reformatory efforts can have no effect upon
them, it is thought excusable, and even laudable, to bestow upon them
hatred and scorn. And it frequently happens that those who so readily
mete out their hatred and scorn, believe that the Carpenter of Nazareth
ate with publicans and sinners, and consorted with those who were
possessed of devils; that the woman taken in adultery was not condemned;
that the dying thief on the cross was admitted to Paradise.
To care for the defective; to bestow on them the love that has been
withheld; to reverence them as the bearers of our common sins; to
mitigate their sufferings and shield them from injustice; this seems to
me the most Christlike work that can be undertaken by any philanthropist
in any age.
But some of these cases are not hopeless. If we have but knowledge and
patience enough to place them in the best conditions, much may be done
for the greater number of distorted beings. The longer we withhold our
aid, the less are our chances of success. Their original surroundings
are generally bad, owing to the same tendencies being inherited more or
less by other members of their families. And we must remember that, in
the treatment of nervous disease, we may show our wisdom quite as much
by what we refrain from doing as by what we do. We must not start with
the idea that we have to work a sudden reformation, but that we have to
allow the organism room to grow naturally and in the right direction. We
cannot create moral growth, or growth of any kind, but we can minister
to it and promote it by placing the organism in the conditions where it
shall absorb the largest amount of nutriment--of vitality,--and we can
then direct the pressure which determines its form.
We constantly see around us instances of persons, not naturally
defective, who have been subjected to lifelong distortion. In an
enlightened community this should be impossible. Place in a low
conservatory a plant that has a capacity for growing into a forest
tree; withhold from it the needed nutriment, and it will remain dwarfed;
deprive it altogether either of the food which it must assimilate in
order to maintain vitality, or of the light and air without which waste
cannot be promoted and function performed, and our plant must die. Give
it all these necessaries, but keep it in the low conservatory, and when
it reaches the roof of the building it will remain stunted or grow awry.
Perhaps the nutriment that ought to have enabled it to shoot upwards
will go into the lower branches, and the tree will become misshapen.
Does not this often happen to the human plant? Is not its lower nature
developed at the expense of the higher, because bounds are set to its
upward development?
The highest type of human being, then, is not merely that which has the
most vitality, but also that which can distribute it in due proportion
to its various parts, and that which has been permitted to expand
naturally in right directions. The extent to which we possess this
vitality,--the power we have of assimilating the force stored up in our
food, to repair waste and ensure growth,--is largely determined by
heredity.
True, this fact is in some quarters violently disputed; but not, I
think, in quarters deserving of much attention. Distorted people are
generally vehement, and resort to bare assertion and flat contradiction
when observation, analogy, and rational argument are all with their
opponent. It is well, perhaps, when the perverted force-current can
steam off so harmlessly instead of working mischief in other channels;
just as it is well when excitable political speeches and articles save
us from dangerous secret organisations.
A young lady once declined to entertain the idea of heredity for a
moment, on the ground that, supposing her to be the unfortunate
possessor of a grandmother who was a monster of wickedness, she would be
expected to prove herself a monster of wickedness likewise. It was in
vain for a gentleman present to point out that we usually have more than
one grandmother, and that if her other grandmother happened to be an
angel of light, she might with equal justice be expected to develop
angelic characteristics. She saw her side of the argument, but not his.
As a matter of fact, we know so little of the numbers of ancestors from
all of whom we may inherit, and we understand so little of the
conditions determining the inheritance of given characteristics, that we
are not yet in a position to entertain expectations at all. All we know
is, that we do not generally get so far as finding grapes on thorns and
figs on thistles. The interesting subject of heredity still offers a
wide field to the observer. So far, physiological revelation does but
prove the truth of the Biblical revelation--that nothing is of
ourselves, but that all is of God.
On the one hand too much has been made of heredity, and on the other
hand too little. Sometimes its warnings are wholly disregarded;
sometimes disease is regarded as inevitable if it has already existed in
a family, and if there are any symptoms of its recurrence, wise
precautions being consequently neglected. Good education would often
avert the evil. Unfortunately, it is in families displaying neurotic
tendencies that education is usually most hopelessly bad. It would be
easy to give numbers of instances in the upper classes where nervous
disease is, with the best intentions, literally being coined. Heredity
does not mean that certain hard and fast qualities are displayed by the
parents and inherited by the children, but that certain tendencies may
develop--pathologically or otherwise--in suitable surroundings. Insane
persons may have no insanity in their families, but may yet have
resulted from a combination of neurotic stocks, the conditions in which
the utmost might have been made of their defective structure having been
denied them. Indeed, the means resorted to in order to reform such
people would be ridiculous were not the whole affair so infinitely
pathetic. The smile of derision would be oftener on our lips but for the
tear of pity which follows close behind it.
Many persons rebel against the doctrine of heredity because they
consider it destructive of faith in God. Surely their own faith must
rest on very insecure foundations. Belief in an all-loving God can but
be strengthened by a knowledge of the means by which He develops and
guides His creations. Kinematics, mathematics, biology, all natural and
physical science--the means by which we study His great and continuous
“Act,” the universe--should serve to increase our faith, since in Him we
live and move and have our being. Even denying scientists do but reveal
Him. If it be true that when we would do good evil is present with us,
it is also true that when we do what seems evil we often bring about
good results. How can there be conflict between the laws of Nature and
the laws of Nature’s God?
Again, it is contended that it is possible for us to live an evil life,
and, by means of scientific knowledge, avert the suffering which, in a
God-fearing community is the reward of evil, the race being thereby
saved from destruction. A very little consideration will suffice to show
us that such contentions are without justification. The laws of God are
not to be evaded. We bring ourselves to nothing when we “kick against
the pricks.” We have seen that if any part be disused, nutriment can no
longer be attracted to it. Let that part of the organism by which the
moral sense manifests itself fall into disuse, and disintegration has
begun in that part--that is to say, a larger amount of waste than can be
repaired by nutrition. Supposing the defect to be counterbalanced by
excessive activity of another part of the organism, this is no true
compensation. No development of the lower part can atone for the loss of
the higher. We should, at best, have one-sided beings, who lack the
social instinct and must run counter to one another’s aims. Mutual
destruction would result from their downward progress, and regulations
previously agreed upon would be disregarded as the higher nature
deteriorated. Moreover, no excessively one-sided organism can remain
healthy. In such cases we commonly see the development of suicidal
tendencies.[8] Our degenerate tribe would thus be suicidal both
collectively and individually. In the most favourable circumstances
imaginable, their career would resemble that of “The-do-as-you-likes” in
Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies;” but, as a matter of fact, no selfish
tribe could have such a good time of it as even these unfortunates had,
since roast pigs are not usually found running about in convenient
proximity to the lazy.
It cannot be too widely taught, then, that the moment we withdraw
ourselves from the paring and shaping action of life’s sieves, and
choose only what is pleasant, our deterioration begins. Physical disease
follows close at the heels of moral lethargy, just as physical disease
may impair the moral sense. And the degenerative process being begun,
our children and our children’s children, even unto the fourth
generation, may bear the burden of our shortcomings.
In our efforts to raise a healthy race, we are apt to make one very
serious blunder. We forget that the word _nervous_ has two meanings. In
its truer sense it implies strength, not weakness. Persons suffering
from nerve-trouble have come to be called nervous, and so the sensitive
organisation,--the finest, most highly developed organisation,--is quite
unjustly depreciated. The healthy sea-anemone is less sensitive than the
healthy human being. Would it therefore be preferable to be a
sea-anemone?
The confusion between the large and complex nervous organisation and a
diseased or defective condition has been aided by the fact that the
genius--the truly nervous man in the higher sense, the largest offshoot
from the great force-current--is invariably placed in hard conditions in
youth. He pays the penalty for being before his time. He belongs to a
higher standard than that into which he is forced. In the family nest he
is the ugly duckling; in the world he is persecuted. When his marvellous
insight and keen intelligence enable him to foresee the remote but
lasting pernicious effects of practices that are clung to by his fellows
for the sake of their immediate advantage, he falls by the hand of the
assassin or is universally credited with madness. Centuries after his
death, when his community has painfully toiled to his level, his
greatness is recognised, and he is deified or canonised.
It is perhaps well that the growth of such offshoots is limited in every
age by a mental atmosphere as real as the atmosphere surrounding our
globe and limiting our aerial flights. Apparently it is not decreed that
human progress shall be rapid. Nevertheless, a too wholesale destruction
of our most highly organised members must certainly ensure that
evolution backwards of which I spoke in another chapter.
The fact is, we find it hard to distinguish between genius and
eccentricity. The uncontrolled eccentricities of the matured do so much
harm, that it is found necessary to suppress them. But we should
remember that the genius is always eccentric in youth unless he is
allowed a very wide area for development--and this is the last service
his friends are willing to do him. He has, as it were, to develop into a
large circle. His great vitality and many-sidedness enable him to take
advantage of any chance diminution of pressure, and in each direction
where resistance is least he shoots out long points and angles. If any
of these angles be lopped or violently discouraged, he may be a
one-sided or distorted being. Let him alone, however, and in due course
he will fill in the spaces between his angles and grow into a finely
rounded being. But the magnificent virtue of letting one another alone
is still little cultivated by our community.
Now, persons who are merely eccentric do not shoot out their angles in a
variety of directions and fill in the spaces as soon as opportunity is
granted them. They have only one or two long angles, to which they
continue to add till they become such a nuisance that the peace and
safety of the community demand their control. Both genius and
eccentricity being hereditary, and the logical outcome of extreme
eccentricity in one generation being insanity in the next, we need to
exercise care in our dealings with these abnormal developments. To drive
men of genius into the ranks of the eccentrics is a very dangerous
policy. Let us honestly recognise the fact that we are all of us
potential madmen.
Curiously enough, those who have the least pretension to sound
organisation and rounded development are most often lauded as men of
genius. Talent in one special direction developed at the expense of more
essential parts of the organism, not an exceptional vitality, secures
them this distinction. We should be cautious as to the objects we choose
for admiration, since, by a natural law, that which we admire becomes
prevalent.
Some persons propose to reform the world by means of checking
reproduction from unfit types. But this measure would be useless so long
as our conditions continue to coin the thing we would destroy. And if we
could alter our conditions, the measure would be unnecessary, as the
unfit already existing would soon die a natural death or be suitably
modified. In some cases the wholesale change suggested would have very
bad results, for the children of misdirected geniuses may possibly
revert to the former standard and inherit the original genius of the
parent without his recent aberrations. Our measures would but serve
therefore to check the reproduction of these highly desirable types. In
the midst of our black ignorance on such matters, our wisest course is
to refrain from violent and irrevocable action. Instead of hurrying to
lop people’s angles, it would be well if we were first to try the effect
of removing pressure from the spaces between them.
The genius is proverbially known by his quick pulse, though the same
symptom may be observed in many defective people. Waste and repair alike
go on quickly. He is eminently adaptable; he takes any shape. But the
great test of the genuineness of the article is his sincerity. Above all
things must his higher moral sense remain intact.
History has given us one splendid example of the highest type of genius
in the great Dutch hero, William the Silent; the man who, to use the
words of his biographer, bore the burden of a nation’s sorrows on his
shoulders _with a smiling face_. A homeless wanderer with a price set
upon his head, poor, friendless and unsupported, this man opposed
himself to the trained legions of Spain, the wealth of Brazil, and the
tremendous machinery of the Inquisition.
The result was the independence of the United Provinces!
And the cause of it?
Here let us quote Father William’s own words.
“Before seeking to conclude a treaty with any earthly potentate,” he
writes to his brother Louis, “_I had entered into an alliance with the
King of Kings_.”
We are not surprised to learn that this man fell by the hand of an
assassin, with a prayer for others on his lips.