many lawyers, and at the moment, I think, not a single scientific
expert, at least among the Commons. This is not really a sordid
argument, though it may appear so. The labourer, after all, is worthy of
his hire; but in the scientific world it very, very seldom happens that
the hire is worthy of the labourer. Even to this day there is plenty of
truth in the description of the attitude of Mr. Meagles towards Mr.
Doyce as detailed by the author of _Little Dorrit_. Perhaps that is
partly because it is generally the man of business, and not the unhappy
man of science, who gains the money produced by scientific discoveries.
These are often, if not usually, made by accident, and by a man on the
track of something else, on the elucidation of which he is probably so
intent that he cannot spare time for side-issues, very likely never even
thinks of them. Sir James Dewar discovered the principle of the "Thermos
flask" whilst he was working at the exceedingly difficult subject of the
liquefaction of air. I hope Sir James had the prescience to patent his
discovery, and reap the reward which was due to him; but, if he did, he
is one amongst a thousand who never took this trouble and of whom _Sic
vos non vobis_ might well be said. When Sabatier had shown the
importance of combinations of hydrogen effected by what is known as a
catalyst, numerous patents were taken out--by other people, of
course--on which were founded very flourishing businesses. Sabatier
profited by none of these--so I understand. He received a Nobel prize
for his discoveries; but another hath his heritage.
Though science has not received any great encouragement, yet in spite of
that--the cynic might say because of that--it has made amazing progress
during the past half-century. Mr. Chesterton somewhere notes that "a
time may easily come when we shall see the great outburst of science in
the Nineteenth Century as something quite as splendid, brief, unique,
and ultimately abandoned as the outburst of art at the Renaissance."
That, of course, may be so, but as to the outburst there can be no
question, nor of its persistence to the present day. That also is surely
a curious phenomenon; for, as regards most other things, we seem to be
in the trough of the wave, and not merely in these islands but all over
the civilised world. In Art, in Music, in Literature, in the Drama, it
would be difficult to argue in favour of a pre-eminence, or even of an
equality of the present age, comparing it with its predecessors.
Take the politicians of the world; it is perhaps difficult, even
foolish, for us who are living with them to prophesy with any
approximation of accuracy what the historian of a future day may say
about them. He may sum them up as respectable, honest mediocrities
trying to do their best under exceptionally difficult circumstances; he
may put them lower; he may put them higher; he may differentiate between
those of different nations; but there is little doubt that, with the
exception of the American President, he will not be able to point to any
one of the calibre of Pitt or of Bismarck or of the less severely tried
Disraeli or Gladstone.
But just the reverse is the case in science, which has men of the very
first rank living, working, and discovering to-day. There are indeed
signs that even our Government is cognizant of this. The creation of a
Department of Industrial Scientific Research, the provision of a
substantial income for the same, the increase of research-grants to
learned societies, these and other things show that some attempt will be
made to recognise the value of science to the State. Further, the
lesson seems to have gone home to some few at least that there is no
difference between what have been absurdly called Pure and Applied
Science, since so very many "Applied" discoveries--such as the
"Thermos"--arose in the course of what certainly would have been
described as "Pure" researches.
It is to the public advantage that every educated person should know
something about science; nor is this by any means as big or difficult an
achievement as some may imagine. It is not necessary to teach any very
large number of persons very much about any particular science or group
of sciences. What is really important is that people should imbibe some
knowledge of scientific methods--of the meaning of science. This can be
done from the study of quite a few fundamental propositions of any one
science under a good teacher--a first essential. Any person thus
educated will, for the remainder of his life, be able at least to
understand what is meant by science and the scientific method of
approaching a problem. He will not, like an educational troglodyte at a
recent Conference, refuse to describe anything as science which is not
capable of mathematical treatment, nor allude compendiously to
physiological study as "the cutting up of frogs." In a word, he will be
an educated man, which can no more be said of one ignorant of science
than it can be of one whose mind has never experienced the softening
influence of letters.
So far, everybody whose opinion counts seems to be agreed; but in any
plea for an extended and improved teaching of science, certain points
ought not to be left out of count. In the first place, science is not
the key to all locks; there are many important things--some of the most
important things in life--with which it has nothing whatever to do. It
will be well to recall Mr. Balfour's words at the opening of the
National Physical Laboratory: "Science depends on measurement, and
things not measurable are therefore excluded, or tend to be excluded,
from its attention. But Life and Beauty and Happiness are not
measurable. If there could be a unit of happiness, politics might begin
to be scientific." It follows that there are a number of subjects on
which the scientific man is just as fit, or as unfit, to express an
opinion as any other man. The intense preoccupation which serious
scientific studies demand, may render the man who is engaged therein
even less competent to express an opinion on alien subjects than one
whose attention, less concentrated, has time to range over diverse
fields of study. Readers of Darwin's _Life_ will remember his confession
that he had lost all taste for music, art, and literature; that he
"could not endure to read a line of poetry" and found Shakespeare "so
intolerably dull that it nauseated" him; and finally, that his mind
seemed "to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out
of a large collection of facts."
Despite this warning as to the limits of science, we have no lack of
instances of scientific men posing as authorities on subjects on which
they had no real right to be heard, and, what is worse, being accepted
as such by the uninstructed crowd. Thus Professor Huxley, who, as some
one once said, "made science respectable," was wont to utter pontifical
pronouncements on the subject of Home Rule for Ireland. His knowledge of
that country was quite rudimentary, and his visits to it had been as few
and as brief as if he had been its Sovereign; but that did not prevent
him from delivering judgment, nor unfortunately deter many from
following that judgment as if it had been inspired. I am not now arguing
as to the rights and wrongs of Huxley's view on the matter in question:
I have my own opinion on that. What I am urging is that his position,
whether as a zoologist or, incidentally, as a great master of the
English language, in no way entitled him to express an opinion or
rendered him a better authority on such a question than any casual
fellow-traveller in a railway carriage might easily be.
This is bad enough; but what is far worse is when scientific experts on
the strength of their study of Nature assume the right of uttering
judicial pronouncements on moral and sociological questions, judgments
some at least of which are subversive of both decency and liberty. Thus
we have lately been told that it is "wanton cruelty" to keep a weak or
sickly child alive; and the medical man, under a reformed system of
medical ethics, is to have leave and licence to put an end to its life
in a painless manner. To what enormities and dastardly agreements this
might lead need hardly be suggested; and I am quite confident that the
members of the honourable profession of physic, to which I am proud to
belong, have no desire whatever for such a reform of the law or of their
ethics. Then we are told in the same address (Bateson, _British
Association Addresses in Australia_, 1914) that on the whole a decline
in the birth-rate is rather a good thing, and that families averaging
four children are quite enough to keep the world going comfortably. The
date of this address will be noted; and the fact that the war, which was
then just beginning, has probably caused its author and has caused
everybody else to see the utter futility of such assertions.
However, if we are to rear only four children per marriage, and if we
are to give the medical man liberty to weed out the weaklings, it
behoves us to see that the children whom we produce are of the best
quality. Let us, therefore, hie to the stud-farm, observe its methods
and proceed to apply them to the human race. We must definitely prevent
feeble-minded persons from propagating their species. Within limits,
that is a proposition with which all instructed persons would agree,
though few, we imagine, would put their opinions so uncharitably as the
lecturer did: "The union of such social vermin we should no more permit
than we would allow parasites to breed on our own bodies." But we must
go farther than this, and introduce all sorts of restrictions on
matrimony, until finally it comes to be a matter to be arranged under
rigid laws by a jury of elderly persons--all, we may feel perfectly
sure, "cranks" of the first water.
In what _milieu_ are their findings to take effect? It is very important
to consider that. The author from whom I have been quoting tells us what
we want to know. Man, he tells us, is "a rather long-lived animal, with
great powers of enjoyment, if he does not deliberately forgo them." In
the past, we are told, "superstitious and mythical ideas of sin have
predominantly controlled these powers." We have changed all that now; as
the parent in _Punch_ says to the crying child by the seashore, "You've
come out to enjoy yourself, and enjoy yourself you shall!" So we are to
plunge into the whirlpool of eugenic delights without any fear of that
"bugbear of a hell" which another writer congratulates us on getting rid
of. We can, it appears, enter upon our eugenic experiment without a
single moral scruple to restrain us or a single religious restriction to
interfere with us. In this soil is the plant to be grown, and the first
weed to be eradicated is that of the right of personal choice of a
partner for life, or for such other term as the law under the new
_régime_ may require. Jack is to be torn from weeping Jill, and handed
over to reluctant Joan, to whom he is personally displeasing and for
whom he has not the slightest desire, and handed over because the
Breeding Committee think it is likely to prove advantageous for the
Coming Race. All that may be possible--or may not--but what then? When
you are carrying out Mendelian experiments on peas, you can enclose your
flowers in muslin bags and prevent anything interfering with your
observations. And in the stud-farm you can keep the occupants shut up.
But what are you going to do with Jack? and with Jill? And still more
with Joan? They cannot be permanently isolated, neither are they
restrained by any "mythical ideas of sin." They have been educated to
the idea that their highest duty is to enjoy themselves. Why should they
not do what they like? And consequently, as any reasoning person can
see, "The Inevitable" must happen; and where is your experiment and
where the Coming Race? It is perfectly useless for doctrinaires to
argue, as doctrinaires will, about ethical restraints. Nature has _no_
ethical restraints; and any ethical restraints which man has come from
that higher nature of his which he does not share with the lower
creation. What those whom the late Mr. Devas so aptly called
"after-Christians" always forget is that the humane, the Christian side
of life, which they as well as others exhibit, is due to the influence,
lingering if you like, of Christianity. They ignore or forget the pit
out of which they were digged.
By another Eugenist we are told that willy-nilly every sound, healthy
person of either sex must get married or at least betake him or herself
to the business of propagating the race. That at least is the essence of
his singularly offensive dictum that since the celibacy of the Catholic
clergy and of members of Religious Orders deprives the State of a
number of presumably excellent parents, "if monastic orders and
institutions are to continue, they should be open only to the
eugenically unfit."[32] If the religious call is not to be permitted to
dispense a man or woman from entering the estate of matrimony, it may be
assumed that nothing else, except an unfavourable report from the
committee of selection, will do so. And, further, as the one object of
all this is to bring super-children into the world, we must also assume
that those who fail in this duty will find themselves in peril of the
law.
Surely what has been set down shows that whatever scientific reputation
the writers in question possess, and it is undeniably great, it has not
equipped them, one will not merely say with moral or religious ideas,
but with an ordinary knowledge of human nature. It has not equipped them
with any conception apparently of political possibilities; and it has
left them without any of that saving salt, a sense of humour. Like
Huxley, they have started out to give opinions without first having made
themselves familiar with the subject on which they were to deliver
judgment.
It is perhaps little to be wondered at that the intense preoccupation
which the study of science entails should tend to induce those whose
attention is constantly fixed on Nature to imagine that from Nature can
be drawn not only lessons of physical life but lessons also of conduct.
Of course this is quite wrong; for Nature has no moral lesson to teach
us. We are told to go to the ant--at least the sluggard is--but for
what? To amend his sluggardliness. No one has ever suggested that we
should go to Nature to learn to be humble, kindly, unselfish, tolerant,
and Christian, in our dealings with others; and for this excellent
reason, that none of these things can be learnt from Nature. Science is
neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral; and, as we have seen a
thousand times in this present war, its kindest gifts to man can be
used, and are used, for his cruel destruction. In this war,
pre-eminently amongst all wars, we have the application of pure natural
principles unameliorated by the influences of Christianity, or of
chivalry, Christianity's offspring. As Sir Robert Borden has summed it
up, German kultur is an attempt "to impose upon us the law of the
jungle."
Natural Selection, some would have us believe, is the dominant law of
living nature, and all would agree that it is an important law. Let us
then, if we are to follow Nature, put it into practice. But Natural
Selection means the Survival of the Fittest in the Struggle for Life. It
consequently means the Extermination of the Less Fit, a little fact
often left out of count. It means in three words "Might is Right," and
was not that exactly the proposition by which we were confronted in this
war? If Natural Selection be our only guide, let us sink hospital
ships, destroy innocent villages and towns, exterminate our weaker
opponents in any way that seems best to us. It was all summed up
centuries ago by the author of the Book of Wisdom: "Let us oppress the
poor just man, and not spare the widow, nor honour the ancient grey
hairs of the aged. But let your strength be the law of justice: for that
which is feeble is found to be nothing worth." That is Natural Selection
in operation in human life when human beings have been stripped of all
"mythical ideas of Sin:" not a pretty picture nor a condition of affairs
under which we should like long to exist. Some of the other resemblances
are less dreadful, but none the less instructive. Let us take the matter
of Mimicry. There is a form of protective mimicry whereby the living
thing is like unto its surroundings, and thus escapes its enemy. We find
it in warfare in the use of khaki dress, in white overalls in snow-time,
in other such expedients. But there is also a form of Aggressive Mimicry
in which a deadly thing makes itself look like something innocent, as
the wolf tried to look in "Little Red Riding Hood." "The Germans were
beginning their attack on Haumont. Their front-line skirmishers, to
throw us into confusion, had donned caps which were a faint imitation of
our own, and also provided themselves with Red Cross brassards" (_The
Battle of Verdun._ H. Dugard). Not to be tedious on this point, which
really does not require to be laboured, let me finish with one quotation
from a vivid series of war-pictures. Boyd Cable is writing of men in
the trenches: "Civilised Man, in his latest art of war, has gone back to
be taught one more simple lesson by the beast of the field and the birds
of the air; the armed hosts are hushed and stilled by the passing
air-machine, exactly as the finches and field-mice of hedgerow and ditch
and field are frozen to stillness by the shadow of a hovering hawk, the
beat of its passing wing."
No; an existence passed under conditions of this kind and as the normal
state of affairs is not an existence to be contemplated with equanimity.
We are anxious that science and scientific teaching should be assisted
in every possible way. But let us be quite clear that while science has
much to teach us and we much to learn from her, there are things as to
which she has no message to the world. The Minor Prophets of science are
never tired of advising theologians to keep their hands off science. The
Major Prophets are too busy to occupy themselves with such polemics. But
the theologian is abundantly in his right in saying to the scientific
writer "Hands off morals!" for with morality science has nothing to do.
Let us at any rate avoid that form of kultur which consists in bending
Natural History to the teaching of conduct, uncorrected by any Christian
injunctions to soften its barbarities.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: Since these lines were written, this state of
affairs has come to an end and the first Fellow has been
elected for his purely scientific attainments, in the person of
the distinguished geologist, Professor Joly, F.R.S.]
[Footnote 31: It was the late distinguished Provost, Sir John
Mahaffy, at whose instance the change in the Fellowship system
was introduced.]
[Footnote 32: Conklyn, _Heredity and Environment in the
Development of Men_. Princeton University Press, 1915.]
VI. HEREDITY AND "ARRANGEMENT"
Some years ago, when I was delivering a lecture at the Cathedral Hall of
Westminster, in the course of the questioning which took place at the
termination of the discourse, which was on vitalism, I was asked by one
who signed his paper, "So and So, Atheist," "What would you say if you
saw a duck come out of a hen's egg?" I recognised at once the idea at
the back of the question and appreciated the fact that it had been asked
by one who, as some one has said, "called himself an advanced
free-thinker, but was really a very ignorant and vulgar person who was
suffering from a surfeit of the ideas of certain people cleverer than
himself." But, as a full discussion of the matter would have taken at
least as long as the lecture which I had just concluded, my reply was
that before I attempted to explain it I would wait to see the duck come
out of the hen's egg, since no man had as yet witnessed such an event. I
do not know whether my atheistical questioner was satisfied or not, but
I heard no more of him. But, after all, is it not a marvellous thing
that a duck never does come out of a hen's egg? If everything happens by
chance, as some would have us believe, why is it that a duck does not
occasionally emerge from a hen's egg? Surely this is a _miraculum_, a
thing to be wondered at, yet so common that it goes unnoticed, like many
other wonderful things which are also matters of common everyday
occurrence, such as the spinning of the earth on its own axis and its
course round the sun and through the heavens.
If we pursue this question further we shall begin to remember that
creatures more nearly related to one another also "breed true." The hen
and the duck are both birds, but they are not so nearly allied to one
another as the lion and the tiger, both of which are _Felidæ_, or cats.
Yet no one ever expects that a tiger will be born of a lioness, or _vice
versa_. Further, the pug and the greyhound are both of them dogs: the
name _canis domesticus_ applies to both, and one would be distinguished
from the other in a scientific list as "Var. (_i.e._ variety) 'pug,'" or
"Var. 'greyhound.'" Yet one can imagine the surprise of a breeder if a
greyhound was born in his carefully selected and guarded kennel of pugs.
In a word, not only species, but varieties do tend to breed true; the
child does resemble its parent or parents. No doubt the resemblance is
not absolute: there is variation as well as inheritance. Sometimes the
variation may be recognised as a feature possessed by a grandparent or
even by some collateral relative such as an uncle or great-uncle;
sometimes this may not be the case, though the non-recognition of the
likeness does not in any way preclude the possibility that the
peculiarity may have been also possessed by some other member of the
family. But on the whole the offspring does closely resemble its
parents; that is to say, not only the species and the variety but the
individual "breeds true." "Look like dey are bleedzed to take atter der
pa," as Uncle Remus said when he was explaining how the rabbit comes to
have a bobtail. Moreover this resemblance is not merely in the great
general features. Apart from monstrosities, the children of human beings
are human beings; the children of white parents have white skins, those
of black progenitors are black. Commonly, though not always by any
means, the children of dark-haired parents are themselves dark-haired,
and so on. But smaller features are also transmitted, and transmitted
too for many generations; for example, the well-known case of the
Hapsburg lip, visible in so many portraits of Spanish monarchs and their
near relatives, and visible in life to-day. Again, there are families in
which the inner part of one eyebrow has the hairs growing upwards
instead of in the ordinary way, a feature which is handed on from one
generation to another. Even more minute features than this have been
known to be transmissible and transmitted, such as a tiny pit in the
skin on the ear or on the face. In fact, there is hardly any feature, no
matter how small, which may not become a hereditary possession.
If in-and-in breeding occur, as it may do amongst human beings in a
locality much removed from other places of habitation, it may even
happen that what may be looked upon as a variety of the human race may
arise, though when it arises it is always easy to wipe it out and
restore things to the normal by the introduction of fresh blood, to use
the misleading term commonly employed, where the Biblical word "seed"
comes much nearer to the facts.
Thus there is a well-authenticated case in France (in Brittany if I
remember right) of a six-fingered race which existed for a number of
generations in a very isolated place and was restored to
five-fingeredness when an increase in the populousness of the district
permitted a wider selection in the matter of marriages.
And similarly, not long ago an account was published of an albino race
somewhere in Canada which had acquired a special name.
Perhaps it has been wiped out by this time by wider marriages, though
these might be effected with greater difficulty by albinos than by
six-fingered persons. At any rate no one can doubt that it might at any
time be wiped out by such marriages, though even when apparently wiped
out, sporadic cases might be expected to occur: what the breeders call
"throws-back," when they see an animal which resembles some ancestor
further back in the line of descent than its actual progenitors.
Certainly the most remarkable instance of the reliance which we have
come to feel respecting this matter of inheritance is that which was
afforded by a recent case of disputed paternity interesting on both
sides of the Atlantic, since the events in dispute occurred in America
and the property and the dispute concerning it were in England.
It was obviously a most difficult and disputable case, but the judge, a
shrewd observer, noticed, when the putative father was in the box, a
feature in his countenance which seemed closely to resemble what was to
be seen in the child which he claimed to be his own. A careful
examination of the parents and of the child was made by an eminent
sculptor, accustomed to minute observation of small features of variety
in those sitting to him as models.