ideas. First, "That the relative weight of nature and nurture must not
_a priori_ be assumed but must be scientifically measured; and thus
far our experience is that nature dominates nurture, and that
inheritance is more vital than environment." Second, "That there
exists no demonstrable inheritance of acquired characters. Environment
modifies the bodily characters of the existing generation, but does
not [often] modify the germ plasms from which the next generation
springs. At most, environment can provide a selection of which germ
plasms among the many provided shall be potential and which shall
remain latent." Third, "That all human qualities are inherited in a
marked and probably equal degree." "If these ideas represent the
substantial truth, you will see how the whole function of the eugenist
is theoretically simplified. He cannot hope by nurture and by
education to create new germinal types. He can only hope by selective
environment to obtain the types most conducive to racial welfare and
to national progress. If we see this point clearly and grasp it to the
full, what a flood of light it sheds on half the schemes for the
amelioration of the people.... The widely prevalent notion that
bettered environment and improved education mean a _progressive_
evolution of humanity is found to be without any satisfactory
scientific basis. Improved conditions of life mean better health for
the existing population; greater educational facilities mean greater
capacity for finding and using existing ability; they do not connote
that the next generation will be either physically or mentally better
than its parents. Selection of parentage is the sole effective process
known to science by which a race can continuously progress. The rise
and fall of nations are in truth summed up in the maintenance or
cessation of that process of selection. Where the battle is to the
capable and thrifty, where the dull and idle have no chance to
propagate their kind, there the nation will progress, even if the land
be sterile, the environment unfriendly and educational facilities
small."
As a concrete example of a most commendable eugenic practice we should
mention the sterilization of certain classes of criminal and insane as
it is now practiced in the States of Indiana and Connecticut. For the
last four years (since March, 1907) the laws of Indiana have permitted
the performance of the operation of vasectomy upon "confirmed
criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles" after rigid scrutiny of all
the mental and physical conditions of the individual case and upon the
concurrent judgment of three competent and impartial persons. The
title and significant parts of the text of this law are as follows:
_An Act_, entitled, An Act to prevent procreation of
confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and
rapists--providing that superintendents, or boards of
managers, of institutions where such persons are confined
shall have the authority, and are empowered to appoint a
committee of experts, consisting of two physicians, to
examine into the mental condition of such inmates.
_Whereas_, Heredity plays a most important part in the
transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility;
_Therefore_, Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the
State of Indiana, That on and after the passage of this act
it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the
State, entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals,
idiots, rapists, and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in
addition to the regular institutional physician, two (2)
skilled surgeons of recognized ability, whose duty it shall
be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the
institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of
such inmates as are recommended by the institutional
physician and board of managers. If, in the judgment of this
committee of experts and the board of managers, procreation
is inadvisable, and there is no probability of improvement of
the mental and physical condition of the inmate, it shall be
lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the
prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most
effective. But this operation shall not be performed except
in cases that have been pronounced unimprovable: Provided,
That in no case shall the consultation fee be more than three
(3) dollars to each expert, to be paid out of the funds
appropriated for the maintenance of such institution.
This operation of vasectomy, sometimes known as "Rentoul's operation,"
consists, in the male, in the removal of a small portion of each sperm
duct; the individual is thus rendered sterile in a completely
effective and permanent way. At the same time there are none of the
harmful effects, either physical or mental, such as usually follow the
better known forms of sterilization which are in reality
asexualization rather than sterilization. Vasectomy is a simple
"office" operation occupying only a few minutes and requiring at the
most the application of only a local anaesthetic, such as cocaine; and
there are no disturbing nor even inconvenient after effects. In the
female the corresponding operation of ooephorotomy consists in removing
a small portion of each Fallopian tube. In Indiana nearly a thousand
persons have already been successfully treated, many upon their own
request--a circumstance entirely unforeseen. Similar laws have been
passed in Oregon and Connecticut, and are being carefully considered
in several other States.
In order that the exact nature of such proposals may be better known
generally we may give here also the text of the Connecticut law which
is somewhat more inclusive and more flexible than that of Indiana. The
Connecticut Statute, enacted in August, 1909, is as follows:
_An Act_, concerning operations for the Prevention of
Procreation.--Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives in General Assembly convened:
_Section 1._ The directors of the State prison and the
superintendents of State hospitals for the insane at
Middletown and Norwich are hereby authorized and directed to
appoint for each of said institutions, respectively, two
skilled surgeons, who, in conjunction with the physician or
surgeon in charge at each of said institutions, shall examine
such persons as are reported to them by the warden,
superintendent, or the physician or surgeon in charge, to be
persons by whom procreation would be inadvisable.
Such board shall examine the physical and mental condition of
such persons, and their record and family history so far as
the same can be ascertained, and if in the judgment of the
majority of said board, procreation by any such person would
produce children with an inherited tendency to crime,
insanity, feeble-mindedness, idiocy, or imbecility, and there
is no probability that the condition of any such person so
examined will improve to such an extent as to render
procreation by such person advisable, or, if the physical and
mental condition of any such person will be substantially
improved thereby, then the said board shall appoint one of
its members to perform the operation of vasectomy or
ooephorectomy, as the case may be, upon such person. Such
operation shall be performed in a safe and humane manner, and
the board making such examination, and the surgeon performing
such operation, shall receive from the State such
compensation, for services rendered, as the warden of the
State prison or the superintendent of either of such
hospitals shall deem reasonable.
_Section 2._ Except as authorized by this Act, every person
who shall perform, encourage, assist in, or otherwise promote
the performance of either of the operations described in
Section 1 of this Act, for the purpose of destroying the
power to procreate the human species; or any person who shall
knowingly permit either of such operations to be performed
upon such person--unless the same be a medical
necessity--shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars,
or imprisoned in the State prison not more than five years,
or both.
These States are to be commended in the highest possible terms for
their enlightened action in this direction. Who can say how many
families of Jukes and Zeros have already been inhibited by this simple
and humane means? "Could such a law be enforced in the whole United
States, less than four generations would eliminate nine tenths of the
crime, insanity and sickness of the present generation in our land.
Asylums, prisons and hospitals would decrease, and the problems of the
unemployed, the indigent old, and the hopelessly degenerate would
cease to trouble civilization."
And yet probably for years to come those mental states and conditions
of servitude graciously termed "conservatism" will continue to insure
an undiminished horde of these unfortunates. The situation here is
interestingly analogous to that in connection with certain of the
infectious diseases. Concerning the eradication of typhoid fever, to
mention a single concrete example, competent authorities declare that
we now possess all of the information necessary to make typhoid fever
as obsolete in civilized communities as is cholera or smallpox. "The
average third-year medical student knows enough about typhoid fever to
be able to stamp it out if he were endowed with absolute power."
"Typhoid fever has passed beyond the catalogue of diseases; it is a
crime." Our knowledge of the causes of many of the conditions leading
to gross physical and mental defect and criminality has progressed
already to such a point that we could if we would eradicate them in
large proportion from our civilization. The great horde of defectives,
once in the world, have the right to live and to enjoy as best they
may whatever freedom is compatible with the lives and freedom of the
other members of society. They have not the right to produce and
reproduce more of their kind for a too generous and too blindly
"charitable" society to contend against. The greater crime consists
in allowing the hereditary criminal to be born.
A well-known British alienist, Tredgold, after pointing out that the
duty of medical science is to fight and relieve disease in every shape
and form, adds: "That if social science does not keep pace with
medical science in this matter the end will be national disaster. In
other words, I would lay it down as a general principle that as soon
as a nation reaches that stage of civilization in which medical
knowledge and humanitarian sentiment operate to prolong the existence
of the unfit, then it becomes imperative upon that nation to devise
such social laws as will insure that these unfit do not propagate
their kind.
"For, mark you, it is not as if these degenerates mated solely amongst
themselves. Were that so, it is possible that, even in spite of the
physician, the accumulated morbidity would become so powerful as to
work out its own salvation by bringing about the sterility and
extinction of its victims. The danger lies in the fact that these
degenerates mate with the _healthy_ members of the community and
thereby constantly drag fresh blood into the vortex of disease and
lower the general vigour of the nation."
Such a practice as vasectomy then represents nicely the eugenic aim of
allowing the individual, who is himself never to be blamed for his
hereditary constitution, the greatest possible personal freedom and
liberty, of allowing full play of sympathy for the individual, and at
the same time of exercising the greatest sympathy to society in
prohibiting the hereditary criminal from procreating a long line of
descendants endowed as badly as he himself was through no fault of his
own, but through the gross neglect of society.
Another quotation from Pearson: "To-day we feed our criminals up, and
we feed up our insane, we let both out of the prison or asylum
'reformed' or 'cured,' as the case may be, only after a few months to
return to State supervision, leaving behind them the germs of a new
generation of deteriorants. The average number of crimes due to the
convicts in his Majesty's prisons to-day is ten apiece. We cannot
reform the criminal, nor cure the insane from the standpoint of
heredity; the taint varies not with their mental or moral conduct.
These are the products of the somatic cells; the disease lies deeper
in their germinal constitution. Education for the criminal, fresh air
for the tuberculous, rest and food for the neurotic--these are
excellent, they may bring control, sound lungs, and sanity to the
individual; but they will not save the offspring from the need of like
treatment, nor from the danger of collapse when the time of strain
comes. They cannot make a nation sound in mind and body, they merely
screen degeneracy behind a throng of arrested degenerates. Our highly
developed human sympathy will no longer allow us to watch the State
purify itself by the aid of crude natural selection. We see pain and
suffering only to relieve it, without inquiry as to the moral
character of the sufferer or as to his national or racial value. And
this is right--no man is responsible for his own being; and nature and
nurture, over which he had no control, have made him the being he is,
good or evil. But here science steps in, crying: Let the reprieve be
accepted, but next remind the social conscience of its duty to the
race ... let there be no heritage if you would build up and preserve a
virile and efficient people. Here, I hold, we reach the kernel of the
truth which the science of eugenics has at present revealed."
It is also a part of eugenic practice to oppose vigorously and
unmistakably any social practice leading to the reduction in the
reproductivity of the desirable and valuable elements of society.
There is to be included here for censure a long list of customs and
practices, from the enforced celibacy of the Church to the horror of
horrors--warfare. A moment's reflection will suggest many
reprehensible practices of this kind more or less current in certain
classes or communities. The requirement of nonmarriage on the part of
women teachers--persons of tested and demonstrated ability, is a very
general practice of decidedly noneugenic character. In Great Britain
more than 75,000 nurses, all of whom must have passed physical
examination, are cut off from reproduction by the same requirement of
nonmarriage. Many less striking but all too common practices have the
final effect of forbidding marriage to the healthy, physically or
mentally capable, helpful, classes. "Help wanted. Must be
unencumbered."
More vigorously and more unmistakably does the Eugenist discourage
anything that leads to matings of the unfit and, above all, to their
reproduction. Many countries, from Servia to the Argentine Republic,
have statutes forbidding the marriage of the insane, idiots, deaf and
dumb, certain classes of criminals, and persons afflicted with certain
contagious diseases. It is to be hoped that these laws are enforced
with greater effectiveness than that with which our own less stringent
laws of similar character are administered. After all, it is the
reproduction of these persons that should be limited, and among many
of these classes the fact of nonmarriage would provide not the
slightest barrier to reproduction.
It is unfortunately true, but true none the less, that there are
current forms of so-called philanthropy which, by relieving defective
parents of the care of their defective offspring, thus encourage them
in the production of more defective offspring; and so the flames are
fed. Relief is the smallest part of the problem. Any condition which
leads to the multiplication of the innately defective and dependent
classes must be sternly opposed. No matter how benign the guise of any
form of relief or charity, if it encourages or permits even indirectly
the free reproduction of these classes, it must be resolutely opposed
and soon abandoned. "It is not enough to preach with horror and
indignation against normal parents who restrict their families. Equal
reprobation should be the lot of those who, with inherited insanity,
feeble-mindedness, or disease, bring children into the world to
perpetuate their infirmities. It should not be overlooked that the
realization of the power of limiting the birth rate, while it has
produced untold harm, when applied blindly and in accordance with
individual caprice, may become an instrument for good if it extends to
the worst stocks, while the better stocks once more undertake their
natural duties."
Practical Eugenics need not be limited to its philanthropic and
legislative aspects. There are other social mechanisms which could be
used to encourage the multiplication of the fitter, abler families.
In Munich, under the enlightened leadership of Dr. Alfred Ploetz, a
society for the study and promotion of social and racial hygiene
(Internationale Gesellschaft fuer Rassen-Hygiene) has made a most
excellent and significant beginning. This society is doing much not
only to collect data and investigate scientifically problems within
its field, but also to spread widely the facts of racial integrity.
Its members agree, among other things, to undergo thorough medical
examination prior to marriage as to their fitness for that state and
agree to abstain from marriage, or at least from parenthood, if found
to be unfit.
Much can be done by suggestion and suasion regarding the choice of
mates and the rearing of large families. When one touches upon this
subject he is pretty likely to be met with the objection that the
selection of mates is so largely an impulsive, emotional affair that
it is quite beyond control. "Marriages," they say, "are made in
heaven." But when we consider the number that can scarcely be said to
be completed there the statement seems open to some question. As a
matter of fact, it is perfectly clear, as Galton, Ellis, and others
have shown, that all peoples, from the Kaffir and the Dyak to the
Hindu and the modern European or American, are surrounded with
restrictions in marriage often of the greatest stringency. And yet,
since these are matters of established social custom, even of
religious observance, we submit almost without knowing it.
That results can be really accomplished in this direction and by this
method is clearly shown by the history of the Jewish people, and by
the Roman Catholics, among whom there are distinctly fewer divorces
and childless marriages than among Protestants. In many countries and
communities the organized Church still exercises an immense influence
over the whole subject of marriage: the Church could easily become a
powerful factor in eugenic practice. Such a control can and should be
given eugenic direction by the establishment of a more discriminative
attitude, looking toward a reduction in the reproductivity of the
dependent or defective as well as to the increased reproductivity of
the valuable and able. In all of the discussion of "race suicide" and
the value to the State of the large family, how seldom do we hear any
mention of quality! To plan the organization and conduct of a State
without regulating and controlling the quality of its membership is
like adopting plans and elevations for a costly building without
making any specifications as to materials.
In concrete eugenic practice it seems probable that most can be
accomplished for the present by striving to limit the multiplication
of the undesirable, dependent, or dangerous elements of the social
group. There can be less uncertainty here. The social organization has
already marked certain kinds of individuals as unfit and unworthy,
whose liberty must be limited in many directions for the social
welfare. This aspect of the matter can be put upon a dollars and cents
basis very clearly, and this is apparently the only relation that
affects a good many people. Why should the able and worthy and thrifty
members of society be compelled to pay, as they are in this country
alone, $100,000,000 annually, not to mention the vast sums voluntarily
contributed toward "charitable" purposes, for the support of the
criminal and pauper and defective classes who themselves contribute
nothing of value and whose very existence is evidence of criminal
disregard of the right of every individual to be well born, into a
healthy and sane life? The only answer, if it be an answer,
is--because the competent are willing to foot the bill. Millions for
tribute but not one cent for defense. And yet a penny's worth of
defense outweighs a million's worth of cure.
In the practice of Eugenics the greatest caution must be exercised.
All eugenic practice must be tested by the most careful and
scrutinizing scientific methods. Mendelian heredity gives a different
answer from Job's to his own query: "Who can bring a clean thing out
of an unclean?" It also makes clear how it may often happen that it
needs but three generations to go from Fifth Avenue to the Bowery, and
back again. Many so-called criminals may be anachronisms, some only
modificationally bad. But there are many cases, many practices,
regarding which there can be no doubt: the Eugenist says, treat these,
and let the doubtful cases alone until as a result of the increase of
knowledge there is no doubt. And while it is easy to say that we
_believe_ the criminal or the insane are the products of a wrong
environment, it is also easy to say that we believe they are not. What
the Eugenist demands is _knowledge_, then belief, and action based
thereon.
Finally, the eugenic program calls for the spread of the facts, far
and wide, through all classes of society. Bring forcibly before the
people the facts of human heredity. Teach them to understand the force
of the eugenic ideal of good breeding. "The prevalent opinion that
almost anybody is good enough to marry is chiefly due to the fact that
in this case, cause and effect, marriage and the feebleness of
offspring, are so distant from each other that the near-sighted eye
does not distinctly perceive the connection between them." By
education we must produce first of all a thoughtfulness in the
community regarding the racial responsibilities of marriage and
reproduction. Human beings are frequently rational creatures; placing
before them clear and truthful ideas regarding fit and unfit matings
cannot fail of an ultimate effect. "The virtue of repetition, the
summation of suggestion, which sells pills and pickles, which makes
Free Trade or Tariff Reform a national issue, this force operating as
a slight but persistent influence when linked to eugenic proposals
will in a few years' time make these proposals a living force to the
common man." By talking and teaching, in season and out, the community
will be compelled to think on these things; they will be forced into
the public conscience and the pressure of public opinion will rise for
the eugenic and against the noneugenic ideals of mating and the
rearing of families. And the rest will come in due season and more
effective and permanent results will follow than are likely to come
from any amount of premature legislation. As Galton writes: "The
enlightenment of the individual is a necessary preamble to practical
Eugenics, but social opinion by praise or blame constantly influences
individual conduct." "Public opinion is commonly far in advance of
private morality, because society as a whole keenly appreciates acts
that tend to its advantage, and condemns those that do not. It
applauds acts of heroism that perhaps not one of the applauders would
be disposed to emulate." "The first and main point is to secure the
general intellectual acceptance of Eugenics as a hopeful and most
important study. Then let its principles work into the heart of the
nation, who will gradually give practical effect to them in ways that
we may not wholly foresee."
In this educational part of the eugenic program, and particularly in
the encouragement of research directed toward the solution of eugenic
problems and the establishment of eugenic practices, there lies one of
the greatest opportunities ever opened to the philanthropist. The
genuine philanthropist is he who would at this moment make possible
the rapid solution of many of the still baffling problems of human
heredity and who would help to spread and teach the gospel of true
racial integrity. But while it has been easy to interest
philanthropists in the relief of social disorders, few can be
interested in the causes at work which make the necessity for relief
seem so imperative.
The patient unraveler of the Jukes family history has said, "I am
informed that $28,000 was raised in two days to purchase a rare
collection of antique jewelry and bronze recently discovered in
classic ground forty feet below the _debris_. I do not hear of
as many pence being offered to fathom the _debris_ of our
civilization--however rich the yield!" Possibly one reason for this
neglect or omission has heretofore been the lack of evidence that real
results could be accomplished in this field. Now that it is so obvious
that we have a real foundation of fact from which to work we may
expect soon some degree of recognition of the supreme importance of
the need for investigation in subjects allied to Eugenics, and of
devotion to eugenic aims.