THE SELECTION OF MIND
“Many are the mighty things, but none is mightier than man.... He
conquers by his devices the tenant of the fields.”--Sophocles.
“L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la Nature; mais c'est
un roseau pensant.”--Pascal.
“The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the
soul.”--Burchell.
Whereas, in its beginning, _mind_, or the psychical in all its aspects,
was merely a useful property of _body_, all organic progress may be
conceived in terms of a change in this original relation between them.
In man, the mental or psychical has become the essential thing, and the
body its servant. We are well prepared, then, to accept the proposition
that in our own day and for our own species, the plane upon which
natural selection works has largely been transferred, and, indeed, if
any further progress is to be effected, _must_ be transferred, from
the bodily or physical to the mental or psychical. A certain most
remarkable fact in the anatomy of man may be cited, as we shall see, in
support of this proposition.
We need not venture upon the controversial ground of the relation or
ultimate unity of mind and body; nor need we set up any suggestion of
antagonism between them. All, however, are absolutely agreed that the
psychical in all its forms, whatever it really be, has a consistent
relation of the most intimate kind with that part of the body which
we call the nervous system. For our present purposes the nature of
this relation matters nothing at all, and in place of the phrase,
the “selection of mind,” I should be quite content, if the reader so
prefers, to speak of the selection of nerve or nervous selection. And
if I may for a moment anticipate the conclusion, we may say that, in
and for the future, the process of selection for life and parenthood,
as it occurs in mankind, must be based, if the highest results are to
be obtained, upon the principle that the selection of bodily qualities
other than those of the nervous system is of value only in so far as
these serve the nervous or psychical qualities. For practical and for
theoretical purposes we must accept the dictum of Professor Forel that
“the brain is the man”--or, to be more accurate and less epigrammatic,
the nervous system is the man. If, then, we counsel or approve of any
selection of bone or muscle or digestion, or any other bodily organ or
function; if we select for physical health, physical energy, longevity,
or immunity from disease--our estimate of these things, one and all,
must be wholly determined by the services which they can perform for
the nervous system, whether as its instruments, its guarantors of
health and persistence, or otherwise. But we are not to regard any of
these things as ends in themselves--notwithstanding the fact that this
temptation will constantly beset us. So to do is implicitly to deny and
renounce the supreme character of man--which is that, in him, mind or
nervous system is the master, and the rest of the body, with all its
attributes, the servant.
=The body still necessary.=--Should anyone suppose that the principles
here laid down would speedily involve us, if executed, in a host
of disasters, let him reconsider that conclusion. Utterly ignorant
or jocose persons have hinted, more or less definitely, that if a
race of mankind were to be bred for brains, the product would be a
most misbegotten creature approaching as near as possible--and that
imperfectly enough--to the ideal of disembodied thought, a creature
monstrous as to head, impotent and puny as to limbs, and, in effect,
the least effective of living creatures. This supposition may be
commended as the last word in the way of nonsense. It depends upon
an abysmal ignorance of the necessary and permanent relations which
subsist between mind and body. It assumes that the healthy mind can
be obtained without the healthy body; it is totally unaware that the
nervous system cannot work properly unless the blood be well aerated by
active lungs and distributed by a healthy heart; that unless certain
glands, of which these people have never heard, are acting properly,
the nervous system falls into decadence, and the man becomes an
imbecile. To breed for brains is most assuredly to breed for body too:
only that the end in view will guide us as to what points of body to
breed for. For instance, it would prevent us from having any foolish
ambitions as to increasing the stature of the race, or the average
weight of its muscular apparatus. Stature may be a point to breed for
in the race-culture of giraffes and muscle in the race-culture of the
hippopotamus: but such bodily characters are of no moment for man,
who is above all things a mind. Whilst we shall pay little attention
to these, we or our descendants will be abundantly concerned with the
preservation and culture of those many bodily characters upon which
the health and vigour and sanity and durability of the nervous system
depend.
Further, notwithstanding all the nonsense that has been written
concerning the man of the future, with bald and swollen head,
be-goggled eyes, toothless gums, and wicker-work skeleton, those
who know the alphabet of physiology and psychology are warranted in
believing that wisely to breed for brains will be to breed for beauty
too--not of the skin-deep but of the mind-deep variety--and also for
grace and energy and versatility of physique. Those who worship brawn
as brawn may be commended to the ox; those who respect brawn as the
instrument of brain, and value it not by its horse-power but by its
capacity as the agent of purpose, will find nothing to complain of in
the kinds of men and women whom a wise eugenics has for its ideal.
=The erect attitude.=--And now we must briefly consider that “most
remarkable fact in the anatomy of man” to which allusion was made in
the first paragraph. It is that, as the most philosophic anatomists are
now coming to believe, the body of man actually represents the goal of
physical evolution. Of course the common opinion is, quite apart from
science, that man is the highest of creatures, and that there is no
more to be expected. But the doctrine of evolution regards man as the
latest, not necessarily the last, term in an age-long process which is
by no means completed, and from the evolutionary point of view it is
thus a daring and, at first hearing, a preposterous thing to say that,
so far as the physical aspects of organic evolution are concerned, the
body of man apparently represents the logical and final conclusion of
the age-long process which has produced it. Let us attempt very briefly
to outline the argument.
We may say that a great step was taken when from the chaos of the
invertebrate or backbone-less animals there emerged the first
vertebrates. This unquestionably occurred in the sea, the first
backbone being evolved in a fish-like creature which, in the course of
time, developed two lateral fins. These became modified into two pairs
of limbs, the sole function of which was locomotion. In the next group
of vertebrates, the amphibia--such as the frog--we see these limbs
terminating each in five digits. (The frog, so to say, decided that
we should count in tens.) Now some creatures have specialised their
limbs at the cost of certain fingers. The horse, for instance, walks
on the nails (the hoofs) of its middle fingers and its middle toes.
In the main line of ascent, however, none of these precious fingers
(and toes)--how precious let the typist or the pianist say--have been
sacrificed. There has been, however, in later ages a tendency towards
the specialisation of the front limbs. Used for locomotion at times,
they are also used for grasping and tearing and holding, as in the
case of the tiger, a member of the carnivora, a relatively late and
high group of mammals. But the carnivore does not carry its food to
its mouth, and the cat carries her kittens in her mouth and not with
her paws. In the apes and monkeys, however, this specialisation goes
further, and things are actually carried by the hands to the mouth--a
very great advance on the tiger, who fixes his food with his “hands,”
and then carries his mouth to it. Food to mouth instead of mouth to
food is a much later stage in evolution, a fact which may be recalled
when we watch the table manners of certain people. Finally, in man the
specialisation reaches its natural limit by the _complete_ liberation
of the fore-limbs from the purposes of locomotion--though the crawling
gait of a child recalls the base degrees by which we did ascend.
This great change depends upon an alteration in the axis of the body.
The first fishes, like present fishes, were horizontal animals, but
gradually the axis has become altered, in the main line of progress,
until the semi-erect apes yield to man the erect, or “man the erected,”
as Stevenson called him. The son of horizontal animals, he is himself
vertical: the “pronograde” has become “orthograde.” Thus the phrase,
“the ascent of man,” may be read in two senses. This capital fact has
depended upon a shifting of the centre of gravity of the body, which
in adult man lies behind the hip-joints, whereas in his ancestors and
in the small baby (still in the four-footed stage) it lies in front
of the hip-joints. Thus, whilst other creatures tend naturally to
fall forwards, so that they must use their fore-limbs for support and
locomotion, the whole body of man above the hip-joints tends naturally
to fall backwards, being prevented from doing so by two great ligaments
which lie in front of the hip-joints and have a unique development in
man. The complete erection of the spine means that the skull, instead
of being suspended in front, is now poised upon the top of the spinal
column. The field of vision is enormously enlarged, and it is possible
to sweep a great extent of horizon at a moment's notice. But the
complete discharge of the fore-limbs from the function of locomotion
has far vaster consequences, especially as they now assume the function
of educating their master, the brain, and enabling him to employ them
for higher and higher purposes.
Thus, when we ask ourselves whether there is any further goal for
physical evolution, the answer is that none can be seen. So far as
physical evolution is concerned the goal has been attained with the
erect attitude. Future changes in the anatomy of man will not be
positive but negative. There doubtless will be a certain lightening of
the ship, the casting overboard of inherited superfluities, but that is
all: except that we may hope for certain modifications in the way of
increasing the adaptation of the body to the erect attitude, which at
present bears very hardly in many ways upon the body of man, and much
more so upon the body of woman.
Thus race-culture will certainly not aim at the breeding of physical
freaks of any kind, nor yet at such things as stature. It must begin by
clearly recognising what are the factors which in man possess supreme
survival-value, and it must aim at their reinforcement rather than at
the maintenance of those factors which, of dominant value in lower
forms of life, have been superseded in him. A few words will suffice
to show in what fashion man has already shed vital characters which,
superfluous and burdensome for him, have in former times been of the
utmost survival-value.
=The denudation of man.=--As contrasted with the whole mass of his
predecessors, man comes into the world denuded of defensive armour,
destitute of offensive weapons, possessed alone of the potentialities
of the psychical. So far as defence is concerned, he has neither fur
nor feathers nor scales, but is the most naked and thinnest skinned of
animals. In his _Autobiography_, Spencer tells us how he and Huxley,
sitting on the cliff at St. Andrews and watching some boys bathing,
“marvelled over the fact, seeming especially strange when they are no
longer disguised by clothes, that human beings should dominate over all
other creatures and play the wonderful part they do on the earth.”[14]
But man is not only without armour against either living enemies or
cold; he is also without weapons of attack. His teeth are practically
worthless in this respect, not only on account of their small size but
also because his chin, a unique possession, and the shape of his jaws,
make them singularly unfit for catching or grasping. For claws he has
merely nails, capable only of the feeblest scratching; he can discharge
no poisons from his mouth; he cannot envelop himself in darkness
in order to hide himself; his speediest and most enduring runner is
a breathless laggard. And, lastly, he is at first almost bereft of
instinct, has to be burnt in order to dread the fire, and cannot find
his own way to the breast. His sole instrument of dominance is his mind
in all its attributes.
On the grounds thus indicated, we must be wholly opposed to all
proposals for race education and race-culture, and to all social
practices, which assume more or less consciously that, for all his
boasting, man is after all only an animal: whilst we must applaud the
selection and culture of the physical exactly in so far as, but no
further than, it makes for health and strength of the psychical--or, if
the reader dislikes these expressions, the health and strength of that
particular part of the physical which we call the nervous system.
It used to be generally asserted that whilst, in a civilised community,
we do not expect to find the biggest or most muscular man King or
Prime Minister, yet amongst savage tribes it _is_ the physical, muscle
and bone and brutality, that determines leadership. This, however, we
now know to be untrue even for the earliest stages of society that
anthropologists can recognise. The leader of the savage tribe is not
the biggest man but the cleverest. The suggestion is therefore that,
even in the earliest stages of human society, the plane of selection
has already been largely transferred from brawn to brain or from
physique to _psyche_. It has always been so, we may be well sure. The
Drift men of Taubach, living in the inter-glacial period, could kill
the full-grown elephant and rhinoceros. Says Professor Ranke: “It is
the mind of man that shows itself superior to the most powerful brute
force, even where we meet him for the first time.” This remains true
whether the brute force be displayed in brutes or in other men.
The great fact of intelligence, as against material apparatus of
any kind and even as against rigid instinct, is its limitless
applicability. With this one instrument man achieves what without it
could be achieved only by a creature who combined in his own person
every kind of material apparatus, offensive and defensive, locomotor or
what not, which animal life, and vegetable life too, have invented in
the past--and not even by such a creature. Man is a poor pedestrian,
but his mind makes locomotives which rival or surpass the fish of the
sea, the antelope on land, if not yet the bird of the air; his teeth
are of poor quality, but his mind supplies him with artificial ones and
enables him to cook and otherwise to prepare his food. All the physical
methods are self-limited, but the method of mind has no limits; it is
even more than cumulative, and multiplies its capacities by geometrical
progression.
=The cult of muscle.=--A word must really be said here, in accordance
with all the foregoing argument, against the recent revival of what
may be called the Cult of Muscle. This cult of muscle, or belief
in physical culture, so called, as the true means of race-culture,
undoubtedly requires to have its absurd pretensions censured. We now
have many flourishing schools of physical culture which desire to
persuade us to a belief in the monstrous anachronism that, even in man,
muscle and bone are still pre-eminent. They want as many people as
possible to believe that the only thing really worth aiming at is what
they understand by physical culture. They pride themselves upon knowing
the names and positions of all the muscles in the body, and on being
able to provide us with instruments to develop all these muscles: they
are there and they ought to be developed, and you are a mere parody of
what a man ought to be unless they are developed--none of them must
be neglected. Many people have been persuaded of these doctrines, and
there is no doubt that the physical culture schools do thus develop a
large number of muscles which have no present service for man and would
otherwise have been allowed to rest in a decent obscurity.
In order to prove this point, let us instance a few muscles which it
is utterly absurd to regard as still possessing any survival-value for
man. In the sole of the foot there are four distinct layers of muscles,
by means of which it is theoretically possible to turn each individual
toe to the left or the right, independently of its neighbours, and to
move the various parts of each toe upon themselves, just as in the case
of the fingers. All this muscular apparatus is a mere survival, worth
nothing at all for the special purposes of the human foot. In point of
fact the human foot is now decadent, and probably not more than two
or three specimens of feet in a hundred contain the complete normal
equipment of muscles, bones and joints--as Sir William Turner showed
many years ago. Thus many feet are possessed of muscles designed to
act upon joints which have not been developed at all in the feet in
question and which, if they were there, would not be of the smallest
use. To take another instance, we do not now use our external ears
for the purpose of catching sound, though we still possess muscles
which, if thrown into action, would move the external ear in various
directions. Again, there is a flat, thin stratum of muscle on the
front of the neck, corresponding to a muscle which in the dog and the
horse is quite important, but which is of no use to us. All would be
agreed as to the absurdity of devoting continued conscious effort to
the development of these particular muscles; but in point of fact we
have a whole host of muscles which are in a similar case, and which
are nevertheless objects of the most tender solicitude on the part of
the physical culturist. In general, this modern craze, whilst highly
profitable to those who foster it, is most misguided and reactionary.
Modern knowledge of heredity teaches us that our descendants will not
profit muscularly in the slightest degree because of our devotion to
these relics: the blacksmith's baby has promise of no bigger biceps
than any one else's. Further, the over-doing of muscular culture
is responsible for the consumption of a large amount of energy. A
muscle is a highly vital and active organ, requiring a large amount
of nourishment, which its possessor has to obtain, consume, digest
and distribute. The more time and energy spent in sustaining useless
muscles, the less is available for immeasurably more important
concerns. Man does not live by brawn alone: he _does_ live by brain
alone.
=Strength versus skill.=--So far as true race-culture is concerned,
we should regard our muscles merely as servants or instruments of the
will. Since we have learnt to employ external forces for our purposes,
the mere bulk of a muscle is now a matter of little importance. Of the
utmost importance, on the other hand, is the power to co-ordinate and
graduate the activity of our muscles, so that they may become highly
trained servants. This is a matter, however, not of muscle at all but
of nervous education. Its foundation cannot be laid by mechanical
things like dumb-bells and exercises, but by games, in which will and
purpose and co-ordination are incessantly employed. In other words, the
only physical culture worth talking about is nervous culture.
The principles here laid down are daily defied in very large measure in
our nurseries, our schools, and our barrack yards. The play of a child,
spontaneous and purposeful, is supremely human and characteristic.
Although, when considered from the outside, it is simply a means of
muscular development, properly considered it is really _the_ means of
nervous development. Here we see muscles used as human muscles should
alone be used--as instruments of mind. In schools the same principles
should be recognised. From the biological and psychological point of
view the playing-field is immeasurably superior to the gymnasium.
But it is in the barrack yard that the pitiable confusion between
the survival-value of mind and muscle respectively in man is most
ludicrously and disastrously exemplified.
The glorious truth upon which we appear to act is that man is an
animated machine; that the business of the soldier is not to think,
not to be an individual, but to be an assemblage of muscles. We see
the marks of this idea even in a fine poem: “Their's not to reason
why, their's but to do or die”--which, of course, might just as well
be said of a stud of horses or motor-cars. Further, our worship of the
machine is, consistently enough, an unintelligent worship. We do not
even recognise the best conditions for its action. Every year hundreds
of young soldiers, originally healthy, have their hearts and lungs and
other vital organs permanently injured by the imbecile attitude of
chest--that of abnormal expansion--which they are required to adopt
during hard work. Army doctors are now protesting against this, but it
is in accordance with the fitness of things that the cult of muscle as
against intelligence should be unintelligent.
I repeat that whilst in the study of race-culture the physical cannot
be ignored, since the psychical is so largely dependent upon it,
yet the physical is of worth to us only in so far as it serves the
psychical. The race the culture of which we propose to undertake has
long ago determined to abandon the physical in itself as an instrument
of success. We are not attempting the culture of the cretaceous
reptiles, which staked their all upon muscle, and finally, having
become as large as houses--and as agile--suffered extinction. We are
attempting the culture of a species which, so far as the physical is
concerned, has long ago crossed the Rubicon or burnt its boats. Even
if Mr. Sandow and the drill-sergeant had their way to the utmost, and,
having finally eliminated all traces of mind, succeeded in producing
the strongest and most perfect physical machine that could be made from
the human body, the species so produced would go down in a generation
before the elements or before any living species that may be named.
Man has staked his all upon mind. The only physical development
that is really worth anything to such a race is that which educates
intelligence and morality, on the one hand, and serves for their
expression, on the other.
If there is any salient and irresistible tendency in our civilisation
to-day, it is the persistent decadence of muscle and of all of which
muscle is the type, as an instrument of survival-value. The development
of machinery, much deplored by the short-sighted, is in the direct line
of progress, because it reduces the importance of muscle and throws
all its weight into the scale of mind. Hewers of wood and drawers of
water are becoming less and less necessary, not because mechanical
force is not needed but because the human intelligence is learning how
to supersede the human machine as its source. Every development of
machinery makes the man who can merely offer his muscles of less value
to the community. Long ago--not so very long ago in some cases--it was
quite sufficient for a man to be able to say “I am a good machine:” he
was worth his keep and had his chance of becoming a parent; but the man
whom society wants now-a-days is not the man who is a good machine but
the man who can make one. These elementary truths are hidden, however,
from the political quacks who discourse to us upon unemployment.
Herbert Spencer's remark that it is necessary to be a good animal
has an element of truth in it which was utterly ignored and needed
proclamation at that time; but it is necessary to be a good animal only
in so far as that state makes for being a good man--and not an iota
further.
The present interest in many most important aspects of physical
education, such as may be summed up under the phrase “school hygiene,”
must not blind us to the great principle that physical education is a
means and not an end. Our present educational system, which permits
schooling to end just when it should begin, or rather sooner, and
which, even through our Government Departments, permits boys to be
used as little more than animated machines, such as telegraph boys--is
very largely responsible for the great national evil of unemployment,
which we treat with soup-kitchens. We shall revise a large proportion
of our educational, political and social methods just so soon as--but
not before--we get into our heads the idea that in human society,
and pre-eminently in society to-day, the survival-value of mind
and consequently the selection of mind must predominate over the
survival-value and consequent selection of muscle. Further, whatever
factors tend to enhance the survival-value of the physical are _ipso
facto_ making for retrogression and a return to the order of the beast.
Whatever tend to enhance the survival-value of the psychical--by which
I most assuredly include not only intelligence but, for instance,
motherhood--are _ipso facto_ forces of progress. The products of
progress are not machinery but men, and the well-drilled-machine idea
of a man ought to be as obsolete as more than one recent war has proved
it disastrous.
There is here to be read no pessimistic suggestion that the psychical
is in any permanent danger. No one can think so who knows its strength
and the relative impotence of the physical, but it is certainly
possible that the course of progress may be greatly delayed in any
given nation or race by worship of the physical, or even, as Sparta
shows, by worship of what may be called the physical virtues as against
the moral and intellectual virtues. But those who are interested in the
survival of any particular race or nation have to remember that arrest
or retardation of progress therein, relatively to its wiser neighbours,
must, before long, result in its utter downfall.
=What are we to choose?=--The argument that the selection of mind has
been dominant throughout human history is reinforced by such knowledge
of that history as we possess. There is no record of any race that
established itself in virtue of great stature or exceptional muscular
strength. Even in cases of the most purely military dominance, it was
not force as such, but discipline and method, that determined success;
whilst some of the greatest soldiers in history have been physically
the smallest. The statement of the anthropologists, already alluded to,
regarding the selection of the leading men in primitive tribes, may
safely be taken as always true: selection in human society has always
been, in the main, selection of that which, for survival-value, is the
dominant character of man, _mind_ in its widest sense. We shall see,
later, that _physical eugenics_ can by no means be ignored: but our
guiding principle must be that the physical is of worth only in so far
as it serves the psychical, and is worse than worthless in so far as it
does not. It would surely be well, for instance, that we should breed
for “energy,” to use Mr. Galton's term: but the energy we desire, and
the energy he commends, is nervous, not muscular. The confusion between
two radically different things, vitality and muscularity, is, however,
almost universal, though it will not stand a moment's examination.
In a volume devoted to personal hygiene I have discussed this point,
which is of real moment both for the individual and for the theory of
eugenics.[15]
It is of interest to note, in passing from this question, that inherent
facts of the human constitution would interdict us if we thought it
a fit ideal to breed for stature or bulk. Giants are essentially
morbid--not favourable but unfavourable variations. They are very
frequently childless and almost constantly slow-witted. Their condition
is really a mild form of a well-marked and highly characteristic
disease known as acromegaly, and distinguished by great enlargement
of the face and extremities. The malady depends upon peculiarities in
the glandular activities of the body: _and the state of these which
makes for great stature and bulk makes against intelligence_. It is
suggested, then, that any considerable increase of human bulk and
stature could only be obtained at the cost of intelligence. It would be
very dear at the price.
When we come to the subject of selection for parenthood in man through
the preferences exhibited by individuals for members of the opposite
sex, we shall see that what Darwin called “sexual selection” is
certainly a reality in the case of man, whether or not it be so in the
case of the lower animals. We shall see that this most potent factor
in human evolution acts even now very favourably, and is capable of
having its value enormously enhanced. In the selection of husbands,
nervous or psychical factors are notably of high survival-value in
civilised communities. In the selection of wives the survival-value of
the physical is still very high: but it may be hoped and believed that
the present tendency is to attach relatively less importance to them
and more to the psychical elements of the chosen. This tendency must be
furthered to the utmost point beyond which the physical requisites for
motherhood would suffer weakening--but no further.
=How are we to estimate civic worth?=--We have already observed that
it is incorrect to use the word “fit” as if it were synonymous with
“worthy.” If we insist on using this term, which means only “adapted
to conditions,” we must define those conditions. We must say that we
desire to further the production of those who are fit for citizenship,
and to disfavour the production of those who are unfit for citizenship.
We shall thereby dispose at least of those vexatious objectors who
tell us that many eminent criminals are individually superior to many
eminent judges. The statement is doubtless untrue, but if it were
true it would still be irrelevant. A criminal may be individually a
remarkable personality, but in so far as he is a criminal he is unfit
for citizenship.
It is far better to use consistently Mr. Galton's phrase, “civic
worth,” or, for short, “worth.” We may here note Mr. Galton's most
recent remarks on what he means by worth:--
“By this I mean the civic worthiness, or the Value to the State of a
person, as it would probably be assessed by experts or, say, by such
of his fellow-workers as have earned the respect of the community
in the midst of which they live. Thus the worth of soldiers would
be such as it would be rated by respected soldiers, students by
students, business men by business men, artists by artists, and so
on. The State is a vastly complex organism, and the hope of obtaining
a Proportional Representation of its best parts should be an avowed
object of issuing invitations to these gatherings.
“Speaking only for myself, if I had to classify persons according
to Worth, I should consider each of them under the three heads of
Physique, Ability, and Character, subject to the provision that
inferiority in any one of the three should outweigh superiority in
the other two. I rank Physique first, because it is not only very
valuable in itself and allied to many other good qualities, but has
the additional merit of being easily rated. Ability I should place
second on similar grounds, and Character third, though in real
importance it stands first of all.”[16]
We shall certainly misunderstand this quotation unless we clearly
realise that Mr. Galton is speaking of eugenic worth--that is to say,
of worth in relation to parenthood and heredity. No one, of course,
would assert for a moment that inferiority in the matter of physique
outweighed superiority in ability and character, so far as our estimate
of an individual as an individual is concerned, nor yet so far as
our estimate of him as a citizen is concerned. But from the eugenic
standpoint, as a parent of citizens to come, such a person, though
he may have himself saved the State, is on the average rightly to be
regarded as unworthy on the eugenic scale--it being assumed, of course,
that the inferiority of physique in the person in question is either
native and therefore transmissible, or else due to forms of disease, or
poisoning, such as, according to our knowledge of ante-natal pathology,
will probably involve degeneracy on the part of his children. I would
add that love is as precious as ability, if not more so, and that we
should aim at its increase by making parenthood the most responsible
act in life, so that children are born only to those who love children
and who will transmit their high measure of the parental instinct and
the tender emotion which is its correlate.[17]