HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE
“We cannot but feel that the application of biological results
is _only beginning_, and beginning with a tardiness which is a
reproach to human foresight. There can be no doubt that it would
pay the British nation to put aside a million a year for research
on eugenics, or the improvement of the human breed.” (Prof. J. A.
Thomson, _Heredity_, 1908.)
It is evident that the facts and principles of heredity lie at the
very basis of eugenics or race-culture in any of its forms, practical
or impractical, scientific or unscientific. Our continual assumption
throughout is that _like tends to beget like_, and it is on this ground
that we desire to make parenthood the privilege of those whom we regard
as _inherently_ the best. If there were no such thing as heredity there
could be no possibility of race-culture--nor indeed should we be here
to discuss it. If a man's children were equally likely to be acorns or
babies or tadpoles, the living world would not be the living world we
know.
The potency of heredity is obscured to uncritical examination by the
fact that that which is inheritable is that which was innate, inherent
or germinal in the parent, as we shall shortly see. We, however, are
apt to compare the child with the parent, who has perhaps been much
modified by circumstances, so that the resemblance between father
and child may seem to be slight. Yet if we could bring back before
us that father, as he was, say at the age of two, and compare him
with his two-year-old child, we should perhaps be astonished by the
resemblance. But we see the acquirements or acquired characters of the
parent; make no distinction between them and his inherent characters;
fail to discover these acquired characters in his child;--and discount
the importance of heredity. Then, again, the eugenist may be utterly
confounded if he estimates the parental value of an individual without
reference to this limitation of heredity. Here is a man of culture and
accomplishment; his children, then, will presumably tend to be cultured
and accomplished. But every kind of advantage that forethought and
love and money can afford may have been showered upon that man. So far
as native endowment was concerned, he may have indeed been far below
mediocrity. Now it is native endowment alone that he can transmit, and
our eugenic estimate of him is therefore erroneous and will lead to
disappointment. It is impossible to lay too great stress upon the truth
that in all eugenic plans or demands or practices we are assuming the
fact of inheritance, and that therefore it is our first business to
distinguish absolutely between that which tends to be inherited and
that which, on the other hand, is never inherited.
Yet again, this distinction is of almost incalculable social moment in
so far as it affects the process of selection actually occurring in
society. This, perhaps, has not been adequately recognised. One may
repeat a former statement of this point, which is cardinal for the
eugenist:--
“Even supposing that we were all identical at birth, yet, since
we would come to differ from one another in virtue of different
acquirements, due to our adaptation to differing environments,
natural selection would ultimately have different individuals
from which to select. Those who had made the most advantageous
acquirements, such as industry or great knowledge, would tend to
survive and prosper, whilst those who had made disadvantageous
acquirements, such as laziness or the loss of sight or limbs, would
be pushed to the wall. That process, of course, occurs in society
at the present day to a greater or less degree, but it has only
immediate and temporary or contemporary consequences. For if we
recall the assertion that acquirements cannot be transmitted, we
shall see that the selection of those who have made advantageous
acquirements cannot benefit the next generation, since these
acquirements die with their makers. The only process of natural
selection which can result in progress is one which consists in
the selection of favourable ... inborn and therefore transmissible
characters, such as good digestion, the musical sense, exceptional
intelligence, the sympathetic temperament or what not (in so far as
these are inborn)--the reason being that such are transmissible and
that the children of persons so selected will tend to inherit their
parents' good fortune. There is a fictitious way in which we speak
of a child inheriting his father's acquirements, as when his father
has acquired a fortune; but the child does much better to inherit
his father's good sense or good health, which were characters inborn
in him. Acquirements, then, are all very well for the day, but it is
inborn characters that alone count for the morrow.”[26]
It may be added that the time is coming when there will be a radical
“transvaluation,” as Nietzsche would say, of the two fashions in which
a father “leaves” something to his children. When a question is asked
on this head now-a-days, we mean, foolishly enough, to enquire how
much money the father left his child, and we say of a man that he has
“inherited” a fortune. We can see plainly enough, as Theognis did
two thousand five hundred years ago, that such an “inheritance” may
and often does work in an anti-eugenic fashion. The gilded fool is
swallowed by the maiden whose native sense would have rejected such a
pill without its coat, and so the most pitiable degenerate becomes the
father of his like. This point will be alluded to later. The present
argument is that when we ask what a father “left” his children, we
should really desire to learn what he _gave_ them when he was still
alive and begot them. These vital, or mortal, characters which they
inherit--shall we say good health or insanity--are of incalculably
more moment to them as individuals than any monetary fortune, and of
incalculably more moment for the future. Yet again is it true that
there is no wealth but life, and the best “fortune” or wealth that you
can leave your children is sane and vigorous life.
=The case of slum childhood.=--We have already seen that even in the
slums the children make a fresh start in a wonderful way, that their
stunted growth, their proneness to disease, are mainly due to their
environment, which it is therefore our duty to improve. This is _in
general_ true, and depends evidently upon the fact that the acquired
deterioration of the parents--_e.g._, dental decay--is not transmitted
to their children--poisonings apart--so that the children make a fresh
start where their parents did. It is necessary to point this out
again and again, as the present writer for one has long been weary
of doing, because it indicates our immediate duty in this respect,
and forbids us to shirk it with any too-comprehensive phrases about
“national degeneration.” Now who could have predicted that this plain
and simple truth would be regarded by some people as constituting a
denial--on strict scientific grounds, and as the very latest scientific
pronouncement--of the principle of heredity? “The bubble of heredity
has been pricked,” says Mr. Bernard Shaw.
But popular muddleheadedness does not affect the palpable and universal
truth that the _inherent_ characters of parents do tend to be inherited
by their children; nor yet that these inherent characters differ
profoundly in different individuals; nor yet the eugenic argument,
which is that for purposes of parenthood, which means for the entire
future, some of these should be taken and others left.
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns,
or figs of thistles?... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
These classical words surely have a special value for the eugenist. As
we have said, it is his particular necessity, alike in theory and in
practice, to “know” the real nature, the innate, inherent, germinal
characters, of the individuals who may or may not be parents: and
these, as we have seen, are frequently obscured by the action of the
environment--as, for instance, in the population of the slums on
the one hand, or the man of factitious culture on the other hand.
But “by their fruits ye shall know them.” In general, the children
inherit what was innate in their parents, and in many an instance the
surest way in which you could ascertain what the parent really was by
nature--what, as we say, Nature “meant” him to be--is by a study of
his children. Only, of course, we must take the children very young
indeed, before environment has made its mark upon them also, for better
or for worse. Thus, when we find the new-born baby of some pallid,
half-starved, stunted mother in the slums, to be healthy and vigorous
and beautiful,[27] by this fruit we shall know what the mother might
and should have been. A healthy baby goes far to demonstrate that the
stock is healthy. This is one of the cardinal truths which emerge from
the study of infant mortality, and it may be perhaps permitted to
warn some students of race-culture of the errors into which they are
bound to fall if they do not reckon with what the student of infant
mortality is constantly asserting: viz., that the babies of the slums,
seen early, before ignorance and neglect have had their way with
them, are physically vigorous and promising in certainly not less than
ninety per cent. of cases. This primarily demonstrates, of course, the
murderous nature of our infant mortality; but it also demonstrates to
the eugenist that these classes are perhaps not so unworthy as he may
fancy. By their new-born babies ye shall know them. It is under the
influence of such considerations that the present writer, for one, is
somewhat chary of predictions and proposals based upon the relative
fertility of different classes of the community or of the masses as
compared with the classes. Directly the eugenist begins to talk in
terms of _social_ classes (as Mr. Galton has never done), he is skating
on thin ice, and if it lets him through, he will find the remains of
many of his rash predecessors beneath it.[28]
In fine, then, if we observe the distinction between the innate and
the acquired, which is the distinction between the transmissible and
the intransmissible, this is so far from denying the fact of heredity
at all as in reality to emphasise its potency whilst undoubtedly
diminishing its range.
=A criticism of terms.=--In order that this distinction may be clear
and never forgotten, it is well to look to our vocabulary--words
being good servants but bad masters. We should certainly have this
vocabulary purged altogether of a certain word in common and uncritical
employment, especially by the medical profession. This is the
thoroughly misleading, indeterminate and useless word “congenital.”
Not on one occasion in a hundred of its use does any examined meaning
attach to it. The word is commonly used as the equivalent of innate,
inherent, inborn or germinal. Now nothing is truly innate or inborn
save what was present in the germ. But with childish confusion of
thought, we persist in attaching quite undeserved importance to the
_birth_ of those animals which are brought forth “alive”--as if a
bird's egg were not alive. Hence we speak of any character present at
birth as congenital, and then we assume that congenital is synonymous
with inherent or germinal. But it is an irrelevant detail that a young
mammal happens to leave its mother at the ninth week or month. During
the whole period that it spends within its mother, it is to be regarded
as an individual organism with its own environment. If that environment
so affects it as to strangle a limb, the result is an acquirement,
though it may be present at birth. An acquirement is an acquirement,
whether it be acquired five minutes or months before, or five minutes
or months after, the change of environment which we call birth.
Thus a character may be congenital--that is, present at birth--but
not inherent or germinal, not inborn at the _real birth_, which was
the union of the maternal and paternal germ-cells at conception.
Such congenital characters are really acquirements, and--poisonings
apart--are not transmissible. In common discussion this distinction
is wholly ignored; and two distinct things, fundamentally different
in origin and in potency, are lumped together under the blessed word
“congenital.”
This word is equally foolish and useless in an opposite direction.
It constantly leads those who use it to suppose that the inherent
characters of an individual are conterminous with his congenital
characters or his characters at birth, and that thus any characters
which he displays at a later age are acquired. All this comes
of the absurdly delusive significance attached to the change of
environment called birth, and may doubtless be traced historically to
the remotest superstitions which imagined that a baby is not alive
until it is born and breathes, or that the soul or breath or _pneuma_
or “vital principle” is breathed into it at the moment of birth. We
know, however, that a man may display for the first time at the age
of twenty or sixty a character which was as truly inherent in his
constitution as his nose or his spinal column--perhaps a beard, perhaps
a mental character, perhaps a disease, or what not. Now this was not
congenital though it was inherent. But as long as the stupid[29] word
“congenital” is used as it is, we shall fail to realise that inherent
characters may display themselves in an individual at any time after
birth as at any time before birth. Thus, to sum up, a character may be
congenital or rather _pre-congenital_, yet not inherent but acquired:
a character may be post-congenital, yet not acquired but inherent. Now
the all-important question as regards heredity is not at what date in
the history of an individual a character appears--as, for instance,
before birth or after birth; but, whether that character is inherent
and therefore transmissible and therefore a possible architect of the
future of mankind; or merely an acquirement, with which--the racial
poisons apart--heredity has no concern.
It is suggested, then, that the word congenital be expunged from the
vocabulary of science, or that, if it be retained, some meaning or
other--any will do--be attached to it. If the word is to be retained,
and if it be agreed to attach a meaning to it, probably “at birth”
would be the most convenient. If this were agreed upon, then the
phrase “congenital blindness,” now in common use, could be retained,
as it would then accurately indicate the nature of the blindness in
question, which is due almost invariably, if not invariably, to an
infection acquired at the moment of birth.
Yet further. When we say that a man's intelligence or length of limb
or whatever it be is hereditary, we mean in ordinary speech that this
character can be traced in one or more of his ancestors; and that is,
of course, an accurate use of the term. But Shakespeare, for instance,
had unremarkable ancestors, so that no one would say that his genius
was hereditary; are we, then, to say that it was acquired? Every one
would protest at once that a poet is born and not made--than which
there is certainly no truer popular saying. What, then, is to be said
of it if it was neither hereditary nor acquired? The truth is that
language is again at fault. Shakespeare's genius was of inherent or
germinal origin--the poet is born and not made: or, more accurately,
the poet is conceived and not made, either before birth or after it.
Therefore, though Shakespeare did not inherit his mother's genius or
his father's genius, neither of them having such a gift to transmit,
yet his genius was certainly potential either in the maternal or
paternal germ-cell which united to form him, or in both; or at the
least arose in consequence of that compromise or rearrangement or
settlement, shall we say, which is in effect always agreed upon by the
two germ-cells in bi-parental reproduction. Now the two germ-cells are
the hereditary material. They were given to Shakespeare by his parents;
nay more, they made him. His genius, then, was hereditary in an
absolutely correct sense of the word, yet not in the sense of ordinary
speech, nor even in the sense in which it is employed by Mr. Galton in
his book on _Hereditary Genius_. This confusion of terms is responsible
for much confusion of thought. It must the more urgently be cleared up
because of the discoveries in heredity initiated by the Abbot Mendel,
forty years ago, and now included in the department of the science of
heredity which is called Mendelism. We learn from this that highly
definite characters may appear in offspring though there was no sign of
them in either parent. These, then, are not hereditary in the sense of
ordinary speech. Yet, in a more accurate sense of the word they can be
proved to be hereditary--nay more, the manner and proportion of their
transmission can be predicted in the most exact mathematical terms.
These characters were not present in the parent's body; they did not
lie open to view in the parent; they were not patent in the parent.
They were latent, however, they lay hid, in the parent, or rather in
the germ-plasm of which that parent was the host. In many such cases,
if we go back a generation further we find that the character in
question was patent in a grand-parent. A mother's son may suffer from
hæmophilia or the bleeding disease, yet she is not a “bleeder,” nor is
the boy's father; but her father was a bleeder, and the disease is, of
course, hereditary in her son, though neither of his parents displayed
a trace of it.
Thus an individual may inherit or may have inherent in the germ-cells
from which he was formed characters which were not present in either
parent. They were, however, potentially present in the germ-cells of
which those parents were the trustees.
But, the reader will say, do we find in the case of every “sport” or
“transilient variation,” such as Shakespeare, that the new character
was, after all, present in some one or other of his ancestors though
absent in his immediate parents? The answer is negative, certainly.
But genius, to take this case, is a combination of qualities. And the
Mendelians are now able to call into existence organisms of new kinds
by combination of qualities derived from one parent, or rather from one
parental line, with other qualities, formerly apparently incompatible
with them derived from the other parental line. Thus Professor Biffen
of Cambridge has called into existence a new kind of wheat such as
never existed before--a wheat combining the quality technically called
“strength,” hitherto lacking in all kinds of wheat capable of being
profitably grown in Great Britain, with the power of yielding a large
crop and other good qualities found in home-grown wheat. He has also
produced a wheat which, together with other desirable qualities, is
immune from the disease known as “rust,” this immunity having never
been found before associated with the other good qualities in question.
These advances will not long be limited to the vegetable world merely.
Perhaps it requires no very great imagination, after all, to suppose
that even something like that combination of qualities which we call
genius may some day be produced at will in mankind.
Such a new wheat, then,--I will not say such a Shakespeare--owes its
unique and unprecedented properties to heredity, and yet there was
never anything like it before. Its “genius” is not “hereditary.”
The words _innate_ and _inborn_ are harmless and may be employed,
though the apparent emphasis on birth is rather unfortunate. We mean,
however, by innate or inborn qualities, qualities which were potential
in the germ. The genius of Shakespeare was innate or inborn. It was
present potentially at his real birth, the union of the parental cells.
It preceded his “birth” in the ordinary sense of the word: Shakespeare,
when only _in embryo_, was a Shakespeare _in embryo_.
Better still is the word _inherent_, which, of course, literally means
“sticking in.” By anything inherent we mean that which was there from
the first as part and parcel of, as indeed essential to, the entity
to which we refer. Now inherent characters are always inherited in
the accurate sense that they inhere in the germ-cells, which are
the inherited material. As these germ-cells make us or as we are
made out of them, it follows, of course, that all our potentialities
whatsoever, our ultimate fates in every particular, partly depend upon
inheritance.[30]
_Nature_ and _nurture_ are antithetic terms of Shakespearean origin
which are in frequent use and much favoured by Mr. Galton. That which
comes by nature is the inborn, inherent, or germinal; and that is due
to nurture which is the result of the converse of the germinal with the
environment--a man's accent, for instance.
Perhaps, in some ways, _germinal_ is the most useful word of all,
though inherent is so convenient and familiar, as well as being
accurate etymologically, that it has been employed throughout this
book. Not only is the word germinal strictly accurate, but also it
suggests the idea of the germ-plasm, and has the particular virtue of
avoiding all reference to the change of environment to which young
mammals are subjected and which is called birth.
There remains the terminological difficulty that, as I have tried to
show, the individual may display characters which were potential in the
germ, inherent and necessarily inherited, though they did not appear in
the parent nor yet in any ancestor. We have to face the paradox, then,
that in natural inheritance a parent can transmit what he has not got,
though this does not apply to the unnatural inheritance of property in
human society. Now what word is there which shall indicate the origin
or at least the time and conditions of origin, of such characters
as these? They are germinal, yet they are--in some cases--not wholly
present in either of the germ-cells which united to form the new
individual in question. They are present, however, in the new single
cell from which this individual, like every living organism, takes its
origin.[31] The terms “congerminal” or “conceptional” might be employed.
“Acquired character,” even, is a bad term. It replaced
“functionally-produced modification,” which was long employed by
Spencer. The blacksmith's biceps answers to this phrase. It is this
and other such modifications that are non-transmissible. Alcoholic
degeneration is not a “functionally-produced modification,” but it
is an “acquired character,” as is lead poisoning. These do produce
results in offspring--naturally enough. If the older phrase were still
the one employed, we should see that the Weismannian argument as to
non-transmission does not apply to _such_ “acquired characters.”
The word “reversion,” also, not to say “atavism,” may well be dropped.
The attempted justification of its older meaning by Professor
Thomson has led to severe and conclusive Mendelian criticism. The
“reversion” of fancy pigeons to the blue ancestor is simply due
to the coming together of Mendelian units long separated. The
“reversion” of the feeble-minded is not reversion but the result of
poisoning--_di_version, or _per_version, if you like. Primitive man was
not feeble-minded, nor is the ape. Science has no further use for the
word as it is at present employed.
=Maternal impressions.=--We are now, at last, after our attempt to
clear up the vocabulary of heredity, in a position to consider
certain doctrines and popular beliefs which bear very directly upon
race-culture. Realising, for instance, that “congenital” means nothing;
realising as perhaps some of us have not so clearly realised before,
_when_ exactly it is that the new human being comes into existence, we
shall be prepared to understand how definite and indisputable are the
denials which science offers to certain popular ideas.
Thus, for instance, in the interests of race-culture, or, to be more
particular, in the interests of her unborn baby, the expectant mother
may faithfully follow the example of Lucy in _The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel_.[32] Does this have its intended effect? The answer is an
unqualified negative. Consider the case. The baby is at this time
already a baby, though rather small and uncanny, floating in a fluid of
its own manufacture. Its sole connection with its mother is by means
of its umbilical cord--that is to say, blood vessels, arterial and
venous. There is no nervous connection whatever: absolutely nothing but
the blood-stream, carried along a system of tubes. This blood is the
child's blood, which it sends forth from itself along the umbilical
cord to a special organ, the placenta or after-birth, half made by
itself and half made by the mother, in which the child's blood travels
in thin vessels so close to the mother's blood that their contents can
be interchanged. Yet the two streams never actually mix. The child's
blood, having disposed of its carbonic acid and waste-products to the
mother's blood, and having received therefrom oxygen and food, returns
so laden to the child. Pray how is the mother's reading of history to
make the child a historian? If, after birth, a small operation were
performed, so that some of the mother's blood should run along an
artificial tube into one of her baby's veins, the effective connection
between the two organisms would in a sense be actually closer than it
was before birth, when, as has been said, the two streams are always
kept apart. Should we expect such an operation to serve the child for
education? If the mother then acquired a scar should we expect it to
give the child a similar scar?
We see now why the learning of geometry on the part of the mother
before its birth will not set her baby upon that royal road to geometry
of which Euclid rightly denied the existence--any more than after
its birth. Such a thing does not happen, and there is no conceivable
means by which it could happen--unless we are to call in telepathy.
All maternal hopes and efforts of this kind are utterly misguided: as
misguided as if the father entertained similar hopes. Let the devoted
mother acquaint herself not with what historians are pleased to call
history, but with the history of the developing human mind and body, so
that she may be a fit educator of her child when it is born.
Let her also realise that her blood is everything to her child. It is
food and air and organ of excretion. If she introduces alcohol into
her blood in any considerable quantity she is feeding her child on
poisoned food. Surely the reader must see the distinction between a
case like this and the supposed transmission of historical knowledge or
even historical aptitude from mother to baby by the diligent perusal of
histories. Yet though the distinction is so palpable and evident, there
are extremists who believe and even print their beliefs that the denial
of the one (supposed) possibility, which is palpably inconceivable,
logically carries with it a denial of the other possibility, which is
indeed a palpable necessity. Or, to state the criticism in another way,
there are those who, if we protest that the introduction of poisons
into the mother's organism must surely involve risk to the child who is
nourished by her blood, will retort, “Oh, well, I suppose you believe
that if you learn a number of languages before your next child is born,
he or she will be a linguist!”[33]
=Hereditary genius.=--Mr. Galton's world-famous work on _Hereditary
Genius_ was published in 1869 and reprinted with a most valuable
additional chapter in 1892. It has long been out of print, however, and
for the definite purpose of attempting to arouse the reader's interest
in it so that he may somehow or other obtain a copy to read, I may here
go over one or two points, chosen to that end. The argument, of course,
is that ability is hereditary.[34]
This, in the judgment of most unbiassed people, Mr. Galton conclusively
proved: and we do not at all realise to-day how repugnant and
revolutionary this doctrine appeared to popular opinion some forty
years ago. Mr. Galton has, however, followed up his citation of facts
on more than one occasion since,[35] and those who now deny his view
belong to that very large majority of any population which finds
itself able to pronounce confidently upon the value of an author's
work without the labour, found necessary by less fortunate people, of
reading it.
The following quotation states the question of national eugenics in
final form:--
“As an example of what could be sought with advantage, let us
suppose that we take a number, sufficient for statistical purposes,
of persons occupying different social classes, those who are the
least efficient in physical, intellectual, and moral grounds forming
our lowest class, and those who are the most efficient forming our
highest class. The question to be solved relates to the hereditary
permanence of the several classes. What proportion of each class
is descended from parents who belong to the same class, and what
proportion is descended from parents who belong to each of the other
classes? Do those persons who have honourably succeeded in life,
and who are presumably, on the whole, the most valuable portion of
our human stock, contribute on the aggregate their fair share of
posterity to the next generation? If not, do they contribute more
or less than their fair share, and in what degree? In other words,
is the evolution of man in each particular country favourably or
injuriously affected by its special form of civilisation?
“Enough is already known to make it certain that the productiveness
of both the extreme classes, the best and the worst, falls short of
the average of the nation as a whole. Therefore, the most prolific
class necessarily lies between the two extremes, but at what
intermediate point does it lie? Taken altogether, on any reasonable
principle, are the natural gifts of the most prolific class, bodily,
intellectual, and moral, above or below the line of national
mediocrity? If above that line, then the existing conditions are
favourable to the improvement of the race. If they are below that
line, they must work towards its degradation.”
The main body of the book deals with enquiries in special cases--the
judges of England between 1660 and 1865, statesmen, commanders,
authors, men of science, poets, musicians, painters, divines, senior
classics of Cambridge, oarsmen and wrestlers.
The concluding chapters should be printed in gold. Only one or two
notes can here be made. Mr. Galton believes that the dark ages were
largely due to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders on their
votaries:--
“Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that
fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature
or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they had
no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But the Church
chose to preach and exact celibacy, and the consequence was that
these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus, by a policy
so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am hardly able to speak
of it without impatience, the Church brutalised the breed of our
forefathers. She acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting
the rudest portion of the community to be, alone, parents of future
generations. She practised the arts which breeders would use, who
aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid natures. No wonder
that club law prevailed for centuries over Europe; the wonder rather
is that enough good remained in the veins of Europeans to enable
their race to rise to its present very moderate level of natural
morality.”
Yet further:--
“The policy of the religious world in Europe was exerted in another
direction, with hardly less cruel effect on the nature of future
generations, by means of persecutions which brought thousands of the
foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes to the scaffold, or
imprisoned them during a large part of their manhood, or drove them
as emigrants into other lands. In every one of these cases the check
upon their leaving issue was very considerable. Hence the Church,
having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to
celibacy, made another sweep of her huge nets, this time fishing
in stirring waters, to catch those who were the most fearless,
truth-seeking, and intelligent, in their modes of thought, and
therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilisation, and put
a strong check, if not a direct stop, to their progeny. Those she
reserved on these occasions, to breed the generations of the future,
were the servile, the indifferent, and, again, the stupid. Thus, as
she--to repeat my expression--brutalised human nature by her system
of celibacy applied to the gentle, she demoralised it by her system
of persecution of the intelligent, the sincere, and the free. It is
enough to make the blood boil to think of the blind folly that has
caused the foremost nations of struggling humanity to be the heirs of
such hateful ancestry, and that has so bred our instincts as to keep
them in an unnecessarily long-continued antagonism with the essential
requirements of a steadily advancing civilisation.”
For this final quotation no apology is needed:--
“The best form of civilisation in respect to the improvement of the
race, would be one in which society was not costly; where incomes
were chiefly derived from professional sources, and not much through
inheritance; where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities,
and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education
and entrance into professional life, by the liberal help of the
exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in his early youth;
where marriage was held in as high honour as in ancient Jewish times;
where the pride of race was encouraged (of course I do not refer to
the nonsensical sentiment of the present day, that goes under that
name); where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate
monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the better sort of
emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed,
and their descendants naturalised.”
=The study of psychical inheritance.=--This early work of Mr. Galton
has been followed by much more on the same lines. Contemporary
psychology, however, is _just beginning_ to indicate the lines on
which new enquiry is needed. The naïve assertions of the actuary as
to the inheritance of, say, “conscientiousness” are not useful to the
psychologist, who has some idea of the structure and history of that
most complex social product we call conscience. The psychologists
must analyse out for us those elementary units of the mind upon
which experience and the social state, education and suggestion act,
to make human nature as we know it. The reader may be directed to
Dr. McDougall's recent work on _Social Psychology_--written at the
present writer's suggestion--for an outline analysis of what is really
inherent, and therefore alone transmissible, in the human mind--certain
instincts and impulses, together with native varieties in capacity of
memory, and so on. Recently the Mendelians have entered this field,
and they have the advantage of realising the importance of dealing
with real primary units. Their law seems to apply to the musical sense
in man and to the brooding instinct in the hen.[36] The line of study
here suggested is earnestly commended to the psychologists for their
_indispensable_ help.
=Eugenics and parties.=--Let us once again consider the fashion in
which men and women are classified to the eugenic eye. We have already
realised that the most essential division _of fact_ is that between
those who will and those who will not be parents. The most essential
division _of ideal_ is of those who are worthy and those who are not
worthy to be parents. It is the object of eugenics to make the real and
the ideal divisions coincide. And let us here say with all possible
force that before such classifications as these all others are trivial
and nearly all others impudent. The eugenist has nothing to do with the
low game called party politics: terms like socialism and so forth mean
very little for him. He may or may not be a socialist, but if he be,
at least he does not subscribe to what, so far as I can judge, is the
first article in the creed of socialism--that all evil is of economic
origin; he knows that there is much evil of germinal origin. As for
conservatism and liberalism, he might have some use for these terms
if the creed of conservatism were that there is no wealth but life,
which must be conserved; and the creed of liberalism that life has not
yet reached its zenith, and there must be liberty for all progressive
variations of body and mind and thought and practice. As it is, all
these things are somewhat nauseating. If and when there is a thinking
party, and that party will have the eugenist, he will doubtless join
it. Meanwhile he appeals to that great and growing section of the
community which knows party-politics for the humbug and sham that it
is, and the House of Commons as a lethal chamber for souls.
Similarly, the eugenic classification of mankind cuts right across
the ordinary social classification. The parasite and the parent of
parasites must be branded, whether he be at the top or the bottom of
the social scale. The quality of the germ-plasm which men and women
carry is the supremely important thing. Its architecture is the
architect of all empires. Year by year we shall more surely be able
to infer the nature and the worth of the germ-plasm in particular
cases, though its host may have been veneered or, on the other hand,
repressed; and year by year the basal facts of heredity will furnish
ever surer criteria for the theory and practice of a New Imperialism
which knows, for instance, what militarism did for Rome and Napoleon
for France, and which will some day sweep all the money changers out of
the Temple of Life.[37]