But heredity is not the whole story, any more than the foundation is the
whole house.
Several times when I have spoken or written upon the basic principle of
heredity, I have been met by questions like this: "Then you must think
it is hopeless. With these awful facts and illustrations of the power
and persistence of heredity before us, we must recognize that we are
doomed before we are born, must we not? If there is, as you say, no
escape from our heredity and its power and influence, what is the use
of trying? Why not let go and just drift on the tide of inherited
conditions? If these conditions are unfortunate for us, why not just
accept the tragedy; if favorable, drift in the sunlight that our
ancestors turned upon us, and let the world wag as it will?--we are not
responsible." I confess that each time this sort of reasoning comes to
me it finds me in a state of surprise that it is possible for thoughtful
people--and naturally those are the ones interested in reading or
talking upon the subject--I confess it surprises me anew each time to
find that it is possible for such people to reason so inadequately and
to see with but one eye.
It is undoubtedly true that, do what we will, labor as we may, heredity
has established beyond the possibility of doubt that an apple cannot
be cultivated into a peach. Once an apple always an apple. That is the
power of heredity. That is the foundation of the house. But there is
another story. Plant your apple tree in hard and rugged soil; give it
too little light and too much rain; let some one hack its bark with a
knife from time to time; when the boys climb the tree let them
strain and break it; let Bridget throw all sorts of liquids about its
roots,--in short, let it take "pot luck" on a barren farm with Ignorance
for an owner and Shiftlessness for his wife, and the best apple tree
in the world will not remain so for many years. The apples will not
degenerate into potatoes, however; heredity will attend to this. But
they will become hard and knotty and sour and feeble and few as to
apples; environment will see to that.
Now suppose you had sold that farm to Intelligence and given him for a
wife Observation or Thrift. Suppose that they had dug and fertilized and
nourished and pruned that tree (I do not mean after it had been ruined,
but from the start). It is quite true that you need never expect it to
bear Malaga grapes. Heredity will still hold its own, and the kind of
fruit was determined at birth (if I maybe permitted the form of
speech), but very much of the quality of the fruit will depend upon the
conditions under which it grew--the environment. So while it is true
that our heredity is as certain as the eternal hills, and, as a famous
biologist recently said in my hearing, dates back of the foundation of
the Sierra Nevada mountain range, so that each of us carries within us
mementos of an age when language was not and, as he humorously said,
"Man has in his anatomy a collection of antiques--we are full of
reminiscences"; still it is equally true that the power of environment,
the conditions under which we develop or restrict our inherited
tendencies, will determine in large part whether heredity shall be our
slave-driver or our companion in the race for life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.
Let me illustrate in another way. Suppose that you are born from a
family which has for its heritage a history of many and early deaths
from consumption. Suppose that you have discovered that the tendency is
strong within yourself. Is it for that reason absolutely necessary that
you buy a coffin-plate to-morrow and proceed to die with lung trouble?
By no means. Knowing your inherited weakness you guard with jealous care
the health you have, and it may be that your intelligent consideration
may secure to you, in spite of your undoubted inheritance, the
threescore years and ten; while your robust neighbor, with lungs like a
bellows and the inheritance from a race of athletes, may succumb to the
March winds which he braved and you did not. Maybe "quick consumption"
will carry him off while you remain to mourn his loss, and quite
possibly leave with your posterity a growing tendency toward strong
lungs.
I know a man in New York City who had what is called a "family history"
of consumption, who was rejected on that account by every life insurance
company in this country thirty years ago. Well, that frightened him
within an inch of his life; but with that inch he set to work to build
his house "facing the other way," as he expressed it to me when I met
him ten years ago, when he was, as he still is, a hale, hearty old
gentleman. He is not and never could have been exactly robust; but he
is as well, as happy and as content as the average man who has not
inherited his unfortunate potentiality. It is true that nothing but
intelligent and wise care all these years, nothing but his temperate and
judicious life, could have compassed this end. I use the word temperate
in its general sense. So far as I know he has not denied himself any of
the best of life, which he has been amply able to secure; but he has at
all times kept his house "facing the other way." His hereditary threat,
while it has not driven him with a lash, has, it is true, lived in the
back yard--which it does and will and must with us all, no matter what
our environment or wisdom may be; but we need not foolishly throw open
the windows, swing back the doors and invite it to take possession,
while our own individuality moves down into the coal cellar.
I have taken as illustrations in both of these papers inherited disease
and its developments, but this is done only for convenience and because
it will explain more fully, clearly and easily to most people what is
meant. That our heredity is equally strong and certain in its mental and
moral potentialities and tendencies is also true.* It is likewise true
that the environment--the conditions under which we develop, curb or
direct our natural tendencies--has a great and modifying rôle to play.
* "Alienists hold, in general, that a large proportion of
mental diseases are the result of degeneracy; that is, they
are the offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic and
consumptive parents, and suffer from the action of
heredity."--Dr. Arthur McDonald, author of "Criminology."
It is sometimes asked, if children were changed in the
cradle, and those of fortunate parentage carried to the
slums to be nurtured and taught and those from the slums.
"To one at all familiar with the external aspect of insanity
in its various forms, it seems incredible that its physical
nature was not sooner realized. Had the laws of heredity
been earlier understood, it would have been seen that mental
derangements, like physical diseases and tendencies, were
transmitted."--Prof. Edward S. Morse.
If placed in the cradles of luxury, would not all trace of mental, moral
and physical heredity of a fortunate type disappear from the darlings of
Murray Hill in their adopted environment of squalor and vice; and would
not the haggard and half-starved, ill-nurtured waifs of Mulberry Bend
blossom as the rose in strength and virtue in their new environment
of luxury and of wholesome and healthful surroundings? Just here a
digression seems necessary; for while I have no doubt that the change
(even on the terms usually implied) would work wonders in both sets
of infants, still it is to be remembered that for such a test to tell
anything of real value to science, the exchange would need to be made
upon another basis from that which is generally used as an argument,
because it is incorrectly assumed that the children of luxury (as a
rule) are born with clean and lofty heredity. This is, alas, so far from
the case that it is almost a truism that "the highest and the lowest"
(meaning the richest and the poorest) are "nearest together in action
and farthest apart in appearance, only." They both frequently give to
their children tainted mental, moral and physical natures with which
to contend. The self-indulgence of the young men of the "upper classes"
leaves a burned-out, undermined and tainted physical heredity almost a
certainty for their children, while the ethical tone of such men--their
moral fibre--is higher only in appearance and the ability to do secretly
that which puts the tough of Mulberry Bend in the penitentiary because
he has not the gold to gild his vices and to dazzle the eyes of society.
The exchanged children, therefore, would not be so totally different
in inherited qualities, after all. They would have alike a tainted
ancestry. Their physical natures are the hotbeds of vices or diseases
that are to be developed or curbed according as environment shall
determine. But the foundation in both cases--the ground--both mental,
moral and physical, is sowed down and harrowed in with the tainted
heredity. The mother in both instances, as a rule, is but an aimless
puppet who dances to the tune played by her male owner--a mere weak
transmitter or adjunct of and for and to his scale of life. Therefore to
point to the fact that to change these classes of infants in the
cradle is to exchange (by means of their environment only) their mature
development, also, from that of a Wall Street magnate to a Sing Sing
convict, tells nothing whatever against the power and force of heredity.
It tells only what is always claimed for fortunate or unfortunate
environment--that "It gilds the straitened forehead of the fool," or
that
"Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all; plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it."
Let us start fair. Let us understand that no environment can create what
is not within the individuality--that heredity has fixed this; but that
environment does and must act as the one tremendous and vital power to
develop or to control the inheritance which parents stamp upon their
children. Notwithstanding, you are personally responsible for the trend,
the added power and development you give to much that you inherit. You
are personally responsible to the coming generation for the fight it
will have to make and for the strength you transmit to it to make that
fight. Many a father and mother transmitted to their "fallen" daughter
the weakness and the tendency to commit the acts which they and their
fellows whine about afterward as "tarnishing the family honor." If they
had tied her hand and foot and cast her into the midst of the waves
of the sea expecting her to save herself they would be no more truly
responsible for her death, be it moral or physical.
And let me emphasize here that I do not attribute all of the moral and
physical disasters of the race to the fathers of the race. By no means.
I believe with all my heart that the mothers have to answer for their
full share of the vice, sorrow and suffering of humanity. Woman has not,
perhaps, been such an active agent, and much of the wrong she has done
to her children has been compassed, through what have been regarded
as her very virtues--her sweetest qualities--submission, compliance,
self-abnegation! In so far as the mothers of the race have been weakly
subservient, in that far have they a terrible score against them in the
transmission of the qualities which has made the race too weak to do the
best that it knew--too cowardly to be honest even with its own soul.
I do not believe that the sexes, in a normal state, would differ
materially in moral tone. Why? Simply because throughout all nature
there is no line of demarcation between the sexes on moral grounds.
The male and the female differ in qualities, but neither is "better,"
"purer" nor "wiser" than the other--dividing them on the basis of
sex alone. I do not believe that women are (under natural and equal
conditions) better or purer than men, as is so often claimed. I do not
believe that men are (under natural and equal conditions) wiser and
abler than women. These are all artificially built up conditions, and
they have fixed upon the race a very large share of its sorrow, its
crime, its insanity, its disease and its despair. They have weakened
woman and brutalized man. Children have been bom from two parents, one
of whom is weakly self-effacing and trivial, narrow in outlook and petty
in interests--a dependant, and therefore servile; while the other parent
is unclean, unjust, self-assertive and willing to demand more than he
is willing to give. These conditions have morally perverted the race so
that it will continue long to need those evidences against, instead
of for, civilization--almshouses, insane asylums, reformatories and
prisons.
It is usual to point with vast pride to the immense sums of money
we spend year by year to support such charitable and eleemosynary
institutions, instead of realizing, in humiliation and shame, that what
we need to do, and what we can do, in great part, is to lock the stable
door before the horse is stolen; that what we need to do, and what we
can do, in large measure, is to regulate conditions and heredity so that
we may congratulate ourselves in pointing to the small sums of money
needed year by year to care for the unfortunate victims of inherited
weakness or vice. We don't want our country covered with magnificently
equipped hospitals, asylums, poor-houses and prisons. What we want is
intelligent and wise parentage which shall depopulate eleemosynary,
charitable and penal institutions. We don't want to continue to boast of
a tremendous and increasing population of sick or weak minds encased in
sick or weak bodies--half-matured, ill-born, mental, moral and physical
weaklings who drag out a few wretched years in some retreat and then
miserably perish.
We want men and women on this continent who shall be well and
intelligent and free and wise enough to see that not numbers but quality
in population will solve the questions that perplex the souls of men. We
want parents who are wise and self-controlled enough to refuse to curse
the world and their own helpless children with vitiated lives, and
who, if they cannot give whole, clean, fine children to the world, will
refuse to give it any. Nothing but a low, perverted and weak moral and
ethical sense makes possible the need of an argument on this subject.
It is self-evident the moment one stops to ask himself a few simple and
primitive questions: "Am I willing to buy my own comfort and pleasure
at the expense of those who are helpless? Am I willing to be a moral and
physical pauper preying upon the rights of my children? Am I willing to
be a thief and misappropriate their physical, mental and moral heritage?
Am I willing to be a murderer and taint with slow poison their lives
before they get them? Am I willing to do this by giving to them a weak
and dependant and silly mother and a father who is less than the best he
can be--who arrogates to himself the prerogative of dictator who has no
account to render?"
All these questions apply to the health of the nation and to what it
shall be in the future. When we speak of the health of a nation, we are
so given to thinking of the physical condition, only, of its citizens
that the more comprehensive thought of their mental, moral, ethical and
business health is likely to escape our minds. Indeed, I fancy that few
persons realize that even in the matter of business ethics and general
moral outlook (including the nation's political policy, of course)
heredity cuts a very wide swath. But it is true that national business
morals are as distinctive from generation to generation as are the
physical characteristics, well-being or mental qualities of the
different peoples. Some one will say, "True, but all this is due to
difference of environment,"--forgetting that the special features of our
environment itself (outside of climate and soil) are due primarily to
the hereditary habits and bias of a people. Natural selection, _per se_,
ceased to have full force the moment man reached the stage when he was
able to control artificial means of protection or power.. The "fittest"
ceased to be so upon the basis of inborn quality. Artificial means--from
the use of a sharp stone to overcome a stronger (or "fitter")
antagonist, on up to the skilful application of money where it will do
the most good--took the place of primary "natural selection," and
the "fittest" to survive in the mental, moral, physical, financial or
political arena became he who could command the artificial means of
guiding and controlling the natural forces of primary "selection."
The "tough" lives in the "slums" primarily because his parents did. He
inherited his social and ethical outlook as well as his physical form,
and the mould in which his thoughts have run was fashioned by nature and
secondarily fixed by an environment or surrounding which also came to
him as a part of his inheritance.
Heredity and environment act and react upon each other with the
regularity and inevitability of succession of night and day. Neither
tells the whole story; together they make up the sum of life; and yet it
is true that the first half--the part or foundation upon which all
else is based and upon which all else must depend--has been taken into
account so little in the conduct and scheme of human affairs that total
ignorance of its very principle has been looked upon as a charming
attribute of the young mothers upon whose weak or undeveloped shoulders
rest the responsibility, the welfare, the shame or the glory, the very
sanity and capacity, of the generations that are to come!