NATURAL SELECTION
Man has risen from the ape chiefly through the action of natural
selection. Any scheme of conscious race betterment, then, should
carefully examine nature's method, to learn to what extent it is still
acting, and to what extent it may better be supplanted or assisted by
methods of man's own invention.
Natural selection operates in two ways: (1) through a selective
death-rate and (2) through a selective birth-rate. The first of these
forms has often been considered the whole of natural selection, but
wrongly. The second steadily gains in importance as an organism rises in
the scale of evolution; until in man it is likely soon to dwarf the
lethal factor into insignificance. For it is evident that the appalling
slaughter of all but a few of the individuals born, which one usually
associates with the idea of natural selection, will take place only when
the number of individuals born is very large. As the reproductive rate
decreases, so does the death-rate, for a larger proportion of those born
are able to find food and to escape enemies.
When considering man, one realizes at once that relatively few babies or
adults starve to death. The selective death-rate therefore must include
only those who are unable to escape their enemies; and while these
enemies of the species, particularly certain microörganisms, still take
a heavy toll from the race, the progress of science is likely to make it
much smaller in the future.
The different aspects of natural selection may be classified as follows:
{ Lethal { Sustentative
{ { Non-sustentative
Natural selection {
{ Reproductive { Sexual
{ { Fecundal
The lethal factor is the one which Darwin himself most emphasized.
Obviously a race will be steadily improved, if the worst stock in it is
cut off before it has a chance to reproduce, and if the best stock
survives to perpetuate its kind. "This preservation of favourable
individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those
which are injurious, I have called natural selection, or the survival of
the fittest," Darwin wrote; and he went on to show that the principal
checks on increase were overcrowding, the difficulty of obtaining food,
destruction by enemies, and the lethal effects of climate. These causes
may be conveniently divided as in the above diagram, into sustentative
and non-sustentative. The sustentative factor has acquired particular
prominence in the human species, since Malthus wrote his essay on
population--that essay which both Darwin and Wallace confess was the
starting point of their discovery of natural selection.
There is a "constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond
the nourishment prepared for it," Malthus declared. "It is
incontrovertibly true that there is no bound to the prolific plants and
animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each
others' means of subsistence." His deduction is well known: that as man
tends to increase in geometrical ratio, and can not hope to increase his
food-supply more rapidly than in arithmetical ratio, the human race must
eventually face starvation, unless the birth-rate be reduced.
Darwin was much impressed by this argument and ever since his time it
has usually been the foundation for any discussion of natural selection.
Nevertheless it is partly false for all animals, as one of the authors
showed[52] some years ago, since a species which regularly eats up all
the food in sight is rare indeed; and it is of very little racial
importance in the present-day evolution of man. Scarcity of food may put
sufficient pressure on him to cause emigration, but rarely death. The
importance of Malthus' argument to eugenics is too slight to warrant
further discussion.
When the non-sustentative forms of lethal selection are considered, it
is seen very clearly that man is not exempt from the workings of this
law. A non-sustentative form of natural selection takes place through
the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the
environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria; or by bodily
deficiency; and it is independent of mere food-supply. W. F. R. Weldon
showed by a long series of measurements, for example, that as the harbor
of Plymouth, England, kept getting muddier, the crabs which lived in it
kept getting narrower; those with the greatest frontal breadth filtered
the water entering their gills least effectively, and died.
But, it was objected, man is above all this. He has gained the control
of his own environment. The bloody hand of natural selection may fall on
crabs: but surely you would not have us think that Man, the Lord of
Creation, shares the same fate?
Biologists could hardly think otherwise. Statisticians were able to
supply the needed proof. A selective death-rate in man can not only be
demonstrated but it can be actually measured.
"The measure of the selective death-rate." says[53] Karl Pearson, to
whom this achievement is due, "is extraordinarily simple. It consists in
the fact that the inheritance of the length of life between parent and
offspring is found statistically to be about one-third of the average
inheritance of physical characters in man. This can only be due to the
fact that the death of parent or of offspring in a certain number of
cases is due to random and not to constitutional causes." He arrived at
the conclusion[54] that 60% of the deaths were selective, in the Quaker
families which he was then studying. The exact proportion must vary in
accordance with the nature of the material and the environment, but as
A. Ploetz found at least 60% of the deaths to be selective in the
European royal families and nobility, where the environment is
uniformly good, there is no reason to think that Professor Pearson's
conclusion is invalid.
Dr. Ploetz[55] investigated the relation between length of life in
parents, and infant mortality, in about 1,000 families including 5,500
children; half of these were from the nobility and half from the
peasantry. The results were of the same order in each case, indicating
that environment is a much less important factor than many have been
wont to suppose. After discussing Professor Pearson's work, he
continued:
It seems to me that a simpler result can be reached from our
material in the following way. Since the greater child-mortality of
each of our classes of children (divided according to the ages at
death of their parents) indicates a higher mortality throughout the
rest of their lives, the offspring of parents who die young will
therefore be eliminated in a higher degree, that is, removed from
the composition of the race, than will those whose parents died
late. Now the elimination can be non-selective, falling on all
sorts of constitutions with the same frequency and degree. In that
case it will of course have no connection with selection inside the
race. Or it may be of a selective nature, falling on its victims
because they differ from those who are not selected, in a way that
makes them less capable of resisting the pressure of the
environment, and avoiding its dangers. Then we speak of a selective
process, of the elimination of the weaker and the survival of the
stronger. Since in our examination of the various causes of the
difference in infant mortality, in the various age-classes of
parents, we found no sufficient cause in the effects of the
environment, which necessarily contains all the non-selective
perils, but found the cause to be in the different constitutions
inherited by the children, we can not escape the conclusion that
the differences in infant mortality which we observe indicate a
strong process of natural selection.
Our tables also permit us to get an approximate idea of the extent
of selection by death among children in the first five years of
life. The minimum of infant mortality is reached among those
children whose parents have attained 85 years of age. Since these
represent the strongest constitutions, the mortality of their
children would appear to represent an absolute minimum, made up
almost wholly of chance, non-selective, unavoidable deaths. As the
number of children from marriages, both parties to which reached
85 years of age, is so small as to render any safe conclusions
impossible, our only recourse is to take the children of the
85-year-old fathers and the children of the 85-year-old mothers,
add them together, and strike an average. But we must recognize
that the minimum so obtained is nevertheless still too large,
because among the consorts of the long-lived fathers and mothers,
some died early with the result of increasing the infant mortality.
The infant mortality with the 85-year-old fathers and mothers is
found to be 11.2%-15.4%, average about 13%. The total
child-mortality reaches 31-32%, of which the 13% make about 40%.
Accordingly at least 60%, and considering the above mentioned
sources of error we may say two-thirds, of the child mortality is
selective in character. That accords reasonably well with the
55-74% which Pearson found for the extent of selective deaths in
his study.
In general, then, one may believe that more than a half of the persons
who die nowadays, die because they were not fit by by nature (i. e.,
heredity) to survive under the conditions into which they were born.
They are the victims of lethal natural selection, nearly always of the
non-sustentative type. As Karl Pearson says, "Every man who has lived
through a hard winter, every man who has examined a mortality table,
every man who has studied the history of nations has probably seen
natural selection at work."
There is still another graphic way of seeing natural selection at work,
by an examination of the infant mortality alone. Imagine a thousand
babies coming into the world on a given day. It is known that under
average American conditions more than one-tenth of them will die during
the first year of life. Now if those who die at this time are the
inherently weaker, then the death-rate among survivors ought to be
correspondingly less during succeeding years, for many will have been
cut down at once, who might otherwise have lingered for several years,
although doomed to die before maturity. On the other hand, if only a few
die during the first year, one might expect a proportionately greater
number to die in succeeding years. If it is actually found that a high
death-rate in the first year of life is associated with a low
death-rate in succeeding years, then there will be grounds for believing
that natural selection is really cutting off the weaker and allowing the
stronger to survive.
E. C. Snow[56] analyzed the infant mortality registration of parts of
England and Prussia to determine whether any such conclusion was
justified. His investigation met with many difficulties, and his results
are not as clear-cut as could be desired, but he felt justified in
concluding from them that "the general result can not be questioned.
Natural selection, in the form of a selective death-rate, is strongly
operative in man in the early years of life. We assert with great
confidence that a high mortality in infancy (the first two years of
life) is followed by a correspondingly low mortality in childhood, and
vice-versa.... Our work has led us to the conclusion that infant
mortality _does_ effect a 'weeding out' of the unfit."
"Unfitness" in this connection must not be interpreted too narrowly. A
child may be "unfit" to survive in its environment, merely because its
parents are ignorant and careless. Such unfitness makes more probable an
inheritance of low intelligence.
Evidence of natural selection was gathered by Karl Pearson from another
source and published in 1912. He dealt with material analogous to that
of Dr. Snow and showed "that when allowance was made for change of
environment in the course of 50 years, a very high association existed
between the deaths in the first year of life and the deaths in childhood
(1 to 5 years). This association was such that if the infantile
death-rate _increased_ by 10% the child death rate _decreased_ by 5.3%
in males, while in females the _fall_ in the child death-rate was almost
1% for every 1% _rise_ in the infantile death-rate."
To put the matter in the form of a truism, part of the children born in
any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to a premature
death; and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in some
succeeding year.
Lately a new mathematical method, which is termed the Variate Difference
Correlation method, has been invented and gives more accurate results,
in such an investigation as that of natural selection, than any hitherto
used. With this instrument Professor Pearson and Miss Elderton have
confirmed the previous work. Applying it to the registered births in
England and Wales between 1850 and 1912, and the deaths during the first
five years of life in the same period, they have again found[57] that
"for both sexes a heavy death-rate in one year of life means a markedly
lower death-rate in the same group in the following year of life." This
lessened death-rate extends in a lessened degree to the year following
that, but is not by the present method easy to trace further.
"It is difficult," as they conclude, "to believe that this important
fact can be due to any other source than natural selection, i. e., a
heavy mortality leaves behind it a stronger population."
To avoid misunderstandings, it may be well to add to this review the
closing words of the Elderton-Pearson memoir. "Nature is not concerned
with the moral or the immoral, which are standards of human conduct, and
the duty of the naturalist is to point out what goes on in Nature. There
can now be scarcely a doubt that even in highly organized human
communities the death-rate is selective, and physical fitness is the
criterion for survival. To assert the existence of this selection and
measure its intensity must be distinguished from an advocacy of high
infant mortality as a factor of racial efficiency. This reminder is the
more needful as there are not wanting those who assert that
demonstrating the existence of natural selection in man is identical
with decrying all efforts to reduce the infantile death-rate." A further
discussion of this point will be found in a later chapter.
The conclusion that, of the infants who die, a large number do so
through inherent weakness--because they are not "fit" to survive--is
also suggested by a study of the causes of death. From a third to a half
of the deaths during the first year of life, and particularly during the
first month, are due to what may be termed uterine causes, such as
debility, atrophy, inanition, or premature birth. Although in many
cases such a death is the result of lack of prenatal care, in still more
it must be ascribed to a defect in the parental stock.
In connection with infant mortality, it may be of interest to point out
that the intensity of natural selection is probably greater among boys
than among girls. There is a steady preponderance of boys over girls at
birth (about 105 to 100, in the United States), while among the
stillborn the proportion is 158 to 100, if the Massachusetts figures for
1891-1900 may be taken as general in application. Evidently a large
number of weak males have been eliminated before birth. This elimination
continues for a number of years to be greater among boys than among
girls, until in the period of adolescence the death-rates of the two
sexes are equal. In adult life the death-rate among men is nearly always
higher than that among women, but this is due largely to the fact that
men pursue occupations where they are more exposed to death. In such
cases, and particularly where deaths are due to accident, the mortality
may not only be non-selective, but is sometimes contra-selective, for
the strongest and most active men will often be those who expose
themselves most to some danger. Such a reversal of the action of natural
selection is seen on a large scale in the case of war, where the
strongest go to the fray and are killed, while the weaklings stay at
home to perpetuate _their_ type of the race.
A curious aspect of the kind of natural selection under
consideration,--that which operates by death without reference to the
food-supply,--is seen in the evolution of a wide pelvis in women. Before
the days of modern obstetrics, the woman born with an unusually narrow
pelvis was likely to die during parturition, and the inheritance of a
narrower type of pelvis was thus stopped. With the introduction and
improvement of instrumental and induced deliveries, many of these women
are enabled to survive, with the necessary consequence that their
daughters will in many cases have a similarly narrow pelvis, and
experience similar difficulty in childbirth. The percentage of
deliveries in which instrumental aid is necessary is thus increasing
from generation to generation, and is likely to continue to increase
for some time. In other words, natural selection, because of man's
interference, can no longer maintain the width of woman's pelvis, as it
formerly did, and a certain amount of reversion in this respect is
probably taking place--a reversion which, if unchecked, would
necessarily lead after a long time to a reduction in the average size of
skull of that part of the human race which frequently uses forceps at
childbirth. The time would be long because the forceps permit the
survival of some large-headed infants who otherwise would die.
But it must not be supposed that lethal, non-sustentative selection
works only through forms of infant mortality. That aspect was first
discussed because it is most obvious, but the relation of natural
selection to microbic disease is equally widespread and far more
striking.
As to the inheritance of disease as such there is little room for
misunderstanding: no biologist now believes a disease is actually handed
down from parent to child in the germ-plasm. But what the doctors call a
diathesis, a predisposition to some given disease, is most certainly
heritable--a fact which Karl Pearson and others have proved by
statistics that can not be given here.[58] And any individual who has
inherited this diathesis, this lack of resistance to a given disease, is
marked as a possible victim of natural selection. The extent to which
and the manner in which it operates may be more readily understood by
the study of a concrete case. Tuberculosis is, as everyone knows, a
disease caused directly by a bacillus; and a disease to which immunity
can not be acquired by any process of vaccination or inoculation yet
known. It is a disease which is not directly inherited as such. Yet
every city-dweller in the United States is almost constantly exposed to
infection by this bacillus, and autopsies show that most persons have
actually been infected at some period of life, but have resisted
further encroachment. Perhaps a fraction of them will eventually die of
consumption; the rest will die of some other disease, and will probably
never even know that they have carried the bacilli of tuberculosis in
their lungs.
Of a group of men picked at random from the population, why will some
eventually die of tuberculosis and the others resist infection? Is it a
matter of environment?--are open-air schools, sanitary tenements, proper
hygiene, the kind of measures that will change this condition? Such is
the doctrine widely preached at the present day. It is alleged that the
white plague may be stamped out, if the open cases of tuberculosis are
isolated and the rest of the population is taught how to live properly.
The problem is almost universally declared to be a problem of infection.
Infection certainly is the immediate problem, but the biologist sees a
greater one a little farther back. It is the problem of natural
selection.
To prove this, it is necessary to prove (1) that some people are born
with less resistance to tuberculosis than others and (2) that it is
these people with weak natural resistance who die of phthisis, while
their neighbors with stronger resistance survive. The proof of these
propositions has been abundantly given by Karl Pearson, G. Archdall Reid
and others. Their main points may be indicated. In the first place it
must be shown that the morbidity from tuberculosis is largely due to
heredity--a point on which most medical men are still uninformed.
Measurement of the direct correlation between phthisis in parent and
child shows it to be about .5, i. e., what one expects if it is a matter
of heredity. This is the coefficient for most physical and mental
characters: it is the coefficient for such pathological traits as
deafness and insanity, which are obviously due in most cases to
inheritance rather than infection.
But, one objects, this high correlation between parent and child does
not prove inheritance,--it obviously proves infection. The family
relations are so intimate that it is folly to overlook this factor in
the spread of the disease.
Very well, Professor Pearson replied, if the relations between parent
and child are so intimate that they lead to infection, they are
certainly not less intimate between husband and wife, and there ought to
be just as much infection in this relationship as in the former. The
correlation was measured in thousands of cases and was found to lie
around .25, being lowest in the poorer classes and highest in the
well-to-do classes.
At first glance this seems partly to confirm the objection--it looks as
if there must be a considerable amount of tubercular infection between
husband and wife. But when it is found that the resemblance between
husband and wife in the matter of insanity is also .25, the objection
becomes less formidable. Certainly it will hardly be argued that one of
the partners infects the other with this disability.
As a fact, a correlation of .25 between husband and wife, for
tuberculosis, is only partly due to infection. What it does mean is that
like tends to mate with like--called assortative mating. This
coefficient of resemblance between husband and wife in regard to
phthisis is about the same as the correlation of resemblance between
husband and wife for eye color, stature, longevity, general health,
truthfulness, tone of voice, and many other characters. No one will
suppose that life partners "infect" each other in these respects.
Certainly no one will claim that a man deliberately selects a wife on
the basis of resemblance to himself in these points; but he most
certainly does so to some extent unconsciously, as will be described at
greater length in Chapter XI. Assortative mating is a well-established
fact, and there is every reason to believe that much of the resemblance
between husband and wife as regards tuberculosis is due to this fact,
and not to infection.[59]
Again, it is objected that the infection of children is not a family
matter, but due to tuberculous cows' milk: how then does it appear
equally among the Japanese, where cows are not tuberculous and cow's
milk rarely used as an infant food: or among such people as the
Esquimaux and Polynesians, who have never seen a cow?
But, it is argued, at any rate bad housing and unsanitary conditions of
life will make infection easier and lower the resistance of the
individual. Perhaps such conditions may make infection easier, but that
is of little importance considering how easy it is for all city
dwellers--for the population as a whole. The question remains, will not
bad housing cause a greater liability to fatal phthisis? Will not
destitution and its attendant conditions increase the probability that a
given individual will succumb to the white plague?
Most physicians think this to be the case, but they have not taken the
pains to measure the respective rôles, by the exact methods of modern
science. S. Adolphus Knopf of New York, an authority on tuberculosis,
recognizes the importance of the heredity factor, but says that after
this, the most important predisposing conditions are of the nature of
unsanitary schools, unsanitary tenements, unsanitary factories and
workshops. This may be very true; these conditions may follow after
heredity in importance--but how near do they follow? That is a matter
capable of fairly accurate measurement, and should be discussed with
figures, not generalities.
Taking the case of destitution, which includes, necessarily, most of the
other evils specified, Professor Pearson measured the correlation with
liability to phthisis and found it to be .02. The correlation for direct
heredity--that is, the resemblance between parent and offspring--it will
be remembered, is .50. As compared with this, the environmental factor
of .02 is utterly insignificant. It seems evident that whether or not
one dies from tuberculosis, under present-day urban conditions, depends
mainly on the kind of constitution one has inherited.
There is no escape, then, from the conclusion that in any individual,
death from tuberculosis is largely a matter of natural selection. But
by taking a longer view, one can actually see the change to which
natural selection is one of the contributors. The following table shows
the deaths from consumption in Massachusetts, per 10,000 population:
1851-60 39.9
1861-70 34.9
1871-80 32.7
1881-90 29.2
1891-1900 21.4
1901 17.5
1902 15.9
F. L. Hoffman further points out[60] that in Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
and Connecticut, 1872-1911, the decline in the death-rate from
tuberculosis has been about 50%. "The evidence is absolutely conclusive
that actually as well as relatively, the mortality from tuberculosis in
what is the most intensely industrial area of America has progressively
diminished during the last 40 years."
It will be noted that the great increase in death from consumption in
this area began in the decade following 1840, when the large Irish
immigration began. The Irish are commonly believed to be particularly
susceptible to phthisis. Crowded together in industrial conditions, they
rapidly underwent infection, and their weak racial resistance led to a
high death-rate. The weak lines of heredity were rapidly cut off; in
other words, the intensity of natural selection was great, for a while.
The result was to leave the population of these New England states much
more resistant, on the average, than it was before; and as the Irish
immigration soon slowed down, and no new stocks with great weakness
arrived, tuberculosis naturally tended to "burn itself out." This seems
to be a partial explanation of the decline in the death-rate from
phthisis in New England during the last half century, although it is not
suggested that it represents the complete explanation: improved methods
of treatment and sanitation doubtless played their part. But that they
are the sole cause of the decline is made highly improbable by the low
correlation between phthisis and environmental factors, which was
mentioned above, and by all the other biometric study of tuberculosis,
which has proved that the results ascribed to hygiene, including
sanitorium treatment, are to some degree illusory.
That tuberculosis is particularly fatal to the Negro race is well known.
Even to-day, after several centuries of natural selection in the United
States, the annual death-rate from consumption among Negroes in the
registration area is 431.9 per 100,000 population (census of 1900) as
compared with 170.5 for the whites; in the cities alone it is 471.0.
That overcrowding and climate can not be the sole factors is indicated
by the fact that the Negro race has been decimated, wherever it has met
tuberculosis. "In the years 1803 and 1810 the British government
imported three or four thousand Negroes from Mozambique into Ceylon to
form into regiments, and of these in December, 1820, there were left
just 440, including the male descendants. All the rest had perished
mainly from tuberculosis, and in a country where the disease is not
nearly so prevalent as in England."[61] Archdall Reid has pointed
out[62] that the American, Polynesian and Australian aborigines, to whom
tuberculosis was unknown before the advent of Europeans, and who had
therefore never been selected against it, could not survive its advent:
they were killed by much smaller infections than would have injured a
European, whose stock has been purged by centuries of natural selection.
These racial histories are the most important evidence available to the
student of natural selection in man. The conclusion to be drawn from
them seems plain. Natural selection, which has in the past never had an
opportunity to act upon the Negro race through tuberculosis, is now
engaged in hastening, at a relatively rapid rate, the evolution of this
race toward immunity from death by tuberculosis. The evolution of the
white race on this line is, as the figures show, going on
simultaneously, but having begun centuries earlier, it is not now so
rapid. The weakest white stocks were cut off hundreds of years ago, in
Great Britain or Europe; those of the black race are only now going.
Despite all the efforts of medicine and sanitation, it is likely that
the Negro death-rate from phthisis will continue high for some years,
until what is left of the race will possess a degree of resistance, or
immunity, not much inferior to that of the whites among whom they live.
The blacks in North America now must be already more resistant than
their ancestors; the mulattoes descended of normal healthy unions should
be more resistant than the pure Negroes, although no statistics are
available on the point; but were a new immigration to take place from
Africa to-day, and the immigrants to be put into villages with their
Americanized brethren, the high death-rate would result.
While the Negroes were thus undergoing the radical surgery of natural
selection, what was happening to the aborigines of America? The answer
of history is unmistakable; they were meeting the same fate, in an even
more violent form. Not tuberculosis alone, but small-pox, measles,
alcohol and a dozen other importations of the conquerors, found in the
aborigines of the New World a stock which had never been selected
against these diseases.
It is the custom of sentimentalists sometimes to talk as if the North
American Indian had been killed off by the white man. So he was,--but
not directly: he was killed off by natural selection, acting through the
white man's diseases and narcotics. In 1841 Catlin wrote, "Thirty
millions of white men are now scuffling for the goods and luxuries of
life over the bones of twelve millions of red men, six millions of whom
have fallen victims to small-pox." Small-pox is an old story to the
white race, and the death of the least resistant strains in each
generation has left a population that is fairly resistant. It was new to
the natives of America, and history shows the result. Alcohol, too,
counted its victims by the thousand, for the same reason. The process of
natural selection among the North American Indians has not yet stopped;
if there are a century from now any Indians left, they will of
necessity belong to stocks which are relatively resistant to alcohol and
tuberculosis and the other widespread and fatal diseases which were
unknown upon this continent before Columbus.
The decrease of natives following the Spanish conquest of tropical
America has long been one of the most striking events of history.
Popular historians sometimes speak as if most of the native population
had been killed off by the cruelty of the conquistadores. Surely such
talk could not proceed from those who are familiar with the action of
natural selection. It is obvious that when the Spaniard brought the
natives together, making them work in mines and assemble in churches, he
brought them under conditions especially favorable for infection by the
new diseases which he had brought. The aborigines of the New World, up
to the time the Spaniards came, had undergone no evolution whatever
against these diseases; consequently the evolution began at so rapid a
rate that in a few centuries only those who lived in out-of-the-way
places remain unscathed.
The same story is repeated, in a survey of the history of the Pacific
Islands. Even such a disease as whooping-cough carried off adults by the
hundred. Robert Louis Stevenson has left a graphic picture[63] of
natural selection at work:
"The tribe of Hapaa," he writes, "is said to have numbered some four
hundred when the small-pox came and reduced them by one-fourth. Six
months later a woman developed tubercular consumption; the disease
spread like fire about the valley, and in less than a year two
survivors, a man and a woman, fled from the newly-created solitude....
Early in the year of my visit, for example, or late the year before, the
first case of phthisis appeared in a household of 17 persons, and by the
end of August, when the tale was told me, one soul survived, a boy who
had been absent at his schooling."
In Tasmania is another good illustration of the evolution of a race
proceeding so rapidly as to be fatal to the race. When the first
English settled on the island, in 1803, the native population consisted
of several thousand. Tuberculosis and many other new diseases, and, most
of all, alcohol, began to operate on the aborigines, who were attracted
to the settlements of the whites. In a quarter of a century there were
only a few hundred left. Many, of course, had met violent deaths, but an
enlightened perusal of any history of the period,[64] will leave no
doubt that natural selection by disease was responsible for most of the
mortality. By 1847 the number of native Tasmanians was reduced to 44,
who were already unmistakably doomed by alcohol and bacteria. When the
last full-blood Tasmanian died in 1876, a new chapter was written in the
story of the modern evolution of the human race.
No such stories are told about the white settlements on this continent,
even before the days of quarantine and scientific medicine. There is no
other adequate explanation of the difference, than that the two races
have evolved to a different degree in their resistance to these
diseases. It is easily seen, then, that man's evolution is going on, at
varying rates of speed, in probably all parts of the human race at the
present time.
We do not mean, of course, to suggest that all the natives who have died
in the New World since the landing of Columbus, have died because the
evolution of their race had not proceeded so far in certain directions
as had that of their conquerors. But the proportion of them who were
eliminated for that reason is certainly very large. In the more remote
parts of South America the process is still going on. Recent press
dispatches have carried the account of the University of Pennsylvania's
Amazon Expedition, under the direction of William C. Farrabee. In a
letter dated March 16, 1916, the leader told of the discovery of the
remains of the tribe of Pikipitanges, a once populous tribe of which a
chief, six women and two boys alone are left. The tribe had been almost
wiped out, Dr. Farabee reported, by an epidemic of _influenza_!
If the aborigines of the New World succumb to the diseases of the
European, it is not less true that the European succumbs to diseases
against which his race has not been selected. The deadliness of yellow
fever to Americans in the tropics, and the relative immunity of Negroes,
is familiar; so too is the frequently fatal result of the African
tropical fevers on the white man, while the natives suffer from them
much less, having been made more resistant by centuries of natural
selection.
This long discussion may now be summarized. We dealt with lethal
selection, that form of natural selection which operates by prematurely
killing off the less fit and leaving the more fit to survive and
reproduce their kind. It is of course understood that the word "fit" in
this connection does not necessarily mean morally or mentally superior,
but merely fit for the particular environment. In a community of
rascals, the greatest rascal might be the fittest to survive. In the
slums of a modern city the Jewish type, stringently selected through
centuries of ghetto life, is particularly fit to survive, although it
may not be the physical ideal of an anthropologist.
Two forms of lethal selection were distinguished, one depending on
starvation and the other on causes not connected with the food supply.
Direct starvation is not a factor of importance in the survival of most
races during most of the time at the present day so far as the civilized
portion of the world is concerned. But disease and the other lethal
factors not connected with the food-supply, through which natural
selection acts, are still of great importance. From a half to two-thirds
of all deaths are of a selective character, even under favorable
conditions.
It is also to be noted, however, that with the progress of medicine, and
the diminution of unfit material, this kind of natural selection will
tend to become less and less widespread. For a long time, natural
selection in man has probably done little to cause marked change in his
physical or mental characteristics. Man's interference has prevented. In
recent centuries natural selection has probably done no more on the
whole than keep the race where it was: it is to be feared that it has
not even done that. It is doubtful if there is any race to-day which
attains the physical and mental average of the Athenians of 2,500 years
ago.
Lethal natural selection, then, has been and still is a factor of great
importance in the evolution of the race, but at present it is doing
little or nothing that promises to further the ideal of eugenics--race
betterment.
But lethal natural selection is only half the story. It is obvious that
if the constitution of a race can be altered by excess of deaths in a
certain class, it can equally be altered by excess of births in a
certain class. This is reproductive selection, which may appear in
either one of two forms. If the individual leaves few or no progeny
because of his failure to mate at the proper time, it is called sexual
selection; if, however, he mates, yet leaves few or no progeny (as
compared with other individuals), it is called fecundal selection.
Even in man, the importance of the rôle of reproductive selection is
insufficiently understood; in the lower animals scientists have tended
still more to undervalue it. As a fact, no species ordinarily multiplies
in such numbers as to exhaust all the food available, despite the
teaching of Malthus and Darwin to the contrary. The rate of reproduction
is the crux of natural selection; each species normally has such a
reproduction rate as will suffice to withstand the premature deaths and
sterility of some individuals, and yet not so large as to press unduly
upon the food supply. The problem of natural selection is a problem of
the adjustment between reproductive rate and death-rate, and the
struggle for subsistence is only one of several factors.
While the reproductive rate must be looked upon as a characteristic
which has its adaptations like other characteristics, it has one
peculiarity--its increase is always opposed by lethal selection. The
chances of life are reduced by reproducing, inasmuch as more danger is
entailed by the extra activities of courtship, and later, in bearing and
caring for the young, since these duties reduce the normal wariness of
individual life. The reproductive rate, therefore, always remains at the
lowest point which will suffice for the reproductive needs of the
species. For this reason alone the non-sustentative form of selection
might be expected to be the predominant kind.
J. T. Gulick and Karl Pearson have pointed out that there is a normal
conflict between natural selection and fecundal selection. Fecundal
selection is said by them to be constantly tending to increase the
reproductive rate, because fecundity is partly a matter of heredity, and
the fecund parents leave more offspring with the same characteristic.
Lethal selection, on the contrary, constantly asserts its power to
reduce the reproductive rate, because the reproductive demands on the
parents reduce their chances of life by interference with their natural
ability of self-protection. This is quite true, but the analysis is
incomplete, for an increased number of progeny not only decreases the
life chances of the parents, but also of the young, by reducing the
amount of care they receive.
In short, lethal selection and reproductive selection accomplish the
same end--a change in the constitution of the species--by different
means; but they are so closely linked together and balanced that any
change in the operation of one is likely to cause a change in the
operation of the other. This will be clearer when the effect of
reproductive selection is studied in man.
Recalling the truism that most human characters have a hereditary basis,
it is evident that the constitution of society will remain stable from
generation to generation, only if each section of society is reproducing
at the same rate as every other (and assuming, for the moment, that the
death-rate remains constant). Then if the birth-rate of one part of the
population is altered, if it is decreased, for example, the next
generation will contain proportionately fewer representatives of this
class, the succeeding generation fewer still, and so on
indefinitely--unless a selective death-rate is operating at the same
time. It is well known not only that the death-rate varies widely in
different parts of the population, as was pointed out in the earlier
part of this chapter, but that the birth-rate is rarely the same in any
two sections of the population. Evidently, therefore, the make-up of
society must necessarily be changing from generation to generation. It
will be the object of the rest of this chapter to investigate the ways
in which it is changing, while in the latter half of the book we shall
point out some of the ways in which it might be changed to better
advantage than it is at present.
Sexual selection, or differential success in marrying, will be discussed
at some length in Chapter XI; here it may be pointed out that the number
who fail to marry is very much greater than one often realizes. It has
already been noted that a large part of the population dies before it
reaches the age of marriage. Of 1,000 babies born in the United States,
only 750 will reach the average age of marriage; in some countries half
of the thousand will have fallen by that time. These dead certainly will
leave no descendants; but even of the survivors, part will fail to
marry. The returns of the thirteenth U. S. census showed that of the
males 45-64 years of age, 10% were single, while 11% of the females,
35-44 years old, were single. Few marriages will take place after those
ages. Add the number who died unmarried previous to those ages, but
after the age of 20, and it is safe to say that at least one-third of
the persons born in the United States die (early or late) without having
married.
The consideration of those who died before the age of marriage properly
comes under the head of lethal selection, but if attention is confined
to those who, though reaching the age of marriage, fail to marry, sexual
selection still has importance. For instance, it is generally known (and
some statistical proof will be given in Chapter XI) that beauty is
directly associated with the chance of marriage. The pretty girls in
general marry earlier as well in larger percentage; many of the ugly
ones will never find mates. Herbert Spencer argued ingeniously that
beauty is associated with general mental and moral superiority, and the
more exact studies of recent years have tended to confirm his
generalization. A recent, but not conclusive, investigation[65] showed
beauty to be correlated with intelligence to the extent of .34. If this
is confirmed, it offers a good illustration of the action of sexual
selection in furthering the progressive evolution of the race. Miss
Gilmore, studying a group of normal school graduates, found a direct
correlation between intelligence (as judged by class marks) and early
marriage after graduation. Anyone who would take the trouble could
easily investigate numerous cases of this sort, which would show the
effect of sexual selection in perpetuating desirable qualities.
But sexual selection no longer has the importance that it once had, for
nowadays the mere fact of marriage is not a measure of fecundity, to the
extent that it once was. In the old days of unlimited fecundity, the
early marriage of a beautiful, or intelligent, woman meant a probable
perpetuation of her endowments; but at present, when artificial
restraint of fertility is so widespread, the result does not follow as a
matter of course: and it is evident that the race is little or not at
all helped by the early marriage of an attractive woman, if she has too
few or no children.
Fecundal selection, then, is becoming the important phase of
reproductive selection, in the evolution of civilized races. The
differential birth-rate is, as we have often insisted, the all-important
factor of eugenics, and it merits careful consideration from all sides.
Such consideration is made difficult by the inadequate vital statistics
of the United States (which ranks with Turkey and China in this
respect); but there is no doubt that the birth-rate as a whole is low,
as compared with that of other countries; although as a whole it is not
dangerously low and there is, of course, no necessary evil in a low
birth-rate, of itself, if the quality be satisfactory. The U. S. Census
tabulation for 1915 gives the following comparison of the number of
babies born alive each year, per 1,000 population, in various countries:
Russia in Europe (1909) 44.0
Japan (1911) 34.1
Italy (1913) 31.7
Austria (1912) 31.3
Spain (1913) 30.4
Austria (1913) 28.3
German Empire (1912) 28.3
Holland (1913) 28.1
Denmark (1913) 25.6
Norway (1913) 25.3
United States (registration area only, 1915) 24.9
England and Wales (1913) 24.1
Sweden (1912) 23.8
Switzerland (1913) 23.1
Belgium (1912) 22.6
France (1912) 19.0
The United States birth-rate may, on its face, appear high enough; but
its face does not show that this height is due largely to the fecundity
of immigrant women. Statistics to prove this are given in Chapter XIII,
but may be supplemented here by some figures from Pittsburgh.
Ward 7, in that city, contains the homes of many well-to-do, and
contains more representatives of the old American stock than any other
ward in the city, having 56.4% of residents who are native born of
native parents while the majority of the residents in nearly all the
other wards in the city are either themselves foreign-born, or the
offspring of foreign-born parents.
Ward 7 has the lowest birth-rate and the lowest rate of net increase of
any ward in the city.
With this may be contrasted the sixth ward, which runs along the south
bank of the Allegheny river. It is one of the great factory districts of
the city, but also contains a large number of homes. Nearly 3,000 of its
14,817 males of voting age are illiterate. Its death-rate is the highest
in the city. Almost nine-tenths of its residents are either foreigners
or the children of foreigners. Its birth-rate is three times that of the
seventh ward.
Taking into account all the wards of the city, it is found that the
birth-rate _rises_ as one considers the wards which are marked by a
large foreign population, illiteracy, poverty and a high death-rate. On
the other hand, the birth-rate _falls_ as one passes to the wards that
have most native-born residents, most education, most prosperity--and,
to some extent, education and prosperity denote efficiency and eugenic
value. For 27 wards there is a high negative correlation (-.673),
between birth-rate and percentage of native-born of native parents in
the population. The correlation between illiteracy and net increase[66]
is +.731.
The net increase of Pittsburgh's population, therefore, is greatest
where the percentage of foreign-born and of illiterates is greatest.
The significance of such figures in natural selection must be evident.
Pittsburgh, like probably all large cities in civilized countries,
breeds from the bottom. The lower a class is in the scale of
intelligence, the greater is its reproductive contribution. Recalling
that intelligence is inherited, that like begets like in this respect,
one can hardly feel encouraged over the quality of the population of
Pittsburgh, a few generations hence.
Of course these illiterate foreign laborers are, from a eugenic point of
view, not wholly bad. The picture should not be painted any blacker than
the original. Some of these ignorant stocks, in another generation and
with decent surroundings, will furnish excellent citizens.
But taken as a whole, it can hardly be supposed that the fecund stocks
of Pittsburgh, with their illiteracy, squalor and tuberculosis, their
high death-rates, their economic straits, are as good eugenic material
as the families that are dying out in the more substantial residence
section which their fathers created in the eastern part of the city.
And it can hardly be supposed that the city, and the nation, of the
future, would not benefit by a change in the distribution of births,
whereby more would come from the seventh ward and its like, and fewer
from the sixth and its like.
Evidently, there is no difficulty about seeing this form of natural
selection at work, and at work in such a way as greatly to change the
character of one section of the species. For comparison, some figures
are presented from European sources. In the French war budget of 1911 it
appears that from 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 50, in
different districts of Paris, the number of yearly births was as
follows:
Very poor 108
Poor 99
Well-to-do 72
Very prosperous 65
Rich 53
Very rich 35
Disregarding the last class altogether, it is yet evident that while the
mother in a wealthy home bears two children, the mother in the slums
bears four. It is evident then that in Paris at the present time
reproductive selection is changing the mental and moral composition of
the population at a rapid rate, which can not be very materially reduced
even if it is found that the death-rate in the poorer districts is
considerably greater than it is on the more fashionable boulevards.
J. Bertillon has brought together[67] in a similar way data from a
number of cities, showing the following birth-rates:
_Berlin_ _Vienna_ _London_
Very poor quarters 157 200 147
Poor quarters 129 164 140
Comfortable quarters 114 155 107
Very comfortable 96 153 107
Rich 63 107 87
Very rich 47 81 63
--- --- ---
Average 102 153 109
Obviously, in all these cases reproductive selection will soon bring
about such a change in the character of the population, that a much
larger part of it than at present will have the hereditary
characteristics of the poorer classes and a much smaller part of it than
at present the hereditary characteristics of the well-to-do classes.
David Heron and others have recently studied[68] the relation which the
birth-rate in different boroughs of London bears to their social and
economic conditions. Using the correlation method, they found "that in
London the birth-rate per 1,000 married women, aged 15 to 54, is
highest where the conditions show the greatest poverty--namely, in
quarters where pawnbrokers abound, where unskilled labor is the
principal source of income, where consumption is most common and most
deadly, where pauperism is most rife, and, finally, where the greatest
proportion of the children born die in infancy. The correlation
coefficients show that the association of these evil conditions with the
relative number of children born is a very close one; and if the
question is put in another way, and the calculations are based on
measures of prosperity instead of on measures of poverty, a high degree
of correlation is found between prosperity and a low birth-rate.
"It must not be supposed that a high rate of infant mortality, which
almost invariably accompanies a high birth-rate, either in London or
elsewhere, goes far toward counteracting the effects of the differential
birth-rate. Where infant mortality is highest the average number of
children above the age of two for each married woman is highest also,
and although the chances of death at all ages are greater among the
inhabitants of the poorer quarters, their rate of natural increase
remains considerably higher than that of the inhabitants of the richer.
"From the detailed study of the figures made by Newsholme and Stevenson,
conclusions essentially the same as those of Heron can be drawn....
Their first step was to divide the London boroughs into six groups
according to the average number of domestic servants for 100 families in
each. This is probably as good a measure of prosperity as any other.
They then determined the total birth-rate of the population in each
group, and arrived at the following figures:
_Group_
I. 10 domestic servants for 100 families 34.97
II. 10-20 38.32
III. 20-30 25.99
IV. 30-40 25.83
V. 40-60 25.11
VI. Over 60 18.24
"In order to find out how far the differences shown by these figures are
due to differences in the percentage of women who marry in each group
and the age at which they marry, they corrected the figures in such a
way as to make them represent what the birth-rates would be in each
group, if the proportion of wives of each age to the whole population
comprising the group was the same as it is in the whole of England and
Wales. The corrected birth-rates thus obtained were as follows:
_Group_
I 31.56
II 25.82
III 25.63
IV 25.50
V 25.56
VI 20.45
"It will readily be seen that the effect of the correction has been to
reduce the difference between the two extreme groups by about one-third,
showing that to this extent it is due to the way in which they differ as
to the average age and number of the women who marry. Further, Groups
II, III, IV and V have all been brought to about the same level, with a
corrected birth-rate about halfway between the highest and the lowest.
This shows that there is no gradual decrease in fertility associated
with a gradually increasing grade of prosperity, but that three sharply
divided classes may be distinguished: a very poor class with a high
degree of fertility, to which about a quarter of the population of
London belong, a rich class with a low degree of fertility, and a class
intermediate in both respects."
"Eugenics is less directly concerned with this side of the question that
with the relative rate of increase of the different classes. This may be
found for the six groups in the usual way by deducting the death-rate
from the birth-rate. The following figures for the rate of natural
increase are then obtained:
_Group_
I 16.56
II 13.89
III 11.43
IV 13.81
V 10.29
VI 5.79
"The figures show in a manner which hardly admits of any doubt that in
London at any rate the inhabitants of the poorest quarters--over a
million in number--are reproducing themselves at a much greater rate
than the more well-to-do."
A research on similar lines by S. R. Steinmetz[69] in Holland shows that
the average number of children in the lowest class families is 5.44.
People in industry or small trade, skilled mechanics and professors of
theology have five children to the family; in other classes the number
is as follows:
Artists 4.30
Well-to-do Commercial Classes 4.27
High Officials 4.00
University Professors (excluding theological) 3.50
23 Scholars and Artists of the first rank 2.60
It is not hard to see that the next generation in Holland is likely to
have proportionately fewer gifted individuals than has the present one.
Fortunately, it is very probable that the differential birth-rate is not
of such ominous import in rural districts as it is in cities, although
some of the tribes of degenerates which live in the country show
birth-rates of four to six children per wife.[70] But in the more highly
civilized nations now, something like a half of the population lives in
urban districts, and the startling extent to which these urban
populations breed from the bottom involves a disastrous change in the
balance of population within a few generations, unless it is in some way
checked.
Just how great the change may be, statistically, has been emphasized by
Karl Pearson, who points out that "50% of the married population provide
75% of the next generation," owing to the number of deaths before
maturity, the number of celibates and the number of childless
marriages. "The same rule may be expressed in another way: 50% of the
next generation is produced by 25% of the married population." At this
rate in a few generations the less efficient and socially valuable, with
their large families, will overwhelm the more efficient and socially
valuable, and their small families.
Fecundal selection is at work to-day on a large scale, changing the
character of the population, and from a eugenic point of view changing
it for the worse. Fortunately, it is not impossible to arrest this
change.
But, it may be objected, is not this change merely "the survival of the
fittest?" In a sense, yes; and it is necessary that the more intelligent
classes should make themselves "fitter" to survive, by a change of
attitude toward reproduction. But the dying-out of the intellectually
superior part of the population is a pathological condition, not a part
of normal evolution; for barring artificial interference with the
birth-rate, fertility has been found to go hand in hand with general
superiority. This demonstration is due to F. A. Woods' study[71] of 608
members of the royal families of Europe, among whom, for reasons of
state, large families are desired, and among whom there has probably
been little restraint on the birth-rate. Averaging the ratings of his
individuals from grade 1, the mentally and physically very inferior, to
grade 10, the mentally and physically very superior, he found that the
number of children produced and brought to maturity increased in a
fairly direct ratio. His figures are as follows:
BOTH SEXES (AVERAGED)
Grades for virtues 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average number of
adult
children. 1.66 2.86 2.99 2.41 3.44 3.49 3.05 3.03 3.93 3.83
Investigations of Karl Pearson and Alexander Graham Bell[72] show that
fecundity and longevity are associated. It follows that the mentally
and morally superior, who are the most fecund, are also the
longest-lived; and as this longevity is largely due to inheritance it
follows that, under natural conditions, the standard of the stratum of
society under consideration would gradually rise, in respect to
longevity, in each generation.
Such is probably one of the methods by which the human race has
gradually increased its level of desirable characters in each
generation. The desirable characters were associated with each other,
and also with fecundity. The desirable characters are still associated
with each other, but their association with fecundity is now negative.
It is in this change that eugenics finds justification for its existence
as a propaganda. Its object is to restore the positive correlation
between desirable characters and fecundity, on which the progressive
evolution of the race depends.
The bearing of natural selection on the present-day evolution of the
human race, particularly in the United States of America, must be
reviewed in a few closing paragraphs.
Selection by death may result either from inadequate food supply, or
from some other lethal factor. The former type, although something of a
bugaboo ever since the time of Malthus, has in reality relatively little
effect on the human race at present. Non-sustentative lethal selection
in man is operating chiefly through zymotic diseases and the bad hygiene
of the mentally inferior.
Reproductive selection is increasingly effective and its action is such
as to cause grave alarm both through the failure of some to marry
properly (sexual selection) and the failure of some to bear enough
children, while others bear too many (fecundal selection). It is obvious
that the racial result of this process will depend on what kind of
people bear and rear the most children; and it has been shown that in
general the larger families are in the section of the population that
makes fewer contributions to human prosperity and happiness, while those
endowed with great gifts, who ought to be transmitting them to their
children, are in many cases not even reproducing their own number.
Natural selection raised man from apehood to his present estate. It is
still operating on him on a large scale, in several ways, but in none of
these ways is it now doing much actually to improve the race, and in
some ways, owing to man's own interference, it is rapidly hastening race
degeneracy.