RELIGION AND EUGENICS
Man is the only animal with a religion. The conduct of the lower animals
is guided by instinct,[186] and instinct normally works for the benefit
of the species. Any action which is dictated by instinct is likely to
result in the preservation of the species, even at the expense of the
individual which acts, provided there has not been a recent change in
the environment.
But in the human species reason appears, and conduct is no longer
governed by instinct alone. A young man is impelled by instinct, for
instance, to marry. It is to the interests of the species that he marry,
and instinct therefore causes him to desire to marry and to act as he
desires. A lower animal would obey the impulse of instinct without a
moment's hesitation. Not so the man. Reason intervenes and asks, "Is
this really the best thing for you to do now? Would you not better wait
awhile and get a start in your business? Of course marriage would be
agreeable, but you must not be short-sighted. You don't want to assume a
handicap just now." There is a corresponding reaction among the married
in respect to bearing additional children. The interests of self are
immediate and easily seen, the interests of the species are not so
pressing. In any such conflict between instinct and reason, one must
win; and if reason wins it is in some cases for the immediate benefit of
the individual but at the expense of the species' interests.
Now with reason dominant over instinct in man, there is a grave danger
that with each man consulting his own interests instead of those of the
species, some groups and even races will become exterminated. Along
with reason, therefore, it is necessary that some other forces shall
appear to control reason and give the interests of the species a chance
to be heard along with the interests of the individual.
One such force is religion. Without insisting that this is the only view
which may be taken of the origin of religion, or that this is the only
function of religion, we may yet assert that one of the useful purposes
served by religion is to cause men to adopt lines of conduct that will
be for the good of the race, although it may sacrifice the immediate
good of the individual.[187] Thus if a young Mohammedan be put in the
situation just described, he may decide that it is to his material
interest to postpone marriage. His religion then obtrudes itself, with
quotations from the Prophet to the effect that Hell is peopled with
bachelors. The young man is thereupon moved to marry, even if it does
cause some inconvenience to his business plans. Religion, reinforcing
instinct, has triumphed over reason and gained a victory for the larger
interests of the species, when they conflict with the immediate
interests of the individual.
From this point of view we may, paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, define
religion as _motivated ethics_. Ethics is a knowledge of right conduct,
religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more
like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious
man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the
interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The
orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he
has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and
he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he
refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.
This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked
with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem
is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements.
Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it
was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We
shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity;
but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.
We can distinguish four phases of religion:
1. Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The
believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular
efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that
peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain
other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested
one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it
is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear,
and the act is therefore avoided.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first
system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the
result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an
after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which
everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence
of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea
still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural
character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important
to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved.
They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called
"luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of
God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse,
although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine power.
3. Theistic religion. In essence this consists of the satisfaction
derived from doing that which pleases God, or "getting into harmony with
the underlying plan of the universe," as some put it. It is idealistic
and somewhat mystic. It should be distinguished from the idea of doing
or believing certain things to insure salvation, which is not
essentially theistic but belongs under (2). The true theist desires to
conform to the will of God, wholly apart from whether he will be
rewarded or punished for so doing.
4. Humanistic religion. This is a willingness to make the end of ethics
the totality of happiness of all men, or some large group of men, rather
than to judge conduct solely by its effects on some one individual. At
its highest, it is a sort of loyalty to the species.
It must be noted that most cults include more than one of these
elements--usually all of them at various stages. As a race rises in
intelligence, it tends to progress from the first two toward the last
two, but usually keeping parts of the earlier attitude, more or less
clearly expressed. And individual adherents of a religion usually have
different ideas of its scope; thus the religious ideas of many
Christians embrace all four of the above elements; others who equally
consider themselves Christians may be influenced by little more than (4)
alone, or (3) alone, or even (2) alone.
There is no reason to believe that any one of these types of religion is
the only one adapted to promoting sound ethics in all individuals, nor
that a similar culture can bring about uniformity in the near future,
since the religion of a race corresponds to some extent to the inherent
nature of the mind of its individuals. Up to a certain point, each type
of religion has a distinct appeal to a certain temperament or type of
mind. With increasing intelligence, it is probable that a religion tends
to emphasize the interests of all rather than the benefits to be derived
by one; such has been clearly the case in the history of the Christian
religion. The diverse elements of retribution, damnation, "communion
with God" and social service still exist, but in America the last-named
one is yearly being more emphasized. Emphasis upon it is the marked
characteristic of Jesus' teaching.
With this rough sketch of religious ideas in mind, the part religion can
play at the present day in advancing the eugenic interests of the race
or species may be considered. Each religion can serve eugenics just as
well as it can serve any other field of ethics, and by the very same
devices. We shall run over our four types again and note what appeals
eugenics can make to each one.
1. Reward and punishment in this life. Here the value of children,
emotionally and economically, to their parents in their later life can
be shown, and the dissatisfaction that is felt by the childless. The
emotions may be reached (as they have been reached in past centuries) by
the painting of Madonnas, the singing of lullabies, by the care of the
baby sister, by the laurel wreath of the victorious son, by the great
choruses of white-robed girls, by the happiness of the bride, and by the
sentiment of the home. Here are some of the noblest subjects for the
arts, which in the past have unconsciously served eugenics well. In a
less emotional way, a deep desire for that "terrestrial immortality"
involved in posterity should be fostered. The doctrine of the continuity
of germ-plasm might play a large part in religion. It should at least be
brought home to everyone at some point in his education. Man should have
a much stronger feeling of identity with his forebears and his progeny.
Is it not a loss to Christians that they have so much less of this
feeling than the Chinese?
It may be urged in opposition that such conceptions are dangerously
static and have thereby harmed China. But that can be avoided by
shifting the balance a little from progenitors to posterity. If people
should live more in their children than they now do, they would be not
only anxious to give them a sound heredity, but all the more eager to
improve the conditions of their children's environment by modifying
their own.
It may be objected that this sort of propaganda is indiscriminate,--that
it may further the reproduction of the inferior just as much as the
superior. We think not. Such steps appeal more to the superior type of
mind and will be little heeded by the inferior. They will be ultimately,
if not directly, discriminative.
In so far as the foregoing appeals to reason alone it is not religion.
The appeal to reason must either be emotionalized or colored with the
supernatural to be religion.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life. Here the belief in the
absolute, verbal inspiration of sacred writings and the doctrine of
salvation by faith alone are rapidly passing, and it is therefore the
easier to bring eugenics into this type of religion. Even where
salvation by faith is still held as an article of creed, it is
accompanied by the concession that he who truly believes will manifest
his belief by works. Altruism can be found in the sacred writings of
probably all religions, and the modern tendency is to make much of such
passages, in which it is easy for the eugenist to find a warrant. What
is needed here, then, is to impress upon the leaders in this field that
eugenic conduct is a "good work" and as such they may properly include
it along with other modern virtues, such as honest voting and abstinence
from graft as a key to heaven. Dysgenic conduct should equally be taught
to be an obstacle to salvation.
3. Theism. The man who is most influenced by the desire to be at one
with God naturally wants to act in accordance with God's plan. But God
being omnibeneficent, he necessarily believes that God's plan is that
which is for the best interests of His children--unless he is one of
those happily rare individuals who still believe that the end of man is
to glorify God by voice, not by means of human betterment.
This type of religion (and the other types in different degrees) is a
great motive power. It both creates energy in its adherents, and directs
that energy into definite outlets. It need only be made convincingly
evident that eugenics is truly a work of human betterment,--really the
greatest work of human betterment, and a partnership with God--to have
it taken up by this type of religion with all the enthusiasm which it
brings to its work.
4. The task of enlisting the humanist appears to be even simpler. It is
merely necessary to show him that eugenics increases the totality of
happiness of the human species. Since the keynote of his devotion is
loyalty, we might make this plea: "Can we not make every superior man or
woman ashamed to accept existence as a gift from his or her ancestors,
only to extinguish this torch instead of handing it on?"
Eugenics is in some ways akin to the movement for the conservation of
natural resources. In pioneer days a race uses up its resources without
hesitation. They seem inexhaustible. Some day it is recognized that they
are not inexhaustible, and then such members of the race as are guided
by good ethics begin to consider the interests of the future.
No system of ethics is worth the name which does not make provision for
the future. It is right here that the ethics of present-day America is
too often found wanting. As this fault is corrected, eugenics will be
more clearly seen as an integral part of ethics.
Provision for the future of the individual leads, in a very low state of
civilization, to the accumulation of wealth. Even the ants and squirrels
have so much ethics! Higher in the evolutionary scale comes provision
for the future of children; their interests lead to the foundation of
the family and, at a much later date, a man looks not only to his
immediate children but to future generations of heirs, when he entails
his estates and tries to establish a notable family line. Provision for
the future is the essence of his actions. But so far only the individual
or those related closely to him have been taken into consideration. With
a growth of altruism, man begins to recognize that he must make
provision for the future of the race; that he should apply to all
superior families the same anxiety which he feels that his children
shall not tarnish the family name by foolish marriages; that they shall
grow up strong and intelligent. This feeling interpreted by science is
eugenics, an important element of which is religion: for religion more
than any other influence leads one to look ahead, and to realize that
immediate benefits are not the greatest values that man can secure in
life,--that there is something beyond and superior to eating, drinking
and being merry.
If the criterion of ethical action is the provision it makes for the
future, then the ethics of the eugenist must rank high, for he not only
looks far to the future, but takes direct and effective steps to
safeguard the future.
Theoretically, then, there is a place for eugenics in every type of
religion. In practice, it will probably make an impression only on the
dynamic religions,--those that are actually accomplishing something.
Buddhism, for example, is perhaps too contemplative to do anything. But
Christianity, above any other, would seem to be the natural ally of the
eugenist. Christianity itself is undergoing a rapid change in ideals at
present, and it seems impossible that this evolution should leave its
adherents as ignorant of and indifferent to eugenics as they have been
in the past--even during the last generation.
Followers of other religions, as this chapter has attempted to show, can
also make eugenics a part of their respective religions. If they do not,
then it bodes ill for the future of their religion and of their race.
It is not difficult to get people to see the value of eugenics,--to give
an intellectual adhesion to it. But as eugenics sometimes calls for
seeming sacrifices, it is much more difficult to get people to _act_
eugenically. We have at numerous points in this book emphasized the
necessity of making the eugenic appeal emotional, though it is based
fundamentally on sound reasoning from facts of biology.
The great value of religion in this connection is that it provides a
driving power,[188] a source of action, which the intellect alone can
rarely furnish. Reason itself is usually an inhibitor of action. It is
the emotions that impel one to do things. The utilization of the
emotions in affecting conduct is by no means always a part of religion,
yet it is the essence of religion. Without abandoning the appeal to
reason, eugenists must make every effort to enlist potent emotional
forces on their side. There is none so strong and available as religion,
and the eugenist may turn to it with confidence of finding an effective
ally, if he can once gain its sanction.
The task, as this chapter was intended to show, is a complex one, yet we
see no insuperable obstacles to it. Eugenics may not become a part of
the Christian religion, as a whole, until scientific education is much
more widespread than at present, but it is not too soon to make a start,
by identifying the interests of the two wherever such identification is
justified and profitable.
We have endeavored to point out that as a race rises, and instinct
becomes less important in guiding the conduct of its members, religion
has often put a restraint on reason, guiding the individual in racially
profitable paths. What is to happen when religion gives way? Unbridled
selfishness too often takes the reins, and the interests of the species
are disregarded. Religion, therefore, appears to be a necessity for the
perpetuation of any race. It is essential to racial welfare that the
national religion should be of such a character as to appeal to the
emotions effectively and yet conciliate the reason. We believe that the
religion of the future is likely to acquire this character, in
proportion as it adheres to eugenics. There is no room in the civilized
world now for a dysgenic religion. Science will progress. The idea of
evolution will be more firmly grasped. Religion itself evolves, and any
religion which does not embrace eugenics will embrace death.