N'abandonnons pas l'avenir de notre race à la fatalité d'Allah; créons-le nous-mêmes.—Forel.“It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but except in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated, and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maim and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment.... Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.”—Darwin,The Descent of Man, 1871. Pt. i., chap. v.
N'abandonnons pas l'avenir de notre race à la fatalité d'Allah; créons-le nous-mêmes.—Forel.
“It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but except in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated, and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maim and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment.... Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.”—Darwin,The Descent of Man, 1871. Pt. i., chap. v.
Hitherto we have mainly concerned ourselves with broad aspects of theory, endeavouring to prove that conscious race-culture is a necessity for any civilisation which is to endure, and to show how alone it can be effected. But evidently for a great many of the practical proposals that might be, and for not a few that have been, based upon these views, public opinion is not ripe. We may be thankful to believe that for some it will never be ripe: it would be rotten first. Marriage, for instance, we hold sacred and essential: we find intolerable the idea of the human stud-farm; we are very dubious as to the help of surgery; we are much morethan dubious as to the lethal chamber. It is necessary to be reasonable, and, in seeking the superman, to remain at least human. Now if we are to achieve any immediate success we must clearly divide our proposals, as the present writer did some years ago, with Mr. Galton's approval, into two classes:positive eugenicsandnegative eugenics. The one would seek to encourage the parenthood of the worthy, the other to discourage the parenthood of the unworthy. Positive eugenics is the original eugenics, but, as the writer endeavoured to show at the time, negative eugenics is one with it in principle. The two are complementary, and are both practised by Nature: natural selection is one with natural rejection. To choose is to refuse.
In regard to positive eugenics I, for one, must ever make the criticism that I cannot believe in the propriety of attempting to bribe into parenthood people who have no love of children: we have to consider the parental environment of the children we desire, as well as their innate quality. Thus, positive eugenics must largely take the form, at present, of removing such disabilities as now weigh upon the desirable members of the community, especially of the more prudent sort.
For instance, it was recently pointed out by a correspondent of theMorning Postthat in Great Britain, despite the alarm caused by the decreasing marriage-rate, no one has protested against—
“... the tax which the propertied middle classes have to pay on marriage.... To take a few instances. Two persons each having £160 a year marry. Previous to marriage they were exempt from income tax; after marriage they pay £6 per annum. Two persons each having £400 a year pay £18 before and £30 after marriage. Similarly the additional income tax payable on marriage by people each having £600 a year is £9, by those having £1,200 a year £30, and by those having £2,000 a year £50. It is difficult to see how our legislators arrived at this result unless they started to average the incomes of married people and then forgot to divide by two.... If, as I contend, a man and his wife should be counted as two people, not one, should not children also be counted in any scheme of graduated taxation, and an income be divided by the number of persons it has to support in order to fix the rate at which the tax is to be charged? It is ridiculous to suppose that a man with a wife and six children is as well off on £1,000 a year as a bachelor with the same income. It is, I believe, acknowledged that the moderately well-off professional classes marry later and have fewer children than the wage-earners, and I think there can be no doubt that the special burthens they have to bear is a material influence contributing to this result. Thus, while we are deploring the decadence of the race, the State is doing what it can to discourage marriage in a class whose children would in all probability prove its most valued citizens.”
“... the tax which the propertied middle classes have to pay on marriage.... To take a few instances. Two persons each having £160 a year marry. Previous to marriage they were exempt from income tax; after marriage they pay £6 per annum. Two persons each having £400 a year pay £18 before and £30 after marriage. Similarly the additional income tax payable on marriage by people each having £600 a year is £9, by those having £1,200 a year £30, and by those having £2,000 a year £50. It is difficult to see how our legislators arrived at this result unless they started to average the incomes of married people and then forgot to divide by two.... If, as I contend, a man and his wife should be counted as two people, not one, should not children also be counted in any scheme of graduated taxation, and an income be divided by the number of persons it has to support in order to fix the rate at which the tax is to be charged? It is ridiculous to suppose that a man with a wife and six children is as well off on £1,000 a year as a bachelor with the same income. It is, I believe, acknowledged that the moderately well-off professional classes marry later and have fewer children than the wage-earners, and I think there can be no doubt that the special burthens they have to bear is a material influence contributing to this result. Thus, while we are deploring the decadence of the race, the State is doing what it can to discourage marriage in a class whose children would in all probability prove its most valued citizens.”
But it is in negative eugenics that we can accomplish most at this stage, and in so doing can steadily educate public opinion, the professional jesters notwithstanding. There is here a field for action which does not demand a great revolution in the popular point of view; and, further, does not require us to wait for certainty until the facts and laws of heredity have been much further elucidated. The services which a conscious race-culture, thus directed, may even now accomplish, can scarcely be over-estimated; and even if we cannot reach the public heart at once we can reach the public head by means of the public pocket—which will benefit obviously and greatly when these proposals are carried out. As Thoreau observes, for a thousand who are lopping off the branches of an evil there is but one striking at its roots. If we strike at the roots of certain grave and costly evils of the present day, we shall abundantly demonstrate that this is a matter of the most vital economy.
The deaf and dumb.—We might begin with the case of thedeaf and dumb, since the facts here are utterly beyonddispute. The condition known as deaf-mutism is congenital or due to innate defect in about one-half of all the cases in Great Britain. Says Dr. Love,[45]“In every institution examples may be found of deaf-mute children who have one or two deaf parents or grand-parents, and of two or more deaf-mute children belonging to one family.” A recent report from Japan is of a similar order, and the evidence might be multiplied indefinitely. The obvious conclusion that the inherently deaf should not marry “is generally conceded by those who work amongst the deaf, but the present arrangements for the education of the deaf, and their management in missions and institutes for the deaf during the period of adolescence, is eminently fitted to encourage union between the congenitally deaf. If not during the school period, at least during the period of adolescence, everything should be done to discourage the association of the deaf and dumb with each other, and the danger of their meeting with those similarly afflicted should be constantly kept before the congenitally deaf by those in charge of them.” Dr. Love quotes the following newspaper report: “At an inquest yesterday, on William Earnshaw, 59, a St. Pancras saddler, it was stated that the relatives could not identify the body, as the wife and sister were blind, deaf and dumb, and that the four children were deaf and dumb. The deceased was deaf and dumb, and was so when he was married.”
The feeble-minded.—The case of thefeeble-mindedis of course parallel. The problem would be at once reduced to negligible proportions if all cases of feeble-mindedness were dealt with as they should be. These unfortunate people might lead quite happy lives, the utmost be done for their feeble capacities, the supreme demands of the law of love be completely but providently complied with. The feeble-mindedgirl might be protected from herself and from others—her fate otherwise is often too deplorable for definition—and the interests of the future be not compromised. These words were written whilst awaiting the long overdue Report of the Royal Commission on this subject—which abundantly confirms them. The proportion of the mentally defective in Great Britain is now 0.83 per cent., and it is doubtless rising yearly. Only by the recognition and application of negative eugenics can this evil be cured. I have elsewhere[46]discussed the supposed objection which will be raised in the name of “liberty” by persons who think in words instead of realities. The right care of the feeble-minded involves the greatest happiness and liberty and self-development possible for them. The interests of the individual and the race are one. What liberty has the feeble-minded prostitute, such as our streets are filled with?
The insane.—As regards obviousinsanity, the same principles of negative eugenics must be enforced. It is probably fair to say that the whole trend of modern research has been to accentuate the importance, if not indeed the indispensableness, of the inherent or inherited factor in the production of insanity. Yet, on the other hand, the trend of treatment of the insane has undoubtedly been towards permitting them more liberty, sometimes of the kind which the principles of race-culture must condemn. It is well, of course, that we should be humane in our treatment of the insane. It is well that curative medicine should do its utmost for them, and it seems well, at first sight, that the proportion of discharges from asylums on the score of recovery should be as high as it is. But at this point the possibility of the gravest criticism evidently arises. I have no intention whateverof exposing the question of race-culture to legitimate criticism by laying down dogmatically any doctrines as to the perpetual incarceration of insane persons, including those who have been, but are not now, insane. Pope was, of course, right when he hinted at the nearness of the relation betweencertain formsof genius and certain forms of insanity. It may well be that if we could provide a fit environment we might welcome the children of some of those, highly and perhaps uniquely gifted in brain, who, under the stress of the ordinary environment of modern life, have broken down for shorter or longer periods. On the other hand, there are forms of insanity which, beyond all dispute, should utterly preclude their victims from parenthood. As a result of recent controversies it seems on the whole probable, if not certain, that the apparent persistent increase in the proportion of the insane in civilised countries generally during many years past, is a real increase, and not due simply to such factors as more stringent certification or increase of public confidence in lunatic asylums. If, then, there be in process a real increase in the proportion of the insane, who will question that no time should be lost in ascertaining the extent—undoubtedly most considerable—to which the principles of negative eugenics can be invoked in order to arrest it?
As regardsepilepsyandepileptic insanitythere can be no question. There is, of course, such a thing as acquired epilepsy, and we may even assume for the sake of the argument that no inherent and therefore transmissible factor of predisposition is involved in such cases. Yet, wholly excluding them, there remains the vast majority of cases in which epilepsy and epileptic insanity are unquestionably germinal in origin, and therefore transmissible. The principle of negative eugenics cannot too soon be applied here.
The criminal.—When we come to consider the question ofcrimethe cautious and responsible eugenist is bound to be wary—chiefly, perhaps, because such a vast amount of sheer nonsense has been written on this subject. The whole question, of course, is the old one, Is it heredity or environment that produces the criminal? If and when it is the environment, race-culture has nothing to do with the question, since the merely acquired criminality is, as we know, not in any degree transmissible. If the criminal, however, is always or ever a “born criminal,” then the eugenist is intimately concerned. At the one extreme are those who tell us that the idea of crime is a purely conventional one, that the criminal is the product of circumstances or environment, and that we, in his case, would have done likewise. The remedy for crime, then, is education. It is pointed out, however, that education merely modifies the variety of crime. There is less murder but more swindling, and so forth. Then, on the other hand, there are those who declare that criminality is innate, and that if we are to make an end of crime we must attach surgeons to our gaols; or at any rate must extend the principle of the life-sentence.
Doubtless, the truth lies between these two extremes. In the face of the work of Lombroso and his school, exaggerated though their conclusions often be, we cannot dispute the existence of the born criminal, and the criminal type. There are undoubtedly many such persons in modern society. There is an abundance of crime which no education, practised or imaginable, would eliminate. Present-day psychology and medicine, and, for the matter of that, ordinary common-sense, can readily distinguish cases at both extremes—themattoidor semi-insane criminal at one end, and the decent citizen who yields to exceptional temptation at the other end. Thus, even thoughthere remain a vast number of cases where our knowledge is insufficient, we could accomplish great things already if the born criminal, the habitual criminal and his like were rationally treated by society, on the lines of the reformatory, the labour colony, indeterminate sentences, and such other methods as aim, successfully or unsuccessfully, at the reform of the individual, whilst incidentally protecting the race. Here, as in some other cases, the nature of the environment provided for their children by certain sections of the community may be taken into account when we decide whether they are to be prohibited from parenthood. Heredity or no heredity, we cannot desire to have children born into the alcoholic home; heredity or no heredity, we cannot desire to have children born into the criminal environment. In Great Britain we are no longer to manufacture criminals in hundreds by sending children to prison. It remains to be seen, after the practical disappearance of the made criminal, what proportion of crime is really due to the born criminal. He, when found, must certainly be dealt with on the lines indicated by our principles.[47]
Other cases.—So far we have considered exclusively diseases and disorders of the brain, the question of alcoholism being deferred to a special chapter. When we come to other forms of defect or disease we find a long gradation of instances: at the one extreme being cases where the fact of disastrous inheritance is palpable and inevitable, whilst at the other extreme are kinds of disease and defect as to which the share of heredity is still very uncertain. In some instances, then, the eugenist is bound to lay down the most emphatic propositions, as, for instance, that parenthood on the part of men sufferingfrom certain diseases is and should and must be regarded and treated as a crime of the most heinous order: whilst in other instances all we can say is that here is a direction in which more knowledge is needed.
Some particular cases may be referred to.
The diseases known as Daltonism or colour-blindness, and hæmophilia or the “bleeding disease,” are certainly hereditary. The sufferers are usually male, but the disease is commonly transmitted by their daughters (who do not themselves suffer) to their male descendants. As regards colour-blindness, the defect is evidently insufficient to concern the eugenist, but hæmophilia is a serious disease, the transmission of which should not be excused. It may seem hard to assert that the daughter of a hæmophilic father should not become a mother, she herself being free from all disease. But it has to be remembered that the possibility of this hardship depends upon the fact that a hæmophilic man has become a father, as he should not have done.
This point, as to the amount of hardship involved in the observance of negative race-culture, has always to be kept in mind. If negative eugenics were generally enforced upon a given generation some persons would, of course, suffer in greater or less degree from the disabilities imposed upon them. But their number would depend upon the neglect of eugenics by previous generations, andthereafter the number of those upon whom our principles pressed hardly would be relatively minute.
Eugenics and tuberculosis.—It would not be correct to say that the old view of consumption regarded it as hereditary. In this and a hundred other matters, medical, astronomical, or what we please, if we go back to the Arabic students, or further, to the Greeks, we are lucky enough to find sound observation and reasoning. Manyquotations might be made to show that the infectious nature of tuberculosis was recognised long ago, just as the revolution of the earth round the sun was recognised a millennium and a half before Copernicus. But the view of our more immediate fathers was that tuberculosis is a hereditary degeneration, and the medical profession proclaimed with no uncertain sound the hopeless and paralysing doctrine that an almost certain doom hung over the children of the consumptive. Then, in memorable succession, came Villemin, Pasteur, and lastly Koch, with his discovery of the bacillus in 1882. The doctrine was then altered in its statement. There was, of course, no choice in the matter, since it was easy to show that not one new-born baby in millions harbours a tubercle bacillus; so all-but-miraculous and, rightly considered, beautiful are the ante-natal defences. It was taught, then, that we inherit a predisposition from consumptive parents, that the bacillus is ubiquitous, and that variations in susceptibility determine the incidence of the disease in one and not in another. It was lightly assumed (simply through what may be called the inertia of belief) that these variations in susceptibility were hereditary; but we are wholly without evidence that the hereditary factor counts for anything substantial, even assuming that it appreciably exists at all. These differences, so far from being inherent, may bemost palpablyacquired. Under-feeding, alcohol, and influenza, let us say, will adequately prepare any human soil. Furthermore, we are learning that the bacillus is nothing like so ubiquitous as used to be supposed. Tuberculosis is now sometimes described as a dwelling disease. It might probably be described with still more accuracy as a bed-room disease, or a bed-room and public-house disease. It has been evident for many years past that the more we learnt about tuberculosis the less did we talk aboutheredity; and in one of the most recent authoritative pronouncements[48]upon the subject, the lecturer did not even allude to heredity at all. Many readers will be up in arms at once with apparently contrary instances; and much labour may be spent in the mathematical analysis of statistical data—as that of cases where a father and a child have tuberculosis. But suppose the father kissed the child? What have you proved regarding heredity? No mathematics can get more out of the data than is in them.
The statistics designed to measure the degree of inheritance in this disease labour under the cardinal fallacy of assuming that where father and son suffer, the case is one of inheritance, and then proceed to measure the average extent of this inheritance. These statistics are so much waste paper and ink—assuming what they claim to prove. They do not allow for the fact that the child is very frequently exposed in grave measure to infection by the parent; they ignore wholly, indeed, the entire question of exposure to infection, both as regards its extent in time and the virulence of the infection in question. At the present day, discussions as to the inheritance of consumption and tuberculosis in general are not fit for practical application: and a practical disservice is rendered by those who seek to divert public attention from the removable environmental causes upon which the disease mainly depends. We know, for instance, that the incidence of tuberculosis is directly proportional to over-crowding: this being universally true, we must work to abolish over-crowding and to provide fresh air for every one by day and by night. When that is done, alcoholism disposed of, and our milk-supply purified, we may turn to the question of heredity: but the incidence of the disease will thenpresent merely trivial instead of the present appalling proportions.
It is not asserted that inherent variations in susceptibility to this disease are not existent. The case would be unique if it were so. But it is asserted that the more we learn of the disease the less importance we attach to this factor, and the more surely do we see that the three syllables constituting the word “infection” substantially suffice to dispose of all the confident dogmas with which we are too familiar. One is almost tempted to quote a forcible phrase of Mill's, and say that, given this point of view, “once questioned, they are doomed.” The only method of accurately studying the question of inherited predisposition would be by comparative study of the resistance of new-born infants as measured by their “opsonic index”—which may be (very roughly) described as the measure of the power of the white cells of the blood to eat up tubercle bacilli.[49]Nor will even this method be free from fallacy.
The present writer believes that eugenics is going to save the world; that there is no study of such urgent and practical importance as that of heredity; that if we get the right people born and the wrong people not born, forms of government and such questions will be left even without fools to contest regarding them. Thus he has every bias in favour of emphasising the hereditary factor in tuberculosis. The fact will at least not discredit the foregoing views, which are in absolute accord with those of Dr. Newsholme, our leading authority, in his recent work upon the subject.
Nothing need here be said about cancer, the best and most recent evidence tending to show that the disease is not hereditary.
The foregoing may briefly suffice to illustrate the general proposition that negative eugenics will seek to define the diseases and defects which are really hereditary, to name those the transmission of which is already certainly known to occur, and to raise the average of the race by interfering as far as may be with the parenthood of persons suffering from these transmissible disorders. Only thus can certain of the gravest evils of society, as, for instance, feeble-mindedness, insanity, and crime due to inherited degeneracy, be suppressed: and if race-culture were absolutely incapable of effecting anything whatever in the way of increasing the fertility of the worthiest classes and individuals, its services in the negative direction here briefly outlined would still be of incalculable value. No other proposal will save so much life, present and to come: and save so much gold in doing so—as one would insist if one were writing a eugenic primer for politicians. To this policy we shall most certainly come: but here, as in other cases, I trust far more in the influence of an educated public opinion than in legislation; though there are certain forms of transmissible disease, interfering in no way with the responsibility of the individual, the transmission of which should be visited with the utmost rigour of the law and regarded as utterly criminal no less than sheer murder.
In the next chapter, recognising marriage as the human mode of selection, we must consider it in its relation to eugenics, both positive and negative.
Historical evidence of control of marriage: Westermarck's evidence.—To begin with the most recent refutation of the doctrine that marriage selection is uncontrollable, one may quote from the inaugural lecture delivered by Dr. Westermarck in December, 1907, on his appointment as Professor of Sociology in the University of London. He said:—
“For instance, when the suggestion has been made that the law should step in and prevent unfit individuals from contracting marriage, the objection has at once been raised that any such measure would be impracticable. Now we find that many savages have tried the experiment and succeeded. Mr. Im Thurn tells us that among the wild Indians of Guiana, a man, before he is allowed to choose a wife, must prove that he can do a man's work and is able to support himself and his family. In various Bechuana and Kaffir tribes, according to Livingstone, a youth is prohibited from marrying until he has killed a rhinoceros. Among the Dyaks of Borneo no one can marry until he has in his possession a certain number of human skulls. Among the Arabs of Upper Egypt a man must undergo an ordeal of whipping by the relatives of his bride, in order to test his courage; and if he wishes to be considered worth having, he must receive the chastisement, which is sometimes exceedingly severe, with an expression of enjoyment.“I do not say that these particular methods are worthy of slavish imitation, but the principle underlying them is certainly excellent, and especially the fact that they are recognised and enforced by custom shows that it has been quite possible among many people to prohibit certain unfit individuals from marrying. The question naturally arises whether, after all, something of the same kind may not be possible among ourselves.”
“For instance, when the suggestion has been made that the law should step in and prevent unfit individuals from contracting marriage, the objection has at once been raised that any such measure would be impracticable. Now we find that many savages have tried the experiment and succeeded. Mr. Im Thurn tells us that among the wild Indians of Guiana, a man, before he is allowed to choose a wife, must prove that he can do a man's work and is able to support himself and his family. In various Bechuana and Kaffir tribes, according to Livingstone, a youth is prohibited from marrying until he has killed a rhinoceros. Among the Dyaks of Borneo no one can marry until he has in his possession a certain number of human skulls. Among the Arabs of Upper Egypt a man must undergo an ordeal of whipping by the relatives of his bride, in order to test his courage; and if he wishes to be considered worth having, he must receive the chastisement, which is sometimes exceedingly severe, with an expression of enjoyment.
“I do not say that these particular methods are worthy of slavish imitation, but the principle underlying them is certainly excellent, and especially the fact that they are recognised and enforced by custom shows that it has been quite possible among many people to prohibit certain unfit individuals from marrying. The question naturally arises whether, after all, something of the same kind may not be possible among ourselves.”
Mr. Galton's evidence.—But Mr. Galton himself, with his characteristic thoroughness, and in full recognition of the fact that this young science must meet ignorant as well as other objections, read before the Sociological Society[50]a paper entitled “Restrictions in Marriage,” with special reference to the objection “that human nature would never brook interference with the freedom of marriage.... How far have marriage restrictions proved effective, when sanctified by the religion of the time, by custom and by law? I appeal from armchair criticism to historical facts.” Mr. Galton then proceeds to quote seven forms of restriction in marriage which have actually been practised—monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, taboo, prohibited degrees and celibacy. He shows how powerful under each of these heads is the influence of “immaterial motives” upon marriage selection, how they may all become hallowed by religion, accepted as custom and enforced by law. “Persons who are born under their various rules, live under them without any objection. They are unconscious of their restrictions as we are unaware of the tension of the atmosphere.” In many cases the establishment of monogamy and the prohibition of polygamy “has been due not to any natural instinct against the practice, but to consideration of social well-being.” “It was penal for a Greek to marry a barbarian, for a Roman patrician to marry a plebeian, for a Hindoo of one caste to marry one of another caste, and so forth. Similar restrictions have been enforced in multitudes of communities, even under the penalty of death.” Cases from ancient Jewish law are quoted; and, to take a very different case, that of the marriage rule amongst the Australian bushmen, it is shown that“the cogency of this rule is due to custom, religion and law, and is so strong that nearly all Australians would be horrified at the idea of breaking it.” Passing further on, one need offer no excuse for quoting, regarding marriage in general, the following words of the founder of eugenics:—“The institution of marriage as now sanctified by religion and safeguarded by law in the more highly civilised nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it be universally accepted in future times, but it is the best that has hitherto been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their children, for home life, and for society.”
Mr. Galton then proceeds to show how extensive are the restrictions in marriage already recognised and practised amongst ourselves and quite contentedly accepted. He proves also that our objection to marriage within prohibited degrees depends mainly upon what he calls immaterial considerations, and adds “it is quite conceivable that a non-eugenic marriage should hereafter excite no less loathing than that of a brother and sister would do now.” Then, in allusion to the possibility “of a whole-hearted acceptance of eugenics as a national religion ... the thorough conviction by a nation that no worthier object exists for man than the improvement of his own race,” Mr. Galton shows from the history of conventual life what abundant evidence there is “of the power of religious authority in directing and withstanding the tendencies of human nature towards freedom in marriage.” This paper was discussed by no less than twenty-six authorities, British and Continental, and in his reply Mr. Galton observes that not one of them impugns his main conclusion “that history tells how restrictions in marriage, even of an excessive kind, have been contentedly accepted very widely, under the guidance of what I called immaterial motives.” Lastly, we may note Mr. Galton's admirable distinction between the two stages of love,“that of slight inclination and that of falling thoroughly into love, for it is the first of these rather than the second that I hope the popular feeling of the future will successfully resist. Every match-making mother appreciates the difference. If a girl is taught to look upon a class of men as tabooed, whether owing to rank, creed, connections or other causes, she does not regard them as possible husbands and turns her thoughts elsewhere. The proverbial ‘Mrs. Grundy’ has enormous influence in checking the marriages she considers indiscreet.”
Surely all the foregoing suffices to show, first, that eugenics or race-culture is compatible with marriage, and secondly, that it is compatible with the love of the sexes—two conclusions of the most cardinal and fundamental importance. This importance it is, and the obstinate stupidity of critics of a kind, which must excuse me for having devoted so much space to propositions which the thoughtful reader would naturally have arrived at for himself.
The present influence of marriage on race-culture.—We must turn now from the past to the present aspect of the question, viz., the actual relation of marriage to eugenics at the present day. Its nature is very much disputed. On the one hand, there are those who see in our present methods what has elsewhere been called reversed selection—that is to say, an anti-eugenic process, involving the mating of the least desirable. On the other hand, there are many conservative critics who, starting from a general opposition to any new thing, such as eugenics, maintain that we are doing very well as we are, and that, without any conscious interference, as they call it—as if there were no such interference—selection by marriage is actually working for the eugenic end. Dr. Maudsley, for instance, is “not sure but that nature in its own blind impulsive way does not manage things better than we can by any light of reason”: an astounding opinion from the veteranpioneer who has devoted so many decades to successfully modifying natural processes by the light of his own splendid reason!
This most important question, as to what is actually happening within the limits of marriage, may legitimately be regarded as substantially equivalent to the question of the extent and nature of selection, for good or for evil, as it occurs in society to-day. If we remember that an overwhelming proportion of children are born in wedlock, that the death-rate of illegitimate children is gigantic, whilst the illegitimate birth-rate is generally falling, we shall be fully entitled to assume that the answer to the one question is the answer to the other; in a word, if under the present conditions of selection for marriage we find a eugenic tendency or an anti-eugenic tendency or a mere neutrality, the answer will be,on the whole, the approximate answer to the larger question as to the present state of selection for parenthood and therefore of our racial prospects, marriage or no marriage. The conclusion which we shall maintain is thatboth forms of selection occur in society to-day—the selection of the desirable and the selection of the undesirable. We shall go ludicrously wrong if we agree, with one party, that society in general to-day exhibits reversed selection; or, with the second party, that everything is going on admirably on the whole; or, with the third party, which jumbles the whole mass of facts and tendencies, and declares that there is no process of selection of any kind occurring in society to-day—an opinion which, in the face of disease, the enormous premature death-rate, and the fact that whilst vast numbers of women are unmarried, the choice of women for marriage does not occur by lot, beggars comment; is a girl with a birth-mark covering half her face, or a nose destroyed by transmissible disease, as likely to marry as a “beauty”? If not, surely we actually select to-dayfor beauty and therefore for whatever beauty depends upon—for instance, health. But really it cannot be necessary to deal seriously with the proposition that no selection occurs in society to-day.
Let us attempt to state clearly the point at issue. There is granted, in the first place, that by far the greater part of all parenthood, in civilised and uncivilised communities alike, occurs within the limits of marriage; to which may be added that, owing to the excessive death-rate of illegitimate children, the proportion of effective parenthood, so to say, that occurs within the limits of marriage is even larger; and this intervention of marriage, and any selection that may be involved in it, steadily recur from generation to generation. Thus even those born outside wedlock will nevertheless be selected for parenthood, on their own part, mainly by the selective factors in marriage.
Selection by marriage has the last word.—It follows, then, though the fact is almost constantly ignored by eugenic writers, that selection by marriage in effect has the last word. Thus supposing that all other forms of selection, depending upon, for instance, the various causes of death amongst the immature, were what we call reversed selection; or supposing that, as is actually the case, society permitted large numbers of the so-called unfit to survive,—even so, marriage selection (if it meant that many or most of these were rejected by it) would control and correct the dangerous tendency. On all hands, scientific and unscientific, we have writers telling us of the disastrous multiplication of the unfit. Such multiplication does occur and is disastrous. Yet hitherto they have failed to recognise that if—to take an extreme case—all these unfit are rejected by marriage selection—that is to say, do not themselves become parents—this alarming multiplication is, after all, not a persistent factor in racial change, but merely the throwing up or throwing aside ineach generation of a certain number of undesirableswhose breed gets no further. Of course there would be much less urgent need for eugenics if this last were wholly and happily the case. Our object, indeed, is to make it the case: but so long as selection by marriage exists,—and its occurrence is palpably indisputable—it is a serious flaw in the common argument to assume that the production and preservation of undesirables necessarily involves their own parenthood in due course. It is necessary that strict statistical enquiry be made on this point. It would show, I believe, that the marriage-rateand the birth-rateamongst thegrosslyunfit is much lower than that of the general community, or, in other words, that the influence and value of selection by marriage (which, as we have shown, is in effect selection for parenthood, the only selection that ultimately matters) has not yet been fully appreciated. I very strongly incline to the view that if this protective factor were not constantly at work, the “multiplication of the unfit” would long ago have led to the destruction of every civilised nation on the earth: they would have swamped us long ago. Indeed, the proposition may be laid down that, supreme and indispensable as are the services of marriage to race-culture, in its protection of motherhood, and the support of motherhood by fatherhood, probably the services of marriage as in effect the working of sexual selection are worthy of being rated almost, if not quite, as high.
Sexual selection is certainly true of mankind.—Before adducing the outlines of the evidence in favour of marriage as an instrument of selection, it may be well to point out that here we are really discussing what Darwin called “sexual selection,” modified by the psychology and peculiar characters of mankind. We must protect ourselves from the critics who will remind us that sexual selection is very largely discredited to-day, rather morethan a generation after Darwin's enunciation of it inThe Descent of Man(1871). The controversy regarding sexual selection as the producer of feathers and markings and song, and so forth, amongst the lower animals, is fortunately quite irrelevant to our present discussion, which is concerned with mankind. We can afford to note with equanimity the observation that, in lower species, no mature female goes unmated, for instance; the fact remains that in the case of mankind a very considerable percentage of women remain unmarried. The case is similar as regards the male sex. In short, one may declare that, whether or not sexual selection is possible, or occurs, or accomplishes anything, in the case of the lower animals, it palpably and patently is possible, and does occur, amongst mankind, and especially amongst civilised peoples, in the form of selection by or for marriage—which, as we have seen, is in effect selection for parenthood. Let us first note the statistical evidence regarding marriage-selection of health and energy.
Spencer on marital longevity.—We are all aware that married people live longer, on the average, than unmarried people, the conclusion being, “of course,” that marriage is good for the health. But some are taken and others left in this respect, and if, for any conceivable reason, health is a factor making for selection by marriage, that may be a real explanation, in whole or in part, of the longer life of married people. Considering the risks to life involved in motherhood, the superior longevity of married as compared with unmarried women would be incomprehensible except on some such assumption. Yet it is the fact, so imperfect still is the entry of the idea of selection into the popular and even the expert mind, that the superior longevity of married people is still constantly asserted to mean that marriage makes for long life; everyyear, when the statistics are printed, this argument may be seen in the newspapers, and I remember encountering it in theEncyclopædia Britannica, to my utter astonishment.
This uncritical conclusion was disposed of by the author of the phrase “the survival of the fittest”—appropriately enough—more than thirty years ago. If the reader will turn to Herbert Spencer'sStudy of Sociology(a masterpiece which may be commended to the publishers for the purpose of indexing—twenty editions without an index are too many) he will find in Chapter V. a discussion of this question. It is an astonishing thing that though Spencer conclusively exposed it a generation ago, the childish fallacy is still apparently as flourishing as ever. He shows how the greater healthfulness of married life was supposed to be proved by Dr. Stark from comparison of the rates of mortality among the married and among the celibate. Then no less an authority than M. Bertillon went into the matter and contributed a paper called “The Influence of Marriage”—thus begging the question in its very title—to the Brussels Academy of Medicine. He showed that, from twenty-five to thirty years of age, several Continental countries being taken into the reckoning, “the mortality per thousand is 4 in married men, 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widows. This beneficial influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, being always more strongly marked in men than in women.” The absurdity of the apparent conclusion regarding widows is surely, as Spencer says, too obvious for discussion. But, for the rest, Spencer goes on to show that, in reality, “marriage and longevity are concomitant results of the same cause”—in other words,“that superior quality of organisation which conduces to long life also conduces to marriage. It is normally accompanied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting marriage; there goes along with it that power[51]which can secure the means of making marriage practicable; and it increases the probability of success in courtship.” Spencer shows how “of men whose marriages depend upon getting the needful income,” those who will succeed are in general “the best, physically and mentally—the strong, the intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced.” He shows also how “women are attracted towards men of power—physical, emotional, intellectual; and obviously their freedom of choice leads them, in many cases, to refuse inferior samples of men; especially the malformed, the diseased, and those who are ill-developed, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as marriage is determined by female selection, the average result on men is that while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst are left without wives.”
Very likely the stupid conclusion into which so many distinguished men have been betrayed will survive for many years yet amongst less distinguished people, but at any rate we may free our minds from it here, and may recognise in the figures to which I have referred, and which are of the same order to-day, the statistical proof of what any observer, however casual, might have inferred from what he sees even amongst his own friends only—that marriage is, as it probably always has been, a selective agent of much value in preserving and augmenting the desirable inherent qualities of the race. It is, of course, the object of race-culture or eugenics to strengthen the hands of marriage in this respect to the utmost possible degree.
Woman as practical eugenist.—We must especially note one most important matter, radically affecting race-culture, which is referred to by Herbert Spencer in thepassage cited, and has been greatly insisted upon by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection. The matter in question is the possibility of race-culture through the choice of their husbands by women. Not long ago Dr. Wallace[52]described selection through marriage as the “more permanently effective agency through which the improvement of human character may be achieved.” This, in his opinion, can only be perfectly achieved “when a greatly improved social system renders all our women economically and socially free to choose; while a rational and complete education will have taught them the importance of their choice both to themselves and to humanity.... It will act through the agency of well-known facts and principles of human nature, leading to a continuous reduction of the lower types in each successive generation, and it is the only mode yet suggested which will automatically and naturally effect this.” Thus “for the first time in the history of mankind his Character—his very Human Nature itself—will be improved by the slow but certain action of a pure and beautiful form of selection—a selection which will act, not through struggle and death, but through brotherhood and love.”
Dr. Wallace is a socialist, and he believes that only through socialism can we achieve “that perfect freedom of choice in marriage which will only be possible when all are economically equal, and no question of social rank or material advantage can have the slightest influence in determining that choice.” As I have said elsewhere, I would call myself neither a socialist nor an anti-socialist, but if labels are necessary, a eugenist and maternalist. As such, I can only say that this argument for socialism—that it is the necessary condition of eugenics or race-culture—is, for me, incomparably the best argumentfor that creed; and if it were proved that only through socialism could the utmost be made of women's choice of husbands, then no argument against socialism could have any appreciable weight at all. The fundamental and permanent argument against certain of the highly various and incompatible doctrines which, for our confusion, are commonly lumped together as socialism, is that they would arrest the process by which Nature rewards worth and permits it to perpetuate itself. If, then, it can be shown, as may or may not be the case, that only through socialism can male worth be most effectively chosen and male unworth be rejected for fatherhood, the supreme—that is, the eugenic—argument against socialism becomes the conclusive argument in its favour.
The field of choice.—But, however this may be, there can be no question that the eugenic purpose, as well as the happiness and elevation of individuals in the present, will be greatly served by whatever measures increase, to the utmost extent possible, the opportunities for choice in marriage afforded to women and also to men. One of the most amazing and satisfactory facts about marriage as at present practised is, I think, the large proportion—often estimated at seventy-five per cent.—of unions which, apart from any eugenic question, turn out happily, in Great Britain, at any rate. What makes this fact more amazing is the almost incredible limitation of the field of choice within which both sexes are still confined as a whole. If the reader will consider the cases most familiar to him or her, it will surely be admitted that the considerable success of marriage takes on an astonishing aspect when the present strait conditions of choice are taken into account. I am convinced that few more radical and far-reaching, because eugenic, reforms can be conceived than any which, in accordance with Dr. Wallace'sargument, tend to widen the field of choice, and that not for one sex only but for both. He would be a rash man who ventured to allot superior value to the selection of man by woman rather than of woman by man, orvice versâ.
Quite apart from any deeper and more difficult reforms, such as Dr. Wallace alludes to, I am sure that even the mere widening of the field of choice, as such, is most desirable. To take an instance, which the reader may very likely think trivial and absurd, I have witnessed in my brief career as a hockey player two unions most happy and eugenic in every way, which entirely depended upon the existence of the amusement called mixed hockey—whereat the contracting parties met one another! It is not asserted that these two cases suffice for world-wide generalisation. They are merely cited as instances which set at least one hockey player thinking, even on the field—the field of choice. It is a great argument, because it is a eugenic argument, in favour of community of sports and amusements amongst young people of both sexes, that it does widen the field of choice in marriage, and that in doing so it also tends to favour those factors of selection which the eugenist would desire to see selected: and this especially as compared with the ball-room. I think that the reader will agree that the conditions, the “atmosphere,” the costume, and the other features of what young people call a “dance,” whilst undoubtedly serving the purpose of marriage and widening somewhat a field of choice which might otherwise be ludicrously and impracticably restricted, compare most unfavourably with the conditions of even the mixed hockey field, which, decried though they often be, are to my mind immeasurably healthier on every conceivable ground than those of the ball-room, and not least of all on the eugenic ground of the prominencegained by most desirable qualities, of which mere strength and energy and neuro-muscular skill are quite the least, whilst unselfishness, capacity for self-control, patience, real gallantry—as when a male “full back” refrains from hitting the ball with all his might against the toes of a girl “forward”—the sporting spirit and other true and radical virtues, are the greatest. It is undoubtedly the case that the personal factors, physical and psychical, which determine the mutual attraction of young people, have dependent upon them the whole of human destiny. In society to-day, what one may call the incidence of parenthood, upon which all the future necessarily depends,isdetermined by nothing other than the humanised form of what Darwin called “sexual selection.” Therefore, it is not trivial but supremely important to discuss the conditions under which the selection obtains.[53]
It has already been suggested that in order to enhance the eugenic value of marriage we should endeavour to widen the field of choice, at present ludicrously restricted by custom, class, religion, economic position, and so forth. The increased locomotion of to-day will be of real eugenic service to the race in this respect, I believe.
Then it has been hinted that young people should meet one another under conditions which make prominent the psychical and put the merely physical or animal into the background—e.g.on the hockey field or the ice or in the “literary circle,” rather than in the ball-room. This proposition accords, of course, with what has been said elsewhere as to that great factor of progress which I define as the enhancement of the survival-value of the psychical as against that of the physical. (Notethe obvious sequence—survival-value, selection-value, marriage-value, parenthood-value, progress-value.) This proposition and the last might both be worked out, I believe, in considerable detail and not without profit.
Arguing on the same lines, we may agree that even such a small matter, usually considered wholly domestic, as the length of engagements, is of eugenic or racial importance. The eugenist, I think, must welcome long engagements simply because, though they may involve a reduced marriage-rate and a reduced birth-rate—the latter partly in consequence of the reduced marriage-rate, and partly because of the later age at marriage—they tend by the mere operation of time, as we say, to enhance the importance of the psychical and to reduce the importance of the physical factors which determine sexual attraction.
To these three points a fourth, of great importance, must be added. It is that we should favour, as far as possible, those factors of choice for marriage which are inherent, and therefore transmissible, as against those which are acquired, accidental, and therefore not transmissible,and thereforeof no racial or eugenic importance. This, of course, is the point made by Dr. Wallace in the article quoted above—or at any rate it is involved in the point he makes. I simply mean that every time a marriage is brought about by, for instance, money, the eugenic value of marriage is at least nullified and may become actually anti-eugenic. Again I say,ifSocialism, or the abolition of (un-natural) inheritance, be necessary in order that selection for marriage shall be determined by the possession of personal qualities of racial value rather than the power of the purse, which has always been a racial curse, then the sooner socialism is established the better.
The eugenic value of contemporary marriage.—The first purpose of this chapter has been to show thatin marriage, wherever, and in so far as, it is determined by the mutual attractiveness of young people, there exists a eugenic factor in society to-day; and since the race is in effect recruited by the married people, this aspect of marriage deserves the closest study and attention. I commend this subject,the eugenic value of contemporary marriage, to the small but rapidly increasing number of students who realise that eugenics or race-culture will be the supreme science of the future, and who are now devoting themselves to its foundations. No more important and urgent enquiry can be undertaken at this stage. Which, for instance, is the more eugenic, the English system or the French?
The second purpose has been to show that one may believe in and work for eugenics or race-culture without proposing to overthrow all human institutions, or to adopt the methods of the stud-farm, or to initiate a vast campaign of surgery, or sensational and drastic legislation, or even, yet, the employment of marriage certificates. One or all of these things may have their place, now or hereafter; or may, on the other hand, be far worse than futile. But most assuredly it is possible now for the individual parent of marriageable children, for the clergyman, the leader of fashion, the doctor, not to start but to strengthen such by no means impotent eugenic forces as already exist in society, without outraging sentiment or custom—indeed, without attracting public attention to their action at all.
Eugenics has already suffered much at the hands of its so-called friends. It is to be hoped that a real service may be discharged by this attempt to show that on the highest, most accurate and scientific eugenic grounds, we may recognise, claim and welcome every father and mother who desire that the son or daughter whom they care for shall marry for psychical and notfor physical love. Every such parent is a eugenist, in effect, though his sole motive may be the welfare of his individual child.
At present we interfere with marriage on every imaginable ground, many utterly trivial, many worse. We encourage or discourage on economic grounds; we recognize many taboos, of caste, creed, colour. It is not for us, certainly, acting as we do, to be offended at the suggestion that we should use our influence to affect marriage on the highest conceivable ground—the life of mankind to come. What we really need is not so much the abolition of Mrs. Grundy as her conversion to the eugenic idea. It is the business of those who believe that eugenics is the greatest ideal in the world to make a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, as we shall some day: and then it will be realised how potent for good public opinion may become, once it is rightly educated.
Says Mr. Galton, in his latest contribution to the subject:—