VI
Nor is this the final item in our tale of woe. A third and most sinister fact which has to be faced is that Civilization, as at present constituted, is very definitely a deteriorating agency, conducing to the degeneration of mankind. This effect of Civilization is nothing new, but has been operating, it would seem, from the beginning, though not probably as intensively as now: its discovery, however, is very recent. It is quite indirect, unintended, and fortuitous, but cumulative, and in the long run has probably been a chief cause in the decay of States and civilizations, as well as an important factor in thearrest of biological development which we have had to recognize.
A simple and easily observable sociological fact is at the bottom of the mischief. The different classes in a society have different birth-rates and death-rates, and the differences between these yield their several net rates of increase or decrease. Now, whereas under the conditions of savage life class differences can hardly exist, or, at least cannot be accentuated, so that the whole tribe flourishes or perishes together, and among barbarians the upper classes have a very great advantage and the tribe recruits itself chiefly from the children of the chiefs, because the conditions of life are so severe that the lower classes are not able to rear many children; incivilized societies these conditions are reversed. It is found that though both birth-rates and death-rates grow as we descend the social scale, so does the net rate of increase. Indeed, the highest or ruling class nowhere appears to keep up its numbers without considerable recruitment from below. So society, as at present organized, is always dying off at the top, and proliferating at the bottom, of the social pyramid.
The disastrous consequences of this sort of social organization may easily be apprehended, with a little reflection. (1) All societies, even those whose social structure is most rigid, have need of ability, discover it, and reward it by social promotion. But (2) as this promotion means passing into a class with a relatively inadequate rate of reproduction,the biological penalty attaching to social promotion is racial extinction. Thus (3) the ultimate reward of merit is sterilization, and society appears to be an organization devoted to the suicidal task of extirpating any ability it may chance to contain, by draining it away from any stratum in which it may occur, promoting it into the highest, and there destroying it. It is exactly as though a dairyman should set in motion apparatus for separating the cream from the milk, and then, as it rose, skim it off, and throw it away!
At present it is calculated that the highest classes in the chief civilized societies only reproduce themselves to the extent of fifty per cent. of their number in each generation, so that thehereditary ability of half of them is lost in each generation. But even then the remainder is largely wasted. It is churned into froth and scum by social forces. For neither now nor at any time has social intelligence shown itself equal to devising a training for the youth of the highest classes that would provide them with adequate stimuli to develop their faculties, and to lead a strenuous life of social service. The children of the rich are tempted to live for ‘society’ in the narrower sense, which means frittering away one’s life on a round of vacuous amusement; and they rarely resist the temptation.
Naturally it is difficult to trace the accumulation of ability in the upper social strata which is theoretically to be expected. On the other hand, insome subjects at any rate, the symptoms of a world-wide dearth of ability are becoming unmistakable. The Great War, though it made abundantly manifest the prevalence of incompetents in high places, did not reveal the existence either of a great general or of a great statesman anywhere.
It is superfluous to insist either on the fatuity of a social organization such as this, or on the certainty of racial degeneration which it entails: but it may be well to draw attention to therapiditywith which these degenerative processes are at present sapping the vitality and value of our civilized races. The failure to reproduce does not, as in former times, affect merely the aristocracy in the highest social strata; it has spread to the whole of the professionaland middle classes, and to most classes of skilled labour. It is not too much to say that, with the exception of the miners, none of the desirable elements in the nation are doing their bit to keep up the population, and that its continued growth is mainly due to the unrestrained breeding of the casual labourers and the feeble-minded.
In the rest of the population its increase is checked by birth-control and the postponement of marriage, neither of which affects the undesirables. They are too stupid, reckless, and ignorant to practise the former, and have nothing to gain by the latter. Also, to make it quite certain that they shall form a true ‘proletariate,’ the wisdom of our rulers ordains that a knowledge of birth-control shall be a(fatal) privilege reserved for the intelligent and well-to-do. They instruct the police to prevent it from penetrating to the poor and stupid—apparently from the mistaken idea that the State needs plenty of cheap labour and cheap cannon-fodder. So child-bearing remains compulsory for the wretched women of the poor, whereas elsewhere only those women produce children who desire them, and natural selection is thus allowed gradually to eliminate the temperament of the unwilling (and, therefore, probably less competent) mother.
The dysgenic effects of this class-discrimination are further intensified by other tendencies: (1) The advance of medicine and hygiene has enormously diminished selective mortality in allclasses, and improved the chances of weaklings to survive and leave descendants. (2) The advance of philanthropy preserves them, especially in the lower classes, where formerly the mortality was largely selective and a high death-rate both counteracted an excessive birth-rate and increased the value of the survivors. The emotional appeal of ‘baby-saving’ goes so directly to the heart of civilized man that his head never reflects whether the particular baby is worth saving, and whether a baby from a different breed and with a better pedigree would not be better worth having. (3) Modern obstetrics save the lives of thousands of women, whose physique is such that in former times they would inevitably have died in child-birth. The result isthat child-birth is becoming more difficult. Also babies brought up on the bottle, which has an irresistible attraction for microbes of all sorts, are apt to be less healthy than those nourished in the more primitive manner.
(4) Lastly, the bastardizing, which used formerly to provide for a considerable infusion of the blood of the upper classes into the lower, has now practically ceased. Since the merry days of King Charles II, very few noble families of royal descent have been added to the peerage.