Chapter 19
A SHORT CHAPTER
Round about the year 1913 Eugenics was turned from a fad to a fashion. Then, if I may so summarise the situation, the joke began in earnest. The organising mind which we have seen considering the problem of slum population, the popular material and the possibility of protests, felt that the time had come to open the campaign. Eugenics began to appear in big headlines in the daily Press, and big pictures in the illustrated papers. A foreign gentleman named Bolce, living at Hampstead, was advertised on a huge scale as having every intention of being the father of the Superman. It turned out to be a Superwoman, and was called Eugenette. The parents were described as devoting themselves to the production of perfect pre-natal conditions. They "eliminated everything from their lives which did not tend towards complete happiness." Many might indeed be ready to do this; but in the voluminous contemporary journalism on the subject I can find no detailed notes about how it is done. Communications were opened with Mr. H.G. Wells, with Dr. Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully cultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper reader, however, it looked as if the names of Metchnikoff and Steinmetz and Karl Pearson would soon be quite as familiar as those of Robey and Lauder and Bard. Arguments about these Eugenic authorities, reports of the controversies at the Eugenic Congress, filled countless columns. The fact that Mr. Bolce, the creator of perfect pre-natal conditions, was afterwards sued in a law-court for keeping his own flat in conditions of filth and neglect, cast but a slight and momentary shadow upon the splendid dawn of the science. It would be vain to record any of the thousand testimonies to its triumph. In the nature of things, this should be the longest chapter in the book, or rather the beginning of another book. It should record, in numberless examples, the triumphant popularisation of Eugenics in England. But as a matter of fact this is not the first chapter but the last. And this must be a very short chapter, because the whole of this story was cut short. A very curious thing happened. England went to war.
This would in itself have been a sufficiently irritating interruption in the early life of Eugenette, and in the early establishment of Eugenics. But a far more dreadful and disconcerting fact must be noted. With whom, alas, did England go to war? England went to war with the Superman in his native home. She went to war with that very land of scientific culture from which the very ideal of a Superman had come. She went to war with the whole of Dr. Steinmetz, and presumably with at least half of Dr. Karl Pearson. She gave battle to the birthplace of nine-tenths of the professors who were the prophets of the new hope of humanity. In a few weeks the very name of a professor was a matter for hissing and low plebeian mirth. The very name of Nietzsche, who had held up this hope of something superhuman to humanity, was laughed at for all the world as if he had been touched with lunacy. A new mood came upon the whole people; a mood of marching, of spontaneous soldierly vigilance and democratic discipline, moving to the faint tune of bugles far away. Men began to talk strangely of old and common things, of the counties of England, of its quiet landscapes, of motherhood and the half-buried religion of the race. Death shone on the land like a new daylight, making all things vivid and visibly dear. And in the presence of this awful actuality it seemed, somehow or other, as if even Mr. Bolce and the Eugenic baby were things unaccountably far-away and almost, if one may say so, funny.
Such a revulsion requires explanation, and it may be briefly given. There was a province of Europe which had carried nearer to perfection than any other the type of order and foresight that are the subject of this book. It had long been the model State of all those more rational moralists who saw in science the ordered salvation of society. It was admittedly ahead of all other States in social reform. All the systematic social reforms were professedly and proudly borrowed from it. Therefore when this province of Prussia found it convenient to extend its imperial system to the neighbouring and neutral State of Belgium, all these scientific enthusiasts had a privilege not always granted to mere theorists. They had the gratification of seeing their great Utopia at work, on a grand scale and very close at hand. They had not to wait, like other evolutionary idealists, for the slow approach of something nearer to their dreams; or to leave it merely as a promise to posterity. They had not to wait for it as for a distant thing like the vision of a future state; but in the flesh they had seen their Paradise. And they were very silent for five years.
The thing died at last, and the stench of it stank to the sky. It might be thought that so terrible a savour would never altogether leave the memories of men; but men's memories are unstable things. It may be that gradually these dazed dupes will gather again together, and attempt again to believe their dreams and disbelieve their eyes. There may be some whose love of slavery is so ideal and disinterested that they are loyal to it even in its defeat. Wherever a fragment of that broken chain is found, they will be found hugging it. But there are limits set in the everlasting mercy to him who has been once deceived and a second time deceives himself. They have seen their paragons of science and organisation playing their part on land and sea; showing their love of learning at Louvain and their love of humanity at Lille. For a time at least they have believed the testimony of their senses. And if they do not believe now, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead; though all the millions who died to destroy Prussianism stood up and testified against it.
INDEX
Abnormal innocence and abnormal sin, alliance between, 4
Abortion, open advocacy of, 138
Affinity as a bar to marriage, 8
Altruism, remarks on, 111
Anarchy, definition of, 22, 23 the opposite of Socialism, 159
Anglican Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75
Aristocratic marriages, Eugenists and, 139 _et seq._
Atheistic literary style, the, 46
Authority versus Reason, 132
Autocrats, Eugenists as, 15
Belloc, Mr., and the Servile State, 21, 165 rebuked by _The Nation_, 122
Blücher, Marshal, an alleged saying of, 124
Bolce, Mr., the super-Eugenist, 180, 181
Bolshevists, and "proletarian art," 169
Brummell, Mr., vanity of, 96
Burglary, punishment for, 36
Calvinism, immorality of, 126, 127 in the Middle Ages, 92
Calvinists and the doctrine of free-will, 52
Capitalists, and workmen, 133 Socialists and, 47
Casuists, Eugenists as, 14
Catholic countries, and the drink traffic, 122
Celtic sadness, and the desolation of Belfast, 121
Chesterton, G.K., and Socialism, 159 _et seq._ on H.G. Wells, 69 rebuked by _The Nation_, 122
Children, and non-eugenic unions, 7 cruelty to: punishment for, 26-7
Christian conception of rebellion, the, 22, 23
Christian religion as protector of the ideal of marriage, 175
Christian serf, how he differed from a pagan slave, 102
Christianity, and freedom, 10
Church teaching, compulsory, 75
Church, the, and question of disestablishment, 75
"Class War, the," and Socialists, 47
Coercion, and control of sex-relationship, 155
Comic songs, and a sermon thereon, 169 _et seq._
Compulsion, and sexual selection, 14, 155
Compulsory education, 95 vaccination, 77
Concordat, the, and the independence of the Roman Church, 75
Criminals, difference between lunatics and, 34, 35 proposed vivisection of, 79 punishment of, 25 _et seq._, 35 _et seq._
Criminology as a disease, 167
Cruelty to children, punishment for, 26-7
Delusions, concrete and otherwise, 32 _et seq._
Disestablishment, author's views on, 75
Doctors, as health advisers of the community, 55, 58 limits to their knowledge, 57
Education, compulsory, 95
Endeavourers, the, 17
English proletarians, anomalous attitude of, 175
Establishment, author's views on, 75 _et seq._
Ethics, as opposed to Eugenics, 7
Eugenic Law, the first, and negative Eugenics, 19, 28
Eugenic State, beginning of the, 19
Eugenics and employment, 141 author's conception of, 12 becomes a fashion, 180 beginning of, 125 different meanings of, 4 essence of, 4 first principle of, 38 general definition of, 10 meanness of the motive of, 136 _et seq._, 146 moral basis of, 5 the false theory of, 3 _et seq._ the real aim of, 91 _et seq._ versus Ethics, 7
Eugenist, true story of a, 114 _et seq._
Eugenists, and their new morality, 82 as Casuists, 14 as employers, 133, 137 as Euphemists, 12 their plutocratic impulses, 139 _et seq._ Mr. Wells' challenge to, 70 secret of what they really want, 73 _et seq._, 85
Euphemists, Eugenists as, 12
Fabians, and Socialism, 160
Feeble-Minded Bill, the, Eugenists and, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 51, 52
Feeble-mindedness, Dr. Saleeby on, 61 hereditary, 62, 63
Flogging, revival of, 25
Foulon, and the French peasants, 103
Freedom, Christianity and, 10
Free-will disbelieved by Eugenists, 52
Game laws, English, result of the, 110, 112
Golf, a Scotch minister's opinion of, 117
Great War, the, outbreak of, and its effect on Eugenics, 181
Health, and what it is, 59 Mr. Wells' views on inheritance of, 70, 85-6 not necessarily allied with beauty, 144 "Health adviser" of society, the, 55, 58
Hereditary diseases, and marriage, 44
Heredity, and feeble-mindedness, 62, 63 author's conception of, 64 incontestable proof of, 66 three first facts of, 66-7 unsatisfactory plight of students of, 66 uselessness of attempting to judge, 39
Housebreaking, punishment for, 36
Household gods of the heathen, 176
Housing problem, the, 164
Hutchinson, Colonel and Mrs., the historic instance of, 7
Huth, A.H., an admission by, 50
Idealists (_see_ Autocrats)
Idiotcy, segregation of, 61
Imperialism, and its aims, 93
Imprisonment, the State and, 25
Incest, the crime of, 8, 9
Indeterminate sentence, the, instrument of, 35 principle of, 37
Individualism, the experiment of, 130
Individualists, early Victorian, 118
Intervention, Socialistic movements of, 166
Irish peasants, T.P. O'Connor on, 144
Irishman in Liverpool, the, 121
Journalism and the Press of to-day, 73
Kindred and affinity, as a bar to marriage, 8
Law, the, and restrictions on sex, 10 and the indeterminate sentence, 35 and the lunatic, 31 _et seq._
Libel, definition of, 28 loose extension of idea of, 27-8
Liberty and scepticism, 148 the eclipse of, 149 _et seq._ the Eugenist's view of, 16
Lodge, Sir Oliver, and "the stud farm," 13, 14
Lunacy, and Eugenic legislation, 17-20, 28, 29, 31 _et seq._ medical specialists as judges of, 40, 41
Lunacy Law, the old, 38
Lunacy Laws, the, extension of principle of, 17
Lunatic, the, and the law, 31 _et seq._
Lunatics, difference between criminals and, 34, 35
Macdonald, George, and space co-incident, 34
Madman, a, definition of, 32
Madness, degrees of, 32 medical specialists and, 40, 41 the essence of, 44 (_See also_ Lunacy)
Malthus, and his doctrine, 118
Mania, segregation of, 61
Marriage, and question of hereditary disease, 44 the aim of, 5 the Christian religion and, 175
Marriages, aristocratic, 139 _et seq._
Marxian Socialists, and Capitalists, 47
Materialism, as the established church, 77 in speech, 46
Materialists, modern, 128
Medical specialists and madness, 40, 41
Mendicancy laws, result of the, 113
Metternich tradition, the, 154
Midas, 129
Middle Ages, the, 91 _et seq._
Midias, segregation of, 29
Monogamy, author's views on, 176
Morality, and restraints on sex, 8
Neisser, Dr., 79
Newspapers, anarchic tendency of modern, 26 decadence of present-day, 73
Niagara, comparison of modern world with, 24
Nietzsche, 182
Non-eugenic unions, and children, 7
O'Connor, T.P., on the Irish peasants, 144
Oedipus, and his incestuous marriage, 8
Om, the formless god of the East, 48
_On_, meaning and use of the word, 48
Osborne, Dorothy, and Sir William Temple, 7
Pagan slave, the, difference between Christian serf and, 102
Pearson, Dr. Karl, 50, 65, 181
Peasant art, comic songs as an instance of, 170
Persecution, author's views on, 77 _et seq._
"Platonic friendship," 138
Politics in the Middle Ages, 92
Post Office, the State, 161 twin model of, 162
Precedenters, the, 17
Press, the, criticisms of, 73, 169
Prevention not better than cure, 55
Preventive medicine, fallacy of, 55
Prison system, the, 162
Procreation, prevention of, 138
Profiteering, author on, 124
"Proletarian art," 169
Property, author's views on, 160
Punishment, extension of, 25
Puritanical moral stories, immorality of, 126
Realities, denial of, 33
Reason versus Authority, 132
Rebellion, Christian conception of, 23 meaning of, 22
Reform and Repeal, 95
"Relations of the sexes," atheists and, 47
Religion in the Middle Ages, 92
Representative Government, the procedure of, 116
Rockefeller, Mr., 124
Russian Orthodox Church, the, and the State, 75
Saladin, Sultan, 100
Saleeby, Dr., 50 and a "health-book," 58 and feeble-mindedness, 61 and heredity, 68
Saturnalia, the Roman, 24
Scepticism, reactionary, 148
Science and tyranny, 76
Scotland, Church of, 76
Scotland, drunkenness in, 122
Segregation of strong-minded people, a suggested, 51
Serf, the, different from pagan slave, 102
Servile State, the, Mr. Belloc's theory of, 21, 165
Sex-relationship, controlled by coercion, 155
Sexes, the, relations of, 47
Sexual selection a destruction of Eugenics, 9
Shaw, Bernard, 162 and Sidney Webb, 161 as Puritan, 69
Slaves, breeding of, 10
Slum children, Mrs. Alec Tweedie and, 143
Smiles, Dr. Samuel, and the English tramp, 119
Snobbishness, an inverted, 117
Socialism as oppressor of the poor, 166
Socialism, the transformation of, 159 _et seq._
Socialist system, foundation of the, 159
Socialists, and "solidarity," 46 their view of the State, 163
Specialists (medical) and madness, 40, 41
Spiritual pride, an example of, 96
Spiritual world, the, author's belief in, 63
State, the, and compulsion, 14 Socialist view of, 163
Statistics, fundamental fallacy in use of, 61
Steinmetz, Dr. R.S., 8, 181
Stevenson, R.L., and pre-natal conditions, 45
Temperance Reform, 164
Temple, Sir William, and Dorothy Osborne, 7
Tithes, question of, 75
Tory conception of anarchy, the, 22
Tramp, true history of a, 101 _et seq._
Truant schools. Socialists and, 167
Tweedie, Mrs. Alec, and the children of the slums, 143
Tyranny of government by Science, 76
Vaccination, compulsory, 77
Vanity, hereditary--and other, 62
Victorian Individualists, optimism of, 118 snobbishness, 117
Wages, "rise and fall of," 47
Webb, Sidney, and Bernard Shaw, 161
Wells, H.G., 55, 154 author's criticism of, 69-70 his "Mankind in the Making," 70
White Slave traffic, punishment for, 25
Witchcraft, punishment for, 26
Witch-hunting and witch burning, 63, 64
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End of Project Gutenberg's Eugenics and Other Evils, by G. K. Chesterton