CHAPTER II

EUGENICS--THE SCIENCE OF RACE CULTURE

The object of Eugenics is the conscious improvement of the human race by the application of the laws of heredity to human mating. Eugenics is the logical fruition of the progress in biologic science made during the nineteenth century.

The laws of heredity, studied in minute detail, have been applied with marvelous success in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. "Is there any good reason," demands the eugenist, "why the formulas which have operated to re-combine the physical properties of plants and animals, should not in like measure operate to modify the physical properties of men and women?"

The studies which have been made of eye color, length of arm, head shape, and other physical traits show that the same laws of heredity which apply in the animal and vegetable kingdoms apply as well in the kingdom of man. Since the species of plants and animals with which man has experimented have been improved by selective breeding, there seems to be no good reason why the human race should not be susceptible of similar improvement. What intelligent farmer sows blighted potatoes? Where is the dog fancier who would strive to rear a St. Bernard from a mongrel dam? Neither yesterday nor yet to-morrow do men gather grapes of thorns. Those who have to do with life in any form, aware of this fact, refuse to permit propagation except among the best members of a species: hence with each succeeding generation the ox increases in size and strength; the apple in color; the sweet pea in perfume; and the horse in speed. Is this law of improving species a universal law? Alas, no! it rarely if ever applies in the selection of men and women for parenthood. The human species has not, during historic times, improved either in physique, in mental capacity, in aggressiveness, in concentration, in sympathy or in vision. Nay, there are not wanting thoughtful students who affirm that in almost every one of these respects the exact contrary holds true.

There appears to be some question as to whether the best of the Greek athletes exceeded in strength and skill the modern professional athlete, but there is no doubt at all that the average citizen of Athens was a more perfect specimen physically than the average citizen of twentieth century America.

Some students insist that the level of intellectual capacity has been raised, yet Galton, after a careful survey of the field, concludes in his _Hereditary Genius_ that the average citizen of Athens was at least two degrees higher in the scale of intellectual attainment than the average Englishman; Carl Snyder[4] boldly maintains that the intellectual ability of scientific men is less to-day than it was in past centuries; while Mrs. Martin,[5] in a study more novel than scientific, insists that the genius of the modern world is on a level distinctly below that of the genius of Greece.

Perhaps American commercial aggressiveness is equal to the military aggressiveness of the Romans, the early Germans, and the followers of Attila. We have concentrated most of our efforts upon industry, yet even here, our concentration is no greater than that of the poets of the Elizabethan era, or the religious zealots of the Middle Ages. Our sympathy with beauty is at so low an ebb that we fail even to approach the standard of past ages. Neither in art, in sculpture, nor in poetry do our achievements compare with those of the earlier Mediterranean civilizations; while our knowledge of men as revealed in our literature is not above that of the Romans or the Athenians. As for vision, we still accept and strive to fulfill the commandments of the Prophet of Nazareth. In all of these fields, twentieth century America is equaled, if not outdone by the past.

Thus the distinctive qualities of the Super Man appear in the past with an intensity equal if not superior to that of the present. History records the transmutation of vegetable and animal species, the revolution of industry, the modification of social institutions, and the transformation of governmental systems; but in all historic time, it affirms no perceptible improvement in the qualities of man. "We must replace the man by the Super Man," writes G. Bernard Shaw.[6] "It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger generation."

Nevertheless, the possibility of race improvement exists. "What now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterize all, for that which the best human nature is capable of is within the reach of human nature at large."[7] After years of intensive study, Spencer thus confidently expressed himself. Since he ceased to work, each bit of scientific data along eugenic lines serves to confirm his opinion. Armed with such a belief and with the assurance which scientific research has afforded, we are preparing in this eleventh hour to fulfill Spencer's predictions.

There are two fields in which eugenics may be applied--the first, Negative, the second, Positive. Through the establishment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will be restrained from mating and perpetuating their unfitness in the future. Through Positive Eugenics the fit may be induced to mate, and by combining their fitness in their offspring, to raise up each new generation out of the flower of the old. Negative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Positive Eugenics perpetuates the fit.

The field of Negative Eugenics has been well explored. No question exists as to the transmission through heredity of feeble mindedness, idiocy, insanity and certain forms of criminality. "There is one way, only one way, out of this difficulty. Modern society ... must declare that there shall be no unfit and defective citizens in the State."[8] The Greeks eliminated unfitness by the destruction of defective children; though we may deplore such a practice in the light of our modern ethical codes, we recognize the end as one essential to race progress. By denying the right of parenthood to any who have transmissible disease or defect, our modern knowledge enables us to accomplish the same end without recourse to the destruction of human life.

Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the science of Eugenics, writes, in his last important work, "I think that stern compulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble-mindedness, habitual criminality and pauperism."[9] Yet society, in dealing with hereditary defect, presents some of its most grotesque inconsistencies. "It is a curious comment on the artificiality of our social system that no stigma attaches to preventable ill-health." An empty purse, or a ruined home may mean social ostracism, but "break-down in person, whatever the cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and silence."[10]

Certain defects are known to be transmissible by heredity from parent to child, until the _cretin_ of Balzac's _Country Doctor_ is reproduced for centuries. The remedy for this form of social self-torture lies in the denial of parenthood to those who have transmissible defects. Individually, such a denial works hardships in this generation: socially, and to the future generations, it means comparative freedom from individual, and hence from social defect.

The problem of Positive Eugenics presents an essentially different aspect. As Ruskin so well observes--"It is a matter of no final concern, to any parent, whether he shall have two children or four; but matter of quite final concern whether those he has shall or shall not deserve to be hanged." The quality is always the significant factor. Whether in family or national progress, an effort must be made to insure against hanging, or against any tendency that leads gallowsward.

Positive Eugenics is the science of race building through wise mating. "As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion of able offspring is a certainty."[11] What prospective parent does not fondly imagine that his children will be at least near-great? Yet how many individuals, in their choice of a mate, set out with the deliberate intention of securing a life partner whose qualities, when combined with his own, must produce greatness?

The Darwin-Galton-Wedgwood families boast sixteen men of world fame in five generations; in the Bach family there were fifty-seven musicians of note in eight generations; Wood's study of _Heredity in Royalty_ shows the evident transmission of special ability; yet men and women of ability, anxious for able offspring, mate without any rational effort to secure the end which they desire. "Ninety-nine times out of a hundred our mathematician marries a woman whose family did not count a single astronomer, physicist or other mathematical mind among it members. The result of such a union is what could be expected. Although genius does not generally die out right away in the first generation, it decreases by half, and further dilutions soon bring it down to nothingness."[12]

This, in brief, is the problem of Negative and of Positive Eugenics. Both defect and ability are transmitted by heredity; both are the product of the mating process known as marriage; since society can and does control marriage, it may, through this control, exercise a real influence upon the character of future generations.

The science of Eugenics is in its infancy, yet, widely established and vigorously applied, it may revolutionize the human species. The Super Race may come, because "looked at from the social standpoint, we see how exceptional families, by careful marriages, can within even a few generations, obtain an exceptional stock, and how directly this suggests assortative mating as a moral duty for the highly endowed. On the other hand, the exceptionally degenerate isolated in the slums of our modern cities can easily produce permanent stock also: a stock which no change of environment will permanently elevate, and which nothing but mixture with better blood will improve. But this is an improvement of the bad by a social waste of the better. We do not want to eliminate bad stock by watering it with good, but by placing it under conditions where it is relatively or absolutely infertile."[13]

"But what of love?" wails the sentimentalist; "in your scheme Eugenics outweighs Cupid!" Perhaps, but what of it? Cupid has proved in the past a sad bungler, whose mistakes and failures grimace from every page of our divorce court records. Far from hindering his activities, however, Eugenics will assist Cupid by bringing together persons truly congenial--hence capable of an enduring love. Too many men have married a natty Easter bonnet, or a cleverly tailored suit. Too many women have fallen a prey to a tempting bank account or a pair of glorious mustachios. Blind Cupid limps but lamely over the rugged path of matrimonial bliss. The questionable success of his best efforts proves his sure need of a guide.

Eugenics represents an effort to bring together those people who have complementary qualities and complementary interests; who are capable of maintaining congenial relationships in the present; and creating able offspring in the future. Selection and parenthood are the cradle of the future. Hence the individual who, in the exercise of his choice, overlooks their significance overlooks one of his most important racial responsibilities.

Society is interested in Eugenics, because it is through Eugenics that the hereditary traits of the Super Race are perpetuated and perfected. Eugenics, rightly understood and applied, is a social asset of unexcelled value. How long, then, shall our society continue to feed on the husks, neglecting the grain which lies everywhere ready at hand?

Eugenics is indeed one means of race salvation, yet what care do we take to perfect eugenic measures? "If through sheer chance, some great mathematician is evolved one day out of the crowd, the state--who should be ever on the watch for such events and whose main care should be to preserve and increase such sources of light, progress and national glory--does nothing to protect the man of genius against care, disease or anything likely to shorten life nor to multiply the splendid thinking machine."[14] A great state must have for its component parts great men and women. Did we truly seek greatness, how many measures for its attainment lie neglected at our very doors!

Every well regulated state of antiquity eliminated defectives in the interest of the group, and of the future. What more effective means of social preservation could be imagined than some measure through whose operation the defective classes in society would be eliminated, and the social structure, bulwarked by stalwart manhood and womanhood, made proof against the ravages of time. How serious a thing is the propagation of defect! Murder is a crime, punishable by death, yet a murderer merely eliminates one unit from the social group. The destruction of this one life may cause sorrow; it may deprive society of a valued member; but it is, after all, a comparatively insignificant offense. The perpetuation of hereditary defect is infinitely worse than murder. Consider, for example, a marriage, sanctioned by church and state, between two persons both having in their blood hereditary feeble-mindedness.

Investigations of thousands of feeble-minded families show that, in such a case, every one of the offspring may be and probably will be feeble-minded--a curse to himself and a burden to society. Pauperism, crime, social dependence, vice, all follow in the train of mental defect, and the mentally defective parents hand on for untold generations their taint--sometimes in more, sometimes in less virulent form, but always bringing into the world beings not only incapable of caring for themselves, but fatally capable of handing on their defect to the future. The murderer robs society; the mentally defective parent curses society, both in the present and in the future, with the taint of degeneracy. The murderer takes away a life; but the feeble-minded parent passes on to the future the seeds of racial decay.

The first step in Eugenics progress--the elimination of defect by preventing the procreation of defectives--is easily stated, and may be almost as easily attained. The price of six battleships ($50,000,000) would probably provide homes for all of the seriously defective men, women and children now at large in the United States. Thus could the scum of society be removed, and a source of social contamination be effectively regulated. Yet with tens of thousands of defectives, freely propagating their kind, we continue to build battleships, fondly believing that rifled cannon and steel armor plate will prove sufficient for national defense.

This is but a part, and by far the least important part, of the eugenic programme. The elimination of defect prevents degeneracy, but does not insure the physical normality, mental capacity, aggressiveness, concentration, sympathy and vision of the Super Man. While the elimination of defect is imperative, it is after all only the first step toward the creation of positive qualities.

Positive Eugenics may be as obvious as Negative Eugenics, but the promulgation of its doctrines is not equally easy. A series of legislative enactments will prevent the mating of the hereditarily defective; nothing but the most painstaking education can be relied upon to secure the mating of those eugenically fit. Nevertheless for that modern state which seeks to persist and dominate, no lesser measure will suffice. After all, why should not society educate its youth to a sense of wisdom in mating? The United States spends each year some four hundred millions of dollars in public education, teaching children to read, to spell, to sew, to draw. The importance of these studies is obvious, yet, from a social standpoint, they cannot compare in significance with such training in the laws of heredity and biology as will insure wise choice in mating. The state, in its efforts at self preservation, cannot lay too much emphasis on the training for eugenic choice.

Biology, through the laws of heredity, applied in the science of Eugenics, holds out every hope for the coming of the Super Man and of the Super Race. Not in our knowledge of its laws, but in the practice of its precepts, are we lacking.

Eugenics, it is true, in its negative and positive phases, holds out a great hope for the future. But Eugenics alone will not suffice. The science of Eugenics must be coupled with the science of Social Adjustment to insure the production of a Super Race. The necessity of this union is well recognized by the students of heredity, while the students of Social Adjustment found their theories on premises essentially biologic in origin. One of the most widely known writers on heredity concludes a recent book with the statement that--"At present, we can only indicate that the future of our race depends on Eugenics (in some form or other), combined with the simultaneous evolution of eutechnics and eutopias. 'Brave words,' of course; but surely not 'Eutopian'!"[15] Thus the knowledge and practice of the laws of heredity must be supplemented by a knowledge and practice of the laws of Social Adjustment.