Chapter 17

The extreme interest of a Life-History Record is obvious, even apart from its eventual scientific value. Most of us would have reason to congratulate ourselves had such records been customary when we were ourselves children. It is probable that this is becoming more generally realized, though until recently only the pioneers have here been active. "I started a Life-History Album for each of my children," writes Mr. F.H. Perrycoste in a private letter, "as soon as they were born; and by the time they arrive at man's and woman's estate they will have valuable records of their own physical, mental, and moral development, which should be of great service to them when they come to have children of their own, whilst the physical--in which are included, of course, medical--records may at any time be of great value to their own medical advisers in later life. I have reason to regret that some such Albums were not kept for my wife and myself, for they would have afforded the necessary data by which to 'size up' the abilities and conduct of our children. I know, for instance, pretty well what was my own Galtonian rank as a schoolboy, and I am constantly asking myself whether my boy will do as well, better, or worse. Now fortunately I do happen to remember roughly what stages I had reached at one or two transition periods of school-life; but if only such an Album had been kept for me, I could turn it up and check my boy against myself in each subject at each yearly stage. You will gather from this that I consider it of great importance that ample details of school-work and intellectual development should be entered in the Album. I find the space at my disposal for these entries insufficient, and consequently I summarize in the Album and insert a reference to sheets of fuller details which I keep; but it might be well, when another edition of the Album comes to be published, to agitate for the insertion of extra blank pages after the age of eight or nine, in order to allow of the transcription of full school-reports. However, the great thing is to induce people to keep an Album that will form the nucleus round which any number of fuller records can cluster."

It is not necessary that the Galtonian type of Album should be rigidly preserved, and I am indebted to "Henry Hamill," the author of _The Truth We Owe to Youth_, for the following suggestions as to the way in which such a record may be carried out:

"The book should not be a mere dry rigmarole, but include a certain appeal to sentiment. The subject should begin to make the entries himself when old enough to do so properly, i.e. so that the book will not be disfigured--though indeed the naivity of juvenile phrasing, etc., may be of a particular interest. From a graphological point of view, the evolution of the handwriting will be of interest; and if for no other reason, specimens of handwriting ought to appear in it from year to year, while the parent is still writing the other entries. There may now be a certain sacramental character in the life-history. The subject should be led to regard the book as a witness, and to perceive in it an additional reason for avoiding every act the mention of which would be a disfigurement of the history. At the same time, the nature of the witness may be made to correct the wrong notions prevailing as to the worthiness of acts, and to sanctify certain of them that have been foolishly degraded. Thus there may be left several leaves blank before the pages of forms for filling in anthropometric and physiological data, and the headings may be made to suggest a worthier way of viewing these things. For instance, there may be the indication 'Place and time of conception,' and a specimen entry may be of service to lead commonplace minds into a more reverent and poetical view than is now usual--such as the one I culled from the life-history of an American child: 'Our second child M---- was conceived on Midsummer Day, under the shade of a friendly sycamore, beneath the cloudless blue of Southern California.' Or, instead of restricting the reference to the particular episode, it may refer to the whole chapter of Love which that episode adorned, more especially in the case of a first child, when a poetical history of the mating of the parents may precede. The presence of the idea that the book would some day be read by others than the intimate circle, would restrain the tendency of some persons to inordinate self-revelation and 'gush.' Such books as these would form the dearest heirlooms of a family, helping to knit its bonds firmer, and giving an insight into individual character which would supplement the more tangible data for the pedigree in a most valuable way. The photographs taken every three months or so ought to be as largely as possible nude. The gradual transition from childhood would help to prevent an abrupt feeling arising, and the practice would be a valuable aid to the rehabilitation of the nude, and of genuineness in our daily life, no matter in what respect. This leads to the difficult question of how far moral aspects should be entertained. 'To-day Johnnie told his first fib; we pretended to disbelieve everything else he said, and he began to see that lying was bad policy.' 'Chastised Johnnie for the first time for pulling the wings off a fly; he wanted to know why we might kill flies outright, but not mutilate them,' and so on. For in this way parents would train themselves in the psychology of education and character-building, though books by specially gifted parents would soon appear for their guidance.

"Of course, whatever relevant circumstances were available about the ante-natal period or the mother's condition would be noted (but who would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such a month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a deterrent). Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the assumption of breast-feeding--provision of columns for the various incidents of it--weight before and after feeding, etc., would have a great suggestive value.

"The provision under diet and regimen of columns for 'drug habits, if any'--tea, coffee, alcohol, nicotine, morphia, etc.--would have a suggestive value and operate in the direction of the simple life and a reverence for the body. Some good aphorisms might be strewed in, such as:

"'If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred' (Whitman).

"As young people circulate their 'Books of Likes and Dislikes,' etc., and thus in an entertaining way provide each other with insight into mutual character, so the Life-History need not be an _arcanum_--at least where people have nothing to be ashamed of. It would be a very trying ordeal, no doubt, to admit even intimate friends to this confidence. _But as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost impracticable_, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could not well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for generations to come. The quiescence of the genital sense, the sedatives naturally occurring, important as these are, and occupying the consciousness in so large a degree, would find no place; nevertheless, a private journal of the facts would help to steady the individual, and prove a check against disrespect to his body.

"As the facts of individual evolution would be noted, so likewise would those of dissolution. The first signs of decay--the teeth, the elasticity of body and mind--would provide a valuable sphere for all who are disposed to the diary-habit. The journals of individuals with a gift for introspection would furnish valuable material for psychologists in the future. Life would be cleansed in many ways. Journals would not have to be bowdlerized, like Marie Bashkirtseff's, for the morbidity that gloats on the forbidden would have a lesser scope, much that is now regarded as disgraceful being then accepted as natural and right.

"The book might have several volumes, and that for the periods of infancy and childhood might need to be less private than the one for puberty. More, in his _Utopia_, demands that lovers shall learn to know each other as they really are, i.e. naked. That is now the most Utopian thing in More's _Utopia_. But the lovers might communicate their life-histories to each other as a preliminary.

"The whole plan would, of course, finally have to be over-hauled by the so-called 'man of the world.'"

Not everyone may agree with this conception of the Life-History Album and its uses. Some will prefer a severely dry and bald record of measurements. At the present time, however, there is room for very various types of such documents. The important point is to realize that, in some form or another, a record of this kind from birth or earlier is practicable, and constitutes a record which is highly desirable alike on personal, social, and scientific grounds.

FOOTNOTES:

[147] Dr. Scott Nearing, "Race Suicide _versus_ Over-Population," _Popular Science Monthly_, January, 1911. And from the biological side Professor Bateson concludes (_Biological Fact and the Structure of Society_, p. 23) that "it is in a decline in the birth-rate that the most promising omen exists for the happiness of future generations."

[148] Galton himself, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, may be said to furnish a noble illustration of an unconscious process of eugenics. (He has set forth his ancestry in _Memories of My Life_.) On his death, the editor of the _Popular Science Monthly_ wrote, referring to the fact that Galton was nominated to succeed William James in the honorary membership of an Academy of Science: "These two men are the greatest whom he has known. James possessed the more complicated personality; but they had certain common traits--a combination of perfect aristocracy with complete democracy, directness, kindliness, generosity, and nobility beyond all measure. It has been said that eugenics is futile because it cannot define its end. The answer is simple--we want men like William James and Francis Galton" (_Popular Science Monthly_, _March_, 1911.) Probably most of those who were brought, however slightly, in contact with these two fine personalities will subscribe to this conclusion.

[149] Galton chiefly studied the families to which men of intellectual ability belong, especially in his _Hereditary Genius_ and _English Men of Science_; various kinds of pathological families have since been investigated by Karl Pearson and his co-workers (see the series of _Biometrika_); the pedigrees of the defective classes (especially the feeble-minded and epileptic) are now being accurately worked out, as by Godden, at Vineland, New Jersey, and Davenport, in New York (see e.g. _Eugenics Review_, April, 1911, and _Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_, November, 1911).

[150] "When once more the importance of good birth comes to be recognized in a new sense," wrote W.C.D. Whetham and Mrs. Whetham (in _The Family and the Nation_, p. 222), "when the innate physical and mental qualities of different families are recorded in the central sociological department or scientifically reformed College of Arms, the pedigrees of all will be known to be of supreme interest. It would be understood to be more important to marry into a family with a good hereditary record of physical and mental and moral qualities than it ever has been considered to be allied to one with sixteen quarterings."

[151] The importance of such biographical records of aptitude and character are so great that some, like Schallmayer (_Vererbung und Auslese_, 2nd ed., 1910, p. 389) believe that they must be made universally obligatory. This proposal, however, seems premature.

[152] In many undesigned and unforeseen ways these registers may be of immense value. They may even prove the means of overthrowing our pernicious and destructive system of so-called "education." A step in this direction has been suggested by Mr. R.T. Bodey, Inspector of Elementary Schools, at a meeting of the Liverpool branch of the Eugenics Education Society: "Education facilities should be carefully distributed with regard to the scientific likelihood of their utilization to the maximum of national advantage, and this not for economic reasons only, but because it was cruel to drag children from their own to a different sphere of life, and cruel to the class they deserted. Since the activities of the nation and the powers of the children were alike varied in kind and degree, the most natural plan would be to sort them both out, and then design a school system expressly in order to fit one to the other. At present there was no fixed purpose, but a perpetual riot of changes, resulting in distraction of mind, discontinuity of purpose, and increase of cost, while happiness decayed because desires grew faster than possessions or the sense of achievement. The only really scientific basis for a national system of education would be a full knowledge of the family history of each child. With more perfect classification of family talent the need of scholarships of transplantation would become less, for each of them was the confession of an initial error in placing the child. Then there would be more money to be spared for industrial research, travelling and art studentships, and other aids to those who had the rare gift of original thought" (_British Medical Journal_, November 18, 1911).

[153] I should add that there is one obstacle, viz. expense. When the present chapter was first published in its preliminary form as an article in the _Nineteenth Century and After_ (May, 1906), Galton, always alive to everything bearing on the study of Eugenics, wrote to me that he had been impressed by the generally sympathetic reception my paper had received, and that he felt encouraged to consider whether it was possible to begin giving such certificates at once. He asked for my views, among others, as to the ground which should be covered by such certificates. The programme I set forth was somewhat extensive, as I considered that the applicant must not only bring evidence of a sound ancestry, but also submit to anthropological, psychological, and medical examination. Galton eventually came to the conclusion that the expenses involved by the scheme rendered it for the present impracticable. My opinion was, and is, that though the charge for such a certificate might in the first place be prohibitive for most people, a few persons might find it desirable to seek, and advantageous to possess, such certificates, and that it is worth while at all events to make a beginning.

[154] Mannhardt, _Wald-und Feldkulte_, 1875, Vol. I, pp. 422 _et seq._ I have discussed seasonal erotic festivals in a study of "The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity," _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. I.

[155] Thus we read in a small popular periodical: "I am prepared to back human nature against all the cranks in Christendom. Human nature will endure a faddist so long as he does not interfere with things it prizes. One of these things is the right to select its partner for life. If a man loves a girl he is not going to give her up because she happens to have an aunt in a lunatic asylum or an uncle who has epileptic fits," etc. In the same way it may be said that a man will allow nothing to interfere with his right to eat such food as he chooses, and is not going to give up a dish he likes because it happens to be peppered with arsenic. It may be so, let us grant, among savages. The growth of civilization lies in ever-extended self-control guided by foresight.

[156] I have summarized some of the evidence on these points, especially that showing that sexual attraction tends to be towards like persons and not, as was formerly supposed, towards the unlike, in _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. IV, "Sexual Selection in Man."

[157] In other words, the process of tumescence is gradual and complex. See Havelock Ellis, _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. III, "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

[158] As Roswell Johnson remarks ("The Evolution of Man and its Control," _Popular Science Monthly_, January, 1910): "While it is undeniable that love when once established defies rational considerations, yet we must remark that sexual selection proceeds usually through two stages, the first being one of mere mutual attraction and interest. It is in this stage that the will and reason are operative, and here alone that any considerable elevation of standard may be effective."

[159] Galton looked upon eugenics as fitted to become a factor in religion (_Essays in Eugenics_, p. 68). It may, however, be questioned whether this consummation is either probable or desirable. The same religious claim has been made for socialism. But, as Dr. Eden Paul remarks in a recent pamphlet on _Socialism and Eugenics_, "Whereas both Socialism and Eugenics are concerned solely with the application of the knowledge gained by experience to the amelioration of the human lot, it seems preferable to dispense with religious terminology, and to regard the two doctrines as complementary parts of the great modern movement known by the name of Humanism." Personally, I do not consider that either Socialism or Eugenics can be regarded as coming within the legitimate sphere of religion, which I have elsewhere attempted to define (Conclusion to _The New Spirit_).

[160] J. Grasset, in Dr. A. Marie's _Traité International de Psychologie Pathologique_, 1910, Vol. I, p. 25. Grasset proceeds to discuss the principles which must guide the physician in such consultations.

[161] This has been clearly realized by the German Society of Eugenics or "Racial Hygiene," as it is usually termed in Germany (Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassen-Hygiene), founded by Dr. Alfred Ploetz, with the co-operation of many distinguished physicians and men of science, "to further the theory and practice of racial hygiene." It is a chief aim of this Society to encourage the registration by the members of the biological and other physical and psychic characteristics of themselves and their families, in order to obtain a body of data on which conclusions may eventually be based; the members undertake not to enter on a marriage except they are assured by medical investigation of both parties that the union is not likely to cause disaster to either partner or to the offspring. The Society also admits associates who only occupy themselves with the scientific aspects of its work and with propaganda. In England the Eugenics Education Society (with its organ the _Eugenics Review_) has done much to stimulate an intelligent interest in eugenics.

[162] How influential public opinion may be in the selection of mates is indicated by the influence it already exerts--in less than a century--in the limitation of offspring. This is well marked in some parts of France. Thus, concerning a rural district near the Garonne, Dr. Belbèze, who knows it thoroughly, writes (_La Neurasthénie Rurale_, 1911): "Public opinion does not at present approve of multiple procreation. Large families, there can be no doubt, are treated with contempt. Couples who produce a numerous progeny are looked on, with a wink, as 'maladroits,' which in this region is perhaps the supreme term of abuse.... Public opinion is all-powerful, and alone suffices to produce restraint, when foresight is not adequate for this purpose."

VII

RELIGION AND THE CHILD

Religious Education in Relation to Social Hygiene and to Psychology--The Psychology of the Child--The Contents of Children's Minds--The Imagination of Children--How far may Religion be assimilated by Children?--Unfortunate Results of Early Religious Instruction--Puberty the Age for Religious Education--Religion as an Initiation into a Mystery--Initiation among Savages--The Christian Sacraments--The Modern Tendency as regards Religious Instruction--Its Advantages--Children and Fairy Tales--The Bible of Childhood--Moral Training.

It is a fact as strange as it is unfortunate that the much-debated question of the religious education of children is almost exclusively considered from the points of view of the sectarian and the secularist. In a discussion of this question we are almost certain to be invited to take part in an unedifying wrangle between Church and Chapel, between religion and secularism. That is the strange part of it, that it should seem impossible to get away from this sectarian dispute as to the abstract claims of varying religious bodies. The unfortunate part of it is that in this quarrel the interests of the community, the interests of the child, even the interests of religion are alike disregarded.

If we really desire to reach a sound conclusion on a matter which is unquestionably of great moment, both for the child and for the community of which he will one day become a citizen, we must resolutely put into the background, as of secondary importance, the cries of contending sects, religious or irreligious. The first place here belongs to the psychologist, who is building up the already extensive edifice of knowledge concerning the real nature of the child and the contents and growth of the youthful mind, and to the practical teacher who is in touch with that knowledge and can bring it to the test of actual experience. Before considering what drugs are to be administered we must consider the nature of the organism they are to be thrust into.

The mind of the child is at once logical and extravagant, matter-of-fact and poetic or rather mytho-poeic. This combination of apparent opposites, though it often seems almost incomprehensible to the adult, is the inevitable outcome of the fact that the child's dawning intelligence is working, as it were, in a vacuum. In other words, the child has not acquired the two endowments which chiefly give character to the whole body of the adult's beliefs and feelings. He is without the pubertal expansion which fills out the mind with new personal and altruistic impulses and transforms it with emotion that is often dazzling and sometimes distorting; and he has not yet absorbed, or even gained the power of absorbing, all those beliefs, opinions, and mental attitudes which the race has slowly acquired and transmitted as the traditional outcome of its experiences.