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Title: Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

Author: C. W. Saleeby

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARENTHOOD
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PARENTHOOD AND RACE CULTURE

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

“WORRY: THE DISEASE OF THE AGE”
“EVOLUTION: THE MASTER KEY”
“HEALTH, STRENGTH, AND HAPPINESS”
Etc., Etc.

PA R E N T H O O D
AND

R A C E C U LT U R E
An Outline of Eugenics

BY
CALEB WILLIAMS SALEEBY
M.D., Ch.B., F.Z.S., F.R.S. Edin.

FELLOW OF THE OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH,
MEMBER OF
COUNCIL OF THE EUGENICS EDUCATION SOCIETY, OF THE
SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE
FOR PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND IMPROVEMENT
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
AND OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE
STUDY OF INEBRIETY
ETC., ETC.

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD.
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
1909

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Dedicated
TO

F R A N C I S G A LT O N
THE

AUGUST MASTER OF ALL EUGENISTS

PREFACE
This book, a first attempt to survey and define the whole field of eugenics,
appears in the year which finds us celebrating the centenary of the birth of
Charles Darwin and the jubilee of the publication of The Origin of Species.
It is a humble tribute to that immortal name, for it is based upon the idea of
selection for parenthood as determining the nature, fate and worth of living
races, which is Darwin's chief contribution to thought, and which finds in
eugenics its supreme application. The book is also a tribute to the august
pioneer who initiated the modern study of eugenics in the light of his
cousin's principle. A few years ago I all but persuaded Mr. Galton himself to
write a general introduction to eugenics, but he felt bound to withdraw from
that undertaking, and has given us instead his Memories, which we could ill
have spared.
The present volume seeks to supply what is undoubtedly a real need at the
present day—a general introduction to eugenics which is at least considered
and responsible. I am indebted to more than one pair of searching and
illustrious eyes, which I may not name, for reading the proofs of this
volume. My best hopes for its utility are based upon this fact. If there be
any other reason for hope it is that during the last six years I have not only
written incessantly on eugenics, but have spoken upon various aspects of it
some hundreds of times to audiences as various as one can well imagine—a
mainly clerical assembly at Lambeth Palace with the Primate in the Chair,
drawing-rooms of title, working-class audiences from the Clyde to the
Thames. It has been my rule to invite questions whenever it was possible.
Such a discipline is invaluable. It gives new ideas and points of view,
discovers the existing forms of prejudice, sharply corrects the tendency to
partial statement. It is my hope that these many hours of cross-examination
will be profitable to the present reader.
It has been sought to define the scope of eugenics, and my consistent aim
has been, if possible, to preserve its natural unity without falling into the
error, which I seem to see almost everywhere, of excluding what is strictly
eugenic. Our primary idea, beyond dispute, is selection for parenthood

based upon the facts of heredity. This, however, is not an end, but a means.
Some eugenists seem to forget the distinction. Our end is a better race. If
then, beyond selecting for parenthood, it be desirable to take care of those
selected—as, for instance, to protect the expectant mother from alcohol,
lead or syphilis—that is strict eugenics on any definition worth a moment's
notice. It then appears, of course, that our demands come into contact with
those prejudices which political parties call their principles. A given eugenic
proposal or argument, for instance, may be stamped as “Socialist” or as
“Individualist,” and people who have labelled their eyes with these
catchwords, which eugenics will ere long make obsolete, proceed to judge
eugenics by them. But the question is not whether a given proposal is
socialistic, individualistic or anything else, but whether it is eugenic. If it is
eugenic, that is final. To this all parties will come, and by this all parties
will be judged. The question is not whether eugenics is, for instance,
socialist, but whether socialism is eugenic. I claim for eugenics that it is the
final and only judge of all proposals and principles, however labelled, new
or old, orthodox or heterodox. Some years ago I ventured to coin the word
eugenist, which is now the accepted term. With that label I believe any man
or woman may well be content. If this be granted, the old catchwords and
the bias they create forgotten, we may be prepared to consider what the
scope of eugenics really is.
Eugenics is not, for instance, a sub-section of applied mathematics. It is at
once a science, and a religion, based upon the laws of life, and recognising
in them the foundation of society. We shall some day have a eugenic
sociology, to which the first part of this volume seeks to contribute: and the
sociology and politics which have not yet discovered that man is mortal will
go to their own place.
Only when we begin to think and work continuously at eugenics is its range
revealed. The present volume is a mere introduction to the principles of the
subject: the full elucidation of its practice is a problem for generations to
come. Nor is it easy to set logical limits to our inquiry. We may say that
eugenics deals with conceptions: and that the care of the expectant mother
is outside its scope: but of what use is it to have a eugenic conception if its
product is thereafter to be ruined by, for instance, the introduction of lead
into the mother's organism? Again, the care of the individual is, in part, a
eugenic concern: for if we desire his offspring we desire that he shall not

contract transmissible disease nor vitiate his tissues with such a racial
poison as alcohol. Plainly, everything that affects every possible parent is a
matter of eugenic concern: and not only those factors which affect the
choice for parenthood.
It follows that the second portion of this volume, which deals with the
practice of eugenics, cannot be more than merely indicative. In the available
space it has been attempted to define certain constituents of practical
eugenics, but in any case the entire ground has not been surveyed. The
concept of the racial poisons may be commended to special consideration.
Whether a poison be so-called “chemical,” as lead, or made by a living
organism, as the poison of syphilis, is of great practical importance, because
of the infection involved in the second case: but, in principle, both cases
belong to the same category. Sooner or later, eugenists must face the
transmissible infections, and repudiate as hideous and devilish the so-called
morality which discountenances any attempt to save unborn innocence from
a nameless fate. He or she who would rather leave this matter is placing
“religion” or “morality” or “politics” above the welfare of the life to come,
and therein continuing the daily prostitution of those great names.
Again, the practice of eugenics may be commended and accepted as the
business of the patriot: and two chapters have been devoted to the question
as seen from the national point of view. I am of nothing more certain than
that the choice for Great Britain to-day is between national eugenics and the
fate of all her Imperial predecessors from Babylon to Spain. The whole
book might have been written from this standpoint, but such a book would
have been beneath the true eugenic plane, which is not national but human.
I believe in the patriotism of William Watson, who desires the continuance
of his country because, as he addresses her,

“O England, should'st thou one day fall,
· · · · · · · ·
Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all
The world, and truth less passionately free,
And God the poorer for thine overthrow.”

This is a patriotism as splendid and vital as the patriotism of the music-halls
and of the political and journalistic makers of wars is foul and fatal: and it is

only in terms of such patriotism that the appeal to love of country is
permissible in the advocacy of eugenics, which is a concern for all
mankind.
The prophet of that kind of Imperialism which has destroyed so many
Empires, has lately approved the emigration of our best to the Colonies, on
the ground that “it is good to give the second eleven a chance.” But as
students of history know, it is at the heart that Empires rot. The case of
Ireland is at present an insoluble one because the emigration of the
worthiest has had full sway. So with the agricultural intellect: the “first
eleven” having gone to the towns. Rome sent her “first eleven” to her
Colonies: if you were not good enough to be a Roman soldier you could at
least remain and be a Roman father: and the children of such fathers
perished in the downfall of the Empire which they could no longer sustain. I
can imagine no more foolish or disastrous advice than this of Mr. Kipling's,
in commending that transportation of the worthiest which, thoroughly
enough persisted in, must inevitably mean our ruin.
The national aspect of eugenics suggests its international aspect, and its
inter-racial aspect. Not having spent six weeks rushing through the United
States, I am unfortunately dubious as to the worth of any opinions I may
possess regarding the most urgent form of this question to-day. I mistrust
not merely the brilliant students who, unhampered by biological knowledge,
pierce to the bottom of this question in the course of such a tour, but also
the humanitarian bias of those who, like M. Finot, or the distinguished
American sociologist, Mr. Graham Brooks, would almost have us believe
that the negro is mentally and morally the equal of the Caucasian. Least of
all does one trust the vulgar opinions of the man in the street. Wisdom on
this matter waits for the advent of real knowledge. Similarly in the matter of
Caucasian-Mongolian unions. I question whether any living man knows
enough to warrant the expression of any decided opinion on this subject.
Merely I here recognise miscegenation in general as a problem in eugenics,
to which increasing attention must yearly be devoted. But it would have
been ridiculous to attempt to deal with that great subject here. As for the
marriage of cousins, to take the opposite case, I always reply to the
question, “Should cousins marry?” that it depends upon the cousins. The
good qualities of a good stock, the bad qualities of a bad stock, are naturally

accentuated by such unions: I doubt whether there is much more to be said
about them.

In the following general study of a subject to which no human affair is
wholly alien, it has been impossible to deal adequately with the great
question of eugenic education—that is to say, education as for parenthood.
If only to emphasise its overwhelming importance, one must here insist
upon the argument. There is, I believe, no greater need for society to-day
than to recognise that education must include, must culminate in,
preparation for the supreme duty of parenthood. This involves instruction
regarding those bodily functions which exist not for the body nor for the
present at all, but for the future life of mankind. The exercise of these
functions depends upon an instinct which I have for some time been in the
habit of terming the racial instinct—a name which at once suggests to us
that we are to represent this instinct, to the boy or girl at puberty, not as
something the satisfaction of which is an end in itself—that is the false and
degrading assertion which will be made by the teachers whom youth will
certainly find, if we fail in our duty—but as existing for what is
immeasurably higher than any selfish end. Youth must be taught that it is
for man the self-conscious, “made with such large discourse, looking before
and after,” as Hamlet says, to deal with his instincts in terms of their
purpose, as no creature but man can do. The boy and girl must learn that the
racial instinct exists for the highest of ends—the continuance and ultimate
elevation of the life of mankind. It is a sacred trust for the life of this world
to come. We must teach our boys what it is to be really “manly”—the fine
word used by the tempter of youth when he means “beast-ly.” To be manly
is to be master of this instinct. And the “higher education” of our girls, as
we must teach ourselves, will be lower, not higher, if it does not serve and
conserve the future mother, both by teaching her how to care for and guard
her body, which is the temple of life to come, and how afterwards to be a
right educator of her children. The leading idea upon which one would
insist is that the key to any of the right and useful methods of eugenic
education is to be found in the conception of the racial instinct as existing
for parenthood, and to be guarded, reverenced, educated for that supreme
end. It is for the reader who may be responsible for youth of either sex with

this key to solve the problem on the lines best suited to his or her particular
case.
By the application of mathematical methods to statistics we can ascertain
their real meaning, if they have any. If, as frequently happens, they have
none, mathematical analysis is worse than useless. Mr. Galton is the pioneer
of this study, which Professor Karl Pearson has named biometrics.
Biometrics is not eugenics, as some have supposed, but is a branch of
scientific enquiry which, like genetics, obstetrics and many more,
contributes to the foundations of eugenics. In the Appendix reference is
made to various publications, mostly inexpensive, which deal with
biometrics. In the text I have availed myself of biometric, genetic and other
results impartially. Differences of opinion between this school and that of
scientific workers are to be regretted by the eugenist; but it is for him to
accept and use knowledge of eugenic significance no matter by what
method it has been obtained. Directly he fails to do so he ceases to be a
eugenist and becomes the ordinary partisan. No reference is made in the
following pages, for instance, to the law of ancestral inheritance,
formulated by the Master to whom the volume is dedicated and of whom all
eugenists are the followers. I believe that law, despite its beauty, to be
without basis in fact and incompatible with demonstrated Mendelian
phenomena: and though the book is dedicated to Mr. Galton, it is more
deeply dedicated to the Future. This, indeed, is the Credo of the eugenist:
Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi.

Woman is Nature's supreme instrument of the future. The eugenist is
therefore deeply concerned with her education, her psychology, the
conditions which permit her to exercise her great natural function of
choosing the fathers of the future, the age at which she should marry, and
the compatibility between the discharge of her incomparable function of
motherhood and the lesser functions which some women now assume.
Obstetrics, and the modern physiology and psychology of sex, must thus be
harnessed to the service of eugenics, and I hope to employ them for the
elucidation, in a future volume, of the problems of woman and womanhood,
thus regarded.

CONTENTS

PART I
THE THEORY OF EUGENICS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. Introductory 1
2. The Exchequer of Life 17
3. Natural Selection and the Law of Love 35
4. The Selection of Mind 52
5. The Multiplication of Man 71
6. The Growth of Individuality 86
7. Heredity and Race-Culture 99
8. Education and Race-Culture 120
9. The Supremacy of Motherhood 145
10. Marriage and Maternalism 160

PART II
THE PRACTICE OF EUGENICS

11. Negative Eugenics 171
12. Selection through Marriage 184
13. The Racial Poisons: Alcohol 205
14. The Racial Poisons: Lead, Narcotics,
Syphilis 246
15. National Eugenics: Race-Culture and
History 254

16. National Eugenics: Mr. Balfour on
Decadence 279
17. The Promise of Race-Culture 287
APPENDIX Concerning Books to Read 305
INDEX 321

PARENTHOOD AND RACE
CULTURE

PART I.—THE THEORY OF EUGENICS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

“A little child shall lead them”

This book will be mere foolishness to those who repeat the inhuman and
animal cry that we have to take the world as we find it—the motto of the
impotent, the forgotten, the cowardly and selfish, or the merely vegetable,
in all ages. The capital fact of man, as distinguished from the lower animals
and from plants, is that he does not have to take the world as he finds it, that
he does not merely adapt himself to his environment, but that he himself is
a creator of his world. If our ancestors had taken and left the world as they
found it, we should be little more than erected monkeys to-day. For none
who accept the hopeless dogma is this book written. They are welcome to
take and leave the world as they find it; they are of no consequence to the
world; and their existence is of interest only in so far as it is another
instance of that amazing wastefulness of Nature in her generations, with
which this book will be so largely concerned.
Beginning, perhaps, some six million years ago, the fact which we call
human life has persisted hitherto, and shows no signs of exhaustion, much
less impending extinction, being indeed more abundant numerically and
more dominant over other forms of life and over the inanimate world to-day
than ever before. It is a continuous phenomenon. The life of every blood
corpuscle or skin cell of every human being now alive is absolutely
continuous with that of the living cells of the first human beings—if not,
indeed, as most biologists appear to believe, of the first life upon the earth.
Yet this continuous life has been and apparently always must be lived in a
tissue of amazing discontinuity—amazing, at least, to those who can see the

wonderful in the commonplace. For though the world-phenomenon which
we call Man has been so long continuous, and is at this moment perhaps as
much modified by the total past as if it were really a single undying
individual, yet only a few decades ago, a mere second in the history of the
earth, no human being now alive was in existence. “As for man, his days
are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth
over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” Indeed,
not merely are we individually as grass, but in a few years the hand that
writes these words, and the tissues of eye and brain whereby they are
perceived, will actually be grass. Here, then, is the colossal paradox:
absolute and literal continuity of life, every cell from a preceding cell
throughout the ages—omnis cellula e cellula; yet three times in every
century the living and only wealth of nations is reduced to dust, and is
raised up again from helpless infancy. Where else is such catastrophic
continuity?
Each individual enters the world in a fashion the dramatic and sensational
character of which can be realised by none who have not witnessed it; and
in a few years the individual dies, scarcely less dramatically as a rule, and
sometimes more so. This continuous and apparently invincible thing,
human life, which began so humbly and to the sound of no trumpets, in
Southern Asia or the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, but which has
never looked back since its birth, and is now the dominant fact of what
might well be an astonished earth, depends in every age and from moment
to moment upon here a baby, there a baby and there yet another; these
curious little objects being of all living things, animal or vegetable, young
or old, large or small, the most utterly helpless and incompetent, incapable
even of finding for themselves the breasts that were made for them. If but
one of all the “hungry generations” that have preceded us had failed to
secure the care and love of its predecessor, the curtain would have come
down and a not unpromising though hitherto sufficiently grotesque drama
would have been ended for ever.
This discontinuity it is which persuades many of us to conceive human life
to be not so much a mighty maze without a plan, as a mere stringing of
beads on an endless cord of which one end arose in Mother Earth, whilst the
other may come at any time—but goes nowhere. The beads, which we call
generations, vary in size and colour, no doubt, but on no system; each one

makes a fresh start; the average difference between them is merely one of
position; and the result is merely to make the string longer. Or the
generations might be conceived as the links of an indeterminate chain,
necessarily held to each other: but suggesting not at all the idea of a living
process such that its every step is fraught with eternal consequence. In a
word, we incline to think that History merely goes on repeating itself, and
we have to learn that History never repeats itself. Every generation is
epoch-making.
It is thus to the conception of parenthood as the vital and organic link of life
that we are forced: and the whole of this book is really concerned with
parenthood. We shall see, in due course, that no generation, whether of men
or animals or plants, determines or provides, as a whole, the future of the
race. Only a percentage, as a rule a very small percentage indeed, of any
species reach maturity, and fewer still become parents. Amongst ourselves,
one-tenth of any generation gives birth to one-half the next. These it is who,
in the long run, make History: a Kant or a Spencer, dying childless, may
leave what we call immortal works; but unless the parents of each new
generation are rightly chosen or “selected”—to use the technical word—a
new generation may at any time arise to whom the greatest achievements of
the past are nothing. The newcomers will be as swine to these pearls, the
immortality of which is always conditional upon the capacity of those who
come after to appreciate them. There is here expressed the distinction
between two kinds of progress: the traditional progress which is dependent
upon transmitted achievement, but in its turn is dependent upon racial
progress—this last being the kind of progress of which the history of pre-
human life upon the planet is so largely the record and of which mankind is
the finest fruit hitherto.

It is possible that a concrete case, common enough, and thus the more
significant, may appeal to the reader, and help us to realise afresh the
conditions under which human life actually persists.
Forced inside a motor-omnibus one evening, for lack of room outside, I
found myself opposite a woman, poorly-clothed, with a wedding-ring upon
her finger and a baby in her arms. The child was covered with a black shawl

and its face could not be seen. It was evidently asleep. It should have been
in its cot at that hour. The mother's face roused feelings which a sonnet of
Wordsworth's might have expressed, or a painting by some artist with a
soul, a Rembrandt or a Watts, such as we may look for in vain amongst the
be-lettered to-day. Here was the spectacle of mother and child, which all the
great historic religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, have rightly
worshipped; the spectacle which more nearly symbolises the sublime than
any other upon which the eye of a man, himself once such a child, can rest;
the spectacle which alone epitomises the life of mankind and the unalterable
conditions of all human life and all human societies, reminding us at once
of our individual mortality, and the immortality of our race—

“While we, the brave, the mighty and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The Elements, must vanish;—be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour:”

—the spectacle which alone, if any can, may reconcile us to death; the
spectacle of that which alone can sanctify the love of the sexes; the
spectacle of motherhood in being, the supreme duty and supreme privilege
of womanhood—“a mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.”
This woman, utterly unconscious of the dignity of her attitude and of the
contrast between herself and the imitation of a woman, elegantly clothed,
who sat next her, giving her not a thought nor a glance, nor yet room for the
elbow bent in its divine office, was probably some thirty-two or three years
old, as time is measured by the revolutions of the earth around the sun.
Measured by some more relevant gauge, she was evidently aged, her face
grey and drawn, desperately tired, yet placid—not with due exultation but
with the calm of one who has no hope. She was too weary to draw the child
to her bosom, and her arms lay upon her knees; but instead she bent her
body downwards to her baby. She looked straight out in front of her, not at
me nor at the passing phantasms beyond, but at nothing. The eyes were
open but they were too tired to see. The face had no beauty of feature nor of
colour nor of intelligence, but it was wholly beautiful, made so by
motherhood; and I think she must have held some faith. The tint of her skin
and of her eyeballs spoke of the impoverishment of her blood, her need of

sleep and rest and ease of mind. She will probably be killed by consumption
within five years and will certainly never hold a grand-child in her arms.
The pathologist may lay this crime at the door of the tubercle bacillus; but a
prophet would lay it at the reader's door and mine.
While we read and write, play at politics or ping-pong, this woman and
myriads like her are doing the essential work of the world. The worm waits
for us as well as for her and them: and in a few years her children and
theirs will be Mankind. We need a prophet to cry aloud and spare not; to tell
us that if this is the fate of mothers in the ranks which supply the
overwhelming proportion of our children, our nation may number
Shakespeare and Newton amongst the glories of its past, and the lands of
ancient empires amongst its present possessions, but it can have no future;
that if, worshipping what it is pleased to call success, it has no tears nor
even eyes for such failures as these, it may walk in the ways of its
insensible heart and in the sight of its blind eyes, yet it is walking not in its
sleep but in its death, is already doomed and damned almost past recall; and
that, if it is to be saved, there will avail not “broadening the basis of
taxation,” nor teaching in churches the worship of the Holy Mother and
Holy Child, whilst Motherhood is blasphemed at their very doors, but this
and this only—the establishment, not in statutes but in the consciences of
men and women, of a true religion based upon these perdurable and evident
dogmas—that all human life is holy, all mothers and all children, that
history is made in the nursery, that the individual dies, that therefore
children determine the destinies of all civilisations, that the race or society
which succeeds with its mammoth ships and its manufactures but fails to
produce men and women, is on the brink of irretrievable doom; that the
body of man is an animal, endowed with the inherited animal instincts
necessary for self-preservation and the perpetuation of the race, but that, if
the possession of this body by a conscious spirit, “looking before and after,”
is anything more than a “sport” of the evolutionary forces, it demands that,
the blind animal instincts notwithstanding, the desecration of motherhood,
the perennial slaughter and injury of children, the casual unconsidered birth
of children for whom there is no room or light or air or food, and of
children whose inheritance condemns them to misery, insanity or crime,
must cease; and that the recurrent drama of human love and struggle
reaches its happy ending not when the protagonists are married, but when
they join hands over a little child that promises to be a worthy heir of all the

ages. This religion must teach that the spectacle of a prematurely aged and
weary and hopeless mother, which he who runs or rides may see, produced
by our rude foreshadowings of civilisation, is an affront to all honest and
thoughtful eyes: that where there are no mothers, such as mothers should
be, the people will assuredly perish, though everything they touch should
turn to gold, though science and art and philosophy should flourish as never
before. I believe that history, rightly read, teaches these tremendous lessons.

In our own day the bounds of imagination are undoubtedly widening.
Means of communication, the press, the camera, the decadence of obsolete
dogmas, making room for the simple daily truths of morality which have
“the dignity of dateless age” and are too hard for the teeth of time—these
account in large measure for the fact that the happier half of the world is at
last beginning to realise how the other half lives. There is perhaps more
divine discontent with things as they are than ever heretofore: this being
due, as has been suggested, perhaps as much to the modern aids of
imagination as to any inherent increase of sympathy. Science, too, in the
form of sociology and economics, adds warrant to the demand for some
radical reform of the conditions of life. It teaches that all forms of life are
interdependent; that society is thus an organism in more than merely loose
analogy; that the classes pay abundantly for the state of the masses: whilst
medicine teaches that the tuberculosis, for instance, which slays so many
members of the middle and upper classes, is bred by and in the
overcrowding of the lower classes, this and many other diseases promising
to resist all measures less radical than the abolition of half our current social
practice.
Hence it is that we hear so much of social reform; and the promises of
representatives of many political -isms jostle one another at the gates of our
ears. The Anarchist at one extreme, and the Collectivist at the other, with
the Individualist and the Socialist somewhere between, offer their panaceas.
To me, I confess, they seem little better than the scholastic metaphysicians
of old days, like them mistaking words for things, incapable of
understanding each other, evading precise definition and using terms which

never mean the same thing twice as missiles and weapons of abuse: and,
above all, mistaking means for ends.
But the leading error common to them all, as I seem to see it, is their
conception of society as a stable thing—a piece of machinery which must
be properly “assembled,” as the engineers say; forgetful of the
extraordinary discontinuity which inheres in the swift-approaching death of
all its parts, and their replacement by helpless immaturity. The first fact of
society really is that all its individuals are mortal. This we all know, but I
question whether even Herbert Spencer fully reckoned with it; and certainly
the common run of social speculators have not begun to realise what it
means. Human life is made up of generations, and the key to all progress
lies in the nature of the relation between one generation and another.
Spencer records the case of an Oxford graduate, desirous to be his secretary,
who did not know that the population of Great Britain is increasing. Here is
a capital present fact of the—merely quantitative—relation between
successive generations. So far as any influence on their theory or practice is
concerned, it is still unknown to nearly all our advisers. Yet this fact of the
ceaseless multiplication of man, which has distinguished him from the first,
and is absolutely peculiar to him of all living species, animal or vegetable,
as Sir E. Ray Lankester has lately pointed out, is the source of the major
facts of history and the besetting condition of every social problem that can
be named at this hour.
The professional and dedicated teachers of morality seem to be in little
better case. They believe in babies, perhaps, as the prime and only really
valid source of the weal and wealth and strength of nations, and as the great
moralisers and humanisers of the generation that gives them birth. They are
beginning to join in that public outcry against infant mortality which will
yet abolish this abominable stain upon our time. But they are lamentably
uninformed. They do not know, for instance, that a high infant mortality
habitually goes with a high birth-rate, not only in human society but in all
living species; and they have yet to appreciate the proposition which I have
so often advanced and which, to me at any rate, seems absolutely self-
evident, that until we have learnt how to keep alive all the healthy babies
now born—that is to say, not less than ninety per cent. of all, the babies in
the slums included—it is monstrous to cry for more, to be similarly slain.
These bewailings about our mercifully falling birth-rate, uncoupled with

any attention to the slaughter of the children actually born, are pitiable in
their blindness and would be lamentable if they had any effect—of which
there is fortunately no sign whatever, but indeed the contrary.
Humanitarian sentiment, also, is terribly misguided. “Why always the
benefit of the future, has the present no claim upon us?” I have been asked.
Assuredly all sentient life, and therefore pre-eminently all human life, in
which sentiency is so incommensurably intensified by self-consciousness,
the power of “looking before and after,” has a claim upon us: but the
question could have been asked by no one whose imagination had been
worthily employed. Our posterity will in due course be as actual and present
as we, their deeds and sufferings and hopes as actual and present as ours.
They outnumber us as the ocean outweighs a raindrop; to avert evil from
one of them is as much as to relieve evil in one of us,—how much more to
prevent the misery of five in the next generation, fifty in the next and
unnumbered hosts beyond? To serve the future of the race is not to benefit a
fiction: the men and women of a hundred and a thousand years hence will
be as real as we. And to serve the future is to put out our talent at compound
interest a thousand-fold compounded. The weak imagination would rather
build a sanatorium for consumptives and see it filled with grateful patients.
This is a palpable, sensible good, for which the meanest visual faculty
suffices: but the strong imagination would rather open the closed windows
of nurseries or work at the mechanical problems of ventilation, aye, or even
at the structure of the bacteriological microscope—finding the spectacle, in
the mind's eye, of healthy men and women fifty years hence as grateful and
as real a reward as the sight of a sanatorium in the present. The pace of
progress will be incalculably hastened when men, whether workers or
bequeathers or administrators, enlarge their imaginations so as to perceive
that the future will be, and therefore indeed is, as real as the present.[1] I
appeal to the reason of the kind-hearted reader. Would you rather make one
man or child happy now, or two or a thousand a century hence?
It is, in a word, the idea of continuous causation or evolution that explains
the remarkable contrast between our outlook on the future and our fathers'.
In older—that is to say, younger—days, men's interest in posterity was most
naïvely and quaintly selfish. If they raised a monument or did any piece of
work which obviously would endure beyond the span of their own lives,
their chief motive seems to have been that we should think well of them,

nor forget how well they thought of themselves. They were not concerned
with us, but with our opinion of them. They were anxious about the verdict
of posterity; and the verdict is that they little realised their responsibility for
us, or betrayed it if they did. There is also the frank attitude of Sir Boyle
Roche's famous bull, “What has posterity done for us?” This is a quite
familiar and conspicuous sentiment—as familiar as any other form of
selfishness: but it is as if a father should say, “What have my children done
for me?” and is open to the same condemnation. We are assuredly
responsible for posterity as any parent for any child. Before the nineteenth
century this fact could be realised by very few. To-day, when the truth of
organic evolution is a commonplace, and when the plasticity of the forces
of evolution is slowly becoming realised, we must face our tremendous
responsibility and privilege in a spirit worthy of those to whom such mighty
truths have been revealed.
Parenthood and birth—in these the whole is summed. At the mercy of these
are all past discovery, all past achievement in art or science, in action or in
thought. The human species, secure though it be, is only a race after all;
only a sequence of runners who quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt—like
runners, hand on the lamp of life, as Lucretius said. This it is which, to the
thoughtful observer, makes each birth such an overwhelming event. It is a
great event for the mother and the father, but how much greater if its
consequences be only half realised. Education in its full sense, “the
provision of an environment,” as I would define it, is a mighty and
necessary force, for nothing but potentiality is given at birth: but no
education, no influence of traditional progress, can avail, unless the
potentialities which these must unfold are worthy. The baby comes
tumbling headlong into the world. The fate of all the to-morrows depends
upon it. Hitherto its happening has depended upon factors animal and
casual enough, utterly improvident, concerned but rarely with this
tremendous consequence. Fate may be mistress, but she works only too
often by Chance, as Goethe remarked. Fate and Chance hitherto have never
failed to keep up the supply which the death of the individual makes
imperative: and forces have been at work determining for progress, to some
extent, but most imperfectly, the parentage of these headlong babies. Yet the
human intelligence cannot remain satisfied with their working—and much
less so when it realises how they can be controlled, how effectively, and to
what high ends. The physician may and must concern himself, on these

occasions, with the immediate needs of the mother and the child, and when
these are satisfied he may feel that his duty has been done; but, as he
journeys homewards, he must surely reflect—that this astonishing thing,
then, has happened again, as indeed it has happened many times this very
day; that whilst this baby is to become an individual man or woman, an end
in himself or herself, in its young loins and in those of its like are the hosts
of all the unborn who are yet to be. If, then, these babies differ widely from
each other, as they do; if these differences are, on the whole, capable of
prediction in terms of heredity; if the future state of mankind is involved in
these differences, which will in their turn be transmitted to the children of
such as themselves become parents; and if this business of parenthood will
be confined to only a small proportion of these babies, of whom one-half
will never reach puberty; if these things be so, as they are, cannot these
babies be chosen in anticipation, there being thus effected an enormous vital
economy, Nature being commanded to the highest ends by the only method,
which is to obey her, as Bacon said; and the human intelligence thus
making its supreme achievement—the ethical direction and vast
acceleration of racial progress? What man can do for animals and plants,
can he not do for himself? Give imagination its fleetest and strongest wing,
it can never conceive a task so worth the doing.
This, and this alone, is what requires to be brought home to the general
reader and the reformer alike. Says Mr. H. G. Wells: “It seemed to me then
that to prevent the multiplication of people below a certain standard, and to
encourage the multiplication of exceptionally superior people, was the only
real and permanent way of mending the ills of the world. I think that still.”
And then, in a few sketchy pages, Mr. Wells discredits, as with one glance
of great eyes, the very proposal which he thinks to be the only real and
permanent way of mending the ills of the world. Not one man in thousands
has got so far as to hold this opinion; and it is the more lamentable that Mr.
Wells, having reached it, should hold it in the loose, formal, and inoperative
fashion in which the man in the street or the woman in the pew holds the
dogmas of orthodox theology. We need to educate public opinion—that
“chaos of prejudices”—up to Mr. Wells' standard, and then we need to
accomplish the much harder task of converting a mere intellectual
speculation into a living belief.

But so surely as this belief, the crowning and practical conclusion to which
all the teachings of modern biology converge, comes to life in men's minds,
so surely the difficulties will be met, not only on paper but also in practice.
“Where there's a will there's a way.” Meanwhile men are content to work at
the impermanent, if not indeed at measures which directly war against the
selection of the best for parenthood: they do not realise the stern necessity
of obeying Nature in this respect—for it is Her selection of parents that
alone has raised us from the beast and the worm—and since necessity
alone, whether inner or outer, whether of character or circumstance, is the
mother of invention, they fail to find the methods by which our ideal can be
carried out. There is nothing, either in the character of the individual man
and woman, or in the structure of society, that makes the ideal of race-
culture impossible to-day: nor must action wait for further knowledge of
heredity. Little though we surely know so far, we have abundance of
assured knowledge for immediate action in many directions—knowledge
which is agreed upon by Lamarckians and neo-Lamarckians, Darwinians
and Weismannians, Mendelians and biometricians alike. All of these agree,
for instance, as to the fact that the insane tendency is transmissible and is
transmitted by heredity. We need only public opinion to say, “Then most
surely those who have such a tendency must forgo parenthood.”
For it is public opinion that governs the world. If it were, as it will be one
day—which may these pages hasten—an elementary and radical truth, as
familiar and as cogent to all, man in the House or man in the public-house,
as the fact of the earth's gravitation—that racial maintenance, much more
racial progress, depends absolutely upon the selection of parents; if the
establishment of this selective process in the best and widest manner were
the admitted goal of all legislation and all social and political speculation—
who can question that the thing would be practicable and indeed easy?
Without the formation of public opinion this is as hopelessly Utopian and
inaccessible an ideal as words ever framed; public opinion once formed,
nothing could be more palpably feasible. Hence Mr. Galton's wisdom in
demanding that, before we dictate courses of procedure, and even before we
can expect profit from scientific investigation, whether by the biometric
method of which he is the founder, or by any other, public opinion must be
formed; that the idea of eugenics or good-breeding must be instilled into the
conscience of civilisation like a new religion—a religion of the most lofty
and austere, because the most unselfish, morality, a religion which sets

before it a sublime ideal, terrestrial indeed in its chosen theatre, but celestial
in its theme, human in its means, but literally superhuman in its goal. If the
intrinsic ennoblement of mankind does not answer to this eulogy, where is
the ideal that does?

CHAPTER II
THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE

“This last lustrum has enabled us to make an astounding discovery, of
which neither Adam Smith nor Cobden nor Malthus dreamed—that a
nation is composed not of property nor of provinces, but of men.”—
Tille (1904), quoted by Forel.

The main thesis which the last chapter was intended to introduce is, in the
words of Ruskin, simply this: “There is no wealth but life.” The assumption
throughout this book is that Ruskin is the real founder of political economy,
he first of moderns having seen this supreme truth.
We speak of a nation's possessions, but possessions imply a possessor or
possessors. Wealth, as Ruskin teaches us, is “the possession of the valuable
by the valiant.” If our national possessions were made over to a race of
monkeys, “they being inherently and eternally incapable of wealth,” what
would they be worth? Furthermore, to possess and to be possessed by, are
totally diverse things. Says Ruskin, “Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship,
one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of
gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he
was sinking—had he the gold or had the gold him?”
Vital economics.—We have already alluded to the unique property of
mankind in virtue of which the radical character of the essential wealth,
which is life, has only too commonly been forgotten. In the case of any
animal or vegetable species we should have no difficulty, if asked regarding
its “success” and “prospects,” in directing our enquiry to essentials. We

should examine the individuals of that species, young and old, its death-rate
and its birth-rate, and these would supply us with the answer. In the case of
man there is the almost incalculable complication involved in the fact that
he is capable of making external acquirements,—material possessions and
spiritual possessions which, so long as he remains capable of possessing
them, are of real value, and, on account of what they mean for life, are a
true though secondary wealth. Amongst civilised mankind, therefore, the
essential question as to the breed of men and women is obscured by the
secondary question as to their traditional or transmitted possessions or
external acquirements. But if we remember the case of the drowning man
and his gold we shall realise that, fundamentally, the case is the same for
the human as for any other species. No one can openly question this, but not
one publicist or politician in a thousand believes it in any living sense. The
true function of government, said Ruskin, is the production and recognition
of human worth. This has only to be said to be admitted; it is one of the
thoughts that shine, as Joubert says. No one denies it and no one acts upon
it.
In this sense such a phrase as the National Exchequer begins to take on a
new meaning, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer loses every whit of his
importance, except in so far as his proceedings tend towards, or away from,
the production and recognition of human worth. He plays with money,
whereas the Chancellor of the real Exchequer would work for life.
The facts of childhood to-day.—But since human life is discontinuous,
since three times in a century the essential wealth of nations is reduced to
dust, and raised again from helpless infancy, our urgent business is with the
children of the nation. What, then, in general, are the facts of the National
Exchequer thus conceived?
We find that, so far as ordinary physical health is concerned, the majority of
human babies—including, for instance, so-called Anglo-Saxon babies—are
physically healthy at birth. On the other hand, a certain proportion are as
definitely and obviously unhealthy at the very start as the more fortunate
majority are healthy. If certain influences, such as alcohol and some few
diseases, have been in operation, the babies may be already doomed—not
national wealth, but national illth. In the absence of these pernicious factors,
there is, on the whole, physical fitness. The ratio is perhaps as ninety to ten
per cent.

Here then, is, on the whole, a ceaseless supply of essential wealth;
physically, at any rate, of good enough quality. As every one knows, or
should know, the greater part of it we immediately proceed to deface and
destroy. Our mouths are full of argument concerning the principles of what
we are pleased to conceive as political economy. The principles of vital
economy we do not enquire into but outrage and defy at every turn. So
horribly and wastefully are we misguided that in point of fact we actually
destroy altogether the greater number, not of all the children merely, but
even of the fit and healthy children; and it may forcibly be argued that,
before any one proceeds to attempt any choice amongst the children, as to
which shall in their turn become parents and which shall not, it would be
well, apart from any question of discrimination, to revise radically the
methods which at present permit this wholesale destruction. Whilst we kill
outright by hundreds of thousands every year, we damage for life far more,
including a very large proportion of those who, as things at present are, will
in their turn become the parents who alone are the makers of the real wealth
of nations. If this destructive process had the effect which common notions
of heredity would lead us to expect, then most certainly not merely would
Britain, for instance, be doomed, but the very name would long ago have
become “one with Nineveh and Tyre.” But though this destructive process
(which it is best to describe as resulting in deterioration rather than
degeneration) has been long continued, and though, in consequence of the
great economic changes of last century and the rush into the cities with their
over-crowding, it is perhaps more disastrous now than ever before: yet it
remains true that most of the babies born in the slums are splendid little
specimens of humanity—so far as physique is concerned—bearing no
marks of degeneration to correspond with the deterioration of their parents.
In a word, heredity works—the racial poisons apart, as we shall see—so
that each generation gets a fresh start. If there be no process of selection,
each new generation begins where its predecessor began and is as a whole
neither worse nor better, whether physically or psychically.
Eugenics and infant mortality.—In the face of the foregoing, which
merely outlines the appalling indictment that ought to be framed against
civilisation for its treatment of its children, it is evidently incumbent upon
us to answer the objector who should say that the whole purpose and
argument of our present enquiry is premature, and that surely our first
business should be not to propose any novel and revolutionary doctrine as

to the choice of parents and of children, but rather to stop this child
slaughter and child damage—in other words, that we should devote
ourselves rather, not to providing children with a good heredity, but to
providing them with a good environment, it being only too demonstrable
that the environment we at present provide for the great majority of them is
deadly and abominable in the extreme. This argument is all the stronger
because most of the children are admittedly fit physically at birth. It would
seem as if there were little to complain of in their heredity, whilst there is
certainly almost everything to complain of in their environment.
If this objection is to be met at all, we must be most careful and serious in
our going. Whatever conclusions we come to we must at any rate be sure
that we do not impugn or deny the instant, immediate and constant law of
love which declares that there can be no adequate ideal short of doing our
best for all children, once they are born—nay, more, from the very moment,
months before, at which their individual history starts. Whoso suggests that,
as a present and immediate policy, it is not right to care for all children,
healthy or diseased, welcome or unwelcome, nurseried in Park Lane or in
the slums, may have plausible and even so-called eugenic arguments on his
side, but his proposal is essentially immoral and therefore essentially false.
For all children actually in being—whether they await or have passed the
particular moment of birth—it is our duty, ideal and real, to do our utmost.
The believer in the principle of race-culture or eugenics—whom I shall
hereafter, as for some years past, call the eugenist—may believe that it
would have been better had some of these children never been born; he may
believe that, in the present unorganised state of society, in the present
dethroned state of motherhood, it were vastly better had many even of the
healthy majority never been born. He may be convinced that, since so many
of them will certainly die, failing our feeble efforts to save childhood, their
birth is a misfortune: but on no terms and for no objects whatever does, or
can, the eugenist propose that any of these children, even though from the
moment of birth they be riddled with disease, should be allowed to die.
Though some will say that the keeping alive of diseased children, or even of
many children at first healthy, is a disaster, I maintain that no such question
of choice, selection or discrimination can find any warrant in any form of
morality—eugenic or other—from the moment at which the child in
question began its individual existence. Those of us who advocate the
eugenic idea must be perpetually on our guard against the insidious alliance

of any who, agreeing with our premises, declare that it is a mistake, for
instance, to prosecute a campaign against infant mortality. I myself have
had a share—by a continuous propaganda started in 1902—in making this
last a publicly recognised question, whilst, on the other hand, I have done
my best to popularise the idea of eugenics. Let me repeat here what I have
already said elsewhere: that I strenuously repudiate any suggestion that the
eugenic end is legitimately or effectively to be served by permitting the
infant mortality to continue. The distinguished Egyptologist, Professor
Flinders Petrie, in his recent book Janus in Modern Life, describes as
follows the results of the present crusade against infant mortality, as he
conceives them:—“We must agree that it would be of the lower or lowest
type of careless, thriftless, dirty, and incapable families that the increase [of
surviving children] would be obtained. Is it worth while to dilute our
increase of population by ten per cent. more of the most inferior kind? Will
England be stronger for having one-thirtieth more, and that of the worst
stock, added to the population every year? This movement is doing away
with one of the few remains of natural weeding out of the unfit that our
civilisation has left to us. And it will certainly cause more misery than
happiness in the course of a century.”
Here, plainly, is a serious argument. We are bound to sympathise with its
underlying assumption, viz., that not all babies are such as we can desire to
carry on the race. Still more must we sympathise with any author whatever
who has imagination and foresight enough to write anywhere, on any
subject, wrongly or rightly, such a sentence as “and it will certainly cause
more misery than happiness in the course of a century.” We need more such
authors. But without going into the whole argument here—as, for instance,
regarding the singular use of the word “natural”—I do most entirely deny
the right of the eugenic idea to any voice or place as to the fate of children
once they have come into being. Another writer, arguing on the same lines,
says à propos of the abolition of infant mortality: “This last change which,
as the Huddersfield experiment shows, is easy of accomplishment, is likely
to be completely effected in the next few years, and we shall then have
abolished the one factor which in any important degree at present tends to
redress the balance between the rates of reproduction of the superior and the
inferior classes.” These are the words of Dr. W. McDougall, the
distinguished psychologist. Dr. McDougall has subsequently shown that he
repudiates the apparent deduction from them, and entirely approves of the

present campaign of mercy to childhood. Nevertheless, these arguments,
plainly derived from the principle of natural selection, do express a most
important truth—viz., that indiscriminate survival must lead to racial
decadence, whether in man, microbe or moss. I submit that the difficulty
can be solved only by the eugenic principle.
The fittest must become parents, and the unfit[2] must not; then kill the
unfit, says Nature. And this indeed, in all living species other than man, is
what Nature does. But “thou shalt not kill,” says the moral law—not even
the unfit. As the foregoing will have shown, some thinkers to-day propose
to avail themselves in this dilemma of the “New Decalogue”:—

“Thou shalt not kill but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.”

This is no solution of the problem. There is only one solution, and that is
the eugenic solution. Nature can preserve a race only by destroying the
unfit. We who are intelligent must preserve and elevate the race by
preventing the unfit from ever coming into existence at all. We must replace
Nature's selective death-rate by a selective birth-rate. This is merciful and
supremely moral; it means vast economy in life and money and time and
suffering; it is natural at bottom, but it is Nature raised to her highest power
in that almost supra-natural fact—the moral intelligence of man.
The dilemma defined.—The moral law, and our natural human sympathy,
insist that we should seek to preserve all the children that come into the
world, to amplify the health of the healthy, and to neutralise, as far as
possible, the unfitness of the unfit. A mother brings her malformed baby to
the surgeon, and he does his best to patch up the gaps left by the imperfect
processes of development. Otherwise the baby will die. Who dares look that
mother in the face and say “Ah, but it is better for the race that your child
should die!” Such a doctrine, I submit, blasphemes our humanity; it is
intolerable to any decent person who will pause to think what it means: and
yet, in so saying, we seem to defy Nature with her imperative law of the
survival of the fittest only. Pre-eugenic writers on evolution state the case in
all its hardness. Dr. Archdall Reid says that “If we wish to improve the
individual, we must attend to his acquirements by providing proper shelter,
food, and training.” Well, we do wish to improve the individual, and to

preserve the individual! We do not wish the super-man on the terms of
Nietzsche—the super-man obtained at the cost of love would turn out to be
inferior to any brute-beast, an intellectual fiend. But, Dr. Reid goes on to
say, “such means will not effect an improvement of the race.... On the
contrary, they will cause deterioration[3] by an increased survival of the
unfit.” The provision of “proper shelter, food and training” will cause racial
decadence! Is it not evident, then, that such provisions must rather be styled
improper, and that we must refrain from doing anything for the defects and
needs of the individual, lest a worse thing befall the race? This is an
outrageous proposition, yet it is offered us as a necessary inference from the
principle of natural selection or the survival of the fittest—which no one
now dares to dispute.
Herbert Spencer, to whom we owe the phrase “the survival of the fittest,”
expresses this critical difficulty as follows: “The law that each creature shall
take the benefits and the evils of its own nature has been the law under
which life has evolved thus far. Any arrangements which, in a considerable
degree, prevent superiority from profiting by the rewards of superiority, or
shield inferiority from the evils it entails—any arrangements which tend to
make it as well to be inferior as to be superior, are arrangements
diametrically opposed to the progress of organisation, and the reaching of a
higher life.” This is permanently and necessarily true, and in our care for
childhood we have to reckon with it. Yet even Spencer himself did not
pursue this supremely important enquiry to what I shall in a moment submit
to be its logical and almost incredibly hopeful conclusion.
Huxley, writing his well-known Romanes Lecture, “Evolution and Ethics,”
at a time when, unfortunately, he had somewhat parted company with
Spencer, and was too ready to accept any argument that made against
Spencer's political views, cuts the Gordian knot in an astonishingly
unsatisfactory fashion. He declares that “the ethical progress of society
depends, not on imitating the cosmic process [that is, the selection of the
fittest], still less in running away from it, but in combating it.” This is
shallow thinking and very poor philosophy. One wonders how Huxley can
have forgotten the great dictum of Bacon that Nature can be commanded
only by obeying her. He declares that moral evolution is the direct
contradiction and antithesis of the process of organic evolution hitherto. He
says, “Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step

and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical
process;” and he declares it to be a fallacy to suppose “that because on the
whole animals and plants have advanced in perfection of organisation, by
means of the struggle for existence and the consequent survival of the
fittest; therefore men in society, men as ethical beings, must look to the
same process to help them towards perfection.”
With all this Huxley offers us no real solution whatever, no hint that he has
realised in any degree what must be the consequences of indiscriminate
survival. It is astonishing how personal bias, so alien to the whole character
of the man as a rule, blinded him to a solution which, as it seems to me,
stared him in the face. Assuredly we can transmute and elevate and raise to
its highest power what he calls the cosmic process, and can reconcile
cosmic with ethical evolution, by extending to the unfit all our sympathy but
forbidding them parenthood. I deny that the provision of a proper
environment for the individual entails racial deterioration. Cosmic and
moral evolution are compatible if, whilst caring for each individual,
whether maim, halt, blind, or insane, and whilst admitting the categorical
imperative of the law of love which demands our care for him, we continue
to obey the indication of Nature, which forbids such an individual to
perpetuate his infirmity. Nature has no choice; if she is to avert the coming
of the unfit race she must summarily extinguish its potential ancestor, but
we can prohibit the reproduction of his infirmity whilst doing all we can for
the success of his individual life. This is the ideal course indicated and
approved by biology and morality alike.
The eugenic reconciliation.—I submit, then, that there is no inconsistency
in fighting simultaneously for the preservation and care of all babies and all
children without discrimination of any kind—and, on the other hand, in
declaring that, if the degeneration of the race is to be averted, still more if
racial, which is the only sure, progress, is to be attained, we must have the
worthy and only the worthy to be the parents of the future. I submit further
that only the eugenist can maintain his position in this matter at the present
day.
On his one hand is the improvident humanitarian with his feeling heart, he
who, seeing misery and disease and death, whether in babyhood, childhood,
or at any other time of life, seeks to improve the environment and so relieve
these evils. Close beside this wholly indiscriminate humanitarianism is that

which declares that with childhood is the future and therefore devotes its
energies especially to the young, is grateful for every baby born, whatever
its state, and when adult years are reached, assumes that all will be well for
the future, though the principle of natural selection is thus made of none
effect.
On the other side of the eugenists stand those whom we may for short call
the Nietzscheans. They see one-half of the truth of natural selection; they
see that through struggle and internecine war, species have hitherto
maintained themselves or ascended. They declare that all improvement of
the environment, or at any rate all humanitarian effort, tends to abrogate the
struggle for existence, and even, as is only too often true, to select unworth
and let worth go to the wall. This school then declares that infant mortality
is a blessing and charity an unmitigated curse. In short, that we must go
back as quickly as possible to the order of the beast.
Between these two, surely, the eugenist stands, declaring that each has a
great truth, but that his teaching, and his alone, involves their co-ordination
and reconciliation. He agrees with the humanitarian that no child should cry
or starve or work or die—or at any rate this particular eugenist does—and
he agrees with the Nietzschean that to abrogate, and still more, to reverse,
the principle of natural selection, is to set our faces for the goal of racial
death. But further, the eugenist declares that the indiscriminate
humanitarian, blind to the truth which the Nietzschean sees, would heap up,
if permitted, disaster upon disaster; whilst he repudiates as horrible and
ghastly the Nietzschean doctrine that morality must go by the board if the
race is to be raised:—that we must be damned to be saved.
Our age is now awakening, at last, to the cry of the children. The tendency
of legislation and opinion in every civilised country is one and the same.
For this humanitarianism let only him who thinks of any child as a brat
refuse to give thanks. But it is the business of all who, whilst loving
children and still in love with love, are yet acquainted with the principles of
organic evolution—in short, the business of all humane men of science,
men of science who have not ceased to be human—whilst aiding, abetting
and directing this humanitarian effort by every means in their power, to
teach and preach, in season and out of season, that unless meanwhile we
make terms with the principle of selection, the choice of worth for parents,
and the rejection of the unworthy, not as individuals but as parents, we shall

assuredly breed for posterity, whose lives and happiness and moral welfare
are in our hands, evils that can adequately neither be named nor numbered.
Already, together with much blessed good, this indiscriminate
humanitarianism has done much evil. Many of our most instant and, for this
generation, insoluble problems are the lamentable fruit of this inherently
good thing. The eugenist declares that this fruit is not necessary, that if it
were necessary he could see no way out of our morass and would echo the
half-wish of Huxley for some kindly comet that should put a term to human
history altogether; and, in short, that only by the eugenic means can the
humanitarian end be attained.
During the last year or two of the campaign against infant mortality many
things have become clear, and none clearer than the fundamental
compatibility between this campaign and the principles of eugenics. As
these two efforts wall be predominant in the real politics of all the years to
come, a few more words must here be devoted to the relation between them.
Granted that the highest of all objects is the making of worthy human
beings, it is quite evident that we must attend equally to the two factors
which determine all human life—heredity and environment. Eugenics
stands for the principle of heredity—the principle that the right children
shall be born. The campaign against infant mortality stands for a good
environment[4]—so that children, when born, may survive and thrive.
Obviously eugenics would be of no use if the children could not survive,
and no human infant can survive unless it be born into a moral
environment: no motherhood, no man. The two campaigns, then, are strictly
complementary. We must endeavour to rid ourselves of the popular notion
that the whole result of the campaign against infant mortality can be
measured by the number of babies whose death is prevented. The infant
mortality is merely an index of a widespread social disease—an index and
an extreme symptom. But for every baby killed many are damaged; and to
remove the causes of infant mortality is to remove the causes which at
present effect the deterioration of millions of human beings. The eugenic
campaign, then, without the other would be almost futile.
The time for eugenics.—On our principles the eugenic question can be
decently raised only before conception. The unyoked germ-cells of any
individual, though alive, are not entitled to claim protection from the
principle that life is sacred. It is permitted to allow them to die; but from the

moment of conception a new individual has been formed—a new living
human individual, even though it only consists of a single cell, product of
the union of the parental germ-cells: and we shall not be safe unless we
regard this being as sacred and its destruction—except in order to save the
life of the mother—as murder, even at this as at any later stage. If the
eugenist should raise his voice, and say that this individual should not be
born, he must be regarded exactly as if he were to recommend infanticide or
the lethal chamber for unfit individuals. In such a case he would have
entirely mistaken the whole principle of (negative) eugenics, which is not to
elevate the race by the destruction of the unfit, at any stage, ante-natal or
post-natal, but to do so by prohibiting the conception of the unfit. Directly
the new human individual is formed the eugenic question is too late in that
case. It is now the eugenist's duty, because it is every one's duty, to regard
the new individual, whether born or yet unborn, as an end in himself or
herself. But when the question arises whether that individual is to become a
parent, then the eugenic question can and must be raised.
Circumstances might arise in which “case-law” might be applicable. It
might be thought better to destroy the syphilitic child rather than allow it to
come into the world. But we cannot make these distinctions. The question is
simply one of expediency, and the only expedient thing is that there shall be
no paltering with the principle that when a new human life is conceived our
duty is to preserve it, whether it were conceived only twenty-four hours ago
or whether it be a decrepit and helpless centenarian. The instant we let this
principle go we are proposing to revert to Nature's method of keeping up
the level of a race by murder. It is improper, then, for any one on eugenic
grounds to protest against proposals for the arrest of infant mortality. He
should have spoken sooner; at this stage he must hold his peace.
The two campaigns complementary.—Yet further: not only is it evident
that the campaign against infant mortality (which is, in a word, the
campaign for the provision of a proper environment for the young) is
obviously necessary for the fulfilment of the eugenic ideal—since what
would be the good of choosing the right parents if their children are then to
be slain?—but it can be shown conversely that the object of those who are
working against infant mortality can never be fully attained except by
means of eugenics. Eugenics apart, we can and shall reduce the infant
mortality to a mere fraction of what it is at present, by preventing the

destruction of that great majority of babies who are born healthy. Even,
however, when we have provided an ideal environment for every baby that
comes into the world, we shall not have abolished infant mortality, since
there will always remain a proportion, say ten per cent., whom not even an
ideal environment can save. They should never have been conceived. At the
Infantile Mortality Conference held in London in 1908, this was clearly
recognised by more than one speaker. The maternalist must have the
eugenist to help him if his ideal is to be attained.
Not only is the ideal of the two campaigns one and the same; not only is
each necessary for the other, but their methods are the same. It is true that at
first this was not evident, since when we began to fight against infant
mortality many temporary expedients of no eugenic relevance were
adopted, such as the crèche and the infant milk depot. But in the interval
between the Conferences of 1906 and 1908 many things became clear: so
that, whereas the papers at the first Conference were only accidentally
connected, the programme of the second proceeded upon a principle—the
principle of the supremacy of motherhood. We see now that the one
fundamental method by which infantile mortality may be checked is by the
elevation of motherhood. In the words of our President, Mr. John Burns,
“you must glorify, dignify, and purify motherhood by every means in your
power.” Thus the first two papers read at the first morning's meeting of the
Conference—a brief paper by the present writer on “The Human Mother,”
and an admirable paper by Miss Alice Ravenhill on “Education for
Motherhood”—might equally well have been read at a Eugenics
Conference. The opponent of infant mortality and the eugenist appeal to the
same principle and avow the same creed: that parenthood is sacred, that it
must not be casually undertaken, that it demands the most assiduous
preparation of body and intellect and emotions. When, at last, these
principles are believed and acted upon, infant mortality will be a thing of
the past and national eugenics a thing of the present.
It is essential in this first general study of the subject to state the true nature
of the relation between these two campaigns, to which every succeeding
year of the present century will find more and more attention devoted.
Between them they succeed in beginning at the beginning, and it would be a
disaster, indeed, if they were incompatible. On the contrary, they are
complementary and mutually indispensable. As the years go on they will

engage between them the sympathy and the assistance of all serious people.
In the year 1907 infant mortality was first named in a speech by a Prime
Minister, and in that same year it was first mentioned in the Christmas-Day
sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral; in that year also Parliament passed the Early
Notification of Births Act, the first substantial legislative provision which
sets our feet on the road towards the goal of a true national estimate of the
value of parenthood. We are about to discover that the true politics is
domestics, since there is no wealth but life and life begins at home. We are
going to have the right kind of life born, and we are going to take care of it
when it is born. We shall raise a generation which looks upon the ordinary
money-changing politician as an impudent public nuisance, and the brutal,
blood-stained Imperialist, shouting about the Empire which his very
existence almost suffices to condemn, whilst he battens on the cannibal sale
of alcoholic poison to babies and the mothers of future babies, as the very
type of those traitors—they of its own household—who have helped to
destroy every Empire in history. We propose to rebuild the living
foundations of empire. To this end we shall preach a New Imperialism,
warning England to beware lest her veins become choked with yellow dirt,
and demanding that over all her legislative chambers there be carved the
more than golden words, “There is no Wealth but Life.”

CHAPTER III
NATURAL SELECTION AND THE LAW OF
LOVE

“Truth justifies herself; and as she dwells
With hope, who would not follow where she leads?”
Wordsworth.

“La plus haute tâche de l'action morale est le travail pour le bien des
générations futures.”—Forel.

Before looking more closely than we are commonly apt to do at the
meaning of the phrases “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest,” let
us exercise the right of man the moral being, as distinguished from man the
scientist or observer of Nature, to pass ethical judgments upon the facts
which it is the business of all the sciences, except ethics itself, merely to
record and interpret in and for themselves. We are beginning at last, half a
century after the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, to realise the
power of the law of selection; what is the moral judgment which is to be
passed upon it? In a passage from the last page of Herbert Spencer's
Autobiography, we find words which may be quoted on both sides: “When
we think of the myriads of years of the Earth's past, during which have
arisen and passed away low forms of creatures, small and great, which,
murdering and being murdered, have gradually evolved,[5] how shall we
answer the question—To what end?”
“Murdering and being murdered” suggests the adverse, and “have gradually
evolved,” the favourable, ethical judgment.
Many thinkers, finding Nature “so careless of the single life,” finding the
murderous struggle for existence the dominant fact of the history of the
living world, return an adverse verdict. Amongst them are to be found not
merely those who are inclined, by temperament or imperfect education, to
rebellion against any conclusions of science, but also, as we saw in the
second chapter, such a great biologist as Huxley. In another part of the
lecture already cited he says that the Stoics failed to see
“... that cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the
headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature. The logic of facts
was necessary to convince them that the cosmos works through
the lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it....
The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call
goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all
respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic
struggle for existence.”
In other words, honesty is the worst policy: and to worship natural selection
is to deify the devil.
The reader will realise that, if we are to succeed in establishing the claim of
natural selection to be the natural model upon which those who desire the

progress of society are to base their policy, it is necessary to controvert the
doctrine that natural selection is an anti-moral process. But let us hear the
other side.
The directly contrary view, then, is taken that though, truly enough, there
has been and is much “murdering and being murdered,” yet organisms
“have gradually evolved” towards fitness for their surroundings, or the
milieu environnant of Lamarck, which we translate environment; and that
since fitness or adaptation obviously makes for happiness, and since the
moral being man has himself been thus evolved, the process of natural
selection, “murdering and being murdered” notwithstanding, is essentially
beneficent.
The controversy is embittered and complicated by the fact that ultimate
questions of religion and philosophy are involved. Is the Universe moral, as
Emerson asserted it was, or is it immoral? A recent opponent of the
orthodox creed of a benevolent Deity teaches that “The Lesson of
Evolution” is to disprove the idea of benevolence behind or in Nature: “The
story of life has been a story of pain and cruelty of the most ghastly
description.” The age-long fact of “murdering and being murdered” is the
weapon with which he attacks the theist: who, per contra, points to the
beneficent result, the exquisite adaptation of all species to the circumstances
of their life, and the evolution of love itself.
We may remind ourselves of those great lines of Mr. George Meredith,

“... sure reward
We have whom knowledge crowns;
Who see in mould the rose unfold,
The soul through blood and tears.”

The one camp points to the “blood and tears” and asks for a verdict
accordingly. The other points to “the soul” as their product, and asks for a
verdict accordingly. But surely we need only to have the case fairly stated,
in order to realise that the “blood and tears” are true but only half the truth,
“the soul” true but only half the truth. Natural Selection is a colossal
paradox—the doing evil that good may come. The evil is undoubtedly done,
and the good undoubtedly comes. Is not this the only verdict that is in
consonance with all the facts? Is it not less than philosophic to look at the

process alone, or to look at the result alone? Is any real end to be served by
the incessant cry that we should keep our eyes fixed on the “blood and
tears” alone, or on “the soul” alone? Is not the poet right when he says that
the sure reward of knowledge is not to see either half of the truth as if it
were the whole, but to see unfold “the soul through blood and tears?”
Any attempt to cast up accounts between the evil of the process and the
good of the result—especially any attempt based on the assumption that the
process has yet achieved its final result—would be not only premature in
the eyes of those who can look forwards, but would be irrelevant to our
present enquiry. I certainly am with those who repudiate as misleading
Mill's description of Nature as a “vast slaughter-house,” and will declare
that, apart from self-conscious and supremely sensitive man, it is easy to
exaggerate the misery and to minimise the joy of the sub-human world. But
our business here is with the process and its results in man himself, in
whom alone are possible the heights of ecstasy and the depths of agony: and
the thesis—the sublime thesis, we may avouch—of the present discussion is
that, whatever the balance between the evil of the process of Natural
Selection and the good of its results in the natural state, yet when it is
transmuted, as it may be, by the moral intelligence of man, according to the
principles of race-culture or eugenics, the good of the result can be attained,
more abundantly and incomparably more rapidly, than ever heretofore,
whilst the evil of the process can be abolished altogether. True or false, is
this not a sublime thesis?
Nature must be cruel to be kind.—If organic fitness or adaptation to the
circumstances of life is to be secured, Nature must choose for future
parents, out of every new generation, only those whose inborn characters
make for this adaptation, and who, in virtue of the fact we call heredity, will
tend to transmit this fitness to their offspring. Now it is often convenient to
personify Nature, but we must not be misled. The process is really an
automatic, not an intelligently directed one. In order that it shall be possible,
certain conditions must obtain. The choice or selection depends not merely
upon the provision of a variety from which to choose—this being afforded
by what is called variation, which is the correlative of heredity, both being
obvious facts in any well-filled nursery—but also upon the production of
more young creatures than there is or will be room for. (If there be room for
all, so that all survive, there can be no selection, and instead of survival of

the fittest there will be indiscriminate survival.) The choice is effected
amongst this superfluity by an internecine “struggle for existence”: hence
the “murdering and being murdered,” hence the “blood and tears.” The
motor force of the whole process may be symbolised as the “will to life,”
ever seeking to realise itself in more abundance and with more success—
with more and more approximation to perfect adaptation. The will to death
is no ingredient of the will to life. Nature is, so to say, by no means desirous
of the process of “murdering and being murdered”: very much on the
contrary. It is life, more life, and fitter life, that is her desire: the “murdering
and being murdered,” the “blood and tears” are no part of her aim. But they
are inevitable, though lamentable, if her aim is to be realised. She must be
cruel to be kind—a little cruel to be very kind.[6]
It is imaginable, though no more, that natural selection, in certain
circumstances, might have worked otherwise: the penalty for less as against
greater fitness might imaginably have been not death but merely sterility—
the denial of future parenthood. This is the ideal of race-culture. Had this
been possible, Nature could have effected her end, which is fitter and fuller
life, without having incidentally to mete out premature death to such an
overwhelming majority of all her creatures. But, actually, this was not
possible: and, unless the end was to be sacrificed, Nature was compelled—
to keep up the figure—summarily to kill right and left. Permitted to reach
maturity, the unfit as well as the fit would multiply; and since, in general,
the lower the form of life the greater its fertility, the species could not
possibly advance, or even maintain itself at the level already gained.
To drop the figure, the process is a mechanical and automatic one, and its
appalling wastefulness and indisputable cruelty are inevitably involved,
whilst it so remains.
Intelligence may be kind to be kinder.—But—and here is the great event
—this mechanical, automatic, non-intelligent process has latterly given
birth to intelligence, the moral intelligence of man: and the question now to
be answered is, what modification can intelligence effect in the moral-
immoral process that has created it? Must intelligence abrogate that process
altogether, as Huxley declares, on the grounds of its murderous methods?
Must intelligence simply look on, recognise, but not reconstruct? Must
intelligence reverse the process—as indeed it is now doing in many cases—
so that in the new environment of which itself is a factor, that which

formerly was unfitness shall become fitness, and vice versâ? Or is it
conceivable that intelligence can transmute the process, so that, whilst
hitherto mechanical, automatic, and therefore inevitably murderous, it shall
become intelligent, pressing towards the sublime end, and reforming the
murderous means?
Hear Mr. Galton himself (Sociological Papers, 1905, p. 52):—
“Purely passive, or what may be styled mechanical evolution,
displays the awe-inspiring spectacle of a vast eddy of organic
turmoil ... it is moulded by blind and wasteful processes,
namely, by an extravagant production of raw material and the
ruthless rejection of all that is superfluous, through the
blundering steps of trial and error.... Evolution is in any case a
grand phantasmagoria, but it assumes an infinitely more
interesting aspect under the knowledge that the intelligent
action of the human will is, in some small measure, capable of
directing its course. Man has the power of doing this largely so
far as the evolution of humanity is concerned; he has already
affected the quality and distribution of organic life so widely
that the changes on the surface of the earth, merely through his
disforestings and agriculture, would be recognisable from a
distance as great as that of the moon.”
Hear also Sir E. Ray Lankester, in the Romanes Lecture[7] for 1905: “Man
is ... a product of the definite and orderly evolution which is universal, a
being resulting from and driven by the one great nexus of mechanism which
we call Nature. He stands alone, face to face with that relentless
mechanism. It is his destiny to understand and to control it.”
“Nature's insurgent son,” Professor Lankester calls man in this lecture: and
yet again there recurs that mighty aphorism of Bacon, which might well be
printed on every page of these chapters, “Nature is to be commanded only
by obeying her.” The struggle for existence is the terrible fact of Nature, but
is only a means to an end. It is our destiny to command the end whilst
humanising the means.
The struggle for existence.—The ideal of eugenics or race-culture is to
abolish the brutal elements of the struggle for existence whilst gaining its
great end. The nature of this struggle is commonly misapprehended and, as

I cannot improve upon the words of Professor Lankester, I shall freely use
them in the attempt to show what it really is. He says:—
“The world, the earth's surface, is practically full, that is to say,
fully occupied. Only one pair of young can grow up to take the
place of the pair—male and female—which have launched a
dozen, or it may be as many as a hundred thousand, young
individuals on the world.... The ‘struggle for existence’ of
Darwin is the struggle amongst all the superabundant young of
a given species, in a given area, to gain the necessary food, to
escape voracious enemies, and gain protection from excesses of
heat, cold, moisture, and dryness. One pair in the new
generation—only one pair—survive for every parental pair.
Animal population does not increase: ‘Increase and multiply’
has never been said by Nature to her lower creatures. Locally,
and from time to time, owing to exceptional changes, a species
may multiply here and decrease there; but it is important to
realise that the ‘struggle for existence’ in Nature—that is to say,
among the animals and plants of this earth untouched by man—
is a desperate one, however tranquil and peaceful the battlefield
may appear to us. The struggle for existence takes place, not as
a clever French writer glibly informs his readers, between
different species, but between individuals of the same species,
brothers and sisters and cousins.... In Nature's struggle for
existence, death, immediate obliteration, is the fate of the
vanquished, whilst the only reward to the victors—few, very
few, but rare and beautiful in the fitness which has carried them
to victory—is the permission to reproduce their kind—to carry
on by heredity to another generation the specific qualities by
which they triumphed.
“It is not generally realised how severe is the pressure and
competition in Nature—not between different species, but
between the immature population of one and the same species,
precisely because they are of the same species and have exactly
the same needs.... A distinctive quality in the beauty of natural
productions (in which man delights) is due to the unobtrusive
yet tremendous slaughter of the unfit which is incessantly going

on and the absolute restriction of the privilege of parentage to
the happy few who attain to the standard described as ‘the
fittest.’”
The survival of the fittest.—Now let us look closely at this most famous
of all Spencer's phrases, “the survival of the fittest,” and try to understand
its full and exact meaning. There is no phrase in any language so frequently
misinterpreted. Even a writer who should know better makes this mistake.
Mr. H. G. Wells speaks[8] of “that same lack of a fine appreciation of facts
that enabled Herbert Spencer to coin those two most unfortunate terms
Evolution and the Survival of the Fittest. The implication is that the best
reproduces and survives. Now really it is the better that survives and not the
best.” What the correction is supposed to signify I do not know, but the
whole passage is nonsense. The implication is neither that the best nor the
better survive, but the fittest—or if Mr. Wells prefers, for it matters not one
whit—the fitter. This lack of a fine appreciation of words is not,
unfortunately, peculiar to Mr. Wells. There is no word in the language that
more exactly expresses the fact than the word fittest: as Darwin recognised
when he promptly incorporated Spencer's phrase in the second edition of
the Origin of Species as the best interpretation of his own phrase “natural
selection”![9] Fitness is the capacity to fit: a thing that is fit is a thing that
fits. A living creature survives in proportion as it fits its environment—the
physical environment in the case of vegetables and the lower animals, the
physical, social, intellectual and moral environment in the case of man. The
kind of glove that most perfectly fits the hand is the fittest glove and will
survive in the struggle for existence between gloves. If, instead of a glove,
we take a living creature, say a microbe, the kind of microbe that best fits
into the environment provided by, say, human blood, is the fittest and will
survive and be the cause of our commonest disease. Thus the tubercle
bacillus is at once the fittest microbe and, not the best, but the worst.
Among ourselves, the newspaper devoted to yesterday's murder is the fittest
and survives, ousting the newspaper which reckons with the crucifixion, or
the murder of Socrates or Bruno. In a society of blackguardism, the biggest
blackguard is the fittest man and will survive: he is also the worst. In
another society the best man is the fittest and survives. The capacity to fit
into the environment is the capacity that determines survival: it has no
moral connotation whatever. If Herbert Spencer had written the survival of

the better, as Mr. Wells desires, he would have written palpable nonsense:
as it was he used the fittest word—in this case also the best, because the
truest. Referring to the queen-bee, who destroys her own daughters, Darwin
says, “undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; maternal love or
maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the same to
the inexorable principle of natural selection.”
If natural selection were the survival of the better, as Mr. Wells would have
us believe, there would be nothing for eugenics or race-culture to do: and
heaven would long ago have come to earth. If in all ages the better men and
women had survived and become parents, earth would long ago have
become a demi-paradise indeed, there would have been no arrests, no
reversals in the history of human progress, and life would be already what,
some day, it will be, when there is achieved the eugenic ideal—which is
precisely that the best or better members of our race shall be the selected for
the supreme profession of parenthood. In other words, the eugenic ideal, the
ideal of race-culture, is to ensure that the fittest shall be the best. Always,
everywhere, without a solitary exception, human, animal or vegetable, the
fittest have ultimately survived and must survive. Once realise what is the
meaning of the word fit—best seen in the verb “to fit”—and we shall see
that, as Herbert Spencer pointed out in his overwhelming reply to the late
Lord Salisbury's attack on evolution, the idea of the survival of the fittest is
a necessity of thought.[10]
But, alas, the idea of the survival of the best or the better is not a necessity
of thought! The fittest microbes are the worst from our point of view,
because they are most inimical to the highest forms of life; the fittest
newspaper may be the worst, because it panders to the worst but most
widespread and irresponsible elements in human nature; everything and
every one that succeeds, succeeds because it or he fits the conditions: but to
succeed is not necessarily to be good. Indeed everything that exists at all,
living or lifeless, an atom or an animal, a molecule or a moon, exists
because it can exist, because it fits the conditions of existence: there is no
moral question involved, but only a mechanical one. The business of
eugenics or race-culture is to make an environment, conditions of law and
public opinion, such that the fittest shall be the best and the best the fittest
therein.

If memory may be trusted, the primary meaning of the word fit has not
hitherto been called in by any one to elucidate the meaning of Spencer's
phrase: perhaps it may be hoped that we shall at last begin to understand it,
if we remember that a thing is fit because it fits. It is best not to be too
sanguine, however, and therefore we may attempt to illustrate the case from
another aspect.
Survival-value.—Every living thing and nearly every character or feature
of a living thing that survives, survives because it has value or capacity for
life—which may be called, in Professor Lloyd Morgan's phrase, survival-
value. The character that gives an organism survival-value, or value for life,
the character that enables it to fit its environment, may be of any order. The
atom, as I have said elsewhere, is an organism writ small. The kinds of
atoms that have survived in the age-long struggle for existence between
atoms are those that have survival-value on account of their internal
stability: as Empedocles argued ages ago. In the case of living things, which
individually die, it is evident that the capacity to reproduce themselves is
one of supreme survival-value. If mankind lost this capacity, all its other
characters of survival-value, such as intelligence, would obviously avail it
nought. Certain valuable members of society may fall short in this cardinal
respect, and therefore become extinct. Indeed, other forms of survival-
value, as we shall see, seem to be in large measure inimical to fertility: and
this is perhaps the chief obstacle to eugenics.[11]
Fertility apart, the character having survival-value may take a thousand
forms. In the case of the parasitic microbe it is an evil character, the power
to produce toxins or poisons. In the case of the tiger it is the possession of
large and powerful bones and claws and muscles and teeth. In the case of
the ox it is a complicated and efficient digestive apparatus, enabling it to fit
into a food-environment which is too innutritious to sustain the life of
creatures not so endowed. Nature seeks only the fittest; not the best but the
best-adapted; she asks no moral questions. A Keats, a Spinoza, or a
Schubert must go under if his factors of survival-value do not enable him to
resist those of the tubercle bacillus, its toxins or poisons. She welcomes the
parasitic tapeworm, all hooks and mouth or stomach, because these give it
survival-value; and so on.
The business of eugenics or race-culture, then, is to create an environment
such that those characters which we desire as moral and intelligent beings

shall be endowed with the highest possible survival-value, as against those
which ally so many men with the microbe and the tapeworm. There are
those who live in society to-day, and reproduce their like, in virtue of the
poisons they produce, in virtue of their tenacious hooks and voracious
stomachs. If society be organised so that these are factors of more survival-
value than the disinterested search for truth, or mother-love, or the power to
create great poetry or music—then, according to the inevitable and
universal law of the survival of the fittest, our parasites will oust our poets
and our poisoners our philosophers. These things have happened and may
happen again at any time. It does not matter that the good thing, in virtue of
survival-value then superior, has been evolved. Nature never gives a final
verdict in favour of good or bad but only and always in favour of the fit. Let
the conditions change, so that rapacity fits them better than righteousness,
or—as in a completely “collectivist” state—vegetableness rather than
virility, and the thing we call high will go under before the thing we call
low. Nature recognises neither high nor low but only fitness or value for life
in the conditions that actually obtain. These laws enthroned and dethroned
the civilisations of the past: they have enthroned and may dethrone us. But
this end is not inevitable, since man—and this is his great character—not
merely reacts to his environment, as all creatures must, but can create and
recreate it. The business of eugenics or race-culture is to create an
environment such that the human characters of which the human spirit
approves shall in it outweigh those of which we disapprove. Make it fittest
to be best and the best will win—not because it is the best, but because it is
the fittest: had the worst been the fittest it would have won. In society to-
day both forms of the process may be observed. The balance between them
determines its destiny. It is the business of eugenics to throw the whole
weight of human purpose into the scale of the good.
Evolution not necessarily progress.—No excessive space has been
devoted to this distinction between the fittest and the best and to the real
meaning of Spencer's famous phrase, if perchance it should avail in any
degree to dispel one of the commonest of the many common delusions
regarding the nature of organic evolution and its outcome. This delusion is
that progress is an inevitable law of nature.[12] The great process of history,
as revealed by biology, displays as its supreme fact the occurrence of
progress. The principles of evolution teach that this progress—as, for
instance, in the evolution of man—is a product of the survival of the fittest;

whilst we are also reminded that the survival of the fittest is a necessary
truth: but it does not follow that progress is inevitable.
In the first place, natural selection involves selection. Where all the young
members of a new generation of any species survive, and parenthood
becomes not a privilege but a common and universal function, plainly the
process is in abeyance: and, in the second place, since the survival of the
fittest is not the survival of the best, but only the survival of the best
adapted, the process may at any time take the form of retrogression rather
than that of progress. The assumption that, because progress has been
effected through natural selection, we need do no more than fold our hands,
or unfold them merely to applaud, involves the denial of one of the most
familiar facts of natural history—the fact of racial degeneration. The
parasitic microbes, the parasitic worms, the barnacles, innumerable living
creatures both animal and vegetable, individuals and races of mankind, to-
day as in all ages—these prove only too clearly that the process of the
survival of the fittest may make as definitely for retrogression in one case as
for progress in another.
By all means let us infer from the facts of organic evolution the conclusion
that further progress must surely be possible, so much progress having
already been achieved as is represented by the difference between inorganic
matter or the amœba or microbe on the one hand, and man on the other
hand. But let us most earnestly beware of the false and disastrous optimism
which should suppose that because the survival of the fittest has often, and
indeed most often, meant the survival of the best, it means always that and
nothing else. On the contrary, we must learn that, even in natural
circumstances, apart from any interference by man, the survival of the
fittest often means racial degeneration—a tapeworm kept in spirits should
stand upon the study mantelpiece of all who think with Mr. Wells that the
survival of the fittest means the survival of the better; and still more notably
we must learn that the interference of man in the case of his own species,
sometimes of evil intent, sometimes for the highest ends, with the process
of natural selection, has repeatedly led, and is now in large part leading, to
nothing other than that process of racial degeneration of which the
tapeworm and the barnacle should be our perpetual reminders. The case
becomes serious enough when man interferes with the process of selection
merely with the effect of suspending it, wholly or in part: but it becomes far

more serious when his interference constitutes a reversal of the process.
This most supremely disastrous of all conceivable consequences of man's
intelligence and moral sense is known as reversed selection, and must be
carefully studied hereafter. Meanwhile, we must devote some space to a
most important consideration—namely, that though Nature is impartial in
her choice, and will, for instance, allow the poisons of a microbe such as the
tubercle bacillus to destroy the life of a Spinoza or a Keats or a Schubert,
yet, on the whole, the survival-value of the mental, spiritual, or psychical in
all its forms does persistently tend to outweigh that of the physical or
material—of this great truth the evolution and dominance of man himself
being the supreme example.
The very fact of progress, which I would define as the emergence and
increasing dominance of mind, demonstrates—it being remembered that
natural selection has no moral prejudices—that even in a world of claws
and toxins the psychical must have possessed sufficient survival-value to
survive. It is quite evident that even the lowliest psychical characters, such
as sharpness of sensation, discrimination, and memory, must be of value in
the struggle for life. More and more we might expect to find, and do
actually find in the course of evolution, that creatures live by their wits,
rather than by force of bone or muscle. The psychical was certainly given
no unfair start—on the contrary. It has had to struggle for its emergence; it
has emerged only where there has been struggle and has done so because it
could—because of its superior survival-value. It has the right which belongs
to might—in the world of life there is no other.[13]
By no means less evident is the inherently superior survival-value of the
psychical, if we turn from its aspects of sensation and intelligence to those
which are all summed up under the word love. Notwithstanding Nietzsche's
mad misconception of the Darwinian theory, no one who has studied the
facts of reproduction and its conditions in the world of life can question the
incalculable survival-value of love in animal history. The success of those
most ancient of all societies, of which the ant-heap and the bee-hive are the
types, depends absolutely upon the self-sacrifice of the individual. If we
pass upwards from the insects to the lowest vertebrates, we find the
survival-value of love proved by the comparison between various species of
fish, and its increasing importance may be traced upwards through
amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals in succession, up to man. Natural

selection thus actually selects morality. Without love no baby could live for
twenty-four hours. Every human being that exists or ever has existed or
ever will exist is a product of mother-love or foster-mother-love, and I am
well entitled to say, as I have so often said, no morals, no man. The creature
in whom organic morality is at its height has become the lord of the earth in
virtue of that morality which natural selection has selected, not from any
moral bias, but because of its superior survival-value.

CHAPTER IV
THE SELECTION OF MIND

“Many are the mighty things, but none is mightier than man.... He
conquers by his devices the tenant of the fields.”—Sophocles.
“L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la Nature; mais c'est un
roseau pensant.”—Pascal.
“The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul.”—
Burchell.

Whereas, in its beginning, mind, or the psychical in all its aspects, was
merely a useful property of body, all organic progress may be conceived in
terms of a change in this original relation between them. In man, the mental
or psychical has become the essential thing, and the body its servant. We are
well prepared, then, to accept the proposition that in our own day and for
our own species, the plane upon which natural selection works has largely
been transferred, and, indeed, if any further progress is to be effected, must
be transferred, from the bodily or physical to the mental or psychical. A
certain most remarkable fact in the anatomy of man may be cited, as we
shall see, in support of this proposition.
We need not venture upon the controversial ground of the relation or
ultimate unity of mind and body; nor need we set up any suggestion of
antagonism between them. All, however, are absolutely agreed that the

psychical in all its forms, whatever it really be, has a consistent relation of
the most intimate kind with that part of the body which we call the nervous
system. For our present purposes the nature of this relation matters nothing
at all, and in place of the phrase, the “selection of mind,” I should be quite
content, if the reader so prefers, to speak of the selection of nerve or
nervous selection. And if I may for a moment anticipate the conclusion, we
may say that, in and for the future, the process of selection for life and
parenthood, as it occurs in mankind, must be based, if the highest results are
to be obtained, upon the principle that the selection of bodily qualities other
than those of the nervous system is of value only in so far as these serve the
nervous or psychical qualities. For practical and for theoretical purposes we
must accept the dictum of Professor Forel that “the brain is the man”—or,
to be more accurate and less epigrammatic, the nervous system is the man.
If, then, we counsel or approve of any selection of bone or muscle or
digestion, or any other bodily organ or function; if we select for physical
health, physical energy, longevity, or immunity from disease—our estimate
of these things, one and all, must be wholly determined by the services
which they can perform for the nervous system, whether as its instruments,
its guarantors of health and persistence, or otherwise. But we are not to
regard any of these things as ends in themselves—notwithstanding the fact
that this temptation will constantly beset us. So to do is implicitly to deny
and renounce the supreme character of man—which is that, in him, mind or
nervous system is the master, and the rest of the body, with all its attributes,
the servant.
The body still necessary.—Should anyone suppose that the principles here
laid down would speedily involve us, if executed, in a host of disasters, let
him reconsider that conclusion. Utterly ignorant or jocose persons have
hinted, more or less definitely, that if a race of mankind were to be bred for
brains, the product would be a most misbegotten creature approaching as
near as possible—and that imperfectly enough—to the ideal of disembodied
thought, a creature monstrous as to head, impotent and puny as to limbs,
and, in effect, the least effective of living creatures. This supposition may
be commended as the last word in the way of nonsense. It depends upon an
abysmal ignorance of the necessary and permanent relations which subsist
between mind and body. It assumes that the healthy mind can be obtained
without the healthy body; it is totally unaware that the nervous system
cannot work properly unless the blood be well aerated by active lungs and

distributed by a healthy heart; that unless certain glands, of which these
people have never heard, are acting properly, the nervous system falls into
decadence, and the man becomes an imbecile. To breed for brains is most
assuredly to breed for body too: only that the end in view will guide us as to
what points of body to breed for. For instance, it would prevent us from
having any foolish ambitions as to increasing the stature of the race, or the
average weight of its muscular apparatus. Stature may be a point to breed
for in the race-culture of giraffes and muscle in the race-culture of the
hippopotamus: but such bodily characters are of no moment for man, who is
above all things a mind. Whilst we shall pay little attention to these, we or
our descendants will be abundantly concerned with the preservation and
culture of those many bodily characters upon which the health and vigour
and sanity and durability of the nervous system depend.
Further, notwithstanding all the nonsense that has been written concerning
the man of the future, with bald and swollen head, be-goggled eyes,
toothless gums, and wicker-work skeleton, those who know the alphabet of
physiology and psychology are warranted in believing that wisely to breed
for brains will be to breed for beauty too—not of the skin-deep but of the
mind-deep variety—and also for grace and energy and versatility of
physique. Those who worship brawn as brawn may be commended to the
ox; those who respect brawn as the instrument of brain, and value it not by
its horse-power but by its capacity as the agent of purpose, will find nothing
to complain of in the kinds of men and women whom a wise eugenics has
for its ideal.
The erect attitude.—And now we must briefly consider that “most
remarkable fact in the anatomy of man” to which allusion was made in the
first paragraph. It is that, as the most philosophic anatomists are now
coming to believe, the body of man actually represents the goal of physical
evolution. Of course the common opinion is, quite apart from science, that
man is the highest of creatures, and that there is no more to be expected.
But the doctrine of evolution regards man as the latest, not necessarily the
last, term in an age-long process which is by no means completed, and from
the evolutionary point of view it is thus a daring and, at first hearing, a
preposterous thing to say that, so far as the physical aspects of organic
evolution are concerned, the body of man apparently represents the logical

and final conclusion of the age-long process which has produced it. Let us
attempt very briefly to outline the argument.
We may say that a great step was taken when from the chaos of the
invertebrate or backbone-less animals there emerged the first vertebrates.
This unquestionably occurred in the sea, the first backbone being evolved in
a fish-like creature which, in the course of time, developed two lateral fins.
These became modified into two pairs of limbs, the sole function of which
was locomotion. In the next group of vertebrates, the amphibia—such as the
frog—we see these limbs terminating each in five digits. (The frog, so to
say, decided that we should count in tens.) Now some creatures have
specialised their limbs at the cost of certain fingers. The horse, for instance,
walks on the nails (the hoofs) of its middle fingers and its middle toes. In
the main line of ascent, however, none of these precious fingers (and toes)
—how precious let the typist or the pianist say—have been sacrificed.
There has been, however, in later ages a tendency towards the specialisation
of the front limbs. Used for locomotion at times, they are also used for
grasping and tearing and holding, as in the case of the tiger, a member of
the carnivora, a relatively late and high group of mammals. But the
carnivore does not carry its food to its mouth, and the cat carries her kittens
in her mouth and not with her paws. In the apes and monkeys, however, this
specialisation goes further, and things are actually carried by the hands to
the mouth—a very great advance on the tiger, who fixes his food with his
“hands,” and then carries his mouth to it. Food to mouth instead of mouth to
food is a much later stage in evolution, a fact which may be recalled when
we watch the table manners of certain people. Finally, in man the
specialisation reaches its natural limit by the complete liberation of the fore-
limbs from the purposes of locomotion—though the crawling gait of a child
recalls the base degrees by which we did ascend.
This great change depends upon an alteration in the axis of the body. The
first fishes, like present fishes, were horizontal animals, but gradually the
axis has become altered, in the main line of progress, until the semi-erect
apes yield to man the erect, or “man the erected,” as Stevenson called him.
The son of horizontal animals, he is himself vertical: the “pronograde” has
become “orthograde.” Thus the phrase, “the ascent of man,” may be read in
two senses. This capital fact has depended upon a shifting of the centre of
gravity of the body, which in adult man lies behind the hip-joints, whereas

in his ancestors and in the small baby (still in the four-footed stage) it lies in
front of the hip-joints. Thus, whilst other creatures tend naturally to fall
forwards, so that they must use their fore-limbs for support and locomotion,
the whole body of man above the hip-joints tends naturally to fall
backwards, being prevented from doing so by two great ligaments which lie
in front of the hip-joints and have a unique development in man. The
complete erection of the spine means that the skull, instead of being
suspended in front, is now poised upon the top of the spinal column. The
field of vision is enormously enlarged, and it is possible to sweep a great
extent of horizon at a moment's notice. But the complete discharge of the
fore-limbs from the function of locomotion has far vaster consequences,
especially as they now assume the function of educating their master, the
brain, and enabling him to employ them for higher and higher purposes.
Thus, when we ask ourselves whether there is any further goal for physical
evolution, the answer is that none can be seen. So far as physical evolution
is concerned the goal has been attained with the erect attitude. Future
changes in the anatomy of man will not be positive but negative. There
doubtless will be a certain lightening of the ship, the casting overboard of
inherited superfluities, but that is all: except that we may hope for certain
modifications in the way of increasing the adaptation of the body to the
erect attitude, which at present bears very hardly in many ways upon the
body of man, and much more so upon the body of woman.
Thus race-culture will certainly not aim at the breeding of physical freaks of
any kind, nor yet at such things as stature. It must begin by clearly
recognising what are the factors which in man possess supreme survival-
value, and it must aim at their reinforcement rather than at the maintenance
of those factors which, of dominant value in lower forms of life, have been
superseded in him. A few words will suffice to show in what fashion man
has already shed vital characters which, superfluous and burdensome for
him, have in former times been of the utmost survival-value.
The denudation of man.—As contrasted with the whole mass of his
predecessors, man comes into the world denuded of defensive armour,
destitute of offensive weapons, possessed alone of the potentialities of the
psychical. So far as defence is concerned, he has neither fur nor feathers nor
scales, but is the most naked and thinnest skinned of animals. In his
Autobiography, Spencer tells us how he and Huxley, sitting on the cliff at

St. Andrews and watching some boys bathing, “marvelled over the fact,
seeming especially strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes,
that human beings should dominate over all other creatures and play the
wonderful part they do on the earth.”[14] But man is not only without
armour against either living enemies or cold; he is also without weapons of
attack. His teeth are practically worthless in this respect, not only on
account of their small size but also because his chin, a unique possession,
and the shape of his jaws, make them singularly unfit for catching or
grasping. For claws he has merely nails, capable only of the feeblest
scratching; he can discharge no poisons from his mouth; he cannot envelop
himself in darkness in order to hide himself; his speediest and most
enduring runner is a breathless laggard. And, lastly, he is at first almost
bereft of instinct, has to be burnt in order to dread the fire, and cannot find
his own way to the breast. His sole instrument of dominance is his mind in
all its attributes.
On the grounds thus indicated, we must be wholly opposed to all proposals
for race education and race-culture, and to all social practices, which
assume more or less consciously that, for all his boasting, man is after all
only an animal: whilst we must applaud the selection and culture of the
physical exactly in so far as, but no further than, it makes for health and
strength of the psychical—or, if the reader dislikes these expressions, the
health and strength of that particular part of the physical which we call the
nervous system.
It used to be generally asserted that whilst, in a civilised community, we do
not expect to find the biggest or most muscular man King or Prime
Minister, yet amongst savage tribes it is the physical, muscle and bone and
brutality, that determines leadership. This, however, we now know to be
untrue even for the earliest stages of society that anthropologists can
recognise. The leader of the savage tribe is not the biggest man but the
cleverest. The suggestion is therefore that, even in the earliest stages of
human society, the plane of selection has already been largely transferred
from brawn to brain or from physique to psyche. It has always been so, we
may be well sure. The Drift men of Taubach, living in the inter-glacial
period, could kill the full-grown elephant and rhinoceros. Says Professor
Ranke: “It is the mind of man that shows itself superior to the most

powerful brute force, even where we meet him for the first time.” This
remains true whether the brute force be displayed in brutes or in other men.
The great fact of intelligence, as against material apparatus of any kind and
even as against rigid instinct, is its limitless applicability. With this one
instrument man achieves what without it could be achieved only by a
creature who combined in his own person every kind of material apparatus,
offensive and defensive, locomotor or what not, which animal life, and
vegetable life too, have invented in the past—and not even by such a
creature. Man is a poor pedestrian, but his mind makes locomotives which
rival or surpass the fish of the sea, the antelope on land, if not yet the bird of
the air; his teeth are of poor quality, but his mind supplies him with artificial
ones and enables him to cook and otherwise to prepare his food. All the
physical methods are self-limited, but the method of mind has no limits; it
is even more than cumulative, and multiplies its capacities by geometrical
progression.
The cult of muscle.—A word must really be said here, in accordance with
all the foregoing argument, against the recent revival of what may be called
the Cult of Muscle. This cult of muscle, or belief in physical culture, so
called, as the true means of race-culture, undoubtedly requires to have its
absurd pretensions censured. We now have many flourishing schools of
physical culture which desire to persuade us to a belief in the monstrous
anachronism that, even in man, muscle and bone are still pre-eminent. They
want as many people as possible to believe that the only thing really worth
aiming at is what they understand by physical culture. They pride
themselves upon knowing the names and positions of all the muscles in the
body, and on being able to provide us with instruments to develop all these
muscles: they are there and they ought to be developed, and you are a mere
parody of what a man ought to be unless they are developed—none of them
must be neglected. Many people have been persuaded of these doctrines,
and there is no doubt that the physical culture schools do thus develop a
large number of muscles which have no present service for man and would
otherwise have been allowed to rest in a decent obscurity.
In order to prove this point, let us instance a few muscles which it is utterly
absurd to regard as still possessing any survival-value for man. In the sole
of the foot there are four distinct layers of muscles, by means of which it is
theoretically possible to turn each individual toe to the left or the right,

independently of its neighbours, and to move the various parts of each toe
upon themselves, just as in the case of the fingers. All this muscular
apparatus is a mere survival, worth nothing at all for the special purposes of
the human foot. In point of fact the human foot is now decadent, and
probably not more than two or three specimens of feet in a hundred contain
the complete normal equipment of muscles, bones and joints—as Sir
William Turner showed many years ago. Thus many feet are possessed of
muscles designed to act upon joints which have not been developed at all in
the feet in question and which, if they were there, would not be of the
smallest use. To take another instance, we do not now use our external ears
for the purpose of catching sound, though we still possess muscles which, if
thrown into action, would move the external ear in various directions.
Again, there is a flat, thin stratum of muscle on the front of the neck,
corresponding to a muscle which in the dog and the horse is quite
important, but which is of no use to us. All would be agreed as to the
absurdity of devoting continued conscious effort to the development of
these particular muscles; but in point of fact we have a whole host of
muscles which are in a similar case, and which are nevertheless objects of
the most tender solicitude on the part of the physical culturist. In general,
this modern craze, whilst highly profitable to those who foster it, is most
misguided and reactionary. Modern knowledge of heredity teaches us that
our descendants will not profit muscularly in the slightest degree because of
our devotion to these relics: the blacksmith's baby has promise of no bigger
biceps than any one else's. Further, the over-doing of muscular culture is
responsible for the consumption of a large amount of energy. A muscle is a
highly vital and active organ, requiring a large amount of nourishment,
which its possessor has to obtain, consume, digest and distribute. The more
time and energy spent in sustaining useless muscles, the less is available for
immeasurably more important concerns. Man does not live by brawn alone:
he does live by brain alone.
Strength versus skill.—So far as true race-culture is concerned, we should
regard our muscles merely as servants or instruments of the will. Since we
have learnt to employ external forces for our purposes, the mere bulk of a
muscle is now a matter of little importance. Of the utmost importance, on
the other hand, is the power to co-ordinate and graduate the activity of our
muscles, so that they may become highly trained servants. This is a matter,
however, not of muscle at all but of nervous education. Its foundation

cannot be laid by mechanical things like dumb-bells and exercises, but by
games, in which will and purpose and co-ordination are incessantly
employed. In other words, the only physical culture worth talking about is
nervous culture.
The principles here laid down are daily defied in very large measure in our
nurseries, our schools, and our barrack yards. The play of a child,
spontaneous and purposeful, is supremely human and characteristic.
Although, when considered from the outside, it is simply a means of
muscular development, properly considered it is really the means of
nervous development. Here we see muscles used as human muscles should
alone be used—as instruments of mind. In schools the same principles
should be recognised. From the biological and psychological point of view
the playing-field is immeasurably superior to the gymnasium. But it is in
the barrack yard that the pitiable confusion between the survival-value of
mind and muscle respectively in man is most ludicrously and disastrously
exemplified.
The glorious truth upon which we appear to act is that man is an animated
machine; that the business of the soldier is not to think, not to be an
individual, but to be an assemblage of muscles. We see the marks of this
idea even in a fine poem: “Their's not to reason why, their's but to do or
die”—which, of course, might just as well be said of a stud of horses or
motor-cars. Further, our worship of the machine is, consistently enough, an
unintelligent worship. We do not even recognise the best conditions for its
action. Every year hundreds of young soldiers, originally healthy, have their
hearts and lungs and other vital organs permanently injured by the imbecile
attitude of chest—that of abnormal expansion—which they are required to
adopt during hard work. Army doctors are now protesting against this, but it
is in accordance with the fitness of things that the cult of muscle as against
intelligence should be unintelligent.
I repeat that whilst in the study of race-culture the physical cannot be
ignored, since the psychical is so largely dependent upon it, yet the physical
is of worth to us only in so far as it serves the psychical. The race the
culture of which we propose to undertake has long ago determined to
abandon the physical in itself as an instrument of success. We are not
attempting the culture of the cretaceous reptiles, which staked their all upon
muscle, and finally, having become as large as houses—and as agile—

suffered extinction. We are attempting the culture of a species which, so far
as the physical is concerned, has long ago crossed the Rubicon or burnt its
boats. Even if Mr. Sandow and the drill-sergeant had their way to the
utmost, and, having finally eliminated all traces of mind, succeeded in
producing the strongest and most perfect physical machine that could be
made from the human body, the species so produced would go down in a
generation before the elements or before any living species that may be
named. Man has staked his all upon mind. The only physical development
that is really worth anything to such a race is that which educates
intelligence and morality, on the one hand, and serves for their expression,
on the other.
If there is any salient and irresistible tendency in our civilisation to-day, it is
the persistent decadence of muscle and of all of which muscle is the type, as
an instrument of survival-value. The development of machinery, much
deplored by the short-sighted, is in the direct line of progress, because it
reduces the importance of muscle and throws all its weight into the scale of
mind. Hewers of wood and drawers of water are becoming less and less
necessary, not because mechanical force is not needed but because the
human intelligence is learning how to supersede the human machine as its
source. Every development of machinery makes the man who can merely
offer his muscles of less value to the community. Long ago—not so very
long ago in some cases—it was quite sufficient for a man to be able to say
“I am a good machine:” he was worth his keep and had his chance of
becoming a parent; but the man whom society wants now-a-days is not the
man who is a good machine but the man who can make one. These
elementary truths are hidden, however, from the political quacks who
discourse to us upon unemployment.
Herbert Spencer's remark that it is necessary to be a good animal has an
element of truth in it which was utterly ignored and needed proclamation at
that time; but it is necessary to be a good animal only in so far as that state
makes for being a good man—and not an iota further.
The present interest in many most important aspects of physical education,
such as may be summed up under the phrase “school hygiene,” must not
blind us to the great principle that physical education is a means and not an
end. Our present educational system, which permits schooling to end just
when it should begin, or rather sooner, and which, even through our

Government Departments, permits boys to be used as little more than
animated machines, such as telegraph boys—is very largely responsible for
the great national evil of unemployment, which we treat with soup-kitchens.
We shall revise a large proportion of our educational, political and social
methods just so soon as—but not before—we get into our heads the idea
that in human society, and pre-eminently in society to-day, the survival-
value of mind and consequently the selection of mind must predominate
over the survival-value and consequent selection of muscle. Further,
whatever factors tend to enhance the survival-value of the physical are ipso
facto making for retrogression and a return to the order of the beast.
Whatever tend to enhance the survival-value of the psychical—by which I
most assuredly include not only intelligence but, for instance, motherhood
—are ipso facto forces of progress. The products of progress are not
machinery but men, and the well-drilled-machine idea of a man ought to be
as obsolete as more than one recent war has proved it disastrous.
There is here to be read no pessimistic suggestion that the psychical is in
any permanent danger. No one can think so who knows its strength and the
relative impotence of the physical, but it is certainly possible that the course
of progress may be greatly delayed in any given nation or race by worship
of the physical, or even, as Sparta shows, by worship of what may be called
the physical virtues as against the moral and intellectual virtues. But those
who are interested in the survival of any particular race or nation have to
remember that arrest or retardation of progress therein, relatively to its
wiser neighbours, must, before long, result in its utter downfall.
What are we to choose?—The argument that the selection of mind has
been dominant throughout human history is reinforced by such knowledge
of that history as we possess. There is no record of any race that established
itself in virtue of great stature or exceptional muscular strength. Even in
cases of the most purely military dominance, it was not force as such, but
discipline and method, that determined success; whilst some of the greatest
soldiers in history have been physically the smallest. The statement of the
anthropologists, already alluded to, regarding the selection of the leading
men in primitive tribes, may safely be taken as always true: selection in
human society has always been, in the main, selection of that which, for
survival-value, is the dominant character of man, mind in its widest sense.
We shall see, later, that physical eugenics can by no means be ignored: but

our guiding principle must be that the physical is of worth only in so far as
it serves the psychical, and is worse than worthless in so far as it does not. It
would surely be well, for instance, that we should breed for “energy,” to use
Mr. Galton's term: but the energy we desire, and the energy he commends,
is nervous, not muscular. The confusion between two radically different
things, vitality and muscularity, is, however, almost universal, though it will
not stand a moment's examination. In a volume devoted to personal hygiene
I have discussed this point, which is of real moment both for the individual
and for the theory of eugenics.[15]
It is of interest to note, in passing from this question, that inherent facts of
the human constitution would interdict us if we thought it a fit ideal to
breed for stature or bulk. Giants are essentially morbid—not favourable but
unfavourable variations. They are very frequently childless and almost
constantly slow-witted. Their condition is really a mild form of a well-
marked and highly characteristic disease known as acromegaly, and
distinguished by great enlargement of the face and extremities. The malady
depends upon peculiarities in the glandular activities of the body: and the
state of these which makes for great stature and bulk makes against
intelligence. It is suggested, then, that any considerable increase of human
bulk and stature could only be obtained at the cost of intelligence. It would
be very dear at the price.
When we come to the subject of selection for parenthood in man through
the preferences exhibited by individuals for members of the opposite sex,
we shall see that what Darwin called “sexual selection” is certainly a reality
in the case of man, whether or not it be so in the case of the lower animals.
We shall see that this most potent factor in human evolution acts even now
very favourably, and is capable of having its value enormously enhanced. In
the selection of husbands, nervous or psychical factors are notably of high
survival-value in civilised communities. In the selection of wives the
survival-value of the physical is still very high: but it may be hoped and
believed that the present tendency is to attach relatively less importance to
them and more to the psychical elements of the chosen. This tendency must
be furthered to the utmost point beyond which the physical requisites for
motherhood would suffer weakening—but no further.
How are we to estimate civic worth?—We have already observed that it is
incorrect to use the word “fit” as if it were synonymous with “worthy.” If

we insist on using this term, which means only “adapted to conditions,” we
must define those conditions. We must say that we desire to further the
production of those who are fit for citizenship, and to disfavour the
production of those who are unfit for citizenship. We shall thereby dispose
at least of those vexatious objectors who tell us that many eminent
criminals are individually superior to many eminent judges. The statement
is doubtless untrue, but if it were true it would still be irrelevant. A criminal
may be individually a remarkable personality, but in so far as he is a
criminal he is unfit for citizenship.
It is far better to use consistently Mr. Galton's phrase, “civic worth,” or, for
short, “worth.” We may here note Mr. Galton's most recent remarks on what
he means by worth:—

“By this I mean the civic worthiness, or the Value to the State
of a person, as it would probably be assessed by experts or, say,
by such of his fellow-workers as have earned the respect of the
community in the midst of which they live. Thus the worth of
soldiers would be such as it would be rated by respected
soldiers, students by students, business men by business men,
artists by artists, and so on. The State is a vastly complex
organism, and the hope of obtaining a Proportional
Representation of its best parts should be an avowed object of
issuing invitations to these gatherings.
“Speaking only for myself, if I had to classify persons
according to Worth, I should consider each of them under the
three heads of Physique, Ability, and Character, subject to the
provision that inferiority in any one of the three should
outweigh superiority in the other two. I rank Physique first,
because it is not only very valuable in itself and allied to many
other good qualities, but has the additional merit of being easily
rated. Ability I should place second on similar grounds, and
Character third, though in real importance it stands first of
all.”[16]
We shall certainly misunderstand this quotation unless we clearly realise
that Mr. Galton is speaking of eugenic worth—that is to say, of worth in
relation to parenthood and heredity. No one, of course, would assert for a
moment that inferiority in the matter of physique outweighed superiority in
ability and character, so far as our estimate of an individual as an individual
is concerned, nor yet so far as our estimate of him as a citizen is concerned.
But from the eugenic standpoint, as a parent of citizens to come, such a
person, though he may have himself saved the State, is on the average
rightly to be regarded as unworthy on the eugenic scale—it being assumed,
of course, that the inferiority of physique in the person in question is either
native and therefore transmissible, or else due to forms of disease, or
poisoning, such as, according to our knowledge of ante-natal pathology,
will probably involve degeneracy on the part of his children. I would add
that love is as precious as ability, if not more so, and that we should aim at
its increase by making parenthood the most responsible act in life, so that
children are born only to those who love children and who will transmit

their high measure of the parental instinct and the tender emotion which is
its correlate.[17]

CHAPTER V
THE MULTIPLICATION OF MAN

“Increase and multiply”

The ceaseless multiplication of man is one of the facts which distinguish
him from all other living species, animal or vegetable.[18]
We must not be misled by such a case as that of the multiplication of rabbits
in Australia. Apart from such circumstances as human interference, the
earth is already crammed with life of a kind, not the highest life nor the
most intense life, but at any rate fully extended life. Man alone multiplies
persistently, irresistibly, and has done so from the very first, so that, arising
locally, he is now diffused over the whole surface of the earth. To quote
from Professor Lankester again: “Man is Nature's rebel. Where Nature says
Die! Man says I will live! According to the law previously in universal
operation man should have been limited in geographical area, killed by
extremes of cold or of heat, subject to starvation if one kind of diet were
unobtainable, and should have been unable to increase and multiply, just as
are his animal relatives, without losing his specific structure.... But man's
wits and his will have enabled him ... to ‘increase and multiply,’ as no other
animal, without change of form.”
Not only has man made himself the only animal which constantly increases
in numbers, but this increase, as Professor Lankester points out in another
part of his lecture, already threatening certain difficulties, will be much
more rapid than at present, assuming the birth-rate to remain where it is,
when disease is controlled. It is within our power, as Pasteur declared long
ago, to abolish all parasitic, infectious or epidemic disease. This must be
and will be done—within a century, I have little doubt. The problem of the

increase of human population will become more pressing than ever.
Professor Lankester suggests that in one or five centuries the difficulty
raised by our multiplication “would, if let alone, force itself upon a
desperate humanity, brutalised by over-crowding and the struggle for food.
A return to Nature's terrible selection of the fittest may, it is conceivable, be
in this way in store for us. But it is more probable that humanity will submit
to a restriction by the community in respect of the right to multiply.” The
lecturer added that we must therefore perfect our knowledge of heredity in
man, as to which “there is absolutely no provision in any civilised
community, and no conception among the people or their leaders, that it is a
matter which concerns anyone but farmers.”
The secret of multiplication.—Professor Lankester, however, omits to
point out the astonishing paradox involved in the fact that—as I pointed out
at the Royal Institution in 1907—man, the only ceaselessly multiplying
animal, has the lowest birth-rate of any living creature.[19] From the purely
arithmetical point of view, what does it mean? We may defer at present any
deeper interpretation.
It means necessarily and obviously that the effective means of
multiplication is not a high birth-rate but a low death-rate. It is a necessary
inference from the paradox in question that the infant death-rate and the
general death-rate in man are the lowest anywhere to be found. Producing
fewer young he alone multiplies.[20] It follows that a smaller proportion of
those young must die. Unless it is supposed by bishops and others, then,
that a peculiar value attaches to the production of a baby shortly to be
buried, the suggestion evidently is the same as that to which every
humanitarian and social and patriotic impulse guides us, namely, the
reduction of the death-rate and especially the infant mortality. This is the
true way in which to insure the more rapid multiplication of man, if that be
desired. I believe it is not to be desired, but in any case the reduction of the
death-rate and especially of the infant mortality is a worthy and necessary
end in itself, and need not inevitably lead to our undue multiplication
provided that the birth-rate falls. Hence the eugenists and the Episcopal
Bench may join hands so far as the reduction of the death-rate is concerned,
and the only persons with whom a practical quarrel remains are those who
—in effect—applaud the mother who boasts that she has buried twelve.

The facts of human multiplication.—Human population continues to
increase notwithstanding any changes in the birth-rate. This fact remains
true, as shown by the latest obtainable figures. It should be one of the
dogmas never absent from the foreground of the statesman's mind.
Apparently nothing, however, will induce us to take this little forethought.
When we build a bridge across the Thames, we ignore it; when we widen a
bridge we ignore it likewise. When we make a new street we ignore it;
when we build railways and railway stations we ignore it—excusably,
perhaps, in this case; when we build hospitals we ignore it: four times out of
five there is no room for the addition of a single ward in time to come. We
have not yet even learnt, as they are learning in America and Germany, how
to acquire the outlying lands of cities for the public possession, so that they
may be properly employed as the city grows. The man who builds himself a
villa on the outskirts of a city, ignores it, and is staggered by it in ten years.
The lover of nature and the country ignores it: “Just look at this,” he says,
“this was in the country when first I knew it, look at these horrible rows of
villas!” The only possible reply to such a person is simply, “Well, my dear
sir, what do you propose? General infanticide?” Most important of all, this
fact, that, to take the case of Great Britain, some half million babies are
born every year in excess over the number of all who die at all ages, is
forgotten by our statesmen—or rather by our politicians. It could, of course,
not be forgotten by a statesman. Quite apart from remoter consequences,
especially in relation to the wheat supply, this persistent multiplication—
which one has actually heard denied on the ground that the birth-rate is
falling—is of urgent moment to all of us.
In 1907 the Census Bureau of Washington published some figures on the
mortality statistics of nations, a summary of which may be quoted: “In all
parts of the civilised world both the birth-rates and the death-rates tend to
decrease, and, as a rule, those countries having the lowest death-rates have
also the lowest birth-rates. In Europe the lowest birth-rate is that of France,
the highest those of Servia and Roumania. The lowest death-rates are in
Sweden and Norway; the highest in Russia and Spain. The downward
tendency of the birth- and death-rates is best shown by diagrams prepared
by the French Government, and it is probable that the downward tendency
is actually steeper than the diagrams show, because both births and deaths
are more accurately registered than formerly.”

But these statements are by no means necessarily incompatible with steady
increase of population, which, of course, increases so long as the birth-rate
exceeds the death-rate. I quote a few figures from the Science Year Book of
1908:
In 1890 the total population of the world was estimated at 1,487,900,000.
Aryan (Europe, Persia, India, etc.) 545,000,000
Mongolian (N. and E. Asia) 630,000,000
Semitic (N. Africa) 65,000,000
Negro (C. Africa) 150,000,000
Malay and Polynesian 35,000,000
American Indian 15,000,000
The total figure now must be something like sixteen hundred millions at
least.
Density of population, in so far as it means what is commonly called over-
crowding, is an important factor in the death-rate, and has a most inimical
influence upon race-culture—in virtue of the opportunity afforded to the
racial poisons—syphilis, alcohol, etc. Thus Sweden has the lowest death-
rate in Europe, and has much the least density of population—only 29 per
square mile as compared with our own 341. If now the fact of the increase
of population, with all that it means and will mean, may be taken as dealt
with and accepted, there will be no danger of leading the reader to false
conclusions if we insist upon the fall of the birth-rate, which in Great
Britain in 1908 was the lowest on record. The death-rate, however,
persistently falls also. The reader who thinks that the birth-rate alone
determines the increase of population, and those who believe in polygamy
on the ground that it necessarily makes for the rapid multiplication and
therefore strength of a nation, should compare the death-rate of London,
which is under 16, with that of Bombay, which is just under 79. It is
asserted that in many large Indian cities the infant mortality approaches
one-half of all the children born. What it amounts to in such cities as
Canton and Pekin we can only surmise with horror.
Notwithstanding the persistent fall in the birth-rate of London the rate of
increase in population remains stupendous, according to the calculations of
Mr. Cottrell, which may be quoted from the Science Year Book of 1908. He

estimates the population of Greater London in 1910 at about 7½ millions,
and in 1920 at well over 8½ millions—the falling birth-rate
notwithstanding.
The increase of population of five great countries may be briefly noted here.
In all, with the possible exception of Russia, the birth-rate is rapidly falling.
In the course of the nineteenth century the population of
Russia (in Europe) rose from 38 to 105,000,000
France " " 26 " 38,000,000
Germany " " 23 " 55,000,000
Great Britain " " 15 " 40,000,000
United States " " 5 " 75,000,000
These are merely approximate figures, but accurate enough to be of value.
It need hardly be pointed out that immigration accounts for the
disproportionate increase of population in the United States. But it may be
added that the imminent arrest or control of this immigration will assuredly
have the most serious and pressing consequences for Europe. Plainly it
must hasten the coming of national eugenics.
The case of Germany.—Especial interest and importance attach for many
reasons to the case of Germany in this connection, and, as might be
expected, many precise facts are available. Here I shall avail myself freely
of the paper contributed by Dr. Sombart to the International for December,
1907. In the first seven years of this century the population of Germany
increased almost ten per cent. The figure in 1870 was 40.8 millions and in
1907 61 millions. The population is increasing yearly at the rate of about
800,000, as compared with about half a million in the case of Great Britain.
In France in 1907 the population actually declined by a few thousands. In
regard to the growth of population Germany is now at the head of all
civilised countries, excepting those cases in which immigration has
augmented the number of inhabitants. Does this expansion of population
depend upon an increasing birth-rate or a diminishing death-rate? The fact,
in strict parallel with the biological generalisation already made, is that
“Germany's population is increasing so swiftly because the death-rate has
been falling steadily. At the beginning of the period, 1870–1880, there were
nearly 30 deaths per thousand inhabitants, while in recent years only about

20 deaths in every thousand inhabitants have taken place each year....
Notwithstanding, the birth-rate during the last ten years, during which the
principal growth of population occurs, has not in anywise increased in
Germany. Indeed, by careful investigation it becomes apparent that it has
declined almost unintermittently for a generation.” The average birth-rate
for the ten years 1871–1880 was 40.7, for 1891–1900 the average was 37.4.
Since then it has fallen further, and in 1905 the figure was 34, the lowest on
record. As Dr. Sombart observes, we shall only appreciate these figures if
we regard them as an expression of a tendency which will continue, and
that this is so he proves. He observes that “the more highly advanced the
country, the lower its birth-rate.... From this we may already draw the
conclusion that a diminution of births is a concomitant of our progress in
civilisation. Secondly, this is confirmed by the fact that the falling-off in the
birth-rate must be attributed largely to the big cities.... As a third statistical
argument that the birth-rate declines with the advance of civilisation, the
fact may be cited that in the quarters of the well-to-do still fewer children
are born than in those of the poor.” (In London, as we have seen, the birth-
rate is highest in Stepney and lowest in Hampstead).
Dr. Sombart finally points out what must never be forgotten—that an
increase in population, dependent upon a fall in the death-rate, whilst the
birth-rate also falls, is necessarily self-limited. The decrease of the death-
rate is limited by definite natural age-limits, and “this indicates that the
increase of population in Germany is gradually entering upon a period of
less activity, and will perhaps quite cease within a conceivable period
unless other causes operate in the opposite direction.”
The yellow peril.—The facts regarding the yellow races are extremely
difficult to ascertain. It appears, however, that the birth-rate in Japan has
almost doubled in 27 years—rising from 17.1 to 31. (I doubt the accuracy
of the earlier figure.) In China the population is largely controlled by
infanticide, but there is little doubt that the main contention of Pearson was
correct, and that the yellow races are multiplying much more rapidly than
the white races. It does not necessarily follow, however, as we shall see, that
this means yellow ascendancy, any more than a similar comparison would
mean microbic ascendancy. It is not quantity but quality of life that gives
survival-value and dominance. This disparity between white and yellow
rates of increase is by far the most pregnant of contemporary phenomena. In

the present introductory volume it can merely be named. But since we shall
not survive in virtue of quantity, I, for one, am well assured that the choice
for Western civilisation will ere long be the final one between eugenics or
extinction.
The wheat problem.—Meanwhile, we must consider briefly the question
evidently raised by this fact of human multiplication. As an expert has lately
said, the rise in the price of wheat “is not the transitory result of market
manipulation and ‘corners,’ forcing prices up to an unnatural level, but of
perfectly natural and irresistible causes which, for all that, are the more
anxious and disquieting. The truth is we are for the first time beginning to
feel individually the effect of a great natural process—the race which
started long ago between the population of the world and the growth of the
world's wheat supply. In this race the growth of the world's population has
been outstripping the growth of its wheat-food production, and the
consequence has been a total growing shortage, in spite of the opening of
vast new areas in Canada and the Argentina.” In this connection one of the
best papers in Great Britain—the Westminster Gazette—cheerfully
remarked in a leading article that, after all, we need not be alarmed as to the
difficulty in increasing the supply of wheat, since population would, in any
case, adapt itself to the food-supply. This is true, indeed: there will never be
more human beings than there is food to feed. But the question is, how will
the population be kept down? In a word, is it to be by the awful and bloody
processes of Nature or by the conscious, provident and humane methods of
man?
We are reminded of the argument advanced by Sir William Crookes in his
Presidential Address to the British Association in 1898. The distinguished
author has himself written an invaluable book on the subject which has
been carefully revised and supplemented, and must be read by the serious
student.[21] We may note from the point of view of the student of dietetics
that wheat is and remains, on physiological examination, what the proverb
suggests. Bread is the staff of life, wheat being, in proportion to its price, by
far the best and cheapest of all foods.
The argument of Sir William Crookes was advanced exactly a century after
the publication of the great essay of Malthus which we must soon consider.
In the whole intervening century no one, capable of being heard, had
considered the question. The relation of Crookes to the earlier thinker

remains, though it is curious that Malthus was not mentioned by his
successor. Writing now, a decade later, I wish merely to point out that Sir
William's argument is found valid. He observed that “the actual and
potential wheat-producing capacity of the United States is—and will be, for
years to come—the dominant factor in the world's bread-supply.” Now the
recent expert from whom we have already quoted declares that “former
great wheat exporting countries like the United States, as well as Russia and
India, while their production remains as high, are sending far less abroad
under the pressure of their own increasing needs. In this connection it may
be recorded that a great American corn expert declares that in twenty-five
years the United States will want all, or very nearly all, of her wheat
production for herself, and will have very little indeed to send us.” In 1898
Sir William said, “A permanently higher price for wheat is, I fear, a
calamity that ere long must be faced.” As everyone knows, this prophecy is
now being fulfilled. Sir William declared that “the augmentation of the
world's eating population in a geometrical ratio” is a proved fact. The
phrase means, of course, simply that the yearly increase increases. On the
other hand, the wheat supply is subject to a yearly increase which does not
itself increase—in other words the increase is in an arithmetical ratio. This,
a century later, precisely illustrates the principle of Malthus. Sir William
also declared that exports of wheat from the United States are only of
present interest, and that “within a generation the ever-increasing
population of the United States will consume all the wheat grown within its
borders, and will be driven to import, and, like ourselves, will scramble for
the lion's share of the wheat crop of the world.”
Next to the United States Russia is the greatest wheat exporter, but the
Russian peasant population increases more rapidly than any other in
Europe, even though it is inadequately fed, and this source of supply must
fail ere very long. As Sir William points out, the Caucasian civilisation is
indeed founded upon bread. “Other races vastly superior to us in numbers,
but differing widely in material and intellectual progress, are eaters of
Indian corn, rice, millet and other grains; but none of these grains have the
food-value, concentrated health-sustaining power of wheat.” Sir William's
argument was, and is, that we must learn how to fix the nitrogen of the
atmosphere—that is to say, how to combine it in forms on which the plant
can feed. “The fixation of nitrogen is a question of the not far distant future.
Unless we can class it among certainties to come, the great Caucasian race

will cease to be foremost in the world, and will be squeezed out of existence
by races to whom wheat and bread is not the staff of life.”
Sir William Crookes was himself the pioneer in the discovery of the electric
method of fixing the atmospheric nitrogen, and now, a decade after the
delivery of his address, this method is in successful commercial
employment in Scandinavia. There is also a method of sowing the bacteria
which are capable of fixing nitrogen and this, according to some, has been
already proved practicable. Further, the Mendelians offer us the possibility
of new varieties of wheat having more grains to the stalk than we obtain at
present. By these methods the output of the land devoted to wheat may be
doubled or trebled, but it is evident that even then there will be an
impassable limit. We have to face, indeed, the evident but unconsidered fact
that there must be a maximum possible human population for this finite
earth, whether a bread-eating population or any other. I do not propose to
speculate regarding this evident truth. If human life is worth living and is
the highest life we know, we may desire to obtain that maximum
population, but it must be obtained, and its limits observed, by the humane
and decent processes which man is capable of putting into practice, and not
by the check of starvation.
It is of great interest to the British reader to look at the question briefly from
his point of view. At the present time our wheat production is no more than
one-eighth of our needs, and in twenty-five years, when the supply from the
United States will probably have ceased, we shall require 40,000,000
quarters of wheat per annum. Yet already, in time of peace, careful
observers such as the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth and Mr. Seebohm Rowntree
declare that thirty per cent. of our own population are living on the verge of
starvation. Our available supply of food of all kinds at any moment would
last us about three weeks. How many of us realise what a war would mean
for this country? Yet in the face of facts such as these, the majority of those
who attempt to guide public opinion are urging us to increase our birth-rate
and still pin their faith to quantity rather than quality of population as our
great need.
The theory of Malthus.—The reader who is interested in general biology
will realise, of course, that we are here back to the great argument of
Malthus, advanced in 1798 in his Essay on the Principle of Population.
Malthus was a great and sincere thinker, a high and true moralist, and the

people who have a vague notion that his name has some connection with
immoral principles of any kind have no acquaintance with the subject. It is
of the deepest interest for the history of thought to know that it was the
work of Malthus which suggested, independently, both to Charles Darwin
and to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, that principle of natural selection, the
survival of the fittest and their choice for parenthood, the discovery of
which constituted one of the great epochs in the history of human
knowledge, and which is the cardinal principle underlying the whole
modern conception of eugenics or race-culture.
Malthus found in all life the constant tendency to increase beyond the
nourishment available. In a given area, not even the utmost imaginable
improvement in developing the resources of the soil can or could keep pace
with the unchecked increase of population.[22] This applies alike to Great
Britain and to the whole world. At bottom, then, the check to population—
and this is true of microbes or men—is want of food, notwithstanding that
this is never the immediate and obvious check except in cases of actual
famine. There must therefore be a “struggle for existence,” and as Darwin
and Wallace saw, it follows as a necessary truth that, to use Spencer's term,
the fittest must survive. The question is whether we are to accept starvation
as, at bottom, the factor controlling population (which, in any case, must be
and is controlled) or whether we can substitute something better—as for
instance, the moral self-control which Malthus recommended. The single
precept of this much maligned thinker was “Do not marry till you have a
fair prospect of supporting a family”—a fairly decent and respectable
doctrine. In the words of Mr. Kirkup, “the greatest and highest moral result
of his principle is that it clearly and emphatically teaches the responsibility
of parentage, and it declares the sin of those who bring human beings into
the world for whose physical, intellectual, and moral well-being no
satisfactory provision is made.” Who, alas, will declare that even after a
century and a decade this great lesson is yet learnt?
It is to be added, first, that though improvement in agriculture is to be
commended on every conceivable ground, and though it may in some
degree relieve and postpone the difficulty, it is infinitely incapable of
abolishing it. Nothing but necessity can check the prolificness of life. To
this doctrine, however, there is, as we shall shortly see, a great excepting
principle, unrecognised by Malthus, discovered by Herbert Spencer, and of

vast and universal importance. Secondly, it is to be noted that emigration—
a real remedy for over-population—is so only for a time. It cannot possibly
abolish the problem—short of the development of interplanetary
communication, if then; and the observer of contemporary politics must be
well aware, as Germany, for instance, is well aware already, that its
effectiveness as a practical remedy for over-population in some European
countries is already being arrested by the invaded states.
The references already made to the work of Sir William Crookes will
suffice to show that the teaching of Malthus is of practical importance to us
to-day, and not least to the population of Great Britain. I am tempted to
quote the actual case in this connection of a young student of biology who
applied for Malthus's book at one of the greatest official libraries in this
country. He was looked at as a shameless young rascal, and the librarian
curtly said, “We have no books of that kind here.” I commend this exquisite
instance of misapplied and perfectly ignorant British prudery to Mr.
Bernard Shaw: not even he could imagine anything to surpass it. No more
impeccably decent book than this of “Parson Malthus” has ever been
written, and I have no adequate comment for the fact that its nature and
contents were not merely wholly unknown but grossly misimagined by this
responsible official, and that it could not be obtained in the great library of
science in question.
We pass in the following chapter to the momentous discovery of Herbert
Spencer that the great truth seen by Malthus was not a whole but a half-
truth, and that there is a compensating principle, which is at once a source
of inspiration and of difficulty to the eugenist. It is in general the principle
that as life ascends it becomes less prolific, and its consequences are
infinitely more vast than the phrase at first suggests. Had this principle been
discovered by a Continental thinker or by a member of a British University
instead of by a man who never passed an examination, it would not now
need the discussion which we shall have to give it.

CHAPTER VI
THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY

The laws of multiplication.—Implicit or explicit approval of a falling
birth-rate involves opposition to the opinion of the man in the street, the
general opinion of the medical profession,[23] the bench of bishops and the
social prophet and publicist in general. Nevertheless a fall in the birth-rate
is a factor in organic progress, and, in general, the level of any species is in
inverse proportion to its birth-rate, from bacteria to the most civilised
classes of men in the most civilised countries of to-day. But in truth the
uninformed opinion, totally contrary to the whole history of life and to the
most obvious comparative facts of the birth-rate amongst and within present
day human societies, was utterly disposed of forty years ago in the closing
chapter of the greatest contribution yet made to philosophic biology—
Herbert Spencer's Principles of Biology. The last chapter of that
masterpiece is entitled “The Laws of Multiplication.” Unfortunately it has
not been read by one in ten thousand of those who think themselves entitled
to hold, and even to express, opinions about the birth-rate. Spencer's
discovery is the complementary half-truth to the discovery of Malthus, and
just as the law of Malthus is pessimistic, so the law of Spencer is optimistic.
In a word, Malthus assumed—indeed, formally declared—that there was no
natural factor of an internal kind tending to limit the rate of vital fertility.
Spencer discovered that there is such a factor, which can and does limit and
has been limiting vegetable, animal, and human fertility since the dawn of
life.
All reproduction involves an expenditure of energy in some degree on the
part of the parent. Now the energy available by any individual is finite. If he
expends it all upon reproduction, he himself, or she herself, must cease to
exist. This happens in all the lowest forms of life, which multiply by fission
or simple splitting. The young bacteria are their sub-divided parent. At the
other extreme is the case of the individual who retains the whole of his
energy for his own development and life, and has no offspring at all. Such
consummate bachelor philosophers as Kant and Spencer may be quoted,
and the list of childless men of genius might be extended quite indefinitely.

This is not to declare this last state to be the ideal, but merely to point out
the logical extremes.
Spencer's principle is that there is an “Antagonism,” or, as we may rather
say, an inverse ratio, between “Individuation” and “Genesis”—between the
proportion of energy expended upon the individual and the proportion
expended upon the continuance of the race. Thus “Individuation,” meaning
all those processes which maintain and expand the life of the individual,
and “Genesis,” meaning all those processes which involve the formation of
new individuals—are necessarily antagonistic. Every higher degree of
individual evolution is followed by a lower degree of race multiplication,
and vice versâ. Increase in bulk (cf. the elephant), complexity or activity
involves diminution in fertility, and vice versâ. This is an obvious à priori
principle.
Should the reader declare that there must be something the matter with an
asserted principle of progress which leads in theory or in practice to the
production of a childless generation, and therefore the end of all progress,
and that this principle suggests that the most completely developed man and
woman cannot be parents—then I would join in the chorus of fathers and
mothers generally, who would say that, in human parenthood, if not, indeed,
in sub-human parenthood, the antagonism is reconciled in a higher unity;
that the best and most complete development of the individual is effected
only through parenthood, in due degree—as Spencer, himself childless,
formally declared.
It is impossible here to show how complete is the evidence for Spencer's
law, both from the side of logical necessity and from the side of
observation. In order to indicate the overwhelming character of the
evidence, one would have to transcribe the whole of his long chapter, and to
add to it all our modern knowledge of human birth-rates. This cannot be
done, but even without it we may venture to say that people who regard a
falling birth-rate as in itself, and obviously, a sign of racial degeneration or
immorality, or approaching weakness or failure of any kind, can have made
no substantial additions to their knowledge of the subject since they
themselves formed items in the birth-rate.
Spencer goes on to show, with profound insight, that, in general, greater
individuality, or, to put it in other words, the more highly evolved organism,

“though less fertile absolutely, is the more fertile relatively.” The supreme
instance of this truth is, of course, the case of man, in whom individuation
has reached its unprecedented height, who is absolutely the least fertile of
creatures,[24] and yet who is relatively the most fertile—unique in his actual
and persistent multiplication.
Their action in man.—Within the human species the laws of multiplication
hold. It is still worth while, after half a century, to quote Spencer's remark
as to infertility in women due to mental labour carried to excess—“most of
the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure education are
incompetent to bear a well-developed infant and to supply it with the
natural food for the natural period.” On all hands people with opened eyes
are rightly urging this truth upon us to-day. In the United States the so-
called higher education of girls has been proved in effect to sterilise them—
and these the flower of the nation's girlhood, and therefore, rightly, the very
elect for motherhood. Here is simply an instance of the Spencerian principle
in its most unfortunate misdirection by man.
Before leaving Spencer, we must refer briefly to the predictions, based upon
the foregoing principles, with which he concluded his great work. The
further evolution of man, he declares, must take mainly the direction of a
higher intellectual and emotional development. Hitherto, and even to-day,
pressure of population is the original cause of human competition,
application, discipline, expenditure of energy—and one may add, the
possibility of continued selection. Excess of fertility, then, says Spencer, is
the cause of man's evolution, but “man's further evolution itself necessitates
a decline in his fertility.” The future progress of civilisation will be
accompanied by increased development of individuality, emotional and
intellectual. As Spencer observes, this does not necessarily mean a mentally
laborious life, for as mental activity “gradually becomes organic, it will
become spontaneous and pleasurable.”
Finally, the necessary antagonism between individuality and parenthood
ensures the ultimate attainment of the highest form of the maintenance of
the race—“... a form in which the amount of life shall be the greatest
possible, and the births and deaths the fewest possible.”

If now we look back at the law of Malthus we shall realise the enormous
significance of the law of Spencer. In this respect we have the advantage
over Malthus that we are aware, as he was not, of the great fact of organic
evolution. We discover, then, that an actual consequence of the pressure of
population, leading as it does to the struggle for existence, and, in the main,
the survival of higher types, is that the rate of fertility falls. This conception
of the fall in the birth-rate—which, it is maintained, has been a great factor
in all organic progress—was entirely absent from the mind of Malthus. In a
word, the unlimited multiplication which Malthus observed leads to its own
correction. It provides abundance of material for natural selection to work
upon, and then the survival-value of individuation, wherever it appears,
asserts itself, with the consequence that the rate of multiplication declines.
This is actually to be observed to-day. Malthus desired that we should
postpone marriage to later ages so as to lower the birth-rate. The increasing
necessity and demand for individuation is effecting that which Malthus
desired. The average age at marriage has been rising in our own country in
both sexes during the last thirty years: and the evidence shows that as
civilisation advances the age of marriage becomes later and later. Professor
Metchnikoff has discussed some aspects of this question in his book The
Nature of Man.
The intensive culture of life.—For every student of progress, and not least
for the eugenist, Spencer's law is a warrant of hope and a promise of better
things to come. It teaches that in the development of higher—that is to say,
more specialised—that is to say, more individualised—organic types,
Nature is working already, and has been working for ages, towards the
elimination of the brutal elements in the struggle for existence. This is, of
course, what every worker for progress, and every eugenist in especial,
desires. Spencer's discovery teaches also that individuality compensates a
species for loss of high fertility. The survival-value of individuation is
greater than the survival-value of rapid multiplication. The very fact of
progress is the replacement of lower by higher life, the supersession of the
quantitative by the qualitative criterion of survival-value, the increasing
dominance of mind over matter, the substitution of the intensive for the
merely extensive cultivation of life. These various phrases express, I believe,
various aspects of one and the same great fact, and I only wish it were
possible to include here an exhaustive study of the conception which may
be expressed by the phrase “the intensity of life”—as distinguished from its

mere extension. There is, I believe, a real and significant analogy between
the introduction of what is called intensive cultivation in agriculture, and
the eugenic principle which seeks to replace the extensive by the intensive
cultivation of human life.
The eugenic difficulty.—But it will be already evident to the reader that,
though Spencer's law offers hope and warrant to the eugenist, it also poses
him with a permanent and ineradicable difficulty which is inherent in
natural necessity—viz., the difficulty that, in consequence of the operation
of this law, those very classes or members of a society whose parenthood he
most desires must be, in general, the least fertile. Throughout the animal
world the lesser fertility of higher species is no real handicap to them, as we
know; but where the conditions of selection are so profoundly modified as
in human society, the case is very different. Furthermore, amongst mankind
individuality has often grown, and does grow, to such an extent that
parenthood disappears altogether. Indeed, Spencer's law expresses itself—
and the eugenist must qualify his hopes by the fact—in the practical
infertility of many[25] of the most highly individualised and even unique
personalities, that is to say, in the ranks of what we call genius. To this
subject we must return.
A notable section in Mr. Galton's great work, Inquiries into Human Faculty,
states very plainly the difficulty for the eugenist involved in Spencer's law,
under its more statistical aspect. What are the relative effects of early and
late marriages? Mr. Galton proves, mathematically, that in a very few
generations a group of persons who marry late will be simply bred down
and more than supplanted by those who marry early. Now no one will
dispute that the less individualised, the lower types, the more nearly animal,
do in general marry earlier, and are more fertile. Here, then, is an anti-
eugenic tendency in human society, depending really upon Spencer's law
and requiring us to recognise and counteract it by throwing all the weight
we can upon the side of progress, which means increasing to our utmost the
survival-value and the effective fertility of the higher types.
Much more space might be spent upon this gravest of problems for the
eugenist—the fact that the very persons from whom he desires to recruit the
future on account of their greater individuality are also on that very account
the persons who, by natural necessity, tend to be less fertile. The difficulty
shows itself in the male sex, but it shows itself still more conspicuously in

the female sex, where the proportion of the individual energy devoted to the
race, as compared with that devoted to individuation, is necessarily far
higher, and must so remain if the race is to persist. Primarily, the body of
woman is the temple of life to come—and therefore, as we shall some day
teach our girls, the holy of holies. Without going further into this matter
now, it may be suggested that a cardinal principle of practical importance is
involved. It is that the individual development of women, their higher
education, their self-expression in works of art and thought and practice,
cannot safely be carried to the point at which motherhood is compromised;
else the race in question will necessarily disappear and be replaced by any
race whatsoever, the women of which continue to be mothers. There are
women of the worker bee type whom this argument annoys intensely. No
one wants them to be mothers.
The proposition that all progress in the psychical world depends upon
individuality, just as all organic progress, and indeed, all organic evolution,
depends upon the physical individuality which biologists call variation, may
suggest to the reader the importance which must attach to our study of
talent and genius, and the possibility of aiding their production. Meanwhile,
we must look a little further at the general question of individuality or
quality versus quantity from the international point of view.
Quantity versus quality.—The reader will understand how it is that
anyone writing from the biological standpoint must view with something
like contempt the common assumption that, in international competition,
mere statistics of population furnish, as such, final and adequate data for
prophecy. Let us remind ourselves once more that, according to these crude
criteria, which were really superseded untold æons ago, the dominance of
the world must belong in the near future not to Russia, with its balance of
more than two million births per annum, rather than to France, with its
approximately stationary population, but to the bacteria, the growth of
population amongst which, if it be not controlled by the less fertile creature
we call man, may be of simply inexpressible magnitude. But the world is
not, and will not be, ruled by bacteria, their fertility notwithstanding.
Indeed, the disease-producing bacteria have already had sentence of death
pronounced upon them by the higher intelligence of man, and that sentence
will be carried out within a century. Similarly within the bounds of
humanity we must recognise the limitations of mere statistics. The

population of France, some forty years ago, consisted of so many millions
of units. The figure does not matter,—let us put it at 30,000,001. Now that
1, so to say, was called Louis Pasteur, and from the point of view of
statistics or those who think they can predict history by counting heads, he
was only an almost infinitesimal fraction, about one-thirty-millionth part, of
the French people. Yet, as Huxley pointed out long ago, his mind sufficed to
pay the entire indemnity exacted from France after the Franco-Prussian war.
This single unit was worth more than a host of soldiers of the merely
mechanical kind. Or take Athens, with its population of 30,000 people,
mostly slaves, and consider its influence upon the world. Or, indeed, go
where you please, whether to the history of nations or the history of religion
or science or art, and ask whether the counting of heads, the ordinary census
taking which indeed amounts merely to weighing nations by the ton, is an
adequate one. In estimating national capital by the methods of vital
statistics alone, we are in a far worse case than he would be who estimated
monetary wealth by numbers of coins, without considering whether they
were pounds, shillings or pence, whether they were genuine or counterfeit.
The illustration is ludicrously inadequate, as every illustration must be,
simply because the human case is unique. In the units of a population,
which many prophets treat as if they were all of equal value, there are not
merely differences to which the difference between a sovereign and a penny
offers no parallel; there is not merely an enormous quantity of bogus or
counterfeit units, but there is a very large number of units in every
population which, so far from adding to the value of the rest, subtract from
it, are parasitic upon it. Students of money will find no parallel to this. Yet
in the face of facts which ought to be common intellectual property
amongst school-children, we find many writers, bishops, socialist
economists, moralists, schoolboy Imperialists, and the rest, pointing merely
to the quantitative question of population as if it were everything, though
they must surely know that, if international competition were the highest
state of mankind, and if the work of Kelvin and Lister had been sold at its
real worth by us to the rest of the world, those two men alone, in their
services to life, and in the power which they give us over life, would be
equal in value to, shall we say, the lower four-fifths of the whole birth-rate
during the last generation. All human history teaches, as all animal history
teaches in lesser degree, that quality and individuality is everything, that
quantity is nothing or far worse than nothing except in so far as it is

quantity of quality: yet though this lesson is written upon every page of the
past, the greater number of our publicists and our public advisers still
implicitly deny it. As Mr. Crackanthorpe put it, speaking of the figures for
1907, it is not the defective numbers, but the numbers of defectives, that
should give us concern.
Mass versus mind.—John Ruskin called Darwin “a dim comet, wagging
its tail of phosphorescent nothing against the steadfast stars”—a description
as delightful as it is foolish. Yet the conception of eugenics, which is indeed
a necessary deduction from Darwin's great discovery, finds abundant
warrant and support in Ruskin's own wonderful writings, and here I quote,
from Time and Tide, some sentences which still require to be read and
remembered by the majority of our present advisers. He says:—
“And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial, compared
with that of character; or rather, its own materialness depends
on the prior determination of character. Make your nation
consist of knaves, and, as Emerson said long ago, it is but the
case of any other vermin—the more, the worse. Or, to put the
matter in narrower limits, 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.... You have to consider first, by what
methods of land distribution you can maintain the greatest
number of healthy persons; and secondly whether, if, by any
other mode of distribution and relative ethical laws, you can
raise their character, while you diminish their numbers, such
sacrifices should be made, and to what extent?... The French
and British public may and will, with many other publics, be at
last brought ... to see farther that a nation's real strength and
happiness do not depend upon properties and territories, nor on
machinery for their defence, but on their getting such territory
as they have, well filled with none but respectable persons,
which is a way of infinitely enlarging one's territory, feasible to
every potentate.”
Surely it is not necessary, one feels, and yet one knows it is necessary, again
to lay down propositions of such shining truth, and one wonders whether
they shine so brightly as to blind those who should see them: or what can

conceivably be the explanation of such arguments as those of the Bishop of
London and others who, in the face of our monstrous infant and child
mortality, the awful pressure of population and over-crowding in our great
cities, where every year a larger and larger proportion of the population
lives, and is born and dies—plead for a higher birth-rate on moral grounds,
of all amazing grounds conceivable; and those also who, from the military
or so-called Imperial point of view, regarding men primarily as “food for
powder,” in Shakespeare's phrase, read and quote statistics of population in
order to promulgate the same advice?
To the moralist we need make no reply except simply to name the infant
mortality which is at last coming to be recognised everywhere as, perhaps,
the most abominable of all our scandals. To the militarist I would quote the
case of our ally, Japan. He recalls the war between China and Japan, and its
issue, and has some idea, perhaps, of the population ratio of those two
Empires. How was it that Providence was on the side of the small
battalions? He recalls also the Russo-Japanese war and its issue; and the
population ratio of the two Empires in that case. How many other instances
does not military history afford of the truth that in the human species mind
is the master of matter? One would suppose that a critical historical enquiry
had been made, proving that the results of all past wars could have been
predicted by the simple method of estimating the total aggregate weight of
the combatant nations in flesh and blood and bone! More than this, if the
development of the art of warfare means anything, if there has been any
such development since the days of fists and stones, it means, as all human
development in every sphere means, the increasing dominance of mind over
matter, character and initiative over machinery, dead or alive. Meanwhile,
the estimate of warriors in terms of the scale and the foot rule are still
accepted just as if they had not been rendered obsolete for ever with the
passing of the “dragons of the prime.”
As regards the psychical worth of the soldier, is it not recognised, though
too commonly forgotten, when we applaud the value of the veteran or of
seasoned troops? Physically the veteran is, on the average, inferior to the
younger man. It is the psychical that gives him his worth, just as it was
patriotism and sobriety that enabled the few sober Japanese to beat the
many drunken Russians. It is safe to prophesy that, in all future war, the
numerical criterion, which in effect weighs armies by the ton, as if war were

merely a tug-of-war, will become less and less important—if, indeed, it is
not already negligible; whilst the purely psychical qualities, from
generalship and strategy and hygiene to initiative, judgment, accuracy,
memory, and down finally to mere brutal red-blooded courage, will
determine the issue.
Platitude, of course, but if true, why ignored? Why cannot our military
advisers learn, in this respect, from the Navy? Owing to the very nature of
the sea as compared with the land, in relation to the merely physical
capacities of man, a Navy must be more intelligent than an Army, just as it
requires more intelligence to make a boat than to walk; and it is in the Navy
that the mechanical factor has been most completely transferred, so that the
human machinery is at a discount and the steel machinery made by the
human mind is much, whilst the value of the psychical in all its aspects
dominates and controls the whole. Great Britain, as the foremost naval
power in the world, should long ago have left to its ultimate fate amongst
other nations the idea that quantity—so many tons of soldiers and so many
tons of sailors—affords an estimate of the warring force of a nation: even if
the whole history of this little isle and the possession of our present Empire
did not teach, as the history of Rome taught and as the history of Athens
teaches in another sphere, that not mass but mind makes a nation great.

CHAPTER VII
HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE

“We cannot but feel that the application of biological results is only
beginning, and beginning with a tardiness which is a reproach to human
foresight. There can be no doubt that it would pay the British nation to
put aside a million a year for research on eugenics, or the improvement
of the human breed.” (Prof. J. A. Thomson, Heredity, 1908.)

It is evident that the facts and principles of heredity lie at the very basis of
eugenics or race-culture in any of its forms, practical or impractical,

scientific or unscientific. Our continual assumption throughout is that like
tends to beget like, and it is on this ground that we desire to make
parenthood the privilege of those whom we regard as inherently the best. If
there were no such thing as heredity there could be no possibility of race-
culture—nor indeed should we be here to discuss it. If a man's children
were equally likely to be acorns or babies or tadpoles, the living world
would not be the living world we know.
The potency of heredity is obscured to uncritical examination by the fact
that that which is inheritable is that which was innate, inherent or germinal
in the parent, as we shall shortly see. We, however, are apt to compare the
child with the parent, who has perhaps been much modified by
circumstances, so that the resemblance between father and child may seem
to be slight. Yet if we could bring back before us that father, as he was, say
at the age of two, and compare him with his two-year-old child, we should
perhaps be astonished by the resemblance. But we see the acquirements or
acquired characters of the parent; make no distinction between them and his
inherent characters; fail to discover these acquired characters in his child;—
and discount the importance of heredity. Then, again, the eugenist may be
utterly confounded if he estimates the parental value of an individual
without reference to this limitation of heredity. Here is a man of culture and
accomplishment; his children, then, will presumably tend to be cultured and
accomplished. But every kind of advantage that forethought and love and
money can afford may have been showered upon that man. So far as native
endowment was concerned, he may have indeed been far below mediocrity.
Now it is native endowment alone that he can transmit, and our eugenic
estimate of him is therefore erroneous and will lead to disappointment. It is
impossible to lay too great stress upon the truth that in all eugenic plans or
demands or practices we are assuming the fact of inheritance, and that
therefore it is our first business to distinguish absolutely between that which
tends to be inherited and that which, on the other hand, is never inherited.
Yet again, this distinction is of almost incalculable social moment in so far
as it affects the process of selection actually occurring in society. This,
perhaps, has not been adequately recognised. One may repeat a former
statement of this point, which is cardinal for the eugenist:—
“Even supposing that we were all identical at birth, yet, since
we would come to differ from one another in virtue of different

acquirements, due to our adaptation to differing environments,
natural selection would ultimately have different individuals
from which to select. Those who had made the most
advantageous acquirements, such as industry or great
knowledge, would tend to survive and prosper, whilst those
who had made disadvantageous acquirements, such as laziness
or the loss of sight or limbs, would be pushed to the wall. That
process, of course, occurs in society at the present day to a
greater or less degree, but it has only immediate and temporary
or contemporary consequences. For if we recall the assertion
that acquirements cannot be transmitted, we shall see that the
selection of those who have made advantageous acquirements
cannot benefit the next generation, since these acquirements die
with their makers. The only process of natural selection which
can result in progress is one which consists in the selection of
favourable ... inborn and therefore transmissible characters,
such as good digestion, the musical sense, exceptional
intelligence, the sympathetic temperament or what not (in so far
as these are inborn)—the reason being that such are
transmissible and that the children of persons so selected will
tend to inherit their parents' good fortune. There is a fictitious
way in which we speak of a child inheriting his father's
acquirements, as when his father has acquired a fortune; but the
child does much better to inherit his father's good sense or good
health, which were characters inborn in him. Acquirements,
then, are all very well for the day, but it is inborn characters that
alone count for the morrow.”[26]
It may be added that the time is coming when there will be a radical
“transvaluation,” as Nietzsche would say, of the two fashions in which a
father “leaves” something to his children. When a question is asked on this
head now-a-days, we mean, foolishly enough, to enquire how much money
the father left his child, and we say of a man that he has “inherited” a
fortune. We can see plainly enough, as Theognis did two thousand five
hundred years ago, that such an “inheritance” may and often does work in
an anti-eugenic fashion. The gilded fool is swallowed by the maiden whose
native sense would have rejected such a pill without its coat, and so the
most pitiable degenerate becomes the father of his like. This point will be

alluded to later. The present argument is that when we ask what a father
“left” his children, we should really desire to learn what he gave them when
he was still alive and begot them. These vital, or mortal, characters which
they inherit—shall we say good health or insanity—are of incalculably
more moment to them as individuals than any monetary fortune, and of
incalculably more moment for the future. Yet again is it true that there is no
wealth but life, and the best “fortune” or wealth that you can leave your
children is sane and vigorous life.
The case of slum childhood.—We have already seen that even in the slums
the children make a fresh start in a wonderful way, that their stunted
growth, their proneness to disease, are mainly due to their environment,
which it is therefore our duty to improve. This is in general true, and
depends evidently upon the fact that the acquired deterioration of the
parents—e.g., dental decay—is not transmitted to their children—
poisonings apart—so that the children make a fresh start where their parents
did. It is necessary to point this out again and again, as the present writer for
one has long been weary of doing, because it indicates our immediate duty
in this respect, and forbids us to shirk it with any too-comprehensive
phrases about “national degeneration.” Now who could have predicted that
this plain and simple truth would be regarded by some people as
constituting a denial—on strict scientific grounds, and as the very latest
scientific pronouncement—of the principle of heredity? “The bubble of
heredity has been pricked,” says Mr. Bernard Shaw.
But popular muddleheadedness does not affect the palpable and universal
truth that the inherent characters of parents do tend to be inherited by their
children; nor yet that these inherent characters differ profoundly in different
individuals; nor yet the eugenic argument, which is that for purposes of
parenthood, which means for the entire future, some of these should be
taken and others left.
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs
of thistles?... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” These classical
words surely have a special value for the eugenist. As we have said, it is his
particular necessity, alike in theory and in practice, to “know” the real
nature, the innate, inherent, germinal characters, of the individuals who may
or may not be parents: and these, as we have seen, are frequently obscured
by the action of the environment—as, for instance, in the population of the

slums on the one hand, or the man of factitious culture on the other hand.
But “by their fruits ye shall know them.” In general, the children inherit
what was innate in their parents, and in many an instance the surest way in
which you could ascertain what the parent really was by nature—what, as
we say, Nature “meant” him to be—is by a study of his children. Only, of
course, we must take the children very young indeed, before environment
has made its mark upon them also, for better or for worse. Thus, when we
find the new-born baby of some pallid, half-starved, stunted mother in the
slums, to be healthy and vigorous and beautiful,[27] by this fruit we shall
know what the mother might and should have been. A healthy baby goes far
to demonstrate that the stock is healthy. This is one of the cardinal truths
which emerge from the study of infant mortality, and it may be perhaps
permitted to warn some students of race-culture of the errors into which
they are bound to fall if they do not reckon with what the student of infant
mortality is constantly asserting: viz., that the babies of the slums, seen
early, before ignorance and neglect have had their way with them, are
physically vigorous and promising in certainly not less than ninety per cent.
of cases. This primarily demonstrates, of course, the murderous nature of
our infant mortality; but it also demonstrates to the eugenist that these
classes are perhaps not so unworthy as he may fancy. By their new-born
babies ye shall know them. It is under the influence of such considerations
that the present writer, for one, is somewhat chary of predictions and
proposals based upon the relative fertility of different classes of the
community or of the masses as compared with the classes. Directly the
eugenist begins to talk in terms of social classes (as Mr. Galton has never
done), he is skating on thin ice, and if it lets him through, he will find the
remains of many of his rash predecessors beneath it.[28]
In fine, then, if we observe the distinction between the innate and the
acquired, which is the distinction between the transmissible and the
intransmissible, this is so far from denying the fact of heredity at all as in
reality to emphasise its potency whilst undoubtedly diminishing its range.
A criticism of terms.—In order that this distinction may be clear and never
forgotten, it is well to look to our vocabulary—words being good servants
but bad masters. We should certainly have this vocabulary purged altogether
of a certain word in common and uncritical employment, especially by the
medical profession. This is the thoroughly misleading, indeterminate and

useless word “congenital.” Not on one occasion in a hundred of its use does
any examined meaning attach to it. The word is commonly used as the
equivalent of innate, inherent, inborn or germinal. Now nothing is truly
innate or inborn save what was present in the germ. But with childish
confusion of thought, we persist in attaching quite undeserved importance
to the birth of those animals which are brought forth “alive”—as if a bird's
egg were not alive. Hence we speak of any character present at birth as
congenital, and then we assume that congenital is synonymous with
inherent or germinal. But it is an irrelevant detail that a young mammal
happens to leave its mother at the ninth week or month. During the whole
period that it spends within its mother, it is to be regarded as an individual
organism with its own environment. If that environment so affects it as to
strangle a limb, the result is an acquirement, though it may be present at
birth. An acquirement is an acquirement, whether it be acquired five
minutes or months before, or five minutes or months after, the change of
environment which we call birth. Thus a character may be congenital—that
is, present at birth—but not inherent or germinal, not inborn at the real
birth, which was the union of the maternal and paternal germ-cells at
conception. Such congenital characters are really acquirements, and—
poisonings apart—are not transmissible. In common discussion this
distinction is wholly ignored; and two distinct things, fundamentally
different in origin and in potency, are lumped together under the blessed
word “congenital.”
This word is equally foolish and useless in an opposite direction. It
constantly leads those who use it to suppose that the inherent characters of
an individual are conterminous with his congenital characters or his
characters at birth, and that thus any characters which he displays at a later
age are acquired. All this comes of the absurdly delusive significance
attached to the change of environment called birth, and may doubtless be
traced historically to the remotest superstitions which imagined that a baby
is not alive until it is born and breathes, or that the soul or breath or pneuma
or “vital principle” is breathed into it at the moment of birth. We know,
however, that a man may display for the first time at the age of twenty or
sixty a character which was as truly inherent in his constitution as his nose
or his spinal column—perhaps a beard, perhaps a mental character, perhaps
a disease, or what not. Now this was not congenital though it was inherent.
But as long as the stupid[29] word “congenital” is used as it is, we shall fail

to realise that inherent characters may display themselves in an individual at
any time after birth as at any time before birth. Thus, to sum up, a character
may be congenital or rather pre-congenital, yet not inherent but acquired: a
character may be post-congenital, yet not acquired but inherent. Now the
all-important question as regards heredity is not at what date in the history
of an individual a character appears—as, for instance, before birth or after
birth; but, whether that character is inherent and therefore transmissible and
therefore a possible architect of the future of mankind; or merely an
acquirement, with which—the racial poisons apart—heredity has no
concern.
It is suggested, then, that the word congenital be expunged from the
vocabulary of science, or that, if it be retained, some meaning or other—any
will do—be attached to it. If the word is to be retained, and if it be agreed to
attach a meaning to it, probably “at birth” would be the most convenient. If
this were agreed upon, then the phrase “congenital blindness,” now in
common use, could be retained, as it would then accurately indicate the
nature of the blindness in question, which is due almost invariably, if not
invariably, to an infection acquired at the moment of birth.
Yet further. When we say that a man's intelligence or length of limb or
whatever it be is hereditary, we mean in ordinary speech that this character
can be traced in one or more of his ancestors; and that is, of course, an
accurate use of the term. But Shakespeare, for instance, had unremarkable
ancestors, so that no one would say that his genius was hereditary; are we,
then, to say that it was acquired? Every one would protest at once that a
poet is born and not made—than which there is certainly no truer popular
saying. What, then, is to be said of it if it was neither hereditary nor
acquired? The truth is that language is again at fault. Shakespeare's genius
was of inherent or germinal origin—the poet is born and not made: or, more
accurately, the poet is conceived and not made, either before birth or after it.
Therefore, though Shakespeare did not inherit his mother's genius or his
father's genius, neither of them having such a gift to transmit, yet his genius
was certainly potential either in the maternal or paternal germ-cell which
united to form him, or in both; or at the least arose in consequence of that
compromise or rearrangement or settlement, shall we say, which is in effect
always agreed upon by the two germ-cells in bi-parental reproduction. Now
the two germ-cells are the hereditary material. They were given to

Shakespeare by his parents; nay more, they made him. His genius, then,
was hereditary in an absolutely correct sense of the word, yet not in the
sense of ordinary speech, nor even in the sense in which it is employed by
Mr. Galton in his book on Hereditary Genius. This confusion of terms is
responsible for much confusion of thought. It must the more urgently be
cleared up because of the discoveries in heredity initiated by the Abbot
Mendel, forty years ago, and now included in the department of the science
of heredity which is called Mendelism. We learn from this that highly
definite characters may appear in offspring though there was no sign of
them in either parent. These, then, are not hereditary in the sense of
ordinary speech. Yet, in a more accurate sense of the word they can be
proved to be hereditary—nay more, the manner and proportion of their
transmission can be predicted in the most exact mathematical terms. These
characters were not present in the parent's body; they did not lie open to
view in the parent; they were not patent in the parent. They were latent,
however, they lay hid, in the parent, or rather in the germ-plasm of which
that parent was the host. In many such cases, if we go back a generation
further we find that the character in question was patent in a grand-parent.
A mother's son may suffer from hæmophilia or the bleeding disease, yet she
is not a “bleeder,” nor is the boy's father; but her father was a bleeder, and
the disease is, of course, hereditary in her son, though neither of his parents
displayed a trace of it.
Thus an individual may inherit or may have inherent in the germ-cells from
which he was formed characters which were not present in either parent.
They were, however, potentially present in the germ-cells of which those
parents were the trustees.
But, the reader will say, do we find in the case of every “sport” or
“transilient variation,” such as Shakespeare, that the new character was,
after all, present in some one or other of his ancestors though absent in his
immediate parents? The answer is negative, certainly. But genius, to take
this case, is a combination of qualities. And the Mendelians are now able to
call into existence organisms of new kinds by combination of qualities
derived from one parent, or rather from one parental line, with other
qualities, formerly apparently incompatible with them derived from the
other parental line. Thus Professor Biffen of Cambridge has called into
existence a new kind of wheat such as never existed before—a wheat

combining the quality technically called “strength,” hitherto lacking in all
kinds of wheat capable of being profitably grown in Great Britain, with the
power of yielding a large crop and other good qualities found in home-
grown wheat. He has also produced a wheat which, together with other
desirable qualities, is immune from the disease known as “rust,” this
immunity having never been found before associated with the other good
qualities in question. These advances will not long be limited to the
vegetable world merely. Perhaps it requires no very great imagination, after
all, to suppose that even something like that combination of qualities which
we call genius may some day be produced at will in mankind.
Such a new wheat, then,—I will not say such a Shakespeare—owes its
unique and unprecedented properties to heredity, and yet there was never
anything like it before. Its “genius” is not “hereditary.”
The words innate and inborn are harmless and may be employed, though
the apparent emphasis on birth is rather unfortunate. We mean, however, by
innate or inborn qualities, qualities which were potential in the germ. The
genius of Shakespeare was innate or inborn. It was present potentially at his
real birth, the union of the parental cells. It preceded his “birth” in the
ordinary sense of the word: Shakespeare, when only in embryo, was a
Shakespeare in embryo.
Better still is the word inherent, which, of course, literally means “sticking
in.” By anything inherent we mean that which was there from the first as
part and parcel of, as indeed essential to, the entity to which we refer. Now
inherent characters are always inherited in the accurate sense that they
inhere in the germ-cells, which are the inherited material. As these germ-
cells make us or as we are made out of them, it follows, of course, that all
our potentialities whatsoever, our ultimate fates in every particular, partly
depend upon inheritance.[30]
Nature and nurture are antithetic terms of Shakespearean origin which are
in frequent use and much favoured by Mr. Galton. That which comes by
nature is the inborn, inherent, or germinal; and that is due to nurture which
is the result of the converse of the germinal with the environment—a man's
accent, for instance.
Perhaps, in some ways, germinal is the most useful word of all, though
inherent is so convenient and familiar, as well as being accurate

etymologically, that it has been employed throughout this book. Not only is
the word germinal strictly accurate, but also it suggests the idea of the
germ-plasm, and has the particular virtue of avoiding all reference to the
change of environment to which young mammals are subjected and which
is called birth.
There remains the terminological difficulty that, as I have tried to show, the
individual may display characters which were potential in the germ,
inherent and necessarily inherited, though they did not appear in the parent
nor yet in any ancestor. We have to face the paradox, then, that in natural
inheritance a parent can transmit what he has not got, though this does not
apply to the unnatural inheritance of property in human society. Now what
word is there which shall indicate the origin or at least the time and
conditions of origin, of such characters as these? They are germinal, yet
they are—in some cases—not wholly present in either of the germ-cells
which united to form the new individual in question. They are present,
however, in the new single cell from which this individual, like every living
organism, takes its origin.[31] The terms “congerminal” or “conceptional”
might be employed.
“Acquired character,” even, is a bad term. It replaced “functionally-
produced modification,” which was long employed by Spencer. The
blacksmith's biceps answers to this phrase. It is this and other such
modifications that are non-transmissible. Alcoholic degeneration is not a
“functionally-produced modification,” but it is an “acquired character,” as is
lead poisoning. These do produce results in offspring—naturally enough. If
the older phrase were still the one employed, we should see that the
Weismannian argument as to non-transmission does not apply to such
“acquired characters.”
The word “reversion,” also, not to say “atavism,” may well be dropped. The
attempted justification of its older meaning by Professor Thomson has led
to severe and conclusive Mendelian criticism. The “reversion” of fancy
pigeons to the blue ancestor is simply due to the coming together of
Mendelian units long separated. The “reversion” of the feeble-minded is not
reversion but the result of poisoning—diversion, or perversion, if you like.
Primitive man was not feeble-minded, nor is the ape. Science has no further
use for the word as it is at present employed.

Maternal impressions.—We are now, at last, after our attempt to clear up
the vocabulary of heredity, in a position to consider certain doctrines and
popular beliefs which bear very directly upon race-culture. Realising, for
instance, that “congenital” means nothing; realising as perhaps some of us
have not so clearly realised before, when exactly it is that the new human
being comes into existence, we shall be prepared to understand how definite
and indisputable are the denials which science offers to certain popular
ideas.
Thus, for instance, in the interests of race-culture, or, to be more particular,
in the interests of her unborn baby, the expectant mother may faithfully
follow the example of Lucy in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.[32] Does this
have its intended effect? The answer is an unqualified negative. Consider
the case. The baby is at this time already a baby, though rather small and
uncanny, floating in a fluid of its own manufacture. Its sole connection with
its mother is by means of its umbilical cord—that is to say, blood vessels,
arterial and venous. There is no nervous connection whatever: absolutely
nothing but the blood-stream, carried along a system of tubes. This blood is
the child's blood, which it sends forth from itself along the umbilical cord to
a special organ, the placenta or after-birth, half made by itself and half made
by the mother, in which the child's blood travels in thin vessels so close to
the mother's blood that their contents can be interchanged. Yet the two
streams never actually mix. The child's blood, having disposed of its
carbonic acid and waste-products to the mother's blood, and having
received therefrom oxygen and food, returns so laden to the child. Pray how
is the mother's reading of history to make the child a historian? If, after
birth, a small operation were performed, so that some of the mother's blood
should run along an artificial tube into one of her baby's veins, the effective
connection between the two organisms would in a sense be actually closer
than it was before birth, when, as has been said, the two streams are always
kept apart. Should we expect such an operation to serve the child for
education? If the mother then acquired a scar should we expect it to give the
child a similar scar?
We see now why the learning of geometry on the part of the mother before
its birth will not set her baby upon that royal road to geometry of which
Euclid rightly denied the existence—any more than after its birth. Such a
thing does not happen, and there is no conceivable means by which it could

happen—unless we are to call in telepathy. All maternal hopes and efforts
of this kind are utterly misguided: as misguided as if the father entertained
similar hopes. Let the devoted mother acquaint herself not with what
historians are pleased to call history, but with the history of the developing
human mind and body, so that she may be a fit educator of her child when it
is born.
Let her also realise that her blood is everything to her child. It is food and
air and organ of excretion. If she introduces alcohol into her blood in any
considerable quantity she is feeding her child on poisoned food. Surely the
reader must see the distinction between a case like this and the supposed
transmission of historical knowledge or even historical aptitude from
mother to baby by the diligent perusal of histories. Yet though the
distinction is so palpable and evident, there are extremists who believe and
even print their beliefs that the denial of the one (supposed) possibility,
which is palpably inconceivable, logically carries with it a denial of the
other possibility, which is indeed a palpable necessity. Or, to state the
criticism in another way, there are those who, if we protest that the
introduction of poisons into the mother's organism must surely involve risk
to the child who is nourished by her blood, will retort, “Oh, well, I suppose
you believe that if you learn a number of languages before your next child
is born, he or she will be a linguist!”[33]
Hereditary genius.—Mr. Galton's world-famous work on Hereditary
Genius was published in 1869 and reprinted with a most valuable additional
chapter in 1892. It has long been out of print, however, and for the definite
purpose of attempting to arouse the reader's interest in it so that he may
somehow or other obtain a copy to read, I may here go over one or two
points, chosen to that end. The argument, of course, is that ability is
hereditary.[34]
This, in the judgment of most unbiassed people, Mr. Galton conclusively
proved: and we do not at all realise to-day how repugnant and revolutionary
this doctrine appeared to popular opinion some forty years ago. Mr. Galton
has, however, followed up his citation of facts on more than one occasion
since,[35] and those who now deny his view belong to that very large
majority of any population which finds itself able to pronounce confidently

upon the value of an author's work without the labour, found necessary by
less fortunate people, of reading it.
The following quotation states the question of national eugenics in final
form:—
“As an example of what could be sought with advantage, let us
suppose that we take a number, sufficient for statistical
purposes, of persons occupying different social classes, those
who are the least efficient in physical, intellectual, and moral
grounds forming our lowest class, and those who are the most
efficient forming our highest class. The question to be solved
relates to the hereditary permanence of the several classes.
What proportion of each class is descended from parents who
belong to the same class, and what proportion is descended
from parents who belong to each of the other classes? Do those
persons who have honourably succeeded in life, and who are
presumably, on the whole, the most valuable portion of our
human stock, contribute on the aggregate their fair share of
posterity to the next generation? If not, do they contribute more
or less than their fair share, and in what degree? In other words,
is the evolution of man in each particular country favourably or
injuriously affected by its special form of civilisation?
“Enough is already known to make it certain that the
productiveness of both the extreme classes, the best and the
worst, falls short of the average of the nation as a whole.
Therefore, the most prolific class necessarily lies between the
two extremes, but at what intermediate point does it lie? Taken
altogether, on any reasonable principle, are the natural gifts of
the most prolific class, bodily, intellectual, and moral, above or
below the line of national mediocrity? If above that line, then
the existing conditions are favourable to the improvement of
the race. If they are below that line, they must work towards its
degradation.”
The main body of the book deals with enquiries in special cases—the
judges of England between 1660 and 1865, statesmen, commanders,

authors, men of science, poets, musicians, painters, divines, senior classics
of Cambridge, oarsmen and wrestlers.
The concluding chapters should be printed in gold. Only one or two notes
can here be made. Mr. Galton believes that the dark ages were largely due
to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders on their votaries:—
“Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature
that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to
literature or to art, the social condition of the time was such that
they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church.
But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy, and the
consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance,
and thus, by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am
hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the Church
brutalised the breed of our forefathers. She acted precisely as if
she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community
to be, alone, parents of future generations. She practised the arts
which breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious,
currish, and stupid natures. No wonder that club law prevailed
for centuries over Europe; the wonder rather is that enough
good remained in the veins of Europeans to enable their race to
rise to its present very moderate level of natural morality.”
Yet further:—
“The policy of the religious world in Europe was exerted in
another direction, with hardly less cruel effect on the nature of
future generations, by means of persecutions which brought
thousands of the foremost thinkers and men of political
aptitudes to the scaffold, or imprisoned them during a large part
of their manhood, or drove them as emigrants into other lands.
In every one of these cases the check upon their leaving issue
was very considerable. Hence the Church, having first captured
all the gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy, made
another sweep of her huge nets, this time fishing in stirring
waters, to catch those who were the most fearless, truth-
seeking, and intelligent, in their modes of thought, and
therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilisation, and

put a strong check, if not a direct stop, to their progeny. Those
she reserved on these occasions, to breed the generations of the
future, were the servile, the indifferent, and, again, the stupid.
Thus, as she—to repeat my expression—brutalised human
nature by her system of celibacy applied to the gentle, she
demoralised it by her system of persecution of the intelligent,
the sincere, and the free. It is enough to make the blood boil to
think of the blind folly that has caused the foremost nations of
struggling humanity to be the heirs of such hateful ancestry, and
that has so bred our instincts as to keep them in an
unnecessarily long-continued antagonism with the essential
requirements of a steadily advancing civilisation.”
For this final quotation no apology is needed:—
“The best form of civilisation in respect to the improvement of
the race, would be one in which society was not costly; where
incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources, and
not much through inheritance; where every lad had a chance of
showing his abilities, and, if highly gifted, was enabled to
achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional
life, by the liberal help of the exhibitions and scholarships
which he had gained in his early youth; where marriage was
held in as high honour as in ancient Jewish times; where the
pride of race was encouraged (of course I do not refer to the
nonsensical sentiment of the present day, that goes under that
name); where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in
celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the better
sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited
and welcomed, and their descendants naturalised.”
The study of psychical inheritance.—This early work of Mr. Galton has
been followed by much more on the same lines. Contemporary psychology,
however, is just beginning to indicate the lines on which new enquiry is
needed. The naïve assertions of the actuary as to the inheritance of, say,
“conscientiousness” are not useful to the psychologist, who has some idea
of the structure and history of that most complex social product we call
conscience. The psychologists must analyse out for us those elementary
units of the mind upon which experience and the social state, education and

suggestion act, to make human nature as we know it. The reader may be
directed to Dr. McDougall's recent work on Social Psychology—written at
the present writer's suggestion—for an outline analysis of what is really
inherent, and therefore alone transmissible, in the human mind—certain
instincts and impulses, together with native varieties in capacity of memory,
and so on. Recently the Mendelians have entered this field, and they have
the advantage of realising the importance of dealing with real primary units.
Their law seems to apply to the musical sense in man and to the brooding
instinct in the hen.[36] The line of study here suggested is earnestly
commended to the psychologists for their indispensable help.
Eugenics and parties.—Let us once again consider the fashion in which
men and women are classified to the eugenic eye. We have already realised
that the most essential division of fact is that between those who will and
those who will not be parents. The most essential division of ideal is of
those who are worthy and those who are not worthy to be parents. It is the
object of eugenics to make the real and the ideal divisions coincide. And let
us here say with all possible force that before such classifications as these
all others are trivial and nearly all others impudent. The eugenist has
nothing to do with the low game called party politics: terms like socialism
and so forth mean very little for him. He may or may not be a socialist, but
if he be, at least he does not subscribe to what, so far as I can judge, is the
first article in the creed of socialism—that all evil is of economic origin; he
knows that there is much evil of germinal origin. As for conservatism and
liberalism, he might have some use for these terms if the creed of
conservatism were that there is no wealth but life, which must be
conserved; and the creed of liberalism that life has not yet reached its
zenith, and there must be liberty for all progressive variations of body and
mind and thought and practice. As it is, all these things are somewhat
nauseating. If and when there is a thinking party, and that party will have
the eugenist, he will doubtless join it. Meanwhile he appeals to that great
and growing section of the community which knows party-politics for the
humbug and sham that it is, and the House of Commons as a lethal chamber
for souls.
Similarly, the eugenic classification of mankind cuts right across the
ordinary social classification. The parasite and the parent of parasites must
be branded, whether he be at the top or the bottom of the social scale. The

quality of the germ-plasm which men and women carry is the supremely
important thing. Its architecture is the architect of all empires. Year by year
we shall more surely be able to infer the nature and the worth of the germ-
plasm in particular cases, though its host may have been veneered or, on the
other hand, repressed; and year by year the basal facts of heredity will
furnish ever surer criteria for the theory and practice of a New Imperialism
which knows, for instance, what militarism did for Rome and Napoleon for
France, and which will some day sweep all the money changers out of the
Temple of Life.[37]

CHAPTER VIII
EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE

“Education is but the giving or withholding of opportunity.”—Bateson.

It is true that education can seem to accomplish miracles; that in a single
generation the results of an ideal education would be amazing. It is true,
also, that in certain epochs of history, when wise counsels have prevailed,
great results have been attained. It is true that at present scarcely a man or
woman amongst us, if any, has reached the full stature which would have
been attained under an ideal system of education. It is true, finally, that no
system of race-culture can ignore education or be effective without it.
Though the general question of education is not the specific question of the
present volume, yet there is only too good reason for some brief allusion to
the subject here, especially since it bears on the question of the measure of
importance which we ascribe to heredity.
Modern education—the destruction of mind.—When we observe in such
contrasted cases as those of Herbert Spencer and Wordsworth, for instance,
that absence of early education, especially in the first septennium, has co-
existed with the subsequent efflorescence of the mightiest genius, we may
almost be inclined to enquire whether genius could not in effect be made to
order even in the very next generation by the simple device of suspending

the process which we are pleased to call education. Doubtless that is
scarcely so, though every one who has any knowledge of the subject is well
assured that mere suspension of the present destructive process might
suffice to produce a population that would wonder at its ancestors.
A simple analogy will show the disastrous character of the present process,
which may be briefly described as “education” by cram and emetic. It is as
if you filled a child's stomach to repletion with marbles, pieces of coal and
similar material incapable of digestion—the more worthless the material the
more accurate the analogy: then applied an emetic and estimated your
success by the completeness with which everything was returned, more
especially if it was returned “unchanged,” as the doctors say. Just so do we
cram the child's mental stomach, its memory, with a selection of dead facts
of history and the like (at least when they are not fictions) and then apply a
violent emetic called an examination (which like most other emetics causes
much depression) and estimate our success by the number of statements
which the child vomits on to the examination paper—if the reader will
excuse me. Further, if we are what we usually are, we prefer that the
statements shall come back “unchanged”—showing no signs of mental
digestion. We call this “training the memory.”
Such a process as one has imagined in the physical case would assuredly
ruin the physical digestion for life. In the mental case, which is not
imaginary but actual, a similar result ensues. It is thus unfair to the Anglo-
Saxon germ-plasm to credit it with the abundant stupidity of its products.
Much of this stupidity is factitious and artificial. We shall continue to
produce it so long as by education or drawing forth we understand intrusion
or thrusting in, and so long as the only drawing forth which we practise is
by means of the emetics we call examinations. The present type of
education is a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future. The
teacher who cannot tell whether a child is doing well without formally
examining it, should be heaving bricks; but such a teacher does not exist. In
Berlin they are now learning that the depression caused by these emetics,
for which the best physical parallel is antimony, often leads to child suicide
—a steadily-increasing phenomenon mainly due to educational over-
pressure and worry about examinations.
Short of such appalling disasters, however, we have to reckon with the
existence of this enormous amount of stupidity, which those who

fortunately escaped such education in childhood have to drag along with
them in the long struggle towards the stars. This dead weight of inertia
lamentably retards progress.
Our factitious stupidity is injurious both in the governing and the governed.
As Professor Patrick Geddes once remarked to the present writer, there are
three kinds of governments: the government of the future—as yet only
ideal, which believes that there are ideas and that they may be worth acting
upon: the second is instanced by the Russian government, which believes
that there are ideas, but fears and suppresses them: the third by the British
government, which denies that there are ideas at all, and prefers the method
of “muddling through”—to use a Cabinet Minister's contented phrase—
though truth is one and error infinite, though there are a million ways of
going wrong for one of going right. This characteristic is not to be attributed
to any germinal stupidity of the ruling classes in England. If it were we
should of course look upon the decadence of their birth-rate with the utmost
gratitude. It is a factitious product of their education. If you have been
treated with marbles and emetics long enough, you may begin to question
whether there is such a thing as nourishing food; if you have been crammed
with dead facts, and then compelled to disgorge them, you may well
question whether there are such things as nourishing facts or ideas.
Not less disastrous is this factitious stupidity amongst the governed. It
produces, of course, the kind of man with whom we are all familiar. Having
at great labour been taught to read, he is incapable of reading anything but
rubbish. He never thinks for himself, and if he does you wish he had not, so
inadequate is his machinery and so deplorable the result. He believes in
politicians. He is, as we have said, so much dead weight for the reformer,
whose energy is diverted from the discovery of new truth by the need of
directing the eyes of stupidity to the old, though it shines as the sun in his
strength.
Therefore, let not the reader suppose that in the advocacy of eugenics or
race-culture we have become blinded to the possibilities offered us by
reasonable education even of the very heterogeneous material offered us by
heredity.
The limits of education—individual and racial.—Yet it must be
maintained that, though we cannot do without education, and though

something infinitely better than we practise at present will be necessary if
the ideal of race-culture is ever to be realised, yet education alone, however
good, can never enable us to achieve our end. It must be maintained, in the
first place, that education is limited in its powers by the inherent nature of
the educated material—it is a process of drawing out, and you cannot draw
out what is not there: and secondly, that its value, so far as the nature of
individuals is concerned, is confined to the individuals in question and is
not reproduced or maintained in their children. Thus education alone would
have similar material to act upon from age to age, would have to make a
fresh beginning in each generation, and its results, however good, relatively,
would still be limited and finite. We shall do well, perhaps, to obtain and
retain an adequate definition of education. No true conception of education
was possible, notwithstanding the derivation of the word, so long as the
child's mind was likened to a piece of “pure white paper” for us to write
upon: or an empty box waiting to be filled. The tabula rasa of Locke is, we
now know, the last thing in the world to resemble a child's mind. Indeed, if
any such figure be demanded, the child's mind is a piece of mosaic—made
of ancestral pieces—and education is the process of realising what is so
given. Or, if a child's mind is a portmanteau, to educate is not to pack but to
unpack it. We understand, at least, that education never can begin at the
beginning, nor anywhere near it—that, as Professor MacCunn says in his
admirable book, The Making of Character, “the page of the youngest life is
so far from being blank that it bears upon it characters in comparison with
which the faded ink of palæography is as recent history.”
We are learning, too, though none but the very few know this, that the
process by which the “faded ink” is made visible must not be credited with
having done the writing: any more than the fire to which you hold a paper
written upon with ink that fire makes visible. Still less do we realise that
what really seems to be the product of education is often the result of an
inherent mechanism now developed, which was not yet formed when we
began the educational process. One reason why the baby cannot walk is that
it has not the nervous apparatus. A child may walk at the first attempt, if
that attempt be delayed until the machinery is developed. A child may
similarly speak sentences at the first attempt. Very commonly we start
teaching a child something, which, after some years, it learns. We have
done nothing but interfere. The learning is none of our doing: merely the
mental apparatus is now evolved—and lo! the result. At birth the sucking

apparatus is perfect. If we could, doubtless we should start teaching the
unborn infant to suck long before the machinery was ready—and should
applaud ourselves for its facility at birth; only that probably this facility
would be impaired by our efforts, as many capacities of later development
are damaged by our interference. What we understand, or misunderstand,
by education should begin approximately when a child is seven. The first
seven years of life should really have the term of childhood confined to
them, for there is a natural term so indicated. The growth of the brain is a
matter of the first seven years almost wholly. It grows relatively little after
that period; and until that is completed the physical apparatus of mind is not
ready for educational interference. Without any such interference, and with
merely the provision of conditions, physical and mental, for its spontaneous
development, the brain of the seven year old will suffice for surprising
things—so surprising that if their evolution were possible under any system
of schooling practised before that date, we should applaud it as ideal.
Probably there is no such system—much less any that will improve on the
spontaneous process.
Education the provision of an environment.—We are prepared, then, to
realise the limits to the action of education upon the individual. We shall not
confuse this great and many-sided thing with such of its factors as
instruction or schooling. It is not intrusion but education: “the guidance of
growth,” to use Sir James Crichton-Browne's phrase. This guidance, this
process of unpacking, educing or realising, is accomplished by the action of
circumstances or the environment. Environment is a large word and is
invariably abused when it is used in less than the large sense. Here it
includes, for instance, air and food, mother-love and the schoolmaster. I
therefore define education as the provision of an environment. This
definition prepares us to understand the limitations of the process. If we
think of education as a packing or cramming process, we shall err in this
respect; we shall expect limitless results from education provided that one
packs early and tightly and carefully enough. It is this erroneous conception
which rules us and daily betrays us in practice. If, however, we think of
education as the provision of an environment, capable of creating nothing,
but merely of causing the expression or the repression of potential
characters inherent in the individual educated, then we shall begin to recast
our methods on the lines determined by this truth. Yet, further, we shall
begin to understand the cardinal truth, one of the many platitudes which we

have yet to appreciate, that “you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's
ear.”
Heredity and environment.—Let us consider the question in general
terms. The characters of any living thing are determined by two factors—
heredity and environment. The old phrases were character and
circumstances, but they were less than useful, since character is modified by
circumstances. Now one of the most important questions in the world, and
not least for the eugenist, is as to the relative importance of these two
factors. The technical terms may not be in our mouths, but we discuss this
instance or that of the question in point almost every day of our lives. One
part of the business of philosophy and of science is not only to answer
questions but to ask them correctly. This question is always wrongly asked,
and therefore cannot be answered, or is incorrectly answered. We persist in
using the mathematical idea of addition, and we seek to show that, say,
seventy per cent. of the result is due to the innate factor and thirty per cent.
to the acquired. But the truth is that so long as we begin with this idea we
may prove what we please. If we keep our attention fixed upon the
environmental or educational factor we can easily and correctly
demonstrate that in certain circumstances Mozart would have been tone-
deaf and Shakespeare a gibbering idiot—hence, but incorrectly, we argue
that environment is practically everything. Per contra, we can easily and
correctly demonstrate that no education in the world could enable a door-
mat or a cabbage or ourselves to write Don Giovanni or Hamlet—hence,
but incorrectly, we argue that the material to be operated upon is everything.
We have to learn, however, that the analogy is one not of addition but of
multiplication. Neither inheritance nor environment, as such, gives
anything. The environmental factor may be potentially one hundred—an
ideal education—but the innate or inherited factor may be nothing, as when
the pupil is a door-mat or a fool. The result then is nothing. Darwin had the
trombone played to a plant, but he did not make a Palestrina. No academy
of music will make a beetroot into a Beethoven, though I dare say a well-
trained beetroot might write a musical comedy. The point is that one
hundred multiplied by nothing equals nothing. Similarly, the innate factor
may be one hundred, as in the case of a potential genius, but he may be
brought up upon alcohol and curses amongst savages, and the result again is
nothing. Keep the idea of multiplication in the mind, and the facts are seen
rightly. No matter how big either factor be, if it be multiplied by nothing it

yields nothing, or if it be multiplied by a fraction, as in the ordinary
education of a genius, it yields less than it should. But in this controversy
people persist in assuming that inheritance or education gives definitely so
much which is there anyhow, whereas, really, it only supplies a potential
figure, which may realise infinity or nothing, according to what it is
multiplied by. With all deference, I submit this as a real answer to these
endless disputes.
But further, granted that neither factor in itself produces any actuality,
which is normally the weightier of the two factors? We must make the
qualification, “normally,” because such a thing as disease or poison,
included in the environmental factor, will dominate the result, completely
overshadowing the importance of whatever heredity gave. Such things
apart, however, we may be thoroughly assured that heredity is the weightier
of the two factors. The more we study education, the more we recognise its
true nature. Indeed, the more we realise its ideal, the more do we realise its
limitations. The more we study education the more important does heredity
appear. If the reader has not had opportunities of observing children for
himself let him refer to such a book as Mr. Galton's Inquiries into Human
Faculty, and he will begin to realise how large is the factor given by
inheritance and how relatively small is the factor given by education.
Education can educate only what heredity gives.—Heredity, as the
eugenist must never forget, gives not actualities but only potentialities. It
depends upon circumstances whether they shall become actualities. That,
however, we all know. No one supposes that education is superfluous or
impotent. We do, however, persistently forget the converse truth that
education, on the other hand, makes no definite contribution, but merely
multiplies—or alas, divides—the potentialities given by inheritance. These
potentialities constitute a limiting condition which no education can
transcend. Education can educate only what heredity gives. Long ago
Helvetius thought, as did Kant, that the differences between men were due
to differences in education. But it is not so. We make, of course, the most
ridiculous claims for education. The remark wrongly attributed to the Duke
of Wellington, that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of
Eton,” is an instance in point. Recently, when Francis Thompson, the poet,
died, the local newspaper of his birthplace said that it should be proud to
have produced him. We may laugh at this conception of the genesis of

genius, but we all talk in this fashion. A genius was educated at Eton, and
we say that Eton produced him. The truth is, of course, that Eton failed to
destroy him. (One says Eton for convenience, but the name of any accepted
school will do.) If Eton produced him, why does not it produce thousands
like him? There is plenty of material: but it is not the right material. We
should cease to speak, in our pride for our own Alma Mater or our own
methods, as if education created genius or anything else. Men are born
unequal. To realise the nature of education is not only to avoid the popular
assumption that an ideal education will do everything for us, forgetting that
no amount of polishing will make pewter shine like silver; it is not only to
send us back to the principle of selection in recognition of the power of
inheritance; it is not merely to dispose of the idea that men are born
inherently equal; but it is also to combat the idea that education is a
levelling process. On the contrary, it accentuates the differences between
men. You may confuse the unpolished pebble and the diamond, but not
when education has done its utmost for both. If education were a process of
addition to what inheritance gives, it would almost level men: the addition
of a large sum to figures such as, say, 1, 2, and 3, would almost obliterate
their original disproportion. But the analogy is with multiplication, as I have
suggested: and the larger the sum by which 1, 2 and 3 are multiplied, the
greater is the disparity between the products. This is, perhaps, one of the
truths of vast importance which the common rim of contemporary
Socialism implicitly denies: though it is of course abundantly recognised by
such a socialist as that master-thinker Professor Forel. The socialist's
panacea, ideal education for all, is much to be desired, and will accomplish
much, as we began by admitting; but it is not a panacea. Those who believe
it to be such do not understand the nature of education nor its limitations.
They should remember the remark of Epictetus, “the condition and
characteristic of a fool is this: he never expects from himself profit nor
harm, but from externals.” The dogma of the unthinking socialist—who
exists, though he is doubtless rarer than the unthinking individualist—is that
all evil is of economic origin: correct your economics and your education
and you obliterate evil. But it is not so. As Lowell said, “A great part of
human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his
institutions.” When by means of eugenics we can give education the right
material to work upon, we shall have a Utopia, and as for forms of
government they may be left for fools to contest. Forel, incomparably the

greatest socialist thinker of the day, sees this. He makes his Utopian
predictions not so much as to mere externals, like clothing and language,
but as regards the kind of man and woman: and, unlike some writers, he
entitles himself to paint these pictures, for in that great eugenic treatise Die
Sexuel Frage, he tells us how to realise them by pedagogic reform working
upon the materials provided by human selection. A paragraph may be
quoted from Forel:—
“Malgré tout l'enthousiasme qu'on doit montrer pour une
pédagogie rationelle, il ne faut jamais oublier qu'elle est
incapable de remplacer la sélection. Elle sert au but immédiat et
rapproché, qui est d'utiliser le mieux possible le matérial
humain tel qu'il existe maintenant. Mais, par elle-même, elle
n'améliore en rien la qualité des germes à venir. Elle peut,
néanmoins, grâce à l'instruction donnée à la jeunesse sur la
valeur sociale de la sélection, la préparer à mettre cette dernière
en œuvre.”
and another from Spencer:—
“We are not among those who believe in Lord Palmerston's
dogma, that all children are born good. On the whole, the
opposite dogma, untenable as it is, seems to us less wide of the
truth. Nor do we agree with those who think that, by skilful
discipline, children may be made altogether what they should
be. Contrariwise, we are satisfied that though imperfections of
nature may be diminished by wise management, they cannot be
removed by it. The notion that an ideal humanity might be
forthwith produced by a perfect system of education, is near
akin to that implied in the poems of Shelley, that would make
mankind give up their old institutions and prejudices, all the
evils in the world would at once disappear; neither notion being
acceptable to such as have dispassionately studied human
affairs.”
Ruskin on education and inequality.—Three great paragraphs may be
quoted from Ruskin's Time and Tide:—
“... Education was desired by the lower orders because they
thought it would make them upper orders, and be a leveller and

effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished, when
they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the fatallest
of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing, even to
the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein your
body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls,
and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal.
“171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely
appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is
undivinely poor, it will make rich; whatever is undivinely
maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, and equal, and
seeing. The blind and the lame are to it as to David at the siege
of the Tower of the Kings, ‘hated of David's soul.’ But there are
other divinely-appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the
everlasting hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters.
And these, education does not do away with; but measures,
manifests, and employs.
“In the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea-beach,
which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam,
has only educated to be, every one, round, you will see little
difference between the noble and the mean stones. But the
jeweller's trenchant education of them will tell you another
story. Even the meanest will be the better for it, but the noblest
so much better that you can class the two together no more. The
fair veins and colours are all clear now, and so stern is nature's
intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show which is
best, but the best will take most polish. You shall not merely see
they have more virtue than the others, but see that more of
virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly
you shall see what there is of it.
“172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to
vulgar pride, is this—that all its gains are at compound interest;
so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther
behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms.
Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an
hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall
they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page a-

head, two pages, ten pages—and evermore, though each toils
equally, the interval enlarges—at birth nothing, at death
infinite.”
So much for one relation of this question to Socialism. Quite lately (The
New Age, April 11th, 1908) Mr. Havelock Ellis has summed the matter up
as follows:—
“Education has been put at the beginning, when it ought to have
been put at the end. It matters comparatively little what sort of
education we give children; the primary matter is what sort of
children we have got to educate. That is the most fundamental
of questions. It lies deeper even than the great question of
Socialism versus Individualism, and indeed touches a
foundation that is common to both. The best organised social
system is only a house of cards if it cannot be constructed with
sound individuals; and no individualism worth the name is
possible, unless a sound social organisation permits the
breeding of individuals who count. On this plane Socialism and
Individualism move in the same circle.”
We cannot agree with Socialism when, as we think, it assumes that all evil
is of economic or of educational origin. The student of heredity finds
elements of evil abundant in poisoned germ-plasm and not absent from the
best. Surely, surely, the products of progress are not mechanisms but men;
and surely no economic system as such can be the only mechanism worth
naming—which would be one that made men. The germ-plasm is such a
mechanism, indeed; and hence its quality is all important.
But if Socialism, sooner than any other party, is going to identify itself with
the economic principle of Ruskin that “there is no wealth but life”; and if in
its discussion of the conditions of industry it will concern itself primarily
with the culture of the racial life, which is the vital industry of any people
(and basis enough for a New Imperialism, or at least a New Patriotism, that
might be quite decent); if so, then it seems to me that we must look to the
socialists for salvation. But books which describe future externals, books
which assume that education is a panacea, forgetting that education can
educate only what heredity gives, turn us away again when we are almost

persuaded. The economic panacea must fail (at least as a panacea); the
educational panacea must fail; the eugenic panacea may not fail.

Education, then, cannot achieve our ideal of race-culture. No matter how
good our polishing, we must have silver and diamonds to work upon, not
pewter and pebbles. When we have the right material to work upon, our
labour will not be wasted, or far worse than wasted, as it now too often is.
Education a Sisyphean task.—But the belief in education as in itself an
adequate instrument of race-culture chiefly depends upon the popular
doctrine as to its influence upon the race. It is supposed, in a word, that if
we educate the parents, the child will begin where the parents left off. This
is the doctrine of Lamarck, who said that if the necks of the parent giraffe
were educated or drawn out, the baby giraffe would have this anatomical
acquirement transmitted to it, and, so to speak, when it grew up, would be
able to begin feeding on the leaves of trees at the level where its parents had
to leave off. In the course of its life its own neck would become elongated
or educated, and its children would outstretch both itself and their grand-
parents. This doctrine of the transmission of acquired characters by
heredity, as we have seen, is, at the present day, repudiated by biologists. It
is generally believed by the medical profession and by the public,
notwithstanding the fact that, for instance, the skin of the heel of every new
baby is almost as thin and delicate as it is anywhere else, though for
unthinkable generations all the ancestors of that baby on both sides have
greatly thickened the skin of both heels by the act of walking.
It is quite evident that, if the Lamarckian theory were true, education would
be a completely adequate instrument of race-culture, incomparable in its
rapidity and certainty. It would not reform the world in a single generation
because, as we have seen, its results would be limited by the inherent nature
of its material; but since those results would involve the vast amelioration
of the material upon which it worked in the second generation, mankind
would be little lower than the angels in a century. The good habits acquired
by one generation would be innate in the next. If the father learnt one
language in addition to his own, the child would start with the knowledge of
two, waiting only for opportunity, and could accumulate more and hand

them on to its child. “My father's environment would be my heredity.” If we
desired muscular strength we could in two generations produce a race
amongst whom Sandow would be a puny weakling. We should not need to
discuss any question of selection for parenthood. Without any such process
we could answer Browning's prayer and “elevate the race at once”—
physically, mentally and morally.
But the Lamarckian theory does not correspond with facts. The results of
education, physical, mental, or moral, are limited to the individuals
educated. The children do not begin where the parents left off, but they
make a fresh start where the parents did. Thus even though we had and
employed an ideal method of education, we should make no permanent
improvement by its means alone in the breed of mankind, any more than the
breeder of race-horses could attain his end by the same means. In each
generation the same problem, the same difficulties, the same limitations
inherent in the nature of the new material, would have to be faced. We must
learn from the horse-breeder, who knows that the blood of a single horse,
Eclipse, runs in the veins of the great majority of winners since his time.
It is exceedingly difficult to dispossess the popular mind of the Lamarckian
idea, the more especially as members of the medical profession, who are
regarded as authorities on heredity, contentedly accept this idea themselves.
Yet the advocates of eugenics or race-culture have to recognise that, so long
as the Lamarckian idea obtains, their crusade will fail to find a hearing. We
believe that nothing can really be accomplished in the way of race-culture
until public opinion—that “chaos of prejudices,” as Huxley called it—is
marshalled on our side. But the popular notion of heredity is a most
formidable obstacle. The Lamarckian idea seems to provide a method for
the improvement of a species which cannot be surpassed for simplicity,
rapidity and certainty. It even excludes the possibility of mistakes. You
cannot go wrong if you simply educate every one to the utmost. Doubtless
some persons are more suited for parenthood than others, but only let
education be wise and universal, and any question of selection by marriage
or otherwise will be superfluous. A thousand difficulties offered by public
sentiment, by convention, by the churches, by the large measure of
uncertainty which attends the working of heredity, could be ignored, if race-
culture were simply a matter of education.

Nevertheless, these difficulties have to be faced by the eugenist. The
popular misconception of heredity—instanced by Sir James Simpson's
belief, not inexcusable sixty years ago, that the education of a future mother
will enlarge her child's brain—must be removed. It can scarcely be doubted
that the sway of the Lamarckian idea will soon be diminished, and then, at
last, those who are interested in the future will discover that only by the
process of selection for parenthood, which has brought mankind thus far,
can further progress be assured.
Real functions of education for race-culture.—Nevertheless education
has a true function for race-culture in addition to the obvious fact of its
necessity in order to realise the inherent potentialities of the individual. One
of its functions is to provide a level of public opinion and public taste such
that the finer specimens of each generation shall receive their due reward
and shall not be crushed out of existence or perverted. There is a passage in
Goethe which suggests the true function of education, and makes us suspect
that, so far as many kinds of genius and talent are concerned, our immediate
business is perhaps less to endeavour to produce them by breeding—if that
be possible—than to make the most of them when they are vouchsafed us.
Says Goethe:—
“We admire the Tragedies of the ancient Greeks; but to take a
correct view of the case, we ought to admire the period and the
nation in which their production was possible rather than the
individual authors; for though these pieces differ in some points
from each other, and though one of these poets appears
somewhat greater and more finished than the other, still, taking
all things together, only one decided character runs through the
whole.
“This is the character of grandeur, fitness, soundness, human
perfection, elevated wisdom, sublime thought, pure, strong
intuition, and whatever other qualities one might enumerate.
But when we find all these qualities, not only in the dramatic
works which have come down to us, but also in lyrical and epic
works—in the philosophers, orators, and historians, and in an
equally high degree in the works of plastic art that have come
down to us—we must feel convinced that such qualities did not

merely belong to individuals, but were the current property of
the nation and the whole period.”
Education as to the principle of selection.—Further, the hope may be
warranted that, though education, as such, will not achieve the ideal of true
race-culture, and though it has never hitherto averted the ultimate failure of
all civilisations, yet the case may be different to-day, in that our acquired or
traditional progress, transmitted by the process of education accumulating
from age to age—not in our blood and bone and brain, but mainly in books,
whereby the non-transmission of the results of education is circumvented in
a sense—has reached the point at which the laws of racial or inherent
progress have been revealed to us, as to none of our predecessors.[38]
Having the knowledge of these laws it is possible that we may avert our
predecessors' fate by putting them into force. If we do not, we must
ultimately become “one with Nineveh and Tyre.” Fifty years have now
elapsed since the principle of natural selection was demonstrated for all
time by the genius of Darwin. We must not be guilty of starting to tell the
story of organic evolution and leaving out the point. So long as we
supposed that man was created as he is, the idea of racial progress was an
absurdity. It is the correct thing now-a-days to decry the possibility of
human perfection. This possibility is rightly to be decried if it be assumed
that ideal education of the present material or anything like it would realise
perfection. We have seen that it would not. It is the principle of selection, in
which Darwin has educated us, that must be taught to all mankind, and thus
education may indeed become the factor of an effective race-culture.
The power of individual opinion.—Since ultimately opinion rules the
world, it is for us to create sound opinion. That is the purpose of this book.
But every individual may be a centre of eugenic opinion, and the time has
assuredly come for attempting to realise this ideal, though a thousand years
should pass before the facts of heredity are completely ascertained and
understood. The main principles are of the simplest character, and can be
readily imparted to a child. Especially does the responsibility fall upon
parents and those who are in charge of childhood.
The young people of the next and all succeeding generations must be taught
the supreme sanctity of parenthood. The little boy who asks what he is to
become when he grows up, must be taught that the highest profession and
privilege he can aspire to is responsible fatherhood; the little girl may less

frequently ask these questions, the answer to which has been imparted to
her by her own Mother-Nature—as the doll instinct, so little appreciated or
utilised, sufficiently demonstrates; but she likewise must be taught
reverence for Motherhood. As childhood gives place to youth, what may be
called the eugenic sense must be cultivated as a cardinal aspect of the moral
sense itself; so that even personal inclination—at the controllable and self-
controllable stage which precedes “head over ears” affection—will wither
when it is directed to some one who, on any ground, offends the educated
eugenic sense. There is here a field for moral education of the highest and
most valuable kind, both for the individual and for the race. Is there any
other aspect of duty which can claim a higher warrant? Is there any hitherto
so wholly ignored?
The preceding paragraph is re-printed from a brief account of its objects
written for the Eugenics Education Society, as a Society which amongst
other purposes exists “to further eugenic teaching at home and in the
schools and elsewhere.” The difficulties of teaching this subject to children
are more apparent than real. I may freely confess that though I have been
speaking, writing, and thinking about eugenics for six years, I did not
realise the importance of eugenic education until I heard the views of some
of the women who belong to this Society, and even then I was at first
sceptical as to its practicability. The subject has been entirely ignored by the
pioneers of this matter. But if we turn to such a work as Forel's masterpiece
we begin to realise that the eugenic education of children is the real
beginning at the beginning, that it is in fact indispensable, and must be
antecedent to all legislation in the direction of positive eugenics, though not
to certain forms of legislation in the direction of negative eugenics.[39] In
the earlier chapters of his great work Professor Forel offers the parent and
the guardian abundant, detailed and accurate guidance as to the lines and
methods of this teaching. It is urgently necessary for both sexes, but more
especially for girls, who may suffer incredibly from the cruel prudery
ordained by Mrs. Grundy, the only old woman to whom the word “hag”
should be applied. We must remove the reproach of Herbert Spencer, made
nearly fifty years ago in words which may well be quoted:—

“The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely
overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed
improvement of our systems in respect both of matter and
manner, the most pressing desideratum, to prepare the young
for the duties of life, is tacitly admitted to be the end which
parents and schoolmasters should have in view; and happily,
the value of the things taught, and the goodness of the methods
followed in teaching them, are now ostensibly judged by their
fitness to this end. The propriety of substituting for an
exclusively classical training, a training in which the modern
languages shall have a share, is argued on this ground. The
necessity of increasing the amount of science is urged for like
reasons. But though some care is taken to fit youth of both
sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to
fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that for the
purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is
needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of
children, no preparation whatever is needed. While many years
are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief
value is that it constitutes ‘the education of a gentleman’; and
while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative
acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an hour is
spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all
responsibilities—the management of a family. Is it that this
responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is
sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is
easy? Certainly not; of all functions which the adult has to
fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by
self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of
parent? No; not only is the need for such self-instruction
unrecognised, but the complexity of the subject renders it the
one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to
succeed.”
The lines of eugenic education.—The teaching of the main facts of
heredity must come first in order to the end of eugenic education. The
vegetable world is at our service in this regard, the products of horticulture

with their beauty and grace and novelty are illustrations one and all of what
heredity means and what the due choice of parents will effect. There need
be no personal allusions at this stage; the thing can be presented in an
impersonal biological setting. And as heredity produces these wonderful
results in plants, so also does it in the animal world. Numberless domestic
forms are at our service. You take your children and your dog to the
Zoological gardens, and show the resemblance between wolf and dog. What
easier, then, than to point out that by consistent choosing for many
generations of the least ferocious wolves, you may make a domesticated
race?[40]
The mind of any child that has fortunately escaped “education” will make
the transition for itself from sub-human races to mankind, and instances
will occur, say, where extreme short-sightedness or deafness appears in
children whose parents were similarly afflicted, and were perhaps closely
related. At yet a later age a boy or girl may learn the doom which often falls
upon the children of drunkards.
And then may it not be possible, when a little boy asks what he is to be
when he grows up, to suggest that the highest profession to which he can be
called, for which he may strive to make himself worthy, is fatherhood? And
when the racial instinct awakes, would it be wrong, improper, indecent, to
teach that it has a purpose, that no attribute of mind or body has a higher
purpose, that this is holy ground? Or is it better that by silence, both as to
the fact and as to its meaning, we should make it unmentionable, indecent,
dishonourable? The Bible is used now-a-days as an instrument of political
immorality, but if and when it should be employed for the function of other
great literature, there is a passage sufficiently relevant to our present
argument.[41]
Perhaps we are wrong in regarding and treating the racial instinct as if it
were animal and low, a thing as far as possible to be ignored, repressed,
treated with silent contempt in education and elsewhere. We may be wrong
in practice because the method is not successful, because the development
of this instinct is inevitable and little short of imperious in every normal
child if that child is ever to become a man or a woman, and because our
silence does not involve the silence of less responsible persons who are less
likely even than we ourselves to teach the young enquirer that this thing
exists for parenthood, and is therefore holy and to be treated as such.

Perhaps we are wrong in principle also, since that which exists for
parenthood, and without which the continuance and future terrestrial hope
of mankind is impossible, cannot be animal and low, unless human life,
even at its best attained or attainable, be animal and low. Our business
rather is to treat this great fact in a spirit worthy of the purpose for which it
exists; and therefore, as part of that process of education by which we
desire to make the young into reasonable, moral and fully human beings, to
teach explicitly, without unworthy shame, that this thing exists for the
highest of purposes that nothing which the future holds for boy or girl can
conceivably be higher or happier than worthy parenthood, however
commonplace that may appear to common eyes, and that accordingly this
instinct is to be guarded, treated, used, honoured as for parenthood, a fact
which immediately raises it from the egoistic to the altruistic plane. We
have to learn and to teach that worthy parenthood is the highest end which
education can achieve—highest alike on the ground of its services to the
individual and its services to the future, and the relation of the racial instinct
to parenthood being what it is, we have to look upon it in that light, at once
austere and splendid.
In the teaching of girls, only a false and disastrous prudery offers any great
obstacle. The idea of motherhood is essentially natural to the normal girl. It
is the eugenic education of boys that is more difficult, and the possibility of
which will be questioned in some quarters, especially by those who regard
the type of boy evolved in semi-monastic institutions, devoid of feminine
influence, as a normal and unchangeable being. Co-educationists, however,
are teaching us to revise that opinion, and will yet demonstrate, perhaps,
that the inculcation of the idea of fatherhood is not so impossible nor so
alien to the boy nature as some would suppose. If such a duty devolved
upon the present writer, he would feel inclined, perhaps, to present his
teaching in terms of patriotism. He would urge that “there is no wealth but
life”; that nations are made not of provinces nor property but of people; that
modern biology is teaching historians to explain such phenomena as the fall
of Rome in terms of the quality of the national life; that therefore,
individuals being mortal, parenthood necessarily takes its place as the
supreme factor of national destiny; that the true patriotism must therefore
concern itself with the conditions and the quality of parenthood—much less
with its quantity; that the patriotism which ignores these truths is ignorant
and must be disastrous; that we must turn our attention therefore from flag

waving to questions of individual conduct; that if alcohol and syphilis, for
instance, can be demonstrated to be what I would call racial poisons, the
young patriot must make himself aware of their relation to parenthood, and
must act upon his knowledge of that relation. It can thus be demonstrated
that righteousness exalteth a nation not only in the spiritual but also in the
most concrete sense.
To this we shall come. We may even recognise eugenic education as the
most urgent need of the day, as the most radical and rational, perhaps even
the most hopeful, of the methods by which the cleansing of the city, and
much more, is to be achieved. We must create a eugenic aspect for the
moral sense. We can associate this alike with individual and civic duty, and
with those very ideals to which, as we all know, the young most readily
respond. Thus I believe it shall be said of us in the after time that we have
raised up the foundations of many generations.
And so, finally, the unselfish significance of marriage might conceivably be
taught, alike to boys and girls, and especially in the case of undoubtedly
good stocks might we inculcate, as Mr. Galton has pointed out, a rational
pride in ancestry—that is to say, a rational pride in the quality of the germ-
plasm which has been entrusted to us. And so may be cultivated a eugenic
aspect of the moral sense—which is immeasurably more plastic than any
but the student of moral ideas knows—and, thus endowed, the young man
or woman will be prepared for the possibility of marriage. It is perfectly
conceivable that in days to come the argument—in any case false—that
affection never brooks control, may become wholly irrelevant, when there
arises a generation in whose members there has been cultivated or created
the eugenic sense. It is conceivable that, just as to-day the mere possibility
of falling in love is arrested by any of a thousand trivial considerations, so
misplaced affection may be incapable of arising because its possible object
affronts the educated eugenic sense. The natural basis for such education
already exists. But the natural eugenic sense still works mainly on the
physical plane, and although we owe to it the maintenance of our present
modest standard of physical beauty, we aim at higher ideals—and will one
day thus attain them.

CHAPTER IX
THE SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD

“The dregs of the human species—the blind, the deaf mute, the
degenerate, the imbecile, the epileptic—are better protected than
pregnant women.”—Bouchacourt.
“I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of the society of
this present day are the carelessness with which it regards the betrayal
of women, and the brutality with which it suffers the neglect of
children.”—Ruskin.

A chapter must be included here concerning a question which can never
safely be ignored in any consideration of race-culture, but the importance of
which, as I think I see it, is recognised by no one who has concerned
himself at all with this subject, from Mr. Francis Galton himself
downwards. We must all be agreed, Mr. Galton declares, as to the propriety
of breeding, if it be possible, for health, energy and ability, whatever else
may be doubtful. To this I would add that, whether we are agreed or not, we
must breed for motherhood, and that, even if we do not, we shall have to
reckon with it. The general eugenic position, I fancy, is that the
requirements which we should make of both sexes, the mothers of the
future as well as the fathers, are essentially identical: but it seems to me that
we have not yet reckoned with the vast importance of motherhood as a
factor in the evolution of all the higher species of animals, and its absolute
supremacy, inevitable and persistent whether recognised or ignored, in the
case of man. Any system of eugenics or race-culture, any system of
government, any proposal for social reform—as, for instance, the reduction
of infant mortality—which fails to reckon with motherhood or falls short of
adequately appraising it, is foredoomed to failure and will continue to fail
so long as the basal facts of human nature and the development of the
human individual retain even approximately their present character.
Whatever proposals for eugenics or race-culture be made or carried out, the
fact will remain that the race is made up of mortal individuals; that every

one of these begins its visible life as a helpless baby, and that the system
which does not permit the babies to survive, they will not permit to survive.
This is a general and universal proposition, admitting of no exceptions,
past, present or to come. It applies equally to conscious systems of race-
culture, to forms of marriage, to forms of government, to any other social
institution or practice or character that can be named or conceived. Upon
every one of these the babies pronounce a judgment from which there is no
appeal. The baby may be a potential Newton, Shakespeare, Beethoven or
Buddha, but it is at its birth the most helpless thing alive, the potentialities
of which avail it not one whit. It is in more need of care, immediate and
continuous, than a baby microbe or a baby cat, whatever the unpublished
glories of which its brain contains the promise; and in the total absence of
any apparatus, mechanical, legal, or scientific, which can provide the
mother's breast and the mother's love, individual motherhood, in its
exquisitely complementary aspects, physical and psychical, will remain the
dominant factor of history so long as the final judgments upon every
present and the final determinations for every future lie in the hands of
helpless babyhood—which will be the case so long as man is mortal. When,
if ever, science, having previously conquered disease, identifies the causes
of natural death and removes them, then motherhood and babyhood may be
thrown upon the rubbish heap; but until that hour they are enthroned by
decree of Nature, and can be dethroned only at the cost of Her certain and
annihilative vengeance.
It is the master paradox that at his first appearance the lord of the earth
should be the most helpless of living things. Consider a new-born baby.
“Unable to stand, much less to wander in search of food; very nearly deaf;
all but blind; well-nigh indiscriminating as to the nature of what is
presented to its mouth; utterly unable to keep itself clean, yet highly
susceptible to the effects of dirt; able to indicate its needs only by
alternately turning its head, open-mouthed, from side to side and then
crying; possessed of an almost ludicrously hypersensitive interior; unable to
fast for more than two or three hours, yet having the most precise and
complicated dietetic requirements; needing the most carefully maintained
warmth; easily injured by draughts; the prey of bacteria (which take up a
permanent abode in its alimentary canal by the eleventh day)—where is to
be found a more complete picture of helpless dependence?”[42] How comes

it that this creature is to be lord of the earth, and a member of the only
species which succeeds in continually multiplying itself?
Motherhood and intelligence.—We have maintained that the vital
character which is of supreme survival-value for man is his intelligence,
and this, as we know, is his unique possession. It is very largely for
intelligence, therefore, that race-culture or eugenics proposes, if possible, to
work. But if there be certain conditions which must be complied with
before intelligence can possibly be evolved, eugenics will come to disaster
should it ignore them. These conditions do exist, and have hitherto been
entirely ignored by all students of this question. Let certain great facts be
observed.
Why is the human baby the most helpless of all creatures? Since it is to
become the most capable, should it not, even in its infant state, show signs
of its coming superiority? What is the meaning of this paradox?
The answer is that, so far as physical weapons of offence and defence are
concerned, these have disappeared because intelligence makes them
superfluous or even burdensome. But the peculiar helplessness of the
human infant depends not upon its nakedness in the physical sense but upon
its lack of very nearly all instinctive capacities. It is this absence of effective
instincts which distinguishes the baby from the young of all other creatures.
Why should its endowment in this respect be so inferior?
It is because of the fact that, if instinct is to give rise to intelligence, it must
be plastic. A purely instinctive creature reacts to certain sets of
circumstances in certain effortless, perfect and fixed ways. The reactions
are the whole of its psychical life. They need no education, being as
perfectly performed on the first occasion as on the last, and in many
instances being performed only once in the whole history of the creature in
question. But, on the other hand, they are almost incapable of education,
and even in the cases where they lack absolute perfection at first, they only
require the merest modicum of opportunity in order to acquire it. Perfect
within their limits, they are yet most definitely limited. They never achieve
the new, they are utterly at fault in novel circumstances, and they are wholly
incapable of creating circumstances.
A creature cannot be at once purely instinctive and intelligent. An
instinctive action is simply a compound reflex action, a highly adapted

automatism: now automatism and intelligence are necessarily inversely
proportional. It is possible for an intelligent creature to acquire
automatisms, which are popularly described as instinctive. They are not
instincts, however, but the acquired equivalents of instincts: “secondary
automatisms.” If they are used to replace intelligence, the individual, in so
far, sinks from the human to the sub-human level. Their proper function is
to leave the intelligence free for higher purposes more worthy of it than,
say, the act of dressing oneself.
In order that an intelligent creature should be evolved it was necessary that
instinct should become plastic. Intelligence could not be superposed upon a
complete and final instinctive equipment. You cannot determine your own
acts if they are already determined for you by your nervous organisation.
The incomparable superiority of intelligence depends upon its limitless and
creative character, in virtue of which, as Disraeli puts it, “men are not the
creatures of circumstances: circumstances are the creatures of men.” But
whilst intelligence can learn everything, it has everything to learn, and the
most nearly intelligent creature whom the earth affords thus begins his
independent life almost wholly bereft of all the instruments which have
served the lower creatures so well, whilst, on the other hand, he is provided
with an utterly undeveloped, and indeed, at that time non-existent, weapon
which, even if it did exist, he could not use. Hence the unique helplessness
of the human baby: one of the most wonderful and little appreciated facts in
the whole of nature—effectively hidden from the glass eyes of the kind of
man who calls a baby a “brat,” but, to eyes that can see, not only the master
paradox from the philosophical point of view but also a fact of the utmost
moment from the practical point of view.
The evolution of motherhood.—It directly follows that motherhood is
supremely important in the case of man. It is the historical fact that its
importance in the history of the animal world has been steadily increasing
throughout æonian time. The most successful and ancient societies we
know, those of the social insects, which antedate by incalculable ages even
the first vertebrates, could not survive for a single generation without the
motherhood or foster-motherhood to which the worker females sacrifice
their lives and their own chances of physical maternity.
The development of maternal care may be steadily traced throughout the
vertebrate series—pari passu with the evolution of sexual relations towards

the ideal of monogamy, which is ideal just because of its incomparable
services to motherhood. But whilst motherhood is of the utmost service for
lower creatures, tending always to lessen infant mortality—if it may be so
called—and to increase the proportion of life to death and birth, it is of
supreme service in the case of man because of the absolute dependence
upon it of intelligence, the solitary but unexampled weapon with which he
has won the earth. Hence in breeding for intelligence we cannot afford to
ignore that upon which intelligence depends. Even if we could produce
genius at will, we should find our young geniuses just as dependent upon
motherhood as the common run of mankind. Newton himself was a seven
months' baby, and the potentialities of gravitation and the calculus and the
laws of motion in his brain could not save him: motherhood could and did.
Even our least biological reformers must admit that purely physical
motherhood, up to the point of birth, can scarcely be omitted in any
schemes for social reform or race-culture. Some of them will even admit
that purely physical motherhood, so far as the mother's breasts are
concerned, cannot wisely be dispensed with. The psychical aspects of
motherhood, however, many of these writers—I do not call them thinkers—
ignore. In relation to infant mortality—which is the most obvious symptom
of causes productive of vast and widespread physical deterioration amongst
the survivors, and which must be abolished before any really effective race-
culture is possible—it is worth noting that motherhood cannot safely be
superseded. I do not believe in the crèche or the municipal milk depôt
except as stop-gaps, or as object-lessons for those who imagine that the
slaughtered babies are not slaughtered but die of inherent defect, and that
therefore infant mortality is a beneficent process. In working for the
reduction of this evil we must work through and by motherhood. In some
future age, boasting the elements of sanity, our girls will be instructed in
these matters. At present the most important profession in the world is
almost entirely carried on by unskilled labour, and until this state of things
is put an end to, it is almost idle to talk of race-culture at all. But under our
present system of education, false and rotten as it is in principles and details
alike, it is necessary for us to send visitors to the homes of the classes
which, in effect, supply almost the whole of the future population of the
country, and to establish schools for mothers on every hand.

Psychical motherhood.—I confess myself opposed to the principle of
bribing a woman to become a mother, whether overtly or covertly, whether
in the guise of State-aid or in the form of eugenic premiums for maternity. It
may sound very well to offer a bonus for the production of babies by
mothers whom the State or any eugenic power considers fit and worthy. But
though the bonus may help motherhood in its physical aspects, the
importance of which no one questions, I do not see what service it renders
to motherhood in its psychical aspects—which are at least equally
important. What is the outlook for the baby when the bonus is spent? In
fact, with all deference to Mr. Galton, and with such deference as may be
due to the literary triflers who have discussed this matter, I am inclined to
think that a cardinal requisite for a mother is love of children. Ignorant this
may be, and indeed at first always is, but if it is there it can be instructed.
The woman who does not think the possession of a baby a sufficient prize is
no fit object, I should say, for any other kind of bribe or lure. The woman
who “would rather have a spare bedroom than a baby” is the woman whom
I do not want to have a baby. Thus I look with suspicion on any proposals
which assume that the psychical elements of motherhood are of little
moment in eugenics. I see no sign or prospect that they can be dispensed
with, and I think eugenics is going to work on wrong lines if it proposes to
ignore them. Even if you turn out Nature with a fork she will yet return—
tamen usque recurret.
In this question we should be able to derive great assistance from
biography. Real guidance, I believe, is obtained from this source, but only a
pitiable fraction of that which should be obtained. Scientific biography is
yet to seek, and it is the ironical fact that when Herbert Spencer, in his
Autobiography, devoted a large amount of space to the discussion of both
his parents and their relatives, the literary critics were bored to death.
Nevertheless, we cannot know too much about the ancestry, on both sides,
and the early environment, of great men. At present it is always tacitly
assumed that a great man is the son of his father alone. The biographer
would probably admit, if pressed, that doubtless some woman or other was
involved in the matter, and that her name was so and so—if any one thinks
it worth mentioning. On the score of heredity alone, however, we derive,
men and women alike, with absolute equality from both parents; and we
cannot know too much about the mothers of men of genius. Such

knowledge would often avail us materially in cases where the paternal
ancestry offers little explanation of the child's destiny.
We do owe, however, to great men themselves many warm and unqualified
tributes to their mothers, not on the score of heredity, but on the score of the
psychical aspects of motherhood. This, indeed, is one of the great lessons of
biography which some eugenists have forgotten. It is all very well to breed
for intelligence, but intelligence needs nurture and guidance, and that need
is the more urgent, the more powerful and original the intelligence in
question. The physical functions of motherhood from the moment of birth
onwards can be effected, no doubt, though at very great cost, by means of
incubators and milk laboratories, and so forth. But there is no counterfeiting
or replacing the psychical component of complete maternity, and a
generation of the highest intelligence borne by unmaternal women would
probably succeed only in writing the blackest and maddest page in history.
The eugenic demand for love.—Mr. Galton desires that we breed for
physique, ability, and energy. But we also need more love, and we must
breed for that. Nothing is easier or more inevitable once we make human
parenthood conscious and deliberate. When children are born only to those
who love children, and who will tend to transmit their high measure of that
parental instinct from which all love is derived, we shall bring to earth a
heaven compared with which the theologian's is but a fool's paradise.
The first requisite, then, for the mothers of the future, the elements of
physical health being assumed, is that they should be motherly. They may
or may not, in addition, be worthy of such exquisite titles as “the female
Shakespeare of America,” but they must have motherliness to begin with.
For this indispensable thing there is no substitute. It must certainly be
granted, and the fact should not be ignored, that the hidden spring of
motherliness in a girl may be revealed only by actual maternity, and the
frivolous damsel who used to think babies “silly squalling things” may be
mightily transformed when the silly squalling thing is her own—and the
Fifth Symphony sound and fury signifying nothing compared with its
slightest whimper. I will grant even that the maternal instinct is so deeply
rooted and universal that its absence must be regarded as either a rare
abnormality or else as the product of the grossest mal-education in the wide
sense. But the reader will not blame me for insisting at such length upon
what, as he would think, no one could deny, when he discovers that these

salient truths are denied, and that in what should be the sacred name of
eugenics, they are openly flouted and defied.
Before we go on to consider these perversions of a great idea, it may briefly
be observed that, though fatherhood is historically a mushroom growth
compared with motherhood, and though its importance is vastly less, yet as
a complementary principle, aiding and abetting motherhood, and making
for its most perfect expression, fatherhood played a great part in animal
evolution, in the right line of progress, ages before man appeared upon the
earth at all, and that its work is not yet done. To this subject we must return.
Meanwhile it is well to note the dangers with which eugenics is at present
threatened in the form of certain proposals which, if for a time they became
popular—and they have elements making for popularity—would inevitably
throw the gravest discredit upon the whole subject.
Eugenics and the family.—Certain remarkable tendencies invoking the
name of eugenics are now to be observed in Germany. These have
considerable funds, much enthusiasm, journalistic support, and even a large
measure of assistance in academic circles. In pursuance of the idea of
eugenics there is a movement the nature of which is indicated by the
following quotation from a private letter:—
“I wonder if your attention was drawn to the German projects
of the reform of the Family. They all aim at improving the
German race and rendering decisive its superiority over all
others. The means seem to be too revolutionary. The more
modern wish the establishment of the matriarchal family (ein
nach Mutterrecht), the more logical require universal polygamy
and polyandry, an individualisation of Society. Others hope to
increase the production of German geniuses by the ‘hellenic
friendship.’[!] The three movements are strongly organised,
command large pecuniary means, a phalanx of original and
prolific writers, and enthusiastic devotion to their cause. More
even than the support of Courts and aristocracy is, in my eyes,
that of the Universities. It is there that the destinies of Germany
have always been shaped, and if they are determined to reform
the Family in that way, it will be done.... The Herren
Professoren are terribly in earnest, yet they say things which
even to the least prejudiced minds appear ridiculous and even

vulgar. Still, their projects have some relation to Eugenics, and
to Sociology in general.”
This sufficiently indicates the dangers run by the eugenic principle at the
hands of those who see in it an instrument of protest and rebellion against
established things. We dare not repudiate the sacred principles of protest
and rebellion, which have been the conditions of all progress, but believing
in motherhood as we must, believing it to be authorised by nature herself
and not by any human conventions, we must deplore any tendencies such as
the two last cited. For us in this country, however, a more immediate
interest attaches to the views of a much admired and discussed writer who
claims to be a social philosopher of the first order, and whose claims must
now be examined.
The opinions of Mr. Bernard Shaw on the question of eugenics may be
quoted from his contribution to the subject published in Sociological
Papers 1904, pp. 74, 75, in discussion of Mr. Galton's great paper. Mr.
Shaw begins by saying: “I agree with the paper and go so far as to say that
there is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing
but a eugenic religion can save our civilisation from the fate that has
overtaken all previous civilisations.” And further:—
“I am afraid we must make up our minds either to face a
considerable shock to vulgar opinion in this matter or to let
eugenics alone.... What we must fight for is freedom to breed
the race without being hampered by the mass of irrelevant
conditions implied in the institution of marriage. If our morality
is attacked, we can carry the war into the enemy's country by
reminding the public that the real objection to breeding by
marriage is that marriage places no restraint on debauchery, so
long as it is monogamic.... What we need is freedom for people
who have never seen each other before and never intend to see
one another again, to produce children under certain definite
public conditions, without loss of honour.”
The conception of individual fatherhood here stated involves a deliberate
reversion to the order of the beast: it excludes individual fatherhood from
any function in aiding motherhood or in serving the future. It involves, of
course, the total abolition of the family. It denies and flouts the very best

elements in human nature. It assumes that the best women will find
motherhood worth while without the interest and sympathy and help and
protection of the father. It does not, however, condemn or exclude the
psychical functions of motherhood, since so far as this quotation goes it
might be assumed that the mother would be permitted to live with her own
child. On this point, however, Mr. Shaw offered us further guidance in his
controversy with myself in the Pall Mall Gazette, in December, 1907. One
or two of his dicta must here be quoted—they followed upon my remark,
“Anything less like a mother than the State I find it hard to imagine”:—
“When the State left the children to the mothers, they got no
schooling; they were sent out to work under inhuman
conditions, under-ground and over-ground for atrociously long
hours, as soon as they were able to walk; they died of typhus
fever in heaps; they grew up to be as wicked to their own
children as their parents had been to them. State socialism
rescued them from the worst of that, and means to rescue them
from all of it. I now publicly challenge Dr. Saleeby to propose,
if he dares, to withdraw the hand of the State and abandon the
children to their mothers as they fall.... All I need say is that
before Dr. Saleeby can persuade me to sacrifice the future of
human society to his maternalism, he will have to tackle me
with harder weapons than the indignant enthusiasm of a young
man's mother worship.”
Mr. Shaw's teaching constitutes a brutal and deliberate libel upon the
highest aspects of womanhood. For his own purposes he attributes to the
mothers all the abominations which, as every one knows, have lain and in
some measure still lie, at the door of the State. The man who has this
opinion of motherhood is complacently ignorant of the elements of the
subject. His charge is denied by every one who has worked as doctor or
nurse or visitor or missionary amongst the poorer classes, and knows that
the mothers there met are of the very salt of the earth.
It is well to state plainly here that these utterly irresponsible dicta have
absolutely no relation or resemblance whatever to the opinions or proposals
of Mr. Francis Galton himself, who desires to effect race-culture through
marriage, and whose whole propaganda is based upon this assumption. This
we shall afterwards see. Meanwhile we may note Mr. Galton's own words:

“The aim of eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably
employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute more
than their proportion to the next generation.” Mr. Galton would be the first
to assert that influences designed to supersede motherhood and to abolish
everything but the physical aspect of fatherhood, would not be reasonable,
but insane in the highest degree.
The ideal of race-culture without fatherhood or motherhood, except in the
mere physiological sense, constitutes a denial of the greatest facts in
evolution, as we have seen. It ignores everything that is known and daily
witnessed regarding the development of the individual, and the formation of
character, without which intelligence is a curse. There is not the slightest
fear that any such reversion to the order of the beast is possible, absolutely
forbidden as it is by the laws of human nature. There is, however,
reasonable ground for apprehension, especially when the recent
developments in Germany are remembered, that the public may obtain its
notions of eugenics in a highly-garbled form.[43]
It must be asserted as fervently and plainly as possible that, if the idea of
race-culture is even in the smallest degree to be realised, it must work
through motherhood and fatherhood not less in their psychical than in their
physical aspects. It is time to have done with the gross delusions of
Nietzsche regarding the nature and course of organic evolution. Morality is
not an invention of man but man the child of morality, and it is not by the
abolition of motherhood, in which morality originated, nor of fatherhood,
its first ally, that the super-man is to be evolved: but by the attainment of
those lofty conceptions of the function, the responsibility and the privilege
of parenthood which it is the first business of eugenics to inculcate.
As for marriage, invaluable though at its best it be for the completion and
ennoblement of the individual life, its great function for society and for the
race is in relation to childhood. Thus considered, the dictum of Professor
Westermarck may be understood, that children are not the result of marriage
but marriage the result of children. This, in other words, is to say that
marriage has become evolved and established as a social institution because
of its services to race-culture. It is, in short, the supreme eugenic institution.
This great subject must next occupy our attention.

CHAPTER X
MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM

Our present concern is the relation of marriage to race-culture, and for this
purpose we must investigate an epoch ages before the institution of human
marriage, ages before mankind itself. We must first remind ourselves of
what may be called the trend of progress from the first in respect of that
reproduction upon which all species depend, all living individuals being
mortal.
At first, in the effort for survival and increase, life tried the quantitative
method. If we take the present day bacteria as representatives of the
primitive method, we see that not quality nor individuality but quantity and
numbers are the means by which, in their case, life seeks to establish itself
more abundantly. We express our own birth-rate in its proportion per year to
one thousand living: but twenty thousand bacteria injected into a rabbit
have been found to multiply into twelve thousand million in one day. “One
bacterium has been actually observed to rear a small family of eighty
thousand within a period of twenty-four hours.” “The cholera bacillus can
duplicate every twenty minutes, and might thus in one day become
5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, with the weight, according to the
calculations of Cohn, of about 7,366 tons. In a few days, at this rate, there
would be a mass of bacteria as big as the moon, huge enough to fill the
whole ocean.”
If now we trace the history of life up to man, we find in him—as we have
seen—the lowest birth-rate of any animal and the longest ante-natal period
in proportion to his body weight, the longest period of maternal feeding,
and by far the lowest infant mortality and general death-rate. A chief fact of
progress has been, in a word, the supersession of the quantitative by the
qualitative criterion of survival-value. Immeasurably vast vital economy
and efficiency have thus been effected. The tendency of progress, in short—
a tendency coincident with the evolution of ever higher and higher species
—is to pass from the horrible Gargantuan wastefulness of the older methods
towards the evident but yet lamentably unrealised ideal—that every child
born shall reach maturity. This great historical tendency, which will

ultimately involve the restriction of parenthood to the fit, fine and relatively
few, has occurred under the impartial rule of natural selection simply and
solely because it has endowed with survival-value the successive species in
which it has been demonstrated.
The rise of parenthood.—Consistently with this fact and with the
argument of the previous chapter is the tendency towards the lengthening of
infancy, a very characteristic condition of the evolution of the higher forms
of life. This lengthening and accentuation of infancy makes for variety of
development, and, as we have seen, is supremely instanced in man, where it
depends upon, and makes possible, the transmutation of fixed instincts into
the plastic thing we call intelligence. Thus, to quote the words of Dr.
Parsons,[44] “we find that as infancy is prolonged in the progress of species,
the care given to offspring by parents is increased. It extends over a longer
period and it is directed more and more towards the total welfare of
offspring. The need of a potentially many-sided and enduring kind of
parental care is filled through the social group we call the family.”
Apart from those immensely significant creatures, the social insects, we
find well-marked though primitive signs of motherhood amongst the fishes,
and in a few cases, such as the stickleback, the beginnings of fatherhood.
But it is not until we reach the mammals, and especially the monkeys and
apes, that we find a great development of motherhood, far more prolonged
and far more important than the more frequently extolled parental care
found amongst the birds.
Very interesting, however, in the case of the fishes is the fact observed by
Sutherland that “as soon as the slightest trace of parental care is discovered
the chance of survival is increased and the birth-rate is lowered.” As a
general summary these words of Dr. Parsons will serve:—“Diminution of
offspring is a threefold gain to a species. (1) It lessens the vital drain upon
the parent. (2) It enables the size and capacity of the limited number of
offspring to be increased. (3) In the case of the higher developments of
parental care after birth, it concentrates the advantage of that care upon a
few instead of scattering it, and thereby weakening its influence, upon
many.”
Now how are these facts connected with that relation between the parents
which we call marriage, temporary or permanent, foreshadowed or

perfected?
It may be submitted that the racial function or survival-value of marriage in
all its forms, low or high, animal or human, consists in its services to the
principle of motherhood, these services depending upon the help and
strength which are afforded to motherhood by fatherhood.
Animal marriage.—Let us now look very briefly at the facts of animal
marriage from this point of view. The phrase, animal marriage, may
possibly offend the reader, but is there any reason to be offended at the
suggestion that the principle of marriage actually has a warrant older even
than mankind? It has lately been pointed out by a distinguished naturalist,
Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, that animals, like men, have long been
groping, so to say, for an ideal form of marriage. We now know, as will be
shown, that, contrary to popular opinion, promiscuity does not prevail
amongst the lowest races of men. Equally false is the popular notion that
promiscuity prevails amongst most of the lower animals. Promiscuity, it is
true, does occur, but so also does strict monogamy, “and promiscuous
animals, such as rabbits and voles, while high in the scale of fecundity, are
low in the scale of general development.” Says Mr. Seton: “It is commonly
remarked that while the Mosaic law did not expressly forbid polygamy, it
surrounded marriage with so many restrictions that by living up to the spirit
of them the Hebrew ultimately was forced into pure monogamy. It is
extremely interesting to note that the animals, in their blind groping for an
ideal form of union, have gone through the same stages, and have arrived at
exactly the same conclusion. Monogamy is their best solution of the
marriage question, and is the rule among all the higher and most successful
animals.”
The moose, Mr. Seton tells us, has several wives in one season but only one
at a time. The hawks practise monogamy lasting for one season, “the male
staying with the family, and sharing the care of the young till they are well-
grown.” The wolves consort for life, but the death of one leaves the other
free to mate again. There is a fourth method “in which they pair for life,
and, in case of death, the survivor remains disconsolate and alone to the
end. This seems absurd. It is the way of the geese.” The point especially to
be insisted upon as regards animal marriage is its evident service to their
race-culture, in accordance with the principle here laid down that marriage
is of value because it supports motherhood by fatherhood, and that its

different forms are of value in proportion as they do so more or less
effectively. We may note also, as a corollary to this, that marriage must be
more important in proportion as the young of a species are helpless and in
proportion as their helplessness is long continued. The importance of
marriage for man, therefore, must necessarily be higher than for any of the
lower animals.
Human marriage.—We must turn now to human marriage, and the
principle which we must remember is that of survival-value. We are
discussing a natural phenomenon exhibited by living creatures. This is what
so few people realise when they speak of marriage. They cannot disabuse
themselves of the idea that it is a human invention, and especially an
ecclesiastical invention. Thus, on the one hand, it is supported by persons
who base its claims on mystical or dogmatic grounds; whilst, on the other
hand, it is attacked by those who are opposed to ecclesiasticism or religion
of any kind, and attacked in the name of science—in which, if the fact
could only be recognised, is found every possible warrant and sanction, and
indeed imperative demand, for this most precious of all institutions. Here
we must endeavour to look upon it as an exceedingly ancient fact of life,
vastly more ancient than mankind; and in judging it and explaining it we
must apply Nature's universal criterion, which is that of its survival-value or
service to race-culture. Let us then glance very briefly at the actual facts of
human marriage—conceived as an institution by which the survival-value
of fatherhood is added to that of motherhood.
The pioneer student of marriage from the standpoint of science was Herbert
Spencer, who with great labour supported the conclusion that monogamy is
the highest, best and latest form of marriage. But in the absence of the great
mass of evidence which is now before us, Spencer too readily assumed the
truth of the popular notion that promiscuity was the primitive state, and
taught that human marriage has developed from this through polygamy
towards the ideal of monogamy. The work of Professor Westermarck,
however—Spencer's chief follower in this path—has shown, and later
writers have abundantly confirmed it, that this primitive promiscuity never
existed. There is no nation or race or clan of man now extant, however
primitive or barbaric, that has not definite marriage laws; there is no society
on earth, however rude, that does not punish the unfaithful wife.
Furthermore, polygamy, the only historical rival of monogamy, is now

known to have played a quite trivial part in history, not merely compared
with monogamy, but as compared with that which it was supposed to have
played. Even in countries which we call polygamous to-day, polygamy is
the relatively rare exception and monogamy the rule. On this most
important question it is well, however, to quote the words of Professor
Westermarck himself:—
“The great majority of peoples are, as a rule, monogamous, and
the other forms of marriage are usually modified in a
monogamous direction.” “As to the history of the forms of
human marriage, two inferences regarding monogamy and
polygyny may be made with absolute certainty; monogamy,
always the predominant form of marriage, has been more
prevalent at the lowest stages of civilisation than at somewhat
higher stages; whilst, at a still higher stage, polygyny has again,
to a great extent, yielded to monogamy.” “We may thus take it
for granted that civilisation, up to a certain point, is favourable
to polygyny; but it is equally certain that in its highest forms it
leads to monogamy.” “But, though civilisation up to a certain
point is favourable to polygyny, its higher forms invariably and
necessarily lead to monogamy.”
It is the principle of survival-value that explains the dominance of
monogamy at all stages of human society—with the single exception of
continuously and wholly militant societies, in which polygamy obtained in
consequence of the great numerical excess of women. It is the fate of the
children, in which everything is involved, that has determined the history of
human marriage. Furthermore, we may see here one more illustration of the
truth that quality is ousting quantity in the course of progress, and that a low
birth-rate represents a more advanced stage than a high birth-rate. The birth-
rate under polygamy is undoubtedly high, but polygamy does not make for
the survival and health of the children, and the infant mortality is gigantic.
As I have said elsewhere, “the form of marriage which does not permit the
babies to survive, they do not permit to survive. There is the beginning and
the end of the whole matter in a nutshell. It is not a question of the father's
taste and fancy, but of what he leaves above ground when the worms are
eating him below.... No system yet conceived can compare for a moment

with monogamy in respect of the one criterion which time and death
recognise, the fate of the children.”
In a word, the wholly adequate and only possible explanation of the
historical fact of the dominance of monogamy is its supreme survival-value.
It has competed with every other kind of sex relation and has been selected
by natural selection because of its supreme service for race-culture—the
most perfect conceivable addition of fatherhood to motherhood.
Plato and motherhood.—Thus eugenics must repudiate not only the ideas
of Mr. Shaw on this subject, but the teaching of Plato, from whom Mr.
Shaw's ideas on this particular subject are apparently derived. It is in the
fifth book of his Republic that the pioneer eugenist lays down his ideas for
race-culture. He realised, indeed, the importance, after birth, of the nurture
of children—“it is of considerable, nay, of the utmost importance to the
State, when this is rightly performed or otherwise;” and he refers also to
their nurture while very young, “in the period between their generation and
their education, which seems to be the most troublesome of all.” His
method involved a complete community of wives and children amongst the
guardians of the State, and on no account were the parents to know their
own children nor the children their parents. The best were to be chosen for
parents, on the analogy of animal race-culture by man. The children of
inferior parents were to be killed. The others were to be conveyed to the
common nursery of the city, but every precaution was to be taken that no
mother should know her own child. This practice was to be the cardinal
point of the Republic and “the cause of the greatest good to the city.”
We see here, then, that the very first proposals for race-culture involved the
destruction of marriage and the family, and a total denial of the value of the
psychical aspects of motherhood and fatherhood alike. Plato's first critic,
however, his own great pupil Aristotle, devoted the best part of his work,
the Politics, to showing that the suggestions of Plato were not only wrong
in themselves, but would not secure his end. Aristotle showed, in the words
of Mr. Barker, that “the destruction of the family, and the substitution in its
place of one vast clan, would lead but to the destruction of warm feelings,
and the substitution of a sentiment which is to them as water is to wine....
So with the system of common marriage, as opposed to monogamy. The
one encourages at best a poor and shadowy sentiment, while it denies to
man the satisfaction of natural instinct and the education of family life; the

other is natural and right, both because it is based on those instincts, and
because it satisfies the moral nature of man, in giving him objects of
permanent yet vivid interest above and beyond himself.” The truth of this
matter is that the rest may reason and welcome—but we fathers know.
Marriage a eugenic instrument.—It has definitely to be stated, then, that
the abolition of marriage and the family is in no degree whatever a part of
the eugenic proposal. We desire to achieve race-culture by and through
marriage, on the lines which indeed many lower races of men successfully
practise at the present day. We must make parenthood more responsible, not
less so. It will afterwards be shown that the suggested incompatibility
between marriage and the family, on the one hand, and race-culture or
eugenics on the other, does not exist. It will be shown that we have in
marriage not only the greatest instrument of race-culture that has yet been
employed—half-consciously—by man, but also an instrument supremely
fitted, and indeed without a rival, for the conscious, deliberate, and
scientific intentions of modern eugenists. The applicability of marriage for
this purpose will be shown by reference to actual facts. Mr. Galton himself
has shown how effectively an educated public opinion can employ marriage
for the purposes of race-culture, its services to which have indeed led to its
evolution. It has furthermore to be added that only the formation of public
opinion can ever lead to the ideal which we desire. This opinion already
exists in some degree as regards one or two transmissible diseases, and,
though without adequate scientific warrant, as regards the marriage of first
cousins. In these respects it is not without some measure of effectiveness,
and the fact is of the utmost promise.
“Marriage,” said Goethe, “is the origin and the summit of all civilisation.”
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the family rather than marriage.
The childless marriage may be and often is a thing of the utmost beauty and
value to the individuals concerned, but it is certainly not the origin of
civilisation, and if it be its summit it is also its grave. The eugenic support
of marriage, therefore, depends upon a belief in the family, and that form of
marriage will commend itself which provides the best form of family. From
the point of view of certain eugenists, polygamy would be desirable in
many cases, as extending the parental opportunities of the man of fine
physique or intellectual distinction. The problem remains, however, as to
the nurture of the children so obtained, and historical study returns us a very

clear answer as to the relative merits of the polygamous family and the
monogamous family. It is this last that pre-eminently justifies itself on the
score of its services to childhood and therefore to the race. Its survival is a
matter of absolute certainty, because of its survival-value. Neither Plato nor
Mr. Shaw, nor any kind of collectivist legislation will permanently abolish
it.
The principle of maternalism.—The merits of monogamy can be defined
in terms of the principle which I would venture to call maternalism—the
principle of the permanent and radical importance of motherhood and
whatever institutions afford it the greatest aid.
Maternalism would point, I think, to the supreme paradox that the dominant
creature of the earth is born of woman, and born the most absolutely
helpless of all living creatures whatsoever, animal or vegetable; it would
note that this utter dependence upon others, mother or foster-mother, is not
only the most unqualified known, but the longest maintained; it would
observe that of all the human beings now alive, all that have lived, all that
are to be, not one could survive its birth for twenty-four hours but for
motherhood; it would note that only motherhood has rendered possible the
development of instinct into that intelligence which, itself dependent upon
motherhood for the possibility of its development, has dependent upon it
the fact that the earth is now man's and the fulness thereof; and to the
advocates of all the political -isms that can be named, and the small
proportion of them that can be defined, it would apply its specific criterion:
Do you regard the safeguarding and the ennoblement of motherhood as the
proximate end of all political action, the end through which the ultimate
ends, the production and recognition of human worth, can alone be attained;
do you realise that marriage is invaluable because it makes for the
enthronement of motherhood as nothing else ever did or can; do you realise
that, metaphors about State maternity notwithstanding, the State has neither
womb nor breasts, these most reverend and divine of all vital organs being
the appanage of the individual mother alone?
The maternalist principle being assumed, and the value of monogamy on
the ground that it supports motherhood by fatherhood, the forthcoming
discussion as to the possibilities of race-culture will assume the persistence
of monogamy and will centre upon the possibility of selecting or rejecting,
for the purposes of race-culture, those who are available for entrance into

the marriage state. The reader who has not studied social anthropology—
and this is true of nearly all the critics of eugenics, very few of whom have
studied anything—will be astounded, I believe, to discover the practically
unlimited extent to which public opinion, whether or not formulated as law,
has always been capable of controlling marriage, and therefore, race-
culture.
Proposed definition of marriage.—Recognising the existence of
subhuman marriage, we may be at a loss to define marriage as distinguished
from sex-relations in general. It is that form of sex-relation which involves
or is adapted to common parental care of the offspring—the support of
motherhood by fatherhood.

PART II—THE PRACTICE OF EUGENICS

CHAPTER XI
NEGATIVE EUGENICS

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 more than 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 eugenics and negative
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 the Morning
Post that 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.”
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 the deaf and dumb,
since the facts here are utterly beyond dispute. 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 the feeble-minded is 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-minded girl 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 obvious insanity, 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 whatever of 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 between
certain forms of 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 regards epilepsy and epileptic insanity there 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 of crime the
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—the mattoid or semi-insane criminal at one end, and the
decent citizen who yields to exceptional temptation at the other end. Thus,
even though there 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 suffering from 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, and thereafter 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. Many quotations 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 be most palpably acquired.
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 about heredity; 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 then present 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.

CHAPTER XII
SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE

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.”
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 veteran pioneer 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 that both 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-day for 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 in each generation of a certain
number of undesirables whose 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-rate and the birth-rate
amongst the grossly unfit 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
more than a generation after Darwin's enunciation of it in The 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; every year, when the statistics are printed, this
argument may be seen in the newspapers, and I remember encountering it in
the Encyclopædia 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's Study 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 the passage 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 argument for 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's argument, 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, or vice 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 prominence gained 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, is determined 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. (Note the 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 therefore of 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, if Socialism, 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 that in 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 not for
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:—

“The power of social opinion is apt to be rather under-rated
than over-rated. Like the atmosphere which we breathe and by
which we live, social opinion operates powerfully without our
being conscious of its existence. Everyone knows that
governments, manners, and beliefs which were thought to be
right, decorous, and true at one period have been judged wrong,
indecorous, and false at another; and that views which we have
heard expressed by those in authority over us in our childhood
and early manhood tend to become axiomatic and
unchangeable in mature life.
“Speaking for myself only, I look forward to local eugenic
action in numerous directions, including the accumulation of
considerable funds to start young couples of ‘worthy’ qualities
in their married life, and to assist them and their families at
critical times. The gifts to those who are the reverse of ‘worthy’
are enormous in amount; it is stated that the charitable
donations in the year 1907 amounted to £4,868,050. I am not
prepared to say how much of this was judiciously spent, or in
what ways, but merely quote the figures to justify the inference
that many of the thousands of persons who are willing to give
freely at the prompting of a sentiment based upon compassion,
might be persuaded to give largely also in response to a more
virile sentiment, based on the desire of promoting the natural
gifts and the National Efficiency of future generations.
“In circumscribed communities especially, social approval and
disapproval exert a potent force. Its presence is only too easily
read by every one who is the object of either, in the
countenances, bearing, and manner of those with whom they
daily meet and converse. Is it then, I ask, too much to expect
that when a public opinion in favour of Eugenics has once
taken sure hold of such communities and has been accepted by
them as a quasi-religion, the result will be manifested in sundry
and very effective modes of action which are as yet untried and
many of them even unforeseen?”
“Breach of promise” and race-culture.—It may be added that perhaps we
shall have to learn to reconsider our ill-judged and stupid censoriousness,

directed against young people who get engaged but then become tired of
one another—as they accurately say, discover that they are not suited for
one another. Not only is it obvious that we are fools in denouncing this
discovery of impermanence in their attraction, happily made before
marriage, whilst we ignore the disasters of its lamentably postmature
discovery, after marriage: but also it should be obvious that the eugenic end
is negatively served whenever what would have been an unfortunate union
is broken off in time. Our imbecile standard of honour, and the law of
breach of promise, which is outrageously abused, at present condemn the
man, for instance, who finds that he has made a mistake, whilst passively
applauding him who, finding his mistake, thinks it his duty to make it
irreparable. Far better would it be that the man incapable of forming an
attachment made of the non-material ties which last, should not marry at all.
The man who cannot see, or seeing, cannot find it in his heart to love, the
spiritual beauties of womanhood, is just the man who can be safely omitted
in the eugenist's scheme for fatherhood.
The plea of insanity is, in English law, no protection against a claim for
damages for breach of promise to marry, unless it be proved insanity at date
of contract in the defendant. A valid contract once made, it is no excuse for
non-performance that insanity has been discovered in the family of the
other party. This wicked law must be altered.
The need for further study.—In his study of this subject the student will
naturally turn to Mr. Havelock Ellis's volume entitled Sexual Selection in
Man.[54] This, of course, has its own scientific value as a statement of facts,
notwithstanding its intensely nauseating character. But anything less
relevant to what most of us understand by psychology it would be difficult
to imagine. The book considers seriatim, touch, smell, hearing, and vision
as the bases of so-called love. It thus deals with “sensology,” not
psychology. Indeed, to the best of one's recollection, after very close and
careful reading, there is no allusion to the human mind in it anywhere. If
men and women were simply animals, this book would doubtless cover the
ground, and perhaps the word “psychology” would even be justified in
connection with it. From end to end men and women are consistently
treated as animals and no more. Since, however, the human species is
possessed of psychical characters which distinguish it from the lower
animals, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a volume which really dealt

with sexual selection in man would, to say the least of it, recognise the
existence of those characters—even if only to reject them as irrelevant to
the subject under discussion.
The foregoing remarks do not imply that the purely anatomical and sensory
factors are irrelevant to the selection of parents in any generation, and for
methodological purposes it might be of value to abstract from the factors of
sexual selection in human society such things as odour and contour. But it
would be urgently necessary in the course of such a study, if it were to be
other than extremely misleading, to observe that this selection of factors
was made for purposes of convenience and that the relation of their
importance to that of other factors was a matter for further and by no means
casual consideration.
We may certainly agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis that sexual selection occurs
in human society, and may welcome his volume as supporting that
assertion. There follows the extremely interesting and indeed urgent
necessity of ascertaining what the factors of this selection really are, what is
their relative potency, and what is their capacity for modification. We may
further enquire whether they tend to be eugenic. A contribution to this
subject is furnished by Mr. Ellis when he shows that width of “hips” is a
female character commonly admired by men. Since a wide pelvis is one
which can accommodate and safely give birth to a large fœtal head, there is
here, as a practically solitary case, a bearing on the eugenic issue: large
heads mean, in general, large brains, and it would be ill for the white races
if men admired hips as narrow as those of, for instance, the negress, whose
pelvis could not find room for the average head of a purely white baby, and
who suffers terribly in many cases where the father is white, especially if
the child be a boy.
Meanwhile we must wait for studies of this great question from various
points of view: notably for a study of the economics of sexual selection as it
obtains in human society. Yet further, we require a detailed study of the
influence of legislation, custom and public opinion upon sexual selection—
on the lines of Mr. Galton's paper on “Restrictions in Marriage.” Mr.
Havelock Ellis has more than adequately dealt with the nervous physiology
of sexual selection; there remain the psychology and sociology of it—these
latter comprehending, one may suppose, ninety-nine per cent. of the whole

subject. In the preceding pages allusion has been made to one or two of the
more salient aspects of this matter.

CHAPTER XIII
THE RACIAL POISONS: ALCOHOL[55]

In the first chapter of our second Part, which deals with the practice of
eugenics, there were introduced, defined, and briefly illustrated, the terms
positive eugenics and negative eugenics. Of these the latter, as the more
urgent and the more completely and immediately practicable, claims our
special attention; though the present writer, notwithstanding that he has
devoted to it the greater part of his eugenic work, is bound to protest that
the positive increase of ability and worth is never to be regarded as of
secondary importance. The two methods are, of course, complementary in
practice, as they are one in principle—to select is to reject, to choose is to
refuse. The preceding chapter, on selection (and rejection) through
marriage, has dealt with the conditions under which both aims are to be
pursued. In the following pages we must discuss a specially urgent and
practicable and indisputable portion of negative eugenic practice: none the
less urgent because of the contemporary emergence and future world-
importance of sober nations, such as Japan and Turkey. The term racial
poisons, introduced by the present writer in the year 1907, is self-
explanatory. After dealing with the most important of these poisons, we
shall proceed, in the next chapter, to discuss some others. The racial poisons
constitute a special department of eugenics which has not hitherto been
considered by the pioneers of this subject, but for which I press the claim of
the utmost gravity and moment, and which I conceive to be certainly a part,
and a most important part, of our manifold yet single subject.

The argument of this chapter is that parenthood must be forbidden to the
dipsomaniac, the chronic inebriate or the drunkard, whether male or female;
and this whether Lamarck or Galton and Weismann be right, or whether, as
we may believe with Galton and Weismann themselves, the controversy
between the two parties is wholly irrelevant to the question in hand. This
conclusion, that on no grounds whatever, theoretical or practical, can we
continue to permit parenthood on the part of the drunkard, is one
temperance reform, perhaps the only one, on which disagreement is
absolutely impossible. It is, further, the most radical that can be named
within the sphere of practical politics, and it is conspicuously practicable. It
has hitherto been lamentably neglected by workers and reformers of all
schools. Indeed, at the time of writing, the London County Council,
governing the greatest city in the world, is pursuing a course of action in
this regard, which will be detailed later, and which, as will appear, is
misguided and deplorable in the last degree.
Alcohol and heredity.—According to Dr. Archdall Reid, “alcohol, year
after year, eliminates from the race a great number of people so constituted
that intoxication affords them keen delight, leaving the perpetuation of the
race in great measure to those on whom intoxication confers little or no
delight.... Now since alcohol weeds out enormous numbers of people of a
particular type, it is a stringent agent of selection—an agent of selection
more stringent than any one disease.” The factor that really makes the
drunkard “is certainly inborn, and therefore as certainly transmissible to
offspring. The man who has it is cursed with the ‘alcohol diathesis,’ with
the ‘predisposition to drunkenness.’ Thus most savages are keenly capable
of enjoying drink, and their offspring inherit the capacity.” Féré has shown
that “it is one of the characteristics of the degenerate that they are prone to
have recourse to the poisons, like alcohol and morphia, which hasten their
decadence and elimination.” Thus, as Dr. W. C. Sullivan points out, alcohol
“might certainly be adjudged a salutary evil if its incidence were limited to
individuals whose extreme inferiority of organisation renders them wholly
undesirable and useless to the community. But this is very far from being
the case.”[56]
The whole crux of the question lies in this last sentence. Alcohol certainly
destroys many degenerate stocks, and that is good, though it would be
better to do what we shall do some day—hasten and ameliorate the process

by forbidding parenthood to the degenerate. But does alcohol also make
degenerates; does it even make more degenerates than it destroys? A
somewhat similar difficulty arises in the case of infant mortality. The causes
of infant mortality destroy many children inherently unfit, diseased or
weakly. But we are not justified in keeping up our infant mortality, if we
find, as we do, that for every diseased child whom they destroy they kill
many who were healthy at birth and damage for life many more.
A man is born sober—in most cases, but not always,[57] as we shall see—
and any changes produced in his body by alcohol are “acquired.” Therefore,
rejecting Lamarck, are we to reject the doctrine that the effects produced by
alcohol on parents are transmitted to offspring?
The controversy between Lamarck and Weismann has absolutely nothing to
do with the question. Let us consider what would be a case of Lamarckian
transmission in the sense which the modern student of heredity denies. The
birth of a child with a scar on its scalp, to a father who had acquired a
similar scar before the child was conceived, would be such a case: and this
does not happen. Or suppose that instead of a scar on the scalp the father
has an inflammatory change, not so dissimilar to a scar, produced by
alcohol in the membranes covering his brain. Then it would be a case of
Lamarckian transmission if the membranes of his baby's brain were
similarly affected; and this does not happen. Such is the kind of
transmission of which exhaustive experiment and observation fail to find a
conclusive instance anywhere.
But what has such a supposition to do with the theory, as definitely
supported by observation and experiment as the other is not, that if a man
saturates his body with alcohol carried by his blood, he injures all the
tissues which are nourished by that blood, including the racial elements of
his body with the rest: and therefore that his child may be degenerate?
What says Weismann himself? In The Germ-Plasm, p. 386, under the
heading “The influence of temporary abnormal conditions of the parents on
the child,” he writes as follows:—
“Although I do not consider that the cases which come under
the above heading have anything to do with heredity, I should
not like to leave them entirely on one side.

“It has often been supposed that drunkenness of the parents at
the time of conception may have a harmful effect on the nature
of the offspring. The child is said to be born in a weak bodily
and mental condition, and inclined to idiocy, or even to
madness, etc., although the parents may be quite normal both
physically and mentally.
“Cases certainly exist in which drunken parents have given rise
to a completely normal child, although this is not a convincing
proof against the above-named view; and in spite of the fact
that most, or perhaps even all, the statements with regard to the
injurious effects on the offspring will not bear a very close
criticism,[58] I am unwilling to entirely deny the possibility that
a harmful influence may be exerted in such cases. These,
however, have nothing to do with heredity, but are concerned
with an affection of the germ by means of an external
influence.”
Weismann goes on to quote cases showing how germ-cells may be injured
by various agents, and continues:—
“It does not appear to me impossible that an intermixture of
alcohol with the blood of the parents may produce similar
effects on the ovum and sperm cell. According to the relative
quantity of alcohol either an exciting or a depressing influence
might be exerted, either of which would lead to abnormal
development....
“New predispositions can certainly never arise owing to such
deviations from the normal course of development, and
therefore a modification of the process of heredity itself is out
of the question. It is, however, conceivable that more or less
considerable abnormalities may affect the course of
development, and either cause the death of the embryo, or else
produce more or less marked deformities. The question as to
whether such deformities really result in consequence of the
drunken condition of the parents can only be decided by
observation.”[59]

This is all that Weismann has to say on the subject, since, not referring to
functionally-produced modifications,[60] it does not concern his theory of
heredity at all: yet it is upon this theory that the most palpable facts of the
racial influence of alcohol are denied. Weismann's own remarks are quite
open to criticism, as, for instance, where he denies that new predispositions
can arise in the manner indicated. This is possibly only a question of words,
and Weismann is perhaps merely denying that alcohol can produce
progressive variations. Also his remarkably brief discussion of the subject
seems to concern itself mainly with the influence of alcohol on the germ-
cells just before their union. He has not a word to say regarding the
influence on the germinal tissues of years of soaking in alcohol. It suffices,
however, to make the point which is quite clearly made, that the
Weismannians are going absurdly beyond their book in denying what,
indeed, the book of Nature demonstrates.
Let us turn now to the experimental side of this question. An American
botanist, Dr. T. D. MacDougal, read an address on “Heredity and Environic
Forces” at the Chicago Meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in 1907. His experiments require confirmation,
but may be provisionally accepted. He has permanently modified the germ-
plasm of plants under the influence of various chemicals. There is here a
vast field for experiment with alcohol. I quote one paragraph indicating the
remarkable results of these experiments. The reader will see their bearing
on our present question, and will also see that they do not for a moment
affect Weismann's denial of the doctrine that by cutting off rats' tails you
can produce a race of tailless rats, or that by learning a language you can
save your future children the trouble of doing so for themselves:—

“It was found that the injection of various solutions into ovaries
of Raimannia was followed by the production of seeds bearing
qualities not exhibited by the parent, wholly irreversible, and
fully transmissible in successive generations. One of the seeds
produced by a plant of Œnothera biennis which had been
treated with zinc sulphate differed so widely from the parental
form that it could be distinguished from it by a novice. This
new form has been tested to the third generation, and transmits
all its characteristics fully.”
Alcohol a proved racial poison.—But the reader will rightly desire some
kind of experimental proof that alcohol itself can act as a cause of racial
degeneration. We may first refer to the chapter on alcoholism and human
degeneration in Dr. W. C. Sullivan's Alcoholism, a Chapter in Social
Pathology,[61] for a recent résumé of the subject. Without actually quoting
Weismann, Dr. Sullivan begins by showing that, as we have seen, the
doctrinal objection of Dr. Reid and others to the theory of alcoholic
degeneration is quite irrelevant—“the effects attributed to parental
alcoholism are not in the category of transmitted acquirements at all; they
are the results, expressed in defect and deviation of development, of a
deleterious influence exerted on the germ-cells, either directly through the
alcohol circulating in the blood, or indirectly, through the deterioration of
the parental organism in which these cells are lodged, and from which they
draw their nutriment.” Later Dr. Sullivan points out that the racial effects of
alcoholism in man are similar to those obtained by experimental
intoxication in the lower animals. Combemale, for instance, found that pups
begotten of a healthy bitch by an alcoholised dog were congenitally feeble
and showed a marked degree of asymmetry of the brain. Recent
experiments have shown the same thing as regards other poisons, and it is
especially to be noted that in the experiments cited the mother was healthy.
They prove that paternal alcoholism alone (all questions of the nourishment
of the growing child before birth, for instance, thus being excluded) can
determine degeneration. Mr. Galton[62] himself long ago quoted the case “of
a man who, after begetting several normal children, became a drunkard and
had imbecile offspring”; and another case has been recorded “of a healthy
woman who, when married to a drunken husband, had five sickly children,

dying in infancy, but in subsequent union with a healthy man, bore normal
and vigorous children.”
Other intoxications show similar results though they are not yet of grave
racial importance. For instance, “a man who had had two healthy children
acquired the cocaine habit, and while suffering from the symptoms of
chronic poisoning engendered two idiots.” Brouardel and others have
observed that the expectant mother who is a morphinomaniac may give
birth to a child who shows all the phenomena of the morphia habit.
Demme has traced the appalling contrast between the offspring in ten sober
families, and in ten families where one or both parents suffered from
chronic alcoholism. Dr. Sullivan himself, realising the obviously greater
importance of maternal alcoholism, since here we have the action of
poisoned food—the maternal blood—upon the child before birth, made an
enquiry of his own. He found that
“... of 600 children born of 120 drunken mothers 335 (55.8 per
cent.) died in infancy or were still-born, and that several of the
survivors were mentally defective, and as many as 4.1 per cent.
were epileptic. Many of these women had female relatives,
sisters or daughters, of sober habits and married to sober
husbands; on comparing the death-rate amongst the children of
the sober mothers with that amongst the children of the drunken
women of the same stock, the former was found to be 23.9 per
cent., the latter 55.2 per cent., or nearly two and a half times as
much. It was further observed that in the drunken families there
was a progressive rise in the death-rate from the earlier to the
later born children.”
Dr. Sullivan cites as a typical alcoholic family one in which “the first three
children were healthy, the fourth was of defective intelligence, the fifth was
an epileptic idiot, the sixth was dead-born, and finally the productive career
ended with an abortion.” Dr. Claye Shaw told the Interdepartmental
Committee on Physical Deterioration, “we have inebriate mothers, and
either abortions or degenerate children. The teleological[63] relationship
between the two seems to be as certain as any other conditions of cause and
effect.” The general rule is that any narcotic substance affects highly
developed tissues sooner and more markedly than simpler tissues, and so it

is in the case of alcohol and the infant. It is the developing nervous system
that is most markedly affected. This leads, of course, to an increased child
mortality, especially by way of convulsions. This was the cause of sixty per
cent. of all the deaths that occurred amongst the six hundred children in Dr.
Sullivan's series. But it has especially to be remembered that a large number
of children whose nervous systems are injured for life by parental and more
especially by maternal alcoholism do not die either as infants or children.
Instead of dying of convulsions they live as epileptics. Of the children in
Dr. Sullivan's series “219 lived beyond infancy, and of these 9, or 4.1 per
cent., became epileptic, as compared with 0.1 per cent. of the whole
population.” Other observers have found epilepsy in 12 per cent. and even
15 per cent. of the children of alcoholic parents. Of course these data, as
such, do not demonstrate Dr. Sullivan's conclusion that “this action of
alcoholism on the health and vitality of the stock is the most serious of the
evils that intemperance brings on the community.”
Dr. Sullivan's enquiries show a very high rate of still-births and abortions
amongst the children of drunken mothers—quite sufficient to prove that
“the detrimental effect of maternal alcoholism must be in a large measure
due to a direct influence on the germ-cells and on the developing embryo,
and cannot be explained as merely a result of the neglect and malnutrition
from which the children of a drunken mother are naturally apt to suffer.”
The point is of some theoretical importance. Practically it matters little; in
either case the drunken woman must not become a mother.
The same conclusion is reached even though we accord unlimited weight to
the unquestionably valid argument that the drunkard is himself or herself
usually degenerate from the first, and that the children are therefore
degenerate, and would indeed be degenerate even if the parents had taken
no alcohol. Let us, then, erroneously enough, but for the sake of the
argument, assume that solely and always alcoholism is a symptom of
degeneracy. It is, then, an indication of unfitness for parenthood no less, and
the practical issue is the same: one radical cure for alcoholism, at any rate,
is the prohibition of parenthood on the part of the alcoholic.[64]
The most recent evidence.—The most thorough and comprehensive
enquiry into this matter yet made is also the most recent. We owe it to Dr.
W. A. Potts, of the University of Birmingham, who did valuable work as
Medical Investigator to the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of

the Feeble-minded. His paper, entitled “The Relation of Alcohol to Feeble-
mindedness,” is printed in the British Journal of Inebriety for January,
1909, together with communications from many authorities. It is quite
impossible to summarise here the enormous mass of evidence which Dr.
Potts has accumulated from the literature of the subject, and to which he has
added his own work. I believe that nothing could be more moderate and
assured than the following conclusions, to which he commits himself after a
study of the subject the quality and range of which can only be appreciated
at first hand:—
“... the evidence is not clear that alcoholism, by itself, in the
father will produce amentia; but it is quite plain that in
combination with other bad factors it is a most unfavourable
element, while maternal drinking, and drinking continued
through more than one generation, are potent influences in
mental degeneracy.”
It is impossible, within the scope of the present volume, to analyse in detail
the Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-
minded. In this present outline of eugenics it is our business, however, to
show main principles, and as the principle expressed in the phrase “racial
poisons” is to my mind absolutely cardinal for eugenics, it is necessary here
to comment, as I have already done in the Journal above quoted, upon the
following most unfortunate deliverance of the Commissioners: “That both
on the grounds of fact and of theory, there is the highest degree of
probability that feeble-mindedness is usually spontaneous in origin—that is,
not due to influences acting on the parent....”
The word spontaneous has, of course, no meaning for science, or rather is a
denial of the fundamental axiom of science that causation is universal. What
the Commissioners mean when they say spontaneous is “sportaneous,” like
the occasional production of a nectarine by a peach tree. Apart from this
highly suspicious phraseology, there is the still more unfortunate fact that
the Commissioners have lent their authority to the view that feeble-
mindedness is not due to influences acting on the parent. The modern
student of syphilis will be astonished at this pronouncement, and also the
student of lead-poisoning, as we shall see in the following chapter.

Every reader of Dr. Potts's admirable paper will realise that this conclusion
of the Commissioners—“not due to influences acting on the parent”—is
directly opposed to an extraordinary mass of evidence and to the opinion of,
I suppose, every authority on the subject, British, Continental or American.
The Commissioners' reference to “theory,” coupled with portions of the
evidence given before them by witnesses who suppose that the alleged
influence of alcohol as a cause of feeble-mindedness controverts the
doctrine of the non-transmission of “acquired characters,” makes it
necessary to point out for the hundredth time that, for lack of analysis and
criticism of terms, the most prominent followers of Galton and Weismann
persistently misunderstand their masters' teaching. The modern doctrine of
the individual as the trustee of the germ-cells and of the non-transmission of
acquired characters is Mr. Galton's. Mr. Galton himself does not question
and never has questioned the possibility that alcohol may cause feeble-
mindedness. There is no reason why he should. If we take the somewhat
unusual course of consulting the words of the masters before we swear by
them, we find—as has been shown—that Weismann, who subsequently
stated and has so greatly supported Mr. Galton's view, has expressly
repudiated the Commissioners' idea of his “theory.” The Galton-Weismann
doctrine is a doctrine of heredity proper,—the organic relation of living
generations. It does not assert that there are two unconnected universes—
the one made of germ-plasm and the other of the rest of nature. The
“grounds of theory,” or rather, our elementary physiological knowledge of
the nutrition of the germ-plasm by the blood of its host, are in reality
precisely the grounds which would lead us to expect those consequences of
parental alcoholism which in fact we find.
Alcoholism as a symptom of degeneracy.—We have seen that alcohol
may be a cause of degeneracy: we now have to recognize the converse
relation. For an authoritative and radical discussion of the problem, the
reader may be referred to the second Norman Kerr Memorial Lecture,
delivered by Dr. Welsh Branthwaite, H.M. Inspector under the Inebriates'
Act, in 1907.[65] He speaks as “the only man in close touch with all
inebriates under legal detention in England.” He reaches most important
conclusions which are generally accepted, as the discussion shows. He says,
“the more I see of habitual drunkards, the more I am convinced that the real
condition we have to study, the trouble we have to fight, and the source of

all the mischief, is ... defect[66] in mental mechanism, generally congenital,
sometimes more or less acquired.... In the absence of alcohol, the same
persons, instead of meriting the term inebriate would have proved
unreliable in many ways; they would have been called ne'er-do-weels,
profligates, persons of lax morality, excitably or abnormally passionate
individuals, persons of melancholic tendency or eccentric.... It seems to me
exceedingly doubtful whether habitual inebriety ... is ever really acquired in
the strictest sense of the word—i.e. in the absence of some measure of pre-
existing defect.” Having studied 2,277 inebriates, committed under the
Inebriates Acts, up to December 31st, 1906, Dr. Branthwaite finds 62.6 per
cent. of these mentally defective. The remainder he regards as of average
mental capacity, using, however, an exceedingly low standard of what that
capacity is. He concludes that in a large majority of police-court cases,
“mental disease was the condition for which they were repeatedly
imprisoned—mental disease merely masked by alcoholic indulgence.... The
majority of our insane inebriates have become alcoholic because of their
tendency to insanity.... Certain peculiarities in cranial conformation, general
physique, and conduct, have long been recognised as evidences of
congenital defect. Nearly all the 1,375 cases included in the two defective
sections of our table have given evidence of possessing some of these
characteristic peculiarities, and it is morally certain that the large majority
of them started life handicapped by imperfect brain development.”[67] The
lecture is accompanied with many photographs clearly showing the physical
marks of congenital defect, and Dr. Branthwaite remarks that “even the
untrained eye should meet with no difficulty in recognising ‘something
wrong’ with all of them.”
Of the proportion of mentally defective inebriates (62.6 per cent. of the
whole) mentioned by Dr. Branthwaite, all are “practically hopeless from a
reformation standpoint.” This is a sufficient comment, if any were needed,
upon repeated imprisonment for habitual drunkenness—which, as Dr.
Branthwaite says, “is indefensible and inhumane.” He adds in closing that,
in his judgment, habitual drunkenness, so far as women are concerned, has
materially increased, during the last twenty-five years, “which I have spent
entirely amongst drunkards and drunkenness.” The unfortunate people
whom he studies “are not in the least affected by orthodox temperance
efforts; they continue to propagate drunkenness, and thereby nullify the

good results of temperance energy. Their children, born of defective
parents, and educated by their surroundings, grow up without a chance of
decent life, and constitute the reserve from which the strength of our present
army of habituals is maintained. Truly we have neglected in the past, and
are still neglecting, the main source of drunkard supply—the drunkard
himself; cripple that, and we should soon see some good result from our
work.”
A foremost authority, Dr. F. W. Mott, F.R.S., has independently reached the
same conclusion as Dr. Branthwaite—that the chronic inebriate comes as a
rule of an inherently tainted stock. (Dr. Mott, however, reminds us that “if
alcohol is a weed killer, preventing the perpetuation of poor types, it is
probably even more effective as a weed producer.”) Professor David
Ferrier, F.R.S., the great pioneer of brain localisation, in reference to these
people, speaks of “the risk of propagation of a race of drunkards and
imbeciles.” Dr. J. C. Dunlop, H.M. Inspector under the Inebriates Act,
Scotland, states that his experience leads him to precisely the same
conclusion as that of Dr. Branthwaite. Dr. A. R. Urquhart, an asylum
authority, affirms that chronic inebriety “is largely an affair of heredity ... is
a symptom of mental defect, disorder, or disease.” Dr. Fleck, another
authority, says: “It is my strong conviction that a large percentage of our
mentally defective children, including idiots, imbeciles and epileptics, are
the descendants of drunkards.” Mr. McAdam Eccles, the distinguished
surgeon, agrees; so does Dr. Langdon Down, Physician to the National
Association for the Welfare of the Feeble-minded; so does Mr. Thomas
Holmes, the Secretary of the Howard Association, who remarks that “our
habitual criminals, equally with our mental inebriates, are not responsible
beings, but victims of mental disease.” Finally Miss Kirby, Secretary of the
National Association for the Feeble-minded, insists upon the obvious
conclusion that these people must be detained permanently. She says,
“When one case of a dissolute feeble-minded woman in America is quoted
as the mother of nine feeble-minded children, we see the cause why
inebriate homes, and also reformatories, penitentiaries, and workhouses are
full to overflowing, and society taxed beyond bearing to keep them there.
Such institutions outnumber homes for the feeble-minded.”[68] Speaking of
the 62.6 per cent. noted by Dr. Branthwaite, she says, “Would it not have
been the more logical course to have dealt with them in earlier years?” Now
what would that have accomplished? It would have saved the future.

The inebriate as parent.—Is it a mere supposition that these women
become mothers? Amongst those committed as criminal inebriates (under
the London County Council) in 1905–6, three hundred and sixty-five of
those admitted to reformatories had two thousand two hundred children.
These are the official figures. As to the quality of these children there is
unfortunately no possibility of question.
We may quote from Dr. Sullivan a notable enquiry:—
“Even more striking results with regard to the several forms of
degeneracy were obtained by Legrain, who investigated the
question from a somewhat different point of view. Selecting
from the material at his disposal all those cases in which
ancestral intemperance had appeared to exercise a causal
influence, and working out their family history, he collected
215 observations of heredo-alcoholism referring to one
generation, 98 referring to two generations, and 7 referring to
three generations. Of the children of the first generation, 508 in
number, 196 were mentally degenerate, the affection of the
brain being shown more particularly by moral and emotional
abnormality, while intellectual defects were less pronounced;
106 were insane, 52 were epileptic, 16 suffered from hystero-
epilepsy, and 3 from chorea; and 39 had convulsions in infancy.
Amongst the children of the second generation, who numbered
294, the intellectual defects were more marked, idiocy,
imbecility, or debility, being noted in the offspring of 54 out of
the 98 families investigated. In 23 out of the 33 families in
which the children of the second generation had reached adult
age, one or more of them were insane. Epilepsy was found in
40 families, infantile convulsions in 42, and meningitis in 14.
The third generation in 7 families was represented by 17
children, all of whom were weak-minded, imbecile, or idiotic; 2
suffered, moreover, from moral insanity, 2 from hysteria, and 2
from epilepsy; 3 were scrofulous, and 4 had convulsions in
childhood. In the three generations taken together there were, in
addition to the children referred to above, 174 infants who were
dead-born or died shortly after birth.”

Therefore, the chronic inebriate must not become a parent. Let it be said
that these people are wicked or have no self-control, drink for fun or love of
degradation, then become drunkards, and prejudicially affect their children.
The conclusion is the same. Have any theory of heredity you please—
Lamarckianism, Darwin's pangenesis, Weismannism, Mendelism; it matters
not a straw. Look at the thing from the uncharitable religious point of view,
or from the charitable scientific view which realizes, in the case of these
women, that to know all is to pardon all—the conclusion is still the same.
The present scandal of London's inebriates.—This, then, being so,
abundance of official evidence having been gathered in addition to all the
unofficial evidence, let us consider the shameful facts which are in process
as I write, and are still so, on revision of these pages a year later. They are
outlined in the reply of Mr. Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, to a
question in the House of Commons. The reply is printed in full in The
Times, Feb. 19th, 1908. There was a paltry squabble between the
Government and the London County Council as to the exact number of
shillings that each was to contribute per week for the maintenance of
inebriates. The London County Council was plainly in the wrong, its
ignorance being sufficiently indicated by the letter to The Times, which I
will quote. The result of the squabble is that, as Mr. G. R. Sims said, “We
shall have something like five hundred women, all habitual drunkards,
passing in and out of the prisons, a peril to publicans, a pest to the police, an
evil example to the women with whom they mix, and free to bring children
into the world, their little lives poisoned at the source.” We have therefore
reverted to the shameful, brutal, and disastrous system sufficiently indicated
by the history of Jane Cakebread, at whom, when one was a schoolboy as
ignorant as those who now govern us, one used to laugh because she had
been convicted so many hundreds of times.[69] As the present writer said in
raising the matter at a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society, the future
children of these women are not only doomed by the very nature of their
germ-plasm, but they will actually be many times intoxicated not merely in
their cradles but before their birth. There is no wealth but life, and this
future wealth of England is to be fed on poisoned food and many times
made drunken before it sees the light. The meeting of the Society passed a
unanimous resolution—“That this society enters a protest against the
present administration of the Inebriates Act, whereby through the closing of

inebriate homes some hundreds of chronic inebriate women will be set
adrift in London, with an inevitably deteriorating result to the race.”[70]
For this particular scandal the London County Council was the more to
blame. Let not the reader suppose that a Liberal Government, however, was
likely to remedy the immoderate ignorance of a “Moderate” County
Council on this matter. Mr. Gladstone's reply in Parliament was an
exceptionally long one, but it did not contain a syllable to suggest that any
question of the future is involved, or that a woman may become a mother.
Further, the Licensing Bill introduced just when we were drawing public
attention to this scandal contained nowhere any hint of the principle that
you must attack drunkenness by attacking “the main source of drunkard
supply—the drunkard himself.” These, the reader will remember, are the
words of His Majesty's Inspector. There is no question of party-feeling,
then, the reader will understand, in what has here been said. Whether
labelled Liberal, Conservative, Progressive or Moderate, ignorance is still
ignorance, and when in action is still what Goethe called it, the most
dangerous thing in the world.
Pure ignorance, of course, is one of the things against which the advocate of
race-culture must fight. The lack of imagination, however, is another. At
present we have few homes for the feeble-minded, and many for what the
feeble-minded become: few for prevention, which is possible and cheap,
many for cure, which is impossible and dear. The average county councillor
or politician, of course, is rather more short-sighted than the average man,
simply because you cannot be far-sighted and a partisan. What his defect of
vision requires is impossible, but it would be effective. It is that the
consequences of unworthy parenthood should be immediate, instead of
taking months or years to develop. Any one, even a politician, can see cause
and effect when they are close enough together. It is the little interval that
the political eye cannot pierce. Nevertheless, we shall one day learn to think
of the next generation, and then there will be an end of the politician who
thinks only of the next election.
Ignorance on its defence.—The state of what has no excuse for being
uninformed opinion was only too well illustrated in a letter from the
Chairman of the Public Control Committee of the London County Council
which appeared in The Times for Feb. 27th, 1908. In defending the London
County Council the writer used the following words: “Reformation, not

mere detention, was its object when it instituted its reformatory under the
Inebriates Acts.... The case of the Public Control Committee is that the
removal and detention of the hopeless habituals is a matter for the police.”
The explanation aggravates the offence. In the face of reiterated expert
opinion, which has no dissentient, as to the practical impossibility of
reformation—you cannot reform what has never been formed, viz., a
normally developed brain—here we find a man in this responsible position,
a man who has the power to put his ignorance into action, telling us that the
London County Council aims at the impossible in this respect; whilst, in
utter defiance of the future and of the useless brutality of the police-court
method, he tells us that these “hopeless habituals” are a matter for the
police. Then, by way of making the thing complete, he speaks of “mere
detention.” What he calls “mere detention” is everything, for it saves the
future by preventing parenthood on the part of members of the community
who, more certainly than any others that can be named, are unworthy of it.
The adjective “mere” is only too adequate a measure of the state of opinion
which, by such retrograde courses as that under discussion, promises to
destroy the British people ere long—and therefore, of course, the Empire of
which that people is the living and necessary foundation.
It may be noted in passing that the word “reformatory,” employed in the
Inebriates Act of 1898, is a highly unfortunate one. It suggests a practically
impossible hope, and it ignores what, I submit, must and will ere long be
regarded as the essential purpose, function and value of the detention of
inebriates—the prohibition of parenthood on their part. In the case of
women beyond the child-bearing age, the whole case is radically altered. If
it amuses the legislature to cherish fantastic hopes, let it speak about the
reformation of these women. If it prefers the futile and disgusting cruelty of
the Jane Cakebread method for such women, when the plan for reformation
is found to fail, that is no affair of ours in the present volume. Such women
have been in effect sterilised by natural processes, and the advocate of race-
culture can afford to ignore them, for they do not concern him. Let me note,
however, that, of 294 female inebriates admitted to reformatories in the year
1906, 170 were under forty years of age, 92, of whom a considerable
proportion would be possible mothers, were between forty and fifty, and
only 32 of the total were over fifty years of age.[71] It may be said that the
lives of these unhappy women tend to be terminated early. The only pity is
that our present blindness and ignorance in dealing with them are not

neutralised, so far as the future is concerned, by death at much earlier ages.
If such a reflection strikes the reader as cruel, how much more cruel are
those who are responsible for the present case of the women inebriates of
London?
The Pall Mall Gazette, on March 4th, 1908, gave the utmost prominence to
an article of mine on this subject, entitled “An Urgent Public Scandal, The
Case of London's Inebriates.” In this article I quoted The Times letter
referred to above, and levelled the most vigorous indictment I could against
the authors of the outrage under discussion. None of them ventured to reply.
In the Referee for March 8th, 1908, however, a member of the Public
Control Committee of the London County Council made an attempt to
defend its action. The curious reader may refer to that letter as one more
instance of that absolute blindness to the nature of the problem and to any
question of the future which had already been indicated in The Times letter
from the Chairman of the Committee. Taking these two letters together, we
may say that never has a public outrage committed by men in authority
been more lamely or ignorantly defended.
Ignorance in action—the present facts.—Since the beginning of January,
1908, the brutal course decreed by the London County Council has been
pursued. The wretched and deeply-to-be-pitied women have been and are
being discharged at the rate of some twenty to twenty-five per month as
their terms expire. The wiser sort of magistrates and the police-court
missionaries are at their wits' ends, and no wonder. This country offers these
women at the moment no refuge whatever; nothing but the degrading and
destructive round—police-court, prison, public-house, pavement; da capo.
Writing to The Times in relation to the correspondence there published
(April 18th, 1908) between the London County Council and the Eugenics
Education Society, Sir Alfred Reynolds, Chairman of the State Inebriate
Reformatory Visiting Board and a Visiting Justice of Holloway Prison, said
(April 21st, 1908):—
“The correspondence published in The Times of April 18,
between the London County Council and the President of the
Eugenics Education Society convinces me more than ever that
the dispute between the London County Council and the
Treasury is a scandal and folly of the worst description. For the
sake of 6d. per case per day, the London County Council (the

same body which receives half a million sterling from the sale
of intoxicating liquor) has made it impossible for the
metropolitan magistrates to carry out the Act of 1898, and the
result is that 500 of the worst female inebriates are alternately
on the streets or in prison again, and the former scenes of horror
and drunken violence reappear. Holloway Prison will soon fill
up again, and all the good which has been done during the last
few years will be lost.... I will not trouble you further, except by
emphasising what I have said by adding that since January last
year 1,500 women have been notified to Scotland Yard as
always in and out of prison from the County of London, are
qualified for inebriate homes, and at the present moment there
are over 50 of this number in Holloway Prison serving
absolutely useless short terms of imprisonment.”
The London County Council performs a service for philosophy.—As
we have seen, there exists or seems to exist a radical antagonism in certain
groups of cases between the interests of the individual and the interests of
the race. You may preserve the quality of the race, as the Spartans did, by
exposing defective infants; you may be kind to feeble-minded children, as
we are, but you will injure the race in the long run. Darwin saw this more
than a generation ago, but instead of suggesting the prohibition of
parenthood to the unfit, he said that we must bear the ill effects of their
multiplication rather than sacrifice the law of love. Huxley similarly said
that moral evolution consisted in opposing natural evolution. Now it has for
some time been evident that this antagonism need not be radical if, whilst
devoting hospitals and charity and medical science to the care of the unfit,
we deny them the privilege of parenthood. On the other hand, the London
County Council by its present action has performed a service to biological
philosophy by showing that it is possible to combine the maximum of
brutality to the individual and to the present with the maximum of injury to
the race and to the future. In his report for 1906 Dr. Branthwaite cites the
history of a girl who, at the age of fifteen years and nine months, was
convicted in 1881 for being drunk and disorderly. During the next quarter of
a century she was sentenced 115 times, and in January, 1906, was sent to a
reformatory. She has twice attempted to commit suicide. Her case is, of
course, now hopeless, and Dr. Branthwaite predicts that her life will end by
suicide. Let any one read Dr. Branthwaite's Report or Dr. Robert Jones's

account of Jane Cakebread, or let him acquaint himself with instances as
they are to be daily seen, and he will agree that the maximum of brutality is
no excessive phrase to describe the policy of shame at present pursued in
London: if, indeed, seeing that we now have knowledge, it should not be
described as something still worse.
As for the injury to the future, we already know what the present policy
effects. We may grant, then, to the London County Council that it has
performed a service for philosophy in showing that it is possible to combine
both kinds of evil in one harmonious policy. Nor let the reader suppose that
any partisan feeling infects this protest. The Government is also to blame.
Even had the L.C.C. declined to contribute anything at all to the cost of the
proper policy, no really educated and honourable Government had any
choice but to undertake all the cost itself—even at the cost of office! Better
were—in Mr. Balfour's words, the wisest he ever uttered—“the barren
exchange of one set of tyrants, or jobbers, for another,” than the horrible
birth of thousands of feeble-minded babies.
The argument from economy.—It would be easy to show that the present
policy is not economical even as regards the cost of these women
themselves, and even if it be assumed that gold is wealth. But consider the
remoter cost. During the period when the present writer was making public
protests very nearly every day on this matter without any immediate effect,
and only one month after the London County Council had attempted to
defend itself on the ground of economy when challenged by the Eugenics
Education Society, there was formally opened, with a flourish of trumpets,
the eighty-seventh school for feeble-minded children established by the
London County Council. It accommodates sixty such children (besides
sixty physically defective). This school cost £6,000 to build alone. The sixty
feeble-minded children whom it accommodates are not a very large
proportion of the 7,000 admittedly feeble-minded school children in
London—a number which is probably not more than a third or a fourth of
the real number. It has been exhaustively proved that feeble-minded
children are mainly, at any given time, the progeny of feeble-minded
persons such as constitute the majority of chronic inebriates. Ignorance is
again in action. On the one hand, the London County Council, quarrelling
over pence, effectively suspends the working of the Inebriates Acts, and
thus ensures that the supply of feeble-minded children shall be kept up. On

the other hand, it takes these children, cares for them until they are capable
of becoming parents, and then turns them upon the world. The Chairman at
the opening ceremony of the school referred to said that “at the special
schools work was being done which would advance the intelligence of the
pupils, and thus benefit the entire race.” It would be difficult to concentrate
more ignorance in fewer words or in ten times as many.
A Home Office Committee appointed.—The almost continuous protest of
two months did, however, bear fruit, the Home Secretary appointing a
Committee to consider the question of the amendment of the Inebriates
Acts. But the legal brutalities described are still being perpetrated, and the
future is being compromised. The London County Council may be advised
to make arrangements for building a few score more schools for defective
children in anticipation of the growing need which it is assuring.
Never again, when it is past, must we permit the present abominable policy.
It is for public opinion to effect this, and public opinion has only to be
directed to the case in order to realise its nature. If the reader pleases he
may discount altogether the eugenic argument, though I believe that in the
long run that is more important than any other. But if he confines his
attention solely to the cruelties perpetrated upon these helpless women,
infinitely more sinned against than sinning, and especially if he considers
the testimony of Sir Alfred Reynolds above quoted, he will surely lend his
aid to put an end to a state of affairs which is a disgrace to our civilisation.
We talk of progress, and we are indeed incalculably indebted to our
ancestors, but let any one consider the case of the poor child, now a
wrecked woman, quoted above, and let him consider what it may be to be
an heir of all the ages in the greatest city of the world to-day.
It will be sufficiently evident that if any warrant were needed for the
formation of the Eugenics Education Society or for the publication of the
present volume, it would be found only too abundantly in the outrage upon
decency and morality and science and the future which is at present in
perpetration. Further, if any warrant were required for the incessant
reiteration of the principle that there is no wealth but life, it would be found
in the fact that this outrage is being committed in the name of economy. Yet
even if the sane and sober London ratepayer were saved a few shillings
now, as he will not be, his children will have to pay pounds in the future for
the support of these women's children. Economy, forsooth, when the rates

of London benefited to the extent of £559,000 out of the sale of intoxicating
liquors in 1905, and spent £8,000 in the maintenance of committed
inebriates! Need one apologise for declaring again, that we require a new
political economy which teaches that gold is for the purchase of life, and
not life for the purchase of gold. For the public outrage under discussion,
whereby an untold measure of life, present and to come, “breathing and to
be,” is to be destroyed and defiled for a squabble over shillings, one can
adequately quote only the words of Romeo to the apothecary: “There is thy
gold; worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome
world, than those poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.”
The last touches of art.—If this protest hurts any one's feelings, that
cannot be helped. When the production of thousands of feeble-minded
children is involved, the self-esteem of what Mr. George Meredith calls the
“accepted imbecile” does not matter. The question is, How soon do we
propose to rectify our present course in this respect?—a course which is a
shame and a disgrace to our age and nation, and which shall in any case be
placed on record in printed words, as well as in young children stamped
with degeneracy—in order to point for future ages the question “An nescis,
mi fili, quantilla prudentia regitur orbis?” “With how little wisdom”—and,
whilst perpetrating this shame, ignoring the one indisputable means by
which legislation can and must check drunkenness, nearly all other
measures having failed since Babylon was an Empire, they were quarrelling
about a temperance measure, so-called, which regarded the question of
transference of money from one pocket to another as vital, and ignored the
one vital question, which is the question of life: a measure showing scarcely
a sign, either in its text or in the words of its supporters or in the words of
its opponents, that the question of the future race had ever entered into the
head of a public man; a measure which left the protection of children from
the public-house to the discretion of local magistrates; a measure which
certainly, whatever else it might effect, could not have been more carefully
drawn if its object were to promote that secret drinking amongst women[72]
which means the poisoning of the racial life even before it sees the light.
This, then, “mi fili,” was what was called practical statesmanship in the year
1908 of the Christian Era: and in order that no last touch might be wanted
from the hand of ignorance and the blasphemous idolatry which worships
gold to the neglect of the only true god, which is life, they announced just at
this time the issue of a Royal Commission to enquire and report upon the

manufacture and variations in the composition of whiskey. It has been a
public joke for years past that no one can answer the question, “What is
whiskey?” Well, then, I will answer the question, and we may save the
labour of such commissions hereafter. Whiskey is a racial poison, and there
is nothing else to know about it worth knowing for the future. Those who
will never become, or can no longer become, fathers or mothers, may do as
they please about whiskey, so far as the ideal of eugenics or race-culture is
concerned. They may say, if they like, that their personal habits are their
affair and concern no one else. Under the influence of whiskey they may,
perhaps, even believe this. But for those who are to be the fathers and
mothers of the future, such a plea is idle. The question is not solely their
affair; it is the affair of the unborn, and we who champion the unborn are
bound to say so.
The time will come when it is recognised that there are two classes of active
mind in society: those who worship and uphold the past, and will always
sacrifice the living to the dead, nay more, the unborn to the dead. The
ultimate fate of these is the fate of her who looked backwards to the shame
and destruction from which she had escaped. She was turned into a pillar of
salt. And there are those who worship and work for the future, who will,
without hesitation, sacrifice the interests of the dead (who are no longer
interested) to those of the living and the coming race—nay, more, who will
even sacrifice the interests of a few worthless living to those of many yet
unborn, that they may be worthy. Let the dead bury their dead; let the
worshippers of the dead and the dying ask themselves whether the life that
is and the life that is to be do not demand their homage and service. Not
until some such principles as these are recognised shall we rightly deal with
the drink problem, amongst many others, and bring to it the mental and
moral enlightenment which makes for life on the higher plane, just as surely
and just as indispensably as the light of the sun creates all life whatsoever.
Mr. Balfour on legislation.—Surely the moral of this argument is clear.
The most important, the most radical, the most practicable of all temperance
measures is that which attacks the main source of supply of the drunkard.
When a Licensing Bill is brought before the House of Commons, Mr.
Balfour repeats the ancient piece of nonsense that you cannot make people
moral by Act of Parliament—an assertion that any child can see to be a
muddle. We may let that pass for the moment, but Mr. Balfour is a thinker, a

student of biology, and heredity in especial, and he has lately been lecturing
on “Decadence.” Might it not have been expected that such a man would
take an opportunity to say what the humblest serious student of the subject
would have said, and thereby to bring far more damaging criticism against
the opposing party's bill than any he hinted at? He might have said, “Your
bill, even if passed, will accomplish little, or relatively little, at great cost,
because you have no grasp of the principles of the subject. You have no idea
of what drunkenness really is. If your bill were worth a straw it would seek
as a primary principle to safeguard the race by arresting the supply of
potential drunkards. Your endless financial clauses deal merely with the re-
distribution of money, but your bill has no clause that deals with the only
business of governments, the creation and the economy of the only real
wealth, which is human life.” That is what the ex-Premier did not say. He
had plenty of passion, plenty of party-feeling to give fire to his words, but
so far as knowledge is concerned or any conception of what alone is the
wealth of nations, there was nothing to choose between Mr. Balfour and Mr.
Asquith. Passion you must have if you are to do anything, but not party-
passion: whereas if you have passion for life and for children, not only will
it be effective, but, notwithstanding all that the psychologists tell us as to
the vitiation of judgment by emotion, it will actually teach you the supreme
and eternal truths.
In this book hitherto little has been said as to formal eugenic legislation. I
believe with Etienne that it is opinion which governs the world: legislation
in front of public opinion brings all law into contempt. But in his first
speech opposing the Licensing Bill of 1908, Mr. Balfour, the author of the
Licensing Bill of 1904, decried legislation. “Intemperance,” he said, “is a
vice”: and legislation can do practically nothing in dealing with a vice.
Plainly Mr. Balfour is ignorant of the nature of intemperance, which largely
depends upon transmitted and inherent brain defect. He therefore lost his
opportunity of pointing out in what fashion you can actually,
notwithstanding the parrots, make people sober by Act of Parliament—viz.,
by forbidding parenthood to those whose children would almost certainly
become drunkards. We who are not politicians, much less ex-Premiers, must
make our own proposals then. Last year's criticism of the London County
Council began, I believe, to educate public opinion to the necessary point.
In the name of race-culture and the New Patriotism, in the name of morality
and charity and science, we must demand, obtain and carry into effect the

most stringent and comprehensive legislation, such as effectively to forbid
parenthood on the part of the chronic inebriate. Ere long, the person who
would have become a chronic inebriate will be cared for and protected
during childhood and thereafter,—with the same result. This solution of the
problem is denounced, says Dr. Archdall Reid,
“... as horrible, as Malthusian, as immoral, as impracticable....
The alternative is more horrible and more immoral still. If by
any means we save the inebriates of this generation, but permit
them to have offspring, future generations must deal with an
increased number of inebriates.... The experience of many
centuries has rendered it sufficiently plain, that while there is
drink, there will be drunkards till the race be purged of them.
We have therefore no real choice between Temperance Reform
by the abolition of drink, and Temperance Reform by the
elimination of the drunkard.... Which is the worse; that
miserable drunkards shall bear wretched children to a fate of
starvation and neglect and early death, or of subsequent
drunkenness and crime, or that, by our deliberate act, the
procreation of children shall be forbidden them? We are on the
horns of a dilemma from which there is no escape.... But our
time has seen the labours of Darwin. We know now the great
secret. Science has given us knowledge and with it power. We
have learnt that if we labour for the individual alone, we shall
surely fail; but that if we make our sacrifice greater, if we
labour for the race as well, we must succeed. Let us then by all
means seek to save the individual drunkard; with all our power
let us endeavour to make and keep him sober; but let us strive
also to eradicate the type; for, as I have said, if we do it not
quickly and with mercy, Nature will do it slowly and with
infinite cruelty.”
Women and children first.—The noble cry on a sinking ship is “women
and children first.” This perhaps is a plea for the service of helplessness as
such, though it might be equally warranted as a demand for the sacrifice of
the present to the future. And assuredly the cry for a sinking society must
also be “women and children first.” It is well if the cry be raised when the
ship of state is not yet sinking, but only water-logged or alcohol-logged.

Temperance legislation and the agitation for temperance reform are
themselves in need of reform. Their appalling record of failure—for it is
such a record—should help even the fanatic, one thinks, to accept the
introduction of the eugenic idea as a new principle of life for the
temperance cause. In the present state of custom and opinion, the teetotaler
cannot force his own wise habits upon the vast majority who do not agree
with him. If he has an infinite amount of energy and resources, let him
spend as much of both as he pleases upon the sort of propaganda with
which we are familiar: he will, by the hypothesis, still have an infinite
amount of both available for the cause to which the principle of race-culture
would direct him. If, however, his energy and resources are finite,—if,
indeed, they are by no means excessive in proportion to the urgent task
which the ideal of race-culture asks of him, then let him not fritter away a
moment or a penny or a breath until he has achieved the process of salvage
or salvation which is expressed in the phrase “women and children first.”
More accurately, perhaps, our cry must be “parents and possible parents
first,” and this for present practical purposes is equivalent to “women and
children first.”
It would have been well if the temperance propaganda from the first, say
two generations ago in Great Britain, had adopted this motto. But its
adoption is far more urgent to-day in consequence of the fact, unfortunately
no longer to be questioned, that drinking amongst women, the mothers of
the future, is, and has been for some time, steadily increasing. Children yet
unborn must be protected from the injury which may be inflicted upon them
by those who will be their mothers. Yet though there is more need for action
in this regard than ever before, and though Mr. G. R. Sims in his books The
Cry of the Children and The Black Stain has lately drawn wide attention to
the subject, we have seen that the principle of women and children first, a
principle derived from the ideal of race-culture, and directly serving that
ideal, was almost wholly ignored in the Licensing Bill of 1908. The motto
“Money, not motherhood,” is a bad one for the framers of a temperance
measure. If ever we have a temperance measure worthy the name the motto
of its framers will be “Motherhood, not money.” Such a measure will most
certainly have to introduce the principle of indeterminate sentences—or
rather, indeterminate care—in the treatment of the chronic inebriate. There
is no possibility of two opinions as to the urgent and indispensable necessity

of such treatment, nor yet as to its scrupulous humanity both for the
unfortunate victim himself or herself and for the unborn.
The word “reformatory” had better be abolished from official language,
since it leads accredited people to write to The Times such foolishness as
“reformation, not mere detention.”
Further, the expense of dealing with the chronic inebriate in this, the only
humane and economical way, had better fall entirely and directly upon the
state. It must not be possible again for a local authority, even the London
County Council, however ignorant or criminally careless, to commit a
public indecency like that already recorded—but the full record of which
none of us will live to see.
An unpunished magistrate.—Yet again, in this measure there must be
some means of compelling such magistrates as cannot be educated. At
present, even when accommodation is provided, the unfortunate creature of
the Jane Cakebread type, when she is only just beginning to enter into
competition with that horrible record, and when she is therefore most
dangerous as regards the possibility of motherhood, can be detained only by
the magistrate's order. Now it is very much less trouble for all concerned to
say “five shillings or a week” than to make the necessary enquiries in such
cases. Further, in putting this measure of one's dreams upon the statute
book, we shall have to remember that the idea of protective care and the
eugenic idea are, to say the least, not native in the mind of every magistrate.
In Dr. Welsh Branthwaite's report for 1906, there is quoted a case where a
woman had been habitually drunken for at least thirteen years previous to
her committal to a reformatory. Her known sentences included 27 fines, and
138 terms of imprisonment. She was feeble-minded. On the termination of
her reformatory sentence the discharge certificate described her as “quite
unfit to control her own actions,” and “certain to succumb to the first
temptation to drink.” The woman was found drunk a few hours after
discharge. Said the magistrate, “this case clearly proves that it is almost
useless trying to reform such women as this.... I think, after all, the old way
is best and therefore I sentence her to one month with hard labour.” I refrain
from suggesting a suitable sentence for the magistrate: doubtless he got off
scot-free.

Surely we might agree, as regards this racial poison, that at least parenthood
and the future must be kept out of its clutches. It may be, it assuredly is, a
deplorable thing that the woman of fifty, to take an instance, should become
alcoholic, but at the worst this is only the fate of an individual—in the main
at any rate. Such principles as these will some day be the cardinal principles
of legislation, and not only in regard to alcohol. The time will and must
come when public opinion will urge, whether in the name of a New
Imperialism or of common morality or of self-protection, that in our
attempts to deal with alcohol we shall begin by removing its fingers from
the throat of the race: “Women and children first.”
The Report of the Inebriates Committee.—In January, 1909, the
Committee which was at last appointed to consider this matter made its
Report.[73] I have not the literary capacity to comment adequately upon the
political wisdom which brings in a Licensing Bill, devotes vast labour and
much time to it and has it rejected by the House of Lords, while such a
Committee as this is at work. The spirit of the politician who spoke of
“those damned professors” still reigns over us, and will certainly ruin us
unless speedily deposed. However, here is the Report, and its
recommendations are earnestly to be commended to the study of all
students. New legislation, as it shows, is urgently required, and it is pre-
eminently the duty of every eugenist to hasten its coming. This is not a
party question, but merely a national one, and will therefore be dealt with
by politicians only under external pressure, such as produced the
Committee itself. The finger of public opinion must apply that pressure
forthwith.
The recommendations of the Committee are so admirable and thorough and
eugenic in effect as to temper one's disappointment that the Report contains
no definite, overt recognition of the eugenic idea. I had hoped that the
evidence prepared and submitted to the Committee for the Eugenics
Education Society would suffice to ensure the recognition of the eugenic
idea in the Report, for the first time, we may suppose, in official history. For
the present we may merely note that the suggestions made in preceding
pages are confirmed by the Committee's Report, and that the next
legislation bearing on the question of temperance will undoubtedly have to
attack the subject in this radical manner—by what will be in effect the
sterilisation of the habitual drinker of either sex and any social status. The

Committee do not recognise that that is what their Report involves, much
less that that gives it its real value; but so it is, as the year 1950 will be late
enough to show.
Much time and trouble were spent in preparing for the Eugenics Education
Society answers to many of the questions submitted to it by the Committee,
and the Society may fairly claim, I think, that its original services to this
matter were well-continued. The present writer also prepared for the
Society a Memorandum (Minutes of Evidence, p. 189), which perhaps
fairly sums up, in the briefest possible space, the indisputable relations
between alcohol and parenthood, and which may therefore be reprinted
here. The reader will notice an omission in that nothing is said as to the
effects of alcohol in injuring the germ-cells of healthy stock of either sex.
The omission was made in order that nothing possibly disputable might be
included. It has already been argued that on grounds both of fact and of
theory there is every reason to recognise in alcohol, as in syphilis and in
lead, a racial poison, originating racial degeneration which, in accordance
with generally recognised principles, shows itself in the latest, highest and
therefore most delicate portions of the organism.
The Memorandum is as follows:—
“It may be pointed out that the children of the drunkard are on the average
less capable of citizenship on account of
“(a) The inheritance of nervous defect inherent in the parent.
“(b) Intra-uterine alcoholic poisoning in cases where the mother
is an inebriate.
“(c) Neglect, ill-feeding, accidents, blows, etc., which are
responsible on the one hand for much infant mortality, and
combined with the possible causes before mentioned, for the
ultimate production of adults defective both in body and mind.
“It would appear, then, that the drunkard, if not effectively restrained,
conduces to the production of a defective race, involving a grave financial
burden upon the sober portion of the community, to say nothing of higher
considerations. It therefore seems to the Eugenics Education Society of
extreme importance that some substantial effort should be made for the
reform of existing drunkards, or the permanent control of the irreformable.

“Scientific warrant for the foregoing propositions is now to be found in no
small abundance. Reference may be made, for instance, to the chapter on
‘Alcoholism and Human Degeneration,’ in Dr. W. C. Sullivan's recent work
Alcoholism (Nisbet, 1906). Dr. Sullivan quotes the results of more than a
dozen observers in this and other countries, and special attention may be
drawn to his own well-known study of the history of 600 children born of
120 drunken mothers. The works of Professor Forel of Zurich are widely
known in this connection, notably Die Sexuel Frage, and The Hygiene of
Nerves and Mind (Translation, Murray, 1907). Parental alcoholism as a true
cause of epilepsy in the offspring is now generally recognised. For
numerous and detailed proofs from many sources reference may be made to
page 210 of the last work named.
“It is not necessary, however, to go over the ground which has doubtless
been covered by the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the
Feeble-minded.
“The existing laws comply to only a very small and almost negligible extent
with the eugenic requirement. They only deal with (a) the very minute
proportion of inebriates who can be induced to voluntarily sign away their
liberty, and (b) those who are also criminal or all but hopeless and who have
done harm already, either as individuals or in becoming parents. The third
group of inebriates (c) not included in (a) or (b) constitutes the
overwhelming majority of the whole. They are absolutely untouched by the
present law, and further powers are urgently required to deal with them.
“Such legislation would be by no means without precedent, and may avail
itself of the experience of several of our own colonies and various foreign
countries. Such methods as compulsory control on petition, guardianship
and so forth are in employment, for instance, in the Australian
Commonwealth and New Zealand, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
various cantons in Switzerland, Nova Scotia, etc.
“To sum up, the Society advocates the retention of the present law so far as
classes (a) and (b) are concerned, but would most strongly urge the addition
of powers to deal with that great majority of inebriates whom the present
law does not touch.”
The friends of alcohol.—Those who defend the alcoholic poisoning of the
race may be easily classified. Some few honestly stand for liberty. Like

Archbishop Magee, they would rather see England free than England sober,
not asking in what sense England drunken could be called free. Some are
merely irritated by the temperance fanatic. Many fear that their personal
comfort may be interfered with. But probably the overwhelming majority
are concerned with their pockets. They live by this cannibal trade; by
selling death and the slaughter of babies, feeble-mindedness and insanity,
consumption and worse diseases, crime and pauperism, degradation of body
and mind in a thousand forms, to the present generation and therefore to the
future, the unconsulted party to the bargain. Their motto is “Your money
and your life.” So powerful are they that most of them are frank. They form
associations for their defence, and hold mass meetings at which they
condemn any temperance measure that is before the country, “whilst ready
to welcome any real temperance reform.” They demand adequate
compensation: though, if they disgorged every farthing they possess, and
devoted themselves body and soul for the rest of their lives to the human
cause, they could never compensate us who are alive, let alone the dead or
the unborn, for the human ruin on which they build their success. They
build their palaces before our eyes; one of the largest and newest, not far
from Piccadilly Circus, I often pass; but where most see only fine stone, the
student of infant mortality, the lover of children, he who works and looks
for the life of this world to come, sees the bodies of the children of men and
is tempted to recall the curse of Joshua, “He shall lay the foundation thereof
in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”
Alcoholic Imperialism.—At least let the alcoholic party refrain from
calling themselves Imperialists. Amongst them, for instance, is the
“Imperial bard,” the “poet of empire,” he who has appealed to the “god of
our fathers,” and who warns us lest it shall be said that “all our pomp of
yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre”: and appeals to deity—

“Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!”

This prophet of what some may think a blasphemous Imperialism gives his
name to the association which frankly in this matter of alcohol stands for
gold as against life. We are to beware lest “drunk with sight of power” we
boast as do the “lesser breeds” to whom the “awful Hand” of God has not
granted dominion: nor are we to put our trust in reeking tube and iron shard.

We may freely call ourselves Imperialists, however, even though we should
be numbered amongst those whom Ruskin, himself the son of a wine
merchant, called the “vendors of death.” One wonders whether the “Lord
God” exists that he can withhold his “awful Hand” at such a spectacle as
this. If some amongst us are to win gold by the sale of this racial poison,
and if it must be so, let them at least be consistent, and label themselves the
very littlest of little Englanders, which they are. An alcoholic Imperialism is
of the kind which no Empire can long survive.
Those of us whom such things as these make sick, and who yet, with true
poets like Wordsworth, are proud of “the tongue that Shakespeare spake,”
and who with him declare:—

“It is not to be thought of that the Flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, · · · · · ·
· · · · · · · · ·
That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever”

—those of us who know that the foundations of any empire are living men
and women, and that, to quote Mr. Kipling, “when breeds are in the making
everything is worth while,” may wonder what process has been afoot that in
three generations English poetry should pass from the sonnets of
Wordsworth to “Duke's son, cook's son,” etc.; and may even at times,
especially those of us who know what alcohol costs in life, feel a
momentary recession of our faith that Great Britain need not now be writing
the last page of her great history. Meanwhile, we read the controversy in
Parliament and the press concerning alcohol. We see the cannibal cause of
beer and spirits, which makes many widows and orphans every day,[74]
represented, with an effrontery to which no parallel can ever be imagined,
as the cause of widows and children, and we recall the lines which
Wordsworth wrote rather more than a century ago:—

“How piteous, then, that there should be such dearth
Of knowledge; that whole myriads should unite

To work against themselves such fell despite;
Should come in frenzy and in drunken mirth,
Impatient to put out the only light
Of liberty that yet remains on earth!”

CHAPTER XIV
THE RACIAL POISONS: LEAD, NARCOTICS,
SYPHILIS

The term racial poisons teaches us to distinguish, amongst substances
known to be poisonous to the individual, those which injure the germ-
plasm: and amongst substances poisonous to the expectant mother herself,
we must distinguish those which may also poison her unborn child. Alcohol
is pre-eminently the racial poison, thus defined, and I plead for its
recognition as primarily a racial poison, this being immeasurably the most
important aspect of the whole alcohol question. Readers of Professor Forel
will not lightly question this assertion.
The total number of racial poisons is, of course, very large. Amongst them
must theoretically be included all abortifacient drugs. There are also various
poisons of disease to be included in this category. Later pages must be
devoted to what is by far the most important of these. But we may observe
in passing that such a disease as rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism has
especial significance for the student of race-culture since, as he knows, its
poisons circulating in the blood of an expectant mother may not only injure
her own heart for life but may pass through the placenta and deform the
valves of the child's heart, with the subsequent result loosely described as
“congenital heart disease.” The conditions giving rise to rheumatic fever,
then, are conditions from which the expectant mother, even more than the
ordinary individual, is entitled to be protected. But this is of minor
importance. We may here refer, however, to one or two striking cases,
especially since they bear in some degree upon social and individual duty.

The racial influence of lead.—In the first place, it is necessary to draw
attention to a really notable racial poison, viz., lead.
Says Sir Thomas Oliver,[75] “Lead destroys the reproductive powers of both
men and women, but its special influence upon women during pregnancy is
the cause of a great destruction of human life.” It may be said that in a sense
the production of miscarriages and still-births, and also of infant mortality
by lead, does not concern the student of race-culture. Nevertheless some of
these children survive. Says Sir Thomas Oliver: “I have seen both cretinism
and imbecility in infants in whom, as there could have been no possible
influence of alcohol, and presumably none of syphilis, the occupation of
one or other parent as a lead worker must have determined the imperfectly
developed nervous system of the child.” Later he says (page 202):
“Salpétrière and Bicêtre are large hospitals in Paris set aside for the
reception and treatment of nervous diseases. The experience of the
physicians of these institutions is unrivalled. One of the physicians, M.
Roques, speaking of the degenerates found in these hospitals, says that
slowly induced lead poisoning on the part of both parents or in one or other
of them is not only a cause of repeated abortions, high percentage of still-
births and high death-rate of infants, but is the cause of convulsions,
imbecility, and idiocy in many of the children who survive the first year of
existence. Of nineteen children born to parents who were lead workers,
Rennert found that one child was still-born and that seventeen were
macrocephalic. In his studies upon hereditary degeneration and idiocy,
Bourneville places house-painters in the unenviable first rank of the
occupations followed by parents of mentally weak children. Out of eighty-
seven cases relating to unhealthy trades, fifty-one were connected with
white lead in some form or another, while syphilis was only responsible for
nineteen.”
This racial influence of lead is by no means generally recognised—even by
Royal Commissioners. Its parallelism with the case of alcohol is striking.
We may note, for instance, that paternal lead-poisoning, like paternal
alcoholism, can cause degeneration in the offspring, if not indeed death
before or shortly after birth. To quote Oliver again: “Taking seven healthy
women who were married to lead workers, and in whom there was a total of
thirty-two pregnancies, Lewin tells us that the results were as follows:
eleven miscarriages, one still-birth, eight children died within the first year

after birth, four in the second year, five in the third, and one subsequent to
this, leaving only two children out of thirty-two pregnancies, as likely to
live to manhood. In cases where women have a series of miscarriages so
long as their husbands worked in lead, a change of industrial occupation on
the part of the husbands restores to the wives normal child-bearing powers.”
According to the statistical enquiry of Rennert, the malign influence of lead
is exerted upon the next generation, ninety-four times out of one hundred
when both parents have been working in lead, ninety-two times when the
mother alone is affected, and sixty-three times when it is the father alone
who has worked in lead. Here, then, as in the case of alcohol, the racial
poison may act either through the father or through the mother, but
especially through the mother. The importance of the demonstration as
regards the father in the case of both poisons is that it means a poisoning of
the paternal germ-cell. The facts may be commended to those extremists, so
much more Weismannian than Weismann, who regard the germ-cells as
existing in a universe of their own, wholly unrelated to the rest of existence.
Another extremely interesting parallel between these two racial poisons
may be noted. It is found, according to Professor Oliver, that “while
following a healthy occupation these women, after having frequently
miscarried when working in lead factories, would have two or three living
healthy children, but circumstances necessitating the return of these women
to town, and resumption of work in the lead factory, they in each successive
pregnancy again miscarried.” He then quotes the following most
remarkable case: “Mrs. K., aged thirty-four, had four children before going
into the factory and two children after. She then had six miscarriages in
succession, when she came under my care in the Royal Infirmary, having
become the victim of plumbism and having lost the power in her arms and
legs. She made a slow but good recovery and did not return to the lead
works. In her next pregnancy she went to full term and gave birth to a living
child.”
We see here that, as is also true in the case of alcoholism, the germinal
tissue itself may escape or at any rate may recover from the effects of
chronic poisoning of the individual who is its host. The race is more
resistant than the individual. If, however, the poisoning continues whilst a
new individual is being formed—that is to say, during pregnancy—that new
individual succumbs, and indeed is far more gravely affected than its

mother. Such a pregnant woman presents three distinct living objects for
our study. Her own body is one: and this is already developed. It has some
measure of resistance to the poison but is gravely affected. The embryo is
the second; it is developing and because developing is susceptible. It is
usually killed before birth. The third is the germ-plasm or the race, and this,
as we have seen, may withstand the poison so well that when the poisoning
is discontinued healthy children may be produced from it. Undoubtedly the
case is the same as regards alcohol. The race or germ-plasm is most
resistant, the developing individual is least resistant, and the adult
individual—that is to say, the mother—occupies an intermediate position in
this respect.
This parallelism, which has escaped previous observers, may be pointed out
and its remarkable interest and significance suggested as a definite advance
upon the absurd view that the germ-plasm is incapable of being poisoned.
On the contrary, we know that many poisons will kill it outright, so that
sterility results. But its high degree of resistance is a fact of great interest.
Doubtless Dr. Archdall Reid's acute explanation of it is correct: namely, that
natural selection would tend to evolve a resistant germ-plasm. Dr. Reid will,
I think, be interested to notice in these remarkable observations on lead-
poisoning a conspicuous illustration of this resistance.
Our business here, however, is with the practical issue. This fortunately is
plain, nor are there the same difficulties of vested interests which arise in
the case of alcohol. Lead-poisoning must be ended in the interests of race-
culture and the essential wealth of the nation, or, if it is to be continued, it
must at least have its clutches kept clear of parenthood.
The possible racial influence of narcotics.—Alcohol is of course a
narcotic poison, or, more precisely still, a narcotic-irritant poison, but here
we may briefly refer to the possible racial influence of certain other
poisons. There is, for instance, the case, noted on p. 212, of the disastrous
racial consequences of the cocaine habit. The matter demands only a
paragraph, since for the present, at least, it is of small general importance,
and since we must beware of going beyond the facts; but when once the
idea of race-culture has reached the popular and professional mind—the
latter at present frequently feeding the pregnant woman with alcohol, as we
all know—the whole question of narcomania will have to be looked at from
this aspect, and the measure of danger in particular cases will then be

ascertained. It is probably safe to assume, however, that, on the whole,
alcohol will be found to stand somewhat apart from other narcotics, and for
the reason that it is not a pure narcotic but also an irritant. Thus, to take the
case of opium, it will probably be very difficult and, one may hope,
impossible to show that, shall we say, opium smoking or eating has an
injurious racial influence where it is practised. Here we have a narcotic
which is not an irritant. The individual may recover perfectly from its
abuse, as he may often fail to recover from the abuse of alcohol, since this
poison leaves permanent changes in the brain, and elsewhere, dependent
upon the fact that it is not merely a narcotic but also a local irritant. The
action of a pure narcotic on the germ-plasm as compared with the action of
a narcotic which is also an irritant may afford a parallel. The abuse of
opium by the expectant mother (see p. 212) is not of the same order: it
means simply dosing a very small baby with opium.
Tobacco and the race.—The poisonous compounds absorbed from tobacco
smoke are of interest in this connection. The question as to the proportion of
nicotine included amongst them is immaterial here. It suffices to know, as
we do, that certain substances, doubtless including some proportion of
nicotine, rapidly absorbed into the blood by the smoker, are poisons to the
individual body. The familiar fact of the acquirement of immunity affects in
no degree the statement as to the toxic character of these substances.
No one but the fanatic would venture to say that any racial degeneration can
be traced to tobacco-smoking. It would be hard to prove the existence of
any injury thus inflicted upon the children of the father who is a smoker,
though the question of the acquirement of immunity is not without
relevance here. The immunising substances or anti-toxins which are
doubtless produced in the smoker's blood may protect the germ-plasm
which he bears as well as his own body.
But in the case of the expectant mother there is more warrant for offering an
opinion even in the absence hitherto of definite evidence. Apart from any
opinion as to the propriety of smoking by women in general, there is a
definite issue in the case of the expectant mother. A very young child is now
being exposed to the poisons of tobacco smoke, and if we are right in
passing laws to prevent this poisoning in the case of the urchin of eight
years (who is really, of course, eight years and nine months old), what shall
we say regarding the unborn child who is only eight months old? I have

observed that the expectant mother may have her liking for tobacco
replaced by violent dislike during pregnancy.
The poison of syphilis.—Brief mention must here be made of syphilis as a
racial poison. Sooner or later the eugenic campaign must and will face this
question, about which a murderous silence is now maintained. No other
disease can rival syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the
future. But it is no crime for a man to marry, infect his innocent bride and
their children: no crime against the laws of our little lawgivers, but a
heinous outrage against Nature's decrees. When, at last, our laws are based
on Nature's laws, criminal marriages of this kind may be put an end to.
The lay reader should acquaint himself with the play of Brieux, Les Avariés.
The student may be referred to Forel's Sexual Question, Dr. C. F. Marshall's
Syphilology and Venereal Diseases, and his article, “Alcohol and Syphilis”
in the British Journal of Inebriety, January, 1908.

This chapter and the last do not profess to do more than indicate the field of
eugenics which the term racial poisons suggests. Our business in the present
volume is, if possible, to see eugenics whole: to treat of this new science
adequately is not for one author or one generation. It is earnestly to be
hoped that the medical profession will speedily take up this question of the
racial poisons. Already the profession is beginning to become the great
instrument of individual hygiene: and every year will enhance the
importance of this work, as compared with the cure of disease. Now
negative eugenics is substantially racial hygiene: and the next great epoch
in the evolution of medicine and the medical profession will be the
enrolment of its knowledge and influence in the cause of racial hygiene.
May this book do a little to hasten that day.
The two next chapters are designed to introduce that aspect of our subject
which may be called National Eugenics, and especially with reference to
decadence. Here is a matter which appeals to minds of type and training
often very different from the typical medical mind. But it is part of one's
purpose to show, if possible, that the historian must become a eugenist, just

as the physician must, for eugenics needs and claims the work and help of
both.

CHAPTER XV
NATIONAL EUGENICS: RACE-CULTURE
AND HISTORY[76]

The reader will not expect to be insulted here with any discussion of the
garbage and gossip, records of scoundrels, courts and courtesans, battles,
murder and theft, which we were taught at school, under the great name of
history.[77] If history be, as nearly all historians have conceived it, and as
Gibbon defined it, “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and
misfortunes of mankind,” it is an empty and contemptible study, save for
the social pathologist. But if history, without by any means ignoring great
men or underrating their influence, is, or should be, the record of the past
life of mankind, of progress and decadence, the rise and fall of Empires and
civilisations, and their mutual reactions; if it be the record of the
intermittent ascent of man, “sagging but pertinacious”; if this record be
subject to the law of causation, and therefore susceptible, in theory, at least,
of explanation as well as description; if its factors are at work to-day and
will shape the destiny of all the to-morrows; if it be neither phantasmagoria
nor panorama nor pageant nor procession but process, in short, an organic
drama,—then, indeed, it is more than worthy of all the study and thought of
all who ever study or ever think. Especially must it appeal to us, who boast
a tradition greater than the world has ever yet seen, and kinship with men
who represent the utmost of which the human spirit has yet shown itself
capable,—to us who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but to whom
the names of all our Imperial predecessors, from Babylon to Spain, serve as
a perpetual memento mori. Our special question here is whether there are
inherent and necessary reasons why our predecessors' fate must sooner or
later be ours. Must races die?—or, if we are sceptical about races and more

especially about the so-called Anglo-Saxon race, must civilisations, states,
or nations die? What comment does modern biology, or the theory of
organic evolution, make upon the familiar words of Byron in his address to
the ocean?—

“Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free
And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage.”

And these, a few pages earlier in the same poem:—

“There is the moral of all human tales;
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom and then Glory—when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page”....

Nations, races, civilisations rise, we shall all agree, because to inherent
virtue of breed they add sound customs and laws, acquirements of
discipline and knowledge. But, these acquirements made, power
established, and crescent from year to year—why do they then fall? If they
can make a place for themselves, how much easier should it not be to
maintain it?
Two explanations, each falsely asserting itself to be rooted in biological
fact, have long been cited and are still cited in order to account for these
supreme tragedies of history.
The fallacy of racial senility.—The first may claim Plato and Aristotle as
its founders, and consists of an argument from analogy. Races may be
conceived in similar terms to individuals. There are many resemblances
between a society—a “social organism,” to use Herbert Spencer's phrase—
and an individual organism. Just, then, as the individual is mortal, so is the
race. Each has its birth, its period of youth and growth, its maturity, and,
finally, its decadence, senility and death. So runs the common argument.

We must reply, however, that biology, so far from confirming it, declares as
the capital fact which contrasts the individual and the race that, whilst the
individual is doomed to die from inherent causes, the race is naturally
immortal. The tendency of life is not to die but to live. If individuals die,
that is doubtless because, as I believe, more life and fuller is thus attained
than if life bodied itself in immortal forms: but the germ-plasm is immortal;
it has no inherent tendency either to degenerate or to die. Species exist and
flourish now which are millions of years older than mankind. “The
individual withers, the race is more and more.”
It may be added that, in historical instances, civilisations have, on the one
hand, persisted, and, on the other, fallen, despite change, and even
substitution, in the races which created them: and, on the other hand, the
most conspicuously persistent of all races in the historic epoch, the Jews,
have survived one Empire after another of their oppressors, but have never
had an Empire of their own. Thus, so far as the historian is concerned, it is
not races at all that die, but civilisations and Empires. Plato's argument from
the individual to the race is therefore irrelevant, as well as untrue. The
fatalistic conception to which it tempts us, saying that races must die, just as
individuals must, and that therefore it is idle to repine or oppose, is utterly
unwarrantable and extremely unhealthy. To take our own case, despite the
talk about our own racial decadence, nearly all our babies still come into the
world fit and strong and healthy—the racial poisons apart. We kill them in
scores of thousands every year, but this infant mortality is not a sign that the
race is dying, but a sign that even the most splendid living material can be
killed or damaged if you try hard enough. The babies do not die because
races are mortal, but because individuals are and we kill them. The babies
drink poison, eat poison, and breathe poison, and in due course die. The
theory of racial senility, inapplicable everywhere because untrue, is most of
all inapplicable here. If a race became sterile, Plato and Aristotle would be
right. There is no such instance in history, apart from well-defined external,
not inherent, causes, as in the case of the Tasmanians. Dismissing this
analogy, we may also dismiss, as based upon nothing better, the idea that
the great tragedies of history were necessary events at all. We must look
elsewhere than amongst the inherent and necessary factors of racial life for
the causes which determine these tragedies; and we shall be entitled to
assume as conceivable the proposition that, notwithstanding the consistent
fall of all our predecessors, the causes are not inevitable, but, being external

and environmental, may possibly be controlled: man being not only creature
but creator also.
The Lamarckian explanation of decadence.—The second of the two false
interpretations of history in terms of biology is still, and always has been,
widely credited. When historians have paid any attention to the breed of a
people as determining its destiny, they have invariably added to the fallacy
of racial senility this no less fecund error. It is that, in consequence of
success, a people become idle, thoughtless, unenterprising, luxurious, and
that these acquired characters are transmitted to succeeding generations so
that, finally, there is produced a degenerate people unable to bear the burden
of Empire—and then the crash comes. The historian usually introduces the
idea already dismissed by saying that a “young and vigorous race” invaded
the Imperial territories—and so forth. The terms “young” and “old,” applied
to human races, usually mean nothing at all.
The reader will recognise, of course, in this doctrine of the transmission to
children of characters acquired by their parents, the explanation of organic
evolution advanced by Lamarck rather more than a century ago. It is
employed by historians for the explanation of both the processes they
record, progress and retrogression. Thus they suppose that for many
generations a race is disciplined, and so at last there is produced a race with
discipline in its very bone; or for many generations a nation finds it
necessary to make adventure upon the sea, and so at last there is produced a
generation of predestined sailors with blue water in its blood. And in similar
terms moral and physical retrogression or degeneration are explained.
Let us consider the contrast between the interpretation which accepts the
Lamarckian theory of the transmission of acquired characters and that
which does not. Consider the babies of a new generation. According to
Lamarck, these have in their blood and brain the consequences of the habits
of their ancestors. If these have been idle and luxurious, the new babies are
predestined to be idle and luxurious too. This, in short, is a “dying nation.”
But, if acquired characters are not transmitted, the new generation is, on the
whole, not much better, not much worse, than its predecessors—so far as
this supposed factor of change is concerned. Each generation makes a fresh
start, as we see in the babies of our slums to-day. It does not begin where
the last left off—whether that means beginning at a higher or at a lower

level than that at which the last started: but it makes a fresh start where the
last did.
Now, in general, we have seen that Lamarck's theory is discredited. The
view of Mr. Galton is accepted, that acquired characters are not transmitted,
either for good or for evil. If there are no other factors of racial
degeneration or racial advance, then races do not degenerate or advance, but
make a fresh start every generation: and Empires rise and fall without any
relation to the breed of the Imperial people—an incredible proposition.
The racial poisons and decadence.—Certain apparent, though not real,
exceptions exist to the denial of the Lamarckian theory of the transmission
of acquired characters. These exceptions are furnished by what I have called
the racial poisons. Alcohol, for instance, is a substance, certainly poisonous
in all but very small doses, if not in them, which is carried by the blood to
every part of the body and may and does injure its racial elements. Thus a
true racial degeneration may be caused by its means: and the possibility of
this is not to be ignored. Other poisons, such as those of certain diseases, act
similarly.
We must therefore note in passing a biological factor of historical
importance, though hitherto entirely unrecognised by historians, and that is
disease. Certain of our diseases, and especially consumption or
tuberculosis, are at present making history by their extermination of
aboriginal races. Minute living creatures, which we call microbes, are
introduced into the new and favourable environment constituted by the
blood and tissues of human races hitherto unacquainted with them: and the
consequences are known to all. But further, it has lately been suggested as
highly probable, by Professor Ross and others, that the fall of Greece, that
incalculable disaster for mankind, was due to the invasion not of human
foes but of the humble living species which are responsible for the disease
miscalled malaria. The evidence for this view is by no means slight, and the
most recent explanation of an event so abrupt and so disastrous is in all
likelihood the correct one. Malaria, like alcohol, produces true racial
degeneration, its poisons affecting those racial elements of which the
individual body, biologically conceived, is merely the ephemeral host:
recalling the great line of Lucretius, “et quasi cursores, vitaï lampada
tradunt.” To lame the runner is not to injure the torch he bears—acquired

characters are not transmitted; but the racial poison makes dim the lamp ere
the runner passes it on.
Selection and racial change.—But, leaving poisons out of the question,
races of men and animals do undergo change, progressive and retrogressive,
in consequence of the action of another factor than that advanced by
Lamarck: and this is the factor of “natural selection” or “survival of the
fittest.” If, of any generation, individuals of a certain kind are chosen by the
environment for survival and parenthood, the character of the species will
change accordingly. If what we call the best are chosen, their goodness will
be transmitted in some degree, and the race will advance: if what we call
the worst are chosen, their badness will be transmitted in some degree, and
the race will degenerate.
The two kinds of progress.—Now in the case of all species other than
man, the only possible progress is this racial or inherent progress,
dependent upon a choice or selection of parents, and comparable in some
measure, as Darwin showed, with the change similarly produced in the
selective breeding or “artificial selection” of the lower animals by man. But
in the case of man himself, there is a wholly different kind of progress also
attainable, which is not inherent or racial progress at all, but yet is real
progress: and which has the most important relations to the inherent or
racial progress that might be achieved by the process of natural selection, or
the choice of parents.
It has been laid down that acquired characters are not transmissible by
heredity: but man has learnt—and it is well for him—to circumvent the
laws of heredity by transmitting his spiritual acquirements through language
and art. Even before writing there was tradition, passed on from mouth to
mouth. As long as man was without writing he advanced little faster than
other creatures, we may surmise: we know that he has an undistinguished
past of probably at least six million years: but with speech and writing came
the transmission of acquirements in this special sense; not that the past
education of a mother will enlarge her baby's brain, but that she can teach
her daughter what she has learnt, and so the child can begin where the
parent left off, just as Lamarck wrongly imagined to be the case with the
young giraffe, that he supposed to profit by the stretching of the parental
necks. It is this transmission of spiritual acquirements—outside the germ-
plasm and in defiance of its laws—that explains the amazing advance of

man in the last ten or twenty thousand years as compared with the almost
speechless ages before them.
This kind of progress is peculiar to man,[78] it is the gift of intelligence, and
we may call it traditional or acquired progress. It is an utterly different thing
from inherent or racial progress, an improvement in the breed dependent
upon the happy choice of parents. And it is surely evident, on a moment's
consideration, that acquired progress is compatible with inherent
decadence. To use Coleridge's image, a dwarf may see further than a giant if
he sits on the giant's shoulders: yet he is a dwarf and the other a giant. Any
schoolboy now knows more than Aristotle, and that is true progress of a
kind, but the schoolboy may well be a dwarf compared with Aristotle, and
may belong to a race degenerate when compared with his; and that is
inherent or racial decadence subsisting with acquired or traditional
progress.
Now whilst the accumulation of knowledge and art and power from age to
age is real progress, it evidently depends for its stability and persistence
upon the quality of the race.[79] If the race degenerates—through, say, the
selection of the worst for parenthood—the time will come when its heritage
is too much for it. The pearls of the ancestral art are now cast before swine,
and are trampled on: statues, temples, books are destroyed or burnt or lost.
If an Empire has been built, the degenerate race cannot sustain it. There is
no wealth but life: and if the quality of the life fails, neither battleships nor
libraries nor symphonies nor anything else will save a nation. This we all
know, though no one who observed our legislation or read our
Parliamentary debates would suspect that it had ever entered into our
minds. Empires and civilisations, then, have fallen, despite the strength and
magnitude of the superstructure, because the foundations decayed: and the
bigger and heavier the superstructure the less could it survive their failure.
If the Fiji islanders degenerate, there is little consequence: if the breed of
Romans degenerate, all their vast mass of acquired progress and power
crushes them into dramatic ruin. This image, I believe, truly expresses the
relation between the two wholly distinct kinds of progress, which we have
yet to learn to distinguish. Acquired progress will not compensate for racial
or inherent decadence. If the race is going down, it will not compensate to
add another colony to your Empire: on the contrary, the bigger the Empire
the stronger must be the race: the bigger the superstructure the stronger the

foundations. Acquired progress is real progress, but it is always dependent
for its maintenance upon racial or inherent progress—or, at least, upon
racial maintenance.
Nothing fails like success.—I believe, then, that civilisations and Empires
have succumbed because they represented only acquired or traditional or
educational progress and this availed not at all when the races that built
them up began to degenerate. Now the only explanation of racial
degeneration yet offered by the historians—apart from the foolish one of
racial senility—is the Lamarckian one of the transmission of habits of
luxury and idleness from parent to child: an explanation which the modern
study of heredity empowers us to repudiate. What theory of this alleged
degeneration is there to offer in its place: and especially what theory which
explains racial degeneration amongst not the conquered but the conquerors:
amongst the successful, the Imperial, the cultured, the leisured, the well-
catered for in all respects, bodily and mental? Why is it that not enslaved
but Imperial peoples degenerate? Why is it that nothing fails like success?
What I believe to be the true and sufficient answer has been given by no
historian: but the key to it is only fifty years old. The reason is that no race
or species, vegetable or animal or human, can maintain—much less raise—
its organic level unless its best be selected for parenthood. It is true of a race
as of an individual that it must work for its living—so to speak—if it is not
to degenerate. When the terms are too easy, down you go. The tape-worm
has given up even digesting for its living, and we know its degeneracy—all
hooks and mouth. Society works and hands over its predigested food to
such social parasites amongst ourselves. You must struggle or you will
degenerate—even if only with rhyme or counterpoint, not necessarily for
bread. “Effort is the law,” as Ruskin said: whether for a livelihood or for
enjoyment. Living things are the product of the struggle for existence: we
are thus evolved strugglers by constitution: and directly we cease to
struggle we forfeit the possibilities of our birthright. “Thou, O God,” said
Leonardo, “hast given all good things to man at the price of labour.”
The case is the same with races. Directly the conditions become too easy,
selection ceases, and it is as successful to be incompetent or lazy or vicious
as to be worthy. The hard conditions that kept weeding out the unworthy are
now relaxed and the fine race they made goes back again. Finally there
occurs the phenomenon of reversed selection, when it is fitter to be bad than

good, cowardly than brave—as when religious persecution murders all who
are true to themselves and spares hypocrites and apostates: or when healthy
children are killed in factories whilst feeble-minded children or deaf-mutes
are carefully tended until maturity and then sent into the world to reproduce
their maladies. Under reversed selection such results are obtained as a
breeder of race-horses or plants would obtain if he went to work on similar
lines: the race degenerates rapidly: and if it be an Imperial race its Empire
comes crashing down about its ears. All Empires and civilisations hitherto
have involved the partial or complete arrest or reversal of the process of
natural selection: and the racial degeneration which necessarily ensued has
been the cause of their invariable doom.
When a primitive race is making its way by force, selection is stringent. The
weak, cowardly, diseased, stupid are expunged from generation to
generation. As civilisation advances, a higher ethical level is reached: all
true civilisation tending to abrogate and ameliorate the struggle for
existence. The diseased and weakly and feeble-minded are no longer left to
pay the penalty sternly exacted by Nature for unfitness: they are allowed to
survive and multiply. A successful race can apparently afford to permit this,
as a race that is fighting for its existence cannot. But in reality no race can
afford this absolutely fatal process.
There is thus a real risk involved in the accumulation of acquired,
traditional or educational progress. Not only does it tend to abrogate or even
to reverse selection, but it serves to disguise the consequences of this
abrogation. If a subhuman race degenerates the fact is evident: but such a
nation as our own may quite well degenerate whilst the accumulation of
acquired progress, transmitted by education, almost completely cloaks the
fact for a time. We may be congratulating ourselves upon our progress,
upon our knowledge, our science and art, our institutions, legal and
charitable, whilst all the time the breed is undergoing retrogression.
We see now, I think, the explanation of the truth expressed by Gibbon,
—“all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.” Why should this
be so? Why should it not be possible merely to maintain a position gained?
The answer is that the civilisation which merely maintains its position is
one in which selection has ceased: if selection had not ceased, the position
would be more than maintained, there would be advance. But without
selection the breed will certainly degenerate, the lower individuals

multiplying more rapidly than higher ones, in accordance with Spencer's
law that the higher the type of the individual the less rapidly does he
multiply; and thus the race which is not advancing is retrograding, as
Gibbon declared.
Natural selection is the sole factor of efficient and permanent progress, but
the traditional or acquired progress which we call civilisation tends to
thwart or abrogate or even invert this process. I thus believe that the
conditions necessary for the secure ascent of any race, an ascent secured in
its very blood, made stable in its very bone, have not yet been achieved in
history: and I advance this as the reason why history records no enduring
Empire.
Some historical instances.—In the face of certain facts of contemporary
history I do not for a moment assert that there are no other causes of
Imperial failure than the arrest or reversal of selection. But I do assert that if
this is not the cause, then, in the absence of the transmission of acquired
characters, the race has not degenerated, and is capable of reasserting itself.
Only by the arrest or reversal of selection can a race degenerate—apart
from the racial poisons. If, then, a civilisation or Empire has fallen through
causes altogether non-biological—through carelessness, or neglect of
motherhood or alteration of ideals—the changes in character so produced
are not transmitted to the children, and the race is not degenerate but merely
deteriorated in each generation.
For instance, we have been brought up to believe that there is no possible
future for Spain; it is a dying nation, a senile individual, a people of
degenerates; it has had its day, which can never return. The historian
explains this by the false analogy between a race and an individual, and by
the false Lamarckian theory of heredity. To these the biologist retorts with
comments upon their falsity, and with the conviction that since Spain, even
allowing for the anti-eugenic labours of the Inquisition, has not been
subjected to the only process which can ensure real degeneration—viz., the
consistent and stringent selection of the worst—she is yet capable of
regeneration. Regeneration is not really the word, because there has been
little real degeneration, but only the successive deterioration of successive
and undegenerate generations.

If we took an animal species that has degenerated, such as the intestinal
parasites, and endeavoured to regenerate them, we should begin to realise
the magnitude of our task. That is not the task for Spain, the biologist
asserts. Merely the environment must be altered,—not the mountain ranges
and the rivers, Buckle notwithstanding, but the really potent factors in the
environment, the spiritual and psychical and social factors—and the
deterioration of each new generation, inherently undegenerate, will cease. I
am using these opposed terms with great care and of set purpose.
And the biologist is right. The facts concerning which so many historians
have shaken their heads, and upon which they have based so many
moralisings and theories of history, the facts which they have cited in
support of their false analogies and misconceptions of heredity—due, of
course, to the errors of former biology—turn out to be not facts at all, or, at
any rate, only facts of the moment. The “dying nation,” as Lord Salisbury
called it, has occasion to alter its psychical environment. It introduces the
practice of education; it begins to shake off the yoke of ecclesiasticism; and
what are the consequences?
The new generation is found to be potentially little worse and little better
than its predecessors of the sixteenth century. There has been no national or
racial degeneration. The environment is modified for the better, i.e., so as to
choose the better, and Spain, as they say in misleading phrase, “takes on a
new lease of life.” The historian of the present day, knowing as a historian
what qualities of blood have been in the Spanish people, and basing his
theories upon sound biology, must confidently assert that that blood,
incapable, as he knows, of degeneration by any Lamarckian process, may
still retain its ancient quality and will yet make history.
But the historian might well write a volume upon the same thesis as applied
to China and Japan. We know historically what were the immediate effects
in one generation of a total change of environment in Japan. That change
has not yet occurred in China, but must inevitably occur. Consider for a
moment how the historian, made far-sighted and clear-sighted by biology,
must contemplate the history of this astounding people. The popular belief
used to be that China illustrated the so-called law of nations. It was the
decadent, though monstrous, relic of an ancient civilisation; it had had its
day. Inevitable degeneration, which must befall all peoples, had come upon
it. Behold it in the paralysis which precedes death!

But in the light of the facts of Japan, the man in the street and the historian
alike have in this case found modern biology superfluous in enabling them
to arrive at sound conclusions. They now believe what the Darwinian has
been compelled to believe for half a century, and more strongly than ever
during the latter part of that period, when the doctrine of the transmission of
modifications was finally discredited. A clever writer invents the phrase
“the yellow peril,” and people discard their old theories. The metaphor must
be changed. This is not paralysis, but merely slumber. Doubtless, it is an
unnatural slumber; doubtless, it is not the slumber which brings renewed
strength. It is suspense or stupor, not recuperation; but assuredly it is not
paralysis. Who now would dare to say that China has had its day, even if he
still clings to the old fictions about Spain?
Motherhood and history.—Here, also, reference must again be made to
another factor of history to which, as I think, the biologist must attach
enormous importance, but which no historian yet has adequately reckoned
with. Our prime assumption from beginning to end is that “there is no
wealth but life,” or, if one may venture to improve upon Ruskin, there is no
wealth but mind; and in the attempt to suggest interpretations of history
based upon this truth, so little recked of by the historian, we have
considered the life in question from the point of view of its determination
by heredity, and its varying value according to the inherent and
transmissible characters selected in each generation. But a word must be
said as to the other factor which, with heredity, determines the character of
the individual—and that factor is the environment. I wish merely to note the
most important aspect of the environment of human beings, and to observe
that historians hitherto have wholly ignored it; yet its influence is
incalculable. I refer to motherhood.
One might have the most perfect system of selection of the finest and
highest individuals for parenthood; but the babies whose potentialities—
heredity gives no more—are so splendid, are always, will be always,
dependent upon motherhood. What was the state of motherhood during the
decline and fall of the Roman Empire? This factor counts in history; and
always will count so long as, three times in every century, the only wealth
of nations is reduced to dust, and is raised again from helpless infancy. As
to Rome we know little, whatever may be suspected: but we know that here
in the heart of the greatest Empire in history—and it is at the heart that

Empires rot—thousands of mothers go out every day to tend dead
machines, whilst their own flesh and blood, with whom lies the Imperial
destiny, are tended anyhow or not at all. It may yet be said by some
enlightened historian of the future that the living wealth of this people, in
the twentieth century, began to be eaten away by the cancer which we call
“married women's labour,” and that, as will be evident to that historian's
readers, its damnation was sure. To-day our historians and politicians think
in terms of regiments and tariffs and “Dreadnoughts”: the time will come
when they must think in terms of babies and motherhood. We must think in
such terms too if we wish Great Britain to be much longer great. Meanwhile
some of us see the perennial slaughter of babies in this land, and the
deterioration of many for every one killed outright, the waste of mothers'
travail and tears: and we recall Ruskin's words:—
“Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I
leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among national
manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last
turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far-away
and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may
cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric
nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands
of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the
housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave,
she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and
the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her
Sons, saying:—
“These are MY Jewels.”
Had all Roman mothers been Cornelias, would Rome have fallen?[80]
Consider the imitation mothers—no longer mammalia—to be found in
certain classes to-day—mothers who should be ashamed to look any tabby-
cat in the face; consider the ignorant and downtrodden mothers amongst our
lower classes; and ask whether these things are not making history.
The survival of the Jews.—The principles the discussion of which has
here been attempted had all been set down before it suddenly seemed clear
that they found their warrant and application in the unexampled riddle of
the persistence and success, throughout more than two thousand years and a

thousand vicissitudes, of the Jewish people. It is true that we have here no
exception to the apparent law that Empires are mortal, for within this period
there never was a Jewish Empire: the Jews were never subject to the risk
involved for racial or inherent progress by the possession of great acquired
powers. But just as the fall of Empires has often not been the fall of races—
various races having at various times carried on the same Imperial tradition
—so the persistence of the Jews, as contrasted with the impermanence of
Empires, has been the persistence of a race. I believe that the principles
already laid down offer us an adequate explanation of this unique case: and
further, that if we had begun with the case of the Jews, endeavouring, by the
investigation of their case, to explain the contrasted case of other races and
of all Empires hitherto, we should have arrived at the same principles.
It has been asserted that that race or people decays in which selection ceases
or is reversed; that in the absence of selection of the worthy for parenthood,
no species, vegetable, animal or human, can prosper—much less progress.
Now the Jews, the one human race of which we know assuredly that it has
persisted unimpaired, have been the most continuously and stringently
selected of any race, I suppose, that can be named. Every measure of
persecution and repression practised against them by the people amongst
whom they have lived, has directly tended towards the very end which
those people least desired to compass. Other peoples found themselves
prosperous through the efforts of their fathers; the struggle for existence
abated; it was, so to say, as fit to be unfit as to be fit—with the inevitable
result. But this has never been the case of the Jews. They have always had
to struggle for life intensely: and their unexampled struggle has been a great
source of their unexampled strength. The Jew who was a weakling or a fool
had no chance at all; the weaklings and the fools being weeded out,
intensity and strength of mind became the common heritage of this amazing
people.
Secondly, there was everything to favour motherhood. Here religious
precept and ethical tradition joined with stem necessity to the same end—
the end which always meant a new and strong beginning for the next
generation. Even to-day all observers are agreed that infant mortality is at a
minimum amongst the Jews; their children are superior in height and weight
and chest measurement to Gentile children brought up amidst poverty far
less intense in our own great cities; in a better material environment, but a

far inferior maternal environment. The Jewish mother is the mother of
children innately superior, on the average, since they are the fruit of such
long ages of stringent parental selection, and she makes more of them
because she fails to nurse them only in the rarest cases, when she has no
choice, and because in every detail her maternal care is incomparably
superior to that of her Gentile sister. Given a high standard of motherhood
in a highly selected race, what other result than that we daily witness and
envy can we expect?
Thirdly, the Jews do not abuse alcohol, and thus avoid one of the few
causes of true racial degeneration apart from selection of the worst for
parenthood.

If these principles are valid, it is evident that our redemption from the fate
of all our predecessors is to be found only in Eugenics—the selection of the
best for parenthood. In his address to the Sociological Society in 1904, in
which he defined this term, Mr. Galton named as one of the duties before
the Society, “historical enquiry into the rates with which the various classes
of society (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed to the
population at various times, in ancient and modern nations.” “There is
strong reason for believing,” he continued, “that national rise and decline is
closely connected with this influence.”[81]
What is a good environment?—Using the word environment in its widest
sense, including, for instance, public opinion—and its use in any sense less
wide is always erroneous and misleading—we may say that it is our
business to provide the environment which selects the best for parenthood
and discourages the parenthood of the worst—say the deaf and dumb, the
feeble-minded, the insane, the epileptic, the inebriate, those afflicted with
hereditary disease of other kinds, and so forth. Our principles should enable
us, also, I think, to define what we mean by a good environment.
Comprehensive and indiscriminate charity means a good environment for
many in a sense, but it may also mean the selection of the worst for
parenthood—e.g., the feeble-minded. This “good” environment then means
the degeneration of the race. We must therefore appraise environment in
terms of its selective action. A good environment is that which selects the

good, and the best environment is that which selects the best; discovers
them, makes the utmost of them, and confers upon them the supreme
privilege and duty of parenthood. That and that alone is the best
environment, and all other moral judgments upon environment are
fallacious and will be disastrous.
The necessary conclusion.—National Eugenics teaches that the first duty
of all governments and patriots and good citizens is, to quote Ruskin again,
“the production and recognition of human worth, the detection and
extinction of human unworthiness.” The idea is not new-fangled, but was
clearly laid down by Plato, and by Theognis two centuries before him.
Eugenics is a project of the most elevated and provident morality, aiming at
no object less sublime than the ennoblement of mankind; and if one may
suggest its motto it would be, The products of progress are not mechanisms
but men. It is based upon the principle of the selection or choice of the
superior for parenthood, which has been the essential factor of all progress
in the world of life, but which all civilisations have tended in some degree
to abrogate—or even to reverse, as when the feeble-minded child is cared
for till maturity and sent out into the world to produce its like, whilst
healthy children are daily destroyed by ignorance and neglect.
“Through Nature only can we ascend”—and the merit of the eugenic
proposal is that it is built upon “the solid ground of nature.”
To the economist, it declares that the culture of the racial life is the vital
industry of any people.
It is to work through marriage, an institution more ancient than mankind,
and supremely valuable in its services to childhood—with which lies all
human destiny.
Eugenics appeals to the individual, asking for a little imagination, which
will make us realise that the future will one day be the present and that to
serve it is to serve no fiction or phantom, but a reality as real as the present
generation.
It teaches the responsibility of the noblest and most sacred of all
professions, which is parenthood, and it makes a sober and dignified claim
to be regarded as a constituent of the religion of the future.

It goes to the root of the matter; where the well-meaning, but short-sighted,
pin their faith on the hospitals, the eugenist seeks to brand the transmission
of hereditary disease as a crime, and thus literally to extirpate it altogether.
That its methods are practicable is proved by the fact that it is practised—as
by the northern society for the “permanent care of the feeble-minded,”
which serves the present and the future simultaneously and reconciles the
law of love with the earlier law of nature—which asserts that parenthood
must be denied to the unworthy—without blame or malice, but without
exception. It suggests the principles of a New Imperialism, and offers, I
submit, our sole chance of escape from the fate which has overtaken all
previous civilisations. It honours men and women by declaring that human
parenthood is crowned with responsibility to the unborn, and to all time
coming, and that man, the animal in body, is also a self-conscious being,
“looking before and after,” who is human because he is responsible, and to
whom the laws of nature have been revealed, not to satisfy an intellectual
curiosity, but for the highest end conceivable—the elevation of his race.
Let me quote a fine passage from Wordsworth's “Prelude”:—

“With settling judgments now of what would last
And what would disappear; prepared to find
Presumption, folly, madness, in the men
Who thrust themselves upon the passive world
As Rulers of the world; to see in these,
Even when the public welfare is their aim,
Plans without thought, or built on theories
Vague and unsound; and having brought the books
Of modern statists to their proper test,
Life, human life, with all its sacred claims
Of sex and age, and heaven-descended rights,
Mortal, or those beyond the reach of death;
And having thus discerned how dire a thing
Is worshipped in that idol proudly named
‘The Wealth of Nations’; where alone that wealth
Is lodged, and how increased; and having gained
A more judicious knowledge of the worth
And dignity of individual man,

No composition of the brain, but man
Of whom we read, the man whom we behold
With our own eyes—I could not but enquire—
Not with less interest than heretofore,
But greater, though in spirit more subdued—
Why is this glorious creature to be found
One only in ten thousand? What one is,
Why may not millions be? What bars are thrown
By Nature in the way of such a hope?”
Consider how far we have come, the base degrees by which we did ascend,
and answer with Shakespeare, “There are many events in the womb of time
which will be delivered.”

CHAPTER XVI
NATIONAL EUGENICS: MR. BALFOUR ON
DECADENCE

(1) “If the various checks specified in the two last paragraphs, and
perhaps others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, the vicious,
and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker
rate than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde, as has too
often occurred in the history of the world. We must remember that
progress is no invariable rule. It is very difficult to say why one
civilised nation rises, becomes more powerful, and spreads more
widely, than another; or why the same nation progresses more quickly at
one time than at another. We can only say that it depends on an increase
in the actual number of the population, on the number of the men
endowed with high intellectual and moral faculties, as well as on their
standard of excellence. Corporeal structure appears to have little
influence, except so far as vigour of body leads to vigour of mind.”—
Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871.

(2) Referring to “the rates with which the various classes of society
(classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed to the
population at various times, in ancient and modern nations,” Mr. Francis
Galton said “there is strong reason for believing that national rise and
decline is closely connected with this influence.”—Galton,
Sociological Papers, 1904, p. 47.
(3) “The inexplicable decline and fall of nations following from no
apparent external cause receives instant light from the relative fertility
of the fitter and unfitter elements combined with what we now know of
the laws of inheritance.”[82]—Pearson, 1904.
(4) To the question, What were the causes of the fall of Rome? Mr.
Balfour replies, “I feel disposed to answer, Decadence.”[83]—Balfour,
1908.

The lecture of which the previous chapter is the written form was prepared
and delivered before I had an opportunity of seeing Mr. A. J. Balfour's
lecture on “Decadence” delivered a few days before. That has since been
printed, and is well worthy of our attention. In Mr. Balfour we have a
representative political thinker, an experimental statesman and, furthermore,
a former President of the British Association, deeply interested in, and
favourably disposed towards, scientific enquiry and the scientific method.
Further, this lecture has been widely noticed, though all the criticisms I
have seen seem to me to miss the point. No apology, then, is necessary for a
special discussion of this most suggestive lecture in direct relation with the
foregoing theory of its subject.
Political and national decadence is Mr. Balfour's theme, and we note first
that here is a contemporary thinker, not unread in recent biology, including
the work of Weismann, who is prepared to make use of the idea that
societies are inherently mortal, as individuals are. One wonders when we
shall be rid of this pernicious instance of the argument from analogy, which
is already much more than two thousand years old.
Next it may be noticed that, though Mr. Balfour has deliberately discussed
the idea of natural selection, he has been led wholly astray from its true
relation to the question under discussion by reason of falling into the
common error which Sir E. Ray Lankester has recently exposed, as Huxley