32
plotted, which shows at a glance just what matrimonial advantage a
woman's beauty gives her.
plotted, which shows at a glance just what matrimonial advantage a
woman's beauty gives her.
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
There is a widespread belief that
such marriages are dangerous, and in support of this idea, one is
referred to the histories of various isolated communities where
consanguineous marriage is alleged to have led to "an appalling amount
of defect and degeneracy. " Without questioning the facts, one may
question the interpretation of the facts, and it seems to us that a
wrong interpretation of these stories is partly responsible for the
widespread condemnation of cousin marriage at the present time.
The Bahama Islands furnish one of the stock examples. Clement A. Penrose
writes[92] of them:
"In some of the white colonies where black blood has been excluded, and
where, owing to their isolated positions, frequent intermarriage has
taken place, as for instance at Spanish Wells, and Hopetown, much
degeneracy is present, manifested by many abnormalities of mind and
body. . . . I am strongly of the opinion that the deplorable state of
degeneracy which we observed at Hopetown has been in a great measure, if
not entirely, brought about by too close intermarrying of the
inhabitants. "
To demonstrate his point, he took the pains to compile a family tree of
the most degenerate strains at Hopetown. There are fifty-five marriages
represented, and the chart is overlaid with twenty-three red lines, each
of which is said to represent an intermarriage. This looks like a good
deal of consanguineous mating; but to test the matter a little farther
the fraternity at the bottom of the chart,--eight children, of whom five
were idiots,--was traced. In the second generation it ran to another
island, and when the data gave out, at the fourth generation, there was
not a single case of consanguineous marriage involved.
Another fraternity was then picked out consisting of two men, both
idiots and congenitally blind, and a woman who had married and given
birth to ten normal children. In the fourth generation this pedigree,
which was far from complete, went out of the islands; so far as the data
showed there was not a single case of consanguineous marriage. There was
one case where a name was repeated, but the author had failed to mark
this as a case of intermarriage, if it really was such. It is difficult
to share the conviction of Dr. Penrose, that the two pedigrees
investigated, offer an example of the nefarious workings of
intermarriage.
Finally a fraternity was traced to which the author had called
particular attention because three of its eleven members were born
blind. The defect was described as "optic atrophy associated with a
pigmentary retinitis and choryditis" and "this condition," Dr. Penrose
averred, "is one stated by the authorities to be due to the effects of
consanguineous marriage. "
Fortunately, the pedigree was fairly full and several lines of it could
be carried through the sixth generation. There was, indeed, a
considerable amount of consanguineous marriage involved. When the amount
of inbreeding represented by these blind boys was measured, it proved to
be almost identical with the amount represented by the present Kaiser of
Germany. [93]
We are unable to see in such a history as that of Hopetown, Bahama
Islands, any evidence that consanguineous marriage necessarily results
in degeneracy. Dr. Penrose himself points to a potent factor when he
says of his chart in another connection: "It will be noticed that only a
few of the descendants of Widow Malone [the first settler at Hopetown]
are indicated as having married. By this it is not meant that the others
did not marry; many of them did, but they moved away and settled
elsewhere, and in no way affected the future history of the settlement
of Hopetown. "
By moving away, it appears to us, they did very decidedly affect the
future history of Hopetown. Who are the emigrants? Might they not have
been the more enterprising and intelligent, the physically and mentally
superior of the population, who rebelled at the limited opportunities of
their little village, and went to seek a fortune in some broader field?
Did not the best go in general; the misfits, the defectives, stay behind
to propagate? Emigration in such a case would have the same effect as
war; it would drain off the best stock and leave the weaklings to stay
home and propagate their kind. Under such conditions, defectives would
be bound to multiply, regardless of whether or not the marriages are
consanguineous.
"It will be seen at a glance," Dr. Penrose writes, "that early in the
history of the Malone family these indications of degeneracy were
absent; but they began in the fourth generation and rapidly increased
afterward until they culminated by the presence of five idiots in one
family. The original stock was apparently excellent, but the present
state of the descendants is deplorable. "
Now three generations of emigration from a little community, which even
to-day has only 1,000 inhabitants, would naturally make quite a
difference in the average eugenic quality of the population. In almost
any population, a few defectives are constantly being produced. Take out
the better individuals, and leave these defectives to multiply, and the
amount of degeneracy in the population will increase, regardless of
whether the defectives are marrying their cousins, or unrelated persons.
The family of five idiots, cited by Dr. Penrose, is an excellent
illustration, for it is not the result of consanguineous marriage--at
least, not in a close enough degree to have appeared on the chart. It is
doubtless a mating of like with like; and biologically, consanguineous
marriage is nothing more.
Honesty demands, therefore, that consanguineous marriage be not credited
with results for which the consanguineous element is in no wise
responsible. The prevailing habit of picking out a community or a strain
where consanguineous marriage and defects are associated and loudly
declaring the one to be the cause of the other, is evidence of the lack
of scientific thought that is all too common.
Most of the studies of these isolated communities where intermarriage
has taken place, illustrate the same point. C. B. Davenport, for example,
quotes[94] an anonymous correspondent from the island of Bermuda, which
"shows the usual consequence of island life. " He writes: "In some of the
parishes (Somerset and Paget chiefly) there has been much intermarriage,
not only with cousins but with double first cousins in several cases.
Intermarriage has chiefly caused weakness of character leading to drink,
not lack of brains or a certain amount of physical strength, but a very
inert and lazy disposition. "
It is difficult to believe that anyone who has lived in the tropics
could have written this except as a practical joke. Those who have
resided in the warmer parts of the world know, by observation if not by
experience, that a "weakness of character leading to drink" and "an
inert and lazy disposition" are by no means the prerogatives of the
inbred.
If one is going to credit consanguineous marriage with these evil
results, what can one say when evil results fail to follow?
What about Smith's Island, off the coast of Maryland, where all the
inhabitants are said to be interrelated, and where a physician who lived
in the community for three years failed to find among the 700 persons a
single case of idiocy, insanity, epilepsy or congenital deafness?
What about the community of Batz, on the coast of France, where Voisin
found five marriages of first cousins and thirty-one of second cousins,
without a single case of mental defect, congenital deafness, albinism,
retinitis pigmentosa or malformation? The population was 3,000, all of
whom were said to be interrelated.
What about Cape Cod, whose natives are known throughout New England for
their ability? "At a recent visit to the Congregational Sunday-School,"
says a student, "I noticed all officers, many teachers, organist,
ex-superintendent, and pastor's wife all Dyers. A lady at Truro united
in herself four quarters Dyer, father, mother and both grandmothers
Dyers. "
And finally, what about the experience of livestock breeders? Not only
has strict brother and sister mating--the closest inbreeding
possible--been carried on experimentally for twenty or twenty-five
generations without bad results; but the history of practically every
fine breed shows that inbreeding is largely responsible for its
excellence.
The Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt for several centuries, wanted to keep the
throne in the family, and hence practiced a system of intermating which
has long been the classical evidence that consanguineous marriage is
not necessarily followed by immediate evil effects. The following
fragment of the genealogy of Cleopatra VII (mistress of Julius Caesar and
Marc Antony) is condensed from Weigall's _Life and Times of Cleopatra_
(1914) and
Ptolemy I
|
|
Ptolemy II
|
|
Ptolemy III m. Berenice II, his half-cousin.
|
|
Ptolemy IV m. Arsinoe III, his full sister.
|
|
Ptolemy V.
|
|
Ptolemy VII m. Cleopatra II, his full sister.
|
|
Cleopatra III m. Ptolemy IX (brother of VII), her uncle.
|
|
Ptolemy X. m. Cleopatra IV, his full sister.
|
-----|
| Berenice II m. Ptolemy XI (brother of X), her uncle.
| |
| |
| Ptolemy XII, d. without issue, succeeded by his uncle.
| |
| |
---Ptolemy XIII.
|
|
Cleopatra VII.
shows an amount of continued inbreeding that has never been surpassed in
recorded history, and yet did not produce any striking evil results. The
ruler's consort is named, only when the two were related. The
consanguineous marriages shown in this line of descent are by no means
the only ones of the kind that took place in the family, many like them
being found in collateral lines.
It is certain that consanguineous marriage, being the mating of like
with like, intensifies the inheritance of the offspring, which gets a
"double dose" of any trait which both parents have in common. If the
traits are good, it will be an advantage to the offspring to have a
double dose of them; if the traits are bad, it will be a disadvantage.
The marriage of superior kin should produce children better than the
parents; the marriage of inferior kin should produce children even worse
than their parents.
In passing judgment on a proposed marriage, therefore, the vital
question is not, "Are they related by blood? " but "Are they carriers of
desirable traits? "
The nature of the traits can be told only by a study of the ancestry. Of
course, characters may be latent or recessive, but this is also the case
in the population at large, and the chance of unpleasant results is so
small, when no instance can be found in the ancestry, that it can be
disregarded. If the same congenital defect or undesirable trait does not
appear in the three previous generations of two cousins, including
collaterals, the individuals need not be discouraged from marrying if
they want to.
Laws which forbid cousins to marry are, then, on an unsound biological
basis. As Dr. Davenport remarks, "The marriage of Charles Darwin and
Emma Wedgewood would have been illegal and void, and their children
pronounced illegitimate in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota,
Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and other states. " The vitality and great
capacity of their seven children are well known. A law which would have
prevented such a marriage is certainly not eugenic.
We conclude, then, that laws forbidding cousin marriages are not
desirable. Since it would be well to make an effort to increase the
opportunities for further play of sexual selection, the lack of which is
sometimes responsible for cousin marriages, consanguineous marriage is
by no means to be indiscriminately indorsed. Still, if there are cases
where it is eugenically injurious, there are also cases where its
results are eugenically highly beneficial, as in families with no
serious defects and with outstanding ability.
The laws prohibiting marriage between persons having no blood
relationship but connected by marriage should all be repealed. The
best-known English instance, which was eugenically very
objectionable,--the prohibition of marriage between a man and his
deceased wife's sister,--has fortunately been extirpated, but laws still
exist, in some communities, prohibiting marriage between a man and his
stepchild or stepparent, between a woman and her deceased husband's
brother, and between the second husband or wife of a deceased aunt or
uncle and the wife or husband of a deceased nephew or niece, etc.
The only other problem of restrictive eugenics which it seems necessary
to consider is that offered by miscegenation. This will be considered in
Chapters XIV and XV.
To sum up: we believe that there are urgent reasons for and no
objections to preventing the reproduction of a number of persons in the
United States, many of whom have already been recognized by society as
being so anti-social or inferior as to need institutional care. Such
restriction can best be enforced by effective segregation of the sexes,
although there are cases where individuals might well be released and
allowed full freedom, either "on parole," so to speak, or after having
undergone a surgical operation which would prevent their reproduction.
Laws providing for sterilization, such as a dozen states now possess,
are not framed with a knowledge of the needs of the case; but a properly
drafted sterilization law to provide for cases not better treated by
segregation is desirable. Segregation should be considered the main
method.
It is practicable to place only minor restrictions on marriage, with a
eugenic goal in view. A good banns law, however, could meet no
objections and would yield valuable results. Limited age restrictions
are proper.
Marriages of individuals whose families are marked by minor taints can
not justify social interference; but an enlightened conscience and a
eugenic point of view should lead every individual to make as good a
choice as possible.
If a eugenically bad mating has been made, society should minimize as
far as possible the injurious results, by means of provision for
properly restricted divorce.
Consanguineous marriages in a degree no closer than that of first
cousins, are neither to be condemned nor praised indiscriminately. Their
desirability depends on the ancestry of the two persons involved; each
case should therefore be treated on its own merits.
CHAPTER XI
THE IMPROVEMENT OF SEXUAL SELECTION
"Love is blind" and "Marriage is a lottery," in the opinion of
proverbial lore. But as usual the proverbs do not tell the whole truth.
Mating is not wholly a matter of chance; there is and always has been a
considerable amount of selection involved. This selection must of course
be with respect to individual traits, a man or woman being for this
purpose merely the sum of his or her traits. Reflection will show that
with respect to any given trait there are three ways of mating: random,
assortative and preferential.
1. Random mating is described by J. Arthur Harris[95] as follows:
"Suppose a most highly refined socialistic community should set about to
equalize as nearly as possible not only men's labor and their
recompense, but the quality of their wives. It would never do to allow
individuals to select their own partners--superior cunning might result
in some having mates above the average desirability, which would be
socially unfair!
"The method adopted would be to write the names of an equal number of
men and women officially condemned to matrimony on cards, and to place
those for men in one lottery wheel and those for women in another. The
drawing of a pair of cards, one from each wheel, would then replace the
'present wasteful system' of 'competitive' courtship. If the cards were
thoroughly shuffled and the drawings perfectly at random, we should
expect only chance resemblances between husband and wife for age,
stature, eye and hair color, temper and so on; in the long run, a wife
would resemble her husband no more than the husband of some other
woman. In this case, the mathematician can give us a coefficient of
resemblance, or of assortative mating, which we write as zero. The other
extreme would be the state of affairs in which men of a certain type
(that is to say men differing from the general average by a definite
amount) always chose wives of the same type; the resemblance would then
be perfect and the correlation, as we call it, would be expressed by a
coefficient of 1. "
If all mating were at random, evolution would be a very slow process.
But actual measurement of various traits in conjugal pairs shows that
mating is very rarely random. There is a conscious or unconscious
selection for certain traits, and this selection involves other traits
because of the general correlation of traits in an individual. Random
mating, therefore, need not be taken into account by eugenists, who must
rather give their attention to one of the two forms of non-random
mating, namely, assortative and preferential.
2. If men who were above the average height always selected as brides
women who were equally above the average height and short men selected
similarly, the coefficient of correlation between height in husbands and
wives would be 1, and there would thus be perfect assortative mating. If
only one half of the men who differed from the average height always
married women who similarly differed and the other half married at
random, there would be assortative mating for height, but it would not
be perfect: the coefficient would only be half as great as in the first
case, or . 5. If on the other hand (as is indeed the popular idea) a tall
man tended to marry a woman who was shorter than the average, the
coefficient of correlation would be less than 0; it would have some
negative value.
Actual measurement shows that a man who exceeds the average height by a
given amount will most frequently marry a woman who exceeds the average
by a little more than one-fourth as much as her husband does. There is
thus assortative mating for height, but it is far from perfect. The
actual coefficient given by Karl Pearson is . 28. In this case, then, the
idea that "unlikes attract" is found to be the reverse of the truth.
If other traits are measured, assortative mating will again be found.
Whether it be eye color, hair color, general health, intelligence,
longevity, insanity, or congenital deafness, exact measurements show
that a man and his wife, though not related by blood, actually resemble
each other as much as do uncle and niece, or first cousins.
In some cases assortative mating is conscious, as when two congenitally
deaf persons are drawn together by their common affliction and mutual
possession of the sign language. But in the greater number of cases it
is wholly unconscious. Certainly no one would suppose that a man selects
his wife deliberately because her eye color matches his own; much less
would he select her on the basis of resemblance in longevity, which can
not be known until after both are dead.
Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones explain such selection by the supposition
that a man's ideal of everything that is lovely in womankind is based on
his mother. During his childhood, her attributes stamp themselves on his
mind as being the perfect attributes of the female sex; and when he
later falls in love it is natural that the woman who most attracts him
should be one who resembles his mother. But as he, because of heredity,
resembles his mother, there is thus a resemblance between husband and
wife. Cases where there is no resemblance would, on this hypothesis,
either be not love matches, or else be cases where the choice was made
by the woman, not the man. Proof of this hypothesis has not yet been
furnished, but it may very well account for some part of the assortative
mating which is so nearly universal.
The eugenic significance of assortative mating is obvious. Marriage of
representatives of two long-lived strains ensures that the offspring
will inherit more longevity than does the ordinary man. Marriage of two
persons from gifted families will endow the children with more than the
ordinary intellect. On the other hand, marriage of two members of
feeble-minded strains (a very common form of assortative mating) results
in the production of a new lot of feeble-minded children, while marriage
contracted between families marked by criminality or alcoholism means
the perpetuation of such traits in an intensified form. For alcoholism,
Charles Goring found the resemblance between husband and wife in the
following classes to be as follows:
Very poor and destitute . 44
Prosperous poor . 58
Well-to-do . 69
The resemblance of husband and wife, in respect of possession of a
police record, he found to be . 20. Of course alcoholism and criminality
are not wholly due to heredity; the resemblance between man and wife is
partly a matter of social influences. But in any case the existence of
assortative mating for such traits is significant.
3. Preferential mating occurs when certain classes of women are
discriminated against by the average man, or by men as a class; or _vice
versa_. It is the form of sexual selection made prominent by Charles
Darwin, who brought it forward because natural selection, operating
solely through a differential death-rate, seemed inadequate to account
for many phases of evolution. By sexual selection he meant that an
individual of one sex, in choosing a mate, is led to select out of
several competitors the one who has some particular attribute in a high
degree. The selection may be conscious, and due to the exercise of
aesthetic taste, or it may be unconscious, due to the greater degree of
excitation produced by the higher degree of some attribute. However the
selection takes place, the individual so selected will have an
opportunity to transmit his character, in the higher degree in which he
possesses it, to his descendants. In this way it was supposed by Darwin
that a large proportion of the ornamental characters of living creatures
were produced: the tail of the peacock, the mane of the lion, and even
the gorgeous coloring of many insects and butterflies. In the early
years of Darwinism, the theory of sexual selection was pushed to what
now seems an unjustifiable extent. Experiment has often failed to
demonstrate any sexual selection, in species where speculation supposed
it to exist. And even if sexual selection, conscious or unconscious,
could be demonstrated in the lower animals, yet the small percentage of
unmated individuals indicates that its importance in evolution could not
be very great. [96]
[Illustration: HOW BEAUTY AIDS A GIRL'S CHANCE OF MARRIAGE
FIG. 32. --Graph showing the marriage rate of graduates of a
normal school, correlated with their facial attractiveness as graded by
estimates. The column of figures at the left-hand side shows the
percentage of girls who married. Of the prettiest girls (those graded 80
or over), 70% married. As the less attractive girls are added to the
chart, the marriage rate declines. Of the girls who graded around 50 on
looks, only about one-half married. In general, the prettier the girl,
the greater the probability that she will not remain single. ]
In man, however, there is--nowadays at least--a considerable percentage
of unmated individuals. The Census of 1910 shows that in the United
States one-fourth of all the men between 25 and 44 years of age, and
one-sixth of all the women, were unmarried. Many of the men, and a
smaller number of the women, will still marry; yet at the end there
will remain a large number, particularly in the more highly educated
classes, who die celibate. If these unmated individuals differ in any
important respect from the married part of the population, preferential
mating will be evident.
[Illustration: INTELLIGENT GIRLS ARE MOST LIKELY TO MARRY
FIG. 33. --Graph showing the marriage-rate (on the same scale as
in Fig. 32) of the graduates of a normal school, as correlated with
their class standing. The girls who received the highest marks in their
studies married in the largest numbers. It is evident that, on the
whole, girls who make a poor showing in their studies in such schools as
this are more likely to be life-long celibates than are the bright
students. ]
At the extremes, there is no difficulty in seeing such mating. Certain
men and women are so defective, physically, mentally, or morally, as to
be unable to find mates. They may be idiots, or diseased, or lacking
normal sexuality, or wrongly educated.
But to get any adequate statistical proof of preferential mating on a
broad scale, has been found difficult. Two small but suggestive studies
made by Miss Carrie F. Gilmore of the University of Pittsburgh are
interesting, though far from conclusive. She examined the records of
the class of 1902, Southwestern State Normal School of Pennsylvania, to
find which of the girls had married. By means of photographs, and the
opinions of disinterested judges, the facial appearance of all the girls
in the class was graded on a scale of 100, and the curve in Fig.
32
plotted, which shows at a glance just what matrimonial advantage a
woman's beauty gives her. In general, it may be said that the prettier
the girl, the better her chance of marriage.
[Illustration: YEARS BETWEEN GRADUATION AND MARRIAGE
FIG. 34. --Curve showing period that elapsed between the
graduation of women at Washington Seminary (at the average age of 19
years) and their marriage. It includes all the graduates of the classes
of 1841 to 1900, status of 1913. ]
Miss Gilmore further worked out the marriage rate of these normal school
girls, on the basis of the marks they obtained in their class work, and
found the results plotted in Fig. 33. It is evident that the most
intelligent girls, measured by their class standing, were preferred as
wives.
[Illustration: THE EFFECT OF LATE MARRIAGES
FIG. 35. --Given a population divided in two equal parts, one of
which produces a new generation every 25 years and the other every
33-1/3 years, the diagram shows that the former group will outnumber the
latter two to one, at the end of a century. The result illustrated is
actually taking place, in various groups of the population of the United
States. Largely for economic reasons, many superior people are
postponing the time of marriage. The diagram shows graphically how they
are losing ground, in comparison with other sections of the population
which marry only a few years earlier, on the average. It is assumed in
the diagram that the two groups contain equal numbers of the two sexes;
that all persons in each group marry; and that each couple produces four
children. ]
It will be noted that these studies merely show that the brighter and
prettier girls were preferred by men as a class. If the individual men
whom the girls married had been studied, it would probably have been
found that the mating was also partly assortative.
If the choice of a life partner is to be eugenic, random mating must be
as nearly as possible eliminated, and assortative and preferential
mating for desirable traits must take place.
The concern of the eugenist is, then, (1) to see that young people have
the best ideals, and (2) to see that their matings are actually guided
by these ideals, instead of by caprice and passion alone.
1. In discussing ideals, we shall ask (a) what are the present ideals
governing sexual selection in the United States; (b) is it
psychologically possible to change them; (c) is it desirable that they
be changed, and if so, in what ways?
(a) There are several studies which throw light on the current ideals.
_Physical Culture_ magazine lately invited its women readers to send in
the specifications of an ideal husband, and the results are worth
considering because the readers of that publication are probably less
swayed by purely conventional ideas than are most accessible groups of
women whom one might question. The ideal husband was held by these women
to be made up of the following qualities in the proportions given:
Per cent.
Health 20
Financial success 19
Paternity 18
Appearance 11
Disposition 8
Education 8
Character 6
Housekeeping 7
Dress 3
---
100
Without laying weight on the exact figures, and recognizing that each
woman may have defined the qualities differently, yet one must admit
aside from a low concern for mental ability that this is a fairly good
eugenic specification. Appearance, it is stated, meant not so much
facial beauty as intelligent expression and manly form. Financial
success is correlated with intelligence and efficiency, and probably is
not rated too high. The importance attached to paternity--which, it is
explained, means a clean sex life as well as interest in children--is
worth noticing.
For comparison there is another census of the preferences of 115 young
women at Brigham Young College, Logan, Utah. This is a "Mormon"
institution and the students, mostly farmers' daughters, are probably
expressing ideals which have been very little affected by the
demoralizing influences of modern city life. The editor of the college
paper relates that:
Eighty-six per cent of the girls specifically stated that the young
man must be morally pure; 14% did not specifically state.
Ninety-nine per cent specifically stated that he must be mentally
and physically strong.
Ninety-three per cent stated that he must absolutely not smoke,
chew, or drink; 7% did not state.
Twenty per cent named an occupation they would like the young man
to follow, and these fell into three different classes, that of
farmer, doctor and business.
Four and seven-tenths per cent of the 20% named farmer; 2. 7% named
doctor, and 1. 7% named business man; 80% did not state any
profession.
Thirty-three and one-third per cent specifically stated that he
must be ambitious; 66-2/3% did not state.
Eight per cent stated specifically that he must have high ideals.
Fifty-two per cent demanded that he be of the same religious
conviction; 48% said nothing about religion.
Seventy-two per cent said nothing regarding money matters; 28%
stated what his financial condition must be, but none named a
specific amount. One-half of the 28% stated that he must be rich,
and three-fourths of these were under twenty years of age; the
other half of the 28% said that he must have a moderate income and
two-thirds of these were under twenty years of age.
Forty-five per cent stated that the young man must be taller than
they; 55% did not state.
Twenty per cent stated that the young man must be older, and from
two to eight years older; 80% did not state.
Fifty per cent stated that he must have a good education;
one-fourth of the 50% stated that he must have a college education;
95% of these were under twenty-one years of age; 50% did not state
his intellectual attainments.
Ninety-one per cent of all the ideals handed in were written by
persons under twenty years of age; the other 8-1/2% were over
twenty years of age.
_Physical Culture_, on another occasion, invited its male readers to
express their requirements of an ideal wife. The proportions of the
various elements desired are given as follows:
Per cent
Health 23
"Looks" 14
Housekeeping 12
Disposition 11
Maternity 11
Education 10
Management 7
Dress 7
Character 5
---
100
One might feel some surprise at the low valuation placed on "character,"
but it is really covered by other points. On the whole, one can not be
dissatisfied with these specifications aside from its slight concern
about mental ability.
Such wholesome ideals are probably rather widespread in the less
sophisticated part of the population. In other strata, social and
financial criteria of selection hold much importance. As a family
ascends in economic position, its standards of sexual selection are
likely to change. And in large sections of the population, there is a
fluctuation in the standards from generation to generation. There is
reason to suspect that the standards of sexual selection among educated
young women in the United States to-day are higher than they were a
quarter of a century, or even a decade, ago. They are demanding a higher
degree of physical fitness and morality in their suitors. Men, in turn,
are beginning to demand that the girls they marry shall be fitted for
the duties of home-maker, wife and mother,--qualifications which were
essential in the colonial period but little insisted on in the immediate
past.
(b) It is evident, then, that the standards of sexual selection do
change; there is therefore reason to suppose that they can change still
further. This is an important point, for it is often alleged as an
objection to eugenics that human affections are capricious and can not
be influenced by rational considerations. Such an objection will be
seen, on reflection, to be ill-founded.
As to the extent of change possible, the psychologist must have the
final word. The ingenious Mr. Diffloth,[97] who reduced love to a series
of algebraical formulae and geometrical curves, and proposed that every
young man should find a girl whose curve was congruent to his own, and
at once lead her to the altar, is not likely to gain many adherents. But
the psychologist declares without hesitation that it is possible to
influence the course of love in its earlier, though rarely in its later,
stages. Francis Galton pointed this out with his usual clearness,
showing that in the past the "incidence" of love, to borrow a technical
term, had been frequently and sometimes narrowly limited by custom--by
those unwritten laws which are sometimes as effective as the written
ones. Monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, tabu,
prohibited degrees and sacerdotal celibacy all furnished him with
historical arguments to show that society could bring about almost any
restriction it chose; and a glance around at the present day will show
that the barriers set up by religion, race and social position are
frequently of almost prohibitive effect.
There is, therefore, from a psychological point of view, no reason why
the ideals of eugenics should not become a part of the mores or
unwritten laws of the race, and why the selection of life partners
should not be unconsciously influenced to a very large extent by them.
As a necessary preliminary to such a condition, intelligent people must
cultivate the attitude of conscious selection, and get away from the
crude, fatalistic viewpoint which is to-day so widespread, and which is
exploited _ad nauseam_ on the stage and in fiction. It must be
remembered that there are two well-marked stages preceding a betrothal:
the first is that of mere attraction, when reason is still operative,
and the second is that of actual love, when reason is relegated to the
background. During the later stage, it is notorious that good counsel is
of little avail, but during the preliminary period direction of the
affections is still possible, not only by active interference of friends
or relatives, but much more easily and usefully by the tremendous
influence of the mores.
Eugenic mores will exist only when many intelligent people become so
convinced of the ethical value of eugenics that that conviction sinks
into their subconscious minds. The general eugenics campaign can be
expected to bring that result about in due time. Care must be taken to
prevent highly conscientious people from being too critical, and letting
a trivial defect outweigh a large number of good qualities. Moreover,
changes in the standards of sexual selection should not be too rapid, as
that results in the permanent celibacy of some excellent but
hyper-critical individuals. The ideal is an advance of standards as
rapidly as will yet keep all the superior persons married. This is
accomplished if all superior individuals marry as well as possible, yet
with advancing years gradually reduce the standard so that celibacy may
not result.
Having decided that there is room for improvement in the standards of
sexual selection, and that such improvement is psychologically feasible,
we come to point (c): in what particular ways is this improvement
needed? Any discussion of this large subject must necessarily be only
suggestive, not exhaustive.
If sexual selection is to be taken seriously, it is imperative that
there be some improvement in the general attitude of public sentiment
toward love itself. It is difficult for the student to acquire sound
knowledge[98] of the normal manifestations of love: the psychology of
sex has been studied too largely from the abnormal and pathological
side; while the popular idea is based too much on fiction and drama
which emphasize the high lights and make love solely an affair of
emotion. We are not arguing for a rationalization of love, for the terms
are almost contradictory; but we believe that more common sense could
profitably be used in considering the subject.
If a typical "love affair" be examined, it is found that propinquity and
a common basis for sympathy in some probably trivial matter lead to the
development of the sex instinct; the parental instinct begins to make
itself felt, particularly among women; the instincts of curiosity,
acquisitiveness, and various others play their part, and there then
appears a well-developed case of "love. " Such love may satisfy a purely
biological definition, but it is incomplete. Love that is worthy of the
name must be a function of the will as well as of the emotions. There
must be a feeling on the part of each which finds strong satisfaction in
service rendered to the other. If the existence of this constituent of
love could be more widely recognized and watched for, it would probably
prevent many a sensible young man or woman from being stampeded into a
marriage of passion, where the real community of interest is slight;[99]
and sexual selection would be improved in a way that would count
immensely for the future of the race. Moreover, there would be much more
real love in the world. Eugenics, as Havelock Ellis has well pointed
out,[100] is not plotting against love but against those influences that
do violence to love, particularly: (1) reckless yielding to mere
momentary desire; and (2) still more fatal influences of wealth and
position and worldly convenience which give a factitious value to
persons who would never appear attractive partners in life were love and
eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand.
"The eugenic ideal," Dr. Ellis foresees, "will have to struggle with the
criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it will have few
serious quarrels with normal and well-constituted lovers. "
The point is an important one. To "rationalize" marriage, is out of the
question. Marriage must be mainly a matter of the emotions; but it is
important that the emotions be exerted in the right direction. The
eugenist seeks to remove the obstacles that are now driving the
emotions into wrong channels. If the emotions can only be headed in the
right direction, then the more emotions the better, for they are the
source of energy which are responsible for almost everything that is
done in the world.
There is in the world plenty of that love which is a matter of mutual
service and of emotions unswayed by any petty or sordid influences; but
it ought not only to be common, it ought to be universal. It is not
likely to be in the present century; but at least, thinking people can
consciously adopt an attitude of respect toward love, and consciously
abandon as far as possible the attitude of jocular cynicism with which
they too often treat it,--an attitude which is reflected so disgustingly
in current vaudeville and musical comedy.
It is the custom to smile at the extravagantly romantic idea of love
which the boarding-school girl holds; but unrealizable as it may be,
hers is a nobler conception than that which the majority of adults
voice. Very properly, one does not care to make one's deepest feelings
public; but if such subjects as love and motherhood can not be discussed
naturally and without affectation, they ought to be left alone. If
intelligent men and women will set the example, this attitude of mind
will spread, and cultured families at least will rid themselves of such
deplorable habits as that of plaguing children, not yet out of the
nursery, about their "sweethearts. "
No sane man would deny the desirability of beauty in a wife,
particularly when it is remembered that beauty, especially as determined
by good complexion, good teeth and medium weight, is correlated with
good health in some degree, and likewise with intelligence.
Nevertheless, we are strongly of the opinion that beauty of face is now
too highly valued, as a standard of sexual selection. [101]
Good health in a mate is a qualification which any sensible man or woman
will require, and for which a "marriage certificate" is in most cases
quite unnecessary. [102] What other physical standard is there that
should be given weight?
Alexander Graham Bell has lately been emphasizing the importance of
longevity in this connection, and in our judgment he has thereby opened
up a very fruitful field for education. It goes without saying that
anyone would prefer to marry a partner with a good constitution. "How
can we find a test of a good, sound constitution? " Dr. Bell asked in a
recent lecture. "I think we could find it in the duration of life in a
family. Take a family in which a large proportion live to old age with
unimpaired faculties. There you know is a good constitution in an
inheritable form. On the other hand, you will find a family in which a
large proportion die at birth and in which there are relatively few
people who live to extreme old age. There has developed an hereditary
weakness of constitution. Longevity is a guide to constitution. " Not
only does it show that one's vital organs are in good running order, but
it is probably the only means now available of indicating strains which
are resistant to zymotic disease. Early death is not necessarily an
evidence of physical weakness; but long life is a pretty good proof of
constitutional strength.
Dr. Bell has elsewhere called attention to the fact that, longevity
being a characteristic which is universally considered creditable in a
family, there is no tendency on the part of families to conceal its
existence, as there is in the case of unfavorable characters--cancer,
tuberculosis, insanity, and the like. This gives it a great advantage as
a criterion for sexual selection, since there will be little difficulty
in finding whether or not the ancestors of a young man or woman were
long-lived. [103]
Karl Pearson and his associates have shown that there is a tendency to
assortative mating for longevity: that people from long-lived stocks
actually do marry people from similar stocks, more frequently than would
be the case if the matings were at random. An increase of this tendency
would be eugenically desirable. [104] So much for the physique.
Though eugenics is popularly supposed to be concerned almost wholly with
the physical, properly it gives most attention to mental traits,
recognizing that these are the ones which most frequently make races
stand or fall, and that attention to the physique is worth while mainly
to furnish a sound body in which the sound mind may function. Now men
and women may excel mentally in very many different ways, and eugenics,
which seeks not to produce a uniform good type, but excellence in all
desirable types, is not concerned to pick out any particular sort of
mental superiority and exalt it as a standard for sexual selection. But
the tendency, shown in Miss Gilmore's study, for men to prefer the more
intelligent girls in secondary schools, is gratifying to the eugenist,
since high mental endowment is principally a matter of heredity. From a
eugenic point of view it would be well could such intellectual
accomplishments weigh even more heavily with the average young man, and
less weight be put on such superficial characteristics as "flashiness,"
ability to use the latest slang freely, and other "smart" traits which
are usually considered attractive in a girl, but which have no real
value and soon become tiresome. They are not wholly bad in themselves,
but certainly should not influence a young man very seriously in his
choice of a wife, nor a young woman in her choice of a husband. It is to
be feared that such standards are largely promoted by the stage, the
popular song, and popular fiction.
In a sense, the education which a young woman has received is no
concern of the eugenist, since it can not be transmitted to her
children. Yet when, as often happens, children die because their mother
was not properly trained to bring them up, this feature of education
does become a concern of eugenics. Young men are more and more coming to
demand that their wives know something about woman's work, and this
demand must not only increase, but must be adequately met. Woman's
education is treated in more detail in another chapter.
It is proper to point out here, however, that in many cases woman's
education gives no great opportunity to judge of her real intellectual
ability. Her natural endowment in this respect should be judged also by
that of her sisters, brothers, parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents.
If a girl comes of an intellectual ancestry, it is likely that she
herself will carry such traits germinally, even if she has never had an
opportunity to develop them. She can, then, pass them on to her own
children. Francis Galton long ago pointed out the good results of a
custom obtaining in Germany, whereby college professors tended to marry
the daughters or sisters of college professors. A tendency for men of
science to marry women of scientific attainments or training is marked
among biologists, at least, in the United States; and the number of
cases in which musicians intermarry is striking. Such assortative mating
means that the offspring will usually be well endowed with a talent.
Finally, young people should be taught a greater appreciation of the
lasting qualities of comradeship, for which the purely emotional factors
that make up mere sexual attraction are far from offering a satisfactory
substitute.
It will not be out of place here to point out that a change in the
social valuation of reputability and honor is greatly needed for the
better working of sexual selection. The conspicuous waste and leisure
that Thorstein Veblen points out as the chief criterion of reputability
at present have a dubious relation to high mental or moral endowment,
far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a
meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of
success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not
argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in
reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would
result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions,
rightly awarded, are an aid, not a hindrance to sexual selection, and
effort should be directed, from the eugenic point of view, no less to
the proper recognition of true superiority than to the elimination of
unjustified differentiations of reputability.
This leads to the consideration of moral standards, and here again
details are complex but the broad outlines clear. It seems probable that
morality is to a considerable extent a matter of heredity, and the care
of the eugenist should be to work with every force that makes for a
clear understanding of the moral factors of the world, and to work
against every force that tends to confuse the issues. When the issue is
clear cut, most people will by instinct tend to marry into moral rather
than immoral stocks.
True quality, then, should be emphasized at the expense of false
standards. Money, social status, family alignment, though indicators to
some degree, must not be taken too much at their face value. Emphasis is
to be placed on real merit as shown by achievement, or on descent from
the meritoriously eminent, whether or not such eminence has led to the
accumulation of a family fortune and inclusion in an exclusive social
set. In this respect, it is important that the value of a high average
of ancestry should be realized. A single case of eminence in a pedigree
should not weigh too heavily. When it is remembered that statistically
one grandparent counts for less than one-sixteenth in the heredity of an
individual, it will be obvious that the individual whose sole claim to
consideration is a distinguished grandfather, is not necessarily a
matrimonial prize. A general high level of morality and mentality in a
family is much more advantageous, from the eugenic point of view, than
one "lion" several generations back.
While we desire very strongly to emphasize the importance of breeding
and the great value of a good ancestry, it is only fair to utter a word
of warning in this connection. Good ancestry does not _necessarily_ make
a man or woman a desirable partner. What stockmen know as the "pure-bred
scrub" is a recognized evil in animal breeding, and not altogether
absent from human society. Due to any one or more of a number of causes,
it is possible for a germinal degenerate to appear in a good family;
discrimination should certainly be made against such an individual.
Furthermore, it is possible that there occasionally arises what may be
called a mutant of very desirable character from a eugenic point of
view. Furthermore a stock in general below mediocrity will occasionally,
due to some fortuitous but fortunate combination of traits, give rise to
an individual of marked ability or even eminence, who will be able to
transmit in some degree that valuable new combination of traits to his
or her own progeny. Persons of this character are to be regarded by
eugenists as distinctly desirable husbands or wives.
The desirability of selecting a wife (or husband) from a family of more
than one or two children was emphasized by Benjamin Franklin, and is
also one of the time-honored traditions of the Arabs, who have always
looked at eugenics in a very practical, if somewhat cold-blooded way. It
has two advantages: in the first place, one can get a better idea of
what the individual really is, by examining sisters and brothers; and in
the second place, there will be less danger of a childless marriage,
since it is already proved that the individual comes of a fertile stock.
Francis Galton showed clearly the havoc wrought in the English peerage,
by marriages with heiresses (an heiress there being nearly always an
only child). Such women were childless in a much larger proportion than
ordinary women.
"Marrying a man to reform him" is a speculation in which many women have
indulged and usually--it may be said without fear of contradiction--with
unfortunate results. It is always likely that she will fail to reform
him; it is certain that she can not reform his germ-plasm. Psychologists
agree that the character of a man or woman undergoes little radical
change after the age of 25; and the eugenist knows that it is largely
determined, _potentially_, when the individual is born. It is,
therefore, in most cases the height of folly to select a partner with
any marked undesirable trait, with the idea that it will change after a
few years.
All these suggestions have in general been directed at the young man or
woman, but it is admitted that if they reach their target at all, it is
likely to be by an indirect route. No rules or devices can take the
place, in influencing sexual selection, of that lofty and rational ideal
of marriage which must be brought about by the uplifting of public
opinion. It is difficult to bring under the control of reason a subject
that has so long been left to caprice and impulse; yet much can
unquestionably be done, in an age of growing social responsibility, to
put marriage in a truer perspective. Much is already being done, but not
in every case of change is the future biological welfare of the race
sufficiently borne in mind. The interests of the individual are too
often regarded to the exclusion of posterity. The eugenist would not
sacrifice the individual, but he would add the welfare of posterity to
that of the individual, when the standards of sexual selection are being
fixed. It is only necessary to make the young person remember that he
will marry, not merely an individual, but a family; and that not only
his own happiness but to some extent the quality of future generations
is being determined by his choice.
We must have (1) the proper ideals of mating but (2) these ideals must
be realized. It is known that many young people have the highest kind of
ideals of sexual selection, and find themselves quite unable to act on
them. The college woman may have a definite idea of the kind of husband
she wants; but if he never seeks her, she often dies celibate. The young
man of science may have an ideal bride in his mind, but if he never
finds her, he may finally marry his landlady's daughter. Opportunity for
sexual selection must be given, as well as suitable standards; and while
education is perhaps improving the standards each year, it is to be
feared that modern social conditions, especially in the large cities,
tend steadily to decrease the opportunity.
Statistical evidence, as well as common observation, indicates that the
upper classes have a much wider range of choice in marriage than the
lower classes. The figures given by Karl Pearson for the degree of
resemblance between husband and wife with regard to phthisis are so
remarkable as to be worth quoting in this connection:
All poor +. 01
Prosperous poor +. 16
Middle classes +. 24
Professional classes +. 28
It can hardly be argued that infection between husband and wife would
vary like this, even if infection, in general, could be proved.
Moreover, the least resemblance is among the poor, where infection
should be greatest. Professor Pearson thinks, as seems reasonable, that
this series of figures indicates principally assortative mating, and
shows that among the poor there is less choice, the selection of a
husband or wife being more largely due to propinquity or some other more
or less random factor. With a rise in the social scale, opportunity for
choice of one from a number of possible mates becomes greater and
greater; the tendency for an unconscious selection of likeness then has
a chance to appear, as the coefficients graphically show.
If such a class as the peerage of Great Britain be considered, it is
evident that the range of choice in marriage is almost unlimited. There
are few girls who can resist the glamor of a title. The hereditary peer
can therefore marry almost anyone he likes and if he does not marry one
of his own class he can select and (until recently) usually has selected
the daughter of some man who by distinguished ability has risen from a
lower social or financial position. Thus the hereditary nobilities of
Europe have been able to maintain themselves; and a similar process is
undoubtedly taking place among the idle rich who occupy an analogous
position in the United States.
But it is the desire of eugenics to raise the average ability of the
whole population, as well as to encourage the production of leaders. To
fulfill this desire, it is obvious that one of the necessary means is to
extend to all desirable classes that range of choice which is now
possessed only by those near the top of the social ladder. It is hardly
necessary to urge young people to widen the range of their
acquaintance, for they will do it without urging if the opportunity is
presented to them. It is highly necessary for parents, and for
organizations and municipalities, deliberately to seek to further every
means which will bring unmarried young people together under proper
supervision. Social workers have already perceived the need of
institutional as well as municipal action on these lines, although they
have not in every case recognized the eugenic aspect, and from their
efforts it is probable that suitable institutions, such as social
centers and recreation piers, and municipal dance halls, will be greatly
multiplied.
such marriages are dangerous, and in support of this idea, one is
referred to the histories of various isolated communities where
consanguineous marriage is alleged to have led to "an appalling amount
of defect and degeneracy. " Without questioning the facts, one may
question the interpretation of the facts, and it seems to us that a
wrong interpretation of these stories is partly responsible for the
widespread condemnation of cousin marriage at the present time.
The Bahama Islands furnish one of the stock examples. Clement A. Penrose
writes[92] of them:
"In some of the white colonies where black blood has been excluded, and
where, owing to their isolated positions, frequent intermarriage has
taken place, as for instance at Spanish Wells, and Hopetown, much
degeneracy is present, manifested by many abnormalities of mind and
body. . . . I am strongly of the opinion that the deplorable state of
degeneracy which we observed at Hopetown has been in a great measure, if
not entirely, brought about by too close intermarrying of the
inhabitants. "
To demonstrate his point, he took the pains to compile a family tree of
the most degenerate strains at Hopetown. There are fifty-five marriages
represented, and the chart is overlaid with twenty-three red lines, each
of which is said to represent an intermarriage. This looks like a good
deal of consanguineous mating; but to test the matter a little farther
the fraternity at the bottom of the chart,--eight children, of whom five
were idiots,--was traced. In the second generation it ran to another
island, and when the data gave out, at the fourth generation, there was
not a single case of consanguineous marriage involved.
Another fraternity was then picked out consisting of two men, both
idiots and congenitally blind, and a woman who had married and given
birth to ten normal children. In the fourth generation this pedigree,
which was far from complete, went out of the islands; so far as the data
showed there was not a single case of consanguineous marriage. There was
one case where a name was repeated, but the author had failed to mark
this as a case of intermarriage, if it really was such. It is difficult
to share the conviction of Dr. Penrose, that the two pedigrees
investigated, offer an example of the nefarious workings of
intermarriage.
Finally a fraternity was traced to which the author had called
particular attention because three of its eleven members were born
blind. The defect was described as "optic atrophy associated with a
pigmentary retinitis and choryditis" and "this condition," Dr. Penrose
averred, "is one stated by the authorities to be due to the effects of
consanguineous marriage. "
Fortunately, the pedigree was fairly full and several lines of it could
be carried through the sixth generation. There was, indeed, a
considerable amount of consanguineous marriage involved. When the amount
of inbreeding represented by these blind boys was measured, it proved to
be almost identical with the amount represented by the present Kaiser of
Germany. [93]
We are unable to see in such a history as that of Hopetown, Bahama
Islands, any evidence that consanguineous marriage necessarily results
in degeneracy. Dr. Penrose himself points to a potent factor when he
says of his chart in another connection: "It will be noticed that only a
few of the descendants of Widow Malone [the first settler at Hopetown]
are indicated as having married. By this it is not meant that the others
did not marry; many of them did, but they moved away and settled
elsewhere, and in no way affected the future history of the settlement
of Hopetown. "
By moving away, it appears to us, they did very decidedly affect the
future history of Hopetown. Who are the emigrants? Might they not have
been the more enterprising and intelligent, the physically and mentally
superior of the population, who rebelled at the limited opportunities of
their little village, and went to seek a fortune in some broader field?
Did not the best go in general; the misfits, the defectives, stay behind
to propagate? Emigration in such a case would have the same effect as
war; it would drain off the best stock and leave the weaklings to stay
home and propagate their kind. Under such conditions, defectives would
be bound to multiply, regardless of whether or not the marriages are
consanguineous.
"It will be seen at a glance," Dr. Penrose writes, "that early in the
history of the Malone family these indications of degeneracy were
absent; but they began in the fourth generation and rapidly increased
afterward until they culminated by the presence of five idiots in one
family. The original stock was apparently excellent, but the present
state of the descendants is deplorable. "
Now three generations of emigration from a little community, which even
to-day has only 1,000 inhabitants, would naturally make quite a
difference in the average eugenic quality of the population. In almost
any population, a few defectives are constantly being produced. Take out
the better individuals, and leave these defectives to multiply, and the
amount of degeneracy in the population will increase, regardless of
whether the defectives are marrying their cousins, or unrelated persons.
The family of five idiots, cited by Dr. Penrose, is an excellent
illustration, for it is not the result of consanguineous marriage--at
least, not in a close enough degree to have appeared on the chart. It is
doubtless a mating of like with like; and biologically, consanguineous
marriage is nothing more.
Honesty demands, therefore, that consanguineous marriage be not credited
with results for which the consanguineous element is in no wise
responsible. The prevailing habit of picking out a community or a strain
where consanguineous marriage and defects are associated and loudly
declaring the one to be the cause of the other, is evidence of the lack
of scientific thought that is all too common.
Most of the studies of these isolated communities where intermarriage
has taken place, illustrate the same point. C. B. Davenport, for example,
quotes[94] an anonymous correspondent from the island of Bermuda, which
"shows the usual consequence of island life. " He writes: "In some of the
parishes (Somerset and Paget chiefly) there has been much intermarriage,
not only with cousins but with double first cousins in several cases.
Intermarriage has chiefly caused weakness of character leading to drink,
not lack of brains or a certain amount of physical strength, but a very
inert and lazy disposition. "
It is difficult to believe that anyone who has lived in the tropics
could have written this except as a practical joke. Those who have
resided in the warmer parts of the world know, by observation if not by
experience, that a "weakness of character leading to drink" and "an
inert and lazy disposition" are by no means the prerogatives of the
inbred.
If one is going to credit consanguineous marriage with these evil
results, what can one say when evil results fail to follow?
What about Smith's Island, off the coast of Maryland, where all the
inhabitants are said to be interrelated, and where a physician who lived
in the community for three years failed to find among the 700 persons a
single case of idiocy, insanity, epilepsy or congenital deafness?
What about the community of Batz, on the coast of France, where Voisin
found five marriages of first cousins and thirty-one of second cousins,
without a single case of mental defect, congenital deafness, albinism,
retinitis pigmentosa or malformation? The population was 3,000, all of
whom were said to be interrelated.
What about Cape Cod, whose natives are known throughout New England for
their ability? "At a recent visit to the Congregational Sunday-School,"
says a student, "I noticed all officers, many teachers, organist,
ex-superintendent, and pastor's wife all Dyers. A lady at Truro united
in herself four quarters Dyer, father, mother and both grandmothers
Dyers. "
And finally, what about the experience of livestock breeders? Not only
has strict brother and sister mating--the closest inbreeding
possible--been carried on experimentally for twenty or twenty-five
generations without bad results; but the history of practically every
fine breed shows that inbreeding is largely responsible for its
excellence.
The Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt for several centuries, wanted to keep the
throne in the family, and hence practiced a system of intermating which
has long been the classical evidence that consanguineous marriage is
not necessarily followed by immediate evil effects. The following
fragment of the genealogy of Cleopatra VII (mistress of Julius Caesar and
Marc Antony) is condensed from Weigall's _Life and Times of Cleopatra_
(1914) and
Ptolemy I
|
|
Ptolemy II
|
|
Ptolemy III m. Berenice II, his half-cousin.
|
|
Ptolemy IV m. Arsinoe III, his full sister.
|
|
Ptolemy V.
|
|
Ptolemy VII m. Cleopatra II, his full sister.
|
|
Cleopatra III m. Ptolemy IX (brother of VII), her uncle.
|
|
Ptolemy X. m. Cleopatra IV, his full sister.
|
-----|
| Berenice II m. Ptolemy XI (brother of X), her uncle.
| |
| |
| Ptolemy XII, d. without issue, succeeded by his uncle.
| |
| |
---Ptolemy XIII.
|
|
Cleopatra VII.
shows an amount of continued inbreeding that has never been surpassed in
recorded history, and yet did not produce any striking evil results. The
ruler's consort is named, only when the two were related. The
consanguineous marriages shown in this line of descent are by no means
the only ones of the kind that took place in the family, many like them
being found in collateral lines.
It is certain that consanguineous marriage, being the mating of like
with like, intensifies the inheritance of the offspring, which gets a
"double dose" of any trait which both parents have in common. If the
traits are good, it will be an advantage to the offspring to have a
double dose of them; if the traits are bad, it will be a disadvantage.
The marriage of superior kin should produce children better than the
parents; the marriage of inferior kin should produce children even worse
than their parents.
In passing judgment on a proposed marriage, therefore, the vital
question is not, "Are they related by blood? " but "Are they carriers of
desirable traits? "
The nature of the traits can be told only by a study of the ancestry. Of
course, characters may be latent or recessive, but this is also the case
in the population at large, and the chance of unpleasant results is so
small, when no instance can be found in the ancestry, that it can be
disregarded. If the same congenital defect or undesirable trait does not
appear in the three previous generations of two cousins, including
collaterals, the individuals need not be discouraged from marrying if
they want to.
Laws which forbid cousins to marry are, then, on an unsound biological
basis. As Dr. Davenport remarks, "The marriage of Charles Darwin and
Emma Wedgewood would have been illegal and void, and their children
pronounced illegitimate in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota,
Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and other states. " The vitality and great
capacity of their seven children are well known. A law which would have
prevented such a marriage is certainly not eugenic.
We conclude, then, that laws forbidding cousin marriages are not
desirable. Since it would be well to make an effort to increase the
opportunities for further play of sexual selection, the lack of which is
sometimes responsible for cousin marriages, consanguineous marriage is
by no means to be indiscriminately indorsed. Still, if there are cases
where it is eugenically injurious, there are also cases where its
results are eugenically highly beneficial, as in families with no
serious defects and with outstanding ability.
The laws prohibiting marriage between persons having no blood
relationship but connected by marriage should all be repealed. The
best-known English instance, which was eugenically very
objectionable,--the prohibition of marriage between a man and his
deceased wife's sister,--has fortunately been extirpated, but laws still
exist, in some communities, prohibiting marriage between a man and his
stepchild or stepparent, between a woman and her deceased husband's
brother, and between the second husband or wife of a deceased aunt or
uncle and the wife or husband of a deceased nephew or niece, etc.
The only other problem of restrictive eugenics which it seems necessary
to consider is that offered by miscegenation. This will be considered in
Chapters XIV and XV.
To sum up: we believe that there are urgent reasons for and no
objections to preventing the reproduction of a number of persons in the
United States, many of whom have already been recognized by society as
being so anti-social or inferior as to need institutional care. Such
restriction can best be enforced by effective segregation of the sexes,
although there are cases where individuals might well be released and
allowed full freedom, either "on parole," so to speak, or after having
undergone a surgical operation which would prevent their reproduction.
Laws providing for sterilization, such as a dozen states now possess,
are not framed with a knowledge of the needs of the case; but a properly
drafted sterilization law to provide for cases not better treated by
segregation is desirable. Segregation should be considered the main
method.
It is practicable to place only minor restrictions on marriage, with a
eugenic goal in view. A good banns law, however, could meet no
objections and would yield valuable results. Limited age restrictions
are proper.
Marriages of individuals whose families are marked by minor taints can
not justify social interference; but an enlightened conscience and a
eugenic point of view should lead every individual to make as good a
choice as possible.
If a eugenically bad mating has been made, society should minimize as
far as possible the injurious results, by means of provision for
properly restricted divorce.
Consanguineous marriages in a degree no closer than that of first
cousins, are neither to be condemned nor praised indiscriminately. Their
desirability depends on the ancestry of the two persons involved; each
case should therefore be treated on its own merits.
CHAPTER XI
THE IMPROVEMENT OF SEXUAL SELECTION
"Love is blind" and "Marriage is a lottery," in the opinion of
proverbial lore. But as usual the proverbs do not tell the whole truth.
Mating is not wholly a matter of chance; there is and always has been a
considerable amount of selection involved. This selection must of course
be with respect to individual traits, a man or woman being for this
purpose merely the sum of his or her traits. Reflection will show that
with respect to any given trait there are three ways of mating: random,
assortative and preferential.
1. Random mating is described by J. Arthur Harris[95] as follows:
"Suppose a most highly refined socialistic community should set about to
equalize as nearly as possible not only men's labor and their
recompense, but the quality of their wives. It would never do to allow
individuals to select their own partners--superior cunning might result
in some having mates above the average desirability, which would be
socially unfair!
"The method adopted would be to write the names of an equal number of
men and women officially condemned to matrimony on cards, and to place
those for men in one lottery wheel and those for women in another. The
drawing of a pair of cards, one from each wheel, would then replace the
'present wasteful system' of 'competitive' courtship. If the cards were
thoroughly shuffled and the drawings perfectly at random, we should
expect only chance resemblances between husband and wife for age,
stature, eye and hair color, temper and so on; in the long run, a wife
would resemble her husband no more than the husband of some other
woman. In this case, the mathematician can give us a coefficient of
resemblance, or of assortative mating, which we write as zero. The other
extreme would be the state of affairs in which men of a certain type
(that is to say men differing from the general average by a definite
amount) always chose wives of the same type; the resemblance would then
be perfect and the correlation, as we call it, would be expressed by a
coefficient of 1. "
If all mating were at random, evolution would be a very slow process.
But actual measurement of various traits in conjugal pairs shows that
mating is very rarely random. There is a conscious or unconscious
selection for certain traits, and this selection involves other traits
because of the general correlation of traits in an individual. Random
mating, therefore, need not be taken into account by eugenists, who must
rather give their attention to one of the two forms of non-random
mating, namely, assortative and preferential.
2. If men who were above the average height always selected as brides
women who were equally above the average height and short men selected
similarly, the coefficient of correlation between height in husbands and
wives would be 1, and there would thus be perfect assortative mating. If
only one half of the men who differed from the average height always
married women who similarly differed and the other half married at
random, there would be assortative mating for height, but it would not
be perfect: the coefficient would only be half as great as in the first
case, or . 5. If on the other hand (as is indeed the popular idea) a tall
man tended to marry a woman who was shorter than the average, the
coefficient of correlation would be less than 0; it would have some
negative value.
Actual measurement shows that a man who exceeds the average height by a
given amount will most frequently marry a woman who exceeds the average
by a little more than one-fourth as much as her husband does. There is
thus assortative mating for height, but it is far from perfect. The
actual coefficient given by Karl Pearson is . 28. In this case, then, the
idea that "unlikes attract" is found to be the reverse of the truth.
If other traits are measured, assortative mating will again be found.
Whether it be eye color, hair color, general health, intelligence,
longevity, insanity, or congenital deafness, exact measurements show
that a man and his wife, though not related by blood, actually resemble
each other as much as do uncle and niece, or first cousins.
In some cases assortative mating is conscious, as when two congenitally
deaf persons are drawn together by their common affliction and mutual
possession of the sign language. But in the greater number of cases it
is wholly unconscious. Certainly no one would suppose that a man selects
his wife deliberately because her eye color matches his own; much less
would he select her on the basis of resemblance in longevity, which can
not be known until after both are dead.
Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones explain such selection by the supposition
that a man's ideal of everything that is lovely in womankind is based on
his mother. During his childhood, her attributes stamp themselves on his
mind as being the perfect attributes of the female sex; and when he
later falls in love it is natural that the woman who most attracts him
should be one who resembles his mother. But as he, because of heredity,
resembles his mother, there is thus a resemblance between husband and
wife. Cases where there is no resemblance would, on this hypothesis,
either be not love matches, or else be cases where the choice was made
by the woman, not the man. Proof of this hypothesis has not yet been
furnished, but it may very well account for some part of the assortative
mating which is so nearly universal.
The eugenic significance of assortative mating is obvious. Marriage of
representatives of two long-lived strains ensures that the offspring
will inherit more longevity than does the ordinary man. Marriage of two
persons from gifted families will endow the children with more than the
ordinary intellect. On the other hand, marriage of two members of
feeble-minded strains (a very common form of assortative mating) results
in the production of a new lot of feeble-minded children, while marriage
contracted between families marked by criminality or alcoholism means
the perpetuation of such traits in an intensified form. For alcoholism,
Charles Goring found the resemblance between husband and wife in the
following classes to be as follows:
Very poor and destitute . 44
Prosperous poor . 58
Well-to-do . 69
The resemblance of husband and wife, in respect of possession of a
police record, he found to be . 20. Of course alcoholism and criminality
are not wholly due to heredity; the resemblance between man and wife is
partly a matter of social influences. But in any case the existence of
assortative mating for such traits is significant.
3. Preferential mating occurs when certain classes of women are
discriminated against by the average man, or by men as a class; or _vice
versa_. It is the form of sexual selection made prominent by Charles
Darwin, who brought it forward because natural selection, operating
solely through a differential death-rate, seemed inadequate to account
for many phases of evolution. By sexual selection he meant that an
individual of one sex, in choosing a mate, is led to select out of
several competitors the one who has some particular attribute in a high
degree. The selection may be conscious, and due to the exercise of
aesthetic taste, or it may be unconscious, due to the greater degree of
excitation produced by the higher degree of some attribute. However the
selection takes place, the individual so selected will have an
opportunity to transmit his character, in the higher degree in which he
possesses it, to his descendants. In this way it was supposed by Darwin
that a large proportion of the ornamental characters of living creatures
were produced: the tail of the peacock, the mane of the lion, and even
the gorgeous coloring of many insects and butterflies. In the early
years of Darwinism, the theory of sexual selection was pushed to what
now seems an unjustifiable extent. Experiment has often failed to
demonstrate any sexual selection, in species where speculation supposed
it to exist. And even if sexual selection, conscious or unconscious,
could be demonstrated in the lower animals, yet the small percentage of
unmated individuals indicates that its importance in evolution could not
be very great. [96]
[Illustration: HOW BEAUTY AIDS A GIRL'S CHANCE OF MARRIAGE
FIG. 32. --Graph showing the marriage rate of graduates of a
normal school, correlated with their facial attractiveness as graded by
estimates. The column of figures at the left-hand side shows the
percentage of girls who married. Of the prettiest girls (those graded 80
or over), 70% married. As the less attractive girls are added to the
chart, the marriage rate declines. Of the girls who graded around 50 on
looks, only about one-half married. In general, the prettier the girl,
the greater the probability that she will not remain single. ]
In man, however, there is--nowadays at least--a considerable percentage
of unmated individuals. The Census of 1910 shows that in the United
States one-fourth of all the men between 25 and 44 years of age, and
one-sixth of all the women, were unmarried. Many of the men, and a
smaller number of the women, will still marry; yet at the end there
will remain a large number, particularly in the more highly educated
classes, who die celibate. If these unmated individuals differ in any
important respect from the married part of the population, preferential
mating will be evident.
[Illustration: INTELLIGENT GIRLS ARE MOST LIKELY TO MARRY
FIG. 33. --Graph showing the marriage-rate (on the same scale as
in Fig. 32) of the graduates of a normal school, as correlated with
their class standing. The girls who received the highest marks in their
studies married in the largest numbers. It is evident that, on the
whole, girls who make a poor showing in their studies in such schools as
this are more likely to be life-long celibates than are the bright
students. ]
At the extremes, there is no difficulty in seeing such mating. Certain
men and women are so defective, physically, mentally, or morally, as to
be unable to find mates. They may be idiots, or diseased, or lacking
normal sexuality, or wrongly educated.
But to get any adequate statistical proof of preferential mating on a
broad scale, has been found difficult. Two small but suggestive studies
made by Miss Carrie F. Gilmore of the University of Pittsburgh are
interesting, though far from conclusive. She examined the records of
the class of 1902, Southwestern State Normal School of Pennsylvania, to
find which of the girls had married. By means of photographs, and the
opinions of disinterested judges, the facial appearance of all the girls
in the class was graded on a scale of 100, and the curve in Fig.
32
plotted, which shows at a glance just what matrimonial advantage a
woman's beauty gives her. In general, it may be said that the prettier
the girl, the better her chance of marriage.
[Illustration: YEARS BETWEEN GRADUATION AND MARRIAGE
FIG. 34. --Curve showing period that elapsed between the
graduation of women at Washington Seminary (at the average age of 19
years) and their marriage. It includes all the graduates of the classes
of 1841 to 1900, status of 1913. ]
Miss Gilmore further worked out the marriage rate of these normal school
girls, on the basis of the marks they obtained in their class work, and
found the results plotted in Fig. 33. It is evident that the most
intelligent girls, measured by their class standing, were preferred as
wives.
[Illustration: THE EFFECT OF LATE MARRIAGES
FIG. 35. --Given a population divided in two equal parts, one of
which produces a new generation every 25 years and the other every
33-1/3 years, the diagram shows that the former group will outnumber the
latter two to one, at the end of a century. The result illustrated is
actually taking place, in various groups of the population of the United
States. Largely for economic reasons, many superior people are
postponing the time of marriage. The diagram shows graphically how they
are losing ground, in comparison with other sections of the population
which marry only a few years earlier, on the average. It is assumed in
the diagram that the two groups contain equal numbers of the two sexes;
that all persons in each group marry; and that each couple produces four
children. ]
It will be noted that these studies merely show that the brighter and
prettier girls were preferred by men as a class. If the individual men
whom the girls married had been studied, it would probably have been
found that the mating was also partly assortative.
If the choice of a life partner is to be eugenic, random mating must be
as nearly as possible eliminated, and assortative and preferential
mating for desirable traits must take place.
The concern of the eugenist is, then, (1) to see that young people have
the best ideals, and (2) to see that their matings are actually guided
by these ideals, instead of by caprice and passion alone.
1. In discussing ideals, we shall ask (a) what are the present ideals
governing sexual selection in the United States; (b) is it
psychologically possible to change them; (c) is it desirable that they
be changed, and if so, in what ways?
(a) There are several studies which throw light on the current ideals.
_Physical Culture_ magazine lately invited its women readers to send in
the specifications of an ideal husband, and the results are worth
considering because the readers of that publication are probably less
swayed by purely conventional ideas than are most accessible groups of
women whom one might question. The ideal husband was held by these women
to be made up of the following qualities in the proportions given:
Per cent.
Health 20
Financial success 19
Paternity 18
Appearance 11
Disposition 8
Education 8
Character 6
Housekeeping 7
Dress 3
---
100
Without laying weight on the exact figures, and recognizing that each
woman may have defined the qualities differently, yet one must admit
aside from a low concern for mental ability that this is a fairly good
eugenic specification. Appearance, it is stated, meant not so much
facial beauty as intelligent expression and manly form. Financial
success is correlated with intelligence and efficiency, and probably is
not rated too high. The importance attached to paternity--which, it is
explained, means a clean sex life as well as interest in children--is
worth noticing.
For comparison there is another census of the preferences of 115 young
women at Brigham Young College, Logan, Utah. This is a "Mormon"
institution and the students, mostly farmers' daughters, are probably
expressing ideals which have been very little affected by the
demoralizing influences of modern city life. The editor of the college
paper relates that:
Eighty-six per cent of the girls specifically stated that the young
man must be morally pure; 14% did not specifically state.
Ninety-nine per cent specifically stated that he must be mentally
and physically strong.
Ninety-three per cent stated that he must absolutely not smoke,
chew, or drink; 7% did not state.
Twenty per cent named an occupation they would like the young man
to follow, and these fell into three different classes, that of
farmer, doctor and business.
Four and seven-tenths per cent of the 20% named farmer; 2. 7% named
doctor, and 1. 7% named business man; 80% did not state any
profession.
Thirty-three and one-third per cent specifically stated that he
must be ambitious; 66-2/3% did not state.
Eight per cent stated specifically that he must have high ideals.
Fifty-two per cent demanded that he be of the same religious
conviction; 48% said nothing about religion.
Seventy-two per cent said nothing regarding money matters; 28%
stated what his financial condition must be, but none named a
specific amount. One-half of the 28% stated that he must be rich,
and three-fourths of these were under twenty years of age; the
other half of the 28% said that he must have a moderate income and
two-thirds of these were under twenty years of age.
Forty-five per cent stated that the young man must be taller than
they; 55% did not state.
Twenty per cent stated that the young man must be older, and from
two to eight years older; 80% did not state.
Fifty per cent stated that he must have a good education;
one-fourth of the 50% stated that he must have a college education;
95% of these were under twenty-one years of age; 50% did not state
his intellectual attainments.
Ninety-one per cent of all the ideals handed in were written by
persons under twenty years of age; the other 8-1/2% were over
twenty years of age.
_Physical Culture_, on another occasion, invited its male readers to
express their requirements of an ideal wife. The proportions of the
various elements desired are given as follows:
Per cent
Health 23
"Looks" 14
Housekeeping 12
Disposition 11
Maternity 11
Education 10
Management 7
Dress 7
Character 5
---
100
One might feel some surprise at the low valuation placed on "character,"
but it is really covered by other points. On the whole, one can not be
dissatisfied with these specifications aside from its slight concern
about mental ability.
Such wholesome ideals are probably rather widespread in the less
sophisticated part of the population. In other strata, social and
financial criteria of selection hold much importance. As a family
ascends in economic position, its standards of sexual selection are
likely to change. And in large sections of the population, there is a
fluctuation in the standards from generation to generation. There is
reason to suspect that the standards of sexual selection among educated
young women in the United States to-day are higher than they were a
quarter of a century, or even a decade, ago. They are demanding a higher
degree of physical fitness and morality in their suitors. Men, in turn,
are beginning to demand that the girls they marry shall be fitted for
the duties of home-maker, wife and mother,--qualifications which were
essential in the colonial period but little insisted on in the immediate
past.
(b) It is evident, then, that the standards of sexual selection do
change; there is therefore reason to suppose that they can change still
further. This is an important point, for it is often alleged as an
objection to eugenics that human affections are capricious and can not
be influenced by rational considerations. Such an objection will be
seen, on reflection, to be ill-founded.
As to the extent of change possible, the psychologist must have the
final word. The ingenious Mr. Diffloth,[97] who reduced love to a series
of algebraical formulae and geometrical curves, and proposed that every
young man should find a girl whose curve was congruent to his own, and
at once lead her to the altar, is not likely to gain many adherents. But
the psychologist declares without hesitation that it is possible to
influence the course of love in its earlier, though rarely in its later,
stages. Francis Galton pointed this out with his usual clearness,
showing that in the past the "incidence" of love, to borrow a technical
term, had been frequently and sometimes narrowly limited by custom--by
those unwritten laws which are sometimes as effective as the written
ones. Monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, tabu,
prohibited degrees and sacerdotal celibacy all furnished him with
historical arguments to show that society could bring about almost any
restriction it chose; and a glance around at the present day will show
that the barriers set up by religion, race and social position are
frequently of almost prohibitive effect.
There is, therefore, from a psychological point of view, no reason why
the ideals of eugenics should not become a part of the mores or
unwritten laws of the race, and why the selection of life partners
should not be unconsciously influenced to a very large extent by them.
As a necessary preliminary to such a condition, intelligent people must
cultivate the attitude of conscious selection, and get away from the
crude, fatalistic viewpoint which is to-day so widespread, and which is
exploited _ad nauseam_ on the stage and in fiction. It must be
remembered that there are two well-marked stages preceding a betrothal:
the first is that of mere attraction, when reason is still operative,
and the second is that of actual love, when reason is relegated to the
background. During the later stage, it is notorious that good counsel is
of little avail, but during the preliminary period direction of the
affections is still possible, not only by active interference of friends
or relatives, but much more easily and usefully by the tremendous
influence of the mores.
Eugenic mores will exist only when many intelligent people become so
convinced of the ethical value of eugenics that that conviction sinks
into their subconscious minds. The general eugenics campaign can be
expected to bring that result about in due time. Care must be taken to
prevent highly conscientious people from being too critical, and letting
a trivial defect outweigh a large number of good qualities. Moreover,
changes in the standards of sexual selection should not be too rapid, as
that results in the permanent celibacy of some excellent but
hyper-critical individuals. The ideal is an advance of standards as
rapidly as will yet keep all the superior persons married. This is
accomplished if all superior individuals marry as well as possible, yet
with advancing years gradually reduce the standard so that celibacy may
not result.
Having decided that there is room for improvement in the standards of
sexual selection, and that such improvement is psychologically feasible,
we come to point (c): in what particular ways is this improvement
needed? Any discussion of this large subject must necessarily be only
suggestive, not exhaustive.
If sexual selection is to be taken seriously, it is imperative that
there be some improvement in the general attitude of public sentiment
toward love itself. It is difficult for the student to acquire sound
knowledge[98] of the normal manifestations of love: the psychology of
sex has been studied too largely from the abnormal and pathological
side; while the popular idea is based too much on fiction and drama
which emphasize the high lights and make love solely an affair of
emotion. We are not arguing for a rationalization of love, for the terms
are almost contradictory; but we believe that more common sense could
profitably be used in considering the subject.
If a typical "love affair" be examined, it is found that propinquity and
a common basis for sympathy in some probably trivial matter lead to the
development of the sex instinct; the parental instinct begins to make
itself felt, particularly among women; the instincts of curiosity,
acquisitiveness, and various others play their part, and there then
appears a well-developed case of "love. " Such love may satisfy a purely
biological definition, but it is incomplete. Love that is worthy of the
name must be a function of the will as well as of the emotions. There
must be a feeling on the part of each which finds strong satisfaction in
service rendered to the other. If the existence of this constituent of
love could be more widely recognized and watched for, it would probably
prevent many a sensible young man or woman from being stampeded into a
marriage of passion, where the real community of interest is slight;[99]
and sexual selection would be improved in a way that would count
immensely for the future of the race. Moreover, there would be much more
real love in the world. Eugenics, as Havelock Ellis has well pointed
out,[100] is not plotting against love but against those influences that
do violence to love, particularly: (1) reckless yielding to mere
momentary desire; and (2) still more fatal influences of wealth and
position and worldly convenience which give a factitious value to
persons who would never appear attractive partners in life were love and
eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand.
"The eugenic ideal," Dr. Ellis foresees, "will have to struggle with the
criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it will have few
serious quarrels with normal and well-constituted lovers. "
The point is an important one. To "rationalize" marriage, is out of the
question. Marriage must be mainly a matter of the emotions; but it is
important that the emotions be exerted in the right direction. The
eugenist seeks to remove the obstacles that are now driving the
emotions into wrong channels. If the emotions can only be headed in the
right direction, then the more emotions the better, for they are the
source of energy which are responsible for almost everything that is
done in the world.
There is in the world plenty of that love which is a matter of mutual
service and of emotions unswayed by any petty or sordid influences; but
it ought not only to be common, it ought to be universal. It is not
likely to be in the present century; but at least, thinking people can
consciously adopt an attitude of respect toward love, and consciously
abandon as far as possible the attitude of jocular cynicism with which
they too often treat it,--an attitude which is reflected so disgustingly
in current vaudeville and musical comedy.
It is the custom to smile at the extravagantly romantic idea of love
which the boarding-school girl holds; but unrealizable as it may be,
hers is a nobler conception than that which the majority of adults
voice. Very properly, one does not care to make one's deepest feelings
public; but if such subjects as love and motherhood can not be discussed
naturally and without affectation, they ought to be left alone. If
intelligent men and women will set the example, this attitude of mind
will spread, and cultured families at least will rid themselves of such
deplorable habits as that of plaguing children, not yet out of the
nursery, about their "sweethearts. "
No sane man would deny the desirability of beauty in a wife,
particularly when it is remembered that beauty, especially as determined
by good complexion, good teeth and medium weight, is correlated with
good health in some degree, and likewise with intelligence.
Nevertheless, we are strongly of the opinion that beauty of face is now
too highly valued, as a standard of sexual selection. [101]
Good health in a mate is a qualification which any sensible man or woman
will require, and for which a "marriage certificate" is in most cases
quite unnecessary. [102] What other physical standard is there that
should be given weight?
Alexander Graham Bell has lately been emphasizing the importance of
longevity in this connection, and in our judgment he has thereby opened
up a very fruitful field for education. It goes without saying that
anyone would prefer to marry a partner with a good constitution. "How
can we find a test of a good, sound constitution? " Dr. Bell asked in a
recent lecture. "I think we could find it in the duration of life in a
family. Take a family in which a large proportion live to old age with
unimpaired faculties. There you know is a good constitution in an
inheritable form. On the other hand, you will find a family in which a
large proportion die at birth and in which there are relatively few
people who live to extreme old age. There has developed an hereditary
weakness of constitution. Longevity is a guide to constitution. " Not
only does it show that one's vital organs are in good running order, but
it is probably the only means now available of indicating strains which
are resistant to zymotic disease. Early death is not necessarily an
evidence of physical weakness; but long life is a pretty good proof of
constitutional strength.
Dr. Bell has elsewhere called attention to the fact that, longevity
being a characteristic which is universally considered creditable in a
family, there is no tendency on the part of families to conceal its
existence, as there is in the case of unfavorable characters--cancer,
tuberculosis, insanity, and the like. This gives it a great advantage as
a criterion for sexual selection, since there will be little difficulty
in finding whether or not the ancestors of a young man or woman were
long-lived. [103]
Karl Pearson and his associates have shown that there is a tendency to
assortative mating for longevity: that people from long-lived stocks
actually do marry people from similar stocks, more frequently than would
be the case if the matings were at random. An increase of this tendency
would be eugenically desirable. [104] So much for the physique.
Though eugenics is popularly supposed to be concerned almost wholly with
the physical, properly it gives most attention to mental traits,
recognizing that these are the ones which most frequently make races
stand or fall, and that attention to the physique is worth while mainly
to furnish a sound body in which the sound mind may function. Now men
and women may excel mentally in very many different ways, and eugenics,
which seeks not to produce a uniform good type, but excellence in all
desirable types, is not concerned to pick out any particular sort of
mental superiority and exalt it as a standard for sexual selection. But
the tendency, shown in Miss Gilmore's study, for men to prefer the more
intelligent girls in secondary schools, is gratifying to the eugenist,
since high mental endowment is principally a matter of heredity. From a
eugenic point of view it would be well could such intellectual
accomplishments weigh even more heavily with the average young man, and
less weight be put on such superficial characteristics as "flashiness,"
ability to use the latest slang freely, and other "smart" traits which
are usually considered attractive in a girl, but which have no real
value and soon become tiresome. They are not wholly bad in themselves,
but certainly should not influence a young man very seriously in his
choice of a wife, nor a young woman in her choice of a husband. It is to
be feared that such standards are largely promoted by the stage, the
popular song, and popular fiction.
In a sense, the education which a young woman has received is no
concern of the eugenist, since it can not be transmitted to her
children. Yet when, as often happens, children die because their mother
was not properly trained to bring them up, this feature of education
does become a concern of eugenics. Young men are more and more coming to
demand that their wives know something about woman's work, and this
demand must not only increase, but must be adequately met. Woman's
education is treated in more detail in another chapter.
It is proper to point out here, however, that in many cases woman's
education gives no great opportunity to judge of her real intellectual
ability. Her natural endowment in this respect should be judged also by
that of her sisters, brothers, parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents.
If a girl comes of an intellectual ancestry, it is likely that she
herself will carry such traits germinally, even if she has never had an
opportunity to develop them. She can, then, pass them on to her own
children. Francis Galton long ago pointed out the good results of a
custom obtaining in Germany, whereby college professors tended to marry
the daughters or sisters of college professors. A tendency for men of
science to marry women of scientific attainments or training is marked
among biologists, at least, in the United States; and the number of
cases in which musicians intermarry is striking. Such assortative mating
means that the offspring will usually be well endowed with a talent.
Finally, young people should be taught a greater appreciation of the
lasting qualities of comradeship, for which the purely emotional factors
that make up mere sexual attraction are far from offering a satisfactory
substitute.
It will not be out of place here to point out that a change in the
social valuation of reputability and honor is greatly needed for the
better working of sexual selection. The conspicuous waste and leisure
that Thorstein Veblen points out as the chief criterion of reputability
at present have a dubious relation to high mental or moral endowment,
far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a
meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of
success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not
argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in
reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would
result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions,
rightly awarded, are an aid, not a hindrance to sexual selection, and
effort should be directed, from the eugenic point of view, no less to
the proper recognition of true superiority than to the elimination of
unjustified differentiations of reputability.
This leads to the consideration of moral standards, and here again
details are complex but the broad outlines clear. It seems probable that
morality is to a considerable extent a matter of heredity, and the care
of the eugenist should be to work with every force that makes for a
clear understanding of the moral factors of the world, and to work
against every force that tends to confuse the issues. When the issue is
clear cut, most people will by instinct tend to marry into moral rather
than immoral stocks.
True quality, then, should be emphasized at the expense of false
standards. Money, social status, family alignment, though indicators to
some degree, must not be taken too much at their face value. Emphasis is
to be placed on real merit as shown by achievement, or on descent from
the meritoriously eminent, whether or not such eminence has led to the
accumulation of a family fortune and inclusion in an exclusive social
set. In this respect, it is important that the value of a high average
of ancestry should be realized. A single case of eminence in a pedigree
should not weigh too heavily. When it is remembered that statistically
one grandparent counts for less than one-sixteenth in the heredity of an
individual, it will be obvious that the individual whose sole claim to
consideration is a distinguished grandfather, is not necessarily a
matrimonial prize. A general high level of morality and mentality in a
family is much more advantageous, from the eugenic point of view, than
one "lion" several generations back.
While we desire very strongly to emphasize the importance of breeding
and the great value of a good ancestry, it is only fair to utter a word
of warning in this connection. Good ancestry does not _necessarily_ make
a man or woman a desirable partner. What stockmen know as the "pure-bred
scrub" is a recognized evil in animal breeding, and not altogether
absent from human society. Due to any one or more of a number of causes,
it is possible for a germinal degenerate to appear in a good family;
discrimination should certainly be made against such an individual.
Furthermore, it is possible that there occasionally arises what may be
called a mutant of very desirable character from a eugenic point of
view. Furthermore a stock in general below mediocrity will occasionally,
due to some fortuitous but fortunate combination of traits, give rise to
an individual of marked ability or even eminence, who will be able to
transmit in some degree that valuable new combination of traits to his
or her own progeny. Persons of this character are to be regarded by
eugenists as distinctly desirable husbands or wives.
The desirability of selecting a wife (or husband) from a family of more
than one or two children was emphasized by Benjamin Franklin, and is
also one of the time-honored traditions of the Arabs, who have always
looked at eugenics in a very practical, if somewhat cold-blooded way. It
has two advantages: in the first place, one can get a better idea of
what the individual really is, by examining sisters and brothers; and in
the second place, there will be less danger of a childless marriage,
since it is already proved that the individual comes of a fertile stock.
Francis Galton showed clearly the havoc wrought in the English peerage,
by marriages with heiresses (an heiress there being nearly always an
only child). Such women were childless in a much larger proportion than
ordinary women.
"Marrying a man to reform him" is a speculation in which many women have
indulged and usually--it may be said without fear of contradiction--with
unfortunate results. It is always likely that she will fail to reform
him; it is certain that she can not reform his germ-plasm. Psychologists
agree that the character of a man or woman undergoes little radical
change after the age of 25; and the eugenist knows that it is largely
determined, _potentially_, when the individual is born. It is,
therefore, in most cases the height of folly to select a partner with
any marked undesirable trait, with the idea that it will change after a
few years.
All these suggestions have in general been directed at the young man or
woman, but it is admitted that if they reach their target at all, it is
likely to be by an indirect route. No rules or devices can take the
place, in influencing sexual selection, of that lofty and rational ideal
of marriage which must be brought about by the uplifting of public
opinion. It is difficult to bring under the control of reason a subject
that has so long been left to caprice and impulse; yet much can
unquestionably be done, in an age of growing social responsibility, to
put marriage in a truer perspective. Much is already being done, but not
in every case of change is the future biological welfare of the race
sufficiently borne in mind. The interests of the individual are too
often regarded to the exclusion of posterity. The eugenist would not
sacrifice the individual, but he would add the welfare of posterity to
that of the individual, when the standards of sexual selection are being
fixed. It is only necessary to make the young person remember that he
will marry, not merely an individual, but a family; and that not only
his own happiness but to some extent the quality of future generations
is being determined by his choice.
We must have (1) the proper ideals of mating but (2) these ideals must
be realized. It is known that many young people have the highest kind of
ideals of sexual selection, and find themselves quite unable to act on
them. The college woman may have a definite idea of the kind of husband
she wants; but if he never seeks her, she often dies celibate. The young
man of science may have an ideal bride in his mind, but if he never
finds her, he may finally marry his landlady's daughter. Opportunity for
sexual selection must be given, as well as suitable standards; and while
education is perhaps improving the standards each year, it is to be
feared that modern social conditions, especially in the large cities,
tend steadily to decrease the opportunity.
Statistical evidence, as well as common observation, indicates that the
upper classes have a much wider range of choice in marriage than the
lower classes. The figures given by Karl Pearson for the degree of
resemblance between husband and wife with regard to phthisis are so
remarkable as to be worth quoting in this connection:
All poor +. 01
Prosperous poor +. 16
Middle classes +. 24
Professional classes +. 28
It can hardly be argued that infection between husband and wife would
vary like this, even if infection, in general, could be proved.
Moreover, the least resemblance is among the poor, where infection
should be greatest. Professor Pearson thinks, as seems reasonable, that
this series of figures indicates principally assortative mating, and
shows that among the poor there is less choice, the selection of a
husband or wife being more largely due to propinquity or some other more
or less random factor. With a rise in the social scale, opportunity for
choice of one from a number of possible mates becomes greater and
greater; the tendency for an unconscious selection of likeness then has
a chance to appear, as the coefficients graphically show.
If such a class as the peerage of Great Britain be considered, it is
evident that the range of choice in marriage is almost unlimited. There
are few girls who can resist the glamor of a title. The hereditary peer
can therefore marry almost anyone he likes and if he does not marry one
of his own class he can select and (until recently) usually has selected
the daughter of some man who by distinguished ability has risen from a
lower social or financial position. Thus the hereditary nobilities of
Europe have been able to maintain themselves; and a similar process is
undoubtedly taking place among the idle rich who occupy an analogous
position in the United States.
But it is the desire of eugenics to raise the average ability of the
whole population, as well as to encourage the production of leaders. To
fulfill this desire, it is obvious that one of the necessary means is to
extend to all desirable classes that range of choice which is now
possessed only by those near the top of the social ladder. It is hardly
necessary to urge young people to widen the range of their
acquaintance, for they will do it without urging if the opportunity is
presented to them. It is highly necessary for parents, and for
organizations and municipalities, deliberately to seek to further every
means which will bring unmarried young people together under proper
supervision. Social workers have already perceived the need of
institutional as well as municipal action on these lines, although they
have not in every case recognized the eugenic aspect, and from their
efforts it is probable that suitable institutions, such as social
centers and recreation piers, and municipal dance halls, will be greatly
multiplied.
