The utilization of the
emotions in affecting conduct is by no means always a part of religion,
yet it is the essence of religion.
emotions in affecting conduct is by no means always a part of religion,
yet it is the essence of religion.
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
The reasons are too obvious to be retailed.
Now, then, knowing that the racial contribution of the sexually moral is
greater than that of the sexually immoral, we may compare the quality of
the sexually moral and immoral, to get the evolutionary effect.
For this purpose a distinction must be made between the individual who
has been chaste till the normal time of marriage and whose sexual life
is truly monogamous, and that abnormal group who remain chaste and
celibate to an advanced age. These last are not moral in the last
analysis, if they have valuable and needed traits and are fertile,
because in the long run their failure to reproduce affects adversely the
welfare of their group. While the race suffers through the failure of
many of these individuals to contribute progeny, probably this does not
happen, so far as males are concerned, as much as might be supposed, for
such individuals are often innately defective in their instincts or, in
the case of disappointed lovers, have a badly proportioned emotional
equipment, since it leads them into a position so obviously opposed to
race interests.
But, to pass to the essential comparison, that between the sexually
immoral and the sexually moral as limited above, it is necessary first
of all to decide whether monogamy is a desirable and presumably
permanent feature of human society.
We conclude that it is:
1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not
favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.
2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of
character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire
wealth; and
3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system,
since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so
many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with
others.
Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society
represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply
with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows
then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and
that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race
progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in
America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely
attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal
infection. [185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might
be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.
It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect
upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary,
we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is
pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.
The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the
selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged
deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of
syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to
be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted
infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so
highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been
demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.
Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve
race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing
to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism,
disease, infant mortality--all powerful selective factors--without harm,
provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured,
such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection,
a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic
distribution of family limitation.
TRADES UNIONISM
A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be
understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to
standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and
demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage.
It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable
than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of
wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes
the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to
have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children,
than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their
real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so
much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of
eugenics.
PROHIBITION
It was shown in Chapter II that the attempt to ban alcoholic beverages
on the ground of direct dysgenic effect is based on dubious evidence.
But the prohibition of the use of liquors, at least those containing
more than 5% alcohol, can be defended on indirect eugenic grounds, as
well as on the familiar grounds of pathology and economics which are
commonly cited.
1. Unless it is present to such a degree as to constitute a neurotic
taint, the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad
thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the
responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable
strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the
death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others
in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were not
available.
2. In selection for eugenic improvement, it is desirable not to have to
select for too many traits at once. If alcoholism could, through
prohibition, be eliminated from consideration, it would just so far
simplify the problem of eugenics.
3. Drunkenness interferes with the effectiveness of means for family
limitation, so that if his alcoholism is not extreme, the drunkard's
family is sometimes larger than it would otherwise be.
On the other hand, prohibition is dysgenic and intemperance is eugenic
in their effect on the species in so far as alcoholism is correlated
with other undesirable characters and brings about the elimination of
undesirable strains. But its action is not sufficiently discriminating
nor decisive; and if the strains have many serious defects, they can
probably be dealt with better in some other, more direct way.
We conclude, then, that, on the whole, prohibition is desirable for
eugenic as well as for other reasons.
PEDAGOGICAL CELIBACY
Whether women are more efficient teachers than men, and whether single
women are more efficient teachers than married women, are disputed
questions which it is not proposed here to consider. Accepting the
present fact, that most of the school teachers in the United States are
unmarried women, it is proper to examine the eugenic consequences of
this condition.
The withdrawal of this large body of women from the career of motherhood
into a celibate career may be desirable if these women are below the
average of the rest of the women of the population in eugenic quality.
But it would hardly be possible to find enough eugenic inferiors to fill
the ranks of teachers, without getting those who are inferior in actual
ability, in patent as well as latent traits. And the idea of placing
education in the hands of such inferior persons is not to be considered.
It is, therefore, inevitable that the teachers are, on the whole,
superior persons eugenically. Their celibacy must be considered highly
detrimental to racial welfare.
But, it may be said, there is a considerable number of women so
deficient in sex feeling or emotional equipment that they are certain
never to marry; they are, nevertheless, persons of intellectual ability.
Let them be the school teachers. This solution is, however, not
acceptable. Many women of the character described undoubtedly exist, but
they are better placed in some other occupation. It is wholly
undesirable that children should be reared under a neuter influence,
which is probably too common already in education.
If women are to teach, then, it must be concluded that on eugenic
grounds preference should be given to married rather than single
teachers, and that the single ones should be encouraged to marry. This
requires (1) that considerable change be made in the education of young
women, so that they shall be fitted for motherhood rather than
exclusively for school teaching as is often the case, and (2) that
social devices be brought into play to aid them in mating--since
undoubtedly a proportion of school teachers are single from the
segregating character of their profession, not from choice, and (3)
provision for employing some women on half-time and (4) increase of the
number of male teachers in high schools.
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to mention a fifth change necessary: that
school boards must be brought to see the undesirability of employing
only unmarried women, and of discharging them, no matter how efficient,
if they marry or have children. The courts must be enabled to uphold
woman's right of marriage and motherhood, instead of, as in some cases
at present, upholding school boards in their denial of this right.
Contracts which prevent women teachers from marrying or discontinuing
their work for marriage should be illegal, and talk about the "moral
obligation" of normal school graduates to teach should be
discountenanced.
Against the proposal to employ married school teachers, two objections
are urged. It is said (1) that for most women school teaching is merely
a temporary occupation, which they take up to pass the few years until
they shall have married. To this it may be replied that the hope of
marriage too often proves illusory to the young woman who enters on the
pedagogical career, because of the lack of opportunities to meet men,
and because the nature of her work is not such as to increase her
attractiveness to men, nor her fitness for home-making. Pedagogy is too
often a sterilizing institution, which takes young women who desire to
marry and impairs their chance of marriage.
Again it will be said (2) that married teachers would lose too much
time from their work; that their primary interests would be in their own
homes instead of in the school; that they could not teach school without
neglecting their own children. These objections fall in the realm of
education, not eugenics, and it can only be said here that the reasons
must be extraordinarily cogent, which will justify the enforcement of
celibacy on so large a body of superior young women as is now engaged in
school teaching.
The magnitude of the problem is not always realized. In 1914 the
Commissioner of education reported that there were, in the United
States, 169,929 men and 537,123 women engaged in teaching. Not less than
half a million women, therefore, are potentially affected by the
institution of pedagogical celibacy.
CHAPTER XIX
RELIGION AND EUGENICS
Man is the only animal with a religion. The conduct of the lower animals
is guided by instinct,[186] and instinct normally works for the benefit
of the species. Any action which is dictated by instinct is likely to
result in the preservation of the species, even at the expense of the
individual which acts, provided there has not been a recent change in
the environment.
But in the human species reason appears, and conduct is no longer
governed by instinct alone. A young man is impelled by instinct, for
instance, to marry. It is to the interests of the species that he marry,
and instinct therefore causes him to desire to marry and to act as he
desires. A lower animal would obey the impulse of instinct without a
moment's hesitation. Not so the man. Reason intervenes and asks, "Is
this really the best thing for you to do now? Would you not better wait
awhile and get a start in your business? Of course marriage would be
agreeable, but you must not be short-sighted. You don't want to assume a
handicap just now. " There is a corresponding reaction among the married
in respect to bearing additional children. The interests of self are
immediate and easily seen, the interests of the species are not so
pressing. In any such conflict between instinct and reason, one must
win; and if reason wins it is in some cases for the immediate benefit of
the individual but at the expense of the species' interests.
Now with reason dominant over instinct in man, there is a grave danger
that with each man consulting his own interests instead of those of the
species, some groups and even races will become exterminated. Along
with reason, therefore, it is necessary that some other forces shall
appear to control reason and give the interests of the species a chance
to be heard along with the interests of the individual.
One such force is religion. Without insisting that this is the only view
which may be taken of the origin of religion, or that this is the only
function of religion, we may yet assert that one of the useful purposes
served by religion is to cause men to adopt lines of conduct that will
be for the good of the race, although it may sacrifice the immediate
good of the individual. [187] Thus if a young Mohammedan be put in the
situation just described, he may decide that it is to his material
interest to postpone marriage. His religion then obtrudes itself, with
quotations from the Prophet to the effect that Hell is peopled with
bachelors. The young man is thereupon moved to marry, even if it does
cause some inconvenience to his business plans. Religion, reinforcing
instinct, has triumphed over reason and gained a victory for the larger
interests of the species, when they conflict with the immediate
interests of the individual.
From this point of view we may, paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, define
religion as _motivated ethics_. Ethics is a knowledge of right conduct,
religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more
like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious
man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the
interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The
orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he
has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and
he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he
refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.
This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked
with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem
is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements.
Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it
was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We
shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity;
but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.
We can distinguish four phases of religion:
1. Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The
believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular
efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that
peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain
other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested
one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it
is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear,
and the act is therefore avoided.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first
system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the
result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an
after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which
everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence
of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea
still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural
character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important
to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved.
They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called
"luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of
God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse,
although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine power.
3. Theistic religion. In essence this consists of the satisfaction
derived from doing that which pleases God, or "getting into harmony with
the underlying plan of the universe," as some put it. It is idealistic
and somewhat mystic. It should be distinguished from the idea of doing
or believing certain things to insure salvation, which is not
essentially theistic but belongs under (2). The true theist desires to
conform to the will of God, wholly apart from whether he will be
rewarded or punished for so doing.
4. Humanistic religion. This is a willingness to make the end of ethics
the totality of happiness of all men, or some large group of men, rather
than to judge conduct solely by its effects on some one individual. At
its highest, it is a sort of loyalty to the species.
It must be noted that most cults include more than one of these
elements--usually all of them at various stages. As a race rises in
intelligence, it tends to progress from the first two toward the last
two, but usually keeping parts of the earlier attitude, more or less
clearly expressed. And individual adherents of a religion usually have
different ideas of its scope; thus the religious ideas of many
Christians embrace all four of the above elements; others who equally
consider themselves Christians may be influenced by little more than (4)
alone, or (3) alone, or even (2) alone.
There is no reason to believe that any one of these types of religion is
the only one adapted to promoting sound ethics in all individuals, nor
that a similar culture can bring about uniformity in the near future,
since the religion of a race corresponds to some extent to the inherent
nature of the mind of its individuals. Up to a certain point, each type
of religion has a distinct appeal to a certain temperament or type of
mind. With increasing intelligence, it is probable that a religion tends
to emphasize the interests of all rather than the benefits to be derived
by one; such has been clearly the case in the history of the Christian
religion. The diverse elements of retribution, damnation, "communion
with God" and social service still exist, but in America the last-named
one is yearly being more emphasized. Emphasis upon it is the marked
characteristic of Jesus' teaching.
With this rough sketch of religious ideas in mind, the part religion can
play at the present day in advancing the eugenic interests of the race
or species may be considered. Each religion can serve eugenics just as
well as it can serve any other field of ethics, and by the very same
devices. We shall run over our four types again and note what appeals
eugenics can make to each one.
1. Reward and punishment in this life. Here the value of children,
emotionally and economically, to their parents in their later life can
be shown, and the dissatisfaction that is felt by the childless. The
emotions may be reached (as they have been reached in past centuries) by
the painting of Madonnas, the singing of lullabies, by the care of the
baby sister, by the laurel wreath of the victorious son, by the great
choruses of white-robed girls, by the happiness of the bride, and by the
sentiment of the home. Here are some of the noblest subjects for the
arts, which in the past have unconsciously served eugenics well. In a
less emotional way, a deep desire for that "terrestrial immortality"
involved in posterity should be fostered. The doctrine of the continuity
of germ-plasm might play a large part in religion. It should at least be
brought home to everyone at some point in his education. Man should have
a much stronger feeling of identity with his forebears and his progeny.
Is it not a loss to Christians that they have so much less of this
feeling than the Chinese?
It may be urged in opposition that such conceptions are dangerously
static and have thereby harmed China. But that can be avoided by
shifting the balance a little from progenitors to posterity. If people
should live more in their children than they now do, they would be not
only anxious to give them a sound heredity, but all the more eager to
improve the conditions of their children's environment by modifying
their own.
It may be objected that this sort of propaganda is indiscriminate,--that
it may further the reproduction of the inferior just as much as the
superior. We think not. Such steps appeal more to the superior type of
mind and will be little heeded by the inferior. They will be ultimately,
if not directly, discriminative.
In so far as the foregoing appeals to reason alone it is not religion.
The appeal to reason must either be emotionalized or colored with the
supernatural to be religion.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life. Here the belief in the
absolute, verbal inspiration of sacred writings and the doctrine of
salvation by faith alone are rapidly passing, and it is therefore the
easier to bring eugenics into this type of religion. Even where
salvation by faith is still held as an article of creed, it is
accompanied by the concession that he who truly believes will manifest
his belief by works. Altruism can be found in the sacred writings of
probably all religions, and the modern tendency is to make much of such
passages, in which it is easy for the eugenist to find a warrant. What
is needed here, then, is to impress upon the leaders in this field that
eugenic conduct is a "good work" and as such they may properly include
it along with other modern virtues, such as honest voting and abstinence
from graft as a key to heaven. Dysgenic conduct should equally be taught
to be an obstacle to salvation.
3. Theism. The man who is most influenced by the desire to be at one
with God naturally wants to act in accordance with God's plan. But God
being omnibeneficent, he necessarily believes that God's plan is that
which is for the best interests of His children--unless he is one of
those happily rare individuals who still believe that the end of man is
to glorify God by voice, not by means of human betterment.
This type of religion (and the other types in different degrees) is a
great motive power. It both creates energy in its adherents, and directs
that energy into definite outlets. It need only be made convincingly
evident that eugenics is truly a work of human betterment,--really the
greatest work of human betterment, and a partnership with God--to have
it taken up by this type of religion with all the enthusiasm which it
brings to its work.
4. The task of enlisting the humanist appears to be even simpler. It is
merely necessary to show him that eugenics increases the totality of
happiness of the human species. Since the keynote of his devotion is
loyalty, we might make this plea: "Can we not make every superior man or
woman ashamed to accept existence as a gift from his or her ancestors,
only to extinguish this torch instead of handing it on? "
Eugenics is in some ways akin to the movement for the conservation of
natural resources. In pioneer days a race uses up its resources without
hesitation. They seem inexhaustible. Some day it is recognized that they
are not inexhaustible, and then such members of the race as are guided
by good ethics begin to consider the interests of the future.
No system of ethics is worth the name which does not make provision for
the future. It is right here that the ethics of present-day America is
too often found wanting. As this fault is corrected, eugenics will be
more clearly seen as an integral part of ethics.
Provision for the future of the individual leads, in a very low state of
civilization, to the accumulation of wealth. Even the ants and squirrels
have so much ethics! Higher in the evolutionary scale comes provision
for the future of children; their interests lead to the foundation of
the family and, at a much later date, a man looks not only to his
immediate children but to future generations of heirs, when he entails
his estates and tries to establish a notable family line. Provision for
the future is the essence of his actions. But so far only the individual
or those related closely to him have been taken into consideration. With
a growth of altruism, man begins to recognize that he must make
provision for the future of the race; that he should apply to all
superior families the same anxiety which he feels that his children
shall not tarnish the family name by foolish marriages; that they shall
grow up strong and intelligent. This feeling interpreted by science is
eugenics, an important element of which is religion: for religion more
than any other influence leads one to look ahead, and to realize that
immediate benefits are not the greatest values that man can secure in
life,--that there is something beyond and superior to eating, drinking
and being merry.
If the criterion of ethical action is the provision it makes for the
future, then the ethics of the eugenist must rank high, for he not only
looks far to the future, but takes direct and effective steps to
safeguard the future.
Theoretically, then, there is a place for eugenics in every type of
religion. In practice, it will probably make an impression only on the
dynamic religions,--those that are actually accomplishing something.
Buddhism, for example, is perhaps too contemplative to do anything. But
Christianity, above any other, would seem to be the natural ally of the
eugenist. Christianity itself is undergoing a rapid change in ideals at
present, and it seems impossible that this evolution should leave its
adherents as ignorant of and indifferent to eugenics as they have been
in the past--even during the last generation.
Followers of other religions, as this chapter has attempted to show, can
also make eugenics a part of their respective religions. If they do not,
then it bodes ill for the future of their religion and of their race.
It is not difficult to get people to see the value of eugenics,--to give
an intellectual adhesion to it. But as eugenics sometimes calls for
seeming sacrifices, it is much more difficult to get people to _act_
eugenically. We have at numerous points in this book emphasized the
necessity of making the eugenic appeal emotional, though it is based
fundamentally on sound reasoning from facts of biology.
The great value of religion in this connection is that it provides a
driving power,[188] a source of action, which the intellect alone can
rarely furnish. Reason itself is usually an inhibitor of action. It is
the emotions that impel one to do things.
The utilization of the
emotions in affecting conduct is by no means always a part of religion,
yet it is the essence of religion. Without abandoning the appeal to
reason, eugenists must make every effort to enlist potent emotional
forces on their side. There is none so strong and available as religion,
and the eugenist may turn to it with confidence of finding an effective
ally, if he can once gain its sanction.
The task, as this chapter was intended to show, is a complex one, yet we
see no insuperable obstacles to it. Eugenics may not become a part of
the Christian religion, as a whole, until scientific education is much
more widespread than at present, but it is not too soon to make a start,
by identifying the interests of the two wherever such identification is
justified and profitable.
We have endeavored to point out that as a race rises, and instinct
becomes less important in guiding the conduct of its members, religion
has often put a restraint on reason, guiding the individual in racially
profitable paths. What is to happen when religion gives way? Unbridled
selfishness too often takes the reins, and the interests of the species
are disregarded. Religion, therefore, appears to be a necessity for the
perpetuation of any race. It is essential to racial welfare that the
national religion should be of such a character as to appeal to the
emotions effectively and yet conciliate the reason. We believe that the
religion of the future is likely to acquire this character, in
proportion as it adheres to eugenics. There is no room in the civilized
world now for a dysgenic religion. Science will progress. The idea of
evolution will be more firmly grasped. Religion itself evolves, and any
religion which does not embrace eugenics will embrace death.
CHAPTER XX
EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS
Emphasis has been given, in several of the foregoing chapters, to the
desirability of inheriting a good constitution and a high degree of
vigor and disease-resistance. It has been asserted that no measures of
hygiene and sanitation can take the place of such inheritance. It is now
desirable to ascertain the limits within which good inheritance is
effective, and this may be conveniently done by a study of the lives of
a group of people who inherited exceptionally strong physical
constitutions.
The people referred to are taken from a collection of histories of long
life made by the Genealogical Record Office of Washington. [189] One
hundred individuals were picked out at random, each of whom had died at
the age of 90 or more, and with the record of each individual were
placed those of all his brothers and sisters. Any family was rejected in
which there was a record of wholly accidental death (e. g. , families of
which a member had been killed in the Civil War). The 100 families, or
more correctly fraternities or sibships, were classified by the number
of children per fraternity, as follows:
Number of Total number
Number of children per of children
fraternities fraternity in group
1 2 2
11 3 33
8 4 32
17 5 85
13 6 78
14 7 98
9 8 72
11 9 99
10 10 100
3 11 33
2 12 24
1 13 13
--- ---
100 669
The average at death of these 669 persons was 64. 7 years. The child
mortality (first 4 years of life) was 7. 5% of the total mortality, 69
families showing no deaths of that kind. The group is as a whole,
therefore, long-lived.
The problem was to measure the resemblance between brothers and sisters
in respect of longevity,--to find whether knowledge of the age at which
one died would justify a prediction as to the age at death of the
others,--or technically, it was to measure the fraternal correlation of
longevity. A zero coefficient here would show that there is no
association; that from the age at which one dies, nothing whatever can
be predicted as to the age at which the others will die. Since it is
known that heredity is a large factor in longevity, such a finding would
mean that all deaths were due to some accident which made the
inheritance of no account.
In an ordinary population it has been found that the age at death of
brothers and sisters furnishes a coefficient of correlation of the order
of . 3, which shows that heredity does determine the age at which one
shall die to considerable extent, but not absolutely. [190]
The index of correlation[191] between the lengths of life within the
fraternity in these 100 selected families, furnished a coefficient
of-. 0163? . 0672, practically zero. In other words, if the age is known at
which a member of one of these families died, whether it be one month or
100 years, nothing whatever can be predicted about the age at which his
brothers and sisters died.
Remembering that longevity is in general inherited, and that it is found
in the families of all the people of this study (since one in each
fraternity lived to be 90 or over) how is one to interpret this zero
coefficient? Evidently it means that although these people had inherited
a high degree of longevity, their deaths were brought about by causes
which prevented the heredity from getting full expression. As far as
hereditary potentialities are concerned, it can be said that all their
deaths were due to accident, using that word in a broad sense to include
all non-selective deaths by disease. If they had all been able to get
the full benefit of their heredity, it would appear that each of these
persons might have lived to 90 or more, as did the one in each family
who was recorded by the Genealogical Record Office. Genetically, these
other deaths may be spoken of as premature.
In an ordinary population, the age of death is determined to the extent
of probably 50% by heredity. In this selected long-lived population,
heredity appears not to be responsible in any measurable degree
whatsoever for the differences in age at death.
The result may be expressed in another, and perhaps more striking, way.
Of the 669 individuals studied, a hundred--namely, one child in each
family--lived beyond 90; and there were a few others who did. But some
550 of the group, though they had inherited the potentiality of reaching
the average age of 90, actually died somewhere around 60; they failed by
at least one-third to live up to the promise of their inheritance. If we
were to generalize from this single case, we would have to say that
five-sixths of the population does not make the most of its physical
inheritance.
This is certainly a fact that discourages fatalistic optimism. The man
who tells himself that, because of his magnificent inherited
constitution, he can safely take any risk, is pretty sure to take too
many risks and meet with a non-selective--i. e. , genetically, a
premature--death, when he might in the nature of things have lived
almost a generation longer.
It should be remarked that most of the members of this group seem to
have lived in a hard environment. They appear to belong predominantly to
the lower strata of society; many of them are immigrants and only a very
few of them, to judge by a cursory inspection of the records, possessed
more than moderate means. This necessitated a frugal and industrious
life which in many ways was doubtless favorable to longevity but which
may often have led to overexposure, overwork, lack of proper medical
treatment, or other causes of a non-selective death. We would not push
the conclusion too far, but we can not doubt that this investigation
shows the folly of ignoring the environment,--shows that the best
inherited constitution must have a fair chance. And what has here been
found for a physical character, would probably hold good in even greater
degree for a mental character. All that man inherits is the capacity to
develop along a certain line under the influence of proper
stimuli,--food and exercise. The object of eugenics is to see that the
inherent capacity is there. Given that, the educational system is next
needed to furnish the stimuli. The consistent eugenist is therefore an
ardent euthenist. He not only works for a better human stock but,
because he does not want to see his efforts wasted, he always works to
provide the best possible environment for this better stock.
In so far, then, as euthenics is actually providing man with more
favorable surroundings,--not with ostensibly more favorable surroundings
which, in reality, are unfavorable--there can be no antagonism between
it and eugenics. Eugenics is, in fact, a prerequisite of euthenics, for
it is only the capable and altruistic man who can contribute to social
progress; and such a man can only be produced through eugenics.
Eugenic fatalism, a blind faith in the omnipotence of heredity
regardless of the surroundings in which it is placed, has been shown by
the study of long-lived families to be unjustified. It was found that
even those who inherited exceptional longevity usually did not live as
long as their inheritance gave them the right to expect. If they had had
more euthenics, they should have lived longer.
But this illustration certainly gives no ground for a belief that
euthenics is sufficient to prolong one's life _beyond_ the inherited
limit. A study of these long-lived families from another point of view
will reveal that heredity is the primary factor and that good
environment, euthenics, is the secondary one.
For this purpose we augment the 100 families of the preceding section by
the addition of 240 more families like them, and we examine each family
history to find how many of the children died before completing the
fourth year of life. The data are summarized in the following table:
CHILD MORTALITY IN FAMILIES OF LONG-LIVED STOCK, GENEALOGICAL RECORD
OFFICE DATA
Size of No. of families No. of families Total no.
family investigated showing deaths of deaths
under 5 years
1 child 6 0 0
2 children 6 0 0
3 " 38 4 5
4 " 40 6 7
5 " 38 4 4
6 " 44 12 13
7 " 34 8 11
8 " 46 13 18
9 " 31 14 20
10 " 27 14 14
11 " 13 6 9
12 " 13 9 16
13 " 1 0 0
14 " 2 0 0
17 " 1 1 2
--- --- ---
340 91 119
The addition of the new families (which were not subjected to any
different selection than the first 100) has brought down the child
mortality rate. For the first 100, it was found to be 7. 5%. If in the
above table the number of child deaths, 119, be divided by the total
number of children represented, 2,259, the child mortality rate for this
population is found to be 5. 27%, or 53 per thousand.
The smallness of this figure may be seen by comparison with the
statistics of the registration area, U. S. Census of 1880, when the child
mortality (0-4 years) was 400 per thousand, as calculated by Alexander
Graham Bell. A mortality of 53 for the first four years of life is
smaller than any district known in the United States, even to-day, can
show for the _first_ year of life _alone_. If any city could bring the
deaths of babies during their first twelve months down to 53 per 1,000,
it would think it had achieved the impossible; but here is a population
in which 53 per 1,000 covers the deaths, not only of the fatal first 12
months, but of the following three years in addition.
Now this population with an unprecedentedly low rate of child mortality
is not one which had had the benefit of any Baby Saving Campaign, nor
even the knowledge of modern science. Its mothers were mostly poor, many
of them ignorant; they lived frequently under conditions of hardship;
they were peasants and pioneers. Their babies grew up without doctors,
without pasteurized milk, without ice, without many sanitary
precautions, usually on rough food. But they had one advantage which no
amount of applied science can give after birth--namely, good heredity.
They had inherited exceptionally good constitutions.
It is not by accident that inherited longevity in a family is associated
with low mortality of its children. The connection between the two facts
was first discovered by Mary Beeton and Karl Pearson in their pioneer
work on the inheritance of duration of life. They found that high infant
mortality was associated with early death of parents, while the
offspring of long-lived parents showed few deaths in childhood. The
correlation of the two facts was quite regular, as will be evident from
a glance at the following tables prepared by A. Ploetz:
LENGTH OF LIFE OF MOTHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR DAUGHTERS.
ENGLISH QUAKER FAMILIES, DATA OF BEETON AND PEARSON, ARRANGED BY
PLOETZ
Year of life in which mothers died At
all
0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up ages
No. of daughters 234 304 305 666 247 1846
No. of them who died in
first 5 years 122 114 118 131 26 511
Per cent. of daughters
who died 52. 1 37. 5 29. 9 19. 7 10. 5 27. 7
LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR
DAUGHTERS
Year of life in which fathers died At
0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up all
ages
No. of daughters 105 284 585 797 236 2009
No. of them who died in
first 5 years 51 98 156 177 40 522
Per cent. of daughters
who died 48. 6 34. 5 26. 7 22. 2 17. 0 26. 0
To save space, we do not show the relation between parent and son; it is
similar to that of parent and daughter which is shown in the preceding
tables. In making comparison with the 340 families from the Genealogical
Record Office, above studied, it must be noted that Dr. Ploetz' tables
include one year longer in the period of child mortality, being computed
for the first five years of life instead of the first four. His
percentages would therefore be somewhat lower if computed on the basis
used in the American work.
These various data demonstrate the existence of a considerable
correlation between short life (_brachybioty_, Karl Pearson calls it) in
parent and short life in offspring. Not only is the tendency to live
long inherited, but the tendency _not_ to live long is likewise
inherited.
But perhaps the reader may think they show nothing of the sort. He may
fancy that the early death of a parent left the child without sufficient
care, and that neglect, poverty, or some other factor of euthenics
brought about the child's death. Perhaps it lacked a mother's loving
attention, or perhaps the father's death removed the wage-earner of the
family and the child thenceforth lacked the necessities of life.
Dr. Ploetz has pointed out[192] that this objection is not valid,
because the influence of the parent's death is seen to hold good even to
the point where the child was too old to require any assistance. If the
facts applied only to cases of early death, the supposed objection might
be weighty, but the correlation exists from one end of the age-scale to
the other. It is not credible that a child is going to be deprived of
any necessary maternal care when its mother dies at the age of 69; the
child herself was probably married long before the death of the mother.
Nor is it credible that the death of the father takes bread from the
child's mouth, leaving it to starve to death in the absence of a pension
for widowed mothers, if the father died at 83, when the "child" herself
was getting to be an old woman. The early death of a parent may
occasionally bring about the child's death for a reason wholly
unconnected with heredity, but the facts just pointed out show that such
cases are exceptional. The steady association of the child death-rate
and parent death-rate _at all ages_ demonstrates that heredity is a
common cause.
But the reader may suspect another fallacy. The cause of this
association is really environmental, he may think, and the same poverty
or squalor which causes the child to die early may cause the parent to
die early. They may both be of healthy, long-lived stock, but forced to
live in a pestiferous slum which cuts both of them off prematurely and
thereby creates a spurious correlation in the statistics.
We can dispose of this objection most effectively by bringing in new
evidence. It will probably be admitted that in the royal families of
Europe, the environment is as good as knowledge and wealth can make it.
No child dies for lack of plenty of food and the best medical care, even
if his father or mother died young. And the members of this caste are
not exposed to any such unsanitary conditions, or such economic pressure
as could possibly cause both parent and child to die prematurely. If the
association between longevity of parent and child mortality holds for
the royal families of Europe and their princely relatives, it can hardly
be regarded as anything but the effect of heredity,--of the inheritance
of a certain type of constitution.
Dr. Ploetz studied the deaths of 3,210 children in European royalty,
from this viewpoint. The following table shows the relation between
father and child:
LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR CHILDREN IN
ROYAL AND PRINCELY FAMILIES, PLOETZ' DATA
At
Year of life in which fathers died Years all
ages
16-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66-75 76-85 86 up
No. of children. 23 90 367 545 725 983 444 33 3210
No. who died in
first 5 years 12 29 115 171 200 254 105 1 887
Per cent. who
died 52. 2 32. 2 31. 3 31. 4 27. 6 25. 8 23. 6 3. 0 27. 6
Allowing for the smallness of some of the groups, it is evident that
the amount of correlation is about the same here as among the English
Quakers of the Beeton-Pearson investigation, whose mortality was shown
in the two preceding tables. In the healthiest group from the royal
families--the cases in which the father lived to old age--the amount of
child mortality is about the same as that of the Hyde family in America,
which Alexander Graham Bell has studied--namely, somewhere around 250
per 1,000. One may infer that the royal families are rather below par in
soundness of constitution. [193]
All these studies agree perfectly in showing that the amount of child
mortality is determined primarily by the physical constitution of the
parents, as measured by their longevity. In the light of these facts,
the nature of the extraordinarily low child mortality shown in the 340
families from the Genealogical Record Office, with which we began the
study of this point, can hardly be misunderstood. These families have
the best inherited constitution possible and the other studies cited
would make us certain of finding a low child mortality among them, even
if we had not directly investigated the facts.
If the interpretation which we have given is correct, the conclusion is
inevitable that child mortality is primarily a problem of eugenics, and
that all other factors are secondary. There is found to be no warrant
for the statement so often repeated in one form or another, that "the
fundamental cause of the excessive rate of infant mortality in
industrial communities is poverty, inadequate incomes, and low standards
of living. "[194] Royalty and its princely relatives are not
characterized by a low standard of living, and yet the child mortality
among them is very high--somewhere around 400 per 1,000, in cases where
a parent died young. If poverty is responsible in the one case, it must
be in the other--which is absurd. Or else the logical absurdity is
involved of inventing one cause to explain an effect to-day and a wholly
different cause to explain the same effect to-morrow. This is
unjustifiable in any case, and it is particularly so when the single
cause that explains both cases is so evident. If weak heredity causes
high mortality in the royal families, why, similarly, can not weak
heredity cause high infant mortality in the industrial communities? We
believe it does account for much of it, and that the inadequate income
and low standard of living are largely the consequences of inferior
heredity, mental as well as physical. The parents in the Genealogical
Record Office files had, many of them, inadequate incomes and low
standards of living under frontier conditions, but their children grew
up while those of the royal families were dying in spite of every
attention that wealth could command and science could furnish.
If the infant mortality problem is to be solved on the basis of
knowledge and reason, it must be recognized that sanitation and hygiene
can not take the place of eugenics any more than eugenics can dispense
with sanitation and hygiene. It must be recognized that the death-rate
in childhood is largely selective, and that the most effective way to
cut it down is to endow the children with better constitutions. This can
not be done solely by any euthenic campaign; it can not be done by
swatting the fly, abolishing the midwife, sterilizing the milk, nor by
any of the other panaceas sometimes proposed.
But, it may be objected, this discussion ignores the actual facts.
Statistics show that infant mortality campaigns _have_ consistently
produced reductions in the death-rate. The figures for New York, which
could be matched in dozens of other cities, show that the number of
deaths per 1,000 births, in the first year of life, has steadily
declined since a determined campaign to "Save the Babies" was started:
1902 181
1903 152
1904 162
1905 159
1906 153
1907 144
1908 128
1909 129
1910 125
1911 112
1912 105
1913 102
1914 95
To one who can not see beyond the immediate consequences of an action,
such figures as the above indeed give quite a different idea of the
effects of an infant mortality campaign, than that which we have just
tried to create. And it is a great misfortune that euthenics so often
fails to look beyond the immediate effect, fails to see what may happen
next year, or 10 years from now, or in the next generation.
We admit that it is possible to keep a lot of children alive who would
otherwise have died in the first few months of life. It is being done,
as the New York figures, and pages of others that could be cited, prove.
The ultimate result is twofold:
1. Some of those who are doomed by heredity to a selective death, but
are kept alive through the first year, die in the second or third or
fourth year. They must die sooner or later; they have not inherited
sufficient resistance to survive more than a limited time. If they are
by a great effort carried through the first year, it is only to die in
the next. This is a statement which we have nowhere observed in the
propaganda of the infant mortality movement; and it is perhaps a
disconcerting one. It can only be proved by refined statistical methods,
but several independent determinations by the English biometricians
leave no doubt as to the fact. This work of Karl Pearson, E. C. Snow, and
Ethel M. Elderton, was cited in our chapter on natural selection; the
reader will recall how they showed that nature is weeding out the
weaklings, and in proportion to the stringency with which she weeds them
out at the start, there are fewer weaklings left to die in succeeding
years.
To put the facts in the form of a truism, part of the children born in
any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to an early death;
and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in the
succeeding year, and vice versa. Of course there are in addition infant
deaths which are not selective and which if prevented would leave the
infant with as good a chance as any to live.
In the light of these researches, we are forced to conclude that
baby-saving campaigns accomplish less than is thought; that the supposed
gain is to some extent temporary and illusory.
2. There is still another consequence. If the gain is by great exertions
made more than temporary; if the baby who would otherwise have died in
the first months is brought to adult life and reproduction, it means in
many cases the dissemination of another strain of weak heredity, which
natural selection would have cut off ruthlessly in the interests of race
betterment. In so far, then, as the infant mortality movement is not
futile it is, from a strict biological viewpoint, often detrimental to
the future of the race.
Do we then discourage all attempts to save the babies? Do we leave them
all to natural selection? Do we adopt the "better dead" gospel?
Unqualifiedly, no! The sacrifice of the finer human feelings, which
would accompany any such course, would be a greater loss to the race
than is the eugenic loss from the perpetuation of weak strains of
heredity. The abolition of altruistic and humanitarian sentiment for the
purpose of race betterment would ultimately defeat its own end by making
race betterment impossible.
But race betterment will also be impossible unless a clear distinction
is made between measures that really mean race betterment of a
fundamental and permanent nature, and measures which do not.
We have chosen the Infant Mortality Movement for analysis in this
chapter because it is an excellent example of the kind of social
betterment which is taken for granted, by most of its proponents, to be
a fundamental piece of race betterment; but which, as a fact, often
means race impairment. No matter how abundant and urgent are the reasons
for continuing to reduce infant mortality wherever possible, it is
dangerous to close the eyes to the fact that the gain from it is of a
kind that must be paid for in other ways; that to carry on the movement
without adding eugenics to it will be a short-sighted policy, which
increases the present happiness of the world at the cost of diminishing
the happiness of posterity through the perpetuation of inferior strains.
Now, then, knowing that the racial contribution of the sexually moral is
greater than that of the sexually immoral, we may compare the quality of
the sexually moral and immoral, to get the evolutionary effect.
For this purpose a distinction must be made between the individual who
has been chaste till the normal time of marriage and whose sexual life
is truly monogamous, and that abnormal group who remain chaste and
celibate to an advanced age. These last are not moral in the last
analysis, if they have valuable and needed traits and are fertile,
because in the long run their failure to reproduce affects adversely the
welfare of their group. While the race suffers through the failure of
many of these individuals to contribute progeny, probably this does not
happen, so far as males are concerned, as much as might be supposed, for
such individuals are often innately defective in their instincts or, in
the case of disappointed lovers, have a badly proportioned emotional
equipment, since it leads them into a position so obviously opposed to
race interests.
But, to pass to the essential comparison, that between the sexually
immoral and the sexually moral as limited above, it is necessary first
of all to decide whether monogamy is a desirable and presumably
permanent feature of human society.
We conclude that it is:
1. Because it is spreading at the expense of polygamy even where not
favored by legal interference. The change is most evident in China.
2. In monogamy, sexual selection puts a premium on valuable traits of
character, rather than on mere personal beauty or ability to acquire
wealth; and
3. The greatest amount of happiness is produced by a monogamous system,
since in a polygamous society so many men must remain unmarried and so
many women are dissatisfied with having to share their mates with
others.
Assuming this, then adaptation to the condition of monogamous society
represents race progress. Such a race profits if those who do not comply
with its conditions make a deficient racial contribution. It follows
then that sexual immorality is eugenic in its result for the species and
that if all sexual immorality should cease, an important means of race
progress might be lost. An illustration is the case of the Negro in
America, whose failure to increase more rapidly in number is largely
attributable to the widespread sterility resulting from venereal
infection. [185] Should venereal diseases be eliminated, that race might
be expected to increase in numbers very much faster than the whites.
It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect
upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary,
we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is
pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy.
The traditional view of sexual morality has been to ignore the
selectional aspect here discussed and to stress the alleged
deterioration of the germ-plasm by the direct action of the toxins of
syphilis. The evidence relied upon to demonstrate this action seems to
be vitiated by the possibility that there was, instead, a transmitted
infection of the progeny. This "racial poison" action, since it is so
highly improbable from analogy, can not be credited until it has been
demonstrated in cases where the parents have been indubitably cured.
Is it necessary, then, to retain sexual immorality in order to achieve
race progress? No, because it is only one of many factors contributing
to race progress. Society can mitigate this as well as alcoholism,
disease, infant mortality--all powerful selective factors--without harm,
provided increased efficiency of other selective factors is ensured,
such as the segregation of defectives, more effective sexual selection,
a better correlation of income and ability, and a more eugenic
distribution of family limitation.
TRADES UNIONISM
A dysgenic feature often found in trades unionism will easily be
understood after our discussion of the minimum wage. The union tends to
standardize wages; it tends to fix a wage in a given industry, and
demand that nearly all workers in that classification be paid that wage.
It cannot be denied that some of these workers are much more capable
than others. Artificial interference with a more exact adjustment of
wages to ability therefore penalizes the better workmen and subsidizes
the worse ones. Economic pressure is thereby put on the better men to
have fewer children, and with the worse men encourages more children,
than would be the case if their incomes more nearly represented their
real worth. Payment according to the product, with prizes and bonuses so
much opposed by the unions, is more in accord with the principles of
eugenics.
PROHIBITION
It was shown in Chapter II that the attempt to ban alcoholic beverages
on the ground of direct dysgenic effect is based on dubious evidence.
But the prohibition of the use of liquors, at least those containing
more than 5% alcohol, can be defended on indirect eugenic grounds, as
well as on the familiar grounds of pathology and economics which are
commonly cited.
1. Unless it is present to such a degree as to constitute a neurotic
taint, the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad
thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the
responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable
strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the
death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others
in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were not
available.
2. In selection for eugenic improvement, it is desirable not to have to
select for too many traits at once. If alcoholism could, through
prohibition, be eliminated from consideration, it would just so far
simplify the problem of eugenics.
3. Drunkenness interferes with the effectiveness of means for family
limitation, so that if his alcoholism is not extreme, the drunkard's
family is sometimes larger than it would otherwise be.
On the other hand, prohibition is dysgenic and intemperance is eugenic
in their effect on the species in so far as alcoholism is correlated
with other undesirable characters and brings about the elimination of
undesirable strains. But its action is not sufficiently discriminating
nor decisive; and if the strains have many serious defects, they can
probably be dealt with better in some other, more direct way.
We conclude, then, that, on the whole, prohibition is desirable for
eugenic as well as for other reasons.
PEDAGOGICAL CELIBACY
Whether women are more efficient teachers than men, and whether single
women are more efficient teachers than married women, are disputed
questions which it is not proposed here to consider. Accepting the
present fact, that most of the school teachers in the United States are
unmarried women, it is proper to examine the eugenic consequences of
this condition.
The withdrawal of this large body of women from the career of motherhood
into a celibate career may be desirable if these women are below the
average of the rest of the women of the population in eugenic quality.
But it would hardly be possible to find enough eugenic inferiors to fill
the ranks of teachers, without getting those who are inferior in actual
ability, in patent as well as latent traits. And the idea of placing
education in the hands of such inferior persons is not to be considered.
It is, therefore, inevitable that the teachers are, on the whole,
superior persons eugenically. Their celibacy must be considered highly
detrimental to racial welfare.
But, it may be said, there is a considerable number of women so
deficient in sex feeling or emotional equipment that they are certain
never to marry; they are, nevertheless, persons of intellectual ability.
Let them be the school teachers. This solution is, however, not
acceptable. Many women of the character described undoubtedly exist, but
they are better placed in some other occupation. It is wholly
undesirable that children should be reared under a neuter influence,
which is probably too common already in education.
If women are to teach, then, it must be concluded that on eugenic
grounds preference should be given to married rather than single
teachers, and that the single ones should be encouraged to marry. This
requires (1) that considerable change be made in the education of young
women, so that they shall be fitted for motherhood rather than
exclusively for school teaching as is often the case, and (2) that
social devices be brought into play to aid them in mating--since
undoubtedly a proportion of school teachers are single from the
segregating character of their profession, not from choice, and (3)
provision for employing some women on half-time and (4) increase of the
number of male teachers in high schools.
It is, perhaps, unnecessary to mention a fifth change necessary: that
school boards must be brought to see the undesirability of employing
only unmarried women, and of discharging them, no matter how efficient,
if they marry or have children. The courts must be enabled to uphold
woman's right of marriage and motherhood, instead of, as in some cases
at present, upholding school boards in their denial of this right.
Contracts which prevent women teachers from marrying or discontinuing
their work for marriage should be illegal, and talk about the "moral
obligation" of normal school graduates to teach should be
discountenanced.
Against the proposal to employ married school teachers, two objections
are urged. It is said (1) that for most women school teaching is merely
a temporary occupation, which they take up to pass the few years until
they shall have married. To this it may be replied that the hope of
marriage too often proves illusory to the young woman who enters on the
pedagogical career, because of the lack of opportunities to meet men,
and because the nature of her work is not such as to increase her
attractiveness to men, nor her fitness for home-making. Pedagogy is too
often a sterilizing institution, which takes young women who desire to
marry and impairs their chance of marriage.
Again it will be said (2) that married teachers would lose too much
time from their work; that their primary interests would be in their own
homes instead of in the school; that they could not teach school without
neglecting their own children. These objections fall in the realm of
education, not eugenics, and it can only be said here that the reasons
must be extraordinarily cogent, which will justify the enforcement of
celibacy on so large a body of superior young women as is now engaged in
school teaching.
The magnitude of the problem is not always realized. In 1914 the
Commissioner of education reported that there were, in the United
States, 169,929 men and 537,123 women engaged in teaching. Not less than
half a million women, therefore, are potentially affected by the
institution of pedagogical celibacy.
CHAPTER XIX
RELIGION AND EUGENICS
Man is the only animal with a religion. The conduct of the lower animals
is guided by instinct,[186] and instinct normally works for the benefit
of the species. Any action which is dictated by instinct is likely to
result in the preservation of the species, even at the expense of the
individual which acts, provided there has not been a recent change in
the environment.
But in the human species reason appears, and conduct is no longer
governed by instinct alone. A young man is impelled by instinct, for
instance, to marry. It is to the interests of the species that he marry,
and instinct therefore causes him to desire to marry and to act as he
desires. A lower animal would obey the impulse of instinct without a
moment's hesitation. Not so the man. Reason intervenes and asks, "Is
this really the best thing for you to do now? Would you not better wait
awhile and get a start in your business? Of course marriage would be
agreeable, but you must not be short-sighted. You don't want to assume a
handicap just now. " There is a corresponding reaction among the married
in respect to bearing additional children. The interests of self are
immediate and easily seen, the interests of the species are not so
pressing. In any such conflict between instinct and reason, one must
win; and if reason wins it is in some cases for the immediate benefit of
the individual but at the expense of the species' interests.
Now with reason dominant over instinct in man, there is a grave danger
that with each man consulting his own interests instead of those of the
species, some groups and even races will become exterminated. Along
with reason, therefore, it is necessary that some other forces shall
appear to control reason and give the interests of the species a chance
to be heard along with the interests of the individual.
One such force is religion. Without insisting that this is the only view
which may be taken of the origin of religion, or that this is the only
function of religion, we may yet assert that one of the useful purposes
served by religion is to cause men to adopt lines of conduct that will
be for the good of the race, although it may sacrifice the immediate
good of the individual. [187] Thus if a young Mohammedan be put in the
situation just described, he may decide that it is to his material
interest to postpone marriage. His religion then obtrudes itself, with
quotations from the Prophet to the effect that Hell is peopled with
bachelors. The young man is thereupon moved to marry, even if it does
cause some inconvenience to his business plans. Religion, reinforcing
instinct, has triumphed over reason and gained a victory for the larger
interests of the species, when they conflict with the immediate
interests of the individual.
From this point of view we may, paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, define
religion as _motivated ethics_. Ethics is a knowledge of right conduct,
religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more
like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious
man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the
interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The
orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he
has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and
he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he
refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.
This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked
with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem
is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements.
Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it
was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We
shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity;
but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.
We can distinguish four phases of religion:
1. Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The
believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular
efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that
peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain
other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested
one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it
is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear,
and the act is therefore avoided.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first
system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the
result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an
after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which
everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence
of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea
still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural
character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important
to note that in neither of these systems is God essentially involved.
They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called
"luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of
God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse,
although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine power.
3. Theistic religion. In essence this consists of the satisfaction
derived from doing that which pleases God, or "getting into harmony with
the underlying plan of the universe," as some put it. It is idealistic
and somewhat mystic. It should be distinguished from the idea of doing
or believing certain things to insure salvation, which is not
essentially theistic but belongs under (2). The true theist desires to
conform to the will of God, wholly apart from whether he will be
rewarded or punished for so doing.
4. Humanistic religion. This is a willingness to make the end of ethics
the totality of happiness of all men, or some large group of men, rather
than to judge conduct solely by its effects on some one individual. At
its highest, it is a sort of loyalty to the species.
It must be noted that most cults include more than one of these
elements--usually all of them at various stages. As a race rises in
intelligence, it tends to progress from the first two toward the last
two, but usually keeping parts of the earlier attitude, more or less
clearly expressed. And individual adherents of a religion usually have
different ideas of its scope; thus the religious ideas of many
Christians embrace all four of the above elements; others who equally
consider themselves Christians may be influenced by little more than (4)
alone, or (3) alone, or even (2) alone.
There is no reason to believe that any one of these types of religion is
the only one adapted to promoting sound ethics in all individuals, nor
that a similar culture can bring about uniformity in the near future,
since the religion of a race corresponds to some extent to the inherent
nature of the mind of its individuals. Up to a certain point, each type
of religion has a distinct appeal to a certain temperament or type of
mind. With increasing intelligence, it is probable that a religion tends
to emphasize the interests of all rather than the benefits to be derived
by one; such has been clearly the case in the history of the Christian
religion. The diverse elements of retribution, damnation, "communion
with God" and social service still exist, but in America the last-named
one is yearly being more emphasized. Emphasis upon it is the marked
characteristic of Jesus' teaching.
With this rough sketch of religious ideas in mind, the part religion can
play at the present day in advancing the eugenic interests of the race
or species may be considered. Each religion can serve eugenics just as
well as it can serve any other field of ethics, and by the very same
devices. We shall run over our four types again and note what appeals
eugenics can make to each one.
1. Reward and punishment in this life. Here the value of children,
emotionally and economically, to their parents in their later life can
be shown, and the dissatisfaction that is felt by the childless. The
emotions may be reached (as they have been reached in past centuries) by
the painting of Madonnas, the singing of lullabies, by the care of the
baby sister, by the laurel wreath of the victorious son, by the great
choruses of white-robed girls, by the happiness of the bride, and by the
sentiment of the home. Here are some of the noblest subjects for the
arts, which in the past have unconsciously served eugenics well. In a
less emotional way, a deep desire for that "terrestrial immortality"
involved in posterity should be fostered. The doctrine of the continuity
of germ-plasm might play a large part in religion. It should at least be
brought home to everyone at some point in his education. Man should have
a much stronger feeling of identity with his forebears and his progeny.
Is it not a loss to Christians that they have so much less of this
feeling than the Chinese?
It may be urged in opposition that such conceptions are dangerously
static and have thereby harmed China. But that can be avoided by
shifting the balance a little from progenitors to posterity. If people
should live more in their children than they now do, they would be not
only anxious to give them a sound heredity, but all the more eager to
improve the conditions of their children's environment by modifying
their own.
It may be objected that this sort of propaganda is indiscriminate,--that
it may further the reproduction of the inferior just as much as the
superior. We think not. Such steps appeal more to the superior type of
mind and will be little heeded by the inferior. They will be ultimately,
if not directly, discriminative.
In so far as the foregoing appeals to reason alone it is not religion.
The appeal to reason must either be emotionalized or colored with the
supernatural to be religion.
2. Reward and punishment in a future life. Here the belief in the
absolute, verbal inspiration of sacred writings and the doctrine of
salvation by faith alone are rapidly passing, and it is therefore the
easier to bring eugenics into this type of religion. Even where
salvation by faith is still held as an article of creed, it is
accompanied by the concession that he who truly believes will manifest
his belief by works. Altruism can be found in the sacred writings of
probably all religions, and the modern tendency is to make much of such
passages, in which it is easy for the eugenist to find a warrant. What
is needed here, then, is to impress upon the leaders in this field that
eugenic conduct is a "good work" and as such they may properly include
it along with other modern virtues, such as honest voting and abstinence
from graft as a key to heaven. Dysgenic conduct should equally be taught
to be an obstacle to salvation.
3. Theism. The man who is most influenced by the desire to be at one
with God naturally wants to act in accordance with God's plan. But God
being omnibeneficent, he necessarily believes that God's plan is that
which is for the best interests of His children--unless he is one of
those happily rare individuals who still believe that the end of man is
to glorify God by voice, not by means of human betterment.
This type of religion (and the other types in different degrees) is a
great motive power. It both creates energy in its adherents, and directs
that energy into definite outlets. It need only be made convincingly
evident that eugenics is truly a work of human betterment,--really the
greatest work of human betterment, and a partnership with God--to have
it taken up by this type of religion with all the enthusiasm which it
brings to its work.
4. The task of enlisting the humanist appears to be even simpler. It is
merely necessary to show him that eugenics increases the totality of
happiness of the human species. Since the keynote of his devotion is
loyalty, we might make this plea: "Can we not make every superior man or
woman ashamed to accept existence as a gift from his or her ancestors,
only to extinguish this torch instead of handing it on? "
Eugenics is in some ways akin to the movement for the conservation of
natural resources. In pioneer days a race uses up its resources without
hesitation. They seem inexhaustible. Some day it is recognized that they
are not inexhaustible, and then such members of the race as are guided
by good ethics begin to consider the interests of the future.
No system of ethics is worth the name which does not make provision for
the future. It is right here that the ethics of present-day America is
too often found wanting. As this fault is corrected, eugenics will be
more clearly seen as an integral part of ethics.
Provision for the future of the individual leads, in a very low state of
civilization, to the accumulation of wealth. Even the ants and squirrels
have so much ethics! Higher in the evolutionary scale comes provision
for the future of children; their interests lead to the foundation of
the family and, at a much later date, a man looks not only to his
immediate children but to future generations of heirs, when he entails
his estates and tries to establish a notable family line. Provision for
the future is the essence of his actions. But so far only the individual
or those related closely to him have been taken into consideration. With
a growth of altruism, man begins to recognize that he must make
provision for the future of the race; that he should apply to all
superior families the same anxiety which he feels that his children
shall not tarnish the family name by foolish marriages; that they shall
grow up strong and intelligent. This feeling interpreted by science is
eugenics, an important element of which is religion: for religion more
than any other influence leads one to look ahead, and to realize that
immediate benefits are not the greatest values that man can secure in
life,--that there is something beyond and superior to eating, drinking
and being merry.
If the criterion of ethical action is the provision it makes for the
future, then the ethics of the eugenist must rank high, for he not only
looks far to the future, but takes direct and effective steps to
safeguard the future.
Theoretically, then, there is a place for eugenics in every type of
religion. In practice, it will probably make an impression only on the
dynamic religions,--those that are actually accomplishing something.
Buddhism, for example, is perhaps too contemplative to do anything. But
Christianity, above any other, would seem to be the natural ally of the
eugenist. Christianity itself is undergoing a rapid change in ideals at
present, and it seems impossible that this evolution should leave its
adherents as ignorant of and indifferent to eugenics as they have been
in the past--even during the last generation.
Followers of other religions, as this chapter has attempted to show, can
also make eugenics a part of their respective religions. If they do not,
then it bodes ill for the future of their religion and of their race.
It is not difficult to get people to see the value of eugenics,--to give
an intellectual adhesion to it. But as eugenics sometimes calls for
seeming sacrifices, it is much more difficult to get people to _act_
eugenically. We have at numerous points in this book emphasized the
necessity of making the eugenic appeal emotional, though it is based
fundamentally on sound reasoning from facts of biology.
The great value of religion in this connection is that it provides a
driving power,[188] a source of action, which the intellect alone can
rarely furnish. Reason itself is usually an inhibitor of action. It is
the emotions that impel one to do things.
The utilization of the
emotions in affecting conduct is by no means always a part of religion,
yet it is the essence of religion. Without abandoning the appeal to
reason, eugenists must make every effort to enlist potent emotional
forces on their side. There is none so strong and available as religion,
and the eugenist may turn to it with confidence of finding an effective
ally, if he can once gain its sanction.
The task, as this chapter was intended to show, is a complex one, yet we
see no insuperable obstacles to it. Eugenics may not become a part of
the Christian religion, as a whole, until scientific education is much
more widespread than at present, but it is not too soon to make a start,
by identifying the interests of the two wherever such identification is
justified and profitable.
We have endeavored to point out that as a race rises, and instinct
becomes less important in guiding the conduct of its members, religion
has often put a restraint on reason, guiding the individual in racially
profitable paths. What is to happen when religion gives way? Unbridled
selfishness too often takes the reins, and the interests of the species
are disregarded. Religion, therefore, appears to be a necessity for the
perpetuation of any race. It is essential to racial welfare that the
national religion should be of such a character as to appeal to the
emotions effectively and yet conciliate the reason. We believe that the
religion of the future is likely to acquire this character, in
proportion as it adheres to eugenics. There is no room in the civilized
world now for a dysgenic religion. Science will progress. The idea of
evolution will be more firmly grasped. Religion itself evolves, and any
religion which does not embrace eugenics will embrace death.
CHAPTER XX
EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS
Emphasis has been given, in several of the foregoing chapters, to the
desirability of inheriting a good constitution and a high degree of
vigor and disease-resistance. It has been asserted that no measures of
hygiene and sanitation can take the place of such inheritance. It is now
desirable to ascertain the limits within which good inheritance is
effective, and this may be conveniently done by a study of the lives of
a group of people who inherited exceptionally strong physical
constitutions.
The people referred to are taken from a collection of histories of long
life made by the Genealogical Record Office of Washington. [189] One
hundred individuals were picked out at random, each of whom had died at
the age of 90 or more, and with the record of each individual were
placed those of all his brothers and sisters. Any family was rejected in
which there was a record of wholly accidental death (e. g. , families of
which a member had been killed in the Civil War). The 100 families, or
more correctly fraternities or sibships, were classified by the number
of children per fraternity, as follows:
Number of Total number
Number of children per of children
fraternities fraternity in group
1 2 2
11 3 33
8 4 32
17 5 85
13 6 78
14 7 98
9 8 72
11 9 99
10 10 100
3 11 33
2 12 24
1 13 13
--- ---
100 669
The average at death of these 669 persons was 64. 7 years. The child
mortality (first 4 years of life) was 7. 5% of the total mortality, 69
families showing no deaths of that kind. The group is as a whole,
therefore, long-lived.
The problem was to measure the resemblance between brothers and sisters
in respect of longevity,--to find whether knowledge of the age at which
one died would justify a prediction as to the age at death of the
others,--or technically, it was to measure the fraternal correlation of
longevity. A zero coefficient here would show that there is no
association; that from the age at which one dies, nothing whatever can
be predicted as to the age at which the others will die. Since it is
known that heredity is a large factor in longevity, such a finding would
mean that all deaths were due to some accident which made the
inheritance of no account.
In an ordinary population it has been found that the age at death of
brothers and sisters furnishes a coefficient of correlation of the order
of . 3, which shows that heredity does determine the age at which one
shall die to considerable extent, but not absolutely. [190]
The index of correlation[191] between the lengths of life within the
fraternity in these 100 selected families, furnished a coefficient
of-. 0163? . 0672, practically zero. In other words, if the age is known at
which a member of one of these families died, whether it be one month or
100 years, nothing whatever can be predicted about the age at which his
brothers and sisters died.
Remembering that longevity is in general inherited, and that it is found
in the families of all the people of this study (since one in each
fraternity lived to be 90 or over) how is one to interpret this zero
coefficient? Evidently it means that although these people had inherited
a high degree of longevity, their deaths were brought about by causes
which prevented the heredity from getting full expression. As far as
hereditary potentialities are concerned, it can be said that all their
deaths were due to accident, using that word in a broad sense to include
all non-selective deaths by disease. If they had all been able to get
the full benefit of their heredity, it would appear that each of these
persons might have lived to 90 or more, as did the one in each family
who was recorded by the Genealogical Record Office. Genetically, these
other deaths may be spoken of as premature.
In an ordinary population, the age of death is determined to the extent
of probably 50% by heredity. In this selected long-lived population,
heredity appears not to be responsible in any measurable degree
whatsoever for the differences in age at death.
The result may be expressed in another, and perhaps more striking, way.
Of the 669 individuals studied, a hundred--namely, one child in each
family--lived beyond 90; and there were a few others who did. But some
550 of the group, though they had inherited the potentiality of reaching
the average age of 90, actually died somewhere around 60; they failed by
at least one-third to live up to the promise of their inheritance. If we
were to generalize from this single case, we would have to say that
five-sixths of the population does not make the most of its physical
inheritance.
This is certainly a fact that discourages fatalistic optimism. The man
who tells himself that, because of his magnificent inherited
constitution, he can safely take any risk, is pretty sure to take too
many risks and meet with a non-selective--i. e. , genetically, a
premature--death, when he might in the nature of things have lived
almost a generation longer.
It should be remarked that most of the members of this group seem to
have lived in a hard environment. They appear to belong predominantly to
the lower strata of society; many of them are immigrants and only a very
few of them, to judge by a cursory inspection of the records, possessed
more than moderate means. This necessitated a frugal and industrious
life which in many ways was doubtless favorable to longevity but which
may often have led to overexposure, overwork, lack of proper medical
treatment, or other causes of a non-selective death. We would not push
the conclusion too far, but we can not doubt that this investigation
shows the folly of ignoring the environment,--shows that the best
inherited constitution must have a fair chance. And what has here been
found for a physical character, would probably hold good in even greater
degree for a mental character. All that man inherits is the capacity to
develop along a certain line under the influence of proper
stimuli,--food and exercise. The object of eugenics is to see that the
inherent capacity is there. Given that, the educational system is next
needed to furnish the stimuli. The consistent eugenist is therefore an
ardent euthenist. He not only works for a better human stock but,
because he does not want to see his efforts wasted, he always works to
provide the best possible environment for this better stock.
In so far, then, as euthenics is actually providing man with more
favorable surroundings,--not with ostensibly more favorable surroundings
which, in reality, are unfavorable--there can be no antagonism between
it and eugenics. Eugenics is, in fact, a prerequisite of euthenics, for
it is only the capable and altruistic man who can contribute to social
progress; and such a man can only be produced through eugenics.
Eugenic fatalism, a blind faith in the omnipotence of heredity
regardless of the surroundings in which it is placed, has been shown by
the study of long-lived families to be unjustified. It was found that
even those who inherited exceptional longevity usually did not live as
long as their inheritance gave them the right to expect. If they had had
more euthenics, they should have lived longer.
But this illustration certainly gives no ground for a belief that
euthenics is sufficient to prolong one's life _beyond_ the inherited
limit. A study of these long-lived families from another point of view
will reveal that heredity is the primary factor and that good
environment, euthenics, is the secondary one.
For this purpose we augment the 100 families of the preceding section by
the addition of 240 more families like them, and we examine each family
history to find how many of the children died before completing the
fourth year of life. The data are summarized in the following table:
CHILD MORTALITY IN FAMILIES OF LONG-LIVED STOCK, GENEALOGICAL RECORD
OFFICE DATA
Size of No. of families No. of families Total no.
family investigated showing deaths of deaths
under 5 years
1 child 6 0 0
2 children 6 0 0
3 " 38 4 5
4 " 40 6 7
5 " 38 4 4
6 " 44 12 13
7 " 34 8 11
8 " 46 13 18
9 " 31 14 20
10 " 27 14 14
11 " 13 6 9
12 " 13 9 16
13 " 1 0 0
14 " 2 0 0
17 " 1 1 2
--- --- ---
340 91 119
The addition of the new families (which were not subjected to any
different selection than the first 100) has brought down the child
mortality rate. For the first 100, it was found to be 7. 5%. If in the
above table the number of child deaths, 119, be divided by the total
number of children represented, 2,259, the child mortality rate for this
population is found to be 5. 27%, or 53 per thousand.
The smallness of this figure may be seen by comparison with the
statistics of the registration area, U. S. Census of 1880, when the child
mortality (0-4 years) was 400 per thousand, as calculated by Alexander
Graham Bell. A mortality of 53 for the first four years of life is
smaller than any district known in the United States, even to-day, can
show for the _first_ year of life _alone_. If any city could bring the
deaths of babies during their first twelve months down to 53 per 1,000,
it would think it had achieved the impossible; but here is a population
in which 53 per 1,000 covers the deaths, not only of the fatal first 12
months, but of the following three years in addition.
Now this population with an unprecedentedly low rate of child mortality
is not one which had had the benefit of any Baby Saving Campaign, nor
even the knowledge of modern science. Its mothers were mostly poor, many
of them ignorant; they lived frequently under conditions of hardship;
they were peasants and pioneers. Their babies grew up without doctors,
without pasteurized milk, without ice, without many sanitary
precautions, usually on rough food. But they had one advantage which no
amount of applied science can give after birth--namely, good heredity.
They had inherited exceptionally good constitutions.
It is not by accident that inherited longevity in a family is associated
with low mortality of its children. The connection between the two facts
was first discovered by Mary Beeton and Karl Pearson in their pioneer
work on the inheritance of duration of life. They found that high infant
mortality was associated with early death of parents, while the
offspring of long-lived parents showed few deaths in childhood. The
correlation of the two facts was quite regular, as will be evident from
a glance at the following tables prepared by A. Ploetz:
LENGTH OF LIFE OF MOTHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR DAUGHTERS.
ENGLISH QUAKER FAMILIES, DATA OF BEETON AND PEARSON, ARRANGED BY
PLOETZ
Year of life in which mothers died At
all
0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up ages
No. of daughters 234 304 305 666 247 1846
No. of them who died in
first 5 years 122 114 118 131 26 511
Per cent. of daughters
who died 52. 1 37. 5 29. 9 19. 7 10. 5 27. 7
LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR
DAUGHTERS
Year of life in which fathers died At
0-38 39-53 54-68 69-83 84 up all
ages
No. of daughters 105 284 585 797 236 2009
No. of them who died in
first 5 years 51 98 156 177 40 522
Per cent. of daughters
who died 48. 6 34. 5 26. 7 22. 2 17. 0 26. 0
To save space, we do not show the relation between parent and son; it is
similar to that of parent and daughter which is shown in the preceding
tables. In making comparison with the 340 families from the Genealogical
Record Office, above studied, it must be noted that Dr. Ploetz' tables
include one year longer in the period of child mortality, being computed
for the first five years of life instead of the first four. His
percentages would therefore be somewhat lower if computed on the basis
used in the American work.
These various data demonstrate the existence of a considerable
correlation between short life (_brachybioty_, Karl Pearson calls it) in
parent and short life in offspring. Not only is the tendency to live
long inherited, but the tendency _not_ to live long is likewise
inherited.
But perhaps the reader may think they show nothing of the sort. He may
fancy that the early death of a parent left the child without sufficient
care, and that neglect, poverty, or some other factor of euthenics
brought about the child's death. Perhaps it lacked a mother's loving
attention, or perhaps the father's death removed the wage-earner of the
family and the child thenceforth lacked the necessities of life.
Dr. Ploetz has pointed out[192] that this objection is not valid,
because the influence of the parent's death is seen to hold good even to
the point where the child was too old to require any assistance. If the
facts applied only to cases of early death, the supposed objection might
be weighty, but the correlation exists from one end of the age-scale to
the other. It is not credible that a child is going to be deprived of
any necessary maternal care when its mother dies at the age of 69; the
child herself was probably married long before the death of the mother.
Nor is it credible that the death of the father takes bread from the
child's mouth, leaving it to starve to death in the absence of a pension
for widowed mothers, if the father died at 83, when the "child" herself
was getting to be an old woman. The early death of a parent may
occasionally bring about the child's death for a reason wholly
unconnected with heredity, but the facts just pointed out show that such
cases are exceptional. The steady association of the child death-rate
and parent death-rate _at all ages_ demonstrates that heredity is a
common cause.
But the reader may suspect another fallacy. The cause of this
association is really environmental, he may think, and the same poverty
or squalor which causes the child to die early may cause the parent to
die early. They may both be of healthy, long-lived stock, but forced to
live in a pestiferous slum which cuts both of them off prematurely and
thereby creates a spurious correlation in the statistics.
We can dispose of this objection most effectively by bringing in new
evidence. It will probably be admitted that in the royal families of
Europe, the environment is as good as knowledge and wealth can make it.
No child dies for lack of plenty of food and the best medical care, even
if his father or mother died young. And the members of this caste are
not exposed to any such unsanitary conditions, or such economic pressure
as could possibly cause both parent and child to die prematurely. If the
association between longevity of parent and child mortality holds for
the royal families of Europe and their princely relatives, it can hardly
be regarded as anything but the effect of heredity,--of the inheritance
of a certain type of constitution.
Dr. Ploetz studied the deaths of 3,210 children in European royalty,
from this viewpoint. The following table shows the relation between
father and child:
LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD-MORTALITY OF THEIR CHILDREN IN
ROYAL AND PRINCELY FAMILIES, PLOETZ' DATA
At
Year of life in which fathers died Years all
ages
16-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66-75 76-85 86 up
No. of children. 23 90 367 545 725 983 444 33 3210
No. who died in
first 5 years 12 29 115 171 200 254 105 1 887
Per cent. who
died 52. 2 32. 2 31. 3 31. 4 27. 6 25. 8 23. 6 3. 0 27. 6
Allowing for the smallness of some of the groups, it is evident that
the amount of correlation is about the same here as among the English
Quakers of the Beeton-Pearson investigation, whose mortality was shown
in the two preceding tables. In the healthiest group from the royal
families--the cases in which the father lived to old age--the amount of
child mortality is about the same as that of the Hyde family in America,
which Alexander Graham Bell has studied--namely, somewhere around 250
per 1,000. One may infer that the royal families are rather below par in
soundness of constitution. [193]
All these studies agree perfectly in showing that the amount of child
mortality is determined primarily by the physical constitution of the
parents, as measured by their longevity. In the light of these facts,
the nature of the extraordinarily low child mortality shown in the 340
families from the Genealogical Record Office, with which we began the
study of this point, can hardly be misunderstood. These families have
the best inherited constitution possible and the other studies cited
would make us certain of finding a low child mortality among them, even
if we had not directly investigated the facts.
If the interpretation which we have given is correct, the conclusion is
inevitable that child mortality is primarily a problem of eugenics, and
that all other factors are secondary. There is found to be no warrant
for the statement so often repeated in one form or another, that "the
fundamental cause of the excessive rate of infant mortality in
industrial communities is poverty, inadequate incomes, and low standards
of living. "[194] Royalty and its princely relatives are not
characterized by a low standard of living, and yet the child mortality
among them is very high--somewhere around 400 per 1,000, in cases where
a parent died young. If poverty is responsible in the one case, it must
be in the other--which is absurd. Or else the logical absurdity is
involved of inventing one cause to explain an effect to-day and a wholly
different cause to explain the same effect to-morrow. This is
unjustifiable in any case, and it is particularly so when the single
cause that explains both cases is so evident. If weak heredity causes
high mortality in the royal families, why, similarly, can not weak
heredity cause high infant mortality in the industrial communities? We
believe it does account for much of it, and that the inadequate income
and low standard of living are largely the consequences of inferior
heredity, mental as well as physical. The parents in the Genealogical
Record Office files had, many of them, inadequate incomes and low
standards of living under frontier conditions, but their children grew
up while those of the royal families were dying in spite of every
attention that wealth could command and science could furnish.
If the infant mortality problem is to be solved on the basis of
knowledge and reason, it must be recognized that sanitation and hygiene
can not take the place of eugenics any more than eugenics can dispense
with sanitation and hygiene. It must be recognized that the death-rate
in childhood is largely selective, and that the most effective way to
cut it down is to endow the children with better constitutions. This can
not be done solely by any euthenic campaign; it can not be done by
swatting the fly, abolishing the midwife, sterilizing the milk, nor by
any of the other panaceas sometimes proposed.
But, it may be objected, this discussion ignores the actual facts.
Statistics show that infant mortality campaigns _have_ consistently
produced reductions in the death-rate. The figures for New York, which
could be matched in dozens of other cities, show that the number of
deaths per 1,000 births, in the first year of life, has steadily
declined since a determined campaign to "Save the Babies" was started:
1902 181
1903 152
1904 162
1905 159
1906 153
1907 144
1908 128
1909 129
1910 125
1911 112
1912 105
1913 102
1914 95
To one who can not see beyond the immediate consequences of an action,
such figures as the above indeed give quite a different idea of the
effects of an infant mortality campaign, than that which we have just
tried to create. And it is a great misfortune that euthenics so often
fails to look beyond the immediate effect, fails to see what may happen
next year, or 10 years from now, or in the next generation.
We admit that it is possible to keep a lot of children alive who would
otherwise have died in the first few months of life. It is being done,
as the New York figures, and pages of others that could be cited, prove.
The ultimate result is twofold:
1. Some of those who are doomed by heredity to a selective death, but
are kept alive through the first year, die in the second or third or
fourth year. They must die sooner or later; they have not inherited
sufficient resistance to survive more than a limited time. If they are
by a great effort carried through the first year, it is only to die in
the next. This is a statement which we have nowhere observed in the
propaganda of the infant mortality movement; and it is perhaps a
disconcerting one. It can only be proved by refined statistical methods,
but several independent determinations by the English biometricians
leave no doubt as to the fact. This work of Karl Pearson, E. C. Snow, and
Ethel M. Elderton, was cited in our chapter on natural selection; the
reader will recall how they showed that nature is weeding out the
weaklings, and in proportion to the stringency with which she weeds them
out at the start, there are fewer weaklings left to die in succeeding
years.
To put the facts in the form of a truism, part of the children born in
any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to an early death;
and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in the
succeeding year, and vice versa. Of course there are in addition infant
deaths which are not selective and which if prevented would leave the
infant with as good a chance as any to live.
In the light of these researches, we are forced to conclude that
baby-saving campaigns accomplish less than is thought; that the supposed
gain is to some extent temporary and illusory.
2. There is still another consequence. If the gain is by great exertions
made more than temporary; if the baby who would otherwise have died in
the first months is brought to adult life and reproduction, it means in
many cases the dissemination of another strain of weak heredity, which
natural selection would have cut off ruthlessly in the interests of race
betterment. In so far, then, as the infant mortality movement is not
futile it is, from a strict biological viewpoint, often detrimental to
the future of the race.
Do we then discourage all attempts to save the babies? Do we leave them
all to natural selection? Do we adopt the "better dead" gospel?
Unqualifiedly, no! The sacrifice of the finer human feelings, which
would accompany any such course, would be a greater loss to the race
than is the eugenic loss from the perpetuation of weak strains of
heredity. The abolition of altruistic and humanitarian sentiment for the
purpose of race betterment would ultimately defeat its own end by making
race betterment impossible.
But race betterment will also be impossible unless a clear distinction
is made between measures that really mean race betterment of a
fundamental and permanent nature, and measures which do not.
We have chosen the Infant Mortality Movement for analysis in this
chapter because it is an excellent example of the kind of social
betterment which is taken for granted, by most of its proponents, to be
a fundamental piece of race betterment; but which, as a fact, often
means race impairment. No matter how abundant and urgent are the reasons
for continuing to reduce infant mortality wherever possible, it is
dangerous to close the eyes to the fact that the gain from it is of a
kind that must be paid for in other ways; that to carry on the movement
without adding eugenics to it will be a short-sighted policy, which
increases the present happiness of the world at the cost of diminishing
the happiness of posterity through the perpetuation of inferior strains.
