PARENTHOOD AND RACE CULTURE
 
 BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 'WORRY: THE DISEASE OP THE AGE 
 'EVOLUTION: THE MASTER KEY " 
 HEALTH. STRENGTH, AND HAPPINESS 
 Etc.. Etc.
 
 PARENTHOOD 
 
 AND 
 
 RACE CULTURE 
 
 An Outline of Eugenics 
 
 BY 
 
 CALEB WILLIAMS SALEEBY 
 
 M.D., CH.B., F.Z.S., F.R.S. EDIN. 
 
 FELLOW OF THE OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH, MEMBER OF 
 
 COUNCIL OF THE EUGENICS EDUCATION SOCIETY, OF THE 
 
 SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE 
 
 FOR PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND IMPROVEMENT 
 
 MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION 
 
 AND OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE 
 
 STUDY OF INEBRIETY 
 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 
 
 1909 
 
 PRIES!
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 BeMcatefc 
 
 TO 
 
 FRANCIS GALTON 
 
 THE 
 
 AUGUST MASTER OF ALL EUGENISTS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book, a first attempt to survey and define the whole 
 field of eugenics, appears in the year which finds us 
 celebrating the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin 
 and the jubilee of the publication of The Origin of Species. 
 It is a humble tribute to that immortal name, for it is 
 based upon the idea of selection for parenthood as deter- 
 mining the nature, fate and worth of living races, which 
 is Darwin's chief contribution to thought, and which 
 finds in eugenics its supreme application. The book is 
 also a tribute to the august pioneer who initiated the 
 modern study of eugenics in the light of his cousin's 
 principle. A few years ago I all but persuaded Mr. 
 Galton himself to write a general introduction to eugenics, 
 but he felt bound to withdraw from that undertaking, 
 and has given us instead his Memories, which we could 
 ill have spared. 
 
 The present volume seeks to supply what is undoubtedly 
 a real need at the present day a general introduction to 
 eugenics which is at least considered and responsible. 
 I am indebted to more than one pair of searching and 
 illustrious eyes, which I may not name, for reading the 
 proofs of this volume. My best hopes for its utility are 
 based upon this fact. If there be any other reason for 
 hope it is that during the last six years I have not only 
 written incessantly on eugenics, but have spoken upon 
 various aspects of it some hundreds of times to audiences 
 as various as one can well imagine a mainly clerical 
 assembly at Lambeth Palace with the Primate in the 
 
 vu
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 Chair, drawing-rooms of title, working-class audiences 
 from the Clyde to the Thames. It has been my rule to 
 invite questions whenever it was possible. Such a 
 discipline is invaluable. It gives new ideas and points 
 of view, discovers the existing forms of prejudice, sharply 
 corrects the tendency to partial statement. It is my hope 
 that these many hours of cross-examination will be 
 profitable to the present reader. 
 
 It has been sought to define the scope of eugenics, and 
 my consistent aim has been, if possible, to preserve its 
 natural unity without falling into the error, which I 
 seem to see almost everywhere, of excluding what is 
 strictly eugenic. Our primary idea, beyond dispute, is 
 selection for parenthood based upon the facts of heredity. 
 This, however, is not an end, but a means. Some 
 eugenists seem to forget the distinction. Our end is a 
 better race. If then, beyond selecting for parenthood, 
 it be desirable to take care of those selected as, for 
 instance, to protect the expectant mother from alcohol, 
 lead or syphilis that is strict eugenics on any definition 
 worth a moment's notice. It then appears, of course, 
 that our demands come into contact with those pre- 
 judices which political parties call their principles. A 
 given eugenic proposal or argument, for instance, may be 
 stamped as " Socialist " or as " Individualist," and people 
 who have labelled their eyes with these catchwords, 
 which eugenics will ere long make obsolete, proceed to 
 judge eugenics by them. But the question is not 
 whether a given proposal is socialistic, individualistic or 
 anything else, but whether it is eugenic. If it is eugenic, 
 that is final. To this all parties will come, and by this all 
 parties will be judged. The question is not whether 
 eugenics is, for instance, socialist, but whether socialism 
 is eugenic. I claim for eugenics that it is the final and 
 only judge of all proposals and principles, however 
 labelled, new or old, orthodox or heterodox. Some
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 years ago I ventured to coin the word eugenist, which is 
 now the accepted term. With that label I believe any 
 man or woman may well be content. If this be granted, 
 the old catchwords and the bias they create forgotten, 
 we may be prepared to consider what the scope of eugenics 
 really is. 
 
 Eugenics is not, for instance, a sub-section of applied 
 mathematics. It is at once a science, and a religion, 
 based upon the laws of life, and recognising in them the 
 foundation of society. We shall some day have a eugenic 
 sociology, to which the first part of this volume seeks to 
 contribute : and the sociology and politics which have 
 not yet discovered that man is mortal will go to their 
 own place. 
 
 Only when we begin to think and work continuously 
 at eugenics is its range revealed. The present volume is 
 a mere introduction to the principles of the subject : 
 the full elucidation of its practice is a problem for genera- 
 tions to come. Nor is it easy to set logical limits to our 
 inquiry. We may say that eugenics deals with con- 
 ceptions : and that the care of the expectant mother is 
 outside its scope : but of what use is it to have a eugenic 
 conception if its product is thereafter to be ruined by, for 
 instance, the introduction of lead into the mother's 
 organism ? Again, the care of the individual is, in part, 
 a eugenic concern : for if we desire his offspring we 
 desire that he shall not contract transmissible disease 
 nor vitiate his tissues with such a racial poison as alcohol. 
 Plainly, everything that affects every possible parent is a 
 matter of eugenic concern : and not only those factors 
 which affect the choice for parenthood. 
 
 It follows that the second portion of this volume, 
 which deals with the practice of eugenics, cannot be more 
 than merely indicative. In the available space it has 
 been attempted to define certain constituents of practical 
 eugenics, but in any case the entire ground has not been
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 surveyed. The concept of the racial poisons may be 
 commended to special consideration. Whether a poison be 
 so-called " chemical," as lead, or made by a living organism, 
 as the poison of syphilis, is of great practical importance, 
 because of the infection involved in the second case : 
 but, in principle, both cases belong to the same category. 
 Sooner or later, eugenists must face the transmissible 
 infections, and repudiate as hideous and devilish the 
 so-called morality which discountenances any attempt 
 to save unborn innocence from a nameless fate. He 
 or she who would rather leave this matter is placing 
 " religion " or " morality " or " politics " above the welfare 
 of the life to come, and therein continuing the daily 
 prostitution of those great names. 
 
 Again, the practice of eugenics may be commended 
 and accepted as the business of the patriot : and two 
 chapters have been devoted to the question as seen from 
 the national point of view. I am of nothing more certain 
 than that the choice for Great Britain to-day is between 
 national eugenics and the fate of all her Imperial pre- 
 decessors from Babylon to Spain. The whole book 
 might have been written from this standpoint, but such 
 a book would have been beneath the true eugenic plane, 
 which is not national but human. I believe in the 
 patriotism of William Watson, who desires the con- 
 tinuance of his country because, as he addresses her, 
 " O England, should'st them one day fall, 
 
 Justice were thenceforth weaker throughout all 
 The world, and truth less passionately free, 
 And God the poorer for thine overthrow." 
 This is a patriotism as splendid and vital as the patriotism 
 of the music-halls and of the political and journalistic 
 makers of wars is foul and fatal : and it is only in terms 
 of such patriotism that the appeal to love of country is 
 permissible in the advocacy of eugenics, which is a con- 
 cern for all mankind.
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 The prophet of that kind of Imperialism which has 
 destroyed so many Empires, has lately approved the 
 emigration of our best to the Colonies, on the ground 
 that " it is good to give the second eleven a chance." 
 But as students of history know, it is at the heart that 
 Empires rot. The case of Ireland is at present an 
 insoluble one because the emigration of the worthiest has 
 had full sway. So with the agricultural intellect : the 
 " first eleven " having gone to the towns. Rome sent 
 her " first eleven " to her Colonies : if you were not good 
 enough to be a Roman soldier you could at least remain 
 and be a Roman father : and the children of such fathers 
 perished in the downfall of the Empire which they could 
 no longer sustain. I can imagine no more foolish or 
 disastrous advice than this of Mr. Kipling's, in com- 
 mending that transportation of the worthiest which, 
 thoroughly enough persisted in, must inevitably mean 
 our ruin. 
 
 The national aspect of eugenics suggests its international 
 aspect, and its inter-racial aspect. Not having spent six 
 weeks rushing through the United States, I am unfortun- 
 ately dubious as to the worth of any opinions I may 
 possess regarding the most urgent form of this question to- 
 day. I mistrust not merely the brilliant students who, 
 unhampered by biological knowledge, pierce to the 
 bottom of this question in the course of such a tour, but 
 also the humanitarian bias of those who, like M. Finot, 
 or the distinguished American sociologist, Mr. Graham 
 Brooks, would almost have us believe that the negro is 
 mentally and morally the equal of the Caucasian. Least 
 of all does one trust the vulgar opinions of the man in 
 the street. Wisdom on this matter waits for the advent 
 of real knowledge. Similarly in the matter of Caucasian 
 Mongolian unions. I question whether any living 
 man knows enough to warrant the expression of any 
 decided opinion on this subject. Merely I here recognise
 
 Xll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 miscegenation in general as a problem in eugenics, to 
 which increasing attention must yearly be devoted. But 
 it would have been ridiculous to attempt to deal with that 
 great subject here. As for the marriage of cousins, to 
 take the opposite case, I always reply to the question, 
 " Should cousins marry ? " that it depends upon the 
 cousins. The good qualities of a good stock, the bad 
 qualities of a bad stock, are naturally accentuated by 
 such unions : I doubt whether there is much more to be 
 said about them. 
 
 In the following general study of a subject to which 
 no human affair is wholly alien, it has been impossible 
 to deal adequately with the great question of eugenic 
 education that is to say, education as for parenthood. 
 If only to emphasise its overwhelming importance, one 
 must here insist upon the argument. There is, I believe, 
 no greater need for society to-day than to recognise that 
 education must include, must culminate in, preparation 
 for the supreme duty of parenthood. This involves 
 instruction regarding those bodily functions which exist 
 not for the body nor for the present at all, but for the 
 future life of mankind. The exercise of these functions 
 depends upon an instinct which I have for some time been 
 in the habit of terming the racial instinct a name which 
 at once suggests to us that we are to represent this instinct, 
 to the boy or girl at puberty, not as something the satis- 
 faction of which is an end in itself that is the false and 
 degrading assertion which will be made by the teachers 
 whom youth will certainly find, if we fail in our duty 
 but as existing for what is immeasurably higher than any 
 selfish end. Youth must be taught that it is for man 
 the self-conscious, " made with such large discourse, 
 looking before and after," as Hamlet says, to deal with 
 his instincts in terms of their purpose, as no creature 
 but man can do. The boy and girl must learn that the
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 racial instinct exists for the highest of ends the con- 
 tinuance and ultimate elevation of the life of mankind. 
 It is a sacred trust for the life of this world to come. 
 We must teach our boys what it is to be really " manly " 
 the fine word used by the tempter of youth when he 
 means " beast-ly." To be manly is to be master of 
 this instinct. And the " higher education " of our 
 girls, as we must teach ourselves, will be lower, not 
 higher, if it does not serve and conserve the future mother, 
 both by teaching her how to care for and guard her body, 
 which is the temple of life to come, and how afterwards 
 to be a right educator of her children. The leading idea 
 upon which one would insist is that the key to any of 
 the right and useful methods of eugenic education is to 
 be found in the conception of the racial instinct as existing 
 for parenthood, and to be guarded, reverenced, educated 
 for that supreme end. It is for the reader who may be 
 responsible for youth of either sex with this key to solve the 
 problem on the lines best suited to his or her particular case. 
 By the application of mathematical methods to 
 statistics we can ascertain their real meaning, if they 
 have any. If, as frequently happens, they have none, 
 mathematical analysis is worse than useless. Mr. Galton 
 is the pioneer of this study, which Professor Karl Pearson 
 has named biometrics. Biometrics is not eugenics, as 
 some have supposed, but is a branch of scientific enquiry 
 which, like genetics, obstetrics and many more, con- 
 tributes to the foundations of eugenics. In the Appendix 
 reference is made to various publications, mostly inex- 
 pensive, which deal with biometrics. In the text I have 
 availed myself of biometric, genetic and other results 
 impartially. Differences of opinion between this school 
 and that of scientific workers are to be regretted by the 
 eugenist ; but it is for him to accept and use knowledge 
 of eugenic significance no matter by what method it has 
 been obtained. Directly he fails to do so he ceases to be
 
 xiv PREFACE 
 
 a eugenist and becomes the ordinary partisan. No 
 reference is made in the following pages, for instance, to 
 the law of ancestral inheritance, formulated by the Master 
 to whom the volume is dedicated and of whom all eugenists 
 are the followers. I believe that law, despite its beauty, 
 to be without basis in fact and incompatible with demon- 
 strated Mendelian phenomena : and though the book is 
 dedicated to Mr. Galton, it is more deeply dedicated to 
 the Future. This, indeed, is the Credo of the eugenist : 
 Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi 
 saeculi. 
 
 Woman is Nature's supreme instrument of the future. 
 The eugenist is therefore deeply concerned with her 
 education, her psychology, the conditions which permit 
 her to exercise her great natural function of choosing the 
 fathers of the future, the age at which she should marry, 
 and the compatibility between the discharge of her in- 
 comparable function of motherhood and the lesser 
 functions which some women now assume. Obstetrics, 
 and the modern physiology and psychology of sex, must 
 thus be harnessed to the service of eugenics, and I hope 
 to employ them for the elucidation, in a future volume, 
 of the problems of woman and womanhood, thus 
 regarded.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 1. INTRODUCTORY i 
 
 2. THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 17 
 
 3. NATURAL SELECTION AND THE LAW OF LOVE . 35 
 
 4. THE SELECTION OF MIND 52 
 
 5. THE MULTIPLICATION OF MAN . . .71 
 
 6. THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY .... 86 
 
 7. HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE .... 99 
 
 8. EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE .... 120 
 
 9. THE SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD . . . 145 
 
 10. MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM .... 160 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 11. NEGATIVE EUGENICS 171 
 
 12. SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE .... 184 
 
 13. THE RACIAL POISONS: ALCOHOL . . . .205 
 
 14. THE RACIAL POISONS : LEAD, NARCOTICS, SYPHILIS 246 
 
 15. NATIONAL EUGENICS : RACE-CULTURE AND HISTORY 254 
 
 16. NATIONAL EUGENICS : MR. BALFOUR ON DECADENCE 279 
 
 17. THE PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE . . 287 
 
 APPENDIX CONCERNING BOOKS TO READ . . 305 
 
 INDEX . ~. . 321
 
 PARENTHOOD AND RACE 
 CULTURE 
 
 PART I. THE THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 " A little child shall lead them " 
 
 THIS book will be mere foolishness to those who repeat 
 the inhuman and animal cry that we have to take the 
 world as we find it the motto of the impotent, the for- 
 gotten, the cowardly and selfish, or the merely vegetable, 
 in all ages. The capital fact of man, as distinguished 
 from the lower animals and from plants, is that he does 
 not have to take the world as he finds it, that he does 
 not merely adapt himself to his environment, but that 
 he himself is a creator of his world. If our ancestors had 
 taken and left the world as they found it, we should be 
 little more than erected monkeys to-day. For none who 
 accept the hopeless dogma is this book written. They 
 are welcome to take and leave the world as they find it ; 
 they are of no consequence to the world ; and their exist- 
 ence is of interest only in so far as it is another instance 
 of that amazing wastefulness of Nature in her genera- 
 tions, with which this book will be so largely concerned. 
 Beginning, perhaps, some six million years ago, the 
 fact which we call human life has persisted hitherto, 
 and shows no signs of exhaustion, much less impending 
 extinction, being indeed more abundant numerically and 
 more dominant over other forms of life and over the
 
 2 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 inanimate world to-day than ever before. It is a con- 
 tinuous phenomenon. The life of every blood corpuscle 
 or skin cell of every human being now alive is absolutely 
 continuous with that of the living cells of the first human 
 beings if not, indeed, as most biologists appear to 
 believe, of the first life upon the earth. Yet this continuous 
 life has been and apparently always must be lived in a 
 tissue of amazing discontinuity amazing, at least, to 
 those who can see the wonderful in the commonplace. 
 For though the world-phenomenon which we call Man 
 has been so long continuous, and is at this moment 
 perhaps as much modified by the total past as if it were 
 really a single undying individual, yet only a few decades 
 ago, a mere second in the history of the earth, no human 
 being now alive was in existence. " As for man, his days 
 are as grass : as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 
 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; and the 
 place thereof shall know it no more." Indeed, not merely 
 are we individually as grass, but in a few years the hand 
 that writes these words, and the tissues of eye and brain 
 whereby they are perceived, will actually be grass. Here, 
 then, is the colossal paradox : absolute and literal con- 
 tinuity of life, every cell from a preceding cell throughout 
 the ages omnis cettula e cellula ; yet three times in every 
 century the living and only wealth of nations is reduced 
 to dust, and is raised up again from helpless infancy. 
 Where else is such catastrophic continuity ? 
 
 Each individual enters the world in a fashion the 
 dramatic and sensational character of which can be 
 realised by none who have not witnessed it ; and in a few 
 years the individual dies, scarcely less dramatically as 
 a rule, and sometimes more so. This continuous and 
 apparently invincible thing, human life, which began so 
 humbly and to the sound .of no trumpets, in Southern 
 Asia or the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, but
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 which has never looked back since its birth, and is now 
 the dominant fact of what might well be an astonished 
 earth, depends in every age and from moment to 
 moment upon here a baby, there a baby and there yet 
 another ; these curious little objects being of all living 
 things, animal or vegetable, young or old, large or small, 
 the most utterly helpless and incompetent, incapable even 
 of finding for themselves the breasts that were made for 
 them. If but one of all the " hungry generations " that 
 have preceded us had failed to secure the care and love 
 of its predecessor, the curtain would have come down 
 and a not unpromising though hitherto sufficiently 
 grotesque drama would have been ended for ever. 
 
 This discontinuity it is which persuades many of us 
 to conceive human life to be not so much a mighty maze 
 without a plan, as a mere stringing of beads on an endless 
 cord of which one end arose in Mother Earth, whilst the 
 other may come at any time but goes nowhere. The 
 beads, which we call generations, vary in size and colour, 
 no doubt, but on no system ; each one makes a fresh 
 start ; the average difference between them is merely 
 one of position ; and the result is merely to make the 
 string longer. Or the generations might be conceived 
 as the links of an indeterminate chain, necessarily held to 
 each other : but suggesting not at all the idea of a living 
 process such that its every step is fraught with eternal 
 consequence. In a word, we incline to think that History 
 merely goes on repeating itself, and we have to learn that 
 History never repeats itself. Every generation is epoch- 
 making. 
 
 It is thus to the conception of parenthood as the vital 
 and organic link of life that we are forced : and the whole 
 of this book is really concerned with parenthood. We 
 shall see, in due course, that no generation, whether of 
 men or animals or plants, determines or provides, as a
 
 4 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 whole, the future of the race. Only a percentage, as a 
 rule a very small percentage indeed, of any species reach 
 maturity, and fewer still become parents. Amongst 
 ourselves, one-tenth of any generation gives birth to 
 one-half the next. These it is who, in the long run, 
 make History : a Kant or a Spencer, dying childless, 
 may leave what we call immortal works ; but unless 
 the parents of each new generation are rightly chosen 
 or " selected " to use the technical word a new 
 generation may at any time arise to whom the greatest 
 achievements of the past are nothing. The newcomers 
 will be as swine to these pearls, the immortality of which 
 is always conditional upon the capacity of those who 
 come after to appreciate them. There is here expressed 
 the distinction between two kinds of progress : the 
 traditional progress which is dependent upon transmitted 
 achievement, but in its turn is dependent upon racial 
 progress this last being the kind of progress of which 
 the history of pre-human life upon the planet is so largely 
 the record and of which mankind is the finest fruit 
 hitherto. 
 
 It is possible that a concrete case, common enough, 
 and thus the more significant, may appeal to the reader, 
 and help us to realise afresh the conditions under which 
 human life actually persists. 
 
 Forced inside a motor-omnibus one evening, for lack of 
 room outside, I found myself opposite a woman, poorly- 
 clothed, with a wedding-ring upon her finger and a baby 
 in her arms. The child was covered with a black shawl 
 and its face could not be seen. It was evidently asleep. 
 It should have been in its cot at that hour. The mother's 
 face roused feelings which a sonnet of Wordsworth's 
 might have expressed, or a painting by some artist with 
 a soul, a Rembrandt or a Watts, such as we may look for
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 in vain amongst the be-lettered to-day. Here was the 
 spectacle of mother and child, which all the great historic 
 religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, have rightly 
 worshipped ; the spectacle which more nearly symbolises 
 the sublime than any other upon which the eye of a 
 man, himself once such a child, can rest ; the spectacle 
 which alone epitomises the life of mankind and the 
 unalterable conditions of all human life and all human 
 societies, reminding us at once of our individual mortality, 
 and the immortality of our race 
 
 " While we, the brave, the mighty and the wise, 
 
 We Men, who in our morn of youth defied 
 
 The Elements, must vanish ; be it so ! 
 
 Enough, if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and serve the future hour : " 
 
 the spectacle which alone, if any can, may reconcile us 
 to death ; the spectacle of that which alone can sanctify 
 the love of the sexes ; the spectacle of motherhood in 
 being, the supreme duty and supreme privilege of woman- 
 hood " a mother is a mother still, the holiest thing 
 alive." 
 
 This woman, utterly unconscious of the dignity of her 
 attitude and of the contrast between herself and the 
 imitation of a woman, elegantly clothed, who sat next 
 her, giving her not a thought nor a glance, nor yet room 
 for the elbow bent in its divine office, was probably some 
 thirty-two or three years old, as time is measured by the 
 revolutions of the earth around the sun. Measured by 
 some more relevant gauge, she was evidently aged, her 
 face grey and drawn, desperately tired, yet placid not 
 with due exultation but with the calm of one who has 
 no hope. She was too weary to draw the child to her 
 bosom, and her arms lay upon her knees ; but instead 
 she bent her body downwards to her baby. She looked 
 straight out in front of her, not at me nor at the passing
 
 6 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 phantasms beyond, but at nothing. The eyes were open 
 but they were too tired to see. The face had no beauty 
 of feature nor of colour nor of intelligence, but it was 
 wholly beautiful, made so by motherhood ; and I think 
 she must have held some faith. The tint of her skin and 
 of her eyeballs spoke of the impoverishment of her blood, 
 her need of sleep and rest and ease of mind. She will 
 probably be killed by consumption within five years and 
 will certainly never hold a grand-child in her arms. The 
 pathologist may lay this crime at the door of the tubercle 
 bacillus ; but a prophet would lay it at the reader's door 
 and mine. 
 
 While we read and write, play at politics or ping-pong, 
 this woman and myriads like her are doing the essential 
 work of the world. The worm waits for us as well as for 
 her and them : and in a few years her children and theirs 
 will be Mankind. We need a prophet to cry aloud and 
 spare not ; to tell us that if this is the fate of mothers 
 in the ranks which supply the overwhelming proportion 
 of our children, our nation may number Shakespeare and 
 Newton amongst the glories of its past, and the lands of 
 ancient empires amongst its present possessions, but it 
 can have no future ; that if, worshipping what it is 
 pleased to call success, it has no tears nor even eyes for 
 such failures as these, it may walk in the ways of its 
 insensible heart and in the sight of its blind eyes, yet it 
 is walking not in its sleep but in its death, is already 
 doomed and damned almost past recall ; and that, if it 
 is to be saved, there will avail not " broadening the basis 
 of taxation," nor teaching in churches the worship of the 
 Holy Mother and Holy Child, whilst Motherhood is 
 blasphemed at their very doors, but this and this only 
 the establishment, not in statutes but in the consciences 
 of men and women, of a true religion based upon these 
 perdurable and evident dogmas that all human life is
 
 INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 holy, all mothers and all children, that history is made 
 in the nursery, that the individual dies, that therefore 
 children determine the destinies of all civilisations, that 
 the race or society which succeeds with its mammoth 
 ships and its manufactures but fails to produce men and 
 women, is on the brink of irretrievable doom ; that the 
 body of man is an animal, endowed with the inherited 
 animal instincts necessary for self-preservation and the 
 perpetuation of the race, but that, if the possession of 
 this body by a conscious spirit, " looking before and 
 after," is anything more than a " sport " of the evolu- 
 tionary forces, it demands that, the blind animal instincts 
 notwithstanding, the desecration of motherhood, the 
 perennial slaughter and injury of children, the casual 
 unconsidered birth of children for whom there is no room 
 or light or air or food, and of children whose inheritance 
 condemns them to misery, insanity or crime, must cease ; 
 and that the recurrent drama of human love and struggle 
 reaches its happy ending not when the protagonists are 
 married, but when they join hands over a little child that 
 promises to be a worthy heir of all the ages. This re- 
 ligion must teach that the spectacle of a prematurely 
 aged and weary and hopeless mother, which he who runs 
 or rides may see, produced by our rude foreshadowings 
 of civilisation, is an affront to all honest and thoughtful 
 eyes : that where there are no mothers, such as mothers 
 should be, the people will assuredly perish, though 
 everything they touch should turn to gold, though 
 science and art and philosophy should flourish as never 
 before. I believe that history, rightly read, teaches these 
 tremendous lessons. 
 
 In our own day the bounds of imagination are un- 
 doubtedly widening. Means of communication, the press, 
 the camera, the decadence of obsolete dogmas, making
 
 8 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 room for the simple daily truths of morality which have 
 " the dignity of dateless age " and are too hard for the 
 teeth of time these account in large measure for the 
 fact that the happier half of the world is at last beginning 
 to realise how the other half lives. There is perhaps more 
 divine discontent with things as they are than ever here- 
 tofore : this being due, as has been suggested, perhaps 
 as much to the modern aids of imagination as to any 
 inherent increase of sympathy. Science, too, in the 
 form of sociology and economics, adds warrant to the 
 demand for some radical reform of the conditions of life. 
 It teaches that all forms of life are interdependent ; that 
 society is thus an organism in more than merely loose 
 analogy ; that the classes pay abundantly for the state 
 of the masses : whilst medicine teaches that the tuber- 
 culosis, for instance, which slays so many members of 
 the middle and upper classes, is bred by and in the 
 overcrowding of the lower classes, this and many other 
 diseases promising to resist all measures less radical than 
 the abolition of half our current social practice. 
 
 Hence it is that we hear so much of social reform ; 
 and the promises of representatives of many political 
 -isms jostle one another at the gates of our ears. The 
 Anarchist at one extreme, and the Collectivist at the 
 other, with the Individualist and the Socialist somewhere 
 between, offer their panaceas. To me, I confess, they 
 seem little better than the scholastic metaphysicians 
 of old days, like them mistaking words for things, 
 incapable of understanding each other, evading precise 
 definition and using terms which never mean the same 
 thing twice as missiles and weapons of abuse : and, 
 above all, mistaking means for ends. 
 
 But the leading error common to them all, as I seem to 
 see it, is their conception of society as a stable thing a 
 piece of machinery which must be properly " assembled,"
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 as the engineers say ; forgetful of the extraordinary 
 discontinuity which inheres in the swift-approaching 
 death of all its parts, and their replacement by helpless 
 immaturity. The first fact of society really is that all 
 its individuals are mortal. This we all know, but I 
 question whether even Herbert Spencer fully reckoned 
 with it ; and certainly the common run of social specu- 
 lators have not begun to realise what it means. Human 
 life is made up of generations, and the key to all progress 
 lies in the nature of the relation between one generation 
 and another. Spencer records the case of an Oxford 
 graduate, desirous to be his secretary, who did not know 
 that the population of Great Britain is increasing. Here 
 is a capital present fact of the merely quantitative 
 relation between successive generations. So far as any 
 influence on their theory or practice is concerned, it is 
 still unknown to nearly all our advisers. Yet this fact 
 of the ceaseless multiplication of man, which has dis- 
 tinguished him from the first, and is absolutely peculiar 
 to him of all living species, animal or vegetable, as 
 Sir E. Ray Lankester has lately pointed out, is the 
 source of the major facts of history and the besetting 
 condition of every social problem that can be named at 
 this hour. 
 
 The professional and dedicated teachers of morality 
 seem to be in little better case. They believe in babies, 
 perhaps, as the prime and only really valid source of the 
 weal and wealth and strength of nations, and as the 
 great moralisers and humanisers of the generation that 
 gives them birth. They are beginning to join in that 
 public outcry against infant mortality which will yet 
 abolish this abominable stain upon our time. But they 
 are lamentably uninformed. They do not know, for 
 instance, that a high infant mortality habitually goes 
 with a high birth-rate, not only in human society but in
 
 io THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 all living species ; and they have yet to appreciate the 
 proposition which I have so often advanced and which, 
 to me at any rate, seems absolutely self-evident, that 
 until we have learnt how to keep alive all the healthy 
 babies now born that is to say, not less than ninety 
 per cent, of all, the babies in the slums included it 
 is monstrous to cry for more, to be similarly slain. 
 These bewailings about our mercifully falling birth- 
 rate, uncoupled with any attention to the slaughter 
 of the children actually born, are pitiable in their blind- 
 ness and would be lamentable if they had any effect 
 of which there is fortunately no sign whatever, but 
 indeed the contrary. 
 
 Humanitarian sentiment, also, is terribly misguided. 
 " Why always the benefit of the future, has the present 
 no claim upon us ? " I have been asked. Assuredly all 
 sentient life, and therefore pre-eminently all human 
 life, in which sentiency is so incommensurably intensified 
 by self-consciousness, the power of " looking before and 
 after," has a claim upon us : but the question could 
 have been asked by no one whose imagination had been 
 worthily employed. Our posterity will in due course 
 be as actual and present as we, their deeds and sufferings 
 and hopes as actual and present as ours. They out- 
 number us as the ocean outweighs a raindrop ; to avert 
 evil from one of them is as much as to relieve evil in one 
 of us, how much more to prevent the misery of five 
 in the next generation, fifty in the next and unnumbered 
 hosts beyond ? To serve the future of the race is not to 
 benefit a fiction : the men and women of a hundred and 
 a thousand years hence will be as real as we. And to 
 serve the future is to put out our talent at compound 
 interest a thousand-fold compounded. The weak imagina- 
 tion would rather build a sanatorium for consumptives 
 and see it filled with grateful patients. This is a palpable,
 
 INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 sensible good, for which the meanest visual faculty 
 suffices : but the strong imagination would rather open 
 the closed windows of nurseries or work at the mechanical 
 problems of ventilation, aye, or even at the structure of 
 the bacteriological microscope finding the spectacle, in 
 the mind's eye, of healthy men and women fifty years 
 hence as grateful and as real a reward as the sight of 
 a sanatorium in the present. The pace of progress will 
 be incalculably hastened when men, whether workers 
 or bequeathers or administrators, enlarge their imagina- 
 tions so as to perceive that the future will be, and therefore 
 indeed is, as real as the present. 1 I appeal to the reason of 
 the kind-hearted reader. Would you rather make one 
 man or child happy now, or two or a thousand a century 
 hence ? 
 
 It is, hi a word, the idea of continuous causation or 
 evolution that explains the remarkable contrast between 
 our outlook on the future and our fathers'. In older 
 that is to say, younger days, men's interest in posterity 
 was most naively and quaintly selfish. If they raised 
 a monument or did any piece of work which obviously 
 would endure beyond the span of their own lives, their 
 chief motive seems to have been that we should think 
 well of them, nor forget how well they thought of them- 
 selves. They were not concerned with us, but with our 
 opinion of them. They were anxious about the verdict 
 of posterity ; and the verdict is that they little realised 
 their responsibility for us, or betrayed it if they did. 
 There is also the frank attitude of Sir Boyle Roche's 
 famous bull, " What has posterity done f or us ? " This 
 is a quite familiar and conspicuous sentiment as familiar 
 as any other form of selfishness : but it is as if a father 
 
 1 A tribute is due to the anonymous pioneer of sane and provident 
 philanthropy who lately gave 20,000 to the London Hospital for 
 research. Such a thing is a commonplace in New York, it is unpre- 
 cedented in London.
 
 12 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 should say, " What have my children done for me ? " 
 and is open to the same condemnation. We are assuredly 
 responsible for posterity as any parent for any child. 
 Before the nineteenth century this fact could be realised 
 by very few. To-day, when the truth of organic evolu- 
 tion is a commonplace, and when the plasticity of the 
 forces of evolution is slowly becoming realised, we must 
 face our tremendous responsibility and privilege in a 
 spirit worthy of those to whom such mighty truths 
 have been revealed. 
 
 Parenthood and birth in these the whole is summed. 
 At the mercy of these are all past discovery, all past 
 achievement in art or science, in action or in thought. 
 The human species, secure though it be, is only a race 
 after all ; only a sequence of runners who quasi cur sores, 
 vital lampada tradunt like runners, hand on the lamp 
 of life, as Lucretius said. This it is which, to the thought- 
 ful observer, makes each birth such an overwhelming 
 event. It is a great event for the mother and the father, 
 but how much greater if its consequences be only half 
 realised. Education in its full sense, " the provision of 
 an environment," as I would define it, is a mighty 
 and necessary force, for nothing but potentiality 
 is given at birth : but no education, no influence of 
 traditional progress, can avail, unless the potentialities 
 which these must unfold are worthy. The baby comes 
 tumbling headlong into the world. The fate of 
 all the to-morrows depends upon it. Hitherto 
 its happening has depended upon factors animal and 
 casual enough, utterly improvident, concerned but rarely 
 with this tremendous consequence. Fate may be 
 mistress, but she works only too often by Chance, as 
 Goethe remarked. Fate and Chance hitherto have 
 never failed to keep up the supply which the death of 
 the individual makes imperative : and forces have
 
 INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 been at work determining for progress, to some extent, 
 but most imperfectly, the parentage of these headlong 
 babies. Yet the human intelligence cannot remain 
 satisfied with their working and much less so when 
 it realises how they can be controlled, how effectively, 
 and to what high ends. The physician may and must 
 concern himself, on these occasions, with the immediate 
 needs of the mother and the child, and when these are 
 satisfied he may feel that his duty has been done ; but, 
 as he journeys homewards, he must surely reflect that 
 this astonishing thing, then, has happened again, as 
 indeed it has happened many times this very day ; that 
 whilst this baby is to become an individual man or 
 woman, an end in himself or herself, in its young loins 
 and in those of its like are the hosts of all the unborn 
 who are yet to be. If, then, these babies differ widely 
 from each other, as they do ; if these differences are, on 
 the whole, capable of prediction in terms of heredity ; 
 if the future state of mankind is involved in these 
 differences, which will in their turn be transmitted to 
 the children of such as themselves become parents ; and 
 if this business of parenthood will be confined to only 
 a small proportion of these babies, of whom one-half 
 will never reach puberty ; if these things be so, as 
 they are, cannot these babies be chosen in anticipation, 
 there being thus effected an enormous vital economy, 
 Nature being commanded to the highest ends by the 
 only method, which is to obey her, as Bacon said ; and 
 the human intelligence thus making its supreme achieve- 
 ment the ethical direction and vast acceleration of 
 racial progress ? What man can do for animals and 
 plants, can he not do for himself ? Give imagination its 
 fleetest and strongest wing, it can never conceive a 
 task so worth the doing. 
 
 This, and this alone, is what requires to be brought
 
 H THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 home to the general reader and the reformer alike. Says 
 Mr. H. G. Wells : " It seemed to me then that to prevent 
 the multiplication of people below a certain standard, 
 and to encourage the multiplication of exceptionally 
 superior people, was the only real and permanent way 
 of mending the ills of the world. I think that still." 
 And then, in a few sketchy pages, Mr. Wells discredits, 
 as with one glance of great eyes, the very proposal which 
 he thinks to be the only real and permanent way of 
 mending the ills of the world. Not one man in thousands 
 has got so far as to hold this opinion ; and it is the more 
 lamentable that Mr. Wells, having reached it, should 
 hold it in the loose, formal, and inoperative fashion in 
 which the man in the street or the woman in the pew 
 holds the dogmas of orthodox theology. We need to 
 educate public opinion that " chaos of prejudices " 
 up to Mr. Wells' standard, and then we need to accomplish 
 the much harder task of converting a mere intellectual 
 speculation into a living belief. 
 
 But so surely as this belief, the crowning and practical 
 conclusion to which all the teachings of modern biology 
 converge, comes to life in men's minds, so surely 
 the difficulties will be met, not only on paper but also 
 in practice. " Where there's a will there's a way." 
 Meanwhile men are content to work at the impermanent, 
 if not indeed at measures which directly war against 
 the selection of the best for parenthood : they do not 
 realise the stern necessity of obeying Nature in this 
 respect for it is Her selection of parents that alone 
 has raised us from the beast and the worm and since 
 necessity alone, whether inner or outer, whether of 
 character or circumstance, is the mother of invention, 
 they fail to find the methods by which our ideal can be 
 carried out. There is nothing, either in the character 
 of the individual man and woman, or in the structure
 
 INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 of society, that makes the ideal of race-culture impossible 
 to-day : nor must action wait for further knowledge of 
 heredity. Little though we surely know so far, we have 
 abundance of assured knowledge for immediate action 
 in many directions knowledge which is agreed upon by 
 Lamarckians and neo-Lamarckians, Darwinians and 
 Weismannians, Mendelians and biometricians alike. All 
 of these agree, for instance, as to the fact that the 
 insane tendency is transmissible and is transmitted by 
 heredity. We need only public opinion to say, " Then 
 most surely those who have such a tendency must forgo 
 parenthood." 
 
 For it is public opinion that governs the world. If 
 it were, as it will be one day which may these pages 
 hasten an elementary and radical truth, as familiar 
 and as cogent to all, man in the House or man in the 
 public-house, as the fact of the earth's gravitation 
 that racial maintenance, much more racial progress, 
 depends absolutely upon the selection of parents ; if 
 the establishment of this selective process in the best 
 and widest manner were the admitted goal of all legisla- 
 tion and all social and political speculation who can 
 question that the thing would be practicable and indeed 
 easy ? Without the formation of public opinion this is 
 as hopelessly Utopian and inaccessible an ideal as words 
 ever framed ; public opinion once formed, nothing could 
 be more palpably feasible. Hence Mr. Galton's wisdom in 
 demanding that, before we dictate courses of procedure, 
 and even before we can expect profit from scientific 
 investigation, whether by the biometric method of which 
 he is the founder, or by any other, public opinion must 
 be formed; that the idea of eugenics or good-breeding 
 must be instilled into the conscience of civilisation like 
 a new religion a religion of the most lofty and austere, 
 because the most unselfish, morality, a religion which
 
 i6 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 sets before it a sublime ideal, terrestrial indeed in its 
 chosen theatre, but celestial in its theme, human in its 
 means, but literally superhuman in its goal. If the 
 intrinsic ennoblement of mankind does not answer to this 
 eulogy, where is the ideal that does ?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 
 
 " This last lustrum has enabled us to make an astounding 
 discovery, of which neither Adam Smith nor Cobden nor Malthus 
 dreamed that a nation is composed not of property nor of 
 provinces, but of men." TILLE (1904), quoted by FOREL. 
 
 THE main thesis which the last chapter was intended 
 to introduce is, in the words of Ruskin, simply this : 
 " There is no wealth but life." The assumption through- 
 out this book is that Ruskin is the real founder of political 
 economy, he first of moderns having seen this supreme 
 truth. 
 
 We speak of a nation's possessions, but possessions 
 imply a possessor or possessors. Wealth, as Ruskin 
 teaches us, is " the possession of the valuable by the 
 valiant." If our national possessions were made over to 
 a race of monkeys, " they being inherently and eternally 
 incapable of wealth," what would they be worth ? 
 Furthermore, to possess and to be possessed by, are 
 totally diverse things. Says Ruskin, " Lately in a 
 wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened 
 a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in 
 it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. 
 Now, as he was sinking had he the gold or had the 
 gold him ? " 
 
 Vital economics We have already alluded to the 
 
 unique property of mankind in virtue of which the radical 
 
 character of the essential wealth, which is life, has only 
 
 too commonly been forgotten. In the case of any animal 
 
 c 17
 
 i8 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 or vegetable species we should have no difficulty, if 
 asked regarding its " success " and " prospects," in 
 directing our enquiry to essentials. We should examine 
 the individuals of that species, young and old, its death- 
 rate and its birth-rate, and these would supply us with 
 the answer. In the case of man there is the almost 
 incalculable complication involved in the fact that he 
 is capable of making external acquirements, material 
 possessions and spiritual possessions which, so long as 
 he remains capable of possessing them, are of real value, 
 and, on account of what they mean for life, are a true 
 though secondary wealth. Amongst civilised mankind, 
 therefore, the essential question as to the breed of men 
 and women is obscured by the secondary question as 
 to their traditional or transmitted possessions or external 
 acquirements. But if we remember the case of the 
 drowning man and his gold we shall realise that, funda- 
 mentally, the case is the same for the human as for 
 any other species. No one can openly question this, 
 but not one publicist or politician in a thousand believes 
 it in any living sense. The true function of government, 
 said Ruskin, is the production and recognition of human 
 worth. This has only to be said to be admitted ; it 
 is one of the thoughts that shine, as Joubert says. No 
 one denies it and no one acts upon it. 
 
 In this sense such a phrase as the National Exchequer 
 begins to take on a new meaning, and the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer loses every whit of his importance, except 
 in so far as his proceedings tend towards, or away from, 
 the production and recognition of human worth. He 
 plays with money, whereas the Chancellor of the real 
 Exchequer would work for life. 
 
 The facts of childhood to-day But since human 
 life is discontinuous, since three times in a century the 
 essential wealth of nations is reduced to dust, and raised
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 19 
 
 again from helpless infancy, our urgent business is with 
 the children of the nation. What, then, in general, are 
 the facts of the National Exchequer thus conceived ? 
 
 We find that, so far as ordinary physical health is 
 concerned, the majority of human babies including, for 
 instance, so-called Anglo-Saxon babies are physically 
 healthy at birth. On the other hand, a certain proportion 
 are as definitely and obviously unhealthy at the very start 
 as the more fortunate majority are healthy. If certain 
 influences, such as alcohol and some few diseases, have 
 been in operation, the babies may be already doomed 
 not national wealth, but national illth. In the absence 
 of these pernicious factors, there is, on the whole, physical 
 fitness. The ratio is perhaps as ninety to ten per cent. 
 
 Here then, is, on the whole, a ceaseless supply of 
 essential wealth ; physically, at any rate, of good enough 
 quality. As every one knows, or should know, the greater 
 part of it we immediately proceed to deface and destroy. 
 Our mouths are full of argument concerning the principles 
 of what we are pleased to conceive as political economy. 
 The principles of vital economy we do not enquire into 
 but outrage and defy at every turn. So horribly and 
 wastefully are we misguided that in point of fact we 
 actually destroy altogether the greater number, not of 
 all the children merely, but even of the fit and healthy 
 children ; and it may forcibly be argued that, before 
 any one proceeds to attempt any choice amongst the 
 children, as to which shall in their turn become parents 
 and which shall not, it would be well, apart from any 
 question of discrimination, to revise radically the methods 
 which at present permit this wholesale destruction. 
 Whilst we kill outright by hundreds of thousands every 
 year, we damage for life far more, including a very large 
 proportion of those who, as things at present are, will in 
 their turn become the parents who alone are the makers
 
 20 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 of the real wealth of nations. If this destructive process 
 had the effect which common notions of heredity would 
 lead us to expect, then most certainly not merely would 
 Britain, for instance, be doomed, but the very name 
 would long ago have become " one with Nineveh and 
 Tyre." But though this destructive process (which it 
 is best to describe as resulting in deterioration rather 
 than degeneration) has been long continued, and though, 
 in consequence of the great economic changes of last 
 century and the rush into the cities with their over- 
 crowding, it is perhaps more disastrous now than ever 
 before : yet it remains true that most of the babies born 
 in the slums are splendid little specimens of humanity 
 so far as physique is concerned bearing no marks of 
 degeneration to correspond with the deterioration of their 
 parents. In a word, heredity works the racial poisons 
 apart, as we shall see so that each generation gets a 
 fresh start. // there be no process of selection, each 
 new generation begins where its predecessor began and 
 is as a whole neither worse nor better, whether physically 
 or psychically. 
 
 Eugenics and infant mortality. In the face of the 
 foregoing, which merely outlines the appalling indictment 
 that ought to be framed against civilisation for its treat- 
 ment of its children, it is evidently incumbent upon us to 
 answer the objector who should say that the whole pur- 
 pose and argument of our present enquiry is premature, 
 and that surely our first business should be not to propose 
 any novel and revolutionary doctrine as to the choice of 
 parents and of children, but rather to stop this child 
 slaughter and child damage in other words, that we 
 should devote ourselves rather, not to providing children 
 with a good heredity, but to providing them with a good 
 environment, it being only too demonstrable that the 
 environment we at present provide for the great majority
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 21 
 
 of them is deadly and abominable in the extreme. This 
 argument is all the stronger because most of the children 
 are admittedly fit physically at birth. It would seem as 
 if there were little to complain of in their heredity, whilst 
 there is certainly almost everything to complain of in 
 their environment. 
 
 If this objection is to be met at all, we must be most 
 careful and serious in our going. Whatever conclusions 
 we come to we must at any rate be sure that we do not 
 impugn or deny the instant, immediate and constant law 
 of love which declares that there can be no adequate ideal 
 short of doing our best for all children, once they are 
 born nay, more, from the very moment, months before, 
 at which their individual history starts. Whoso suggests 
 that, as a present and immediate policy, it is not right to 
 care for all children, healthy or diseased, welcome or 
 unwelcome, nurseried in Park Lane or in the slums, may 
 have plausible and even so-called eugenic arguments on 
 his side, but his proposal is essentially immoral and there- 
 fore essentially false. For all children actually in being 
 whether they await or have passed the particular moment 
 of birth it is our duty, ideal and real, to do our utmost. 
 The believer in the principle of race-culture or eugenics 
 whom I shall hereafter, as for some years past, call the 
 eugenist may believe that it would have been better had 
 some of these children never been born ; he may believe 
 that, in the present unorganised state of society, in the 
 present dethroned state of motherhood, it were vastly better 
 had many even of the healthy majority never been born. 
 He may be convinced that, since so many of them will 
 certainly die, failing our feeble efforts to save childhood, 
 their birth is a misfortune : but on no terms and for no 
 objects whatever does, or can, the eugenist propose that 
 any of these children, even though from the moment of 
 birth they be riddled with disease, should be allowed to
 
 22 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 die. Though some will say that the keeping alive of 
 diseased children, or even of many children at first 
 healthy, is a disaster, I maintain that no such question of 
 choice, selection or discrimination can find any warrant 
 in any form of morality eugenic or other from the 
 moment at which the child in question began its in- 
 dividual existence. Those of us who advocate the 
 eugenic idea must be perpetually on our guard against 
 the insidious alliance of any who, agreeing with our 
 premises, declare that it is a mistake, for instance, to 
 prosecute a campaign against infant mortality. I myself 
 have had a share by a continuous propaganda started 
 in 1902 in making this last a publicly recognised question, 
 whilst, on the other hand, I have done my best to popu- 
 larise the idea of eugenics. Let me repeat here what I 
 have already said elsewhere : that I strenuously repudiate 
 any suggestion that the eugenic end is legitimately or 
 effectively to be served by permitting the infant mortality 
 to continue. The distinguished Egyptologist, Professor 
 Flinders Petrie, in his recent book Janus in Modern Life, 
 describes as follows the results of the present crusade 
 against infant mortality, as he conceives them : " We 
 must agree that it would be of the lower or lowest type of 
 careless, thriftless, dirty, and incapable families that the 
 increase [of surviving children] would be obtained. Is 
 it worth while to dilute our increase of population by ten 
 per cent, more of the most inferior kind ? Will England 
 be stronger for having one-thirtieth more, and that of the 
 worst stock, added to the population every year ? This 
 movement is doing away with one of the few remains of 
 natural weeding out of the unfit that our civilisation has 
 left to us. And it will certainly cause more misery than 
 happiness in the course of a century." 
 
 Here, plainly, is a serious argument. We are bound 
 to sympathise with its underlying assumption, viz.,
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 23 
 
 that not all babies are such as we can desire to carry 
 on the race. Still more must we sympathise with any 
 author whatever who has imagination and foresight 
 enough to write anywhere, on any subject, wrongly or 
 rightly, such a sentence as " and it will certainly cause 
 more misery than happiness in the course of a century." 
 We need more such authors. But without going into the 
 whole argument here as, for instance, regarding the 
 singular use of the word " natural " I do most entirely 
 deny the right of the eugenic idea to any voice or place as 
 to the fate of children once they have come into being. 
 Another writer, arguing on the same lines, says h propos 
 of the abolition of infant mortality : " This last change 
 which, as the Huddersfield experiment shows, is easy of 
 accomplishment, is likely to be completely effected in the 
 next few years, and we shall then have abolished the one 
 factor which in any important degree at present tends 
 to redress the balance between the rates of reproduction 
 of the superior and the inferior classes." These are the 
 words of Dr. W. McDougall, the distinguished psychologist. 
 Dr. McDougall has subsequently shown that he re- 
 pudiates the apparent deduction from them, and entirely 
 approves of the present campaign of mercy to childhood. 
 Nevertheless, these arguments, plainly derived from the 
 principle of natural selection, do express a most important 
 truth viz., that indiscriminate survival must lead to 
 racial decadence, whether in man, microbe or moss. I 
 submit that the difficulty can be solved only by the 
 eugenic principle. 
 
 The fittest must become parents, and the unfit 1 must 
 not ; then kill the unfit, says Nature. And this indeed, 
 in all living species other than man, is what Nature does. 
 
 1 The word is used in the ordinary loose sense, to which there is no 
 objection provided that there be no misunderstanding of its exact 
 scientific meaning, as in Spencer's phrase "survival of the fittest" i.e. 
 not the best, but the best adapted. See p. 43.
 
 24 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 But " thou shalt not kill," says the moral law not even 
 the unfit. As the foregoing will have shown, some 
 thinkers to-day propose to avail themselves in this 
 dilemma of the " New Decalogue " : 
 
 " Thou shalt not kill but need'st not strive 
 Officiously to keep alive." 
 
 This is no solution of the problem. There is only one 
 solution, and that is the eugenic solution. Nature can 
 preserve a race only by destroying the unfit. We who 
 are intelligent must preserve and elevate the race by 
 preventing the unfit from ever coming into existence at 
 all. We must replace Nature's selective death-rate by a 
 selective birth-rate. This is merciful and supremely 
 moral ; it means vast economy in life and money and 
 time and suffering ; it is natural at bottom, but it is 
 Nature raised to her highest power in that almost 
 supra-natural fact the moral intelligence of man. 
 
 The dilemma defined. The moral law, and our natural 
 human sympathy, insist that we should seek to preserve 
 all the children that come into the world, to amplify the 
 health of the healthy, and to neutralise, as far as possible, 
 the unfitness of the unfit. A mother brings her mal- 
 formed baby to the surgeon, and he does his best to patch 
 up the gaps left by the imperfect processes of development. 
 Otherwise the baby will die. Who dares look that mother 
 in the face and say " Ah, but it is better for the race that 
 your child should die ! " Such a doctrine, I submit, blas- 
 phemes our humanity ; it is intolerable to any decent 
 person who will pause to think what it means : and yet, in 
 so saying, we seem to defy Nature with her imperative 
 law of the survival of the fittest only. Pre-eugenic 
 writers on evolution state the case in all its hardness. 
 Dr. Archdall Reid says that " If we wish to improve 
 the individual, we must attend to his acquirements by
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 25 
 
 providing proper shelter, food, and training." Well, we 
 do wish to improve the individual, and to preserve the 
 individual ! We do not wish the super-man on the terms 
 of Nietzsche the super-man obtained at the cost of love 
 would turn out to be inferior to any brute-beast, an 
 intellectual fiend. But, Dr. Reid goes on to say, " such 
 means will not effect an improvement of the race. . . . 
 On the contrary, they will cause deterioration 1 by an 
 increased survival of the unfit." The provision of 
 " proper shelter, food and training " will cause racial 
 decadence ! Is it not evident, then, that such provisions 
 must rather be styled improper, and that we must refrain 
 from doing anything for the defects and needs of the 
 individual, lest a worse thing befall the race ? This is 
 an outrageous proposition, yet it is offered us as a necessary 
 inference from the principle of natural selection or the 
 survival of the fittest which no one now dares to dispute. 
 Herbert Spencer, to whom we owe the phrase " the 
 survival of the fittest," expresses this critical difficulty 
 as follows : " The law that each creature shall take the 
 benefits and the evils of its own nature has been the law 
 under which life has evolved thus far. Any arrangements 
 which, in a considerable degree, prevent superiority from 
 profiting by the rewards of superiority, or shield in- 
 feriority from the evils it entails any arrangements 
 which tend to make it as well to be inferior as to be 
 superior, are arrangements diametrically opposed to the 
 progress of organisation, and the reaching of a higher 
 life." This is permanently and necessarily true, and in 
 our care for childhood we have to reckon with it. Yet 
 even Spencer himself did not pursue this supremely 
 important enquiry to what I shall in a moment submit 
 to be its logical and almost incredibly hopeful conclusion. 
 
 1 " Degeneration," I think, is the best word for the racial, " deteriora- 
 tion " for the individual, change.
 
 26 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Huxley, writing his well-known Romanes Lecture, 
 " Evolution and Ethics," at a tune when, unfortunately, 
 he had somewhat parted company with Spencer, and 
 was too ready to accept any argument that made against 
 Spencer's political views, cuts the Gordian knot in an 
 astonishingly unsatisfactory fashion. He declares that 
 " the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating 
 the cosmic process [that is, the selection of the fittest], 
 still less in running away from it, but in combating it." 
 This is shallow thinking and very poor philosophy. One 
 wonders how Huxley can have forgotten the great dictum 
 of Bacon that Nature can be commanded only by obeying 
 her. He declares that moral evolution is the direct 
 contradiction and antithesis of the process of organic 
 evolution hitherto. He says, " Social progress means a 
 checking of the cosmic process at every step and the 
 substitution for it of another, which may be called the 
 ethical process ; " and he declares it to be a fallacy to 
 suppose " that because on the whole animals and plants 
 have advanced in perfection of organisation, by means of 
 the struggle for existence and the consequent survival 
 of the fittest ; therefore men in society, men as ethical 
 beings, must look to the same process to help them 
 towards perfection." 
 
 With all this Huxley offers us no real solution whatever, 
 no hint that he has realised in any degree what must be 
 the consequences of indiscriminate survival. It is aston- 
 ishing how personal bias, so alien to the whole character 
 of the man as a rule, blinded him to a solution which, as 
 it seems to me, stared him in the face. Assuredly we can 
 transmute and elevate and raise to its highest power what 
 he calls the cosmic process, and can reconcile cosmic with 
 ethical evolution, by extending to the unfit all our sympathy 
 but forbidding them parenthood. I deny that the provision 
 of a proper environment for the individual entails racial
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 27 
 
 deterioration. Cosmic and moral evolution are com- 
 patible if, whilst caring for each individual, whether maim, 
 halt, blind, or insane, and whilst admitting the categorical 
 imperative of the law of love which demands our care for 
 him, we continue to obey the indication of Nature, which 
 forbids such an individual to perpetuate his infirmity. 
 Nature has no choice ; if she is to avert the coming of the 
 unfit race she must summarily extinguish its potential 
 ancestor, but we can prohibit the reproduction of his 
 infirmity whilst doing all we can for the success of his 
 individual life. This is the ideal course indicated and 
 approved by biology and morality alike. 
 
 The eugenic reconciliation. I submit, then, that there 
 is no inconsistency in fighting simultaneously for the 
 preservation and care of all babies and all children with- 
 out discrimination of any kind and, on the other hand, 
 in declaring that, if the degeneration of the race is to be 
 averted, still more if racial, which is the only sure, progress, 
 is to be attained, we must have the worthy and only the 
 worthy to be the parents of the future. I submit further 
 that only the eugenist can maintain his position in this 
 matter at the present day. 
 
 On his one hand is the improvident humanitarian with 
 his feeling heart, he who, seeing misery and disease and 
 death, whether in babyhood, childhood, or at any other 
 time of life, seeks to improve the environment and so 
 relieve these evils. Close beside this wholly indis- 
 criminate humanitarianism is that which declares that 
 with childhood is the future and therefore devotes its 
 energies especially to the young, is grateful for every baby 
 bom, whatever its state, and when adult years are reached, 
 assumes that all will be well for the future, though the 
 principle of natural selection is thus made of none effect. 
 
 On the other side of the eugenists stand those whom 
 we may for short call the Nietzscheans. They see
 
 28 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 one-half of the truth of natural selection ; they see that 
 through struggle and internecine war, species have 
 hitherto maintained themselves or ascended. They de- 
 clare that all improvement of the environment, or at any 
 rate all humanitarian effort, tends to abrogate the struggle 
 for existence, and even, as is only too often true, to select 
 unworth and let worth go to the wall. This school then 
 declares that infant mortality is a blessing and charity 
 an unmitigated curse. In short, that we must go back 
 as quickly as possible to the order of the beast. 
 
 Between these two, surely, the eugenist stands, de- 
 claring that each has a great truth, but that his teaching, 
 and his alone, involves their co-ordination and recon- 
 ciliation. He agrees with the humanitarian that no child 
 should cry or starve or work or die or at any rate this 
 particular eugenist does and he agrees with the Nietz- 
 schean that to abrogate, and still more, to reverse, the 
 principle of natural selection, is to set our faces for the goal 
 of racial death. But further, the eugenist declares that the 
 indiscriminate humanitarian, blind to the truth which the 
 Nietzschean sees, would heap up, if permitted, disaster 
 upon disaster ; whilst he repudiates as horrible and 
 ghastly the Nietzschean doctrine that morality must go 
 by the board if the race is to be raised : that we must be 
 damned to be saved. 
 
 Our age is now awakening, at last, to the cry of the 
 children. The tendency of legislation and opinion in 
 every civilised country is one and the same. For this 
 humanitarianism let only him who thinks of any child 
 as a brat refuse to give thanks. But it is the business 
 of all who, whilst loving children and still in love with 
 love, are yet acquainted with the principles of organic 
 evolution in short, the business of all humane men 
 of science, men of science who have not ceased to be 
 human whilst aiding, abetting and directing this
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 29 
 
 humanitarian effort by every means in their power, to 
 teach and preach, in season and out of season, that 
 unless meanwhile we make terms with the principle of 
 selection, the choice of worth for parents, and the 
 rejection of the unworthy, not as individuals bitt as 
 parents, we shall assuredly breed for posterity, whose 
 lives and happiness and moral welfare are in our hands, 
 evils that can adequately neither be named nor numbered. 
 Already, together with much blessed good, this indis- 
 criminate humanitarianism has done much evil. Many 
 of our most instant and, for this generation, insoluble 
 problems are the lamentable fruit of this inherently 
 good thing. The eugenist declares that this fruit is not 
 necessary, that if it were necessary he could see no way 
 out of our morass and would echo the half-wish of Huxley 
 for some kindly comet that should put a term to human 
 history altogether ; and, in short, that only by the 
 eugenic means can the humanitarian end be attained. 
 
 During the last year or two of the campaign against 
 infant mortality many things have become clear, and 
 none clearer than the fundamental compatibility between 
 this campaign and the principles of eugenics. As these 
 two efforts will be predominant in the real politics of 
 all the years to come, a few more words must here be 
 devoted to the relation between them. 
 
 Granted that the highest of all objects is the making 
 of worthy human beings, it is quite evident that we 
 must attend equally to the two factors which determine 
 all human life heredity and environment. Eugenics 
 stands for the principle of heredity the principle that 
 the right children shall be born. The campaign against 
 infant mortality stands for a good environment x so 
 
 1 That is in the ordinary sense of the words, not in the more exact 
 sense as I think in which a good environment would be defined as that 
 which selects the good for parenthood.
 
 30 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 that children, when born, may survive and thrive. 
 Obviously eugenics would be of no use if the children 
 could not survive, and no human infant can survive 
 unless it be born into a moral environment : no mother- 
 hood, no man. The two campaigns, then, are strictly 
 complementary. We must endeavour to rid ourselves 
 of the popular notion that the whole result of the cam- 
 paign against infant mortality can be measured by the 
 number of babies whose death is prevented. The infant 
 mortality is merely an index of a widespread social 
 disease an index and an extreme symptom. But for 
 every baby killed many are damaged ; and to remove 
 the causes of infant mortality is to remove the causes 
 which at present effect the deterioration of millions of 
 human beings. The eugenic campaign, then, without 
 the other would be almost futile. 
 
 The time for eugenics On our principles the eugenic 
 question can be decently raised only before conception. The 
 unyoked germ-cells of any individual, though alive, are not 
 entitled to claim protection from the principle that life is 
 sacred. It is permitted to allow them to die ; but from 
 the moment of conception a new individual has been formed 
 a new living human individual, even though it only con- 
 sists of a single cell, product of the union of the parental 
 germ-cells : and we shall not be safe unless we regard 
 this being as sacred and its destruction except in order 
 to save the life of the mother as murder, even at 
 this as at any later stage. If the eugenist should raise 
 his voice, and say that this individual should not be born, 
 he must be regarded exactly as if he were to recommend 
 infanticide or the lethal chamber for unfit individuals. 
 In such a case he would have entirely mistaken the 
 whole principle of (negative) eugenics, which is not to 
 elevate the race by the destruction of the unfit, at 
 any stage, ante-natal or post-natal, but to do so by
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 31 
 
 prohibiting the conception of the unfit. Directly the new 
 human individual is formed the eugenic question is too 
 late in that case. It is now the eugenist's duty, because it 
 is every one's duty, to regard the new individual, whether 
 born or yet unborn, as an end in himself or herself. But 
 when the question arises whether that individual is to 
 become a parent, then the eugenic question can and 
 must be raised. 
 
 Circumstances might arise in which "case-law" might 
 be applicable. It might be thought better to destroy 
 the syphilitic child rather than allow it to come into 
 the world. But we cannot make these distinctions. 
 The question is simply one of expediency, and the 
 only expedient thing is that there shall be no paltering 
 with the principle that when a new human life is con- 
 ceived our duty is to preserve it, whether it were conceived 
 only twenty-four hours ago or whether it be a decrepit 
 and helpless centenarian. The instant we let this principle 
 go we are proposing to revert to Nature's method of keeping 
 up the level of a race by murder. It is improper, then, for 
 any one on eugenic grounds to protest against proposals 
 for the arrest of infant mortality. He should have 
 spoken sooner ; at this stage he must hold his peace. 
 
 The two campaigns complementary. Yet further : 
 not only is it evident that the campaign against 
 infant mortality (which is, in a word, the campaign 
 for the provision of a proper environment for the 
 young) is obviously necessary for the fulfilment of the 
 eugenic ideal since what would be the good of choosing 
 the right parents if their children are then to be slain ? 
 but it can be shown conversely that the object of those 
 who are working against infant mortality can never be fully 
 attained except by means of eugenics. Eugenics apart, 
 we can and shall reduce the infant mortality to a mere frac- 
 tion of what it is at present, by preventing the destruction
 
 32 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 of that great majority of babies who are born healthy. 
 Even, however, when we have provided an ideal environ- 
 ment for every baby that comes into the world, we shall 
 not have abolished infant mortality, since there will 
 always remain a proportion, say ten per cent., whom 
 not even an ideal environment can save. They should 
 never have been conceived. At the Infantile Mortality 
 Conference held in London in 1908, this was clearly 
 recognised by more than one speaker. The maternalist 
 must have the eugenist to help him if his ideal is to be 
 attained. 
 
 Not only is the ideal of the two campaigns one and 
 the same ; not only is each necessary for the other, but 
 their methods are the same. It is true that at first 
 this was not evident, since when we began to fight against 
 infant mortality many temporary expedients of no 
 eugenic relevance were adopted, such as the creche and 
 the infant milk depot. But in the interval between the 
 Conferences of 1906 and 1908 many things became 
 clear : so that, whereas the papers at the first Conference 
 were only accidentally connected, the programme of the 
 second proceeded upon a principle the principle of 
 the supremacy of motherhood. We see now that the 
 one fundamental method by which infantile mortality 
 may be checked is by the elevation of motherhood. In 
 the words of our President, Mr. John Burns, " you must 
 glorify, dignify, and purify motherhood by every means 
 in your power." Thus the first two papers read at 
 the first morning's meeting of the Conference a brief 
 paper by the present writer on "The Human Mother," 
 and an admirable paper by Miss Alice Ravenhill on 
 " Education for Motherhood " might equally well 
 have been read at a Eugenics Conference. The opponent 
 of infant mortality and the eugenist appeal to the same 
 principle and avow the same creed : that parenthood is
 
 THE EXCHEQUER OF LIFE 33 
 
 sacred, that it must not be casually undertaken, that it 
 demands the most assiduous preparation of body and 
 intellect and emotions. When, at last, these principles 
 are believed and acted upon, infant mortality will be 
 a thing of the past and national eugenics a thing of the 
 present. 
 
 It is essential in this first general study of the subject 
 to state the true nature of the relation between these 
 two campaigns, to which every succeeding year of the 
 present century will find more and more attention devoted. 
 Between them they succeed in beginning at the beginning, 
 and it would be a disaster, indeed, if they were incom- 
 patible. On the contrary, they are complementary and 
 mutually indispensable. As the years go on they will 
 engage between them the sympathy and the assistance 
 of all serious people. In the year 1907 infant mortality 
 was first named in a speech by a Prime Minister, and in 
 that same year it was first mentioned in the Christmas- 
 Day sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral ; in that year also 
 Parliament passed the Early Notification of Births Act, 
 the first substantial legislative provision which sets our 
 feet on the road towards the goal of a true national 
 estimate of the value of parenthood. We are about to 
 discover that the true politics is domestics, since there 
 is no wealth but life and life begins at home. We are 
 going to have the right kind of life born, and we are going 
 to take care of it when it is born. We shall raise a 
 generation which looks upon the ordinary money-changing 
 politician as an impudent public nuisance, and the brutal, 
 blood-stained Imperialist, shouting about the Empire 
 which his very existence almost suffices to condemn, whilst 
 he battens on the cannibal sale of alcoholic poison to babies 
 and the mothers of future babies, as the very type of those 
 traitors they of its own household who have helped to 
 destroy every Empire in history. We propose to rebuild
 
 34 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 the living foundations of empire. To this end we shall 
 preach a New Imperialism, warning England to beware 
 lest her veins become choked with yellow dirt, and de- 
 manding that over all her legislative chambers there be 
 carved the more than golden words, " There is no Wealth 
 but Life."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THE LAW OF LOVE 
 
 " Truth justifies herself ; and as she dwells 
 With hope, who would not follow where she leads ? " 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " La plus haute tache de 1'action morale est le travail pour le 
 bien des generations futures." FOREL. 
 
 BEFORE looking more closely than we are commonly 
 apt to do at the meaning of the phrases " natural selec- 
 tion " and " survival of the fittest," let us exercise the 
 right of man the moral being, as distinguished from 
 man the scientist or observer of Nature, to pass ethical 
 judgments upon the facts which it is the business of 
 all the sciences, except ethics itself, merely to record 
 and interpret in and for themselves. We are beginning 
 at last, half a century after the publication of the Origin 
 of Species in 1859, to realise the power of the law of 
 selection ; what is the moral judgment which is to be 
 passed upon it ? In a passage from the last page of 
 Herbert Spencer's Autobiography, we find words which 
 may be quoted on both sides : " When we think of the 
 myriads of years of the Earth's past, during which have 
 arisen and passed away low forms of creatures, small 
 and great, which, murdering and being murdered, have 
 gradually evolved, * how shall we answer the question 
 To what end ? " 
 
 " Murdering and being murdered " suggests the adverse, 
 and " have gradually evolved," the favourable, ethical 
 judgment. 
 
 1 Italics mine. 
 35
 
 30 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Many thinkers, finding Nature " so careless of the 
 single life," finding the murderous struggle for existence 
 the dominant fact of the history of the living world, 
 return an adverse verdict. Amongst them are to be 
 found not merely those who are inclined, by temperament 
 or imperfect education, to rebellion against any con- 
 clusions of science, but also, as we saw in the second 
 chapter, such a great biologist as Huxley. In another 
 part of the lecture already cited he says that the Stoics 
 failed to see 
 
 "... that cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the head- 
 quarters of the enemy of ethical nature. The logic of facts was 
 necessary to convince them that the cosmos works through the 
 lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it. ... 
 The practice of that which is ethically best what we call good- 
 ness or virtue involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, 
 is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for 
 existence." 
 
 In other words, honesty is the worst policy : and to 
 worship natural selection is to deify the devil. 
 
 The reader will realise that, if we are to succeed in 
 establishing the claim of natural selection to be the 
 natural model upon which those who desire the progress 
 of society are to base their policy, it is necessary to contro- 
 vert the doctrine that natural selection is an anti-moral 
 process. But let us hear the other side. 
 
 The directly contrary view, then, is taken that though, 
 truly enough, there has been and is much " murdering 
 and being murdered," yet organisms " have gradually 
 evolved " towards fitness for their surroundings, or the 
 milieu environnant of Lamarck, which we translate environ- 
 ment ; and chat since fitness or adaptation obviously 
 makes for happiness, and since the moral being man 
 has himself been thus evolved, the process of natural 
 selection, " murdering and being murdered " notwith- 
 standing, is essentially beneficent.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 3? 
 
 The controversy is embittered and complicated by the 
 fact that ultimate questions of religion and philosophy 
 are involved. Is the Universe moral, as Emerson asserted 
 it was, or is it immoral ? A recent opponent of the 
 orthodox creed of a benevolent Deity teaches that " The 
 Lesson of Evolution " is to disprove the idea of benevolence 
 behind or in Nature : " The story of life has been a story 
 of pain and cruelty of the most ghastly description." 
 The age-long fact of " murdering and being murdered " 
 is the weapon with which he attacks the theist : who, 
 per contra, points to the beneficent result, the exquisite 
 adaptation of all species to the circumstances of their 
 life, and the evolution of love itself. 
 
 We may remind ourselves of those great lines of 
 Mr. George Meredith, 
 
 "... sure reward 
 
 We have whom knowledge crowns ; 
 
 Who see in mould the rose unfold, 
 
 The soul through blood and tears." 
 
 The one camp points to the " blood and tears " and 
 asks for a verdict accordingly. The other points to 
 " the soul " as their product, and asks for a verdict 
 accordingly. But surely we need only to have the 
 case fairly stated, in order to realise that the " blood 
 and tears " are true but only half the truth, " the soul " 
 true but only half the truth. Natural Selection is a 
 colossal paradox the doing evil that good may come. 
 The evil is undoubtedly done, and the good undoubtedly 
 comes. Is not this the only verdict that is in consonance 
 with all the facts ? Is it not less than philosophic to 
 look at the process alone, or to look at the result alone ? 
 Is any real end to be served by the incessant cry that 
 we should keep our eyes fixed on the " blood and tears " 
 alone, or on " the soul " alone ? Is not the poet right 
 when he says that the sure reward of knowledge is not to
 
 38 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 see either half of the truth as if it were the whole, but 
 to see unfold " the soul through blood and tears ? " 
 
 Any attempt to cast up accounts between the evil of 
 the process and the good of the result especially any 
 attempt based on the assumption that the process has 
 yet achieved its final result would be not only pre- 
 mature in the eyes of those who can look forwards, but 
 would be irrelevant to our present enquiry. I certainly am 
 with those who repudiate as misleading Mill's description 
 of Nature as a " vast slaughter-house," and will declare 
 that, apart from self-conscious and supremely sensitive 
 man, it is easy to exaggerate the misery and to minimise 
 the joy of the sub-human world. But our business here 
 is with the process and its results in man himself, in 
 whom alone are possible the heights of ecstasy and the 
 depths of agony : and the thesis the sublime thesis, we 
 may avouch of the present discussion is that, whatever 
 the balance between the evil of the process of Natural 
 Selection and the good of its results in the natural state, yet 
 when it is transmuted, as it may be, by the moral intelli- 
 gence of man, according to the principles of race-culture 
 or eugenics, the good of the result can be attained, more 
 abundantly and incomparably more rapidly, than ever 
 heretofore, whilst the evil of the process can be abolished 
 altogether. True or false, is this not a sublime thesis ? 
 
 Nature must be cruel to be kind. If organic fitness 
 or adaptation to the circumstances of life is to be secured, 
 Nature must choose for future parents, out of every new 
 generation, only those whose inborn characters make for 
 this adaptation, and who, hi virtue of the fact we call 
 heredity, will tend to transmit this fitness to their off- 
 spring. Now it is often convenient to personify Nature, 
 but we must not be misled. The process is really an 
 automatic, not an intelligently directed one. In order 
 that it shall be possible, certain conditions must obtain.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 39 
 
 The choice or selection depends not merely upon the 
 provision of a variety from which to choose this being 
 afforded by what is called variation, which is the cor- 
 relative of heredity, both being obvious facts in any well- 
 filled nursery but also upon the production of more 
 young creatures than there is or will be room for. (If 
 there be room for all, so that all survive, there can be 
 no selection, and instead of survival of the fittest there 
 will be indiscriminate survival.) The choice is effected 
 amongst this superfluity by an internecine " struggle for 
 existence " : hence the " murdering and being murdered," 
 hence the " blood and tears." The motor force of the 
 whole process may be symbolised as the " will to life," 
 ever seeking to realise itself in more abundance and with 
 more success with more and more approximation to 
 perfect adaptation. The will to death is no ingredient 
 of the will to life. Nature is, so to say, by no means 
 desirous of the process of " murdering and being mur- 
 dered " : very much on the contrary. It is life, more 
 life, and fitter life, that is her desire : the " murdering 
 and being murdered," the " blood and tears " are no 
 part of her aim. But they are inevitable, though lament- 
 able, if her aim is to be realised. She must be cruel to 
 be kind a little cruel to be very kind. 1 
 
 1 We have seen that Huxley's assertion of the fundamental opposition 
 between moral and cosmic evolution is unwarrantable. We do recognise, 
 however, that in our present practice this opposition exists. Our 
 ancestors were cruel to the insane, but at least they prevented them 
 from multiplying. We are blindly kind to them, and therefore in the 
 long run cruel. But the dilemma, kind to be cruel, or cruel to be kind, 
 is not necessary. It is quite possible, as we have asserted, to be at once 
 kind to the individual and protective of the future. On the other hand, 
 it is also possible to be cruel to both. The London County Council 
 offers us, at the time of writing, a demonstration of this. Sending 
 wretched inebriates on the round of police-court, prison and street, with 
 intermittent gestations, rather than expend a shilling a day, per 
 individual, in decently detaining them, it serves at least the philosophic 
 purpose of demonstrating that it is possible to combine the maximum of 
 brutality to the individual and the present with the maximum of injury 
 to the race and the future.
 
 40 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 It is imaginable, though no more, that natural selection, 
 in certain circumstances, might have worked otherwise : 
 the penalty for less as against greater fitness might 
 imaginably have been not death but merely sterility 
 the denial of future parenthood. This is the ideal of race- 
 culture. Had this been possible, Nature could have 
 effected her end, which is fitter and fuller life, without 
 having incidentally to mete out premature death to such 
 an overwhelming majority of all her creatures. But, 
 actually, this was not possible : and, unless the end was 
 to be sacrificed, Nature was compelled to keep up the 
 figure summarily to kill right and left. Permitted to 
 reach maturity, the unfit as well as the fit would multiply ; 
 and since, in general, the lower the form of life the greater 
 its fertility, the species could not possibly advance, or even 
 maintain itself at the level already gained. 
 
 To drop the figure, the process is a mechanical and 
 automatic one, and its appalling wastefulness and indis- 
 putable cruelty are inevitably involved, whilst it so 
 remains. 
 
 Intelligence may be kind to be kinder. But and 
 
 here is the great event this mechanical, automatic, non- 
 intelligent process has latterly given birth to intelligence, 
 the moral intelligence of man : and the question now 
 to be answered is, what modification can intelligence 
 effect in the moral-immoral process that has created 
 it ? Must intelligence abrogate that process alto- 
 gether, as Huxley declares, on the grounds of its 
 murderous methods ? Must intelligence simply look on, 
 recognise, but not reconstruct ? Must intelligence re- 
 verse the process as indeed it is now doing in many 
 cases so that in the new environment of which itself is 
 a factor, that which formerly was unfitness shall become 
 fitness, and vice versa ? Or is it conceivable that intelli- 
 gence can transmute the process, so that, whilst hitherto
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 41 
 
 mechanical, automatic, and therefore inevitably mur- 
 derous, it shall become intelligent, pressing towards the 
 sublime end, and reforming the murderous means ? 
 
 Hear Mr. Galton himself (Sociological Papers, 1905, 
 P- 52) : 
 
 " Purely passive, or what may be styled mechanical evolution, 
 displays the awe-inspiring spectacle of a vast eddy of organic 
 turmoil ... it is moulded by blind and wasteful processes, 
 namely, by an extravagant production of raw material and the 
 ruthless rejection of all that is superfluous, through the blundering 
 steps of trial and error. . . . Evolution is in any case a grand 
 phantasmagoria, but it assumes an infinitely more interesting 
 aspect under the knowledge that the intelligent action of the 
 human will is, in some small measure, capable of directing its 
 course. Man has the power of doing this largely so far as the 
 evolution of humanity is concerned ; he has already affected the 
 quality and distribution of organic life so widely that the changes 
 on the surface of the earth, merely through his disforestings and 
 agriculture, would be recognisable from a distance as great as that 
 of the moon." 
 
 Hear also Sir E. Ray Lankester, in the Romanes 
 Lecture 1 for 1905 : " Man is . .a product of the de- 
 finite and orderly evolution which is universal, a being 
 resulting from and driven by the one great nexus of 
 mechanism which we call Nature. He stands alone, 
 face to face with that relentless mechanism. It is his 
 destiny to understand and to control it." 
 
 " Nature's insurgent son," Professor Lankester calls man 
 in this lecture : and yet again there recurs that mighty 
 aphorism of Bacon, which might well be printed on every 
 page of these chapters, " Nature is to be commanded only 
 by obeying her." The struggle for existence is the 
 terrible fact of Nature, but is only a means to an end. 
 It is our destiny to command the end whilst humanising 
 the means. 
 
 1 Reprinted in The Kingdom of Man (Constable).
 
 42 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 The struggle for existence The ideal of eugenics or 
 race-culture is to abolish the brutal elements of the 
 struggle for existence whilst gaining its great end. The 
 nature of this struggle is commonly misapprehended and, 
 as I cannot improve upon the words of Professor 
 Lankester, I shall freely use them in the attempt to 
 show what it really is. He says : 
 
 " The world, the earth's surface, is practically full, that is to say, 
 fully occupied. Only one pair of young can grow up to take the 
 place of the pair male and female which have launched a 
 dozen, or it may be as many as a hundred thousand, young 
 individuals on the world. . . . The ' struggle for existence ' of 
 Darwin is the struggle amongst all the superabundant young of a 
 given species, in a given area, to gain the necessary food, to escape 
 voracious enemies, and gain protection from excesses of heat, cold, 
 moisture, and dryness. One pair in the new generation only one 
 pair survive for every parental pair. Animal population does 
 not increase : ' Increase and multiply ' has never been said by 
 Nature to her lower creatures. Locally, and from time to time, 
 owing to exceptional changes, a species may multiply here and 
 decrease there ; but it is important to realise that the ' struggle 
 for existence ' in Nature that is to say, among the animals and 
 plants of this earth untouched by man is a desperate one, how- 
 ever tranquil and peaceful the battlefield may appear to us. The 
 struggle for existence takes place, not as a clever French writer 
 glibly informs his readers, between different species, but between 
 individuals of the same species, brothers and sisters and cousins. 
 ... In Nature's struggle for existence, death, immediate oblitera- 
 tion, is the fate of the vanquished, whilst the only reward to the 
 victors few, very few, but rare and beautiful in the fitness which 
 has carried them to victory is the permission to reproduce their 
 kind to carry on by heredity to another generation the specific 
 qualities by which they triumphed. 
 
 " It is not generally realised how severe is the pressure and 
 competition in Nature not between different species, but between 
 the immature population of one and the same species, precisely 
 because they are of the same species and have exactly the same 
 needs. ... A distinctive quality in the beauty of natural produc- 
 tions (in which man delights) is due to the unobtrusive yet 
 tremendous slaughter of the unfit which is incessantly going on
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 43 
 
 and the absolute restriction of the privilege of parentage to the 
 happy few who attain to the standard described as ' the fittest.' " 
 
 The survival of the fittest. Now let us look closely at 
 this most famous of all Spencer's phrases, " the survival 
 of the fittest," and try to understand its full and exact 
 meaning. There is no phrase in any language so fre- 
 quently misinterpreted. Even a writer who should know 
 better makes this mistake. Mr. H. G. Wells speaks * 
 of " that same lack of a fine appreciation of facts that 
 enabled Herbert Spencer to coin those two most un- 
 fortunate terms Evolution and the Survival of the Fittest. 
 The implication is that the best reproduces and survives. 
 Now really it is the better that survives and not the best." 
 What the correction is supposed to signify I do not know, 
 but the whole passage is nonsense. The implication is 
 neither that the best nor the better survive, but the fittest 
 or if Mr. Wells prefers, for it matters not one whit the 
 fitter. This lack of a fine appreciation of words is not, 
 unfortunately, peculiar to Mr. Wells. There is no word 
 in the language that more exactly expresses the fact than 
 the word fittest : as Darwin recognised when he promptly 
 incorporated Spencer's phrase in the second edition of the 
 Origin of Species as the best interpretation of his own 
 phrase " natural selection " ! 2 Fitness is the capacity 
 to fit : a thing that is fit is a thing that fits. A living 
 creature survives in proportion as it fits its environment 
 the physical environment in the case of vegetables and 
 the lower animals, the physical, social, intellectual and 
 moral environment in the case of man. The kind of 
 glove that most perfectly fits the hand is the fittest glove 
 
 1 Sociological Papers, 1905, p. 59. 
 
 * Whilst allowing due weight to Mr. Wells' opinion, we may also note 
 that of Charles Darwin who, referring to his own phrase, natural selection, 
 says, " But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the 
 Survival of the Fittest is moie accurate." (Origin of Species, popular 
 edition, p. 76.)
 
 44 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 and will survive in the struggle for existence between 
 gloves. If, instead of a glove, we take a living creature, 
 say a microbe, the kind of microbe that best fits into the 
 environment provided by, say, human blood, is the fittest 
 and will survive and be the cause of our commonest 
 disease. Thus the tubercle bacillus is at once the fittest 
 microbe and, not the best, but the worst. Among 
 ourselves, the newspaper devoted to yesterday's murder 
 is the fittest and survives, ousting the newspaper which 
 reckons with the crucifixion, or the murder of Socrates or 
 Bruno. In a society of blackguardism, the biggest black- 
 guard is the fittest man and will survive : he is also the 
 worst. In another society the best man is the fittest and 
 survives. The capacity to fit into the environment is the 
 capacity that determines survival : it has no moral conno- 
 tation whatever. If Herbert Spencer had written the 
 survival of the better, as Mr. Wells desires, he would have 
 written palpable nonsense : as it was he used the fittest 
 word in this case also the best, because the truest. 
 Referring to the queen-bee, who destroys her own 
 daughters, Darwin says, " undoubtedly this is for the good 
 of the community; maternal love or maternal hatred, 
 though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the 
 same to the inexorable principle of natural selection." 
 
 If natural selection were the survival of the better, as 
 Mr. Wells would have us believe, there would be nothing 
 for eugenics or race-culture to do : and heaven would 
 long ago have come to earth. If in all ages the better men 
 and women had survived and become parents, earth would 
 long ago have become a demi-paradise indeed, there would 
 have been no arrests, no reversals in the history of human 
 progress, and life would be already what, some day, it 
 will be, when there is achieved the eugenic ideal which 
 is precisely that the best or better members of our 
 race shall be the selected for the supreme profession of
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 45 
 
 parenthood. In other words, the eugenic ideal, the ideal 
 of race-culture, is to ensure that the fittest shall be the best. 
 Always, everywhere, without a solitary exception, human, 
 animal or vegetable, the fittest have ultimately survived 
 and must survive. Once realise what is the meaning of 
 the word fit best seen in the verb "to fit " and we 
 shall see that, as Herbert Spencer pointed out in his 
 overwhelming reply to the late Lord Salisbury's attack 
 on evolution, the idea of the survival of the fittest is a 
 necessity of thought. 1 
 
 But, alas, the idea of the survival of the best or the 
 better is not a necessity of thought ! The fittest microbes 
 are the worst from our point of view, because they are 
 most inimical to the highest forms of life ; the fittest 
 newspaper may be the worst, because it panders to the 
 worst but most widespread and irresponsible elements 
 in human nature ; everything and every one that suc- 
 ceeds, succeeds because it or he fits the conditions : but 
 to succeed is not necessarily to be good. Indeed every- 
 thing that exists at all, living or lifeless, an atom or an 
 animal, a molecule or a moon, exists because it can exist, 
 because it fits the conditions of existence : there is no 
 moral question involved, but only a mechanical one. 
 The business of eugenics or race-culture is to make an 
 environment, conditions of law and public opinion, such 
 that the fittest shall be the best and the best the fittest therein. 
 
 If memory may be trusted, the primary meaning of the 
 word fit has not hitherto been called in by any one to 
 elucidate the meaning of Spencer's phrase : perhaps it 
 may be hoped that we shall at last begin to understand it, 
 if we remember that a thing is fit because it fits. It is 
 best not to be too sanguine, however, and therefore we 
 may attempt to illustrate the case from another aspect. 
 
 1 Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 493. A valuable controversy but poor 
 sport. Thinker versus politician is scarcely a match.
 
 46 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Survival-value- Every living thing and nearly every 
 character or feature of a living thing that survives, survives 
 because it has value or capacity for life which may be 
 called, in Professor Lloyd Morgan's phrase, survival-value. 
 The character that gives an organism survival-value, or 
 value for life, the character that enables it to fit its environ- 
 ment, may be of any order. The atom, as I have said 
 elsewhere, is an organism writ small. The kinds of atoms 
 that have survived in the age-long struggle for existence 
 between atoms are those that have survival-value on 
 account of their internal stability : as Empedocles argued 
 ages ago. In the case of living things, which individually 
 die, it is evident that the capacity to reproduce them- 
 selves is one of supreme survival-value. If mankind 
 lost this capacity, all its other characters of survival- 
 value, such as intelligence, would obviously avail it 
 nought. Certain valuable members of society may fall 
 short in this cardinal respect, and therefore become 
 extinct. Indeed, other forms of survival-value, as we 
 shall see, seem to be in large measure inimical to fertility : 
 and this is perhaps the chief obstacle to eugenics. 1 
 
 Fertility apart, the character having survival-value may 
 take a thousand forms. In the case of the parasitic 
 microbe it is an evil character, the power to produce 
 toxins or poisons. In the case of the tiger it is the pos- 
 session of large and powerful bones and claws and muscles 
 and teeth. In the case of the ox it is a complicated and 
 efficient digestive apparatus, enabling it to fit into a 
 food-environment which is too innutritions to sustain 
 the life of creatures not so endowed. Nature seeks only 
 the fittest ; not the best but the best-adapted ; she asks 
 no moral questions. A Keats, a Spinoza, or a Schubert 
 must go under if his factors of survival-value do not enable 
 
 1 This is discussed at length in the writer's paper, " The Obstacles 
 to Eugenics," read before the Sociological Society, March 8, 1909.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 47 
 
 him to resist those of the tubercle bacillus, its toxins or 
 poisons. She welcomes the parasitic tapeworm, all hooks 
 and mouth or stomach, because these give it survival- 
 value ; and so on. 
 
 The business of eugenics or race-culture, then, is to 
 create an environment such that those characters which 
 we desire as moral and intelligent beings shall be endowed 
 with the highest possible survival-value, as against those 
 which ally so many men with the microbe and the tape- 
 worm. There are those who live in society to-day, and 
 reproduce their like, in virtue of the poisons they produce, 
 in virtue of their tenacious hooks and voracious stomachs. 
 If society be organised so that these are factors of more 
 survival-value than the disinterested search for truth, or 
 mother-love, or the power to create great poetry or 
 music then, according to the inevitable and universal 
 law of the survival of the fittest, our parasites will oust 
 our poets and our poisoners our philosophers. These 
 things have happened and may happen again at any time. 
 It does not matter that the good thing, in virtue of 
 survival-value then superior, has been evolved. Nature 
 never gives a final verdict in favour of good or bad but 
 only and always in favour of the fit. Let the conditions 
 change, so that rapacity fits them better than righteous- 
 ness, or as in a completely " collectivist " state 
 vegetableness rather than virility, and the thing we call 
 high will go under before the thing we call low. Nature 
 recognises neither high nor low but only fitness or value for 
 life in the conditions that actually obtain. These laws en- 
 throned and dethroned the civilisations of the past : they 
 have enthroned and may dethrone us. But this end is 
 not inevitable, since man and this is his great character 
 not merely reacts to his environment, as all creatures 
 must, but can create and recreate it. The business of 
 eugenics or race-culture is to create an environment such
 
 48 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 that the human characters of which the human spirit 
 approves shall in it outweigh those of which we dis- 
 approve. Make it fittest to be best and the best will 
 win not because it is the best, but because it is the 
 fittest : had the worst been the fittest it would have won. 
 In society to-day both forms of the process may be 
 observed. The balance between them determines its 
 destiny. It is the business of eugenics to throw the 
 whole weight of human purpose into the scale of the 
 good. 
 
 Evolution not necessarily progress- No excessive space 
 has been devoted to this distinction between the fittest 
 and the best and to the real meaning of Spencer's famous 
 phrase, if perchance it should avail in any degree to dispel 
 one of the commonest of the many common delusions 
 regarding the nature of organic evolution and its out- 
 come. This delusion is that progress is an inevitable law 
 of nature. 1 The great process of history, as revealed 
 by biology, displays as its supreme fact the occurrence 
 of progress. The principles of evolution teach that this 
 progress as, for instance, in the evolution of man is a 
 product of the survival of the fittest ; whilst we are also 
 reminded that the survival of the fittest is a necessary 
 truth : but it does not follow that progress is inevitable. 
 
 In the first place, natural selection involves selection. 
 Where all the young members of a new generation of any 
 species survive, and parenthood becomes not a privilege 
 but a common and universal function, plainly the process 
 is in abeyance : and, in the second place, since the sur- 
 vival of the fittest is not the survival of the best, but only 
 the survival of the best adapted, the process may at any 
 time take the form of retrogression rather than that of 
 progress. The assumption that, because progress has 
 
 1 Spencer introduced the non-moral word evolution in 1857, in order to 
 avoid the moral connotation of the word progress, which he had formerly 
 employed.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 49 
 
 been effected through natural selection, we need do no 
 more than fold our hands, or unfold them merely to ap- 
 plaud, involves the denial of one of the most familiar 
 facts of natural history the fact of racial degeneration. 
 The parasitic microbes, the parasitic worms, the barnacles, 
 innumerable living creatures both animal and vegetable, 
 individuals and races of mankind, to-day as in all ages 
 these prove only too clearly that the process of the 
 survival of the fittest may make as definitely for retro- 
 gression in one case as for progress in another. 
 
 By all means let us infer from the facts of organic 
 evolution the conclusion that further progress must surely 
 be possible, so much progress having already been achieved 
 as is represented by the difference between inorganic 
 matter or the amoeba or microbe on the one hand, and 
 man on the other hand. But let us most earnestly beware 
 of the false and disastrous optimism which should suppose 
 that because the survival of the fittest has often, and 
 indeed most often, meant the survival of the best, it 
 means always that and nothing else. On the contrary , 
 we must learn that, even in natural circumstances, apart 
 from any interference by man, the survival of the fittest 
 often means racial degeneration a tapeworm kept in 
 spirits should stand upon the study mantelpiece of all 
 who think with Mr. Wells that the survival of the fittest 
 means the survival of the better ; and still more notably 
 we must learn that the interference of man in the case 
 of his own species, sometimes of evil intent, sometimes 
 for the highest ends, with the process of natural selection, 
 has repeatedly led, and is now in large part leading, to 
 nothing other than that process of racial degeneration of 
 which the tapeworm and the barnacle should be our per- 
 petual reminders. The case becomes serious enough when 
 man interferes with the process of selection merely with the 
 effect of suspending it, wholly or in part : but it becomes
 
 50 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 far more serious when his interference constitutes a 
 reversal of the process. This most supremely disastrous 
 of all conceivable consequences of man's intelligence and 
 moral sense is known as reversed selection, and must be 
 carefully studied hereafter. Meanwhile, we must devote 
 some space to a most important consideration namely, 
 that though Nature is impartial in her choice, and will, 
 for instance, allow the poisons of a microbe such as the 
 tubercle bacillus to destroy the life of a Spinoza or a 
 Keats or a Schubert, yet, on the whole, the survival- 
 value of the mental, spiritual, or psychical in all its forms 
 does persistently tend to outweigh that of the physical 
 or material of this great truth the evolution and domin- 
 ance of man himself being the supreme example. 
 
 The very fact of progress, which I would define as the 
 emergence and increasing dominance of mind, demon- 
 strates it being remembered that natural selection has no 
 moral prejudices that even in a world of claws and 
 toxins the psychical must have possessed sufficient 
 survival -value to survive. It is quite evident that 
 even the lowliest psychical characters, such as sharpness 
 of sensation, discrimination, and memory, must be of 
 value in the struggle for life. More and more we might 
 expect to find, and do actually find in the course of 
 evolution, that creatures live by their wits, rather than by 
 force of bone or muscle. The psychical was certainly 
 given no unfair start on the contrary. It has had to 
 struggle for its emergence ; it has emerged only where 
 there has been struggle and has done so because it could 
 because of its superior survival-value. It has the right 
 which belongs to might in the world of life there is no 
 other. 1 
 
 1 In his recent work, The Origin of Vertebrates, Dr. W. H. Gaskell, 
 F.R.S., has adduced much evidence in support of this thesis. He says, 
 " The law of progress is this : The race is not to the swift nor to the 
 strong, but to the wise." And again ; "As for the individual, so for the
 
 NATURAL SELECTION 51 
 
 By no means less evident is the inherently superior 
 survival-value of the psychical, if we turn from its aspects 
 of sensation and intelligence to those which are all summed 
 up under the word love. Notwithstanding Nietzsche's 
 mad misconception of the Darwinian theory, no one who 
 has studied the facts of reproduction and its conditions 
 in the world of life can question the incalculable survival- 
 value of love in animal history. The success of those 
 most ancient of all societies, of which the ant-heap and 
 the bee-hive are the types, depends absolutely upon the 
 self-sacrifice of the individual. If we pass upwards 
 from the insects to the lowest vertebrates, we find the 
 survival-value of love proved by the comparison between 
 various species of fish, and its increasing importance may 
 be traced upwards through amphibia, reptiles, birds and 
 mammals in succession, up to man. Natural selection 
 thus actually selects morality. Without love no baby 
 could live for twenty-four hours. Every human being 
 that exists or ever has existed or ever will exist is a 
 product of mother-love or foster-mother-love, and I 
 am well entitled to say, as I have so often said, no morals, 
 no man. The creature in whom organic morality is at 
 its height has become the lord of the earth in virtue of 
 that morality which natural selection has selected, not 
 from any moral bias, but because of its superior survival- 
 value. 
 
 nation ; as for the nation, so for the race ; the law of evolution teaches 
 that in all cases brain-power wins. Throughout, from the dawn of 
 animal life up to the present day, the evidence given in this book 
 suggests that the same law has always held. In all cases, upward 
 progress is associated with the development of the central nervous system. 
 The law for the whole animal kingdom is the same as for the individual. 
 " Success in this world depends upon brains.' "
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SELECTION OF MIND 
 
 " Many are the mighty things, but none is mightier than 
 
 man He conquers by his devices the tenant of the 
 
 fields." SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la Nature ; 
 mais c'est un roseau pensant." PASCAL. 
 
 " The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the 
 
 SOul." BURCHELL. 
 
 WHEREAS, in its beginning, mind, or the psychical in all 
 its aspects, was merely a useful property of body, all 
 organic progress may be conceived in terms of a change 
 in this original relation between them. In man, the 
 mental or psychical has become the essential thing, and 
 the body its servant. We are well prepared, then, to 
 accept the proposition that in our own day and for our 
 own species, the plane upon which natural selection 
 works has largely been transferred, and, indeed, if any 
 further progress is to be effected, must be transferred, 
 from the bodily or physical to the mental or psychical. A 
 certain most remarkable fact in the anatomy of man 
 may be cited, as we shall see, in support of this proposition. 
 We need not venture upon the controversial ground 
 of the relation or ultimate unity of mind and body ; 
 nor need we set up any suggestion of antagonism between 
 them. All, however, are absolutely agreed that the 
 psychical in all its forms, whatever it really be, has a 
 consistent relation of the most intimate kind with that 
 part of the body which we call the nervous system. 
 
 52
 
 53 
 
 For our present purposes the nature of this relation 
 matters nothing at all, and in place of the phrase, the 
 " selection of mind," I should be quite content, if the 
 reader so prefers, to speak of the selection of nerve or 
 nervous selection. And if I may for a moment anticipate 
 the conclusion, we may say that, in and for the future, 
 the process of selection for life and parenthood, as it occurs 
 in mankind, must be based, if the highest results are to 
 be obtained, upon the principle that the selection of 
 bodily qualities other than those of the nervous system 
 is of value only in so far as these serve the nervous or 
 psychical qualities. For practical and for theoretical 
 purposes we must accept the dictum of Professor Forel 
 that " the brain is the man " or, to be more accurate 
 and less epigrammatic, the nervous system is the man. 
 If, then, we counsel or approve of any selection of bone 
 or muscle or digestion, or any other bodily organ or 
 function ; if we select for physical health, physical 
 energy, longevity, or immunity from disease our estimate 
 of these things, one and all, must be wholly determined 
 by the services which they can perform for the nervous 
 system, whether as its instruments, its guarantors of 
 health and persistence, or otherwise. But we are not 
 to regard any of these things as ends in themselves 
 notwithstanding the fact that this temptation will con- 
 stantly beset us. So to do is implicitly to deny and 
 renounce the supreme character of man which is that, 
 in him, mind or nervous system is the master, and the 
 rest of the body, with all its attributes, the servant. 
 
 The body still necessary. Should anyone suppose that 
 the principles here laid down would speedily involve us, if 
 executed, in a host of disasters, let him reconsider that 
 conclusion. Utterly ignorant or jocose persons have 
 hinted, more or less definitely, that if a race of mankind 
 were to be bred for brains, the product would be a most
 
 54 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 misbegotten creature approaching as near as possible and 
 that imperfectly enough to the ideal of disembodied 
 thought, a creature monstrous as to head, impotent and 
 puny as to limbs, and, in effect, the least effective of living 
 creatures. This supposition may be commended as the last 
 word in the way of nonsense. It depends upon an abysmal 
 ignorance of the necessary and permanent relations 
 which subsist between mind and body. It assumes that 
 the healthy mind can be obtained without the healthy 
 body ; it is totally unaware that the nervous system 
 cannot work properly unless the blood be well aerated 
 by active lungs and distributed by a healthy heart ; 
 that unless certain glands, of which these people have 
 never heard, are acting properly, the nervous system 
 falls into decadence, and the man becomes an imbecile. 
 To breed for brains is most assuredly to breed for body 
 too : only that the end in view will guide us as to what 
 points of body to breed for. For instance, it would 
 prevent us from having any foolish ambitions as to 
 increasing the stature of the race, or the average weight 
 of its muscular apparatus. Stature may be a point 
 to breed for in the race-culture of giraffes and muscle 
 in the race-culture of the hippopotamus : but such 
 bodily characters are of no moment for man, who is above 
 all things a mind. Whilst we shall pay little attention 
 to these, we or our descendants will be abundantly 
 concerned with the preservation and culture of those 
 many bodily characters upon which the health and 
 vigour and sanity and durability of the nervous system 
 depend. 
 
 Further, notwithstanding all the nonsense that has 
 been written concerning the man of the future, with bald 
 and swollen head, be-goggled eyes, toothless gums, and 
 wicker-work skeleton, those who know the alphabet 
 of physiology and psychology are warranted in believing
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 55 
 
 that wisely to breed for brains will be to breed for beauty 
 too not of the skin-deep but of the mind-deep variety 
 and also for grace and energy and versatility of physique. 
 Those who worship brawn as brawn may be commended 
 to the ox ; those who respect brawn as the instrument 
 of brain, and value it not by its horse-power but by 
 its capacity as the agent of purpose, will find nothing 
 to complain of in the kinds of men and women whom a 
 wise eugenics has for its ideal. 
 
 The erect attitude. And now we must briefly consider 
 that " most remarkable fact in the anatomy of man " to 
 which allusion was made in the first paragraph. It is that, 
 as the most philosophic anatomists are now coming to 
 believe, the body of man actually represents the goal of 
 physical evolution. Of course the common opinion is, quite 
 apart from science, that man is the highest of creatures, 
 and that there is no more to be expected. But the 
 doctrine of evolution regards man as the latest, not 
 necessarily the last, term in an age-long process 
 which is by no means completed, and from the 
 evolutionary point of view it is thus a daring 
 and, at first hearing, a preposterous thing to say that, 
 so far as the physical aspects of organic evolution are 
 concerned, the body of man apparently represents the 
 logical and final conclusion of the age-long process which 
 has produced it. Let us attempt very briefly to outline 
 the argument. 
 
 We may say that a great step was taken when from 
 the chaos of the invertebrate or backbone-less animals 
 there emerged the first vertebrates. This unquestionably 
 occurred in the sea, the first backbone being evolved 
 in a fish-like creature which, in the course of time, de- 
 veloped two lateral fins. These became modified into 
 two pairs of limbs, the sole function of which was loco- 
 motion. In the next group of vertebrates, the amphibia
 
 56 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 such as the frog we see these limbs terminating 
 each in five digits. (The frog, so to say, decided that we 
 should count in tens.) Now some creatures have 
 specialised their limbs at the cost of certain fingers. 
 The horse, for instance, walks on the nails (the hoofs) 
 of its middle fingers and its middle toes. In the 
 main line of ascent, however, none of these precious 
 fingers (and toes) how precious let the typist or the 
 pianist say have been sacrificed. There has been, 
 however, in later ages a tendency towards the specialisa- 
 tion of the front limbs. Used for locomotion at times, 
 they are also used for grasping and tearing and holding, 
 as in the case of the tiger, a member of the carnivora, 
 a relatively late and high group of mammals. But the 
 carnivore does not carry its food to its mouth, and the 
 cat carries her kittens in her mouth and not with her 
 paws. In the apes and monkeys, however, this specialisa- 
 tion goes further, and things are actually carried by the 
 hands to the mouth a very great advance on the tiger, 
 who fixes his food with his " hands," and then carries 
 his mouth to it. Food to mouth instead of mouth to 
 food is a much later stage in evolution, a fact which may 
 be recalled when we watch the table manners of certain 
 people. Finally, in man the specialisation reaches its 
 natural limit by the complete liberation of the fore-limbs 
 from the purposes of locomotion though the crawling 
 gait of a child recalls the base degrees by which we did 
 ascend 
 
 This great change depends upon an alteration 
 in the axis of the body. The first fishes, like present 
 fishes, were horizontal animals, but gradually the axis 
 has become altered, in the main line of progress, until 
 the semi-erect apes yield to man the erect, or " man the 
 erected," as Stevenson called him. The son of horizontal 
 animals, he is himself vertical : the " pronograde "
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 57 
 
 has become " orthograde." Thus the phrase, " the 
 ascent of man," may be read in two senses. This capital 
 fact has depended upon a shifting of the centre of 
 gravity of the body, which in adult man lies behind 
 the hip-joints, whereas in his ancestors and in the small 
 baby (still in the four-footed stage) it lies in front of the 
 hip-joints. Thus, whilst other creatures tend naturally 
 to fall forwards, so that they must use their fore-limbs 
 for support and locomotion, the whole body of man above 
 the hip-joints tends naturally to fall backwards, being 
 prevented from doing so by two great ligaments which 
 lie in front of the hip- joints and have a unique develop- 
 ment in man. The complete erection of the spine means 
 that the skull, instead of being suspended in front, is 
 now poised upon the top of the spinal column. The field 
 of vision is enormously enlarged, and it is possible to 
 sweep a great extent of horizon at a moment's notice. 
 But the complete discharge of the fore-limbs from the 
 function of locomotion has far vaster consequences, 
 especially as they now assume the function of educating 
 their master, the brain, and enabling him to employ them 
 for higher and higher purposes. 
 
 Thus, when we ask ourselves whether there is any 
 further goal for physical evolution, the answer is that 
 none can be seen. So far as physical evolution is con- 
 cerned the goal has been attained with the erect attitude. 
 Future changes in the anatomy of man will not be positive 
 but negative. There doubtless will be a certain lightening 
 of the ship, the casting overboard of inherited super- 
 fluities, but that is all : except that we may hope for 
 certain modifications in the way of increasing the adapta- 
 tion of the body to the erect attitude, which at present 
 bears very hardly in many ways upon the body of man, 
 and much more so upon the body of woman. 
 
 Thus race-culture will certainly not aim at the breeding
 
 58 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 of physical freaks of any kind, nor yet at such things 
 as stature. It must begin by clearly recognising what 
 are the factors which in man possess supreme survival- 
 value, and it must aim at their reinforcement rather 
 than at the maintenance of those factors which, of 
 dominant value in lower forms of life, have been super- 
 seded in him. A few words will suffice to show in what 
 fashion man has already shed vital characters which, 
 superfluous and burdensome for him, have in former 
 times been of the utmost survival-value. 
 
 The denudation of man. As contrasted with the 
 whole mass of his predecessors, man comes into the 
 world denuded of defensive armour, destitute of offen- 
 sive weapons, possessed alone of the potentialities 
 of the psychical. So far as defence is concerned, 
 he has neither fur nor feathers nor scales, but is the 
 most naked and thinnest skinned of animals. In his 
 Autobiography, Spencer tells us how he and Huxley, 
 sitting on the cliff at St. Andrews and watching some 
 boys bathing, " marvelled over the fact, seeming especially 
 strange when they are no longer disguised by clothes, 
 that human beings should dominate over all other creatures 
 and play the wonderful part they do on the earth." 1 
 But man is not only without armour against either 
 living enemies or cold ; he is also without weapons of 
 attack. His teeth are practically worthless in this 
 respect, not only on account of their small size but also 
 because his chin, a unique possession, and the shape 
 of his jaws, make them singularly unfit for catching 
 or grasping. For claws he has merely nails, capable 
 only of the feeblest scratching ; he can discharge no 
 
 1 We may recall the words of Lear : 
 
 " Is man no more than this ? Consider him well : Thou owest the 
 worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume : 
 . . . Thou art the thing itself : unaccommodated man is no more but 
 such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 59 
 
 poisons from his mouth ; he cannot envelop himself in 
 darkness in order to hide himself ; his speediest and 
 most enduring runner is a breathless laggard. And, 
 lastly, he is at first almost bereft of instinct, has to be 
 burnt in order to dread the fire, and cannot find his 
 own way to the breast. His sole instrument of dominance 
 is his mind in all its attributes. 
 
 On the grounds thus indicated, we must be wholly 
 opposed to all proposals for race education and race- 
 culture, and to all social practices, which assume more 
 or less consciously that, for all his boasting, man is after 
 all only an animal : whilst we must applaud the selection 
 and culture of the physical exactly in so far as, but no 
 further than, it makes for health and strength of the 
 psychical or, if the reader dislikes these expressions, 
 the health and strength of that particular part of the 
 physical which we call the nervous system. 
 
 It used to be generally asserted that whilst, in a civilised 
 community, we do not expect to find the biggest or most 
 muscular man King or Prime Minister, yet amongst savage 
 tribes it is the physical, muscle and bone and brutality, 
 that determines leadership. This, however, we now 
 know to be untrue even for the earliest stages of society 
 that anthropologists can recognise. The leader of the 
 savage tribe is not the biggest man but the cleverest. 
 The suggestion is therefore that, even in the earliest stages 
 of human society, the plane of selection has already been 
 largely transferred from brawn to brain or from physique 
 to psyche. It has always been so, we may be well sure. 
 The Drift men of Taubach, living in the inter-glacial 
 period, could kill the full-grown elephant and rhinoceros. 
 Says Professor Ranke : " It is the mind of man that shows 
 itself superior to the most powerful brute force, even where 
 we meet him for the first time." This remains true whether 
 the brute force be displayed in brutes or in other men.
 
 6o THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 The great fact of intelligence, as against material 
 apparatus of any kind and even as against rigid instinct, 
 is its limitless applicability. With this one instrument 
 man achieves what without it could be achieved only by 
 a creature who combined in his own person every kind 
 of material apparatus, offensive and defensive, locomotor 
 or what not, which animal life, and vegetable life too, 
 have invented in the past and not even by such a 
 creature. Man is a poor pedestrian, but his mind makes 
 locomotives which rival or surpass the fish of the sea, 
 the antelope on land, if not yet the bird of the air ; his 
 teeth are of poor quality, but his mind supplies him with 
 artificial ones and enables him to cook and otherwise to 
 prepare his food. All the physical methods are self- 
 limited, but the method of mind has no limits ; it is even 
 more than cumulative, and multiplies its capacities by 
 geometrical progression. 
 
 The cult of muscle, A word must really be said 
 here, in accordance with all the foregoing argument, 
 against the recent revival of what may be called the 
 Cult of Muscle. This cult of muscle, or belief in 
 physical culture, so called, as the true means of 
 race-culture, undoubtedly requires to have its absurd 
 pretensions censured. We now have many flourish- 
 ing schools of physical culture which desire to 
 persuade us to a belief in the monstrous anachronism 
 that, even in man, muscle and bone are still pre-eminent. 
 They want as many people as possible to believe that the 
 only thing really worth aiming at is what they understand 
 by physical culture. They pride themselves upon know- 
 ing the names and positions of all the muscles in the 
 body, and on being able to provide us with instruments 
 to develop all these muscles: they are there and they 
 ought to be developed, and you are a mere parody of 
 what a man ought to be unless they are developed none
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 61 
 
 of them must be neglected. Many people have been 
 persuaded of these doctrines, and there is no doubt that 
 the physical culture schools do thus develop a large 
 number of muscles which have no present service for 
 man and would otherwise have been allowed to rest in a 
 decent obscurity. 
 
 In order to prove this point, let us instance a few 
 muscles which it is utterly absurd to regard as still pos- 
 sessing any survival- value for man. In the sole of the 
 foot there are four distinct layers of muscles, by means 
 of which it is theoretically possible to turn each individual 
 toe to the left or the right, independently of its neigh- 
 bours, and to move the various parts of each toe upon 
 themselves, just as in the case of the fingers. All this 
 muscular apparatus is a mere survival, worth nothing at 
 all for the special purposes of the human foot. In point of 
 fact the human foot is now decadent, and probably not 
 more than two or three specimens of feet in a hundred 
 contain the complete normal equipment of muscles, bones 
 and joints as Sir William Turner showed many 
 years ago. Thus many feet are possessed of muscles 
 designed to act upon joints which have not been de- 
 veloped at all in the feet in question and which, if they 
 were there, would not be of the smallest use. To take 
 another instance, we do not now use our external ears 
 for the purpose of catching sound, though we still possess 
 muscles which, if thrown into action, would move the 
 external ear in various directions. Again, there is a flat, 
 thin stratum of muscle on the front of the neck, corre- 
 sponding to a muscle which in the dog and the horse is 
 quite important, but which is of no use to us. All would 
 be agreed as to the absurdity of devoting continued 
 conscious effort to the development of these particular 
 muscles ; but in point of fact we have a whole host of 
 muscles which are in a similar case, and which are never-
 
 62 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 theless objects of the most tender solicitude on the part 
 of the physical culturist. In general, this modern craze, 
 whilst highly profitable to those who foster it, is 
 most misguided and reactionary. Modern knowledge of 
 heredity teaches us that our descendants will not profit 
 muscularly in the slightest degree because of our de- 
 votion to these relics : the blacksmith's baby has promise 
 of no bigger biceps than any one else's. Further, the 
 over-doing of muscular culture is responsible for the 
 consumption of a large amount of energy. A muscle is 
 a highly vital and active organ, requiring a large amount 
 of nourishment, which its possessor has to obtain, consume, 
 digest and distribute. The more time and energy spent 
 in sustaining useless muscles, the less is available for 
 immeasurably more important concerns. Man does not 
 live by brawn alone : he does live by brain alone. 
 
 Strength versus skill. So far as true race-culture 
 is concerned, we should regard our muscles merely 
 as servants or instruments of the will. Since we 
 have learnt to employ external forces for our pur- 
 poses, the mere bulk of a muscle is now a matter of 
 little importance. Of the utmost importance, on the 
 other hand, is the power to co-ordinate and graduate the 
 activity of our muscles, so that they may become highly 
 trained servants. This is a matter, however, not of 
 muscle at all but of nervous education. Its foundation 
 cannot be laid by mechanical things like dumb-bells and 
 exercises, but by games, in which will and purpose and 
 co-ordination are incessantly employed. In other words, 
 the only physical culture worth talking about is nervous 
 culture. 
 
 The principles here laid down are daily defied in very 
 large measure in our nurseries, our schools, and our 
 barrack yards. The play of a child, spontaneous and 
 purposeful, is supremely human and characteristic.
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 63 
 
 Although, when considered from the outside, it is simply a 
 means of muscular development, properly considered it is 
 really the means of nervous development. Here we see 
 muscles used as human muscles should alone be used 
 as instruments of mind. In schools the same principles 
 should be recognised. From the biological and psycho- 
 logical point of view the playing-field is immeasurably 
 superior to the gymnasium. But it is in the barrack 
 yard that the pitiable confusion between the survival- 
 value of mind and muscle respectively in man is most 
 ludicrously and disastrously exemplified. 
 
 The glorious truth upon which we appear to act is that 
 man is an animated machine ; that the business of the 
 soldier is not to think, not to be an individual, but to be 
 an assemblage of muscles. We see the marks of this idea 
 even in a fine poem : " Their's not to reason why, their's 
 but to do or die " which, of course, might just as well 
 be said of a stud of horses or motor-cars. Further, our 
 worship of the machine is, consistently enough, an un- 
 intelligent worship. We do not even recognise the best 
 conditions for its action. Every year hundreds of young 
 soldiers, originally healthy, have their hearts and lungs 
 and other vital organs permanently injured by the 
 imbecile attitude of chest that of abnormal expansion 
 which they are required to adopt during hard work. 
 Army doctors are now protesting against this, but it is 
 in accordance with the fitness of things that the cult of 
 muscle as against intelligence should be unintelligent. 
 
 I repeat that whilst in the study of race-culture the 
 physical cannot be ignored, since the psychical is so 
 largely dependent upon it, yet the physical is of worth 
 to us only in so far as it serves the psychical. The race 
 the culture of which we propose to undertake has long 
 ago determined to abandon the physical in itself as an 
 instrument of success. We are not attempting the
 
 64 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 culture of the cretaceous reptiles, which staked their all 
 upon muscle, and finally, having become as large as 
 houses and as agile suffered extinction. We are at- 
 tempting the culture of a species which, so far as the 
 physical is concerned, has long ago crossed the Rubicon 
 or burnt its boats. Even if Mr. Sandow and the drill- 
 sergeant had their way to the utmost, and, having finally 
 eliminated all traces of mind, succeeded in producing the 
 strongest and most perfect physical machine that could 
 be made from the human body, the species so produced 
 would go down in a generation before the elements or 
 before any living species that may be named. Man 
 has staked his all upon mind. The only physical 
 development that is really worth anything to such a race 
 is that which educates intelligence and morality, on the 
 one hand, and serves for their expression, on the other. 
 
 If there is any salient and irresistible tendency in our 
 civilisation to-day, it is the persistent decadence of 
 muscle and of all of which muscle is the type, as an 
 instrument of survival -value. The development of 
 machinery, much deplored by the short-sighted, is in the 
 direct line of progress, because it reduces the importance 
 of muscle and throws all its weight into the scale of mind. 
 Hewers of wood and drawers of water are becoming less 
 and less necessary, not because mechanical force is not 
 needed but because the human intelligence is learning 
 how to supersede the human machine as its source. Every 
 development of machinery makes the man who can merely 
 offer his muscles of less value to the community. Long 
 ago not so very long ago in some cases it was quite 
 sufficient for a man to be able to say " I am a good 
 machine : " he was worth his keep and had his chance of 
 becoming a parent ; but the man whom society wants 
 now-a-days is not the man who is a good machine but 
 the man who can make one. These elementary truths
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 65 
 
 are hidden, however, from the political quacks who dis- 
 course to us upon unemployment. 
 
 Herbert Spencer's remark that it is necessary to be a 
 good animal has an element of truth in it which was 
 utterly ignored and needed proclamation at that time ; 
 but it is necessary to be a good animal only in so far as 
 that state makes for being a good man and not an iota 
 further. 
 
 The present interest in many most important aspects 
 of physical education, such as may be summed up under 
 the phrase "school hygiene," must not blind us to the 
 great principle that physical education is a means and not 
 an end. Our present educational system, which permits 
 schooling to end just when it should begin, or rather 
 sooner, and which, even through our Government Depart- 
 ments, permits boys to be used as little more than ani- 
 mated machines, such as telegraph boys is very largely 
 responsible for the great national evil of unemployment, 
 which we treat with soup-kitchens. We shall revise a 
 large proportion of our educational, political and social 
 methods just so soon as but not before we get into 
 our heads the idea that in human society, and pre- 
 eminently in society to-day, the survival-value of mind 
 and consequently the selection of mind must predominate 
 over the survival -value and consequent selection of 
 muscle. Further, whatever factors tend to enhance the 
 survival-value of the physical are ipso facto making for 
 retrogression and a return to the order of the beast. 
 Whatever tend to enhance the survival-value of the 
 psychical by which I most assuredly include not only 
 intelligence but, for instance, motherhood are ipso 
 facto forces of progress. The products of progress are not 
 machinery but men, and the well-drilled-machine idea of 
 a man ought to be as obsolete as more than one recent 
 war has proved it disastrous. 
 F
 
 66 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 There is here to be read no pessimistic suggestion that 
 the psychical is in any permanent danger. No one can 
 think so who knows its strength and the relative impot- 
 ence of the physical, but it is certainly possible that the 
 course of progress may be greatly delayed in any given 
 nation or race by worship of the physical, or even, as 
 Sparta shows, by worship of what may be called the 
 physical virtues as against the moral and intellectual 
 virtues. But those who are interested in the survival of 
 any particular race or nation have to remember that 
 arrest or retardation of progress therein, relatively to its 
 wiser neighbours, must, before long, result in its utter 
 downfall. 
 
 What are we to choose ? The argument that the 
 selection of mind has been dominant throughout 
 human history is reinforced by such knowledge of 
 that history as we possess. There is no record of any 
 race that established itself in virtue of great stature 
 or exceptional muscular strength. Even in cases of 
 the most purely military dominance, it was not force 
 as such, but discipline and method, that determined 
 success ; whilst some of the greatest soldiers in history 
 have been physically the smallest. The statement of the 
 anthropologists, already alluded to, regarding the selec- 
 tion of the leading men hi primitive tribes, may safely 
 be taken as always true : selection in human society has 
 always been, in the main, selection of that which, for 
 survival-value, is the dominant character of man, mind 
 in its widest sense. We shall see, later, that physical 
 eugenics can by no means be ignored : but our guiding 
 principle must be that the physical is of worth only in so 
 far as it serves the psychical, and is worse than worthless 
 in so far as it does not. It would surely be well, for 
 instance, that we should breed for " energy," to use
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 67 
 
 Mr. Gallon's term : but the energy we desire, and the energy 
 he commends, is nervous, not muscular. The confusion 
 between two radically different things, vitality and mus- 
 cularity, is, however, almost universal, though it will not 
 stand a moment's examination. In a volume devoted to 
 personal hygiene I have discussed this point, which is of 
 real moment both for the individual and for the theory 
 of eugenics. 1 
 
 It is of interest to note, in passing from this question, 
 that inherent facts of the human constitution would 
 interdict us if we thought it a fit ideal to breed for stature 
 or bulk. Giants are essentially morbid not favourable 
 but unfavourable variations. They are very frequently 
 childless and almost constantly slow-witted. Their 
 condition is really a mild form of a well-marked and highly 
 characteristic disease known as acromegaly, and dis- 
 tinguished by great enlargement of the face and 
 extremities. The malady depends upon peculiarities in 
 the glandular activities of the body : and the state of these 
 which makes for great stature and bulk makes against intelli- 
 gence. It is suggested, then, that any considerable 
 increase of human bulk and stature could only be 
 obtained at the cost of intelligence. It would be very 
 dear at the price. 
 
 When we come to the subject of selection for parenthood 
 in man through the preferences exhibited by individuals 
 for members of the opposite sex, we shall see that what 
 Darwin called " sexual selection " is certainly a reality 
 in the case of man, whether or not it be so in the case of 
 
 1 Says Darwin, " So little is this subject understood, that I have heard 
 surprise repeatedly expressed at such great monsters as the Mastodon . . . 
 having become extinct ; as if mere bodily strength gave victory in the 
 battle of life. Mere size, on the contrary, would in some cases determine 
 .... quicker extermination from the greater amount of requisite food." 
 In the Russo-Japanese War, one of the effective factors was the greater 
 area of the Russian soldier as a target, and the disparity between the 
 food requirements of the little victors and the big losers.
 
 68 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 the lower animals. We shall see that this most potent 
 factor in human evolution acts even now very favourably, 
 and is capable of having its value enormously enhanced. 
 In the selection of husbands, nervous or psychical factors 
 are notably of high survival-value in civilised communities. 
 In the selection of wives the survival-value of the 
 physical is still very high : but it may be hoped and 
 believed that the present tendency is to attach relatively 
 less importance to them and more to the psychical ele- 
 ments of the chosen. This tendency must be furthered to 
 the utmost point beyond which the physical requisites 
 for motherhood would suffer weakening but no further. 
 
 How are we to estimate civic worth ? We have 
 already observed that it is incorrect to use the word 
 " fit " as if it were synonymous with " worthy." If we 
 insist on using this term, which means only " adapted to 
 conditions," we must define those conditions. We must 
 say that we desire to further the production of those who 
 are fit for citizenship, and to disfavour the production of 
 those who are unfit for citizenship. We shall thereby 
 dispose at least of those vexatious objectors who tell us 
 that many eminent criminals are individually superior to 
 many eminent judges. The statement is doubtless 
 untrue, but if it were true it would still be irrelevant. 
 A criminal may be individually a remarkable personality, 
 but in so far as he is a criminal he is unfit for citizenship. 
 
 It is far better to use consistently Mr. Galton's phrase, 
 " civic worth," or, for short, " worth." We may here note 
 Mr. Galton's most recent remarks on what he means by 
 worth : 
 
 " By this I mean the civic worthiness, or the Value to the State 
 of a person, as it would probably be assessed by experts or, say, by 
 such of his fellow-workers as have earned the respect of the com- 
 munity in the midst of which they live. Thus the worth of 
 soldiers would be such as it would be rated by respected soldiers,
 
 SELECTION OF MIND 69 
 
 students by students, business men by business men, artists by 
 artists, and so on. The State is a vastly complex organism, and 
 the hope of obtaining a Proportional Representation of its best 
 parts should be an avowed object of issuing invitations to these 
 gatherings. 
 
 " Speaking only for myself, if I had to classify persons according 
 to Worth, I should consider each of them under the three heads of 
 Physique, Ability, and Character, subject to the provision that 
 inferiority in any one of the three should outweigh superiority in 
 the other two. I rank Physique first, because it is not only very 
 valuable in itself and allied to many other good qualities, but has 
 the additional merit of being easily rated. Ability I should place 
 second on similar grounds, and Character third, though in real 
 importance it stands first of all." 
 
 We shall certainly misunderstand this quotation unless 
 we clearly realise that Mr. Galton is speaking of eugenic 
 worth that is to say, of worth in relation to parenthood 
 and heredity. No one, of course, would assert for a 
 moment that inferiority in the matter of physique out- 
 weighed superiority in ability and character, so far as 
 our estimate of an individual as an individual is con- 
 cerned, nor yet so far as our estimate of him as a citizen 
 is concerned. But from the eugenic standpoint, as a 
 parent of citizens to come, such a person, though he may 
 have himself saved the State, is on the average rightly 
 to be regarded as unworthy on the eugenic scale it being 
 assumed, of course, that the inferiority of physique in 
 the person in question is either native and therefore 
 transmissible, or else due to forms of disease, or poison- 
 ing, such as, according to our knowledge of ante- 
 natal pathology, will probably involve degeneracy on 
 the part of his children. I would add that love is as 
 precious as ability, if not more so, and that we should 
 aim at its increase by making parenthood the most 
 
 1 Quoted from a Paper read by Mr. Galton before the Eugenics 
 Education Society, October 14, 1908, and published in Nature, 
 October 22, 1908.
 
 70 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 responsible act in life, so that children are born only 
 to those who love children and who will transmit their 
 high measure of the parental instinct and the tender 
 emotion which is its correlate. 1 
 
 1 See the author's paper, " The Psychology of Parenthood," Eugenics 
 Review, April, 1909.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 
 " Increase and multiply " 
 
 THE ceaseless multiplication of man is one of the facts 
 which distinguish him from all other living species, animal 
 or vegetable. 1 
 
 We must not be misled by such a case as that of the 
 multiplication of rabbits in Australia. Apart from such 
 circumstances as human interference, the earth is already 
 crammed with life of a kind, not the highest life nor the 
 most intense life, but at any rate fully extended life. Man 
 alone multiplies persistently, irresistibly, and has done 
 so from the very first, so that, arising locally, he is now 
 diffused over the whole surface of the earth. To quote 
 from Professor Lankester again : " Man is Nature's rebel. 
 Where Nature says Die ! Man says I will live ! Accord- 
 ing to the law previously in universal operation man should 
 have been limited in geographical area, killed by extremes 
 of cold or of heat, subject to starvation if one kind of diet 
 were unobtainable, and should have been unable to in- 
 crease and multiply, just as are his animal relatives, with- 
 out losing his specific structure. . . . But man's wits and 
 his will have enabled him ... to ' increase and multiply/ 
 as no other animal, without change of form." 
 
 Not only has man made himself the only animal which 
 constantly increases in numbers, but this increase, as Pro- 
 fessor Lankester points out in another part of his lecture, 
 
 1 An authoritative statement on this point has already been quoted 
 from Sir E. Ray Lankester's Romanes Lecture of 1905, p. 42. 
 
 71
 
 72 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 already threatening certain difficulties, will be much more 
 rapid than at present, assuming the birth-rate to remain 
 where it is, when disease is controlled. It is within our 
 power, as Pasteur declared long ago, to abolish all para- 
 sitic, infectious or epidemic disease. This must be and 
 will be done within a century, I have little doubt. The 
 problem of the increase of human population will become 
 more pressing than ever. Professor Lankester suggests that 
 in one or five centuries the difficulty raised by our multi- 
 plication " would, if let alone, force itself upon a desperate 
 humanity, brutalised by over-crowding and the struggle 
 for food. A return to Nature's terrible selection of the 
 fittest may, it is conceivable, be in this way in store for 
 us. But it is more probable that humanity will submit 
 to a restriction by the community in respect of the right 
 to multiply." The lecturer added that we must therefore 
 perfect our knowledge of heredity in man, as to which 
 " there is absolutely no provision in any civilised com- 
 munity, and no conception among the people or their 
 leaders, that it is a matter which concerns anyone but 
 farmers." 
 
 The secret of multiplication. Professor Lankester, 
 however, omits to point out the astonishing paradox 
 involved in the fact that as I pointed out at the 
 Royal Institution in 1907 man, the only ceaselessly 
 multiplying animal, has the lowest birth-rate of any 
 living creature. 1 From the purely arithmetical point 
 of view, what does it mean ? We may defer at present 
 any deeper interpretation. 
 
 1 The exception of one or two large animals, like the elephant, is 
 not important. In proportion to body weight man's birth-rate is 
 lower than theirs. And it is to be noted that the "infant " mortality is 
 very low in this case, where the birth-rate is so low. Says Darwin, of 
 the young elephant, " None are destroyed bv beasts of prey ; for e en the 
 tiger in India most rarely dares to attack a young elephant protected by 
 its dam." The dam has no factory to go to, and no beast of prey to sell 
 her alcohol.
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 73 
 
 It means necessarily and obviously that the effective 
 means of multiplication is not a high birth-rate but a low 
 death-rate. It is a necessary inference from the paradox 
 in question that the infant death-rate and the general 
 death-rate in man are the lowest anywhere to be found. 
 Producing fewer young he alone multiplies. 1 It follows 
 that a smaller proportion of those young must die. Unless 
 it is supposed by bishops and others, then, that a peculiar 
 value attaches to the production of a baby shortly to be 
 buried, the suggestion evidently is the same as that to 
 which every humanitarian and social and patriotic impulse 
 guides us, namely, the reduction of the death-rate and 
 especially the infant mortality. This is the true way in 
 which to insure the more rapid multiplication of man, if 
 that be desired. I believe it is not to be desired, but in 
 any case the reduction of the death-rate and especially of 
 the infant mortality is a worthy and necessary end in 
 itself, and need not inevitably lead to our undue multi- 
 plication provided that the birth-rate falls. Hence the 
 eugenists and the Episcopal Bench may join hands so far 
 as the reduction of the death-rate is concerned, and the 
 only persons with whom a practical quarrel remains are 
 those who in effect applaud the mother who boasts 
 that she has buried twelve. 
 
 The facts of human multiplication. Human popu- 
 lation continues to increase notwithstanding any 
 changes in the birth-rate. This fact remains true, 
 as shown by the latest obtainable figures. It should 
 be one of the dogmas never absent from the fore- 
 ground of the statesman's mind. Apparently nothing, 
 however, will induce us to take this little forethought. 
 When we build a bridge across the Thames, we ignore 
 
 1 " The fulmar petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the 
 most numerous bird in the world." (Origin of Species, popular edition, 
 p. 81).
 
 74 
 
 it ; when we widen a bridge we ignore it likewise. 
 When we make a new street we ignore it ; when we build 
 railways and railway stations we ignore it excusably, 
 perhaps, in this case ; when we build hospitals we ignore 
 it : four times out of five there is no room for the addition 
 of a single ward in time to come. We have not yet even 
 learnt, as they are learning in America and Germany, 
 how to acquire the outlying lands of cities for the public 
 possession, so that they may be properly employed as the 
 city grows. The man who builds himself a villa on the 
 outskirts of a city, ignores it, and is staggered by it in ten 
 years. The lover of nature and the country ignores it : 
 " Just look at this," he says, " this was in the country 
 when first I knew it, look at these horrible rows of villas ! " 
 The only possible reply to such a person is simply, " Well, 
 my dear sir, what do you propose ? General infanticide ? " 
 Most important of all, this fact, that, to take the case of 
 Great Britain, some half million babies are born every year 
 hi excess over the number of all who die at all ages, is 
 forgotten by our statesmen or rather by our politicians. 
 It could, of course, not be forgotten by a statesman. 
 Quite apart from remoter consequences, especially in 
 relation to the wheat supply, this persistent multiplication 
 which one has actually heard denied on the ground that 
 the birth-rate is falling is of urgent moment to all of us. 
 In 1907 the Census Bureau of Washington published 
 some figures on the mortality statistics of nations, a sum- 
 mary of which may be quoted : " In all parts of the 
 civilised world both the birth-rates and the death-rates 
 tend to decrease, and, as a rule, those countries having 
 the lowest death-rates have also the lowest birth-rates. 
 In Europe the lowest birth-rate is that of France, the 
 highest those of Servia and Roumania. The lowest death- 
 rates are in Sweden and Norway ; the highest in Russia 
 and Spain. The downward tendency of the birth- and
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 75 
 
 death-rates is best shown by diagrams prepared by the 
 French Government, and it is probable that the downward 
 tendency is actually steeper than the diagrams show, 
 because both births and deaths are more accurately 
 registered than formerly." 
 
 But these statements are by no means necessarily in- 
 compatible with steady increase of population, which, 
 of course, increases so long as the birth-rate exceeds the 
 death-rate. I quote a few figures from the Science Year 
 Book of 1908 : 
 
 In 1890 the total population of the world was estimated 
 at 1,487,900,000. 
 
 Aryan (Europe, Persia, India, etc.) . . 545,000,000 
 
 Mongolian (N. and E. Asia) . . . . 630,000,000 
 
 Semitic (N. Africa) . . . . . . 65,000,000 
 
 Negro (C. Africa) . . . . . . 150,000,000 
 
 Malay and Polynesian . . . . . . 35,000,000 
 
 American Indian . . . . . . 15,000,000 
 
 The total figure now must be something like sixteen 
 hundred millions at least. 
 
 Density of population, in so far as it means what is 
 commonly called over-crowding, is an important factor 
 in the death-rate, and has a most inimical influence upon 
 race-culture in virtue of the opportunity afforded to 
 the racial poisons syphilis, alcohol, etc. Thus Sweden 
 has the lowest death-rate in Europe, and has much 
 the least density of population only 29 per square 
 mile as compared with our own 341. If now the fact 
 of the increase of population, with all that it means 
 and will mean, may be taken as dealt with and accepted, 
 there will be no danger of leading the reader to false 
 conclusions if we insist upon the fall of the birth-rate, 
 which in Great Britain in 1908 was the lowest on record.
 
 76 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 The death-rate, however, persistently falls also. The 
 reader who thinks that the birth-rate alone determines the 
 increase of population, and those who believe in polygamy 
 on the ground that it necessarily makes for the rapid 
 multiplication and therefore strength of a nation, 
 should compare the death-rate of London, which 
 is under 16, with that of Bombay, which is just under 79. 
 It is asserted that in many large Indian cities the infant 
 mortality approaches one-half of all the children born. 
 What it amounts to in such cities as Canton and Pekin we 
 can only surmise with horror. 
 
 Notwithstanding the persistent fall in the birth-rate of 
 London the rate of increase in population remains 
 stupendous, according to the calculations of Mr. Cottrell, 
 which may be quoted from the Science Year Book of 
 1908. He estimates the population of Greater London 
 in 1910 at about 7^ millions, and in 1920 at well over 
 8 millions the falling birth-rate notwithstanding. 
 
 The increase of population of five great countries may 
 be briefly noted here. In all, with the possible exception 
 of Russia, the birth-rate is rapidly falling. In the course 
 of the nineteenth century the population of 
 
 Russia (in Europe) . . rose from 38 to 105,000,000 
 
 France . . . . ,, 26 38,000,000 
 
 Germany .. .. 23 55,000,000 
 
 Great Britain . . 15 ,, 40,000,000 
 
 United States . . 5 ,, 75,000,000 
 
 These are merely approximate figures, but accurate 
 enough to be of value. It need hardly be pointed out 
 that immigration accounts for the disproportionate in- 
 crease of population in the United States. But it may 
 be added that the imminent arrest or control of this immi- 
 gration will assuredly have the most serious and pressing
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 77 
 
 consequences for Europe. Plainly it must hasten the 
 coming of national eugenics. 
 
 The case of Germany. Especial interest and importance 
 attach for many reasons to the case of Germany in this 
 connection, and, as might be expected, many precise facts 
 are available. Here I shall avail myself freely of the 
 paper contributed by Dr. Sombart to the International for 
 December, 1907. In the first seven years of this century 
 the population of Germany increased almost ten per cent. 
 The figure in 1870 was 40.8 millions and in 1907 61 
 millions. The population is increasing yearly at the rate 
 of about 800,000, as compared with about half a million 
 in the case of Great Britain. In France in 1907 the 
 population actually declined by a few thousands. In 
 regard to the growth of population Germany is now at 
 the head of all civilised countries, excepting those cases 
 in which immigration has augmented the number of 
 inhabitants. Does this expansion of population depend 
 upon an increasing birth-rate or a diminishing death-rate ? 
 The fact, in strict parallel with the biological generalisa- 
 tion already made, is that " Germany's population is 
 increasing so swiftly because the death-rate has been fall- 
 ing steadily. At the beginning of the period, 1870-1880, 
 there were nearly 30 deaths per thousand inhabitants, 
 while in recent years only about 20 deaths in every 
 thousand inhabitants have taken place each year. . . . 
 Notwithstanding, the birth-rate during the last ten years, 
 during which the principal growth of population occurs, 
 has not in anywise increased in Germany. Indeed, by 
 careful investigation it becomes apparent that it has 
 declined almost unintermittently for a generation." The 
 average birth-rate for the ten years 1871-1880 was 40.7, 
 for 1891-1900 the average was 37.4. Since then it has fallen 
 further, and in 1905 the figure was 34, the lowest on record. 
 As Dr. Sombart observes, we shall only appreciate these
 
 78 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 figures if we regard them as an expression of a tendency 
 which will continue, and that this is so he proves. He 
 observes that " the more highly advanced the country, 
 the lower its birth-rate. . . . From this we may already 
 draw the conclusion that a diminution of births is a con- 
 comitant of our progress in civilisation. Secondly, this 
 is confirmed by the fact that the falling-off in the birth- 
 rate must be attributed largely to the big cities. ... As a 
 third statistical argument that the birth-rate declines with 
 the advance of civilisation, the fact may be cited that in 
 the quarters of the well-to-do still fewer children are born 
 than in those of the poor." (In London, as we have 
 seen, the birth-rate is highest in Stepney and lowest 
 in Hampstead). 
 
 Dr. Sombart finally points out what must never be 
 forgotten that an increase in population, dependent upon 
 a fall in the death-rate, whilst the birth-rate also falls, is 
 necessarily self-limited. The decrease of the death-rate 
 is limited by definite natural age-limits, and " this indi- 
 cates that the increase of population in Germany is gradu- 
 ally entering upon a period of less activity, and will perhaps 
 quite cease within a conceivable period unless other causes 
 operate in the opposite direction." 
 
 The yellow peril. The facts regarding the yellow 
 races are extremely difficult to ascertain. It appears, 
 however, that the birth-rate in Japan has almost doubled 
 in 27 years rising from 17.1 to 31. (I doubt the 
 accuracy of the earlier figure.) In China the population 
 is largely controlled by infanticide, but there is little 
 doubt that the main contention of Pearson was correct, 
 and that the yellow races are multiplying much more 
 rapidly than the white races. It does not necessarily 
 follow, however, as we shall see, that this means yellow 
 ascendancy, any more than a similar comparison would 
 mean microbic ascendancy. It is not quantity but
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 79 
 
 quality of life that gives survival-value and dominance. 
 This disparity between white and yellow rates of increase 
 is by far the most pregnant of contemporary phenomena. 
 In the present introductory volume it can merely be 
 named. But since we shall not survive in virtue of 
 quantity, I, for one, am well assured that the choice for 
 Western civilisation will ere long be the final one between 
 eugenics or extinction. 
 
 The wheat problem. Meanwhile, we must consider 
 briefly the question evidently raised by this fact of 
 human multiplication. As an expert has lately said, 
 the rise in the price of wheat " is not the transitory 
 result of market manipulation and ' corners,' forcing 
 prices up to an unnatural level, but of perfectly natural 
 and irresistible causes which, for all that, are the more 
 anxious and disquieting. The truth is we are for the 
 first time beginning to feel individually the effect of a 
 great natural process the race which started long ago 
 between the population of the world and the growth of 
 the world's wheat supply. In this race the growth of 
 the world's population has been outstripping the growth 
 of its wheat-food production, and the consequence has 
 been a total growing shortage, in spite of the opening of 
 vast new areas in Canada and the Argentina." In this 
 connection one of the best papers in Great Britain 
 the Westminster Gazette cheerfully remarked in a leading 
 article that, after all, we need not be alarmed as to the 
 difficulty in increasing the supply of wheat, since popula- 
 tion would, in any case, adapt itself to the food-supply. 
 This is true, indeed: there will never be more human 
 beings than there is food to feed. But the question is, 
 how will the population be kept down ? In a word, 
 is it to be by the awful and bloody processes of Nature 
 or by the conscious, provident and humane methods of 
 man ?
 
 8o THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 We are reminded of the argument advanced by Sir 
 William Crookes in his Presidential Address to the British 
 Association in 1898. The distinguished author has 
 himself written an invaluable book on the subject which 
 has been carefully revised and supplemented, and must 
 be read by the serious student. 1 We may note from the 
 point of view of the student of dietetics that wheat is 
 and remains, on physiological examination, what the 
 proverb suggests. Bread is the staff of life, wheat being, 
 in proportion to its price, by far the best and cheapest 
 of all foods. 
 
 The argument of Sir William Crookes was advanced 
 exactly a century after the publication of the great essay 
 of Malthus which we must soon consider. In the whole 
 intervening century no one, capable of being heard, had 
 considered the question. The relation of Crookes to 
 the earlier thinker remains, though it is curious that 
 Malthus was not mentioned by his successor. Writing 
 now, a decade later, I wish merely to point out that 
 Sir William's argument is found valid. He observed 
 that " the actual and potential wheat-producing capacity 
 of the United States is and will be, for years to come 
 the dominant factor in the world's bread-supply." 
 Now the recent expert from whom we have already 
 quoted declares that " former great wheat exporting 
 countries like the United States, as well as Russia and 
 India, while their production remains as high, are sending 
 far less abroad under the pressure of their own increasing 
 needs. In this connection it may be recorded that a 
 great American corn expert declares that in twenty-five 
 years the United States will want all, or very nearly all, 
 of her wheat production for herself, and will have very 
 little indeed to send us." In 1898 Sir William said, 
 
 1 The Wheat Problem, by Sir Wm. Crookes, F.R.S., 2nd edition, 1905. 
 The Chemical Nnvs Office, 15, Newcastle St., Farringdon St., E.G.
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 8r 
 
 " A permanently higher price for wheat is, I fear, a 
 calamity that ere long must be faced." As everyone 
 knows, this prophecy is now being fulfilled. Sir William 
 declared that " the augmentation of the world's eating 
 population in a geometrical ratio " is a proved fact. The 
 phrase means, of course, simply that the yearly increase 
 increases. On the other hand, the wheat supply is subject 
 to a yearly increase which does not itself increase in other 
 words the increase is in an arithmetical ratio. This, a 
 century later, precisely illustrates the principle of Malthus. 
 Sir William also declared that exports of wheat from the 
 United States are only of present interest, and that 
 " within a generation the ever-increasing population of 
 the United States will consume all the wheat grown 
 within its borders, and will be driven to import, and, 
 like ourselves, will scramble for the lion's share of the 
 wheat crop of the world." 
 
 Next to the United States Russia is the greatest wheat 
 exporter, but the Russian peasant population increases 
 more rapidly than any other in Europe, even though it 
 is inadequately fed, and this source of supply must fail 
 ere very long. As Sir William points out, the Caucasian 
 civilisation is indeed founded upon bread. " Other races 
 vastly superior to us in numbers, but differing widely in 
 material and intellectual progress, are eaters of Indian 
 corn, rice, millet and other grains ; but none of these 
 grains have the food-value, concentrated health-sus- 
 taining power of wheat." Sir William's argument was, 
 and is, that we must learn how to fix the nitrogen of 
 the atmosphere that is to say, how to combine it in 
 forms on which the plant can feed. " The fixation 
 of nitrogen is a question of the not far distant 
 future. Unless we can class it among certainties to 
 come, the great Caucasian race will cease to be foremost 
 in the world, and will be squeezed out of existence by
 
 82 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 races to whom wheat and bread is not the staff of 
 life." 
 
 Sir William Crookes was himself the pioneer in the 
 discovery of the electric method of fixing the atmo- 
 spheric nitrogen, and now, a decade after the delivery 
 of his address, this method is in successful commercial 
 employment in Scandinavia. There is also a method of 
 sowing the bacteria which are capable of fixing nitrogen 
 and this, according to some, has been already proved 
 practicable. Further, the Mendelians offer us the possi- 
 bility of new varieties of wheat having more grains to 
 the stalk than we obtain at present. By these methods 
 the output of the land devoted to wheat may be doubled 
 or trebled, but it is evident that even then there will be 
 an impassable limit. We have to face, indeed, the 
 evident but unconsidered fact that there must be a maxi- 
 mum possible human population for this finite earth, 
 whether a bread-eating population or any other. I do 
 not propose to speculate regarding this evident truth. 
 If human life is worth living and is the highest life we 
 know, we may desire to obtain that maximum population, 
 but it must be obtained, and its limits observed, by the 
 humane and decent processes which man is capable of 
 putting into practice, and not by the check of starvation. 
 
 It is of great interest to the British reader to look at 
 the question briefly from his point of view. At the 
 present tune our wheat production is no more than one- 
 eighth of our needs, and in twenty-five years, when the 
 supply from the United States will probably have ceased, 
 we shall require 40,000,000 quarters of wheat per annum. 
 Yet already, in time of peace, careful observers such as 
 the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth and Mr. Seebohm Rowntree 
 declare that thirty per cent, of our own population are 
 living on the verge of starvation. Our available supply of 
 food of all kinds at any moment would last us about three
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 83 
 
 weeks. How many of us realise what a war would mean 
 for this country ? Yet in the face of facts such as these, 
 the majority of those who attempt to guide public opinion 
 are urging us to increase our birth-rate and still pin their 
 faith to quantity rather than quality of population as 
 our great need. 
 
 The theory of Malthus. The reader who is interested 
 in general biology will realise, of course, that we are 
 here back to the great argument of Malthus, advanced in 
 1798 in his Essay on the Principle of Population. 
 Malthus was a great and sincere thinker, a high and true 
 moralist, and the people who have a vague notion that 
 his name has some connection with immoral principles 
 of any kind have no acquaintance with the subject. 
 It is of the deepest interest for the history of thought 
 to know that it was the work of Malthus which suggested, 
 independently, both to Charles Darwin and to Dr. Alfred 
 Russel Wallace, that principle of natural selection, the 
 survival of the fittest and their choice for parenthood, 
 the discovery of which constituted one of the great 
 epochs in the history of human knowledge, and which 
 is the cardinal principle underlying the whole modern 
 conception of eugenics or race-culture. 
 
 Malthus found in all life the constant tendency to 
 increase beyond the nourishment available. In a given 
 area, not even the utmost imaginable improvement in 
 developing the resources of the soil can or could keep 
 pace with the unchecked increase of population. 1 This 
 applies alike to Great Britain and to the whole world. 
 At bottom, then, the check to population and this is 
 true of microbes or men is want of food, notwithstanding 
 that this is never the immediate and obvious check 
 except in cases of actual famine. There must therefore 
 be a " struggle for existence," and as Darwin and Wallace 
 
 1 See Chap. iii. of the Origin of Species.
 
 84 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 saw, it follows as a necessary truth that, to use Spencer's 
 term, the fittest must survive. The question is whether 
 we are to accept starvation as, at bottom, the factor 
 controlling population (which, in any case, must be 
 and is controlled) or whether we can substitute something 
 better as for instance, the moral self-control which 
 Malthus recommended. The single precept of this 
 much maligned thinker was " Do not marry till you have 
 a fair prospect of supporting a family " a fairly decent 
 and respectable doctrine. In the words of Mr. Kirkup, 
 " the greatest and highest moral result of his principle 
 is that it clearly and emphatically teaches the responsi- 
 bility of parentage, and it declares the sin of those who 
 bring human beings into the world for whose physical, 
 intellectual, and moral well-being no satisfactory pro- 
 vision is made." Who, alas, will declare that even after 
 a century and a decade this great lesson is yet learnt ? 
 
 It is to be added, first, that though improvement in 
 agriculture is to be commended on every conceivable 
 ground, and though it may in some degree relieve and 
 postpone the difficulty, it is infinitely incapable of 
 abolishing it. Nothing but necessity can check the 
 prolificness of life. To this doctrine, however, there is, 
 as we shall shortly see, a great excepting principle, un- 
 recognised by Malthus, discovered by Herbert Spencer, 
 and of vast and universal importance. Secondly, it 
 is to be noted that emigration a real remedy for over- 
 population is so only for a time. It cannot possibly 
 abolish the problem short of the development of inter- 
 planetary communication, if then ; and the observer of 
 contemporary politics must be well aware, as Germany, 
 for instance, is well aware already, that its effectiveness 
 as a practical remedy for over-population in some 
 European countries is already being arrested by the 
 invaded states.
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF MAN 85 
 
 The references already made to the work of Sir William 
 Crookes will suffice to show that the teaching of Malthus 
 is of practical importance to us to-day, and not least to 
 the population of Great Britain. I am tempted to quote 
 the actual case in this connection of a young student of 
 biology who applied for Malthus's book at one of the 
 greatest official libraries in this country. He was looked 
 at as a shameless young rascal, and the librarian curtly 
 said, " We have no books of that kind here." I commend 
 this exquisite instance of misapplied and perfectly ignorant 
 British prudery to Mr. Bernard Shaw : not even he 
 could imagine anything to surpass it. No more im- 
 peccably decent book than this of " Parson Malthus " has 
 ever been written, and I have no adequate comment for the 
 fact that its nature and contents were not merely wholly 
 unknown but grossly misimagined by this responsible 
 official, and that it could not be obtained in the great 
 library of science in question. 
 
 We pass in the following chapter to the momentous 
 discovery of Herbert Spencer that the great truth seen 
 by Malthus was not a whole but a half-truth, and that 
 there is a compensating principle, which is at once a 
 source of inspiration and of difficulty to the eugenist. 
 It is in general the principle that as life ascends it becomes 
 less prolific, and its consequences are infinitely more 
 vast than the phrase at first suggests. Had this principle 
 been discovered by a Continental thinker or by a member 
 of a British University instead of by a man who never 
 passed an examination, it would not now need the dis- 
 cussion which we shall have to give it.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 The laws of multiplication. Implicit or explicit approval 
 of a falling birth-rate involves opposition to the opinion 
 of the man in the street, the general opinion of the medical 
 profession, 1 the bench of bishops and the social prophet 
 and publicist in general. Nevertheless a fall in the 
 birth-rate is a factor in organic progress, and, in general, 
 the level of any species is in inverse proportion to its 
 birth-rate, from bacteria to the most civilised classes of 
 men in the most civilised countries of to-day. But 
 in truth the uninformed opinion, totally contrary to the 
 whole history of life and to the most obvious comparative 
 facts of the birth-rate amongst and within present day 
 human societies, was utterly disposed of forty years ago 
 in the closing chapter of the greatest contribution yet 
 made to philosophic biology Herbert Spencer's Prin- 
 ciples of Biology. The last chapter of that masterpiece 
 is entitled " The Laws of Multiplication." Unfortunately 
 it has not been read by one in ten thousand of those 
 who think themselves entitled to hold, and even to express, 
 opinions about the birth-rate. Spencer's discovery is 
 the complementary half-truth to the discovery of Malthus, 
 and just as the law of Malthus is pessimistic, so the law 
 of Spencer is optimistic. In a word, Malthus assumed 
 indeed, formally declared that there was no natural 
 factor of an internal kind tending to limit the rate of 
 
 1 Including even such an exceptional student as Dr. George Newman, 
 who, in his book on Infant Mortality, regards a falling birth-rate as 
 an essential evil, and actually declares without qualification that the 
 factors "which lower the birth-rate tend to raise the infant death-rate." 
 
 86
 
 GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 87 
 
 vital fertility. Spencer discovered that there is such a 
 factor, which can and does limit and has been limiting 
 vegetable, animal, and human fertility since the dawn 
 of life. 
 
 All reproduction involves an expenditure of energy 
 in some degree on the part of the parent. Now the 
 energy available by any individual is finite. If he 
 expends it all upon reproduction, he himself, or she 
 herself, must cease to exist. This happens in all the 
 lowest forms of life, which multiply by fission or simple 
 splitting. The young bacteria are their sub-divided 
 parent. At the other extreme is the case of the individual 
 who retains the whole of his energy for his own develop- 
 ment and life, and has no offspring at all. Such con- 
 summate bachelor philosophers as Kant and Spencer 
 may be quoted, and the list of childless men of genius 
 might be extended quite indefinitely. This is not to- 
 declare this last state to be the ideal, but merely to point 
 out the logical extremes. 
 
 Spencer's principle is that there is an " Antagonism," or, 
 as we may rather say, an inverse ratio, between "Individua- 
 tion " and " Genesis " between the proportion of energy 
 expended upon the individual and the proportion ex- 
 pended upon the continuance of the race. Thus " In- 
 dividuation," meaning all those processes which maintain 
 and expand the life of the individual, and " Genesis," 
 meaning all those processes which involve the formation 
 of new individuals are necessarily antagonistic. Every 
 higher degree of individual evolution is followed by a 
 lower degree of race multiplication, and vice versb. In- 
 crease in bulk (cf. the elephant), complexity or activity 
 involves diminution in fertility, and vice versfr. This is 
 an obvious a priori principle. 
 
 Should the reader declare that there must be something 
 the matter with an asserted principle of progress which
 
 88 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 leads in theory or in practice to the production of a 
 childless generation, and therefore the end of all progress, 
 and that this principle suggests that the most completely 
 developed man and woman cannot be parents then I 
 would join in the chorus of fathers and mothers generally, 
 who would say that, in human parenthood, if not, indeed, 
 in sub-human parenthood, the antagonism is reconciled 
 in a higher unity ; that the best and most complete 
 development of the individual is effected only through 
 parenthood, in due degree as Spencer, himself childless, 
 formally declared. 
 
 It is impossible here to show how complete is the 
 evidence for Spencer's law, both from the side of logical 
 necessity and from the side of observation. In order to 
 indicate the overwhelming character of the evidence, one 
 would have to transcribe the whole of his long chapter, 
 and to add to it all our modern knowledge of human 
 birth-rates. This cannot be done, but even without it 
 we may venture to say that people who regard a 
 falling birth-rate as in itself, and obviously, a sign 
 of racial degeneration or immorality, or approaching 
 weakness or failure of any kind, can have made no sub- 
 stantial additions to their knowledge of the subject since 
 they themselves formed items in the birth-rate. 
 
 Spencer goes on to show, with profound insight, that, in 
 general, greater individuality, or, to put it in other words, 
 the more highly evolved organism, " though less fertile 
 absolutely, is the more fertile relatively." The supreme 
 instance of this truth is, of course, the case of man, in 
 whom individuation has reached its unprecedented height, 
 who is absolutely the least fertile of creatures, 1 and yet 
 who is relatively the most fertile unique in his actual 
 and persistent multiplication. 
 
 1 It is not necessary to point out again the exception of the elephant, 
 nor to explain it.
 
 GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 89 
 
 Their action in man. Within the human species the 
 laws of multiplication hold. It is still worth while, after 
 half a century, to quote Spencer's remark as to infertility 
 in women due to mental labour carried to excess " most 
 of the flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure 
 education are incompetent to bear a well-developed 
 infant and to supply it with the natural food for the 
 natural period." On all hands people with opened eyes 
 are rightly urging this truth upon us to-day. In the 
 United States the so-called higher education of girls has 
 been proved in effect to sterilise them and these the 
 flower of the nation's girlhood, and therefore, rightly, 
 the very elect for motherhood. Here is simply an 
 instance of the Spencerian principle in its most unfortunate 
 misdirection by man. 
 
 Before leaving Spencer, we must refer briefly to the 
 predictions, based upon the foregoing principles, with 
 which he concluded his great work. The further evolution 
 of man, he declares, must take mainly the direction of a 
 higher intellectual and emotional development. Hither- 
 to, and even to-day, pressure of population is the original 
 cause of human competition, application, discipline, 
 expenditure of energy and one may add, the possibility 
 of continued selection. Excess of fertility, then, says 
 Spencer, is the cause of man's evolution, but " man's 
 further evolution itself necessitates a decline in his 
 fertility." The future progress of civilisation will be 
 accompanied by increased development of individuality, 
 emotional and intellectual. As Spencer observes, this 
 does not necessarily mean a mentally laborious life, for 
 as mental activity " gradually becomes organic, it will 
 become spontaneous and pleasurable." 
 
 Finally, the necessary antagonism between individuality 
 and parenthood ensures the ultimate attainment of the 
 highest form of the maintenance of the race " ... a form
 
 go THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 in which the amount of life shall be the greatest possible, 
 and the births and deaths the fewest possible." 
 
 If now we look back at the law of Malthus we shall 
 realise the enormous significance of the law of Spencer. 
 In this respect we have the advantage over Malthus that 
 we are aware, as he was not, of the great fact of organic 
 evolution. We discover, then, that an actual consequence 
 of the pressure of population, leading as it does to the 
 struggle for existence, and, in the main, the survival of 
 higher types, is that the rate of fertility falls. This con- 
 ception of the fall in the birth-rate which, it is main- 
 tained, has been a great factor in all organic progress 
 was entirely absent from the mind of Malthus. In a 
 word, the unlimited multiplication which Malthus ob- 
 served leads to its own correction. It provides abundance 
 of material for natural selection to work upon, and then 
 the survival-value of individuation, wherever it appears, 
 asserts itself, with the consequence that the rate of 
 multiplication declines. This is actually to be observed 
 to-day. Malthus desired that we should postpone 
 marriage to later ages so as to lower the birth-rate. The 
 increasing necessity and demand for individuation is 
 effecting that which Malthus desired. The average age 
 at marriage has been rising in our own country in both 
 sexes during the last thirty years : and the evidence 
 shows that as civilisation advances the age of marriage 
 becomes later and later. Professor Metchnikoff has dis- 
 cussed some aspects of this question in his book The 
 Nature of Man. 
 
 The intensive culture of life. For every student of 
 progress, and not least for the eugenist, Spencer's law is 
 a warrant of hope and a promise of better things to come. 
 It teaches that in the development of higher that is to 
 say, more specialised that is to say, more individualised
 
 GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 91 
 
 organic types, Nature is working already, and has been 
 working for ages, towards the elimination of the brutal 
 elements in the struggle for existence. This is, of course, 
 what every worker for progress, and every eugenist in 
 especial, desires. Spencer's discovery teaches also that 
 individuality compensates a species for loss of high 
 fertility. The survival-value of individuation is greater 
 than the survival-value of rapid multiplication. The 
 very fact of progress is the replacement of lower by higher 
 life, the supersession of the quantitative by the qualitative 
 criterion of survival-value, the increasing dominance of 
 mind over matter, the substitution of the intensive for the 
 merely extensive cultivation of life. These various phrases 
 express, I believe, various aspects of one and the same 
 great fact, and I only wish it were possible to include here 
 an exhaustive study of the conception which may be 
 expressed by the phrase " the intensity of life " as 
 distinguished from its mere extension. There is, I believe, 
 a real and significant analogy between the introduction 
 of what is called intensive cultivation in agriculture, and 
 the eugenic principle which seeks to replace the extensive 
 by the intensive cultivation of human life. 
 
 The eugenic difficulty. But it will be already evident 
 to the reader that, though Spencer's law offers hope and 
 warrant to the eugenist, it also poses him with a permanent 
 and ineradicable difficulty which is inherent in natural 
 necessity viz., the difficulty that, in consequence of the 
 operation of this law, those very classes or members of a 
 society whose parenthood he most desires must be, in 
 general, the least fertile. Throughout the animal world 
 the lesser fertility of higher species is no real handicap 
 to them, as we know ; but where the conditions of selection 
 are so profoundly modified as in human society, the case 
 is very different. Furthermore, amongst mankind in- 
 dividuality has often grown, and does grow, to such an
 
 92 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 extent that parenthood disappears altogether. Indeed, 
 Spencer's law expresses itself and the eugenist must 
 qualify his hopes by the fact in the practical infertility 
 of many 1 of the most highly individualised and even 
 unique personalities, that is to say, in the ranks of what 
 we call genius. To this subject we must return. 
 
 A notable section in Mr. Galton's great work, Inquiries 
 into Human Faculty, states very plainly the difficulty 
 for the eugenist involved in Spencer's law, under its more 
 statistical aspect. What are the relative effects of early 
 and late marriages ? Mr. Galton proves, mathematically, 
 that in a very few generations a group of persons who 
 marry late will be simply bred down and more than 
 supplanted by those who marry early. Now no one will 
 dispute that the less individualised, the lower types, the 
 more nearly animal, do in general marry earlier, and are 
 more fertile. Here, then, is an anti-eugenic tendency 
 in human society, depending really upon Spencer's law 
 and requiring us to recognise and counteract it by 
 throwing all the weight we can upon the side of 
 progress, which means increasing to our utmost the 
 survival-value and the effective fertility of the higher 
 types. 
 
 Much more space might be spent upon this gravest of 
 problems for the eugenist the fact that the very persons 
 from whom he desires to recruit the future on account of 
 their greater individuality are also on that very account 
 the persons who, by natural necessity, tend to be less 
 fertile. The difficulty shows itself in the male sex, but 
 it shows itself still more conspicuously in the female sex, 
 where the proportion of the individual energy devoted to 
 the race, as compared with that devoted to individuation, 
 is necessarily far higher, and must so remain if the race 
 is to persist. Primarily, the body of woman is the temple 
 
 1 Mr. Galton believes their number has been exaggerated.
 
 GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 9 3 
 
 of life to come and therefore, as we shall some day teach 
 our girls, the holy of holies. Without going further into 
 this matter now, it may be suggested that a cardinal 
 principle of practical importance is involved. It is that 
 the individual development of women, their higher 
 education, their self-expression in works of art and 
 thought and practice, cannot safely be carried to the 
 point at which motherhood is compromised ; else the 
 race in question will necessarily disappear and be 
 replaced by any race whatsoever, the women of which 
 continue to be mothers. There are women of the worker 
 bee type whom this argument annoys intensely. No 
 one wants them to be mothers. 
 
 The proposition that all progress in the psychical world 
 depends upon individuality, just as all organic progress, 
 and indeed, all organic evolution, depends upon the 
 physical individuality which biologists call variation, 
 may suggest to the reader the importance which must 
 attach to our study of talent and genius, and the possi- 
 bility of aiding their production. Meanwhile, we must 
 look a little further at the general question of individuality 
 or quality versus quantity from the international point 
 of view. 
 
 Quantity versus quality. The reader will understand 
 how it is that anyone writing from the biological stand- 
 point must view with something like contempt the 
 common assumption that, in international competition, 
 mere statistics of population furnish, as such, final and 
 adequate data for prophecy. Let us remind ourselves 
 once more that, according to these crude criteria, which 
 were really superseded untold aeons ago, the dominance 
 of the world must belong in the near future not to Russia, 
 with its balance of more than two million births per 
 annum, rather than to France, with its approximately 
 stationary population, but to the bacteria, the growth
 
 94 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 of population amongst which, if it be not controlled by 
 the less fertile creature we call man, may be of simply 
 inexpressible magnitude. But the world is not, and will 
 not be, ruled by bacteria, their fertility notwithstand- 
 ing. Indeed, the disease-producing bacteria have 
 already had sentence of death pronounced upon 
 them by the higher intelligence of man, and that 
 sentence will be carried out within a century. Similarly 
 within the bounds of humanity we must recognise the 
 limitations of mere statistics. The population of France, 
 some forty years ago, consisted of so many millions of 
 units. The figure does not matter, let us put it at 
 30,000,001. Now that i, so to say, was called Louis 
 Pasteur, and from the point of view of statistics or those 
 who think they can predict history by counting heads, 
 he was only an almost infinitesimal fraction, about one- 
 thirty-millionth part, of the French people. Yet, as 
 Huxley pointed out long ago, his mind sufficed to pay the 
 entire indemnity exacted from France after the Franco- 
 Prussian war. This single unit was worth more than a 
 host of soldiers of the merely mechanical kind. Or take 
 Athens, with its population of 30,000 people, mostly 
 slaves, and consider its influence upon the world. Or, 
 indeed, go where you please, whether to the history of 
 nations or the history of religion or science or art, and ask 
 whether the counting of heads, the ordinary census taking 
 which indeed amounts merely to weighing nations by the 
 ton, is an adequate one. In estimating national capital 
 by the methods of vital statistics alone, we are in a far 
 worse case than he would be who estimated monetary 
 wealth by numbers of coins, without considering whether 
 they were pounds, shillings or pence, whether they were 
 genuine or counterfeit. The illustration is ludicrously 
 inadequate, as every illustration must be, simply because 
 the human case is unique. In the units of a population,
 
 GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 95 
 
 which many prophets treat as if they were all of equal 
 value, there are not merely differences to which the 
 difference between a sovereign and a penny offers no 
 parallel ; there is not merely an enormous quantity of 
 bogus or counterfeit units, but there is a very large 
 number of units in every population which, so far from 
 adding to the value of the rest, subtract from it, are 
 parasitic upon it. Students of money will find no parallel 
 to this. Yet in the face of facts which ought to be 
 common intellectual property amongst school-children, 
 we find many writers, bishops, socialist economists, 
 moralists, schoolboy Imperialists, and the rest, pointing 
 merely to the quantitative question of population as if 
 it were everything, though they must surely know that, 
 if international competition were the highest state of 
 mankind, and if the work of Kelvin and Lister had been 
 sold at its real worth by us to the rest of the world, those 
 two men alone, in their services to life, and in the power 
 which they give us over life, would be equal in value to, 
 shall we say, the lower four-fifths of the whole birth-rate 
 during the last generation. All human history teaches, 
 as all animal history teaches in lesser degree, that quality 
 and individuality is everything, that quantity is nothing 
 or far worse than nothing except in so far as it is quantity 
 of quality : yet though this lesson is written upon every 
 page of the past, the greater number of our publicists 
 and our public advisers still implicitly deny it. As Mr. 
 Crackanthorpe put it, speaking of the figures for 1907, 
 it is not the defective numbers, but the numbers of de- 
 fectives, that should give us concern. 
 
 Mass versus mind. John Ruskin called Darwin " a dim 
 comet, wagging its tail of phosphorescent nothing 
 against the steadfast stars " a description as delightful 
 as it is foolish. Yet the conception of eugenics, which 
 is indeed a necessary deduction from Darwin's great
 
 96 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 discovery, finds abundant warrant and support in Ruskin's 
 own wonderful writings, and here I quote, from Time and 
 Tide, some sentences which still require to be read and 
 remembered by the majority of our present advisers. 
 He says : 
 
 " And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial, compared 
 with that of character ; or rather, its own materialness depends 
 on the prior determination of character. Make your nation con- 
 sist of knaves, and, as Emerson said long ago, it is but the case of 
 any other vermin the more, the worse. Or, to put the matter in 
 narrower limits, it is a matter of no final concern to any parent 
 whether he shall have two children, or four ; but matter of quite 
 final concern whether those he has shall, or shall not, deserve to 
 be hanged. . . . You have to consider first, by what methods of 
 land distribution you can maintain the greatest number of healthy 
 persons ; and secondly whether, if, by any other mode of distribu- 
 tion and relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, while 
 you diminish their numbers, such sacrifices should be made, and 
 to what extent? . . . The French and British public may and 
 will, with many other publics, be at last brought ... to see 
 farther that a nation's real strength and happiness do not depend 
 upon properties and territories, nor on machinery for their defence, 
 but on their getting such territory as they have, well filled with 
 none but respectable persons, which is a way of infinitely en- 
 larging one's territory, feasible to every potentate." 
 
 Surely it is not necessary, one feels, and yet one knows 
 it is necessary, again to lay down propositions of such 
 shining truth, and one wonders whether they shine so 
 brightly as to blind those who should see them : or what 
 can conceivably be the explanation of such arguments 
 as those of the Bishop of London and others who, in the 
 face of our monstrous infant and child mortality, the 
 awful pressure of population and over-crowding in our 
 great cities, where every year a larger and larger pro- 
 portion of the population lives, and is born and dies 
 plead for a higher birth-rate on moral grounds, of all 
 amazing grounds conceivable ; and those also who, from
 
 GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY 97 
 
 the military or so-called Imperial point of view, regarding 
 men primarily as " food for powder," in Shakespeare's 
 phrase, read and quote statistics of population in order 
 to promulgate the same advice ? 
 
 To the moralist we need make no reply except simply 
 to name the infant mortality which is at last coming to 
 be recognised everywhere as, perhaps, the most abomin- 
 able of all our scandals. To the militarist I would 
 quote the case of our ally, Japan. He recalls the war 
 between China and Japan, and its issue, and has some 
 idea, perhaps, of the population ratio of those two Empires. 
 How was it that Providence was on the side of the small 
 battalions ? He recalls also the Russo-Japanese war 
 and its issue ; and the population ratio of the two 
 Empires in that case. How many other instances does 
 not military history afford of the truth that in the human 
 species mind is the master of matter ? One would suppose 
 that a critical historical enquiry had been made, proving 
 that the results of all past wars could have been predicted 
 by the simple method of estimating the total aggregate 
 weight of the combatant nations in flesh and blood and 
 bone ! More than this, if the development of the art 
 of warfare means anything, if there has been any such 
 development since the days of fists and stones, it means, 
 as all human development in every sphere means, the 
 increasing dominance of mind over matter, character and 
 initiative over machinery, dead or alive. Meanwhile, the 
 estimate of warriors in terms of the scale and the 
 foot rule are still accepted just as if they had not been 
 rendered obsolete for ever with the passing of the 
 " dragons of the prime." 
 
 As regards the psychical worth of the soldier, is it not 
 
 recognised, though too commonly forgotten, when we 
 
 applaud the value of the veteran or of seasoned troops ? 
 
 Physically the veteran is, on the average, inferior to 
 
 H
 
 98 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 the younger man. It is the psychical that gives him 
 his worth, just as it was patriotism and sobriety that 
 enabled the few sober Japanese to beat the many drunken 
 Russians. It is safe to prophesy that, in all future war, 
 the numerical criterion, which in effect weighs armies 
 by the ton, as if war were merely a tug-of-war, will 
 become less and less important if, indeed, it is not 
 already negligible ; whilst the purely psychical qualities, 
 from generalship and strategy and hygiene to initiative, 
 judgment, accuracy, memory, and down finally to mere 
 brutal red-blooded courage, will determine the issue. 
 
 Platitude, of course, but if true, why ignored ? Why 
 cannot our military advisers learn, in this respect, from the 
 Navy ? Owing to the very nature of the sea as compared 
 with the land, in relation to the merely physical capacities 
 of man, a Navy must be more intelligent than an Army, 
 just as it requires more intelligence to make a boat than 
 to walk ; and it is in the Navy that the mechanical 
 factor has been most completely transferred, so that 
 the human machinery is at a discount and the steel 
 machinery made by the human mind is much, whilst 
 the value of the psychical in all its aspects dominates 
 and controls the whole. Great Britain, as the foremost 
 naval power in the world, should long ago have left to 
 its ultimate fate amongst other nations the idea that 
 quantity so many tons of soldiers and so many tons 
 of sailors affords an estimate of the warring force of 
 a nation : even if the whole history of this little isle and 
 the possession of our present Empire did not teach, as 
 the history of Rome taught and as the history of Athens 
 teaches in another sphere, that not mass but mind makes 
 a nation great.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 
 
 "We cannot but feel that the application of biological results 
 is only beginning, and beginning with a tardiness which is a 
 reproach to human foresight. There can be no doubt that it 
 would pay the British nation to put aside a million a year for 
 research on eugenics, or the improvement of the human breed." 
 (Prof. J. A. Thomson, Heredity, 1908.) 
 
 IT is evident that the facts and principles of heredity 
 lie at the very basis of eugenics or race-culture in any of 
 its forms, practical or impractical, scientific or unscientific. 
 Our continual assumption throughout is that like tends 
 to beget like, and it is on this ground that we desire to 
 make parenthood the privilege of those whom we regard 
 as inherently the best. If there were no such thing as 
 heredity there could be no possibility of race-culture 
 nor indeed should we be here to discuss it. If a man's 
 children were equally likely to be acorns or babies or 
 tadpoles, the living world would not be the living world 
 we know. 
 
 The potency of heredity is obscured to uncritical 
 examination by the fact that that which is inheritable 
 is that which was innate, inherent or germinal in the 
 parent, as we shall shortly see. We, however, are apt 
 to compare the child with the parent, who has perhaps 
 been much modified by circumstances, so that the 
 resemblance between father and child may seem to 
 be slight. Yet if we could bring back before us that 
 father, as he was, say at the age of two, and compare 
 him with his two-year-old child, we should perhaps be 
 
 99
 
 ioo THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 astonished by the resemblance. But we see the acquire- 
 ments or acquired characters of the parent ; make no 
 distinction between them and his inherent characters ; 
 fail to discover these acquired characters in his child ; 
 and discount the importance of heredity. Then, again, 
 the eugenist may be utterly confounded if he estimates 
 the parental value of an individual without reference 
 to this limitation of heredity. Here is a man of culture 
 and accomplishment ; his children, then, will presumably 
 tend to be cultured and accomplished. But every kind 
 of advantage that forethought and love and money 
 can afford may have been showered upon that man. 
 So far as native endowment was concerned, he may 
 have indeed been far below mediocrity. Now it is 
 native endowment alone that he can transmit, and our 
 eugenic estimate of him is therefore erroneous and will 
 lead to disappointment. It is impossible to lay too- 
 great stress upon the truth that in all eugenic plans or 
 demands or practices we are assuming the fact of in- 
 heritance, and that therefore it is our first business to 
 distinguish absolutely between that which tends to 
 be inherited and that which, on the other hand, is never 
 inherited. 
 
 Yet again, this distinction is of almost incalculable social 
 moment in so far as it affects the process of selection 
 actually occurring in society. This, perhaps, has not 
 been adequately recognised. One may repeat a former 
 statement of this point, which is cardinal for the 
 eugenist : 
 
 " Even supposing that we were all identical at birth, yet, since 
 we would come to differ from one another in virtue of different 
 acquirements, due to our adaptation to differing environments, 
 natural selection would ultimately have different individuals from 
 which to select. Those who had made the most advantageous 
 acquirements, such as industry or great knowledge, would tend to 
 survive and prosper, whilst those who had made disadvantageous
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 101 
 
 acquirements, such as laziness or the loss of sight or limbs, would 
 be pushed to the wall. That process, of course, occurs in society 
 at the present day to a greater or less degree, but it has only 
 immediate and temporary or contemporary consequences. For if 
 we recall the assertion that acquirements cannot be transmitted, 
 we shall see that the selection of those who have made 
 advantageous acquirements cannot benefit the next generation, 
 since these acquirements die with their makers. The only process 
 of natural selection which can result in progress is one which 
 consists in the selection of favourable . . . inborn and therefore 
 transmissible characters, such as good digestion, the musical sense, 
 exceptional intelligence, the sympathetic temperament or what 
 not (in so far as these are inborn) the reason being that such are 
 transmissible and that the children of persons so selected will tend 
 to inherit their parents' good fortune. There is a fictitious way in 
 which we speak of a child inheriting his father's acquirements, as 
 when his father has acquired a fortune ; but the child does much 
 better to inherit his father's good sense or good health, which 
 were characters inborn in him. Acquirements, then, are all very 
 well for the day, but it is inborn characters that alone count for 
 the morrow." 1 
 
 It may be added that the time is coming when there 
 will be a radical " transvaluation," as Nietzsche would say, 
 of the two fashions in which a father " leaves " some- 
 thing to his children. When a question is asked on 
 this head now-a-days, we mean, foolishly enough, to 
 enquire how much money the father left his child, and 
 we say of a man that he has " inherited " a fortune. 
 We can see plainly enough, as Theognis did two thousand 
 five hundred years ago, that such an "inheritance" 
 may and often does work in an anti-eugenic fashion. 
 The gilded fool is swallowed by the maiden whose native 
 sense would have rejected such a pill without its coat, 
 and so the most pitiable degenerate becomes the father 
 of his like. This point will be alluded to later. The 
 present argument is that when we ask what a father 
 
 1 Quoted from the author's lectures on Individualism and Collectivism 
 (Williams and Norgate, 1906).
 
 102 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 " left " his children, we should really desire to learn 
 what he gave them when he was still alive and begot them. 
 These vital, or mortal, characters which they inherit 
 shall we say good health or insanity are of incalculably 
 more moment to them as individuals than any monetary 
 fortune, and of incalculably more moment for the future. 
 Yet again is it true that there is no wealth but life, and 
 the best " fortune " or wealth that you can leave your 
 children is sane and vigorous life. 
 
 The case of slum childhood. We have already seen 
 that even in the slums the children make a fresh start 
 in a wonderful way, that their stunted growth, their 
 proneness to disease, are mainly due to their environment, 
 which it is therefore our duty to improve. This is in 
 general true, and depends evidently upon the fact that the 
 acquired deterioration of the parents e.g., dental decay 
 is not transmitted to their children poisonings apart so 
 that the children make a fresh start where their parents 
 did. It is necessary to point this out again and again, as 
 the present writer for one has long been weary of doing, 
 because it indicates our immediate duty in this respect, 
 and forbids us to shirk it with any too-comprehensive 
 phrases about " national degeneration." Now who could 
 have predicted that this plain and simple truth would be 
 regarded by some people as constituting a denial on 
 strict scientific grounds, and as the very latest scientific 
 pronouncement of the principle of heredity ? " The 
 bubble of heredity has been pricked," says Mr. Bernard 
 Shaw. 
 
 But popular muddleheadedness does not affect the 
 palpable and universal truth that the inherent characters 
 of parents do tend to be inherited by their children ; nor 
 yet that these inherent characters differ profoundly in 
 different individuals ; nor yet the eugenic argument, 
 which is that for purposes of parenthood, which means
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 103 
 
 for the entire future, some of these should be taken and 
 others left. 
 
 " Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather 
 grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? . . . Wherefore 
 by their fruits ye shall know them." These classical 
 words surely have a special value for the eugenist. As 
 we have said, it is his particular necessity, alike in theory 
 and in practice, to " know " the real nature, the innate, 
 inherent, germinal characters, of the individuals who 
 may or may not be parents : and these, as we have seen, 
 are frequently obscured by the action of the environment 
 as, for instance, in the population of the slums on the 
 one hand, or the man of factitious culture on the other 
 hand. But " by their fruits ye shall know them." In 
 general, the children inherit what was innate in their 
 parents, and in many an instance the surest way in which 
 you could ascertain what the parent really was by nature 
 what, as we say, Nature " meant " him to be is 
 by a study of his children. Only, of course, we must 
 take the children very young indeed, before environment 
 has made its mark upon them also, for better or for 
 worse. Thus, when we find the new-born baby of 
 some pallid, half-starved, stunted mother in the 
 slums, to be healthy and vigorous and beautiful, 1 by this 
 fruit we shall know what the mother might and should 
 have been. A healthy baby goes far to demonstrate 
 that the stock is healthy. This is one of the cardinal 
 truths which emerge from the study of infant mortality, 
 and it may be perhaps permitted to warn some students 
 of race-culture of the errors into which they are bound 
 to fall if they do not reckon with what the student of 
 infant mortality is constantly asserting : viz., that the 
 babies of the slums, seen early, before ignorance and 
 
 1 As is usually the case, except when the mother or the father is 
 alcoholic or syphilitic.
 
 104 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 neglect have had their way with them, are physically 
 vigorous and promising in certainly not less than ninety 
 per cent, of cases. This primarily demonstrates, of 
 course, the murderous nature of our infant mortality ; 
 but it also demonstrates to the eugenist that these classes 
 are perhaps not so unworthy as he may fancy. By their 
 new-born babies ye shall know them. It is under the 
 influence of such considerations that the present writer, 
 for one, is somewhat chary of predictions and proposals 
 based upon the relative fertility of different classes of 
 the community or of the masses as compared with the 
 classes. Directly the eugenist begins to talk in terms of 
 social classes (as Mr. Galton has never done), he is 
 skating on thin ice, and if it lets him through, he will 
 find the remains of many of his rash predecessors be- 
 neath it. 1 
 
 In fine, then, if we observe the distinction between 
 the innate and the acquired, which is the distinction 
 between the transmissible and the intransmissible, this 
 is so far from denying the fact of heredity at all as 
 in reality to emphasise its potency whilst undoubtedly 
 diminishing its range. 
 
 A criticism of terms. In order that this distinction 
 may be clear and never forgotten, it is well to look to 
 our vocabulary words being good servants but bad 
 masters. We should certainly have this vocabulary 
 purged altogether of a certain word in common and 
 uncritical employment, especially by the medical pro- 
 fession. This is the thoroughly misleading, indeterminate 
 
 1 If we make a diagram of society, with the social strata labelled, and 
 then proceed to make a eugenic comment upon it, certainly the line 
 dividing the sheep from the goats, as for parenthood, would not be 
 horizontal, at any level. Nor would it be vertical as if the proportions 
 of worth and unworth were the same in all classes. Some would draw it 
 diagonally, counting most of the aristocracy good and most of the lowest 
 strata bad : others would slope it the other way. I should not venture 
 to draw it at all : there are individuals good and bad in all classes and 
 races, and their relative proportions are unknown, at least to me.
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 105 
 
 and useless word " congenital." Not on one occasion in 
 a hundred of its use does any examined meaning attach 
 to it. The word is commonly used as the equivalent of 
 innate, inherent, inborn or germinal. Now nothing is 
 truly innate or inborn save what was present in the germ. 
 But with childish confusion of thought, we persist in 
 attaching quite undeserved importance to the birth of 
 those animals which are brought forth " alive " as if a 
 bird's egg were not alive. Hence we speak of any character 
 present at birth as congenital, and then we assume that 
 congenital is synonymous with inherent or germinal. 
 But it is an irrelevant detail that a young mammal 
 happens to leave its mother at the ninth week or month. 
 During the whole period that it spends within its mother, 
 it is to be regarded as an individual organism with its 
 own environment. If that environment so affects it as 
 to strangle a limb, the result is an acquirement, though 
 it may be present at birth. An acquirement is an 
 acquirement, whether it be acquired five minutes or 
 months before, or five minutes or months after, the 
 change of environment which we call birth. Thus a 
 character may be congenital that is, present at birth 
 but not inherent or germinal, not inborn at the real 
 birth, which was the union of the maternal and paternal 
 germ-cells at conception. Such congenital characters are 
 really acquirements, and poisonings apart are not 
 transmissible. In common discussion this distinction is 
 wholly ignored ; and two distinct things, fundamentally 
 different in origin and in potency, are lumped together 
 under the blessed word " congenital." 
 
 This word is equally foolish and useless in an opposite 
 direction. It constantly leads those who use it to sup- 
 pose that the inherent characters of an individual are 
 conterminous with his congenital characters or his char- 
 acters at birth, and that thus any characters which he
 
 106 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 displays at a later age are acquired. All this comes of 
 the absurdly delusive significance attached to the change 
 of environment called birth, and may doubtless be traced 
 historically to the remotest superstitions which imagined 
 that a baby is not alive until it is born and breathes, or 
 that the soul or breath or pneuma or " vital principle " 
 is breathed into it at the moment of birth. We know, 
 however, that a man may display for the first time at 
 the age of twenty or sixty a character which was as truly 
 inherent in his constitution as his nose or his spinal 
 column perhaps a beard, perhaps a mental character, 
 perhaps a disease, or what not. Now this was not con- 
 genital though it was inherent. But as long as the 
 stupid l word " congenital " is used as it is, we shall fail 
 to realise that inherent characters may display themselves 
 in an individual at any time after birth as at any time 
 before birth. Thus, to sum up, a character may be 
 congenital or rather pre-congenital, yet not inherent but 
 acquired : a character may be post-congenital, yet not 
 acquired but inherent. Now the all-important question 
 as regards heredity is not at what date in the history of 
 an individual a character appears as, for instance, before 
 birth or after birth ; but, whether that character is 
 inherent and therefore transmissible and therefore a 
 possible architect of the future of mankind ; or merely 
 an acquirement, with which the racial poisons apart 
 heredity has no concern. 
 
 It is suggested, then, that the word congenital be 
 expunged from the vocabulary of science, or that, if it be 
 retained, some meaning or other any will do be 
 attached to it. If the word is to be retained, and if it 
 be agreed to attach a meaning to it, probably " at birth " 
 would be the most convenient. If this were agreed upon, 
 
 1 " For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them ; 
 but they are the money of fools " (Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. I. chap iv.).
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 107 
 
 then the phrase " congenital blindness," now in common 
 use, could be retained, as it would then accurately indicate 
 the nature of the blindness in question, which is due 
 almost invariably, if not invariably, to an infection 
 acquired at the moment of birth. 
 
 Yet further. When we say that a man's intelligence 
 or length of limb or whatever it be is hereditary, we mean 
 in ordinary speech that this character can be traced in 
 one or more of his ancestors ; and that is, of course, an 
 accurate use of the term. But Shakespeare, for instance, 
 had unremarkable ancestors, so that no one would say 
 that his genius was hereditary ; are we, then, to say 
 that it was acquired ? Every one would protest at once 
 that a poet is born and not made than which there is 
 certainly no truer popular saying. What, then, is to be 
 said of it if it was neither hereditary nor acquired ? The 
 truth is that language is again at fault. Shakespeare's 
 genius was of inherent or germinal origin the poet is 
 born and not made : or, more accurately, the poet is 
 conceived and not made, either before birth or after it. 
 Therefore, though Shakespeare did not inherit his 
 mother's genius or his father's genius, neither of them 
 having such a gift to transmit, yet his genius was certainly 
 potential either in the maternal or paternal germ-cell 
 which united to form him, or in both ; or at the least arose 
 in consequence of that compromise or rearrangement or 
 settlement, shall we say, which is in effect always agreed 
 upon by the two germ-cells in bi-parental reproduction. 
 Now the two germ-cells are the hereditary material. 
 They were given to Shakespeare by his parents ; nay 
 more, they made him. His genius, then, was hereditary 
 in an absolutely correct sense of the word, yet not hi the 
 sense of ordinary speech, nor even in the sense in which 
 it is employed by Mr. Galton in his book on Hereditary 
 Genius. This confusion of terms is responsible for much
 
 *>8 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 confusion of thought. It must the more urgently be 
 cleared up because of the discoveries in heredity initiated 
 by the Abbot Mendel, forty years ago, and now included 
 in the department of the science of heredity which is 
 called Mendelism. We learn from this that highly 
 definite characters may appear in offspring though there 
 was no sign of them in either parent. These, then, are not 
 hereditary in the sense of ordinary speech. Yet, in a 
 more accurate sense of the word they can be proved to 
 be hereditary nay more, the manner and proportion of 
 their transmission can be predicted in the most exact 
 mathematical terms. These characters were not present 
 in the parent's body ; they did not lie open to view in 
 the parent ; they were not patent in the parent. They 
 were latent, however, they lay hid, in the parent, or 
 rather in the germ-plasm of which that parent was the 
 host. In many such cases, if we go back a generation 
 further we find that the character in question was patent 
 in a grand-parent. A mother's son may suffer from 
 haemophilia or the bleeding disease, yet she is not a 
 " bleeder," nor is the boy's father ; but her father was a 
 bleeder, and the disease is, of course, hereditary in her 
 son, though neither of his parents displayed a trace of it. 
 
 Thus an individual may inherit or may have inherent 
 in the germ-cells from which he was formed characters 
 which were not present in either parent. They were, 
 however, potentially present in the germ-cells of which 
 those parents were the trustees. 
 
 But, the reader will say, do we find in the case of every 
 " sport " or " transilient variation," such as Shakespeare, 
 that the new character was, after all, present in some one 
 or other of his ancestors though absent in his immediate 
 parents ? The answer is negative, certainly. But genius, 
 to take this case, is a combination of qualities. And the 
 Mendelians are now able to call into existence organisms
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 109 
 
 of new kinds by combination of qualities derived from 
 one parent, or rather from one parental line, with other 
 qualities, formerly apparently incompatible with them 
 derived from the other parental line. Thus Professor 
 Biffen of Cambridge has called into existence a new kind of 
 wheat such as never existed before a wheat combining 
 the quality technically called " strength," hitherto lacking 
 in all kinds of wheat capable of being profitably grown in 
 Great Britain, with the power of yielding a large crop 
 and other good qualities found in home-grown wheat. 
 He has also produced a wheat which, together with other 
 desirable qualities, is immune from the disease known as 
 " rust," this immunity having never been found before 
 associated with the other good qualities in question. 
 These advances will not long be limited to the vegetable 
 world merely. Perhaps it requires no very great imagina- 
 tion, after all, to suppose that even something like that 
 combination of qualities which we call genius may some 
 day be produced at will in mankind. 
 
 Such a new wheat, then, I will not say such a Shake- 
 speare owes its unique and unprecedented properties to 
 heredity, and yet there was never anything like it before. 
 Its " genius " is not " hereditary." 
 
 The words innate and inborn are harmless and may be 
 employed, though the apparent emphasis on birth is rather 
 unfortunate. We mean, however, by innate or inborn 
 qualities, qualities which were potential in the germ. The 
 genius of Shakespeare was innate or inborn. It was 
 present potentially at his real birth, the union of the 
 parental cells. It preceded his " birth " in the ordinary 
 sense of the word : Shakespeare, when only in embryo, 
 was a Shakespeare in embryo. 
 
 Better still is the word inherent, which, of course, 
 literally means " sticking in." By anything inherent we 
 mean that which was there from the first as part and
 
 no THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 parcel of, as indeed essential to, the entity to which we 
 refer. Now inherent characters are always inherited in 
 the accurate sense that they inhere in the germ-cells, 
 which are the inherited material. As these germ-cells 
 make us or as we are made out of them, it follows, of 
 course, that all our potentialities whatsoever, our ultimate 
 fates in every particular, partly depend upon inheritance. 1 
 
 Nature and nurture are antithetic terms of Shake- 
 spearean origin which are in frequent use and much 
 favoured by Mr. Galton. That which comes by nature 
 is the inborn, inherent, or germinal ; and that is due to 
 nurture which is the result of the converse of the germinal 
 with the environment a man's accent, for instance. 
 
 Perhaps, in some ways, germinal is the most useful 
 word of all, though inherent is so convenient and familiar, 
 as well as being accurate etymologically, that it has been 
 employed throughout this book. Not only is the word 
 germinal strictly accurate, but also it suggests the idea 
 of the germ-plasm, and has the particular virtue of 
 avoiding all reference to the change of environment to 
 which young mammals are subjected and which is called 
 birth. 
 
 There remains the terminological difficulty that, as I 
 have tried to show, the individual may display characters 
 which were potential in the germ, inherent and necessarily 
 inherited, though they did not appear in the parent nor 
 yet in any ancestor. We have to face the paradox, then, 
 that in natural inheritance a parent can transmit what 
 he has not got, though this does not apply to the un- 
 natural inheritance of property in human society. Now 
 what word is there which shall indicate the origin or at 
 
 1 It might be supposed that the words " inherent " and " inherited " 
 were allied etymologically. This is not so. " Inherit " is derived from 
 " heir," and this from a verb meaning " to take." In natural inheritance 
 the heir inherits what is inherent in the germ-cells which make him. 
 Says Professor Thomson : " The organisation of the fertilised ovum is 
 the inheritance " and the heir, we may add.
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE in 
 
 least the time and conditions of origin, of such characters 
 as these? They are germinal, yet they are in some 
 cases not wholly present in either of the germ-cells which 
 united to form the new individual in question. They 
 are present, however, in the new single cell from which 
 this individual, like every living organism, takes its 
 origin. 1 The terms " congerminal " or " conceptional " 
 might be employed. 
 
 " Acquired character," even, is a bad term. It re- 
 placed " functionally-produced modification," which was 
 long employed by Spencer. The blacksmith's biceps 
 answers to this phrase. It is this and other such modi- 
 fications that are non-transmissible. Alcoholic degenera- 
 tion is not a " functionally-produced modification," but 
 it is an " acquired character," as is lead poisoning. These 
 do produce results in offspring naturally enough. If the 
 older phrase were still the one employed, we should see 
 that the Weismannian argument as to non-transmission 
 does not apply to such " acquired characters." 
 
 The word " reversion," also, not to say " atavism," 
 may well be dropped. The attempted justification of its 
 older meaning by Professor Thomson has led to severe 
 and conclusive Mendelian criticism. The " reversion " of 
 fancy pigeons to the blue ancestor is simply due to the 
 coming together of Mendelian units long separated. The 
 " reversion " of the feeble-minded is not reversion but the 
 result of poisoning diversion, or perversion, if you like. 
 Primitive man was not feeble-minded, nor is the ape. 
 Science has no further use for the word as it is at present 
 employed. 
 
 Maternal impressions. We are now, at last, after 
 our attempt to clear up the vocabulary of heredity, in 
 
 1 Unless indeed it be an organism so lowly as only to consist of one 
 cell throughout.
 
 ii2 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 a position to consider certain doctrines and popular 
 beliefs which bear very directly upon race-culture. 
 Realising, for instance, that " congenital " means nothing ; 
 realising as perhaps some of us have not so clearly realised 
 before, when exactly it is that the new human being comes 
 into existence, we shall be prepared to understand how 
 definite and indisputable are the denials which science 
 offers to certain popular ideas. 
 
 Thus, for instance, in the interests of race-culture, or, to 
 be more particular, in the interests of her unborn baby, the 
 expectant mother may faithfully follow the example of 
 Lucy in The Ordeal of Richard Fever el. l Does this have its 
 intended effect ? The answer is an unqualified negative. 
 Consider the case. The baby is at this time already a baby, 
 though rather small and uncanny, floating in a fluid of its 
 own manufacture. Its sole connection with its mother is 
 by means of its umbilical cord that is to say, blood vessels, 
 arterial and venous. There is no nervous connection 
 whatever : absolutely nothing but the blood-stream, 
 carried along a system of tubes. This blood is the child's 
 blood, which it sends forth from itself along the umbilical 
 cord to a special organ, the placenta or after-birth, half 
 made by itself and half made by the mother, in which 
 the child's blood travels in thin vessels so close to the 
 mother's blood that their contents can be interchanged. 
 Yet the two streams never actually mix. The child's 
 blood, having disposed of its carbonic acid and waste- 
 products to the mother's blood, and having received 
 therefrom oxygen and food, returns so laden to the child. 
 Pray how is the mother's reading of history to make the 
 child a historian ? If, after birth, a small operation were 
 
 1 The reader will remember the chapter, "A Berry to the Rescue." 
 " Says Lucy demurely : ' Now you know why I read history, and that 
 sort of books ... I only read sensible books and talk of serious things 
 . . . because I have heard say . . . dear Mrs. Berry ! don't you under- 
 stand now?' "
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 113 
 
 performed, so that some of the mother's blood should 
 run along an artificial tube into one of her baby's veins, 
 the effective connection between the two organisms would 
 in a sense be actually closer than it was before birth, when, 
 as has been said, the two streams are always kept apart. 
 Should we expect such an operation to serve the child for 
 education ? If the mother then acquired a scar should 
 we expect it to give the child a similar scar ? 
 
 We see now why the learning of geometry on the part of 
 the mother before its birth will not set her baby upon that 
 royal road to geometry of which Euclid rightly denied the 
 existence any more than after its birth. Such a thing 
 does not happen, and there is no conceivable means by 
 which it could happen unless we are to call in telepathy. 
 All maternal hopes and efforts of this kind are utterly 
 misguided : as misguided as if the father entertained 
 similar hopes. Let the devoted mother acquaint herself 
 not with what historians are pleased to call history, but 
 with the history of the developing human mind and body, 
 so that she may be a fit educator of her child when it is 
 born. 
 
 Let her also realise that her blood is everything to her 
 child. It is food and air and organ of excretion. If she 
 introduces alcohol into her blood in any considerable 
 quantity she is feeding her child on poisoned food. Surely 
 the reader must see the distinction between a case like 
 this and the supposed transmission of historical know- 
 ledge or even historical aptitude from mother to baby by 
 the diligent perusal of histories. Yet though the dis- 
 tinction is so palpable and evident, there are extremists 
 who believe and even print their beliefs that the denial 
 of the one (supposed) possibility, which is palpably incon- 
 ceivable, logically carries with it a denial of the other 
 possibility, which is indeed a palpable necessity. Or, 
 to state the criticism in another way, there are those who, 
 i
 
 ii4 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 if we protest that the introduction of poisons into the 
 mother's organism must surely involve risk to the child 
 who is nourished by her blood, will retort, " Oh, well, I 
 suppose you believe that if you learn a number of languages 
 before your next child is born, he or she will be a 
 linguist ! " * 
 
 Hereditary genius. Mr. Galton's world-famous work 
 on Hereditary Genius was published in 1869 and reprinted 
 with a most valuable additional chapter in 1892. It 
 has long been out of print, however, and for the definite 
 purpose of attempting to arouse the reader's interest 
 in it so that he may somehow or other obtain a 
 copy to read, I may here go over one or two points, 
 chosen to that end. The argument, of course, is that 
 ability is hereditary. 2 
 
 This, in the judgment of most unbiassed people, Mr. 
 Galton conclusively proved : and we do not at all realise 
 to-day how repugnant and revolutionary this doctrine 
 appeared to popular opinion some forty years ago. Mr. 
 Galton has, however, followed up his citation of facts 
 on more than one occasion since, 3 and those who now 
 deny his view belong to that very large majority of 
 any population which finds itself able to pronounce 
 confidently upon the value of an author's work without 
 
 1 Contrast Mr. Galton, the propounder of the now accepted view : 
 " As a general rule, with scarcely any exception that cannot be 
 ascribed to other influences, such as bad nutrition or transmitted 
 microbes, the injuries or habits of the parents are found to have no 
 effect on the natural form or faculties of the child." (Hereditary Genius, 
 Prefatory Chapter to the Edition of 1892, p. xv.) 
 
 1 In the later edition Mr. Galton discusses the question of the title, 
 and says that if it could now be altered, it should appear as Hereditary 
 Ability. We may note that, as the author says himself, " The reader 
 will find a studious abstinence throughout the work from speaking 
 of genius as a special quality." 
 
 * The reader may note " A Eugenic Investigation : Index to Achieve- 
 ments of Near Kinsfolk of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society," 
 Sociological Papers, 1904, pp. 85-99 (Macmillan) ; also Noteworthy Families 
 (John Murray, 1906).
 
 HEREDITY AND RACE-CULTURE 115 
 
 the labour, found necessary by less fortunate people, of 
 reading it. 
 
 The following quotation states the question of national 
 eugenics in final form : 
 
 " As an example of what could be sought with advantage, let 
 us suppose that we take a number, sufficient for statistical pur- 
 poses, of persons occupying different social classes, those who are 
 the least efficient in physical, intellectual, and moral grounds 
 forming our lowest class, and those who are the most efficient 
 forming our highest class. The question to be solved relates to 
 the hereditary permanence of the several classes. What pro- 
 portion of each class is descended from parents who belong to the 
 same class, and what proportion is descended from parents who 
 belong to each of the other classes ? Do those persons who have 
 honourably succeeded in life, and who are presumably, on the 
 whole, the most valuable portion of our human stock, contribute 
 on the aggregate their fair share of posterity to the next genera- 
 tion ? If not, do they contribute more or less than their fair 
 share, and in what degree ? In other words, is the evolution 
 of man in each particular country favourably or injuriously 
 affected by its special form of civilisation ? 
 
 " Enough is already known to make it certain that the pro- 
 ductiveness of both the extreme classes, the best and the worst, 
 falls short of the average of the nation as a whole. Therefore, 
 the most prolific class necessarily lies between the two extremes, 
 but at what intermediate point does it lie ? Taken altogether, on 
 any reasonable principle, are the natural gifts of the most prolific 
 class, bodily, intellectual, and moral, above or below the line of 
 national mediocrity ? If above that line, then the existing con- 
 ditions are favourable to the improvement of the race. If they 
 are below that line, they must work towards its degradation." 
 
 The main body of the book deals with enquiries in 
 special cases the judges of England between 1660 and 
 1865, statesmen, commanders, authors, men of science, 
 poets, musicians, painters, divines, senior classics of 
 Cambridge, oarsmen and wrestlers. 
 
 The concluding chapters should be printed in gold. 
 Only one or two notes can here be made. Mr. Galton
 
 n6 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 believes that the dark ages were largely due to the celibacy 
 enjoined by religious orders on their votaries : 
 
 " Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature 
 that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to litera- 
 ture or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they 
 had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But 
 the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy, and the conse- 
 quence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and 
 thus, by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal that I am 
 hardly able to speak of it without impatience, the Church 
 brutalised the breed of our forefathers. She acted precisely as if 
 she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community 
 to be, alone, parents of future generations. She practised the arts 
 which breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious, 
 currish, and stupid natures. No wonder that club law prevailed 
 for centuries over Europe ; the wonder rather is that enough good 
 remained in the veins of Europeans to enable their race to rise to 
 its present very moderate level of natural morality." 
 
 Yet further : 
 
 " The policy of the religious world in Europe was exerted in 
 another direction, with hardly less cruel effect on the nature of 
 future generations, by means of persecutions which brought 
 thousands of the foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes 
 to the scaffold, or imprisoned them during a large part of their 
 manhood, or drove them as emigrants into other lands. In every 
 one of these cases the check upon their leaving issue was very 
 considerable. Hence the Church, having first captured all the 
 gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy, made another 
 sweep of her huge nets, this time fishing in stirring waters, to 
 catch those who were the most fearless, truth-seeking, and intelli- 
 gent, in their modes of thought, and therefore the most suitable 
 parents of a high civilisation, and put a strong check, if not a 
 direct stop, to their progeny. Those she reserved on these 
 occasions, to breed the generations of the future, were the servile, 
 the indifferent, and, again, the stupid. Thus, as she to repeat 
 my expression brutalised human nature by her system of celibacy 
 applied to the gentle, she demoralised it by her system of persecu- 
 tion of the intelligent, the sincere, and the free. It is enough to 
 make the blood boil to think of the blind follv that has caused
 
 HEREDITY AND RAGE-CULTURE 117 
 
 the foremost nations of struggling humanity to be the heirs of 
 such hateful ancestry, and that has so bred our instincts as to keep 
 them in an unnecessarily long-continued antagonism with the 
 essential requirements of a steadily advancing civilisation." 
 
 For this final quotation no apology is needed : 
 
 " The best form of civilisation in respect to the improvement of 
 the race, would be one in which society was not costly ; where 
 incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources, and not much 
 through inheritance ; where every lad had a chance of showing 
 his abilities, and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first- 
 class education and entrance into professional life, by the liberal 
 help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in 
 his early youth ; where marriage was held in as high honour as in 
 ancient Jewish times ; where the pride of race was encouraged 
 (of course I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the 
 present day, that goes under that name) ; where the weak could 
 find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, 
 and lastly, where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from 
 other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants 
 naturalised." 
 
 The study of psychical inheritance. This early work of 
 Mr. Galton has been followed by much more on the same 
 lines. Contemporary psychology, however, is just begin- 
 ning to indicate the lines on which new enquiry is needed. 
 The naive assertions of the actuary as to the inheritance 
 of, say, " conscientiousness " are not useful to the psycho- 
 logist, who has some idea of the structure and history of 
 that most complex social product we call conscience. The 
 psychologists must analyse out for us those elementary 
 units of the mind upon which experience and the social 
 state, education and suggestion act, to make human nature 
 as we know it. The reader may be directed to Dr. 
 McDougalTs recent work on Social Psychology written 
 at the present writer's suggestion for an outline analysis 
 of what is really inherent, and therefore alone trans- 
 missible, in the human mind certain instincts and
 
 n8 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 impulses, together with native varieties in capacity of 
 memory, and so on. Recently the Mendelians have 
 entered this field, and they have the advantage of 
 realising the importance of dealing with real primary 
 units. Their law seems to apply to the musical sense in 
 man and to the brooding instinct in the hen. 1 The line 
 of study here suggested is earnestly commended to the 
 psychologists for their indispensable help. 
 
 Eugenics and parties. Let us once again consider the 
 fashion in which men and women are classified to the 
 eugenic eye. We have already realised that the most essen- 
 tial division of fact is that between those who will and 
 those who will not be parents. The most essential division 
 of ideal is of those who are worthy and those who are not 
 worthy to be parents. It is the object of eugenics to make 
 the real and the ideal divisions coincide. And let us here 
 say with all possible force that before such classifications 
 as these all others are trivial and nearly all others im- 
 pudent. The eugenist has nothing to do with the low 
 game called party politics : terms like socialism and so 
 forth mean very little for him. He may or may not be a 
 socialist, but if he be, at least he does not subscribe to 
 what, so far as I can judge, is the first article in the creed 
 of socialism that all evil is of economic origin ; he knows 
 that there is much evil of germinal origin. As for 
 conservatism and liberalism, he might have some use for 
 these terms if the creed of conservatism were that there is 
 no wealth but life, which must be conserved ; and the 
 creed of liberalism that life has not yet reached its zenith, 
 and there must be liberty for all progressive variations 
 of body and mind and thought and practice. As it is, all 
 these things are somewhat nauseating. If and when there 
 is a thinking party, and that party will have the eugenist, 
 he will doubtless join it. Meanwhile he appeals to that 
 
 1 These researches have not yet been published.
 
 HEREDITY AND RAGE-CULTURE 119 
 
 great and growing section of the community which knows 
 party-politics for the humbug and sham that it is, and the 
 House of Commons as a lethal chamber for souls. 
 
 Similarly, the eugenic classification of mankind cuts 
 right across the ordinary social classification. The para- 
 site and the parent of parasites must be branded, whether 
 he be at the top or the bottom of the social scale. The 
 quality of the germ-plasm which men and women carry is 
 the supremely important thing. Its architecture is the 
 architect of all empires. Year by year we shall more 
 surely be able to infer the nature and the worth of the 
 germ-plasm in particular cases, though its host may have 
 been veneered or, on the other hand, repressed ; and year 
 by year the basal facts of heredity will furnish ever surer 
 criteria for the theory and practice of a New Imperialism 
 which knows, for instance, what militarism did for Rome 
 and Napoleon for France, and which will some day sweep 
 all the money changers out of the Temple of Life. 1 
 
 1 In the later chapters of a former book, "Health, Strength, and 
 Happiness " (Grant Richards, London ; Mitchell Kennerley, New York, 
 1908), I have discussed various aspects of heredity from the eugenic point 
 of view more fully than has been possible here.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 
 
 " Education is but the giving or withholding of opportunity." 
 BATESON. 
 
 IT is true that education can seem to accomplish miracles ; 
 that in a single generation the results of an ideal educa- 
 tion would be amazing. It is true, also, that in certain 
 epochs of history, when wise counsels have prevailed, great 
 results have been attained. It is true that at present 
 scarcely a man or woman amongst us, if any, has reached 
 the full stature which would have been attained under an 
 ideal system of education. It is true, finally, that no 
 system of race-culture can ignore education or be effective 
 without it. Though the general question of education is 
 not the specific question of the present volume, yet there 
 is only too good reason for some brief allusion to the sub- 
 ject here, especially since it bears on the question of the 
 measure of importance which we ascribe to heredity. 
 
 Modern education the destruction of mind. When we 
 observe in such contrasted cases as those of Herbert 
 Spencer and Wordsworth, for instance, that absence of 
 early education, especially in the first septennium, has 
 co-existed with the subsequent efflorescence of the 
 mightiest genius, we may almost be inclined to enquire 
 whether genius could not in effect be made to order even 
 in the very next generation by the simple device of sus- 
 pending the process which we are pleased to call education. 
 Doubtless that is scarcely so, though every one who has 
 any knowledge of the subject is well assured that mere
 
 EDUCATION AND RAGE-GULTURE 121 
 
 suspension of the present destructive process might suffice 
 to produce a population that would wonder at its ancestors. 
 
 A simple analogy will show the disastrous character of 
 the present process, which may be briefly described as 
 " education " by cram and emetic. It is as if you filled 
 a child's stomach to repletion with marbles, pieces of coal 
 and similar material incapable of digestion the more 
 worthless the material the more accurate the analogy : 
 then applied an emetic and estimated your success by the 
 completeness with which everything was returned, more 
 especially if it was returned " unchanged," as the doctors 
 say. Just so do we cram the child's mental stomach, its 
 memory, with a selection of dead facts of history and the 
 like (at least when they are not fictions) and then apply a 
 violent emetic called an examination (which like most 
 other emetics causes much depression) and estimate our 
 success by the number of statements which the child 
 vomits on to the examination paper if the reader will 
 excuse me. Further, if we are what we usually are, we 
 prefer that the statements shall come back " unchanged " 
 showing no signs of mental digestion. We call this 
 " training the memory." 
 
 Such a process as one has imagined in the physical case 
 would assuredly ruin the physical digestion for life. In 
 the mental case, which is not imaginary but actual, a 
 similar result ensues. It is thus unfair to the Anglo-Saxon 
 germ-plasm to credit it with the abundant stupidity of its 
 products. Much of this stupidity is factitious and arti- 
 ficial. We shall continue to produce it so long as by 
 education or drawing forth we understand intrusion or 
 thrusting in, and so long as the only drawing forth which 
 we practise is by means of the emetics we call examina- 
 tions. The present type of education is a curse to modern 
 childhood and a menace to the future. The teacher who 
 cannot tell whether a child is doing well without formally
 
 122 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 examining it, should be heaving bricks ; but such a teacher 
 does not exist. In Berlin they are now learning that the 
 depression caused by these emetics, for which the best 
 physical parallel is antimony, often leads to child suicide 
 a steadily-increasing phenomenon mainly due to educa- 
 tional over-pressure and worry about examinations. 
 
 Short of such appalling disasters, however, we have to 
 reckon with the existence of this enormous amount of 
 stupidity, which those who fortunately escaped such 
 education in childhood have to drag along with them in 
 the long struggle towards the stars. This dead weight of 
 inertia lamentably retards progress. 
 
 Our factitious stupidity is injurious both in the govern- 
 ing and the governed. As Professor Patrick Geddes once 
 remarked to the present writer, there are three kinds of 
 governments : the government of the future as yet only 
 ideal, which believes that there are ideas and that they may 
 be worth acting upon : the second is instanced by the 
 Russian government, which believes that there are ideas, 
 but fears and suppresses them : the third by the British 
 government, which denies that there are ideas at all, and 
 prefers the method of " muddling through " to use a 
 Cabinet Minister's contented phrase though truth is one 
 and error infinite, though there are a million ways of going 
 wrong for one of going right. This characteristic is not 
 to be attributed to any germinal stupidity of the ruling 
 classes in England. If it were we should of course look 
 upon the decadence of their birth-rate with the utmost 
 gratitude. It is a factitious product of their education. 
 If you have been treated with marbles and emetics long 
 enough, you may begin to question whether there is such 
 a thing as nourishing food ; if you have been crammed 
 with dead facts, and then compelled to disgorge them, 
 you may well question whether there are such things as 
 nourishing facts or ideas.
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 123 
 
 Not less disastrous is this factitious stupidity amongst 
 the governed. It produces, of course, the kind of man 
 with whom we are all familiar. Having at great labour 
 been taught to read, he is incapable of reading anything 
 but rubbish. He never thinks for himself, and if he does 
 you wish he had not, so inadequate is his machinery and 
 so deplorable the result. He believes in politicians. He 
 is, as we have said, so much dead weight for the reformer, 
 whose energy is diverted from the discovery of new truth 
 by the need of directing the eyes of stupidity to the old, 
 though it shines as the sun in his strength. 
 
 Therefore, let not the reader suppose that in the advo- 
 cacy of eugenics or race-culture we have become blinded 
 to the possibilities offered us by reasonable education even 
 of the very heterogeneous material offered us by heredity. 
 
 The limits of education individual and racial. Yet 
 it must be maintained that, though we cannot do without 
 education, and though something infinitely better than 
 we practise at present will be necessary if the ideal of race- 
 culture is ever to be realised, yet education alone, however 
 good, can never enable us to achieve our end. It must 
 be maintained, in the first place, that education is limited 
 in its powers by the inherent nature of the educated 
 material it is a process of drawing out, and you cannot 
 draw out what is not there : and secondly, that its value, 
 so far as the nature of individuals is concerned, is confined 
 to the individuals in question and is not reproduced or 
 maintained in their children. Thus education alone would 
 have similar material to act upon from age to age, would 
 have to make a fresh beginning in each generation, and its 
 results, however good, relatively, would still be limited 
 and finite. We shall do well, perhaps, to obtain and retain 
 an adequate definition of education. No true conception 
 of education was possible, notwithstanding the derivation 
 of the word, so long as the child's mind was likened to a
 
 124 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 piece of " pure white paper " for us to write upon : or an 
 empty box waiting to be filled. The tabula rasa of Locke 
 is, we now know, the last thing in the world to resemble a 
 child's mind. Indeed, if any such figure be demanded, 
 the child's mind is a piece of mosaic made of ancestral 
 pieces and education is the process of realising what is 
 so given. Or, if a child's mind is a portmanteau, to 
 educate is not to pack but to unpack it. We understand, 
 at least, that education never can begin at the beginning, 
 nor anywhere near it that, as Professor MacCunn says 
 in his admirable book, The Making of Character, " the page 
 of the youngest life is so far from being blank that it bears 
 upon it characters in comparison with which the faded 
 ink of palaeography is as recent history." 
 
 We are learning, too, though none but the very few know 
 this, that the process by which the " faded ink " is made 
 visible must not be credited with having done the writing : 
 any more than the fire to which you hold a paper written 
 upon with ink that fire makes visible. Still less do we 
 realise that what really seems to be the product of educa- 
 tion is often the result of an inherent mechanism now 
 developed, which was not yet formed when we began the 
 educational process. One reason why the baby cannot 
 walk is that it has not the nervous apparatus. A child 
 may walk at the first attempt, if that attempt be delayed 
 until the machinery is developed. A child may similarly 
 speak sentences at the first attempt. Very commonly we 
 start teaching a child something, which, after some years, 
 it learns. We have done nothing but interfere. The learn- 
 ing is none of our doing : merely the mental apparatus is 
 now evolved and lo ! the result. At birth the sucking 
 apparatus is perfect. If we could, doubtless we should 
 start teaching the unborn infant to suck long before the 
 machinery was ready and should applaud ourselves for 
 its facility at birth ; only that probably this facility would
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 125 
 
 be impaired by our efforts, as many capacities of later 
 development are damaged by our interference. What we 
 understand, or misunderstand, by education should begin 
 approximately when a child is seven. The first seven years 
 of life should really have the term of childhood confined 
 to them, for there is a natural term so indicated. The 
 growth of the brain is a matter of the first seven years 
 almost wholly. It grows relatively little after that period ; 
 and until that is completed the physical apparatus of 
 mind is not ready for educational interference. Without 
 any such interference, and with merely the provision of 
 conditions, physical and mental, for its spontaneous 
 development, the brain of the seven year old will suffice 
 for surprising things so surprising that if their evolution 
 were possible under any system of schooling practised 
 before that date, we should applaud it as ideal. Probably 
 there is no such system much less any that will improve 
 on the spontaneous process. 
 
 Education the provision of an environment. We 
 are prepared, then, to realise the limits to the action of 
 education upon the individual. We shall not confuse 
 this great and many-sided thing with such of its factors 
 as instruction or schooling. It is not intrusion but 
 education : " the guidance of growth," to use Sir James 
 Crichton-Browne's phrase. This guidance, this pro- 
 cess of unpacking, educing or realising, is accomplished 
 by the action of circumstances or the environment. 
 Environment is a large word and is invariably abused 
 when it is used in less than the large sense. Here it 
 includes, for instance, air and food, mother-love and 
 the schoolmaster. I therefore define education as the 
 provision of an environment. This definition prepares 
 us to understand the limitations of the process. If we 
 think of education as a packing or cramming process, 
 we shall err in this respect ; we shall expect limitless
 
 126 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 results from education provided that one packs early 
 and tightly and carefully enough. It is this erroneous 
 conception which rules us and daily betrays us in practice. 
 If, however, we think of education as the provision of 
 an environment, capable of creating nothing, but merely 
 of causing the expression or the repression of potential 
 characters inherent in the individual educated, then we 
 shall begin to recast our methods on the lines determined 
 by this truth. Yet, further, we shall begin to understand 
 the cardinal truth, one of the many platitudes which 
 we have yet to appreciate, that " you cannot make a 
 silk purse out of a sow's ear." 
 
 Heredity and environment. Let us consider the ques- 
 tion in general terms. The characters of any living thing 
 are determined by two factors heredity and environment. 
 The old phrases were character and circumstances, but 
 they were less than useful, since character is modified 
 by circumstances. Now one of the most important 
 questions in the world, and not least for the eugenist, 
 is as to the relative importance of these two factors. 
 The technical terms may not be in our mouths, but we 
 discuss this instance or that of the question in point almost 
 every day of our lives. One part of the business of 
 philosophy and of science is not only to answer questions 
 but to ask them correctly. This question is always 
 wrongly asked, and therefore cannot be answered, or 
 is incorrectly answered. We persist in using the 
 mathematical idea of addition, and we seek to show that, 
 say, seventy per cent, of the result is due to the innate 
 factor and thirty per cent, to the acquired. But the 
 truth is that so long as we begin with this idea we may 
 prove what we please. If we keep our attention fixed 
 upon the environmental or educational factor we can 
 easily and correctly demonstrate that in certain circum- 
 stances Mozart would have been tone-deaf and Shake-
 
 EDUCATION AND RAGE-CULTURE 127 
 
 speare a gibbering idiot hence, but incorrectly, we 
 argue that environment is practically everything. Per 
 contra, we can easily and correctly demonstrate that no 
 education in the world could enable a door-mat or a 
 cabbage or ourselves to write Don Giovanni or Hamlet 
 hence, but incorrectly, we argue that the material to be 
 operated upon is everything. We have to learn, however, 
 that the analogy is one not of addition but of multiplication. 
 Neither inheritance nor environment, as such, gives any- 
 thing. The environmental factor may be potentially 
 one hundred an ideal education but the innate or 
 inherited factor may be nothing, as when the pupil is a 
 door-mat or a fool. The result then is nothing. Darwin 
 had the trombone played to a plant, but he did not make 
 a Palestrina. No academy of music will make a beetroot 
 into a Beethoven, though I dare say a well-trained beet- 
 root might write a musical comedy. The point is that 
 one hundred multiplied by nothing equals nothing. 
 Similarly, the innate factor may be one hundred, as in 
 the case of a potential genius, but he may be brought 
 up upon alcohol and curses amongst savages, and the 
 result again is nothing. Keep the idea of multiplication 
 in the mind, and the facts are seen rightly. No matter 
 how big either factor be, if it be multiplied by nothing 
 it yields nothing, or if it be multiplied by a fraction, as 
 in the ordinary education of a genius, it yields less than 
 it should. But in this controversy people persist in 
 assuming that inheritance or education gives definitely 
 so much which is there anyhow, whereas, really, it only 
 supplies a potential figure, which may realise infinity or 
 nothing, according to what it is multiplied by. With 
 all deference, I submit this as a real answer to these 
 endless disputes. 
 
 But further, granted that neither factor in itself pro- 
 duces any actuality, which is normally the weightier of
 
 128 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 the two factors ? We must make the qualification, 
 " normally," because such a thing as disease or poison, 
 included in the environmental factor, will dominate 
 the result, completely overshadowing the importance 
 of whatever heredity gave. Such things apart, however, 
 we may be thoroughly assured that heredity is the 
 weightier of the two factors. The more we study 
 education, the more we recognise its true nature. 
 Indeed, the more we realise its ideal, the more do we 
 realise its limitations. The more we study educa- 
 tion the more important does heredity appear. If the 
 reader has not had opportunities of observing children 
 for himself let him refer to such a book as Mr. Galton's 
 Inquiries into Human Faculty, and he will begin to realise 
 how large is the factor given by inheritance and how 
 relatively small is the factor given by education. 
 
 Education can educate only what heredity gives. 
 Heredity, as the eugenist must never forget, gives not 
 actualities but only potentialities. It depends upon 
 circumstances whether they shall become actualities. 
 That, however, we all know. No one supposes that 
 education is superfluous or impotent. We do, however, 
 persistently forget the converse truth that education, 
 on the other hand, makes no definite contribution, but 
 merely multiplies or alas, divides the potentialities 
 given by inheritance. These potentialities constitute a 
 limiting condition which no education can transcend. 
 Education can educate only what heredity gives. Long 
 ago Helvetius thought, as did Kant, that the differences 
 between men were due to differences in education. But it is 
 not so. We make, of course, the most ridiculous claims for 
 education. The remark wrongly attributed to the Duke 
 of Wellington, that " the battle of Waterloo was won 
 on the playing-fields of Eton," is an instance in point. 
 Recently, when Francis Thompson, the poet, died, the local
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 129 
 
 newspaper of his birthplace said that it should be proud 
 to have produced him. We may laugh at this con- 
 ception of the genesis of genius, but we all talk in this 
 fashion. A genius was educated at Eton, and we say 
 that Eton produced him. The truth is, of course, that 
 Eton failed to destroy him. (One says Eton for con- 
 venience, but the name of any accepted school will do.) 
 If Eton produced him, why does not it produce thousands 
 like him ? There is plenty of material : but it is not 
 the right material. We should cease to speak, in our 
 pride for our own Alma Mater or our own methods, as 
 if education created genius or anything else. Men 
 are born unequal. To realise the nature of education 
 is not only to avoid the popular assumption that an 
 ideal education will do everything for us, forgetting 
 that no amount of polishing will make pewter shine like 
 silver ; it is not only to send us back to the principle 
 of selection in recognition of the power of inheritance ; 
 it is not merely to dispose of the idea that men are born 
 inherently equal ; but it is also to combat the idea 
 that education is a levelling process. On the contrary, 
 it accentuates the differences between men. You may 
 confuse the unpolished pebble and the diamond, but not 
 when education has done its utmost for both. If educa- 
 tion were a process of addition to what inheritance gives, 
 it would almost level men : the addition of a large sum 
 to figures such as, say, i, 2, and 3, would almost obliterate 
 their original disproportion. But the analogy is with 
 multiplication, as I have suggested : and the larger the 
 sum by which i, 2 and 3 are multiplied, the greater is 
 the disparity between the products. This is, perhaps, 
 one of the truths of vast importance which the common 
 run of contemporary Socialism implicitly denies : though 
 it is of course abundantly recognised by such a socialist 
 as that master-thinker Professor Forel. The socialist's
 
 130 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 panacea, ideal education for all, is much to be desired, 
 and will accomplish much, as we began by admitting ; 
 but it is not a panacea. Those who believe it to be 
 such do not understand the nature of education nor its 
 limitations. They should remember the remark of 
 Epictetus, " the condition and characteristic of a fool 
 is this : he never expects from himself profit nor harm, 
 but from externals." The dogma of the unthinking 
 socialist who exists, though he is doubtless rarer than 
 the unthinking individualist is that all evil is of economic 
 origin : correct your economics and your education and 
 you obliterate evil. But it is not so. As Lowell said, 
 " A great part of human suffering has its root in the 
 nature of man, and not in that of his institutions." 
 When by means of eugenics we can give education the 
 right material to work upon, we shall have a Utopia, and 
 as for forms of government they may be left for fools to 
 contest. Forel, incomparably the greatest socialist thinker 
 of the day, sees this. He makes his Utopian predictions 
 not so much as to mere externals, like clothing and 
 language, but as regards the kind of man and woman : 
 and, unlike some writers, he entitles himself to paint 
 these pictures, for in that great eugenic treatise 
 Die Sexuel Frage, he tells us how to realise them by 
 pedagogic reform working upon the materials provided 
 by human selection. A paragraph may be quoted from 
 Forel : 
 
 " Malgre tout 1'enthousiasme qu'on doit montrer pour une 
 pedagogic rationelle, il ne faut jamais oublier qu'elle est incapable 
 de remplacer la selection. Elle sert au but immeMiat et 
 rapproche, qui est d'utiliser le mieux possible le material 
 humain tel qu'il existe maintenant. Mais, par elle-meme, elle 
 n'ameliore en rien la qualite des germes a venir. Elle peut, 
 neanmoins, gr^ce a 1'instruction donn6e a la jeunesse sur la 
 valeur sociale de la selection, la preparer a mettre cette derniere 
 en ceuvre."
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 131 
 
 and another from Spencer : 
 
 " We are not among those who believe in Lord Palmerston's 
 dogma, that all children are born good. On the whole, the 
 opposite dogma, untenable as it is, seems to us less wide of the 
 truth. Nor do we agree with those who think that, by skilful 
 discipline, children may be made altogether what they should be. 
 Contrariwise, we are satisfied that though imperfections of nature 
 may be dimin^hed by wise management, they cannot be removed 
 by it. The notion that an ideal humanity might be forthwith 
 produced by a perfect system of education, is near akin to that 
 implied in the poems of Shelley, that would make mankind give 
 up their old institutions and prejudices, all the evils in the world 
 would at once disappear ; neither notion being acceptable to such 
 as have dispassionately studied human affairs." 
 
 Ruskin on education and inequality. Three great 
 paragraphs may be quoted from Ruskin's Time and 
 Tide : - 
 
 ' . . . Education was desired by the lower orders because they 
 thought it would make them upper orders, and be a leveller and 
 effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished, when 
 they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the fatallest 
 of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions ; piercing, even to 
 the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein your 
 body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, 
 and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal. 
 
 "171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely 
 appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is un- 
 divinely poor, it will make rich ; whatever is undivinely maimed, 
 and halt, and blind, it will make whole, and equal, and seeing. 
 The blind and the lame are to it'as to David at the siege of the 
 Tower of the Kings, "hated of David's soul." But there are 
 other divinely-appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the 
 everlasting hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. 
 And these, education does not do away with ; but measures, 
 manifests, and employs. 
 
 " In the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea- 
 beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal 
 foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, you will see
 
 132 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 little difference between the noble and the mean stones. But the 
 jeweller's trenchant education of them will tell you another story. 
 Even the meanest will be the better for it, but the noblest so 
 much better that you can class the two together no more. The 
 fair veins and colours are all clear now, and so stern is nature's 
 intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show which is 
 best, but the best will take most polish. You shall not merely see 
 they have more virtue than the others, but see that more of virtue 
 more clearly ; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall 
 see what there is of it. 
 
 " 172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to 
 vulgar pride, is this that all its gains are at compound interest ; 
 so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther 
 behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms. 
 Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an 
 hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall 
 they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page 
 a-head, two pages, ten pages and evermore, though each toils 
 equally, the interval enlarges at birth nothing, at death infinite." 
 
 So much for one relation of this question to Socialism. 
 Quite lately (The New Age, April nth, 1908) Mr. Have- 
 lock Ellis has summed the matter up as follows : 
 
 " Education has been put at the beginning, when it ought to 
 have been put at the end. It matters comparatively little what 
 sort of education we give children ; the primary matter is what 
 sort of children we have got to educate. That is the most 
 fundamental of questions. It lies deeper even than the great 
 question of Socialism versus Individualism, and indeed touches a 
 foundation that is common to both. The best organised social 
 system is only a house of cards if it cannot be constructed with 
 sound individuals; and no individualism worth the name is 
 possible, unless a sound social organisation permits the breeding 
 of individuals who count. On this plane Socialism and Individual- 
 ism move in the same circle." 
 
 We cannot agree with Socialism when, as we think, 
 it assumes that all evil is of economic or of educational 
 origin. The student of heredity finds elements of evil
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 133 
 
 abundant in poisoned germ-plasm and not absent from 
 the best. Surely, surely, the products of progress are 
 not mechanisms but men ; and surely no economic 
 system as such can be the only mechanism worth naming 
 which would be one that made men. The germ-plasm 
 is such a mechanism, indeed ; and hence its quality is 
 all important. 
 
 But if Socialism, sooner than any other party, is going 
 to identify itself with the economic principle of Ruskin 
 that " there is no wealth but life " ; and if in its discussion 
 of the conditions of industry it will concern itself primarily 
 with the culture of the racial life, which is the vital 
 industry of any people (and basis enough for a New 
 Imperialism, or at least a New Patriotism, that might 
 be quite decent) ; if so, then it seems to me that we must 
 look to the socialists for salvation. But books which 
 describe future externals, books which assume that 
 education is a panacea, forgetting that education can 
 educate only what heredity gives, turn us away again 
 when we are almost persuaded. The economic panacea 
 must fail (at least as a panacea) ; the educational panacea 
 must fail ; the eugenic panacea may not fail. 
 
 Education, then, cannot achieve our ideal of race- 
 culture. No matter how good our polishing, we must 
 have silver and diamonds to work upon, not pewter 
 and pebbles. When we have the right material to 
 work upon, our labour will not be wasted, or far worse 
 than wasted, as it now too often is. 
 
 Education a Sisyphean task But the belief in 
 education as in itself an adequate instrument of race- 
 culture chiefly depends upon the popular doctrine as 
 to its influence upon the race. It is supposed, in a word, 
 that if we educate the parents, the child will begin
 
 i34 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 where the parents left off. This is the doctrine of 
 Lamarck, who said that if the necks of the parent giraffe 
 were educated or drawn out, the baby giraffe would have 
 this anatomical acquirement transmitted to it, and, so 
 to speak, when it grew up, would be able to begin feeding 
 on the leaves of trees at the level where its parents had 
 to leave off. In the course of its life its own neck would 
 become elongated or educated, and its children would out- 
 stretch both itself and their grand-parents. This doctrine 
 of the transmission of acquired characters by heredity, 
 as we have seen, is, at the present day, repudiated by 
 biologists. It is generally believed by the medical 
 profession and by the public, notwithstanding the fact 
 that, for instance, the skin of the heel of every new baby 
 is almost as thin and delicate as it is anywhere else, 
 though for unthinkable generations all the ancestors 
 of that baby on both sides have greatly thickened the 
 skin of both heels by the act of walking. 
 
 It is quite evident that, if the Lamarckian theory 
 were true, education would be a completely adequate 
 instrument of race-culture, incomparable in its rapidity 
 and certainty. It would not reform the world in a 
 single generation because, as we have seen, its results 
 would be limited by the inherent nature of its material ; 
 but since those results would involve the vast ameliora- 
 tion of the material upon which it worked in the second 
 generation, mankind would be little lower than the 
 angels in a century. The good habits acquired by one 
 generation would be innate in the next. If the father 
 learnt one language in addition to his own, the child 
 would start with the knowledge of two, waiting only 
 for opportunity, and could accumulate more and hand 
 them on to its child. " My father's environment would 
 be my heredity." If we desired muscular strength we 
 could in two generations produce a race amongst whom
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 135 
 
 Sandow would be a puny weakling. We should not need to 
 discuss any question of selection for parenthood. Without 
 any such process we could answer Browning's prayer and 
 " elevate the race at once " physically, mentally and 
 morally. 
 
 But the Lamarckian theory does not correspond with 
 facts. The results of education, physical, mental, or 
 moral, are limited to the individuals educated. The 
 children do not begin where the parents left off, but 
 they make a fresh start where the parents did. Thus even 
 though we had and employed an ideal method of education, 
 we should make no permanent improvement by its means 
 alone in the breed of mankind, any more than the breeder 
 of race-horses could attain his end by the same means. 
 In each generation the same problem, the same difficulties, 
 the same limitations inherent in the nature of the new 
 material, would have to be faced. We must learn from 
 the horse-breeder, who knows that the blood of a single 
 horse, Eclipse, runs in the veins of the great majority of 
 winners since his time. 
 
 It is exceedingly difficult to dispossess the popular 
 mind of the Lamarckian idea, the more especially as 
 members of the medical profession, who are regarded 
 as authorities on heredity, contentedly accept this idea 
 themselves. Yet the advocates of eugenics or race- 
 culture have to recognise that, so long as the Lamarckian 
 idea obtains, their crusade will fail to find a hearing. 
 We believe that nothing can really be accomplished 
 in the way of race-culture until public opinion that 
 " chaos of prejudices," as Huxley called it is marshalled 
 on our side. But the popular notion of heredity is a 
 most formidable obstacle. The Lamarckian idea seems 
 to provide a method for the improvement of a species 
 which cannot be surpassed for simplicity, rapidity and 
 certainty. It even excludes the possibility of mistakes.
 
 136 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 You cannot go wrong if you simply educate every one to 
 the utmost. Doubtless some persons are more suited for 
 parenthood than others, but only let education be wise and 
 universal, and any question of selection by marriage or 
 otherwise will be superfluous. A thousand difficulties 
 offered by public sentiment, by convention, by the 
 churches, by the large measure of uncertainty which 
 attends the working of heredity, could be ignored, if 
 race-culture were simply a matter of education. 
 
 Nevertheless, these difficulties have to be faced by 
 the eugenist. The popular misconception of heredity- 
 instanced by Sir James Simpson's belief, not inexcusable 
 sixty years ago, that the education of a future mother 
 will enlarge her child's brain must be removed. It can 
 scarcely be doubted that the sway of the Lamarckian 
 idea will soon be diminished, and then, at last, those 
 who are interested in the future will discover that only by 
 the process of selection for parenthood, which has brought 
 mankind thus far, can further progress be assured. 
 
 Real functions of education for race-culture. 
 Nevertheless education has a true function for race- 
 culture in addition to the obvious fact of its necessity in 
 order to realise the inherent potentialities of the individual. 
 One of its functions is to provide a level of public opinion 
 and public taste such that the finer specimens of each gen- 
 eration shall receive their due reward and shall not be 
 crushed out of existence or perverted. There is a passage 
 in Goethe which suggests the true function of education, 
 and makes us suspect that, so far as many kinds of genius 
 and talent are concerned, our immediate business is 
 perhaps less to endeavour to produce them by breeding 
 if that be possible than to make the most of them when 
 they are vouchsafed us. Says Goethe : 
 
 " We admire the Tragedies of the ancient Greeks; but to take a 
 correct view of the case, we ought to admire the period and the
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 137 
 
 nation in which their production was possible rather than the 
 individual authors ; for though these pieces differ in some points 
 from each other, and though one of these poets appears somewhat 
 greater and more finished than the other, still, taking all things 
 together, only one decided character runs through the whole. 
 
 " This is the character of grandeur, fitness, soundness, human 
 perfection, elevated wisdom, sublime thought, pure, strong in- 
 tuition, and whatever other qualities one might enumerate. But 
 when we find all these qualities, not only in the dramatic works 
 which have come down to us, but also in lyrical and epic works 
 in the philosophers, orators, and historians, and in an equally 
 high degree in the works of plastic art that have come down to 
 us we must feel convinced that such qualities did not merely 
 belong to individuals, but were the current property of the nation 
 and the whole period." 
 
 Education as to the principle of selection. Further, the 
 hope may be warranted that, though education, as such, 
 will not achieve the ideal of true race-culture, and though 
 it has never hitherto averted the ultimate failure of all 
 civilisations, yet the case may be different to-day, in that 
 our acquired or traditional progress, transmitted by the 
 process of education accumulating from age to age not 
 in our blood and bone and brain, but mainly in books, 
 whereby the non-transmission of the results of education 
 is circumvented in a sense has reached the point at 
 which the laws of racial or inherent progress have been 
 revealed to us, as to none of our predecessors. 1 Having 
 the knowledge of these laws it is possible that we may 
 avert our predecessors' fate by putting them into force. 
 If we do not, we must ultimately become " one with 
 Nineveh and Tyre." Fifty years have now elapsed since 
 the principle of natural selection was demonstrated for 
 all time by the genius of Darwin. We must not be guilty 
 of starting to tell the story of organic evolution and 
 leaving out the point. So long as we supposed that man 
 was created as he is, the idea of racial progress was an 
 
 1 See the last sentence of the quotation from Forel on p. 130.
 
 138 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 absurdity. It is the correct thing now-a-days to decry 
 the possibility of human perfection. This possibility is 
 rightly to be decried if it be assumed that ideal education 
 of the present material or anything like it would realise 
 perfection. We have seen that it would not. It is the 
 principle of selection, in which Darwin has educated 
 us, that must be taught to all mankind, and thus 
 education may indeed become the factor of an effective 
 race-culture. 
 
 The power of individual opinion. Since ultimately 
 opinion rules the world, it is for us to create sound opinion. 
 That is the purpose of this book. But every individual 
 may be a centre of eugenic opinion, and the time has 
 assuredly come for attempting to realise this ideal, 
 though a thousand years should pass before the facts of 
 heredity are completely ascertained and understood. 
 The main principles are of the simplest character, and 
 can be readily imparted to a child. Especially does the 
 responsibility fall upon parents and those who are in 
 charge of childhood. 
 
 The young people of the next and all succeeding genera- 
 tions must be taught the supreme sanctity of parenthood. 
 The little boy who asks what he is to become when he 
 grows up, must be taught that the highest profession and 
 privilege he can aspire to is responsible fatherhood ; the 
 little girl may less frequently ask these questions, the 
 answer to which has been imparted to her by her own 
 Mother-Nature as the doll instinct, so little appreciated 
 or utilised, sufficiently demonstrates ; but she likewise 
 must be taught reverence for Motherhood. As childhood 
 gives place to youth, what may be called the eugenic 
 sense must be cultivated as a cardinal aspect of the moral 
 sense itself ; so that even personal inclination at the 
 controllable and self-controllable stage which precedes
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 139 
 
 " head over ears " affection will wither when it is 
 directed to some one who, on any ground, offends 
 the educated eugenic sense. There is here a field 
 for moral education of the highest and most valu- 
 able kind, both for the individual and for the race. 
 Is there any other aspect of duty which can claim 
 a higher warrant ? Is there any hitherto so wholly 
 ignored ? 
 
 The preceding paragraph is re-printed from a brief 
 account of its objects written for the Eugenics Education 
 Society, as a Society which amongst other purposes 
 exists " to further eugenic teaching at home and in the 
 schools and elsewhere." The difficulties of teaching 
 this subject to children are more apparent than real. I 
 may freely confess that though I have been speaking, 
 writing, and thinking about eugenics for six years, I did 
 not realise the importance of eugenic education until I 
 heard the views of some of the women who belong to this 
 Society, and even then I was at first sceptical as to its 
 practicability. The subject has been entirely ignored by 
 the pioneers of this matter. But if we turn to such a 
 work as Forel's masterpiece we begin to realise that the 
 eugenic education of children is the real beginning at the 
 beginning, that it is in fact indispensable, and must be 
 antecedent to all legislation in the direction of positive 
 eugenics, though not to certain forms of legislation in the 
 direction of negative eugenics. 1 In the earlier chapters 
 of his great work Professor Forel offers the parent and the 
 guardian abundant, detailed and accurate guidance as 
 to the lines and methods of this teaching. It is urgently 
 necessary for both sexes, but more especially for girls, 
 who may suffer incredibly from the cruel prudery ordained 
 by Mrs. Grundy, the only old woman to whom the word 
 " hag " should be applied. We must remove the reproach 
 
 1 For definition of these terms see Chap. xi.
 
 140 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 of Herbert Spencer, made nearly fifty years ago in words 
 which may well be quoted : 
 
 "The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely 
 overlooked. While much is being done in the detailed improve- 
 ment of our systems in respect both of matter and manner, the 
 most pressing desideratum, to prepare the young for the duties of 
 life, is tacitly admitted to be the end which parents and school- 
 masters should have in view ; and happily, the value of the things 
 taught, and the goodness of the methods followed in teaching 
 them, are now ostensibly judged by their fitness to this end. The 
 propriety of substituting for an exclusively classical training, a 
 training in which the modern languages shall have a share, is 
 argued on this ground. The necessity of increasing the amount 
 of science is urged for like reasons. But though some care is 
 taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care 
 whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it 
 is seen that for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate 
 preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the 
 bringing up of children, no preparation whatever is needed. 
 While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge 
 of which the chief value is that it constitutes " the education of 
 a gentleman " ; and while many years are spent by a girl in those 
 decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties ; not an 
 hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all 
 responsibilities the management of a family. Is it that this 
 responsibility is but a remote contingency ? On the contrary, it 
 is sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge 
 of it is easy ? Certainly not ; of all functions which the adult has 
 to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted 
 by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent ? 
 No; not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognised, 
 but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others 
 in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed." 
 
 The lines of eugenic education The teaching of the 
 main facts of heredity must come first in order to the 
 end of eugenic education. The vegetable world is at our 
 service in this regard, the products of horticulture with 
 their beauty and grace and novelty are illustrations one
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 141 
 
 and all of what heredity means and what the due choice 
 of parents will effect. There need be no personal allusions 
 at this stage ; the thing can be presented in an impersonal 
 biological setting. And as heredity produces these 
 wonderful results in plants, so also does it in the animal 
 world. Numberless domestic forms are at our service. 
 You take your children and your dog to the Zoological 
 gardens, and show the resemblance between wolf and 
 dog. What easier, then, than to point out that by 
 consistent choosing for many generations of the least 
 ferocious wolves, you may make a domesticated race ? * 
 
 The mind of any child that has fortunately escaped 
 " education " will make the transition for itself from sub- 
 human races to mankind, and instances will occur, say, 
 where extreme short-sightedness or deafness appears in 
 children whose parents were similarly afflicted, and were 
 perhaps closely related. At yet a later age a boy or girl 
 may learn the doom which often falls upon the children of 
 drunkards. 
 
 And then may it not be possible, when a little boy asks 
 what he is to be when he grows up, to suggest that the 
 highest profession to which he can be called, for which 
 he may strive to make himself worthy, is fatherhood ? 
 And when the racial instinct awakes, would it be wrong, 
 improper, indecent, to teach that it has a purpose, that 
 no attribute of mind or body has a higher purpose, that 
 this is holy ground ? Or is it better that by silence, both 
 as to the fact and as to its meaning, we should make it 
 unmentionable, indecent, dishonourable ? The Bible is 
 used now-a-days as an instrument of political immorality, 
 but if and when it should be employed for the function 
 of other great literature, there is a passage sufficiently 
 relevant to our present argument. 2 
 
 1 By some such means we may hope that man too may some day 
 become domesticated without losing his fertility ! 
 1 I Corinthians xii. 22, 23, 24.
 
 142 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Perhaps we are wrong in regarding and treating the 
 racial instinct as if it were animal and low, a thing as far 
 as possible to be ignored, repressed, treated with silent 
 contempt in education and elsewhere. We may be 
 wrong in practice because the method is not successful, 
 because the development of this instinct is inevitable 
 and little short of imperious in every normal child if 
 that child is ever to become a man or a woman, and 
 because our silence does not involve the silence of less 
 responsible persons who are less likely even than we 
 ourselves to teach the young enquirer that this thing 
 exists for parenthood, and is therefore holy and to be 
 treated as such. 
 
 Perhaps we are wrong in principle also, since that which 
 exists for parenthood, and without which the continuance 
 and future terrestrial hope of mankind is impossible, 
 cannot be animal and low, unless human life, even at its 
 best attained or attainable, be animal and low. Our 
 business rather is to treat this great fact in a spirit 
 worthy of the purpose for which it exists ; and therefore, 
 as part of that process of education by which we desire 
 to make the young into reasonable, moral and fully 
 human beings, to teach explicitly, without unworthy 
 shame, that this thing exists for the highest of purposes 
 that nothing which the future holds for boy or girl can 
 conceivably be higher or happier than worthy parent- 
 hood, however commonplace that may appear to common 
 eyes, and that accordingly this instinct is to be guarded, 
 treated, used, honoured as for parenthood, a fact which 
 immediately raises it from the egoistic to the altruistic 
 plane. We have to learn and to teach that worthy 
 parenthood is the highest end which education can 
 achieve highest alike on the ground of its services to 
 the individual and its services to the future, and the 
 relation of the racial instinct to parenthood being what
 
 EDUCATION AND RACE-CULTURE 143 
 
 it is, we have to look upon it in that light, at once austere 
 and splendid. 
 
 In the teaching of girls, only a false and disastrous 
 prudery offers any great obstacle. The idea of mother- 
 hood is essentially natural to the normal girl. It is the 
 eugenic education of boys that is more difficult, and the 
 possibility of which will be questioned in some quarters, 
 especially by those who regard the type of boy evolved 
 in semi-monastic institutions, devoid of feminine in- 
 fluence, as a normal and unchangeable being. Co- 
 educationists, however, are teaching us to revise that 
 opinion, and will yet demonstrate, perhaps, that the 
 inculcation of the idea of fatherhood is not so impossible 
 nor so alien to the boy nature as some would suppose. 
 If such a duty devolved upon the present writer, he would 
 feel inclined, perhaps, to present his teaching in terms 
 of patriotism. He would urge that " there is no wealth 
 but life" ; that nations are made not of provinces nor 
 property but of people ; that modern biology is teaching 
 historians to explain such phenomena as the fall of Rome 
 in terms of the quality of the national life ; that there- 
 fore, individuals being mortal, parenthood necessarily 
 takes its place as the supreme factor of national destiny ; 
 that the true patriotism must therefore concern itself 
 with the conditions and the quality of parenthood much 
 less with its quantity ; that the patriotism which ignores 
 these truths is ignorant and must be disastrous ; that we 
 must turn our attention therefore from flag waving to 
 questions of individual conduct ; that if alcohol and 
 syphilis, for instance, can be demonstrated to be what 
 I would call racial poisons, the young patriot must make 
 himself aware of their relation to parenthood, and must 
 act upon his knowledge of that relation. It can thus be 
 demonstrated that righteousness exalteth a nation not 
 only in the spiritual but also in the most concrete sense.
 
 144 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 To this we shall come. We may even recognise eugenic 
 education as the most urgent need of the day, as the 
 most radical and rational, perhaps even the most hopeful, 
 of the methods by which the cleansing of the city, and 
 much more, is to be achieved. We must create a eugenic 
 aspect for the moral sense. We can associate this alike with 
 individual and civic duty, and with those very ideals to 
 which, as we all know, the young most readily respond. 
 Thus I believe it shall be said of us in the after time that 
 we have raised up the foundations of many generations. 
 
 And so, finally, the unselfish significance of marriage 
 might conceivably be taught, alike to boys and girls, and 
 especially in the case of undoubtedly good stocks might 
 we inculcate, as Mr. Galton has pointed out, a rational 
 pride in ancestry that is to say, a rational pride in the 
 quality of the germ-plasm which has been entrusted to 
 us. And so may be cultivated a eugenic aspect of the 
 moral sense which is immeasurably more plastic than 
 any but the student of moral ideas knows and, thus 
 endowed, the young man or woman will be prepared for 
 the possibility of marriage. It is perfectly conceivable 
 that hi days to come the argument in any case false 
 that affection never brooks control, may become wholly 
 irrelevant, when there arises a generation in whose 
 members there has been cultivated or created the eugenic 
 sense. It is conceivable that, just as to-day the mere 
 possibility of falling in love is arrested by any of a thousand 
 trivial considerations, so misplaced affection may be 
 incapable of arising because its possible object affronts 
 the educated eugenic sense. The natural basis for such 
 education already exists. But the natural eugenic sense 
 still works mainly on the physical plane, and although 
 we owe to it the maintenance of our present modest 
 standard of physical beauty, we aim at higher ideals 
 and will one day thus attain them.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 
 
 " The dregs of the human species the blind, the deaf mute, the 
 degenerate, the imbecile, the epileptic are better protected than 
 pregnant women." BOUCHACOURT. 
 
 " I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of the 
 society of this present day are the carelessness with which it 
 regards the betrayal of women, and the brutality with which 
 it suffers the neglect of children." RUSKIN. 
 
 A CHAPTER must be included here concerning a question 
 which can never safely be ignored in any consideration 
 of race-culture, but the importance of which, as I think 
 I see it, is recognised by no one who has concerned himself 
 at all with this subject, from Mr. Francis Galton himself 
 downwards. We must all be agreed, Mr. Galton declares, 
 as to the propriety of breeding, if it be possible, for health, 
 energy and ability, whatever else may be doubtful. To 
 this I would add that, whether we are agreed or not, we 
 must breed for motherhood, and that, even if we do not, 
 we shall have to reckon with it. The general eugenic 
 position, I fancy, is that the requirements which we 
 should make of both sexes, the mothers of the future as 
 well as the fathers, are essentially identical : but it seems 
 to me that we have not yet reckoned with the vast im- 
 portance of motherhood as a factor in the evolution of all 
 the higher species of animals, and its absolute supremacy, 
 inevitable and persistent whether recognised or ignored, 
 in the case of man. Any system of eugenics or race- 
 culture, any system of government, any proposal for 
 social reform as, for instance, the reduction of infant 
 K H5
 
 146 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 mortality which fails to reckon with motherhood or 
 falls short of adequately appraising it, is foredoomed to 
 failure and will continue to fail so long as the basal facts 
 of human nature and the development of the human 
 individual retain even approximately their present 
 character. Whatever proposals for eugenics or race- 
 culture be made or carried out, the fact will remain that 
 the race is made up of mortal individuals ; that every 
 one of these begins its visible life as a helpless baby, and 
 that the system which does not permit the babies to 
 survive, they will not permit to survive. 
 
 This is a general and universal proposition, admitting 
 of no exceptions, past, present or to come. It 
 applies equally to conscious systems of race-culture, 
 to forms of marriage, to forms of government, to any 
 other social institution or practice or character that 
 can be named or conceived. Upon every one of 
 these the babies pronounce a judgment from which 
 there is no appeal. The baby may be a potential Newton, 
 Shakespeare, Beethoven or Buddha, but it is at its birth 
 the most helpless thing alive, the potentialities of which 
 avail it not one whit. It is in more need of care, im- 
 mediate and continuous, than a baby microbe or a baby 
 cat, whatever the unpublished glories of which its brain 
 contains the promise ; and in the total absence of any 
 apparatus, mechanical, legal, or scientific, which can 
 provide the mother's breast and the mother's love, 
 individual motherhood, in its exquisitely complementary 
 aspects, physical and psychical, will remain the dominant 
 factor of history so long as the final judgments upon 
 every present and the final determinations for every 
 future lie in the hands of helpless babyhood which will 
 be the case so long as man is mortal. When, if ever, 
 science, having previously conquered disease, identifies 
 the causes of natural death and removes them, then
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 147 
 
 motherhood and babyhood may be thrown upon the 
 rubbish heap ; but until that hour they are enthroned 
 by decree of Nature, and can be dethroned only at the 
 cost of Her certain and annihilative vengeance. 
 
 It is the master paradox that at his first appearance 
 the lord of the earth should be the most helpless of living 
 things. Consider a new-born baby. " Unable to stand, 
 much less to wander in search of food ; very nearly deaf ; 
 all but blind ; well-nigh indiscriminating as to the nature 
 of what is presented to its mouth ; utterly unable to keep 
 itself clean, yet highly susceptible to the effects of dirt ; 
 able to indicate its needs only by alternately turning its 
 head, open-mouthed, from side to side and then crying ; 
 possessed of an almost ludicrously hypersensitive interior ; 
 unable to fast for more than two or three hours, yet 
 having the most precise and complicated dietetic require- 
 ments ; needing the most carefully maintained warmth ; 
 easily injured by draughts ; the prey of bacteria (which 
 take up a permanent abode in its alimentary canal by 
 the eleventh day) where is to be found a more complete 
 picture of helpless dependence ? " l How comes it that this 
 creature is to be lord of the earth, and a member of the only 
 species which succeeds in continually multiplying itself ? 
 
 Motherhood and intelligence. We have maintained 
 that the vital character which is of supreme survival- 
 value for man is his intelligence, and this, as we know, 
 is his unique possession. It is very largely for intelli- 
 gence, therefore, that race-culture or eugenics proposes, if 
 possible, to work. But if there be certain conditions 
 which must be complied with before intelligence can 
 possibly be evolved, eugenics will come to disaster should 
 it ignore them. These conditions do exist, and have 
 hitherto been entirely ignored by all students of this 
 question. Let certain great facts be observed. 
 
 1 Quoted from the Author's Evolution the Master Key.
 
 148 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Why is the human baby the most helpless of all 
 creatures ? Since it is to become the most capable, should 
 it not, even in its infant state, show signs of its coming 
 superiority ? What is the meaning of this paradox ? 
 
 The answer is that, so far as physical weapons of offence 
 and defence are concerned, these have disappeared because 
 intelligence makes them superfluous or even burdensome. 
 But the peculiar helplessness of the human infant depends 
 not upon its nakedness in the physical sense but upon its 
 lack of very nearly all instinctive capacities. It is this 
 absence of effective instincts which distinguishes the baby 
 from the young of all other creatures. Why should its 
 endowment in this respect be so inferior ? 
 
 It is because of the fact that, if instinct is to give rise to 
 intelligence, it must be plastic. A purely instinctive 
 creature reacts to certain sets of circumstances in certain 
 effortless, perfect and fixed ways. The reactions are the 
 whole of its psychical life. They need no education, 
 being as perfectly performed on the first occasion as on 
 the last, and in many instances being performed only once 
 in the whole history of the creature in question. But, on the 
 other hand, they are almost incapable of education, and 
 even in the cases where they lack absolute perfection at 
 first, they only require the merest modicum of opportunity 
 in order to acquire it. Perfect within their limits, they are 
 yet most definitely limited. They never achieve the new, 
 they are utterly at fault in novel circumstances, and they 
 are wholly incapable of creating circumstances. 
 
 A creature cannot be at once purely instinctive and 
 intelligent. An instinctive action is simply a compound 
 reflex action, a highly adapted automatism : now auto- 
 matism and intelligence are necessarily inversely propor- 
 tional. It is possible for an intelligent creature to acquire 
 automatisms, which are popularly described as instinctive. 
 They are not instincts, however, but the acquired equiva-
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 149 
 
 lents of instincts : " secondary automatisms." If they 
 are used to replace intelligence, the individual, in so far, 
 sinks from the human to the sub-human level. Their 
 proper function is to leave the intelligence free for higher 
 purposes more worthy of it than, say, the act of dressing 
 oneself. 
 
 In order that an intelligent creature should be evolved 
 it was necessary that instinct should become plastic. 
 Intelligence could not be superposed upon a complete and 
 final instinctive equipment. You cannot determine your 
 own acts if they are already determined for you by your 
 nervous organisation. The incomparable superiority of 
 intelligence depends upon its limitless and creative 
 character, in virtue of which, as Disraeli puts it, " men are 
 not the creatures of circumstances : circumstances are 
 the creatures of men." But whilst intelligence can learn 
 everything, it has everything to learn, and the most nearly 
 intelligent creature whom the earth affords thus begins 
 his independent life almost wholly bereft of all the instru- 
 ments which have served the lower creatures so well, 
 whilst, on the other hand, he is provided with an utterly 
 undeveloped, and indeed, at that time non-existent, 
 weapon which, even if it did exist, he could not use. 
 Hence the unique helplessness of the human baby : one 
 of the most wonderful and little appreciated facts in the 
 whole of nature effectively hidden from the glass eyes of 
 the kind of man who calls a baby a " brat," but, to eyes that 
 can see, not only the master paradox from the philoso- 
 phical point of view but also a fact of the utmost moment 
 from the practical point of view. 
 
 The evolution of motherhood. It directly follows that 
 motherhood is supremely important in the case of man. 
 It is the historical fact that its importance in the history 
 of the animal world has been steadily increasing through- 
 out aeonian time. The most successful and ancient
 
 150 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 societies we know, those of the social insects, which ante- 
 date by incalculable ages even the first vertebrates, could 
 not survive for a single generation without the mother- 
 hood or foster-motherhood to which the worker females 
 sacrifice their lives and their own chances of physical 
 maternity. 
 
 The development of maternal care may be steadily 
 traced throughout the vertebrate series pan passu with 
 the evolution of sexual relations towards the ideal of 
 monogamy, which is ideal just because of its incompar- 
 able services to motherhood. But whilst motherhood is 
 of the utmost service for lower creatures, tending always 
 to lessen infant mortality if it may be so called and to 
 increase the proportion of life to death and birth, it is of 
 supreme service in the case of man because of the absolute 
 dependence upon it of intelligence, the solitary but unex- 
 ampled weapon with which he has won the earth. Hence 
 in breeding for intelligence we cannot afford to ignore that 
 upon which intelligence depends. Even if we could pro- 
 duce genius at will, we should find our young geniuses just 
 as dependent upon motherhood as the common run of 
 mankind. Newton himself was a seven months' baby, and 
 the potentialities of gravitation and the calculus and the 
 laws of motion in his brain could not save him : mother- 
 hood could and did. 
 
 Even our least biological reformers must admit that 
 purely physical motherhood, up to the point of birth, can 
 scarcely be omitted in any schemes for social reform or 
 race-culture. Some of them will even admit that purely 
 physical motherhood, so far as the mother's breasts are 
 concerned, cannot wisely be dispensed with. The psychical 
 aspects of motherhood, however, many of these writers I 
 do not call them thinkers ignore. In relation to infant 
 mortality which is the most obvious symptom of causes 
 productive of vast and widespread physical deterioration
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 151 
 
 amongst the survivors, and which must be abolished before 
 any really effective race-culture is possible it is worth 
 noting that motherhood cannot safely be superseded. I 
 do not believe in the creche or the municipal milk depot 
 except as stop-gaps, or as object-lessons for those who 
 imagine that the slaughtered babies are not slaughtered 
 but die of inherent defect, and that therefore infant 
 mortality is a beneficent process. In working for the reduc- 
 tion of this evil we must work through and by motherhood. 
 In some future age, boasting the elements of sanity, our 
 girls will be instructed in these matters. At present the 
 most important profession in the world is almost entirely 
 carried on by unskilled labour, and until this state of 
 things is put an end to, it is almost idle to talk of race- 
 culture at all. But under our present system of educa- 
 tion, false and rotten as it is in principles and details alike, 
 it is necessary for us to send visitors to the homes of the 
 classes which, in effect, supply almost the whole of the 
 future population of the country, and to establish 
 schools for mothers on every hand. 
 
 Psychical motherhood. I confess myself opposed to 
 the principle of bribing a woman to become a 
 mother, whether overtly or covertly, whether in the 
 guise of State-aid or in the form of eugenic premiums 
 for maternity. It may sound very well to offer a bonus 
 for the production of babies by mothers whom the 
 State or any eugenic power considers fit and worthy. But 
 though the bonus may help motherhood in its physical 
 aspects, the importance of which no one questions, I do 
 not see what service it renders to motherhood in its 
 psychical aspects which are at least equally important. 
 What is the outlook for the baby when the bonus is spent ? 
 In fact, with all deference to Mr. Galton, and with such 
 deference as may be due to the literary triflers who have 
 discussed this matter, I am inclined to think that a
 
 152 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 cardinal requisite for a mother is love of children. Ignor- 
 ant this may be, and indeed at first always is, but if it is 
 there it can be instructed. The woman who does not 
 think the possession of a baby a sufficient prize is no fit 
 object, I should say, for any other kind of bribe or lure. 
 The woman who " would rather have a spare bedroom 
 than a baby " is the woman whom I do not want to have 
 a baby. Thus I look with suspicion on any proposals 
 which assume that the psychical elements of motherhood 
 are of little moment in eugenics. I see no sign or prospect 
 that they can be dispensed with, and I think eugenics is 
 going to work on wrong lines if it proposes to ignore them. 
 Even if you turn out Nature with a fork she will yet 
 return tamen usque recurret. 
 
 In this question we should be able to derive great 
 assistance from biography. Real guidance, I believe, is 
 obtained from this source, but only a pitiable fraction of 
 that which should be obtained. Scientific biography 
 is yet to seek, and it is the ironical fact that when Herbert 
 Spencer, in his Autobiography, devoted a large amount 
 of space to the discussion of both his parents and their 
 relatives, the literary critics were bored to death. Never- 
 theless, we cannot know too much about the ancestry, on 
 both sides, and the early environment, of great men. At 
 present it is always tacitly assumed that a great man is 
 the son of his father alone. The biographer would prob- 
 ably admit, if pressed, that doubtless some woman or 
 other was involved in the matter, and that her name was 
 so and so if any one thinks it worth mentioning. On 
 the score of heredity alone, however, we derive, men and 
 women alike, with absolute equality from both parents ; 
 and we cannot know too much about the mothers of men 
 of genius. Such knowledge would often avail us materi- 
 ally in cases where the paternal ancestry offers little 
 explanation of the child's destiny.
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 153 
 
 We do owe, however, to great men themselves many 
 warm and unqualified tributes to their mothers, not on 
 the score of heredity, but on the score of the psychical 
 aspects of motherhood. This, indeed, is one of the great 
 lessons of biography which some eugenists have forgotten. 
 It is all very well to breed for intelligence, but intelligence 
 needs nurture and guidance, and that need is the more 
 urgent, the more powerful and original the intelligence in 
 question. The physical functions of motherhood from the 
 moment of birth onwards can be effected, no doubt, though 
 at very great cost, by means of incubators and milk labora- 
 tories, and so forth. But there is no counterfeiting or 
 replacing the psychical component of complete maternity, 
 and a generation of the highest intelligence borne by 
 unmaternal women would probably succeed only in 
 writing the blackest and maddest page in history. 
 
 The eugenic demand for love. Mr. Galton desires 
 that we breed for physique, ability, and energy. But 
 we also need more love, and we must breed for that. 
 Nothing is easier or more inevitable once we make 
 human parenthood conscious and deliberate. When 
 children are born only to those who love children, and 
 who will tend to transmit their high measure of that 
 parental instinct from which all love is derived, we shall 
 bring to earth a heaven compared with which the 
 theologian's is but a fool's paradise. 
 
 The first requisite, then, for the mothers of the future, 
 the elements of physical health being assumed, is that 
 they should be motherly. They may or may not, in 
 addition, be worthy of such exquisite titles as " the female 
 Shakespeare of America," but they must have motherli- 
 ness to begin with. For this indispensable thing there is 
 no substitute. It must certainly be granted, and the fact 
 should not be ignored, that the hidden spring of motherli- 
 ness in a girl may be revealed only by actual maternity,
 
 154 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 and the frivolous damsel who used to think babies " silly 
 squalling things " may be mightily transformed when the 
 silly squalling thing is her own and the Fifth Symphony 
 sound and fury signifying nothing compared with its 
 slightest whimper. I will grant even that the maternal 
 instinct is so deeply rooted and universal that its 
 absence must be regarded as either a rare abnormality 
 or else as the product of the grossest mal-education 
 in the wide sense. But the reader will not blame me 
 for insisting at such length upon what, as he would 
 think, no one could deny, when he discovers that these 
 salient truths are denied, and that in what should be 
 the sacred name of eugenics, they are openly flouted and 
 defied. 
 
 Before we go on to consider these perversions of a great 
 idea, it may briefly be observed that, though fatherhood 
 is historically a mushroom growth compared with mother- 
 hood, and though its importance is vastly less, yet as a 
 complementary principle, aiding and abetting mother- 
 hood, and making for its most perfect expression, father- 
 hood played a great part in animal evolution, in the right 
 line of progress, ages before man appeared upon the earth 
 at all, and that its work is not yet done. To this subject 
 we must return. Meanwhile it is well to note the dangers 
 with which eugenics is at present threatened in the form 
 of certain proposals which, if for a time they became 
 popular and they have elements making for popularity 
 would inevitably throw the gravest discredit upon the 
 whole subject. 
 
 Eugenics and the family Certain remarkable 
 tendencies invoking the name of eugenics are now to be 
 observed in Germany. These have considerable funds, 
 much enthusiasm, journalistic support, and even a large 
 measure of assistance in academic circles. In pursuance 
 of the idea of eugenics there is a movement the nature of
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 155 
 
 which is indicated by the following quotation from a 
 private letter : 
 
 " I wonder if your attention was drawn to the German projects 
 of the reform of the Family. They all aim at improving the 
 German race and rendering decisive its superiority over all others. 
 The means seem to be too revolutionary. The more modern wish 
 the establishment of the matriarchal family (ein nach M utter rechf), 
 the more logical require universal polygamy and polyandry, an 
 individualisation of Society. Others hope to increase the pro- 
 duction of German geniuses by the ' hellenic friendship.' [!] The 
 three movements are strongly organised, command large pecuniary 
 means, a phalanx of original and prolific writers, and enthusiastic 
 devotion to their cause. More even than the support of Courts 
 and aristocracy is, in my eyes, that of the Universities. It is there 
 that the destinies of Germany have always been shaped, and if 
 they are determined to reform the Family in that way, it will be 
 done. . . . The Herren Professoren are terribly in earnest, yet 
 they say things which even to the least prejudiced minds appear 
 ridiculous and even vulgar. Still, their projects have some 
 relation to Eugenics, and to Sociology in general." 
 
 This sufficiently indicates the dangers run by the eugenic 
 principle at the hands of those who see in it an instrument 
 of protest and rebellion against established things. We 
 dare not repudiate the sacred principles of protest and 
 rebellion, which have been the conditions of all progress, 
 but believing in motherhood as we must, believing it to be 
 authorised by nature herself and not by any human con- 
 ventions, we must deplore any tendencies such as the two 
 last cited. For us in this country, however, a more im- 
 mediate interest attaches to the views of a much admired 
 and discussed writer who claims to be a social philosopher 
 of the first order, and whose claims must now be examined. 
 
 The opinions of Mr. Bernard Shaw on the question of 
 eugenics may be quoted from his contribution to the 
 subject published in Sociological Papers 1904, pp. 74, 75, 
 in discussion of Mr. Galton's great paper. Mr. Shaw 
 begins by saying : "I agree with the paper and go so far
 
 156 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 as to say that there is now no reasonable excuse for refus- 
 ing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can 
 save our civilisation from the fate that has overtaken all 
 previous civilisations." And further : 
 
 " I am afraid we must make up our minds either to face a 
 considerable shock to vulgar opinion in this matter or to let 
 eugenics alone. . . . What we must fight for is freedom to breed 
 the race without being hampered by the mass of irrelevant con- 
 ditions implied in the institution of marriage. If our morality is 
 attacked, we can carry the war into the enemy's country by 
 reminding the public that the real objection to breeding by 
 marriage is that marriage places no restraint on debauchery, so 
 long as it is monogamic. . . . What we need is freedom for 
 people who have never seen each other before and never intend to 
 see one another again, to produce children under certain definite 
 public conditions, without loss of honour." 
 
 The conception of individual fatherhood here stated 
 involves a deliberate reversion to the order of the beast : 
 it excludes individual fatherhood from any function in 
 aiding motherhood or in serving the future. It involves, 
 of course, the total abolition of the family. It denies 
 and flouts the very best elements in human nature. It 
 assumes that the best women will find motherhood worth 
 while without the interest and sympathy and help and pro- 
 tection of the father. It does not, however, condemn or 
 exclude the psychical functions of motherhood, since so far 
 as this quotation goes it might be assumed that the mother 
 would be permitted to live with her own child. On this 
 point, however, Mr. Shaw offered us further guidance in his 
 controversy with myself in the Pall Mall Gazette, in 
 December, 1907. One or two of his dicta must here be 
 quoted they followed upon my remark, " Anything less 
 like a mother than the State I find it hard to imagine " : 
 
 "When the State left the children to the mothers, they got 
 no schooling ; they were sent out to work under inhuman con- 
 ditions, under-ground and over-ground for atrociously long hours,
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 157 
 
 as soon as they were able to walk ; they died of typhus fever 
 in heaps ; they grew up to be as wicked to their own children as 
 their parents had been to them. State socialism rescued them 
 from the worst of that, and means to rescue them from all of it. I 
 now publicly challenge Dr. Saleeby to propose, if he dares, to 
 withdraw the hand of the State and abandon the children to 
 their mothers as they fall. . . . All I need say is that before Dr. 
 Saleeby can persuade me to sacrifice the future of human society 
 to his maternalism, he will have to tackle me with harder weapons 
 than the indignant enthusiasm of a young man's mother worship." 
 
 Mr. Shaw's teaching constitutes a brutal and deliberate 
 libel upon the highest aspects of womanhood. For his own 
 purposes he attributes to the mothers all the abominations 
 which, as every one knows, have lain and in some measure 
 still lie, at the door of the State. The man who has this 
 opinion of motherhood is complacently ignorant of the 
 elements of the subj ect. His charge is denied by every one 
 who has worked as doctor or nurse or visitor or missionary 
 amongst the poorer classes, and knows that the mothers 
 there met are of the very salt of the earth. 
 
 It is well to state plainly here that these utterly irres- 
 ponsible dicta have absolutely no relation or resemblance 
 whatever to the opinions or proposals of Mr. Francis Galton 
 himself, who desires to effect race-culture through marriage, 
 and whose whole propaganda is based upon this assump- 
 tion. This we shall afterwards see. Meanwhile we may 
 note Mr. Galton's own words : " The aim of eugenics is to 
 bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, 
 to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute 
 more than their proportion to the next generation." Mr. 
 Galton would be the first to assert that influences designed 
 to supersede motherhood and to abolish everything but 
 the physical aspect of fatherhood, would not be reasonable, 
 but insane in the highest degree. 
 
 The idea] of race-culture without fatherhood or mother- 
 hood, except in the mere physiological sense, constitutes
 
 i5 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 a denial of the greatest facts in evolution, as we have seen. 
 It ignores everything that is known and daily witnessed 
 regarding the development of the individual, and the 
 formation of character, without which intelligence is a 
 curse. There is not the slightest fear that any such rever- 
 sion to the order of the beast is possible, absolutely for- 
 bidden as it is by the laws of human nature. There is, 
 however, reasonable ground for apprehension, especially 
 when the recent developments in Germany are remem- 
 bered, that the public may obtain its notions of eugenics 
 in a highly-garbled form. 1 
 
 It must be asserted as fervently and plainly as possible 
 that, if the idea of race-culture is even in the smallest 
 degree to be realised, it must work through motherhood 
 and fatherhood not less in their psychical than in their 
 physical aspects. It is time to have done with the gross 
 delusions of Nietzsche regarding the nature and course of 
 organic evolution. Morality is not an invention of man 
 but man the child of morality, and it is not by the 
 abolition of motherhood, in which morality originated, 
 nor of fatherhood, its first ally, that the super-man is 
 to be evolved : but by the attainment of those lofty 
 conceptions of the function, the responsibility and the 
 privilege of parenthood which it is the first business of 
 eugenics to inculcate. 
 
 As for marriage, invaluable though at its best it be for 
 the completion and ennoblement of the individual life, 
 its great function for society and for the race is in relation 
 to childhood. Thus considered, the dictum of Professor 
 Westermarck may be understood, that children are not 
 
 1 Mr. G. K. Chesterton, one of the most amusing of contemporary 
 phenomena, has lately said : " The most serious sociologists, the most 
 stately professors of eugenics, calmly propose that, ' for the good of 
 the race,' people should be forcibly married to each other by the 
 police." Readers unacquainted with Mr. Chesterton's standard of 
 accuracy and methods of criticism might be misled by this gay invention.
 
 SUPREMACY OF MOTHERHOOD 159 
 
 the result of marriage but marriage the result of children. 
 This, in other words, is to say that marriage has become 
 evolved and established as a social institution because of 
 its services to race-culture. It is, in short, the supreme 
 eugenic institution. This great subject must next occupy 
 our attention.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM 
 
 OUR present concern is the relation of marriage to race- 
 culture, and for this purpose we must investigate an 
 epoch ages before the institution of human marriage, 
 ages before mankind itself. We must first remind 
 ourselves of what may be called the trend of 
 progress from the first in respect of that reproduction 
 upon which all species depend, all living individuals 
 being mortal. 
 
 At first, in the effort for survival and increase, life tried 
 the quantitative method. If we take the present day 
 bacteria as representatives of the primitive method, we 
 see that not quality nor individuality but quantity and 
 numbers are the means by which, in their case, life seeks 
 to establish itself more abundantly. We express our own 
 birth-rate in its proportion per year to one thousand 
 living : but twenty thousand bacteria injected into a 
 rabbit have been found to multiply into twelve thousand 
 million in one day. " One bacterium has been actually 
 observed to rear a small family of eighty thousand within 
 a period of twenty-four hours." " The cholera bacillus 
 can duplicate every twenty minutes, and might thus in 
 one day become 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, with the 
 weight, according to the calculations of Cohn, of about 
 7,366 tons. In a few days, at this rate, there would be 
 a mass of bacteria as big as the moon, huge enough to 
 fill the whole ocean." 
 
 If now we trace the history of life up to man, we find 
 in him as we have seen the lowest birth-rate of any 
 
 1 60
 
 MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM 161 
 
 animal and the longest ante-natal period in proportion to 
 his body weight, the longest period of maternal feeding, 
 and by far the lowest infant mortality and general death- 
 rate. A chief fact of progress has been, in a word, the 
 supersession of the quantitative by the qualitative 
 criterion of survival- value. Immeasurably vast vital 
 economy and efficiency have thus been effected. The 
 tendency of progress, in short a tendency coincident 
 with the evolution of ever higher and higher species is to 
 pass from the horrible Gargantuan wastefulness of the 
 older methods towards the evident but yet lamentably 
 unrealised ideal that every child born shall reach 
 maturity. This great historical tendency, which will 
 ultimately involve the restriction of parenthood to the fit, 
 fine and relatively few, has occurred under the impartial 
 rule of natural selection simply and solely because it has 
 endowed with survival-value the successive species in 
 which it has been demonstrated. 
 
 The rise of parenthood. Consistently with this fact 
 and with the argument of the previous chapter is the 
 tendency towards the lengthening of infancy, a very 
 characteristic condition of the evolution of the higher 
 forms of life. This lengthening and accentuation of 
 infancy makes for variety of development, and, as we have 
 seen, is supremely instanced in man, where it depends 
 upon, and makes possible, the transmutation of fixed 
 instincts into the plastic thing we call intelligence. Thus, 
 to quote the words of Dr. Parsons, 1 " we find that as 
 infancy is prolonged in the progress of species, the care 
 given to offspring by parents is increased. It extends 
 over a longer period and it is directed more and more 
 towards the total welfare of offspring. The need of a 
 potentially many-sided and enduring kind of parental 
 care is filled through the social group we call the family." 
 
 1 The Family, p. 20. 
 L
 
 162 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Apart from those immensely significant creatures, the 
 social insects, we find well-marked though primitive signs 
 of motherhood amongst the fishes, and in a few cases, 
 such as the stickleback, the beginnings of fatherhood. 
 But it is not until we reach the mammals, and especially 
 the monkeys and apes, that we find a great development 
 of motherhood, far more prolonged and far more im- 
 portant than the more frequently extolled parental care 
 found amongst the birds. 
 
 Very interesting, however, in the case of the fishes is 
 the fact observed by Sutherland that " as soon as the 
 slightest trace of parental care is discovered the chance 
 of survival is increased and the birth-rate is lowered." 
 As a general summary these words of Dr. Parsons will 
 serve : " Diminution of offspring is a threefold gain to 
 a species, (i) It lessens the vital drain upon the parent. 
 (2) It enables the size and capacity of the limited number 
 of offspring to be increased. (3) In the case of the higher 
 developments of parental care after birth, it concentrates 
 the advantage of that care upon a few instead of scattering 
 it, and thereby weakening its influence, upon many." 
 
 Now how are these facts connected with that relation 
 between the parents which we call marriage, tem- 
 porary or permanent, foreshadowed or perfected ? 
 
 It may be submitted that the racial function or survival- 
 value of marriage in all its forms, low or high, animal or 
 human, consists in its services to the principle of motherhood, 
 these services depending upon the help and strength which 
 are afforded to motherhood by fatherhood. 
 
 Animal marriage Let us now look very briefly at the 
 facts of animal marriage from this point of view. The 
 phrase, animal marriage, may possibly offend the reader, 
 but is there any reason to be offended at the suggestion 
 that the principle of marriage actually has a warrant 
 older even than mankind ? It has lately been pointed
 
 MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM 163 
 
 out by a distinguished naturalist, Mr. Ernest Thompson 
 Seton, that animals, like men, have long been groping, so 
 to say, for an ideal form of marriage. We now know, as 
 will be shown, that, contrary to popular opinion, pro- 
 miscuity does not prevail amongst the lowest races of 
 men. Equally false is the popular notion that promis- 
 cuity prevails amongst most of the lower animals. 
 Promiscuity, it is true, does occur, but so also does strict 
 monogamy, " and promiscuous animals, such as rabbits 
 and voles, while high in the scale of fecundity, are low 
 in the scale of general development." Says Mr. Seton : 
 " It is commonly remarked that while the Mosaic law 
 did not expressly forbid polygamy, it surrounded marriage 
 with so many restrictions that by living up to the spirit 
 of them the Hebrew ultimately was forced into pure 
 monogamy. It is extremely interesting to note that the 
 animals, in their blind groping for an ideal form of union, 
 have gone through the same stages, and have arrived at 
 exactly the same conclusion. Monogamy is their best 
 solution of the marriage question, and is the rule among 
 all the higher and most successful animals." 
 
 The moose, Mr. Seton tells us, has several wives in one 
 season but only one at a time. The hawks practise mono- 
 gamy lasting for one season, " the male staying with the 
 family, and sharing the care of the young till they are 
 well-grown." The wolves consort for life, but the death of 
 one leaves the other free to mate again. There is a fourth 
 method " in which they pair for life, and, in case of death, 
 the survivor remains disconsolate and alone to the end. 
 This seems absurd. It is the way of the geese. ' ' The point 
 especially to be insisted upon as regards animal marriage 
 is its evident service to their race-culture, in accord- 
 ance with the principle here laid down that marriage is of 
 value because it supports motherhood by fatherhood, and that 
 its different forms are of value in proportion as they do
 
 164 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 so more or less effectively. We may note also, as a corol- 
 lary to this, that marriage must be more important in 
 proportion as the young of a species are helpless and in 
 proportion as their helplessness is long continued. The 
 importance of marriage for man, therefore, must neces- 
 sarily be higher than for any of the lower animals. 
 
 Human marriage We must turn now to human 
 marriage, and the principle which we must remember is 
 that of survival-value. We are discussing a natural 
 phenomenon exhibited by living creatures. This is what 
 so few people realise when they speak of marriage. They 
 cannot disabuse themselves of the idea that it is a human 
 invention, and especially an ecclesiastical invention. 
 Thus, on the one hand, it is supported by persons who base 
 its claims on mystical or dogmatic grounds ; whilst, on the 
 other hand, it is attacked by those who are opposed to 
 ecclesiasticism or religion of any kind, and attacked in the 
 name of science in which, if the fact could only be recog- 
 nised, is found every possible warrant and sanction, and 
 indeed imperative demand, for this most precious of all 
 institutions. Here we must endeavour to look upon it as 
 an exceedingly ancient fact of life, vastly more ancient 
 than mankind ; and in judging it and explaining it we must 
 apply Nature's universal criterion, which is that of its 
 survival-value or service to race-culture. Let us then 
 glance very briefly at the actual facts of human marriage 
 conceived as an institution by which the survival-value 
 of fatherhood is added to that of motherhood. 
 
 The pioneer student of marriage from the standpoint 
 of science was Herbert Spencer, who with great labour 
 supported the conclusion that monogamy is the highest, 
 best and latest form of marriage. But in the absence of 
 the great mass of evidence which is now before us, Spencer 
 too readily assumed the truth of the popular notion that 
 promiscuity was the primitive state, and taught that
 
 MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM 165 
 
 human marriage has developed from this through poly- 
 gamy towards the ideal of monogamy. The work of 
 Professor Westermarck, however Spencer's chief follower 
 in this path has shown, and later writers have abund- 
 antly confirmed it, that this primitive promiscuity never 
 existed. There is no nation or race or clan of man now 
 extant, however primitive or barbaric, that has not definite 
 marriage laws ; there is no society on earth, however 
 rude, that does not punish the unfaithful wife. Further- 
 more, polygamy, the only historical rival of monogamy, 
 is now known to have played a quite trivial part in history, 
 not merely compared with monogamy, but as compared 
 with that which it was supposed to have played. Even 
 in countries which we call polygamous to-day, polygamy 
 is the relatively rare exception and monogamy the rule. 
 On this most important question it is well, however, to 
 quote the words of Professor Westermarck himself : 
 
 " The great majority of peoples are, as a rule, monogamous, 
 and the other forms of marriage are usually modified in a mono- 
 gamous direction." " As to the history of the forms of human 
 marriage, two inferences regarding monogamy and polygyny may- 
 be made with absolute certainty ; monogamy, always the pre- 
 dominant form of marriage, has been more prevalent at the 
 lowest stages of civilisation than at somewhat higher stages ; 
 whilst, at a still higher stage, polygyny has again, to a great 
 extent, yielded to monogamy." " We may thus take it for 
 granted that civilisation, up to a certain point, is favourable 
 to polygyny ; but it is equally certain that in its highest forms 
 it leads to monogamy." "But, though civilisation up to a certain 
 point is favourable to polygyny, its higher forms invariably and 
 necessarily lead to monogamy." 
 
 It is the principle of survival-value that explains the 
 dominance of monogamy at all stages of human society 
 with the single exception of continuously and wholly 
 militant societies, in which polygamy obtained in con- 
 sequence of the great numerical excess of women. It is
 
 166 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 the fate of the children, in which everything is involved, 
 that has determined the history of human marriage. 
 Furthermore, we may see here one more illustration of the 
 truth that quality is ousting quantity in the course of 
 progress, and that a low birth-rate represents a more 
 advanced stage than a high birth-rate. The birth-rate 
 under polygamy is undoubtedly high, but polygamy does 
 not make for the survival and health of the children, and 
 the infant mortality is gigantic. As I have said elsewhere, 
 " the form of marriage which does not permit the babies 
 to survive, they do not permit to survive. There is the 
 beginning and the end of the whole matter in a nutshell. 
 It is not a question of the father's taste and fancy, but of 
 what he leaves above ground when the worms are eating 
 him below. . . . No system yet conceived can compare 
 for a moment with monogamy in respect of the one 
 criterion which time and death recognise, the fate of the 
 children." 
 
 In a word, the wholly adequate and only possible 
 explanation of the historical fact of the dominance of 
 monogamy is its supreme survival-value. It has com- 
 peted with every other kind of sex relation and has been 
 selected by natural selection because of its supreme service 
 for race-culture the most perfect conceivable addition 
 of fatherhood to motherhood. 
 
 Plato and motherhood. Thus eugenics must repudiate 
 not only the ideas of Mr. Shaw on this subject, 
 but the teaching of Plato, from whom Mr. Shaw's 
 ideas on this particular subject are apparently derived. 
 It is in the fifth book of his Republic that the pioneer 
 eugenist lays down his ideas for race-culture. He realised, 
 indeed, the importance, after birth, of the nurture of 
 children " it is of considerable, nay, of the utmost import- 
 ance to the State, when this is rightly performed or other- 
 wise ; " and he refers also to their nurture while very
 
 MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM 167 
 
 young, " in the period between their generation and their 
 education, which seems to be the most troublesome of all." 
 His method involved a complete community of wives and 
 children amongst the guardians of the State, and on no 
 account were the parents to know their own children nor 
 the children their parents. The best were to be chosen 
 for parents, on the analogy of animal race-culture by man. 
 The children of inferior parents were to be killed. The 
 others were to be conveyed to the common nursery of the 
 city, but every precaution was to be taken that no mother 
 should know her own child. This practice was to be the 
 cardinal point of the Republic and " the cause of the 
 greatest good to the city." 
 
 We see here, then, that the very first proposals for 
 race-culture involved the destruction of marriage and the 
 family, and a total denial of the value of the psychical 
 aspects of motherhood and fatherhood alike. Plato's 
 first critic, however, his own great pupil Aristotle, devoted 
 the best part of his work, the Politics, to showing that the 
 suggestions of Plato were not only wrong in themselves, 
 but would not secure his end. Aristotle showed, in the 
 words of Mr. Barker, that " the destruction of the family, 
 and the substitution in its place of one vast clan, would 
 lead but to the destruction of warm feelings, and the 
 substitution of a sentiment which is to them as water is 
 to wine. ... So with the system of common marriage, as 
 opposed to monogamy. The one encourages at best a poor 
 and shadowy sentiment, while it denies to man the satis- 
 faction of natural instinct and the education of family life ; 
 the other is natural and right, both because it is based on 
 those instincts, and because it satisfies the moral nature 
 of man, in giving him objects of permanent yet vivid 
 interest above and beyond himself." The truth of this 
 matter is that the rest may reason and welcome but we 
 fathers know.
 
 168 THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 Marriage a eugenic instrument. It has definitely 
 to be stated, then, that the abolition of marriage 
 and the family is in no degree whatever a part of 
 the eugenic proposal. We desire to achieve race- 
 culture by and through marriage, on the lines which 
 indeed many lower races of men successfully practise at 
 the present day. We must make parenthood more 
 responsible, not less so. It will afterwards be shown that 
 the suggested incompatibility between marriage and the 
 family, on the one hand, and race-culture or eugenics on 
 the other, does not exist. It will be shown that we have 
 in marriage not only the greatest instrument of race- 
 culture that has yet been employed half-consciously 
 by man, but also an instrument supremely fitted, and 
 indeed without a rival, for the conscious, deliberate, and 
 scientific intentions of modern eugenists. The applica- 
 bility of marriage for this purpose will be shown by 
 reference to actual facts. Mr. Galton himself has shown 
 how effectively an educated public opinion can employ 
 marriage for the purposes of race-culture, its services to 
 which have indeed led to its evolution. It has furthermore 
 to be added that only the formation of public opinion can 
 ever lead to the ideal which we desire. This opinion already 
 exists in some degree as regards one or two transmissible 
 diseases, and, though without adequate scientific warrant, 
 as regards the marriage of first cousins. In these respects 
 it is not without some measure of effectiveness, and the 
 fact is of the utmost promise. 
 
 " Marriage," said Goethe, " is the origin and the 
 summit of all civilisation." Perhaps it would be more 
 accurate to say the family rather than marriage. The 
 childless marriage may be and often is a thing of the 
 utmost beauty and value to the individuals concerned, 
 but it is certainly not the origin of civilisation, and if 
 it be its summit it is also its grave. The eugenic
 
 MARRIAGE AND MATERNALISM 169 
 
 support of marriage, therefore, depends upon a belief 
 in the family, and that form of marriage will commend 
 itself which provides the best form of family. From 
 the point of view of certain eugenists, polygamy would 
 be desirable in many cases, as extending the parental 
 opportunities of the man of fine physique or intellectual 
 distinction. The problem remains, however, as to the 
 nurture of the children so obtained, and historical study 
 returns us a very clear answer as to the relative merits 
 of the polygamous family and the monogamous family. 
 It is this last that pre-eminently justifies itself on the score 
 of its services to childhood and therefore to the race. Its 
 survival is a matter of absolute certainty, because of its 
 survival-value. Neither Plato nor Mr. Shaw, nor any kind 
 of collectivist legislation will permanently abolish it. 
 
 The principle of maternalism. The merits of mono- 
 gamy can be defined in terms of the principle which 
 I would venture to call maternalism the principle of 
 the permanent and radical importance of motherhood 
 and whatever institutions afford it the greatest aid. 
 
 Maternalism would point, I think, to the supreme 
 paradox that the dominant creature of the earth is 
 born of woman, and born the most absolutely helpless 
 of all living creatures whatsoever, animal or vegetable ; 
 it would note that this utter dependence upon others, 
 mother or foster-mother, is not only the most unqualified 
 known, but the longest maintained ; it would observe 
 that of all the human beings now alive, all that have 
 lived, all that are to be, not one could survive its birth 
 for twenty-four hours but for motherhood ; it would 
 note that only motherhood has rendered possible the 
 development of instinct into that intelligence which, 
 itself dependent upon motherhood for the possibility of its 
 development, has dependent upon it the fact that the 
 earth is now man's and the fulness thereof ; and to
 
 r;o THEORY OF EUGENICS 
 
 the advocates of all the political -isms that can be named, 
 and the small proportion of them that can be denned, 
 it would apply its specific criterion : Do you regard 
 the safeguarding and the ennoblement of motherhood 
 as the proximate end of all political action, the end 
 through which the ultimate ends, the production and 
 recognition of human worth, can alone be attained ; 
 do you realise that marriage is invaluable because it 
 makes for the enthronement of motherhood as nothing 
 else ever did or can ; do you realise that, metaphors 
 about State maternity notwithstanding, the State has 
 neither womb nor breasts, these most reverend and 
 divine of all vital organs being the appanage of the 
 individual mother alone ? 
 
 The maternalist principle being assumed, and the 
 value of monogamy on the ground that it supports 
 motherhood by fatherhood, the forthcoming discussion 
 as to the possibilities of race-culture will assume the 
 persistence of monogamy and will centre upon the 
 possibility of selecting or rejecting, for the purposes of 
 race-culture, those who are available for entrance into 
 the marriage state. The reader who has not studied social 
 anthropology and this is true of nearly all the critics of 
 eugenics, very few of whom have studied anything will 
 be astounded, I believe, to discover the practically 
 unlimited extent to which public opinion, whether or 
 not formulated as law, has always been capable of 
 controlling marriage, and therefore, race-culture. 
 
 Proposed definition of marriage. Recognising the 
 existence of subhuman marriage, we may be at a loss to 
 define marriage as distinguished from sex-relations in 
 general. It is that form of sex-relation which involves 
 or is adapted to common parental care of the offspring 
 the support of motherhood by fatherhood.
 
 PART II THE PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 
 
 N'abandonnons pas 1'avenir de notre race a la fatalite 
 d' Allah ; crons-le nous-memes. FOREL. 
 
 " It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly 
 directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race ; but except 
 in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as 
 to allow his worst animals to breed. 
 
 " With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated, 
 and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of 
 health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to 
 check the process of elimination ; we build asylums for the 
 imbecile, the maim and the sick ; we institute poor laws ; and our 
 medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone 
 to the last moment. . . . Thus the weak members of civilised 
 societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the 
 breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly 
 injurious to the race of man." DARWIN, The Descent of Man, 1871, 
 Pt. i., chap. v. 
 
 HITHERTO we have mainly concerned ourselves with 
 broad aspects of theory, endeavouring to prove that 
 conscious race-culture is a necessity for any civilisation 
 which is to endure, and to show how alone it can be 
 effected. But evidently for a great many of the practical 
 proposals that might be, and for not a few that have 
 been, based upon these views, public opinion is not 
 ripe. We may be thankful to believe that for some it 
 will never be ripe : it would be rotten first. Marriage, 
 for instance, we hold sacred and essential : we find in- 
 tolerable the idea of the human stud-farm ; we are very 
 dubious as to the help of surgery ; we are much more 
 
 171
 
 172 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 than dubious as to the lethal chamber. It is necessary 
 to be reasonable, and, in seeking the superman, to remain 
 at least human. Now if we are to achieve any immediate 
 success we must clearly divide our proposals, as the present 
 writer did some years ago, with Mr. Galton's approval, into 
 two classes : positive eugenics and negative eugenics. The 
 one would seek to encourage the parenthood of the 
 worthy, the other to discourage the parenthood of the 
 unworthy. Positive eugenics is the original eugenics, 
 but, as the writer endeavoured to show at the time, 
 negative eugenics is one with it in principle. The two 
 are complementary, and are both practised by Nature : 
 natural selection is one with natural rejection. To choose 
 is to refuse. 
 
 In regard to positive eugenics I, for one, must 
 ever make the criticism that I cannot believe in 
 the propriety of attempting to bribe into parenthood 
 people who have no love of children : we have to con- 
 sider the parental environment of the children we desire, 
 as well as their innate quality. Thus, positive eugenics 
 must largely take the form, at present, of removing such 
 disabilities as now weigh upon the desirable members 
 of the community, especially of the more prudent sort. 
 
 For instance, it was recently pointed out by a corre- 
 spondent of the Morning Post that in Great Britain, 
 despite the alarm caused by the decreasing marriage- 
 rate, no one has protested against 
 
 "... the tax which the propertied middle classes have to pay 
 on marriage. . . . To take a few instances. Two persons each 
 having 160 a year marry. Previous to marriage they were 
 exempt from income tax ; after marriage they pay 6 per annum. 
 Two persons each having ^400 a year pay 18 before and 30 
 after marriage. Similarly the additional income tax payable on 
 marriage by people each having 600 a year is 9, by those 
 having ,"1,200 a year ^30, and by those having ^"2,000 a year 
 50. It is difficult to see how our legislators arrived at this
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 173 
 
 result unless they started to average the incomes of married people 
 and then forgot to divide by two. ... If, as I contend, a man 
 and his wife should be counted as two people, not one, should not 
 children also be counted in any scheme of graduated taxation, 
 and an income be divided by the number of persons it has to 
 support in order to fix the rate at which the tax is to be charged ? 
 It is ridiculous to suppose that a man with a wife and six children 
 is as well off on 1,000 a year as a bachelor with the same 
 income. It is, I believe, acknowledged that the moderately 
 well-off professional classes marry later and have fewer children 
 than the wage-earners, and I think there can be no doubt that the 
 special burthens they have to bear is a material influence 
 contributing to this result. Thus, while we are deploring the 
 decadence of the race, the State is doing what it can to discourage 
 marriage in a class whose children would in all probability prove 
 its most valued citizens." 
 
 But it is in negative eugenics that we can accomplish 
 most at this stage, and in so doing can steadily educate 
 public opinion, the professional jesters notwithstanding. 
 There is here a field for action which does not demand 
 a great revolution in the popular point of view ; and, 
 further, does not require us to wait for certainty until 
 the facts and laws of heredity have been much further 
 elucidated. The services which a conscious race-culture, 
 thus directed, may even now accomplish, can scarcely 
 be over-estimated ; and even if we cannot reach the 
 public heart at once we can reach the public head by 
 means of the public pocket which will benefit obviously 
 and greatly when these proposals are carried out. As 
 Thoreau observes, for a thousand who are lopping off 
 the branches of an evil there is but one striking at its 
 roots. If we strike at the roots of certain grave and 
 costly evils of the present day, we shall abundantly 
 demonstrate that this is a matter of the most vital 
 economy. 
 
 The deaf and dumb. We might begin with the case of 
 the deaf and dumb, since the facts here are utterly beyond
 
 174 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 dispute. The condition known as deaf-mutism is con- 
 genital or due to innate defect in about one-half of 
 all the cases in Great Britain. Says Dr. Love, 1 " In 
 every institution examples may be found of deaf-mute 
 children who have one or two deaf parents or grand- 
 parents, and of two or more deaf-mute children 
 belonging to one family." A recent report from Japan 
 is of a similar order, and the evidence might be 
 multiplied indefinitely. The obvious conclusion that 
 the inherently deaf should not marry " is generally 
 conceded by those who work amongst the deaf, but the 
 present arrangements for the education of the deaf, 
 and their management in missions and institutes for the 
 deaf during the period of adolescence, is eminently fitted 
 to encourage union between the congenitally deaf. If 
 not during the school period, at least during the period 
 of adolescence, everything should be done to discourage 
 the association of the deaf and dumb with each other, and 
 the danger of their meeting with those similarly afflicted 
 should be constantly kept before the congenitally deaf 
 by those in charge of them." Dr. Love quotes the 
 following newspaper report : " At an inquest yesterday, 
 on William Earnshaw, 59, a St. Pancras saddler, it was 
 stated that the relatives could not identify the body, 
 as the wife and sister were blind, deaf and dumb, and 
 that the four children were deaf and dumb. The deceased 
 was deaf and dumb, and was so when he was married." 
 
 The feeble-minded. The case of the feeble-minded is of 
 course parallel. The problem would be at once reduced to 
 negligible proportions if all cases of feeble-mindedness were 
 dealt with as they should be. These unfortunate people 
 might lead quite happy lives, the utmost be done for their 
 feeble capacities, the supreme demands of the law of love 
 be completely but providently complied with. The feeble- 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Medica, vol. ii., Article " Deaf-Mutism."
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 175 
 
 minded girl might be protected from herself and from 
 others her fate otherwise is often too deplorable for 
 definition and the interests of the future be not com- 
 promised. These words were written whilst awaiting the 
 long overdue Report of the Royal Commission on this 
 subject which abundantly confirms them. The propor- 
 tion of the mentally defective in Great Britain is now 
 0*83 per cent., and it is doubtless rising yearly. Only by 
 the recognition and application of negative eugenics can 
 this evil be cured. I have elsewhere 1 discussed the 
 supposed objection which will be raised in the name of 
 "liberty" by persons who think in words instead of 
 realities. The right care of the feeble-minded involves 
 the greatest happiness and liberty and self-development 
 possible for them. The interests of the individual and 
 the race are one. What liberty has the feeble-minded 
 prostitute, such as our streets are filled with ? 
 
 The insane. As regards obvious insanity, the same 
 principles of negative eugenics must be enforced. It is 
 probably fair to say that the whole trend of modern re- 
 search has been to accentuate the importance, if not indeed 
 the indispensableness, of the inherent or inherited factor 
 in the production of insanity. Yet, on the other hand, 
 the trend of treatment of the insane has undoubtedly 
 been towards permitting them more liberty, sometimes 
 of the kind which the principles of race-culture must 
 condemn. It is well, of course, that we should be humane 
 in our treatment of the insane. It is well that curative 
 medicine should do its utmost for them, and it seems 
 well, at first sight, that the proportion of discharges 
 from asylums on the score of recovery should be as high 
 as it is. But at this point the possibility of the gravest 
 criticism evidently arises. I have no intention whatever 
 
 1 In a lecture, " The Obstacles to Eugenics," delivered before the 
 Sociological Society, March 8, 1909.
 
 176 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 of exposing the question of race-culture to legitimate 
 criticism by laying down dogmatically any doctrines 
 as to the perpetual incarceration of insane persons, 
 including those who have been, but are not now, insane. 
 Pope was, of course, right when he hinted at the nearness 
 of the relation between certain forms of genius and certain 
 forms of insanity. It may well be that if we could provide 
 a fit environment we might welcome the children of 
 some of those, highly and perhaps uniquely gifted in 
 brain, who, under the stress of the ordinary environment 
 of modern life, have broken down for shorter or longer 
 periods. On the other hand, there are forms of insanity 
 which, beyond all dispute, should utterly preclude their 
 victims from parenthood. As a result of recent con- 
 troversies it seems on the whole probable, if not certain, 
 that the apparent persistent increase in the proportion 
 of the insane in civilised countries generally during 
 many years past, is a real increase, and not due simply 
 to such factors as more stringent certification or increase 
 of public confidence in lunatic asylums. If, then, there 
 be in process a real increase in the proportion of the 
 insane, who will question that no time should be lost 
 in ascertaining the extent undoubtedly most consider- 
 able to which the principles of negative eugenics can 
 be invoked in order to arrest it ? 
 
 As regards epilepsy and epileptic insanity there can 
 be no question. There is, of course, such a thing as 
 acquired epilepsy, and we may even assume for the sake 
 of the argument that no inherent and therefore trans- 
 missible factor of predisposition is involved in such cases. 
 Yet, wholly excluding them, there remains the vast 
 majority of cases in which epilepsy and epileptic insanity 
 are unquestionably germinal in origin, and therefore 
 transmissible. The principle of negative eugenics cannot 
 too soon be applied here.
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 177 
 
 The criminal. When we come to consider the question 
 of crime the cautious and responsible eugenist is bound 
 to be wary chiefly, perhaps, because such a vast amount 
 of sheer nonsense has been written on this subject. The 
 whole question, of course, is the old one, Is it heredity 
 or environment that produces the criminal ? If and 
 when it is the environment, race-culture has nothing to 
 do with the question, since the merely acquired criminality 
 is, as we know, not in any degree transmissible. If the 
 criminal, however, is always or ever a " born criminal," 
 then the eugenist is intimately concerned. At the one 
 extreme are those who tell us that the idea of crime is a 
 purely conventional one, that the criminal is the product 
 of circumstances or environment, and that we, in his 
 case, would have done likewise. The remedy for crime, 
 then, is education. It is pointed out, however, that 
 education merely modifies the variety of crime. There 
 is less murder but more swindling, and so forth. 
 Then, on the other hand, there are those who declare 
 that criminality is innate, and that if we are to make 
 an end of crime we must attach surgeons to our gaols ; 
 or at any rate must extend the principle of the life- 
 sentence. 
 
 Doubtless, the truth lies between these two extremes. 
 In the face of the work of Lombroso and his school, 
 exaggerated though their conclusions often be, we cannot 
 dispute the existence of the born criminal, and the criminal 
 type. There are undoubtedly many such persons in 
 modern society. There is an abundance of crime which 
 no education, practised or imaginable, would eliminate. 
 Present-day psychology and medicine, and, for the matter 
 of that, ordinary common-sense, can readily distinguish 
 cases at both extremes the mattoid or semi-insane criminal 
 at one end, and the decent citizen who yields to exceptional 
 temptation at the other end. Thus, even though 
 M
 
 178 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 there remain a vast number of cases where our knowledge 
 is insufficient, we could accomplish great things already 
 if the born criminal, the habitual criminal and his like 
 were rationally treated by society, on the lines of the 
 reformatory, the labour colony, indeterminate sentences, 
 and such other methods as aim, successfully or un- 
 successfully, at the reform of the individual, whilst 
 incidentally protecting the race. Here, as in some other 
 cases, the nature of the environment provided for their 
 children by certain sections of the community may be 
 taken into account when we decide whether they are 
 to be prohibited from parenthood. Heredity or no 
 heredity, we cannot desire to have children born into 
 the alcoholic home ; heredity or no heredity, we cannot 
 desire to have children born into the criminal environment. 
 In Great Britain we are no longer to manufacture criminals 
 in hundreds by sending children to prison. It remains 
 to be seen, after the practical disappearance of the made 
 criminal, what proportion of crime is really due to the 
 born criminal. He, when found, must certainly be dealt 
 with on the lines indicated by our principles. 1 
 
 Other cases. So far we have considered exclusively 
 diseases and disorders of the brain, the question of 
 alcoholism being deferred to a special chapter. When 
 we come to other forms of defect or disease we find a 
 long gradation of instances : at the one extreme being 
 cases where the fact of disastrous inheritance is palpable 
 and inevitable, whilst at the other extreme are kinds of 
 disease and defect as to which the share of heredity is still 
 very uncertain. In some instances, then, the eugenist is 
 bound to lay down the most emphatic propositions, as, 
 for instance, that parenthood on the part of men suffering 
 
 1 Since these words were written there has been passed the 
 " Prevention of Crimes Act,'' which is the first attempt in this country 
 to apply the elementary truths of the subject in legislation. As an 
 essentially eugenic proposal it is to be heartily welcomed.
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 179 
 
 from certain diseases is and should and must be regarded 
 and treated as a crime of the most heinous order : whilst 
 in other instances all we can say is that here is a direction 
 in which more knowledge is needed. 
 
 Some particular cases may be referred to. 
 
 The diseases known as Daltonism or colour-blindness, 
 and haemophilia or the " bleeding disease," are certainly 
 hereditary. The sufferers are usually male, but the disease 
 is commonly transmitted by their daughters (who do not 
 themselves surfer) to their male descendants. As regards 
 colour-blindness, the defect is evidently insufficient to 
 concern the eugenist, but haemophilia is a serious disease, 
 the transmission of which should not be excused. It 
 may seem hard to assert that the daughter of a haemo- 
 philic father should not become a mother, she herself 
 being free from all disease. But it has to be remembered 
 that the possibility of this hardship depends upon the 
 fact that a haemophilic man has become a father, as 
 he should not have done. 
 
 This point, as to the amount of hardship involved 
 in the observance of negative race-culture, has always 
 to be kept in mind. If negative eugenics were generally 
 enforced upon a given generation some persons would, 
 of course, suffer in greater or less I degree from the 
 disabilities imposed upon them. But their number 
 would depend upon the neglect of eugenics by previous 
 generations, and thereafter the number of those upon 
 whom our principles pressed hardly would be relatively 
 minute. 
 
 Eugenics and tuberculosis. It would not be correct to 
 say that the old view of consumption regarded it as 
 hereditary. In this and a hundred other matters, medical, 
 astronomical, or what we please, if we go back to the 
 Arabic students, or further, to the Greeks, we are lucky 
 enough to find sound observation and reasoning. Many
 
 i8o PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 quotations might be made to show that the infectious 
 nature of tuberculosis was recognised long ago, just as 
 the revolution of the earth round the sun was recognised 
 a millenium and a half before Copernicus. But the view 
 of our more immediate fathers was that tuberculosis 
 is a hereditary degeneration, and the medical profession 
 proclaimed with no uncertain sound the hopeless and 
 paralysing doctrine that an almost certain doom hung 
 over the children of the consumptive. Then, in memor- 
 able succession, came Villemin, Pasteur, and lastly Koch, 
 with his discovery of the bacillus in 1882. The doctrine 
 was then altered in its statement. There was, of course, 
 no choice in the matter, since it was easy to show that 
 not one new-born baby in millions harbours a tubercle 
 bacillus ; so all-but-miraculous and, rightly considered, 
 beautiful are the ante-natal defences. It was taught, 
 then, that we inherit a predisposition from consumptive 
 parents, that the bacillus is ubiquitous, and that variations 
 in susceptibility determine the incidence of the disease 
 in one and not in another. It was lightly assumed 
 (simply through what may be called the inertia of belief) 
 that these variations in susceptibility were hereditary ; 
 but we are wholly without evidence that the hereditary 
 factor counts for anything substantial, even assuming 
 that it appreciably exists at all. These differences, so 
 far from being inherent, may be most palpably acquired. 
 Under-feeding, alcohol, and influenza, let us say, will 
 adequately prepare any human soil. Furthermore, we 
 are learning that the bacillus is nothing like so ubiquitous 
 as used to be supposed. Tuberculosis is now sometimes 
 described as a dwelling disease. It might probably 
 be described with still more accuracy as a bed-room 
 disease, or a bed-room and public-house disease. It has 
 been evident for many years past that the more we 
 learnt about tuberculosis the less did we talk about
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 181 
 
 heredity ; and in one of the most recent authoritative 
 pronouncements x upon the subject, the lecturer did not 
 even allude to heredity at all. Many readers will be up 
 in arms at once with apparently contrary instances ; 
 and much labour may be spent in the mathematical 
 analysis of statistical data as that of cases where a 
 father and a child have tuberculosis. But suppose the 
 father kissed the child ? What have you proved regarding 
 heredity ? No mathematics can get more out of the 
 data than is in them. 
 
 The statistics designed to measure the degree of inherit- 
 ance in this disease labour under the cardinal fallacy of 
 assuming that where father and son suffer, the case is one 
 of inheritance, and then proceed to measure the average 
 extent of this inheritance. These statistics are so much 
 waste paper and ink assuming what they claim to 
 prove. They do not allow for the fact that the child 
 is very frequently exposed in grave measure to infection 
 by the parent ; they ignore wholly, indeed, the entire 
 question of exposure to infection, both as regards its 
 extent in time and the virulence of the infection in 
 question. At the present day, discussions as to the 
 inheritance of consumption and tuberculosis in general 
 are not fit for practical application : and a practical 
 disservice is rendered by those who seek to divert public 
 attention from the removable environmental causes 
 upon which the disease mainly depends. We know, 
 for instance, that the incidence of tuberculosis is directly 
 proportional to over-crowding : this being universally 
 true, we must work to abolish over-crowding and to 
 provide fresh air for every one by day and by night. 
 When that is done, alcoholism disposed of, and our 
 milk-supply purified, we may turn to the question of 
 heredity : but the incidence of the disease will then 
 
 1 Dr. Bulstrode's Lecture to the Royal Institution, May 15, 1908.
 
 i2 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 present merely trivial instead of the present appalling 
 proportions. 
 
 It is not asserted that inherent variations in suscepti- 
 bility to this disease are not existent. The case would 
 be unique if it were so. But it is asserted that the more 
 we learn of the disease the less importance we attach 
 to this factor, and the more surely do we see that the 
 three syllables constituting the word " infection " sub- 
 stantially suffice to dispose of all the confident dogmas 
 with which we are too familiar. One is almost tempted 
 to quote a forcible phrase of Mill's, and say that, given 
 this point of view, " once questioned, they are doomed." 
 The only method of accurately studying the question of 
 inherited predisposition would be by comparative study 
 of the resistance of new-born infants as measured by 
 their " opsonic index " which may be (very roughly) 
 described as the measure of the power of the white cells 
 of the blood to eat up tubercle bacilli. 1 Nor will even 
 this method be free from fallacy. 
 
 The present writer believes that eugenics is going to save 
 the world ; that there is no study of such urgent and 
 practical importance as that of heredity ; that if we 
 get the right people born and the wrong people not born, 
 forms of government and such questions will be left 
 even without fools to contest regarding them. Thus he 
 has every bias in favour of emphasising the hereditary 
 factor in tuberculosis. The fact will at least not dis- 
 credit the foregoing views, which are in absolute accord 
 with those of Dr. Newsholme, our leading authority, 
 in his recent work upon the subject. 
 
 Nothing need here be said about cancer, the best 
 and most recent evidence tending to show that the 
 disease is not hereditary. 
 
 1 This suggestion, first made by the present writer in March, 1908, 
 and in the paper referred to on p. 205, is, I believe, to be the subject of 
 an official enquiry.
 
 NEGATIVE EUGENICS 183 
 
 The foregoing may briefly suffice to illustrate the 
 general proposition that negative eugenics will seek to 
 define the diseases and defects which are really hereditary, 
 to name those the transmission of which is already cer- 
 tainly known to occur, and to raise the average of the race 
 by interfering as far as may be with the parenthood 
 of persons suffering from these transmissible disorders. 
 Only thus can certain of the gravest evils of society, as, 
 for instance, feeble-mindedness, insanity, and crime due 
 to inherited degeneracy, be suppressed : and if race- 
 culture were absolutely incapable of effecting anything 
 whatever in the way of increasing the fertility of the 
 worthiest classes and individuals, its services in the 
 negative direction here briefly outlined would still be 
 of incalculable value. No other proposal will save so 
 much life, present and to come : and save so much gold 
 in doing so as one would insist if one were writing a 
 eugenic primer for politicians. To this policy we shall 
 most certainly come : but here, as in other cases, I trust 
 far more in the influence of an educated public opinion 
 than in legislation ; though there are certain forms of 
 transmissible disease, interfering in no way with the 
 responsibility of the individual, the transmission of 
 which should be visited with the utmost rigour of the 
 law and regarded as utterly criminal no less than sheer 
 murder. 
 
 In the next chapter, recognising marriage as the human 
 mode of selection, we must consider it in its relation to 
 eugenics, both positive and negative.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 
 
 Historical evidence of control of marriage : Wester- 
 marck's evidence. To begin with the most recent 
 refutation of the doctrine that marriage selection is uncon- 
 trollable, one may quote from the inaugural lecture 
 delivered by Dr. Westermarck in December, 1907, on his 
 appointment as Professor of Sociology in the University 
 of London. He said : 
 
 " For instance, when the suggestion has been made that the law 
 should step in and prevent unfit individuals from contracting 
 marriage, the objection has at once been raised that any such 
 measure would be impracticable. Now we find that many 
 savages have tried the experiment and succeeded. Mr. Im Thurn 
 tells us that among the wild Indians of Guiana, a man, before he 
 is allowed to choose a wife, must prove that he can do a man's 
 work and is able to support himself and his family. In various 
 Bechuana and Kaffir tribes, according to Livingstone, a youth is 
 prohibited from marrying until he has killed a rhinoceros. 
 Among the Dyaks of Borneo no one can marry until he has in his 
 possession a certain number of human skulls. Among the Arabs 
 of Upper Egypt a man must undergo an ordeal of whipping by 
 the relatives of his bride, in order to test his courage ; and if he 
 wishes to be considered worth having, he must receive the 
 chastisement, which is sometimes exceedingly severe, with an 
 expression of enjoyment. 
 
 " I do not say that these particular methods are worthy of 
 slavish imitation, but the principle underlying them is certainly 
 excellent, and especially the fact that they are recognised and 
 enforced by custom shows that it has been quite possible among 
 many people to prohibit certain unfit individuals from marrying. 
 The question naturally arises whether, after all, something of the 
 same kind may not be possible among ourselves." 
 
 184
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 185 
 
 Mr. Galton's evidence, But Mr. Gallon himself, with 
 his characteristic thoroughness, and in full recognition 
 of the fact that this young science must meet ignorant 
 as well as other objections, read before the Sociological 
 Society * a paper entitled " Restrictions in Marriage," 
 with special reference to the objection " that human 
 nature would never brook interference with the freedom 
 of marriage. . . . How far have marriage restrictions 
 proved effective, when sanctified by the religion of the 
 time, by custom and by law ? I appeal from armchair 
 criticism to historical facts." Mr. Galton then proceeds 
 to quote seven forms of restriction in marriage which 
 have actually been practised monogamy, endogamy, 
 exogamy, Australian marriages, taboo, prohibited degrees 
 and celibacy. He shows how powerful under each of these 
 heads is the influence of " immaterial motives " upon 
 marriage selection, how they may all become hallowed 
 by religion, accepted as custom and enforced by law. 
 " Persons who are born under their various rules, live 
 under them without any objection. They are unconscious 
 of their restrictions as we are unaware of the tension of 
 the atmosphere." In many cases the establishment of 
 monogamy and the prohibition of polygamy " has 
 been due not to any natural instinct against the practice, 
 but to consideration of social well-being." " It was 
 penal for a Greek to marry a barbarian, for a Roman 
 patrician to marry a plebeian, for a Hindoo of one caste 
 to marry one of another caste, and so forth. Similar 
 restrictions have been enforced in multitudes of com- 
 munities, even under the penalty of death." Cases 
 from ancient Jewish law are quoted ; and, to take a 
 very different case, that of the marriage rule amongst 
 the Australian bushmen, it is shown that " the cogency 
 of this rule is due to custom, religion and law, and is so 
 
 1 Sociological Papers (Macmillan, 1905), p. 3.
 
 186 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 strong that nearly all Australians would be horrified 
 at the idea of breaking it." Passing further on, one 
 need offer no excuse for quoting, regarding marriage 
 in general, the following words of the founder of eugenics : 
 " The institution of marriage as now sanctified by 
 religion and safeguarded by law in the more highly civilised 
 nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it be universally 
 accepted in future times, but it is the best that has hitherto 
 been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their 
 children, for home life, and for society." 
 
 Mr. Galton then proceeds to show how extensive are 
 the restrictions in marriage already recognised and 
 practised amongst ourselves and quite contentedly 
 accepted. He proves also that our objection to marriage 
 within prohibited degrees depends mainly upon what he 
 calls immaterial considerations, and adds "it is quite 
 conceivable that a non-eugenic marriage should hereafter 
 excite no less loathing than that of a brother and sister 
 would do now." Then, in allusion to the possibility " of 
 a whole-hearted acceptance of eugenics as a national 
 religion . . . the thorough conviction by a nation that 
 no worthier object exists for man than the improvement 
 of his own race," Mr. Galton shows from the history of 
 conventual life what abundant evidence there is "of the 
 power of religious authority in directing and withstanding 
 the tendencies of human nature towards freedom in 
 marriage." This paper was discussed by no less than 
 twenty-six authorities, British and Continental, and in 
 his reply Mr. Galton observes that not one of them impugns 
 his main conclusion " that history tells how restrictions 
 in marriage, even of an excessive kind, have been con- 
 tentedly accepted very widely, under the guidance of what 
 I called immaterial motives." Lastly, we may note Mr. 
 Galton's admirable distinction between the two stages 
 of love, " that of slight inclination and that of falling
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 187 
 
 thoroughly into love, for it is the first of these rather than 
 the second that I hope the popular feeling of the future 
 will successfully resist. Every match-making mother 
 appreciates the difference. If a girl is taught to look upon 
 a class of men as tabooed, whether owing to rank, creed, 
 connections or other causes, she does not regard them as 
 possible husbands and turns her thoughts elsewhere. 
 The proverbial ' Mrs. Grundy ' has enormous influence 
 in checking the marriages she considers indiscreet." 
 
 Surely all the foregoing suffices to show, first, that 
 eugenics or race-culture is compatible with marriage, and 
 secondly, that it is compatible with the love of the sexes 
 two conclusions of the most cardinal and fundamental 
 importance. This importance it is, and the obstinate 
 stupidity of critics of a kind, which must excuse me for 
 having devoted so much space to propositions which the 
 thoughtful reader would naturally have arrived at for 
 himself. 
 
 The present influence of marriage on race-culture. 
 We must turn now from the past to the present aspect of the 
 question, viz., the actual relation of marriage to eugenics 
 at the present day. Its nature is very much disputed. 
 On the one hand, there are those who see in our present 
 methods what has elsewhere been called reversed selection 
 that is to say, an anti-eugenic process, involving the 
 mating of the least desirable. On the other hand, there 
 are many conservative critics who, starting from a general 
 opposition to any new thing, such as eugenics, maintain 
 that we are doing very well as we are, and that, without 
 any conscious interference, as they call it as if there were 
 no such interference selection by marriage is actually 
 working for the eugenic end. Dr. Maudsley, for instance, 
 is " not sure but that nature in its own blind impulsive 
 way does not manage things better than we can by any 
 light of reason " : an astounding opinion from the veteran
 
 i88 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 pioneer who has devoted so many decades to successfully 
 modifying natural processes by the light of his own 
 splendid reason ! 
 
 This most important question, as to what is actually 
 happening within the limits of marriage, may legitimately 
 be regarded as substantially equivalent to the question 
 of the extent and nature of selection, for good or for evil, 
 as it occurs in society to-day. If we remember that an 
 overwhelming proportion of children are born in wedlock, 
 that the death-rate of illegitimate children is gigantic, 
 whilst the illegitimate birth-rate is generally falling, we 
 shall be fully entitled to assume that the answer to the 
 one question is the answer to the other ; in a word, if under 
 the present conditions of selection for marriage we find a 
 eugenic tendency or an anti-eugenic tendency or a mere 
 neutrality, the answer will be, on the whole, the approximate 
 answer to the larger question as to the present state of 
 selection for parenthood and therefore of our racial pro- 
 spects, marriage or no marriage. The conclusion which 
 we shall maintain is that both forms of selection occur in 
 society to-day the selection of the desirable and the 
 selection of the undesirable. We shall go ludicrously wrong 
 if we agree, with one party, that society in general to-day 
 exhibits reversed selection; or, with the second party, 
 that everything is going on admirably on the whole ; or, 
 with the third party, which jumbles the whole mass of 
 facts and tendencies, and declares that there is no process 
 of selection of any kind occurring in society to-day an 
 opinion which, in the face of disease, the enormous pre- 
 mature death-rate, and the fact that whilst vast 
 numbers of women are unmarried, the choice of women 
 for marriage .does not occur by lot, beggars comment ; 
 is a girl with a birth-mark covering half her face, or a 
 nose destroyed by transmissible disease, as likely to marry 
 as a " beauty " ? If not, surely we actually select to-day
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 189 
 
 for beauty and therefore for whatever beauty depends 
 upon for instance, health. But really it cannot be 
 necessary to deal seriously with the proposition that no 
 selection occurs in society to-day. 
 
 Let us attempt to state clearly the point at issue. There 
 is granted, in the first place, that by far the greater part 
 of all parenthood, in civilised and uncivilised communities 
 alike, occurs within the limits of marriage ; to which may 
 be added that, owing to the excessive death-rate of illegiti- 
 mate children, the proportion of effective parenthood, so 
 to say, that occurs within the limits of marriage is even 
 larger ; and this intervention of marriage, and any selec- 
 tion that may be involved in it, steadily recur from 
 generation to generation. Thus even those born outside 
 wedlock will nevertheless be selected for parenthood, on 
 their own part, mainly by the selective factors in marriage. 
 
 Selection by marriage has the last word. It follows, 
 then, though the fact is almost constantly ignored by 
 eugenic writers, that selection by marriage in effect has the 
 last word. Thus supposing that all other forms of selec- 
 tion, depending upon, for instance, the various causes of 
 death amongst the immature, were what we call reversed 
 selection ; or supposing that, as is actually the case, 
 society permitted large numbers of the so-called unfit to 
 survive, even so, marriage selection (if it meant that 
 many or most of these were rejected by it) would control 
 and correct the dangerous tendency. On all hands, 
 scientific and unscientific, we have writers telling us of 
 the disastrous multiplication of the unfit. Such multi- 
 plication does occur and is disastrous. Yet hitherto they 
 have failed to recognise that if to take an extreme case 
 all these unfit are rejected by marriage selection that is 
 to say, do not themselves become parents this alarming 
 multiplication is, after all, not a persistent factor in racial 
 change, but merely the throwing up or throwing aside in
 
 IQO PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 each generation of a certain number of undesirables whose 
 breed gets no further. Of course there would be much 
 less urgent need for eugenics if this last were wholly and 
 happily the case. Our object, indeed, is to make it the 
 case : but so long as selection by marriage exists, and its 
 occurrence is palpably indisputable it is a serious flaw in 
 the common argument to assume that the production and 
 preservation of undesirables necessarily involves their own 
 parenthood in due course. It is necessary that strict 
 statistical enquiry be made on this point. It would show, 
 I believe, that the marriage-rate and the birth-rate amongst 
 the grossly unfit is much lower than that of the general 
 community, or, in other words, that the influence and value 
 of selection by marriage (which, as we have shown, is in 
 effect selection for parenthood, the only selection that 
 ultimately matters) has not yet been fully appreciated. 
 I very strongly incline to the view that if this protective 
 factor were not constantly at work, the " multiplication 
 of the unfit " would long ago have led to the destruction 
 of every civilised nation on the earth : they would have 
 swamped us long ago. Indeed, the proposition may 
 be laid down that, supreme and indispensable as are 
 the services of marriage to race-culture, in its protection 
 of motherhood, and the support of motherhood by father- 
 hood, probably the services of marriage as in effect the 
 working of sexual selection are worthy of being rated 
 almost, if not quite, as high. 
 
 Sexual selection is certainly true of mankind Before 
 adducing the outlines of the evidence in favour of marriage 
 as an instrument of selection, it may be well to point out 
 that here we are really discussing what Darwin called 
 " sexual selection," modified by the psychology and 
 peculiar characters of mankind. We must protect our- 
 selves from the critics who will remind us that sexual 
 selection is very largely discredited to-day, rather more
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 191 
 
 than a generation after Darwin's enunciation of it in 
 The Descent of Man (1871). The controversy regarding 
 sexual selection as the producer of feathers and markings 
 and song, and so forth, amongst the lower animals, is 
 fortunately quite irrelevant to our present discussion, 
 which is concerned with mankind. We can afford to note 
 with equanimity the observation that, in lower species, no 
 mature female goes unmated, for instance ; the fact re- 
 mains that in the case of mankind a very considerable 
 percentage of women remain unmarried. The case is 
 similar as regards the male sex. In short, one may 
 declare that, whether or not sexual selection is 
 possible, or occurs, or accomplishes anything, in the 
 case of the lower animals, it palpably and patently is 
 possible, and does occur, amongst mankind, and 
 especially amongst civilised peoples, in the form of 
 selection by or for marriage which, as we have seen, 
 is in effect selection for parenthood. Let us first note 
 the statistical evidence regarding marriage-selection of 
 health and energy. 
 
 Spencer on marital longevity. We are all aware that 
 married people live longer, on the average, than unmarried 
 people, the conclusion being, " of course," that marriage 
 is good for the health. But some are taken and others left 
 in this respect, and if, for any conceivable reason, health 
 is a factor making for selection by marriage, that may be 
 a real explanation, in whole or in part, of the longer life of 
 married people. Considering the risks to life involved in 
 motherhood, the superior longevity of married as com- 
 pared with unmarried women would be incomprehensible 
 except on some such assumption. Yet it is the fact, so 
 imperfect still is the entry of the idea of selection into the 
 popular and even the expert mind, that the superior 
 longevity of married people is still constantly asserted 
 to mean that marriage makes for long life ; every
 
 192 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 year, when the statistics are printed, this argument 
 may be seen in the newspapers, and I remember 
 encountering it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to my 
 utter astonishment. 
 
 This uncritical conclusion was disposed of by the author 
 of the phrase " the survival of the fittest " appropriately 
 enough more than thirty years ago. If the reader will 
 turn to Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology (a masterpiece 
 which may be commended to the publishers for the pur- 
 pose of indexing twenty editions without an index are 
 too many) he will find in Chapter V. a discussion of this 
 question. It is an astonishing thing that though Spencer 
 conclusively exposed it a generation ago, the childish 
 fallacy is still apparently as nourishing as ever. He shows 
 how the greater healthfulness of married life was supposed 
 to be proved by Dr. Stark from comparison of the rates of 
 mortality among the married and among the celibate. 
 Then no less an authority than M. Bertillon went into the 
 matter and contributed a paper called " The Influence of 
 Marriage " thus begging the question in its very title 
 to the Brussels Academy of Medicine. He showed that, 
 from twenty-five to thirty years of age, several 
 Continental countries being taken into the reckoning, 
 " the mortality per thousand is 4 in married men, 
 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widows. This beneficial 
 influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, 
 being always more strongly marked in men than 
 in women." The absurdity of the apparent conclusion 
 regarding widows is surely, as Spencer says, too 
 obvious for discussion. But, for the rest, Spencer goes on 
 to show that, in reality, " marriage and longevity are 
 concomitant results of the same cause " in other words, 
 " that superior quality of organisation which conduces to 
 long life also conduces to marriage. It is normally accom- 
 panied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 193 
 
 prompting marriage ; there goes along with it that power * 
 which can secure the means of making marriage practic- 
 able ; and it increases the probability of success in court- 
 ship." Spencer shows how " of men whose marriages 
 depend upon getting the needful income," those who will 
 succeed are in general " the best, physically and mentally 
 the strong, the intellectually capable, the morally well- 
 balanced." He shows also how " women are attracted 
 towards men of power physical, emotional, intellectual ; 
 and obviously their freedom of choice leads them, in many 
 cases, to refuse inferior samples of men ; especially the 
 malformed, the diseased, and those who are ill-developed, 
 physically and mentally. So that, in so far as marriage 
 is determined by female selection, the average result on 
 men is that while the best easily get wives, a certain 
 proportion of the worst are left without wives." 
 
 Very likely the stupid conclusion into which so many 
 distinguished men have been betrayed will survive for 
 many years yet amongst less distinguished people, but 
 at any rate we may free our minds from it here, and may 
 recognise in the figures to which I have referred, and which 
 are of the same order to-day, the statistical proof of what 
 any observer, however casual, might have inferred from 
 what he sees even amongst his own friends only that 
 marriage is, as it probably always has been, a selective 
 agent of much value in preserving and augmenting the 
 desirable inherent qualities of the race. It is, of course, 
 the object of race-culture or eugenics to strengthen the 
 hands of marriage in this respect to the utmost possible 
 degree. 
 
 Woman as practical eugenist. We must especially 
 note one most important matter, radically affecting race- 
 culture, which is referred to by Herbert Spencer in the 
 
 1 " In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality to 
 favour ; it is, as we have seen, the basis of every action, and it is 
 eminently transmissible by descent." GALTON. 
 
 N
 
 194 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 passage cited, and has been greatly insisted upon by Dr. 
 Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of 
 the principle of natural selection. The matter in question 
 is the possibility of race-culture through the choice of 
 their husbands by women. Not long ago Dr. Wallace 1 
 described selection through marriage as the " more per- 
 manently effective agency through which the improvement 
 of human character may be achieved." This, in his 
 opinion, can only be perfectly achieved " when a greatly 
 improved social system renders all our women economic- 
 ally and socially free to choose ; while a rational and 
 complete education will have taught them the importance 
 of their choice both to themselves and to humanity. ... It 
 will act through the agency of well-known facts and prin- 
 ciples of human nature, leading to a continuous reduction 
 of the lower types in each successive generation, and it is 
 the only mode yet suggested which will automatically 
 and naturally effect this." Thus " for the first time in the 
 history of mankind his Character his very Human 
 Nature itself will be improved by the slow but certain 
 action of a pure and beautiful form of selection a selec- 
 tion which will act, not through struggle and death, but 
 through brotherhood and love." 
 
 Dr. Wallace is a socialist, and he believes that only 
 through socialism can we achieve " that perfect freedom 
 of choice in marriage which will only be possible when all 
 are economically equal, and no question of social rank 
 or material advantage can have the slightest influence 
 in determining that choice." As I have said elsewhere, 
 I would call myself neither a socialist nor an anti-socialist, 
 but if labels are necessary, a eugenist and maternalist. 
 As such, I can only say that this argument for socialism 
 that it is the necessary condition of eugenics or race- 
 culture is, for me, incomparably the best argument 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review, January, 1908.
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 195 
 
 for that creed ; and if it were proved that only through 
 socialism could the utmost be made of women's choice 
 of husbands, then no argument against socialism 
 could have any appreciable weight at all. The funda- 
 mental and permanent argument against certain of 
 the highly various and incompatible doctrines which, 
 for our confusion, are commonly lumped together as 
 socialism, is that they would arrest the process by which 
 Nature rewards worth and permits it to perpetuate 
 itself. If, then, it can be shown, as may or may not 
 be the case, that only through socialism can male worth 
 be most effectively chosen and male unworth be rejected 
 for fatherhood, the supreme that is, the eugenic 
 argument against socialism becomes the conclusive 
 argument in its favour. 
 
 The field of choice. But, however this may be, there 
 can be no question that the eugenic purpose, as well as 
 the happiness and elevation of individuals in the present, 
 will be greatly served by whatever measures increase, to 
 the utmost extent possible, the opportunities for choice in 
 marriage afforded to women and also to men. One of the 
 most amazing and satisfactory facts about marriage as at 
 present practised is, I think, the large proportion often 
 estimated at seventy-five per cent. of unions which, 
 apart from any eugenic question, turn out happily, in 
 Great Britain, at any rate. What makes this fact more 
 amazing is the almost incredible limitation of the field 
 of choice within which both sexes are still confined as a 
 whole. If the reader will consider the cases most familiar 
 to him or her, it will surely be admitted that the consider- 
 able success of marriage takes on an astonishing aspect 
 when the present strait conditions of choice are taken 
 into account. I am convinced that few more radical and 
 far-reaching, because eugenic, reforms can be conceived 
 than any which, in accordance with Dr. Wallace's
 
 196 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 argument, tend to widen the field of choice, and that not 
 for one sex only but for both. He would be a rash man 
 who ventured to allot superior value to the selection of 
 man by woman rather than of woman by man, or vice 
 versa. 
 
 Quite apart from any deeper and more difficult 
 reforms, such as Dr. Wallace alludes to, I am sure that 
 even the mere widening of the field of choice, as such, is 
 most desirable. To take an instance, which the reader 
 may very likely think trivial and absurd, I have wit- 
 nessed in my brief career as a hockey player two unions 
 most happy and eugenic in every way, which entirely 
 depended upon the existence of the amusement called 
 mixed hockey whereat the contracting parties met one 
 another ! It is not asserted that these two cases suffice 
 for world- wide generalisation. They are merely cited as 
 instances which set at least one hockey player thinking, 
 even on the field the field of choice. It is a great argu- 
 ment, because it is a eugenic argument, in favour of 
 community of sports and amusements amongst young 
 people of both sexes, that it does widen the field of 
 choice in marriage, and that in doing so it also tends 
 to favour those factors of selection which the eugenist 
 would desire to see selected : and this especially as 
 compared with the ball-room. I think that the reader 
 will agree that the conditions, the " atmosphere," the 
 costume, and the other features of what young people 
 call a " dance," whilst undoubtedly serving the purpose 
 of marriage and widening somewhat a field of choice 
 which might otherwise be ludicrously and impracticably 
 restricted, compare most unfavourably with the conditions 
 of even the mixed hockey field, which, decried though they 
 often be, are to my mind immeasurably healthier on 
 every conceivable ground than those of the ball-room, 
 and not least of all on the eugenic ground of the prominence
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 197 
 
 gained by most desirable qualities, of which mere strength 
 and energy and neuro-muscular skill are quite the least, 
 whilst unselfishness, capacity for self-control, patience, 
 real gallantry as when a male " full back " refrains 
 from hitting the ball with all his might against the toes 
 of a girl " forward " the sporting spirit and other true 
 and radical virtues, are the greatest. It is undoubtedly 
 the case that the personal factors, physical and psychical, 
 which determine the mutual attraction of young people, 
 have dependent upon them the whole of human destiny. 
 In society to-day, what one may call the incidence of 
 parenthood, upon which all the future necessarily 
 depends, is determined by nothing other than the 
 humanised form of what Darwin called " sexual selection." 
 Therefore, it is not trivial but supremely important to 
 discuss the conditions under which the selection obtains. 1 
 
 It has already been suggested that in order to enhance 
 the eugenic value of marriage we should endeavour to 
 widen the field of choice, at present ludicrously restricted 
 by custom, class, religion, economic position, and so forth. 
 The increased locomotion of to-day will be of real eugenic 
 service to the race in this respect, I believe. 
 
 Then it has been hinted that young people should 
 meet one another under conditions which make prominent 
 the psychical and put the merely physical or animal 
 into the background e.g. on the hockey field or the 
 ice or in the " literary circle," rather than in the ball- 
 room. This proposition accords, of course, with what 
 has been said elsewhere as to that great factor of progress 
 which I define as the enhancement of the survival-value 
 of the psychical as against that of the physical. (Note 
 
 1 " As the German philosopher Schopenhauer remarks, the final aim of 
 all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more importance 
 than all other ends in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less 
 than the composition of the next generation. ... It is not the weal or 
 woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come, which is 
 at stake." DARWIN, Descent of Man, p. 893.
 
 198 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 the obvious sequence survival -value, selection -value, 
 marriage-value, parenthood-value, progress- value.) This 
 proposition and the last might both be worked out, 
 I believe, in considerable detail and not without profit. 
 
 Arguing on the same lines, we may agree that even 
 such a small matter, usually considered wholly domestic, 
 as the length of engagements, is of eugenic or racial 
 importance. The eugenist, I think, must welcome long 
 engagements simply because, though they may involve 
 a reduced marriage -rate and a reduced birth-rate 
 the latter partly in consequence of the reduced marriage- 
 rate, and partly because of the later age at marriage 
 they tend by the mere operation of time, as we say, to 
 enhance the importance of the psychical and to reduce 
 the importance of the physical factors which determine 
 sexual attraction. 
 
 To these three points a fourth, of great importance, 
 must be added. It is that we should favour, as far as 
 possible, those factors of choice for marriage which are 
 inherent, and therefore transmissible, as against those 
 which are acquired, accidental, and therefore not trans- 
 missible, and therefore of no racial or eugenic importance. 
 This, of course, is the point made by Dr. Wallace in the 
 article quoted above or at any rate it is involved in 
 the point he makes. I simply mean that every time a 
 marriage is brought about by, for instance, money, the 
 eugenic value of marriage is at least nullified and may 
 become actually anti-eugenic. Again I say, if Socialism, 
 or the abolition of (ww-natural) inheritance, be necessary 
 in order that selection for marriage shall be determined by 
 the possession of personal qualities of racial value rather 
 than the power of the purse, which has always been a racial 
 curse, then the sooner socialism is established the better. 
 
 The eugenic value of contemporary marriage. 
 The first purpose of this chapter has been to show that
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 
 
 in marriage, wherever, and in so far as, it is determined 
 by the mutual attractiveness of young people, there 
 exists a eugenic factor in society to-day ; and since 
 the race is in effect recruited by the married people, 
 this aspect of marriage deserves the closest study and 
 attention. I commend this subject, the eugenic value 
 of contemporary marriage, to the small but rapidly in- 
 creasing number of students who realise that eugenics 
 or race-culture will be the supreme science of the future, 
 and who are now devoting themselves to its foundations 
 No more important and urgent enquiry can be under- 
 taken at this stage. Which, for instance, is the more 
 eugenic, the English system or the French ? 
 
 The second purpose has been to show that one may 
 believe in and work for eugenics or race-culture with- 
 out proposing to overthrow all human institutions, or 
 to adopt the methods of the stud-farm, or to initiate a 
 vast campaign of surgery, or sensational and drastic 
 legislation, or even, yet, the employment of marriage 
 certificates. One or all of these things may have their 
 place, now or hereafter ; or may, on the other hand, be 
 far worse than futile. But most assuredly it is possible 
 now for the individual parent of marriageable children, 
 for the clergyman, the leader of fashion, the doctor, not 
 to start but to strengthen such by no means impotent 
 eugenic forces as already exist in society, without out- 
 raging sentiment or custom indeed, without attracting 
 public attention to their action at all. 
 
 Eugenics has already suffered much at the hands 
 of its so-called friends. It is to be hoped that a real 
 service may be discharged by this attempt to show that 
 on the highest, most accurate and scientific eugenic 
 grounds, we may recognise, claim and welcome every 
 father and mother who desire that the son or daughter 
 whom they care for shall marry for psychical and not
 
 200 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 for physical love. Every such parent is a eugenist, in 
 effect, though his sole motive may be the welfare of his 
 individual child. 
 
 At present we interfere with marriage on every imagin- 
 able ground, many utterly trivial, many worse. We 
 encourage or discourage on economic grounds ; we 
 recognize many taboos, of caste, creed, colour. It is not 
 for us, certainly, acting as we do, to be offended at the 
 suggestion that we should use our influence to affect 
 marriage on the highest conceivable ground the life of 
 mankind to come. What we really need is not so much 
 the abolition of Mrs. Grundy as her conversion to the 
 eugenic idea. It is the business of those who believe 
 that eugenics is the greatest ideal in the world to make 
 a eugenist of Mrs. Grundy, as we shall some day : and 
 then it will be realised how potent for good public opinion 
 may become, once it is rightly educated. 
 
 Says Mr. Galton, in his latest contribution to the 
 subject : 
 
 " The power of social opinion is apt to be rather under-rated 
 than over-rated. Like the atmosphere which we breathe and by 
 which we live, social opinion operates powerfully without 
 our being conscious of its existence. Everyone knows that 
 governments, manners, and beliefs which were thought to be 
 right, decorous, and true at one period have been judged wrong ) 
 indecorous, and false at another ; and that views which we have 
 heard expressed by those in authority over us in our childhood and 
 early manhood tend to become axiomatic and unchangeable in 
 mature life. 
 
 " Speaking for myself only, I look forward to local eugenic action 
 in numerous directions, including the accumulation of considerable 
 funds to start young couples of " worthy " qualities in their 
 married life, and to assist them and their families at critical 
 times. The gifts to those who are the reverse of " worthy " are 
 enormous in amount ; it is stated that the charitable donations 
 in the year 1907 amounted to ^"4,868,050. I am not prepared to 
 say how much of this was judiciously spent, or in what ways, but 
 merely quote the figures to justify the inference that many of
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 201 
 
 the thousands of persons who are willing to give freely at the 
 prompting of a sentiment based upon compassion, might be 
 persuaded to give largely also in response to a more virile 
 sentiment, based on the desire of promoting the natural gifts and 
 the National Efficiency of future generations. 
 
 " In circumscribed communities especially, social approval and 
 disapproval exert a potent force. Its presence is only too 
 easily read by every one who is the object of either, in 
 the countenances, bearing, and manner of those with whom they 
 daily meet and converse. Is it then, I ask, too much to expect 
 that when a public opinion in favour of Eugenics has once taken 
 sure hold of such communities and has been accepted by them as 
 a quasi-religion, the result will be manifested in sundry and very 
 -effective modes of action which are as yet untried and many of 
 them even unforeseen ? " 
 
 "Breach of promise "and race-culture It may be 
 
 added that perhaps we shall have to learn to reconsider 
 our ill-judged and stupid censoriousness, directed against 
 young people who get engaged but then become tired 
 of one another as they accurately say, discover that 
 they are not suited for one another. Not only is it 
 obvious that we are fools in denouncing this discovery of 
 impermanence in their attraction, happily made before 
 marriage, whilst we ignore the disasters of its lamentably 
 fostmature discovery, after marriage : but also it should 
 be obvious that the eugenic end is negatively served 
 whenever what would have been an unfortunate union 
 is broken off in time. Our imbecile standard of honour, 
 and the law of breach of promise, which is outrageously 
 abused, at present condemn the man, for instance, who 
 finds that he has made a mistake, whilst passively 
 applauding him who, finding his mistake, thinks it his 
 duty to make it irreparable. Far better would it be that 
 the man incapable of forming an attachment made of 
 the non-material ties which last, should not marry at 
 all. The man who cannot see, or seeing, cannot find 
 it in his heart to love, the spiritual beauties of
 
 202 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 womanhood, is just the man who can be safely omitted 
 in the eugenist's scheme for fatherhood. 
 
 The plea of insanity is, in English law, no protection 
 against a claim for damages for breach of promise to 
 marry, unless it be proved insanity at date of contract 
 in the defendant. A valid contract once made, it is no 
 excuse for non-performance that insanity has been dis- 
 covered in the family of the other party. This wicked 
 law must be altered. 
 
 The need lor further study. In his study of this 
 subject the student will naturally turn to Mr. Havelock 
 Ellis's volume entitled Sexual Selection in Man. 1 This, 
 of course, has its own scientific value as a statement 
 of facts, notwithstanding its intensely nauseating 
 character. But anything less relevant to what most 
 of us understand by psychology it would be difficult 
 to imagine. The book considers seriatim, touch, 
 smell, hearing, and vision as the bases of so-called 
 love. It thus deals with " sensology," not psychology. 
 Indeed, to the best of one's recollection, after very close 
 and careful reading, there is no allusion to the human 
 mind in it anywhere. If men and women were simply 
 animals, this book would doubtless cover the ground, and 
 perhaps the word " psychology " would even be justified 
 in connection with it. From end to end men and women 
 are consistently treated as animals and no more. Since, 
 however, the human species is possessed of psychical 
 characters which distinguish it from the lower animals, 
 it is not unreasonable to suppose that a volume which 
 really dealt with sexual selection in man would, to say the 
 least of it, recognise the existence of those characters 
 even if only to reject them as irrelevant to the subject 
 under discussion. 
 
 1 Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iv. (F. A. Davis Co., 
 Philadelphia, 1905).
 
 SELECTION THROUGH MARRIAGE 203 
 
 The foregoing remarks do not imply that the purely 
 anatomical and sensory factors are irrelevant to the selec- 
 tion of parents in any generation, and for methodological 
 purposes it might be of value to abstract from the factors 
 of sexual selection in human society such things as odour 
 and contour. But it would be urgently necessary in 
 the course of such a study, if it were to be other than 
 extremely misleading, to observe that this selection of 
 factors was made for purposes of convenience and that 
 the relation of their importance to that of other factors 
 was a matter for further and by no means casual con- 
 sideration. 
 
 We may certainly agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis that 
 sexual selection occurs in human society, and may 
 welcome his volume as supporting that assertion. There 
 follows the extremely interesting and indeed urgent 
 necessity of ascertaining what the factors of this selection 
 really are, what is their relative potency, and what 
 is their capacity for modification. We may further 
 enquire whether they tend to be eugenic. A contribution 
 to this subject is furnished by Mr. Ellis when he shows 
 that width of "hips" is a female character commonly 
 admired by men. Since a wide pelvis is one which can 
 accommodate and safely give birth to a large foetal head, 
 there is here, as a practically solitary case, a bearing on 
 the eugenic issue : large heads mean, in general, large 
 brains, and it would be ill for the white races if men 
 admired hips as narrow as those of, for instance, the 
 negress, whose pelvis could not find room for the average 
 head of a purely white baby, and who suffers terribly in 
 many cases where the father is white, especially if the 
 child be a boy. 
 
 Meanwhile we must wait for studies of this great 
 question from various points of view: notably for 
 a study of the economics of sexual selection as it
 
 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 obtains in human society. Yet further, we require a 
 detailed study of the influence of legislation, custom and 
 public opinion upon sexual selection on the lines of 
 Mr. Galton's paper on " Restrictions in Marriage." 
 Mr. Havelock Ellis has more than adequately dealt with 
 the nervous physiology of sexual selection ; there remain 
 the psychology and sociology of it these latter com- 
 prehending, one may suppose, ninety-nine per cent, of 
 the whole subject. In the preceding pages allusion has 
 been made to one or two of the more salient aspects 
 of this matter.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE RACIAL POISONS : ALCOHOL l 
 
 IN the first chapter of our second Part, which deals 
 with the practice of eugenics, there were introduced, 
 defined, and briefly illustrated, the terms positive eugenics 
 and negative eugenics. Of these the latter, as the more 
 urgent and the more completely and immediately practic- 
 able, claims our special attention ; though the present 
 writer, notwithstanding that he has devoted to it the 
 greater part of his eugenic work, is bound to protest that 
 the positive increase of ability and worth is never to be 
 regarded as of secondary importance. The two methods 
 are, of course, complementary in practice, as they are 
 one in principle to select is to reject, to choose is 
 to refuse. The preceding chapter, on selection (and 
 rejection) through marriage, has dealt with the con- 
 ditions under which both aims are to be pursued. 
 In the following pages we must discuss a specially urgent 
 and practicable and indisputable portion of negative 
 eugenic practice : none the less urgent because of the 
 contemporary emergence and future world-importance of 
 sober nations, such as Japan and Turkey. The term 
 racial poisons, introduced by the present writer in the 
 year 1907, is self-explanatory. After dealing with the 
 most important of these poisons, we shall proceed, in the 
 next chapter, to discuss some others. The racial poisons 
 constitute a special department of eugenics which has 
 
 1 Part of the matter of this chapter was included in papers entitled 
 " Racial Hygiene or Negative Eugenics, with special reference to the 
 Extirpation of Alcoholism," read before the Congress of the Royal 
 Institute of Public Health, at Buxton, 1908, and " Alcoholism and 
 Eugenics," read before the Society for the Study of Inebriety, April, 1909. 
 
 205
 
 206 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 not hitherto been considered by the pioneers of this 
 subject, but for which I press the claim of the utmost 
 gravity and moment, and which I conceive to be certainly 
 a part, and a most important part, of our manifold yet 
 single subject. 
 
 The argument of this chapter is that parenthood must 
 be forbidden to the dipsomaniac, the chronic inebriate or 
 the drunkard, whether male or female ; and this whether 
 Lamarck or Galton and Weismann be right, or whether, 
 as we may believe with Galton and Weismann them- 
 selves, the controversy between the two parties is 
 wholly irrelevant to the question in hand. This con- 
 clusion, that on no grounds whatever, theoretical or 
 practical, can we continue to permit parenthood on 
 the part of the drunkard, is one temperance reform, 
 perhaps the only one, on which disagreement is absolutely 
 impossible. It is, further, the most radical that can be 
 named within the sphere of practical politics, and it is 
 conspicuously practicable. It has hitherto been lament- 
 ably neglected by workers and reformers of all schools. 
 Indeed, at the time of writing, the London County Council, 
 governing the greatest city in the world, is pursuing a 
 course of action in this regard, which will be detailed 
 later, and which, as will appear, is misguided and 
 deplorable in the last degree. 
 
 Alcohol and heredity. According to Dr. Archdall Reid, 
 " alcohol, year after year, eliminates from the race a 
 great number of people so constituted that intoxication 
 affords them keen delight, leaving the perpetuation of the 
 race in great measure to those on whom intoxication 
 confers little or no delight. . . . Now since alcohol weeds 
 out enormous numbers of people of a particular type, it 
 is a stringent agent of selection an agent of selection 
 more stringent than any one disease." The factor that
 
 RACIAL POISONS-ALCOHOL 207 
 
 really makes the drunkard " is certainly inborn, and 
 therefore as certainly transmissible to offspring. The 
 man who has it is cursed with the ' alcohol diathesis,' 
 with the ' predisposition to drunkenness.' Thus most 
 savages are keenly capable of enjoying drink, and their 
 offspring inherit the capacity." Fere has shown that 
 "it is one of the characteristics of the degenerate that 
 they are prone to have recourse to the poisons, like 
 alcohol and morphia, which hasten their decadence and 
 elimination." Thus, as Dr. W. C. Sullivan points out, 
 alcohol " might certainly be adjudged a salutary evil if 
 its incidence were limited to individuals whose extreme 
 inferiority of organisation renders them wholly undesir- 
 able and useless to the community. But this is very far 
 from being the case." l 
 
 The whole crux of the question lies in this last sentence. 
 Alcohol certainly destroys many degenerate stocks, and 
 that is good, though it would be better to do what we 
 shall do some day hasten and ameliorate the process 
 by forbidding parenthood to the degenerate. But does 
 alcohol also make degenerates ; does it even make more 
 degenerates than it destroys ? A somewhat similar difficulty 
 arises in the case of infant mortality. The causes of 
 infant mortality destroy many children inherently unfit, 
 diseased or weakly. But we are not justified in keeping 
 up our infant mortality, if we find, as we do, that for 
 every diseased child whom they destroy they kill 
 many who were healthy at birth and damage for life 
 many more. 
 
 A man is born sober in most cases, but not always, 2 
 as we shall see and any changes produced in his body 
 by alcohol are ' ' acquired . ' ' Therefore, re j ecting Lamarck, 
 
 1 Italics mine. 
 
 * To-day many of the children who make our destiny are born drunk, 
 owing to maternal intoxication during labour: I have myself attended 
 the birth of such children, both in Edinburgh and in York.
 
 208 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 are we to reject the doctrine that the effects produced by 
 alcohol on parents are transmitted to offspring ? 
 
 The controversy between Lamarck and Weismann has 
 absolutely nothing to do with the question. Let us consider 
 what would be a case of Lamarckian transmission in the 
 sense which the modern student of heredity denies. The 
 birth of a child with a scar on its scalp, to a father who 
 had acquired a similar scar before the child was conceived, 
 would be such a case : and this does not happen. Or 
 suppose that instead of a scar on the scalp the father 
 has an inflammatory change, not so dissimilar to a scar, 
 produced by alcohol in the membranes covering his brain. 
 Then it would be a case of Lamarckian transmission if 
 the membranes of his baby's brain were similarly affected ; 
 and this does not happen. Such is the kind of trans- 
 mission of which exhaustive experiment and observation 
 fail to find a conclusive instance anywhere. 
 
 But what has such a supposition to do with the theory, 
 as definitely supported by observation and experiment 
 as the other is not, that if a man saturates his body with 
 alcohol carried by his blood, he injures all the tissues 
 which are nourished by that blood, including the racial 
 elements of his body with the rest : and therefore that 
 his child may be degenerate ? 
 
 What says Weismann himself ? In The Germ-Plasm, 
 p. 386, under the heading " The influence of temporary 
 abnormal conditions of the parents on the child," he 
 writes as follows : 
 
 " Although I do not consider that the cases which come under 
 the above heading have anything to do with heredity, I should 
 not like to leave them entirely on one side. 
 
 " It has often been supposed that drunkenness of the parents at the 
 time of conception may have a harmful effect on the nature of the 
 offspring. The child is said to be born in a weak bodily and mental 
 condition, and inclined to idiocy, or even to madness, etc., although 
 the parents may be quite normal both physically and mentally.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 209 
 
 " Cases certainly exist in which drunken parents have given rise 
 to a completely normal child, although this is not a convincing 
 proof against the above-named view ; and in spite of the fact that 
 most, or perhaps even all, the statements with regard to the 
 injurious effects on the offspring will not bear a very close 
 criticism, 1 I am unwilling to entirely deny the possibility that a 
 harmful influence may be exerted in such cases. These, however, 
 have nothing to do with heredity, but are concerned with an 
 affection of the germ by means of an external influence." 
 
 Weismann goes on to quote cases showing how germ- 
 cells may be injured by various agents, and continues : 
 
 " It does not appear to me impossible that an intermixture of 
 alcohol with the blood of the parents may produce similar effects 
 on the ovum and sperm cell. According to the relative quantity of 
 alcohol either an exciting or a depressing influence might be 
 exerted, either of which would lead to abnormal development. . . . 
 
 "New predispositions can certainly never arise owing to such 
 deviations from the normal course of development, and therefore a 
 modification of the process of heredity itself is out of the question. 
 It is, however, conceivable that more or less considerable 
 abnormalities may affect the course of development, and either 
 cause the death of the embryo, or else produce more or less 
 marked deformities. The question as to whether such deformities 
 really result in consequence of the drunken condition of the 
 parents can only be decided by observation." * 
 
 This is all that Weismann has to say on the subject, 
 since, not referring to functionally-produced modifications, 3 
 it does not concern his theory of heredity at all : yet it is 
 upon this theory that the most palpable facts of the 
 racial influence of alcohol are denied. Weismann's own 
 
 1 This was written in 1892, before the accumulation of the modern 
 evidence on the subject. 
 
 * " Alcohol taken into the stomach can be demonstrated in the testicle 
 or ovary within a few minutes, and, like any other poison, may injure 
 the sperm or the germ element therein contained. As a result of this 
 intoxication of the primary elements, children may be conceived and 
 born who become idiots, epileptics, or feeble-minded. Therefore it comes 
 about that even before conception a fault may be present." Me ADAM 
 ECCLES, F.R.C.S., in the British Journal of Inebriety, April, 1908. 
 
 * See p. in. 
 
 O
 
 210 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 remarks are quite open to criticism, as, for instance, 
 where he denies that new predispositions can arise in the 
 manner indicated. This is possibly only a question of 
 words, and Weismann is perhaps merely denying that 
 alcohol can produce progressive variations. Also his 
 remarkably brief discussion of the subject seems to con- 
 cern itself mainly with the influence of alcohol on the 
 germ-cells just before their union. He has not a word to 
 say regarding the influence on the germinal tissues of 
 years of soaking in alcohol. It suffices, however, to make 
 the point which is quite clearly made, that the Weisman- 
 nians are going absurdly beyond their book in denying 
 what, indeed, the book of Nature demonstrates. 
 
 Let us turn now to the experimental side of this ques- 
 tion. An American botanist, Dr. T. D. MacDougal, read 
 an address on " Heredity and Environic Forces " at the 
 Chicago Meeting of the American Association for the 
 Advancement of Science in 1907. His experiments re- 
 quire confirmation, but may be provisionally accepted. 
 He has permanently modified the germ-plasm of plants 
 under the influence of various chemicals. There is here 
 a vast field for experiment with alcohol. I quote one 
 paragraph indicating the remarkable results of these 
 experiments. The reader will see their bearing on our 
 present question, and will also see that they do not for a 
 moment affect Weismann's denial of the doctrine that by 
 cutting off rats' tails you can produce a race of tailless 
 rats, or that by learning a language you can save your 
 future children the trouble of doing so for themselves : 
 
 " It was found that the injection of various solutions into 
 ovaries of Raimannia was followed by the production of seeds 
 bearing qualities not exhibited by the parent, wholly irreversible, 
 and fully transmissible in successive generations. One of the 
 seeds produced by a plant of (Enothera biennis which had been 
 treated with zinc sulphate differed so widely from the parental 
 form that it could be distinguished from it by a novice. This
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 211 
 
 new form has been tested to the third generation, and transmits 
 all its characteristics fully." 
 
 Alcohol a proved racial poison. But the reader will 
 rightly desire some kind of experimental proof that 
 alcohol itself can act as a cause of racial degeneration. We 
 may first refer to the chapter on alcoholism and human 
 degeneration in Dr. W. C. Sullivan's Alcoholism, a Chapter 
 in Social Pathology, 1 for a recent resume of the subject. 
 Without actually quoting Weismann, Dr. Sullivan begins 
 by showing that, as we have seen, the doctrinal objection 
 of Dr. Reid and others to the theory of alcoholic de- 
 generation is quite irrelevant " the effects attributed to 
 parental alcoholism are not in the category of transmitted 
 acquirements at all ; they are the results, expressed in 
 defect and deviation of development, of a deleterious 
 influence exerted on the germ-cells, either directly through 
 the alcohol circulating in the blood, or indirectly, through 
 the deterioration of the parental organism in which these 
 cells are lodged, and from which they draw their nutri- 
 ment." Later Dr. Sullivan points out that the racial 
 effects of alcoholism in man are similar to those obtained 
 by experimental intoxication in the lower animals. 
 Combemale, for instance, found that pups begotten of a 
 healthy bitch by an alcoholised dog were congenitally 
 feeble and showed a marked degree of asymmetry of the 
 brain. Recent experiments have shown the same thing 
 as regards other poisons, and it is especially to be noted 
 that in the experiments cited the mother was healthy. 
 They prove that paternal alcoholism alone (all questions 
 of the nourishment of the growing child before birth, 
 for instance, thus being excluded) can determine de- 
 generation. Mr. Galton 2 himself long ago quoted the 
 
 1 London: James Nisbet and Co., 1906. 
 
 * Will our modern extremists be good enough to remember that 
 Mr. Galton is the prime author of the doctrine that functionally- 
 produced modifications are not inherited ?
 
 212 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 case "of a man who, after begetting several normal 
 children, became a drunkard and had imbecile offspring " ; 
 and another case has been recorded " of a healthy woman 
 who, when married to a drunken husband, had five sickly 
 children, dying in infancy, but in subsequent union with 
 a healthy man, bore normal and vigorous children." 
 
 Other intoxications show similar results though they are 
 not yet of grave racial importance. For instance, " a 
 man who had had two healthy children acquired the 
 cocaine habit, and while suffering from the symptoms of 
 chronic poisoning engendered two idiots." Brouardel 
 and others have observed that the expectant mother 
 who is a morphinomaniac may give birth to a child 
 who shows all the phenomena of the morphia habit. 
 
 Demme has traced the appalling contrast between the 
 offspring in ten sober families, and in ten families where 
 one or both parents suffered from chronic alcoholism. 
 Dr. Sullivan himself, realising the obviously greater 
 importance of maternal alcoholism, since here we have 
 the action of poisoned food the maternal blood -upon 
 the child before birth, made an enquiry of his own. He 
 found that 
 
 "... of 600 children born of 120 drunken mothers 335 (55.8 
 per cent.) died in infancy or were still-born, and that several 
 of the survivors were mentally defective, and as many as 4.1 
 per cent, were epileptic. Many of these women had female 
 relatives, sisters or daughters, of sober habits and married to 
 sober husbands ; on comparing the death-rate amongst the 
 children of the sober mothers with that amongst the children 
 of the drunken women of the same stock, the former was found 
 to be 23.9 per cent., the latter 55.2 per cent., or nearly two 
 and a half times as much. It was further observed that in the 
 drunken families there was a progressive rise in the death-rate 
 from the earlier to the later born children." 
 
 Dr. Sullivan cites as a typical alcoholic family one in 
 which " the first three children were healthy, the fourth
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 213 
 
 was of defective intelligence, the fifth was an epileptic 
 idiot, the sixth was dead-born, and finally the productive 
 career ended with an abortion." Dr. Claye Shaw told 
 the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deteriora- 
 tion, " we have inebriate mothers, and either abortions 
 or degenerate children. The teleological 1 relationship 
 between the two seems to be as certain as any other 
 conditions of cause and effect." The general rule is that 
 any narcotic substance affects highly developed tissues 
 sooner and more markedly than simpler tissues, and so 
 it is in the case of alcohol and the infant. It is the 
 developing nervous system that is most markedly affected. 
 This leads, of course, to an increased child mortality, 
 especially by way of convulsions. This was the cause of 
 sixty per cent, of all the deaths that occurred amongst the 
 six hundred children in Dr. Sullivan's series. But it has 
 especially to be remembered that a large number of children 
 whose nervous systems are injured for life by parental and 
 more especially by maternal alcoholism do not die either as 
 infants or children. Instead of dying of convulsions they 
 live as epileptics. Of the children in Dr. Sullivan's 
 series " 219 lived beyond infancy, and of these 9, or 
 4.1 per cent., became epileptic, as compared with o.i 
 per cent, of the whole population." Other observers 
 have found epilepsy in 12 per cent, and even 15 per cent, 
 of the children of alcoholic parents. Of course these 
 data, as such, do not demonstrate Dr. Sullivan's con- 
 clusion that " this action of alcoholism on the health and 
 vitality of the stock is the most serious of the evils that 
 intemperance brings on the community." 
 
 Dr. Sullivan's enquiries show a very high rate of still- 
 births and abortions amongst the children of drunken 
 mothers quite sufficient to prove that " the detrimental 
 
 1 The use of this word thus is unusual, to say the least of it. Dr. 
 Claye Shaw simply means causa/ relation.
 
 214 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 effect of maternal alcoholism must be in a large measure 
 due to a direct influence on the germ-cells and on the 
 developing embryo, and cannot be explained as merely 
 a result of the neglect and malnutrition from which the 
 children of a drunken mother are naturally apt to suffer." 
 The point is of some theoretical importance. Practically 
 it matters little ; in either case the drunken woman must 
 not become a mother. 
 
 The same conclusion is reached even though we accord 
 unlimited weight to the unquestionably valid argument 
 that the drunkard is himself or herself usually degenerate 
 from the first, and that the children are therefore de- 
 generate, and would indeed be degenerate even if the 
 parents had taken no alcohol. Let us, then, erroneously 
 enough, but for the sake of the argument, assume that 
 solely and always alcoholism is a symptom of degeneracy. 
 It is, then, an indication of unfitness for parenthood no 
 less, and the practical issue is the same : one radical 
 cure for alcoholism, at any rate, is the prohibition of 
 parenthood on the part of the alcoholic. l 
 
 The most recent evidence The most thorough and 
 comprehensive enquiry into this matter yet made is 
 also the most recent. We owe it to Dr. W. A. Potts, 
 of the University of Birmingham, who did valuable work 
 as Medical Investigator to the Royal Commission on the 
 Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. His paper, 
 
 1 The subject of alcoholism and race-culture really demands a 
 large volume. There is no space here to deta.il the fashion in which 
 the drunken mother poisons her child after birth, when she nurses 
 it, since, as has been chemically proved, alcohol is excreted in her 
 milk. Says a most distinguished authority, Mrs. Scharlieb, " the 
 child, then, absolutely receives alcohol as part of his diet, with the 
 worst effect upon his organs, for alcohol has a greater effect upon 
 cells in proportion to their immaturity " ("The Drink Problem," in the 
 New Library of Medicine), and Dr. Sullivan refers to " numerous cases 
 on record of convulsions and other disorders occurring in infants 
 when the nurse has taken liquor, and ceasing when she has been put 
 on a non-alcoholic diet." The reader may be referred to my brief 
 paper, "Alcohol and Infancy," published in the form of a tract by 
 the Church of England Temperance Society.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 215 
 
 entitled " The Relation of Alcohol to Feeble-mindedness," 
 is printed in the British Journal of Inebriety for 
 January, 1909, together with communications from many 
 authorities. It is quite impossible to summarise here 
 the enormous mass of evidence which Dr. Potts has 
 accumulated from the literature of the subject, and to 
 which he has added his own work. I believe that nothing 
 could be more moderate and assured than the following 
 conclusions, to which he commits himself after a study 
 of the subject the quality and range of which can only 
 be appreciated at first hand : 
 
 "... the evidence is not clear that alcoholism, by itself, in 
 the father will produce amentia ; but it is quite plain that in 
 combination with other bad factors it is a most unfavourable 
 element, while maternal drinking, and drinking continued through 
 more than one generation, are potent influences in mental 
 degeneracy." 
 
 It is impossible, within the scope of the present volume, 
 to analyse in detail the Report of the Royal Commission 
 on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. In this 
 present outline of eugenics it is our business, however, 
 to show main principles, and as the principle expressed 
 in the phrase " racial poisons " is to my mind absolutely 
 cardinal for eugenics, it is necessary here to comment, 
 as I have already done in the Journal above quoted, 
 upon the following most unfortunate deliverance of the 
 Commissioners : " That both on the grounds of fact 
 and of theory, there is the highest degree of probability 
 that feeble-mindedness is usually spontaneous in 
 origin that is, not due to influences acting on the 
 parent. ..." 
 
 The word spontaneous has, of course, no meaning for 
 science, or rather is a denial of the fundamental axiom 
 of science that causation is universal. What the 
 Commissioners mean when they say spontaneous is
 
 216 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 " spontaneous," like the occasional production of a nec- 
 tarine by a peach tree. Apart from this highly suspicious 
 phraseology, there is the still more unfortunate fact that 
 the Commissioners have lent their authority to the view 
 that feeble-mindedness is not due to influences acting on 
 the parent. The modern student of syphilis will be 
 astonished at this pronouncement, and also the student of 
 lead-poisoning, as we shall see in the following chapter. 
 Every reader of Dr. Potts's admirable paper will 
 realise that this conclusion of the Commissioners " not 
 due to influences acting on the parent " is directly 
 opposed to an extraordinary mass of evidence and to the 
 opinion of, I suppose, every authority on the subject, 
 British, Continental or American. The Commissioners' 
 reference to " theory," coupled with portions of the 
 evidence given before them by witnesses who suppose 
 that the alleged influence of alcohol as a cause of feeble- 
 mindedness controverts the doctrine of the non-trans- 
 mission of " acquired characters," makes it necessary to 
 point out for the hundredth time that, for lack of analysis 
 and criticism of terms, the most prominent followers of 
 Galton and Weismann persistently misunderstand their 
 masters' teaching. The modern doctrine of the in- 
 dividual as the trustee of the germ-cells and of the 
 non-transmission of acquired characters is Mr. Galton's. 
 Mr. Galton himself does not question and never has 
 questioned the possibility that alcohol may cause feeble- 
 mindedness. There is no reason why he should. If we 
 take the somewhat unusual course of consulting the 
 words of the masters before we swear by them, we find 
 as has been shown that Weismann, who subsequently 
 stated and has so greatly supported Mr. Galton's view, 
 has expressly repudiated the Commissioners' idea of his 
 " theory." The Gait on- Weismann doctrine is a doctrine 
 of heredity proper, the organic relation of living genera-
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 217 
 
 tions. It does not assert that there are two unconnected 
 universes the one made of germ-plasm and the other of 
 the rest of nature. The " grounds of theory," or rather, 
 our elementary physiological knowledge of the nutrition 
 of the germ-plasm by the blood of its host, are in reality 
 precisely the grounds which would lead us to expect 
 those consequences of parental alcoholism which in fact 
 we find. 
 
 Alcoholism as a symptom of degeneracy. We have 
 seen that alcohol may be a cause of degeneracy : we 
 now have to recognize the converse relation. For an 
 authoritative and radical discussion of the problem, the 
 reader may be referred to the second Norman Kerr 
 Memorial Lecture, delivered by Dr. Welsh Branthwaite, 
 H.M. Inspector under the Inebriates' Act, in 1907. x He 
 speaks as " the only man in close touch with all inebriates 
 under legal detention in England." He reaches most 
 important conclusions which are generally accepted, as 
 the discussion shows. He says, " the more I see of 
 habitual drunkards, the more I am convinced that the 
 real condition we have to study, the trouble we have to 
 fight, and the source of all the mischief, is ... defect z 
 in mental mechanism, generally congenital, sometimes 
 more or less acquired. ... In the absence of alcohol, 
 the same persons, instead of meriting the term inebriate 
 would have proved unreliable in many ways ; they would 
 have been called ne'er-do-weels, profligates, persons of 
 lax morality, excitably or abnormally passionate in- 
 dividuals, persons of melancholic tendency or eccentric. 
 ... It seems to me exceedingly doubtful whether 
 
 1 This is printed in the British Journal of Inebriety, January, 1908, 
 under the title " Inebriety, its Causation and Control " with comments 
 by numerous authorities. 
 
 * The author says "inherent defect." I have omitted the adjective, 
 as it is obviously misused. Antecedent would have been the better word, 
 surely.
 
 218 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 habitual inebriety ... is ever really acquired in the 
 strictest sense of the word i.e. in the absence of some 
 measure of pre-existing defect." Having studied 2,277 
 inebriates, committed under the Inebriates Acts, up 
 to December 3ist, 1906, Dr. Branthwaite finds 62.6 
 per cent, of these mentally defective. The remainder he 
 regards as of average mental capacity, using, however, 
 an exceedingly low standard of what that capacity is. 
 He concludes that in a large majority of police-court 
 cases, " mental disease was the condition for which they 
 were repeatedly imprisoned mental disease merely 
 masked by alcoholic indulgence. . . . The majority of 
 our insane inebriates have become alcoholic because of 
 their tendency to insanity. . . . Certain peculiarities in 
 cranial conformation, general physique, and conduct, 
 have long been recognised as evidences of congenital 
 defect. Nearly all the 1,375 cases included in the two 
 defective sections of our table have given evidence of 
 possessing some of these characteristic peculiarities, and 
 it is morally certain that the large majority of them started 
 life handicapped by imperfect brain development." x The 
 lecture is accompanied with many photographs clearly 
 showing the physical marks of congenital defect, and Dr. 
 Branthwaite remarks that " even the untrained eye 
 should meet with no difficulty in recognising ' something 
 wrong ' with all of them." 
 
 Of the proportion of mentally defective inebriates (62.6 
 per cent, of the whole) mentioned by Dr. Branthwaite, all 
 are " practically hopeless from a reformation standpoint." 
 This is a sufficient comment, if any were needed, upon 
 repeated imprisonment for habitual drunkenness which, 
 as Dr. Branthwaite says, " is indefensible and inhumane." 
 He adds in closing that, in his judgment, habitual drunken- 
 ness, so far as women are concerned, has materially 
 
 1 Italics mine.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 219 
 
 increased, during the last twenty-five years, " which I have 
 spent entirely amongst drunkards and drunkenness." 
 The unfortunate people whom he studies " are not in the 
 least affected by orthodox temperance efforts ; they continue 
 to propagate drunkenness, and thereby nullify the good results 
 of temperance energy. Their children, born of defective 
 parents, and educated by their surroundings, grow up with- 
 out a chance of decent life, and constitute the reserve from 
 which the strength of our present army of habituals is main- 
 tained. Truly we have neglected in the past, and are still 
 neglecting, the main source of drunkard supply the drunkard 
 himself ; cripple that, and we should soon see some good 
 result from our work." 
 
 A foremost authority, Dr. F. W. Mott, F.R.S., has in- 
 dependently reached the same conclusion as Dr. Branth- 
 waite that the chronic inebriate comes as a rule of an 
 inherently tainted stock. (Dr. Mott, however, reminds 
 us that " if alcohol is a weed killer, preventing the per- 
 petuation of poor types, it is probably even more effective 
 as a weed producer.") Professor David Ferrier, F.R.S., 
 the great pioneer of brain localisation, in reference to 
 these people, speaks of " the risk of propagation of a race 
 of drunkards and imbeciles." Dr. J. C. Dunlop, H.M. 
 Inspector under the Inebriates Act, Scotland, states that 
 his experience leads him to precisely the same conclusion 
 as that of Dr. Branthwaite. Dr. A. R. Urquhart, an 
 asylum authority, affirms that chronic inebriety " is 
 largely an affair of heredity ... is a symptom of mental 
 defect, disorder, or disease." Dr. Fleck, another authority, 
 says : " It is my strong conviction that a large percentage 
 of our mentally defective children, including idiots, 
 imbeciles and epileptics, are the descendants of drunkards." 
 Mr. McAdam Eccles, the distinguished surgeon, agrees ; 
 so does Dr. Langdon Down, Physician to the National 
 Association for the Welfare of the Feeble-minded ; so
 
 220 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 does Mr. Thomas Holmes, the Secretary of the Howard 
 Association, who remarks that " our habitual criminals, 
 equally with our mental inebriates, are not responsible 
 beings, but victims of mental disease." Finally Miss 
 Kirby, Secretary of the National Association for the 
 Feeble-minded, insists upon the obvious conclusion that 
 these people must be detained permanently. She says, 
 " When one case of a dissolute feeble-minded woman in 
 America is quoted as the mother of nine feeble-minded 
 children, we see the cause why inebriate homes, and also 
 reformatories, penitentiaries, and workhouses are full 
 to overflowing, and society taxed beyond bearing to keep 
 them there. Such institutions outnumber homes for the 
 feeble-minded." x Speaking of the 62.6 per cent, noted by 
 Dr. Branthwaite, she says, " Would it not have been the 
 more logical course to have dealt with them in earlier 
 years ? " Now what would that have accomplished ? 
 It would have saved the future. 
 
 The inebriate as parent Is it a mere supposition that 
 these women become mothers ? Amongst those com- 
 mitted as criminal inebriates (under the London County 
 Council) in 1905-6, three hundred and sixty-five of those 
 admitted to reformatories had two thousand two hundred 
 children. These are the official figures. As to the quality 
 of these children there is unfortunately no possibility of 
 question. 
 
 We may quote from Dr. Sullivan a notable enquiry : 
 
 " Even more striking results with regard to the several forms 
 of degeneracy were obtained by Legrain, who investigated the 
 question from a somewhat different point of view. Selecting 
 from the material at his disposal all those cases in which 
 ancestral intemperance had appeared to exercise a causal 
 influence, and working out their family history, he collected 215 
 
 1 Italics mine. A thousand pounds for cure which does not cure 
 and twopence for prevention is, of course, the rule with a half- 
 educated nation always.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 221 
 
 observations of heredo-alcoholism referring to one generation, 
 98 referring to two generations, and 7 referring to three 
 generations. Of the children of the first generation, 508 in 
 number, 196 were mentally degenerate, the affection of the brain 
 being shown more particularly by moral and emotional abnor- 
 mality, while intellectual defects were less pronounced; 106 were 
 insane, 52 were epileptic, 16 suffered from hystero-epilepsy, and 
 3 from chorea ; and 39 had convulsions in infancy. Amongst 
 the children of the second generation, who numbered 294, the 
 intellectual defects were more marked, idiocy, imbecility, or 
 debility, being noted in the offspring of 54 out of the 98 families 
 investigated. In 23 out of the 33 families in which the children 
 of the second generation had reached adult age, one or more 
 of them were insane. Epilepsy was found in 40 families, infantile 
 convulsions in 42, and meningitis in 14. The third generation in 
 7 families was represented by 17 children, all of whom were 
 weak-minded, imbecile, or idiotic ; 2 suffered, moreover, from 
 moral insanity, 2 from hysteria, and 2 from epilepsy ; 3 were 
 scrofulous, and 4 had convulsions in childhood. In the three 
 generations taken together there were, in addition to the 
 children referred to above, 174 infants who were dead-born or 
 died shortly after birth." 
 
 Therefore, the chronic inebriate must not become a 
 parent. Let it be said that these people are wicked or 
 have no self-control, drink for fun or love of degradation, 
 then become drunkards, and prejudicially affect their 
 children. The conclusion is the same. Have any theory 
 of heredity you please Lamarckianism, Darwin's pan- 
 genesis, Weismannism, Mendelism ; it matters not a 
 straw. Look at the thing from the uncharitable religious 
 point of view, or from the charitable scientific view which 
 realizes, in the case of these women, that to know all 
 is to pardon all the conclusion is still the same. 
 
 The present scandal of London's inebriates. This, 
 then, being so, abundance of official evidence having been 
 gathered in addition to all the unofficial evidence, let us 
 consider the shameful facts which are in process as I write, 
 and are still so, on revision of these pages a year later.
 
 222 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 They are outlined in the reply of Mr. Herbert Gladstone, 
 the Home Secretary, to a question in the House of Com- 
 mons. The reply is printed in full in The Times, Feb. 
 igth, 1908. There was a paltry squabble between the 
 Government and the London County Council as to the 
 exact number of shillings that each was to contribute per 
 week for the maintenance of inebriates. The London 
 County Council was plainly in the wrong, its ignorance 
 being sufficiently indicated by the letter to The Times, 
 which I will quote. The result of the squabble is that, 
 as Mr. G. R. Sims said, " We shall have something like five 
 hundred women, all habitual drunkards, passing in and out 
 of the prisons, a peril to publicans, a pest to the police, 
 an evil example to the women with whom they mix, 
 and free to bring children into the world, their little 
 lives poisoned at the source." We have therefore 
 reverted to the shameful, brutal, and disastrous system 
 sufficiently indicated by the history of Jane Cakebread, 
 at whom, when one was a schoolboy as ignorant as 
 those who now govern us, one used to laugh because 
 she had been convicted so many hundreds of times. 1 
 As the present writer said in raising the matter at a 
 meeting of the Eugenics Education Society, the future 
 children of these women are not only doomed by the very 
 nature of their germ-plasm, but they will actually be many 
 times intoxicated not merely in their cradles but before 
 their birth. There is no wealth but life, and this future 
 wealth of England is to be fed on poisoned food and many 
 times made drunken before it sees the light. The meet- 
 ing of the Society passed a unanimous resolution " That 
 this society enters a protest against the present adminis- 
 tration of the Inebriates Act, whereby through the closing 
 of inebriate homes some hundreds of chronic inebriate 
 
 1 She died in a lunatic asylum. I have not heard that society ever 
 offered her a public apology for its brutality to her.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 223 
 
 women will be set adrift in London, with an inevitably 
 deteriorating result to the race." 1 
 
 For this particular scandal the London County Council 
 was the more to blame. Let not the reader suppose 
 that a Liberal Government, however, was likely to 
 remedy the immoderate ignorance of a " Moderate " 
 County Council on this matter. Mr. Gladstone's reply 
 in Parliament was an exceptionally long one, but it 
 did not contain a syllable to suggest that any question 
 of the future is involved, or that a woman may become 
 a mother. Further, the Licensing Bill introduced just 
 when we were drawing public attention to this scandal 
 contained nowhere any hint of the principle that you 
 must attack drunkenness by attacking " the main source 
 of drunkard supply the drunkard himself." These, the 
 reader will remember, are the words of His Majesty's 
 Inspector. There is no question of party-feeling, then, 
 the reader will understand, in what has here been said. 
 Whether labelled Liberal, Conservative, Progressive or 
 Moderate, ignorance is still ignorance, and when in action 
 is still what Goethe called it, the most dangerous thing 
 in the world. 
 
 Pure ignorance, of course, is one of the things against 
 which the advocate of race-culture must fight. The 
 lack of imagination, however, is another. At present 
 we have few homes for the feeble-minded, and many for 
 what the feeble-minded become : few for prevention, 
 which is possible and cheap, many for cure, which is 
 impossible and dear. The average county councillor or 
 politician, of course, is rather more short-sighted than 
 the average man, simply because you cannot be far- 
 sighted and a partisan. What his defect of vision requires 
 is impossible, but it would be effective. It is that 
 the consequences of unworthy parenthood should be 
 
 1 See Times report, February 28, 1908.
 
 224 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 immediate, instead of taking months or years to develop. 
 Any one, even a politician, can see cause and effect when 
 they are close enough together. It is the little interval 
 that the political eye cannot pierce. Nevertheless, we 
 shall one day learn to think of the next generation, and 
 then there will be an end of the politician who thinks 
 only of the next election. 
 
 Ignorance on its defence The state of what has no 
 excuse for being uninformed opinion was only too well illus- 
 trated in a letter from the Chairman of the Public Control 
 Committee of the London County Council which appeared 
 in The Times for Feb. 27th, 1908. In defending the London 
 County Council the writer used the following words : 
 " Reformation, not mere detention, was its object when 
 it instituted its reformatory under the Inebriates Acts. 
 . . . The case of the Public Control Committee is that 
 the removal and detention of the hopeless habituals is a 
 matter for the police." The explanation aggravates the 
 offence. In the face of reiterated expert opinion, which 
 has no dissentient, as to the practical impossibility of 
 reformation you cannot reform what has never been 
 formed, viz., a normally developed brain here we find 
 a man in this responsible position, a man who has the 
 power to put his ignorance into action, telling us that the 
 London County Council aims at the impossible in this 
 respect ; whilst, in utter defiance of the future and of the 
 useless brutality of the police-court method, he tells us 
 that these " hopeless habituals " are a matter for the 
 police. Then, by way of making the thing complete, he 
 speaks of " mere detention." What he calls " mere deten- 
 tion " is everything, for it saves the future by preventing 
 parenthood on the part of members of the community who, 
 more certainly than any others that can be named, are 
 unworthy of it. The adjective " mere " is only too 
 adequate a measure of the state of opinion which, by such
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 225 
 
 retrograde courses as that under discussion, promises to 
 destroy the British people ere long and therefore, of 
 course, the Empire of which that people is the living and 
 necessary foundation. 
 
 It may be noted in passing that the word " reforma- 
 tory," employed in the Inebriates Act of 1898, is a highly 
 unfortunate one. It suggests a practically impossible 
 hope, and it ignores what, I submit, must and will ere 
 long be regarded as the essential purpose, function and 
 value of the detention of inebriates the prohibition of 
 parenthood on their part. In the case of women beyond 
 the child-bearing age, the whole case is radically altered. 
 If it amuses the legislature to cherish fantastic hopes, let 
 it speak about the reformation of these women. If it 
 prefers the futile and disgusting cruelty of the Jane Cake- 
 bread method for such women, when the plan for reforma- 
 tion is found to fail, that is no affair of ours in the present 
 volume. Such women have been in effect sterilised by 
 natural processes, and the advocate of race-culture can 
 afford to ignore them, for they do not concern him. Let 
 me note, however, that, of 294 female inebriates 
 admitted to reformatories in the year 1906, 170 were 
 under forty years of age, 92, of whom a considerable 
 proportion would be possible mothers, were between 
 forty and fifty, and only 32 of the total were over 
 fifty years of age. 1 It may be said that the lives 
 of these unhappy women tend to be terminated early. 
 The only pity is that our present blindness and 
 ignorance in dealing with them are not neutralised, 
 so far as the future is concerned, by death at much 
 earlier ages. If such a reflection strikes the reader 
 as cruel, how much more cruel are those who are 
 responsible for the present case of the women inebriates 
 of London ? 
 
 1 Report of the Inspector under the Inebriates Acts for the year 1906. 
 P
 
 226 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 The Pall Matt Gazette, on March 4th, 1908, gave the 
 utmost prominence to an article of mine on this subject, 
 entitled "An Urgent Public Scandal, The Case of London's 
 Inebriates." In this article I quoted The Times letter 
 referred to above, and levelled the most vigorous indict- 
 ment I could against the authors of the outrage under 
 discussion. None of them ventured to reply. In the 
 Referee for March 8th, 1908, however, a member of the 
 Public Control Committee of the London County Council 
 made an attempt to defend its action. The curious reader 
 may refer to that letter as one more instance of that 
 absolute blindness to the nature of the problem and to 
 any question of the future which had already been 
 indicated in The Times letter from the Chairman of 
 the Committee. Taking these two letters together, 
 we may say that never has a public outrage committed 
 by men in authority been more lamely or ignorantly 
 defended. 
 
 Ignorance in action the present facts. Since the 
 beginning of January, 1908, the brutal course decreed 
 by the London County Council has been pursued. The 
 wretched and deeply-to-be-pitied women have been 
 and are being discharged at the rate of some twenty to 
 twenty-five per month as their terms expire. The wiser 
 sort of magistrates and the police-court missionaries are 
 at their wits' ends, and no wonder. This country offers 
 these women at the moment no refuge whatever ; nothing 
 but the degrading and destructive round police-court, 
 prison, public-house, pavement ; da capo. Writing to The 
 Times in relation to the correspondence there published 
 (April i8th, 1908) between the London County Council 
 and the Eugenics Education Society, Sir Alfred Reynolds, 
 Chairman of the State Inebriate Reformatory Visiting 
 Board and a Visiting Justice of Holloway Prison, said 
 (April 2ist, 1908) :
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 227 
 
 "The correspondence published in The Times of April 18, 
 between the London County Council and the President of the 
 Eugenics Education Society convinces me more than ever that 
 the dispute between the London County Council and the 
 Treasury is a scandal and folly of the worst description. For 
 the sake of 6d. per case per day, the London County Council 
 (the same body which receives half a million sterling from the 
 sale of intoxicating liquor) has made it impossible for the metro- 
 politan magistrates to carry out the Act of 1898, and the result 
 is that 500 of the worst female inebriates are alternately on 
 the streets or in prison again, and the former scenes of horror 
 and drunken violence reappear. Holloway Prison will soon 
 fill up again, and all the good which has been done during 
 the last few years will be lost. ... I will not trouble you 
 further, except by emphasising what I have said by adding 
 that since January last year 1,500 women have been notified 
 to Scotland Yard as always in and out of prison from the 
 County of London, are qualified for inebriate homes, and at 
 the present moment there are over 50 of this number in Holloway 
 Prison serving absolutely useless short terms of imprisonment." 
 
 The London County Council performs a service for 
 philosophy. As we have seen, there exists or seems to 
 exist a radical antagonism in certain groups of cases 
 between the interests of the individual and the interests 
 of the race. You may preserve the quality of the race, as 
 the Spartans did, by exposing defective infants ; you may 
 be kind to feeble-minded children, as we are, but you will 
 injure the race in the long run. Darwin saw this more than 
 a generation ago, but instead of suggesting the prohibition 
 of parenthood to the unfit, he said that we must bear the 
 ill effects of their multiplication rather than sacrifice the 
 law of love. Huxley similarly said that moral evolution 
 consisted in opposing natural evolution. Now it has for 
 some time been evident that this antagonism need not be 
 radical if, whilst devoting hospitals and charity and 
 medical science to the care of the unfit, we deny them the 
 privilege of parenthood. On the other hand, the London
 
 228 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 County Council by its present action has performed a 
 service to biological philosophy by showing that it is 
 possible to combine the maximum of brutality to the individual 
 and to the present with the maximum of injury to the race 
 and to the future. In his report for 1906 Dr. Branthwaite 
 cites the history of a girl who, at the age of fifteen years and 
 nine months, was convicted in 1881 for being drunk and 
 disorderly. During the next quarter of a century she was 
 sentenced 115 times, and in January, 1906, was sent to a 
 reformatory. She has twice attempted to commit 
 suicide. Her case is, of course, now hopeless, and Dr. 
 Branthwaite predicts that her life will end by suicide. 
 Let any one read Dr. Branthwaite's Report or Dr. Robert 
 Jones's account of Jane Cakebread, or let him acquaint 
 himself with instances as they are to be daily seen, and 
 he will agree that the maximum of brutality is no excessive 
 phrase to describe the policy of shame at present pur- 
 sued in London : if, indeed, seeing that we now have 
 knowledge, it should not be described as something still 
 worse. 
 
 As for the injury to the future, we already know what 
 the present policy effects. We may grant, then, to the 
 London County Council that it has performed a service 
 for philosophy in showing that it is possible to combine 
 both kinds of evil in one harmonious policy. Nor let 
 the reader suppose that any partisan feeling infects this 
 protest. The Government is also to blame. Even had 
 the L.C.C. declined to contribute anything at all to the 
 cost of the proper policy, no really educated and honour- 
 able Government had any choice but to undertake all 
 the cost itself even at the cost of office ! Better were 
 in Mr. Balfour's words, the wisest he ever uttered " the 
 barren exchange of one set of tyrants, or jobbers, for 
 another," than the horrible birth of thousands of feeble- 
 minded babies.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 229 
 
 The argument from economy It would be easy to 
 show that the present policy is not economical even as 
 regards the cost of these women themselves, and even 
 if it be assumed that gold is wealth. But consider the 
 remoter cost. During the period when the present writer 
 was making public protests very nearly every day on 
 this matter without any immediate effect, and only one 
 month after the London County Council had attempted 
 to defend itself on the ground of economy when 
 challenged by the Eugenics Education Society, there 
 was formally opened, with a flourish of trumpets, the 
 eighty-seventh school for feeble-minded children estab- 
 lished by the London County Council. It accommodates 
 sixty such children (besides sixty physically defective). 
 This school cost 6,000 to build alone. The sixty feeble- 
 minded children whom it accommodates are not a very 
 large proportion of the 7,000 admittedly feeble-minded 
 school children in London a number which is probably 
 not more than a third or a fourth of the real number. It 
 has been exhaustively proved that feeble-minded children 
 are mainly, at any given time, the progeny of feeble- 
 minded persons such as constitute the majority of chronic 
 inebriates. Ignorance is again in action. On the one 
 hand, the London County Council, quarrelling over 
 pence, effectively suspends the working of the Inebriates 
 Acts, and thus ensures that the supply of feeble-minded 
 children shall be kept up. On the other hand, it takes 
 these children, cares for them until they are capable of 
 becoming parents, and then turns them upon the world. 
 The Chairman at the opening ceremony of the school 
 referred to said that " at the special schools work was 
 being done which would advance the intelligence of 
 the pupils, and thus benefit the entire race." It would 
 be difficult to concentrate more ignorance in fewer words 
 or in ten times as many.
 
 230 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 A Home Office Committee appointed. The almost 
 continuous protest of two months did, however, bear 
 fruit, the Home Secretary appointing a Committee to 
 consider the question of the amendment of the Inebriates 
 Acts. But the legal brutalities described are still being 
 perpetrated, and the future is being compromised. 
 The London County Council may be advised to make 
 arrangements for building a few score more schools for 
 defective children in anticipation of the growing need 
 which it is assuring. 
 
 Never again, when it is past, must we permit the 
 present abominable policy. It is for public opinion to 
 effect this, and public opinion has only to be directed 
 to the case in order to realise its nature. If the reader 
 pleases he may discount altogether the eugenic argument, 
 though I believe that in the long run that is more 
 important than any other. But if he confines his 
 attention solely to the cruelties perpetrated upon these 
 helpless women, infinitely more sinned against than 
 sinning, and especially if he considers the testimony 
 of Sir Alfred Reynolds above quoted, he will surely 
 lend his aid to put an end to a state of affairs which 
 is a disgrace to our civilisation. We talk of progress, 
 and we are indeed incalculably indebted to our ancestors, 
 but let any one consider the case of the poor child, now 
 a wrecked woman, quoted above, and let him consider what 
 it may be to be an heir of all the ages in the greatest 
 city of the world to-day. 
 
 It will be sufficiently evident that if any warrant were 
 needed for the formation of the Eugenics Education 
 Society or for the publication of the present volume, 
 it would be found only too abundantly in the outrage upon 
 decency and morality and science and the future which 
 is at present in perpetration. Further, if any warrant were 
 required for the incessant reiteration of the principle
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 231 
 
 that there is no wealth but life, it would be found in the 
 fact that this outrage is being committed in the name 
 of economy. Yet even if the sane and sober London 
 ratepayer were saved a few shillings now, as he will not 
 be, his children will have to pay pounds in the future 
 for the support of these women's children. Economy, 
 forsooth, when the rates of London benefited to the 
 extent of 559,000 out of the sale of intoxicating liquors 
 in 1905, and spent 8,000 in the maintenance of com- 
 mitted inebriates ! Need one apologise for declaring 
 again, that we require a new political economy which 
 teaches that gold is for the purchase of life, and not 
 life for the purchase of gold. For the public outrage 
 under discussion, whereby an untold measure of life, 
 present and to come, " breathrng and to be," is to 
 be destroyed and defiled for a squabble over shillings, 
 one can adequately quote only the words of Romeo 
 to the apothecary : " There is thy gold ; worse poison 
 to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome 
 world, than those poor compounds that thou may'st 
 not sell." 
 
 The last touches of art. If this protest hurts any one's 
 feelings, that cannot be helped. When the produc- 
 tion of thousands of feeble-minded children is in- 
 volved, the self-esteem of what Mr. George Meredith 
 calls the " accepted imbecile " does not matter. The 
 question is, How soon do we propose to rectify our present 
 course hi this respect ? a course which is a shame and a 
 disgrace to our age and nation, and which shall in any 
 case be placed on record in printed words, as well as in 
 young children stamped with degeneracy in order to 
 point for future ages the question "An nescis, mi fili, 
 quantilla prudentia regitur orbis ?" " With how little 
 wisdom " and, whilst perpetrating this shame, ignoring 
 the one indisputable means by which legislation can and
 
 232 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 must check drunkenness, nearly all other measures having 
 failed since Babylon was an Empire, they were quarrelling 
 about a temperance measure, so-called, which regarded 
 the question of transference of money from one pocket 
 to another as vital, and ignored the one vital question, 
 which is the question of life : a measure showing scarcely 
 a sign, either in its text or in the words of its supporters 
 or in the words of its opponents, that the question of 
 the future race had ever entered into the head of a 
 public man ; a measure which left the protection of 
 children from the public-house to the discretion of local 
 magistrates ; a measure which certainly, whatever else 
 it might effect, could not have been more carefully drawn 
 if its object were to promote that secret drinking amongst 
 women 1 which means the poisoning of the racial life 
 even before it sees the light. This, then, " mi fili," was 
 what was called practical statesmanship in the year 
 1908 of the Christian Era : and in order that no last 
 touch might be wanted from the hand of ignorance 
 and the blasphemous idolatry which worships gold to 
 the neglect of the only true god, which is life, they 
 announced just at this time the issue of a Royal Com- 
 mission to enquire and report upon the manufacture 
 and variations in the composition of whiskey. It has 
 been a public joke for years past that no one can answer 
 the question, " What is whiskey ? " Well, then, I will 
 answer the question, and we may save the labour of 
 such commissions hereafter. Whiskey is a racial poison, 
 and there is nothing else to know about it worth knowing 
 for the future. Those who will never become, or can 
 no longer become, fathers or mothers, may do as they 
 please about whiskey, so far as the ideal of eugenics or 
 race-culture is concerned. They may say, if they like, 
 
 1 This drinking by women, which means drinking by mothers present, 
 expectant or possible, is rapidly increasing in G eat Britain, though 
 almost unknown in our Colonies. It is at the heart that Empires rot.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 233 
 
 that their personal habits are their affair and concern 
 no one else. Under the influence of whiskey they may, 
 perhaps, even believe this. But for those who are to 
 be the fathers and mothers of the future, such a plea is 
 idle. The question is not solely their affair ; it is the 
 affair of the unborn, and we who champion the unborn 
 are bound to say so. 
 
 The time will come when it is recognised that there 
 are two classes of active mind in society : those who 
 worship and uphold the past, and will always sacrifice 
 the living to the dead, nay more, the unborn to the 
 dead. The ultimate fate of these is the fate of her who 
 looked backwards to the shame and destruction from 
 which she had escaped. She was turned into a pillar 
 of salt. And there are those who worship and work 
 for the future, who will, without hesitation, sacrifice 
 the interests of the dead (who are no longer interested) 
 to those of the living and the coming race nay, more, 
 who will even sacrifice the interests of a few worthless 
 living to those of many yet unborn, that they may be 
 worthy. Let the dead bury their dead ; let the worshippers 
 of the dead and the dying ask themselves whether the 
 life that is and the life that is to be do not demand their 
 homage and service. Not until some such principles as 
 these are recognised shall we rightly deal with the drink 
 problem, amongst many others, and bring to it the mental 
 and moral enlightenment which makes for life on the higher 
 plane, just as surely and just as indispensably as the 
 light of the sun creates all life whatsoever. 
 
 Mr. Balfour on legislation. Surely the moral of this 
 argument is clear. The most important, the most 
 radical, the most practicable of all temperance measures 
 is that which attacks the main source of supply of the 
 drunkard. When a Licensing Bill is brought before the 
 House of Commons, Mr. Balfour repeats the ancient piece
 
 234 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 of nonsense that you cannot make people moral by Act 
 of Parliament an assertion that any child can see to 
 be a muddle. We may let that pass for the moment, 
 but Mr. Balfour is a thinker, a student of biology, and 
 heredity in especial, and he has lately been lecturing 
 on " Decadence." Might it not have been expected that 
 such a man would take an opportunity to say what the 
 humblest serious student of the subject would have said, 
 and thereby to bring far more damaging criticism against 
 the opposing party's bill than any he hinted at ? He 
 might have said, " Your bill, even if passed, will accom- 
 plish little, or relatively little, at great cost, because you 
 have no grasp of the principles of the subject. You 
 have no idea of what drunkenness really is. If your bill 
 were worth a straw it would seek as a primary principle 
 to safeguard the race by arresting the supply of potential 
 drunkards. Your endless financial clauses deal merely 
 with the re-distribution of money, but your bill has no 
 clause that deals with the only business of governments, 
 the creation and the economy of the only real wealth, 
 which is human life." That is what the ex-Premier did 
 not say. He had plenty of passion, plenty of party- 
 feeling to give fire to his words, but so far as knowledge 
 is concerned or any conception of what alone is the 
 wealth of nations, there was nothing to choose between 
 Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith. Passion you must have 
 if you are to do anything, but not party-passion : whereas 
 if you have passion for life and for children, not only will 
 it be effective, but, notwithstanding all that the psych- 
 ologists tell us as to the vitiation of judgment by emotion, 
 it will actually teach you the supreme and eternal truths. 
 In this book hitherto little has been said as to formal 
 eugenic legislation. I believe with Etienne that it is 
 opinion which governs the world : legislation in front 
 of public opinion brings all law into contempt. But in
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 235 
 
 his first speech opposing the Licensing BUI of 1908, Mr. 
 Balfour, the author of the Licensing Bill of 1904, decried 
 legislation. " Intemperance," he said, " is a vice " : 
 and legislation can do practically nothing in dealing with 
 a vice. Plainly Mr. Balfour is ignorant of the nature 
 of intemperance, which largely depends upon transmitted 
 and inherent brain defect. He therefore lost his oppor- 
 tunity of pointing out in what fashion you can actually, 
 notwithstanding the parrots, make people sober by 
 Act of Parliament viz., by forbidding parenthood to 
 those whose children would almost certainly become 
 drunkards. We who are not politicians, much less 
 ex-Premiers, must make our own proposals then. Last 
 year's criticism of the London County Council began, I 
 believe, to educate public opinion to the necessary point. 
 In the name of race-culture and the New Patriotism, 
 in the name of morality and charity and science, we 
 must demand, obtain and carry into effect the most 
 stringent and comprehensive legislation, such as effectively 
 to forbid parenthood on the part of the chronic inebriate. 
 Ere long, the person who would have become a chronic 
 inebriate will be cared for and protected during childhood 
 and thereafter, with the same result. This solution of 
 the problem is denounced, says Dr. Archdall Reid, 
 
 "... as horrible, as Malthusian, as immoral, as impracticable. 
 . . . The alternative is more horrible and more immoral still. 
 If by any means we save the inebriates of this generation, but 
 permit them to have offspring, future generations must deal 
 with an increased number of inebriates. . . . The experience of 
 many centuries has rendered it sufficiently plain, that while 
 there is drink, there will be drunkards till the race be purged 
 of them. We have therefore no real choice between Temperance 
 Reform by the abolition of drink, and Temperance Reform by 
 the elimination of the drunkard. . . . Which is the worse ; that 
 miserable drunkards shall bear wretched children to a fate of 
 starvation and neglect and early death, or of subsequent
 
 236 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 drunkenness and crime, or that, by our deliberate act, the 
 procreation of children shall be forbidden them ? We are on 
 the horns of a dilemma from which there is no escape. . . . But 
 our time has seen the labours of Darwin. We know now the 
 great secret. Science has given us knowledge and with it 
 power We have learnt that if we labour for the individual 
 alone, we shall surely fail ; but that if we make our sacrifice 
 greater, if we labour for the race as well, we must succeed. 
 Let us then by all means seek to save the individual drunkard ; 
 with all our power let us endeavour to make and keep him 
 sober ; but let us strive also to eradicate the type ; for, as I 
 have said, if we do it not quickly and with mercy, Nature will 
 do it slowly and with infinite cruelty." 
 
 Women and children first. The noble cry on a sinking 
 ship is " women and children first." This perhaps is 
 a plea for the service of helplessness as such, though it 
 might be equally warranted as a demand for the sacrifice 
 of the present to the future. And assuredly the cry 
 for a sinking society must also be " women and children 
 first." It is well if the cry be raised when the ship of 
 state is not yet sinking, but only water-logged or alcohol- 
 logged. Temperance legislation and the agitation for 
 temperance reform are themselves in need of reform. 
 Their appalling record of failure for it is such a record 
 should help even the fanatic, one thinks, to accept 
 the introduction of the eugenic idea as a new principle of 
 life for the temperance cause. In the present state of 
 custom and opinion, the teetotaler cannot force his own 
 wise habits upon the vast majority who do not agree with 
 him. If he has an infinite amount of energy and resources, 
 let him spend as much of both as he pleases upon the 
 sort of propaganda with which we are familiar : he 
 will, by the hypothesis, still have an infinite amount 
 of both available for the cause to which the principle 
 of race-culture would direct him. If, however, his 
 energy and resources are finite, if, indeed, they are by
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 237 
 
 no means excessive in proportion to the urgent task 
 which the ideal of race-culture asks of him, then let him 
 not fritter away a moment or a penny or a breath until 
 he has achieved the process of salvage or salvation which 
 is expressed in the phrase " women and children first." 
 More accurately, perhaps, our cry must be " parents 
 and possible parents first," and this for present practical 
 purposes is equivalent to " women and children first." 
 
 It would have been well if the temperance propaganda 
 from the first, say two generations ago in Great Britain, 
 had adopted this motto. But its adoption is far more 
 urgent to-day in consequence of the fact, unfortunately 
 no longer to be questioned, that drinking amongst women, 
 the mothers of the future, is, and has been for some time, 
 steadily increasing. Children yet unborn must be pro- 
 tected from the injury which may be inflicted upon them 
 by those who will be their mothers. Yet though there 
 is more need for action in this regard than ever before, 
 and though Mr. G. R. Sims in his books The Cry of the 
 Children and The Black Stain has lately drawn wide 
 attention to the subject, we have seen that the principle 
 of women and children first, a principle derived from 
 the ideal of race-culture, and directly serving that ideal, 
 was almost wholly ignored in the Licensing Bill of 
 1908. The motto " Money, not motherhood," is a bad 
 one for the framers of a temperance measure. If ever we 
 have a temperance measure worthy the name the 
 motto of its framers will be " Motherhood, not money." 
 Such a measure will most certainly have to introduce 
 the principle of indeterminate sentences or rather, 
 indeterminate care in the treatment of the chronic 
 inebriate. There is no possibility of two opinions as to 
 the urgent and indispensable necessity of such treatment, 
 nor yet as to its scrupulous humanity both for the un- 
 fortunate victim himself or herself and for the unborn.
 
 238 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 The word " reformatory " had better be abolished from 
 official language, since it leads accredited people to write 
 to The Times such foolishness as " reformation, not mere 
 detention." 
 
 Further, the expense of dealing with the chronic 
 inebriate in this, the only humane and economical way, 
 had better fall entirely and directly upon the state. It 
 must not be possible again for a local authority, even the 
 London County Council, however ignorant or criminally 
 careless, to commit a public indecency like that already 
 recorded but the full record of which none of us will live 
 to see. 
 
 An unpunished magistrate. Yet again, in this measure 
 there must be some means of compelling such magistrates 
 as cannot be educated. At present, even when accom- 
 modation is provided, the unfortunate creature of the 
 Jane Cakebread type, when she is only just beginning 
 to enter into competition with that horrible record, and 
 when she is therefore most dangerous as regards the 
 possibility of motherhood, can be detained only by the 
 magistrate's order. Now it is very much less trouble 
 for all concerned to say " five shillings or a week " than 
 to make the necessary enquiries in such cases. Further, 
 in putting this measure of one's dreams upon the statute 
 book, we shall have to remember that the idea of pro- 
 tective care and the eugenic idea are, to say the least, 
 not native in the mind of every magistrate. In Dr. 
 Welsh Branthwaite's report for 1906, there is quoted a 
 case where a woman had been habitually drunken for 
 at least thirteen years previous to her committal to 
 a reformatory. Her known sentences included 27 
 fines, and 138 terms of imprisonment. She was feeble- 
 minded. On the termination of her reformatory sentence 
 the discharge certificate described her as " quite unfit to 
 control her own actions," and " certain to succumb to
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 239 
 
 the first temptation to drink." The woman was found 
 drunk a few hours after discharge. Said the magistrate, 
 " this case clearly proves that it is almost useless trying 
 to reform such women as this. ... I think, after all, 
 the old way is best and therefore I sentence her to one 
 month with hard labour." I refrain from suggesting a 
 suitable sentence for the magistrate : doubtless he got 
 off scot-free. 
 
 Surely we might agree, as regards this racial poison, 
 that at least parenthood and the future must be kept out 
 of its clutches. It may be, it assuredly is, a deplorable 
 thing that the woman of fifty, to take an instance, should 
 become alcoholic, but at the worst this is only the fate of 
 an individual in the main at any rate. Such principles 
 as these will some day be the cardinal principles of legis- 
 lation, and not only in regard to alcohol. The time will 
 and must come when public opinion will urge, whether 
 in the name of a New Imperialism or of common morality 
 or of self-protection, that in our attempts to deal with 
 alcohol we shall begin by removing its fingers from the 
 throat of the race : " Women and children first." 
 
 The Report of the Inebriates Committee. In January, 
 1909, the Committee which was at last appointed 
 to consider this matter made its Report. 1 I have 
 not the literary capacity to comment adequately upon 
 the political wisdom which brings in a Licensing Bill, 
 devotes vast labour and much time to it and has it 
 rejected by the House of Lords, while such a Committee 
 as this is at work. The spirit of the politician who 
 spoke of " those damned professors " still reigns over us, 
 and will certainly ruin us unless speedily deposed. How- 
 ever, here is the Report, and its recommendations are 
 earnestly to be commended to the study of all students. 
 New legislation, as it shows, is urgently required, and 
 
 1 Cd. 4438. Price 4^ d. Volume of evidence Cd. 4439. Price 25.
 
 2 4 o PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 it is pre-eminently the duty of every eugenist to hasten 
 its coming. This is not a party question, but merely a 
 national one, and will therefore be dealt with by poli- 
 ticians only under external pressure, such as produced 
 the Committee itself. The finger of public opinion must 
 apply that pressure forthwith. 
 
 The recommendations of the Committee are so ad- 
 mirable and thorough and eugenic in effect as to temper 
 one's disappointment that the Report contains no 
 definite, overt recognition of the eugenic idea. I had 
 hoped that the evidence prepared and submitted to the 
 Committee for the Eugenics Education Society would 
 suffice to ensure the recognition of the eugenic idea in 
 the Report, for the first time, we may suppose, in official 
 history. For the present we may merely note that the 
 suggestions made in preceding pages are confirmed by 
 the Committee's Report, and that the next legislation 
 bearing on the question of temperance will undoubtedly 
 have to attack the subject in this radical manner by 
 what will be in effect the sterilisation of the habitual 
 drinker of either sex and any social status. The Com- 
 mittee do not recognise that that is what their Report 
 involves, much less that that gives it its real value ; 
 but so it is, as the year 1950 will be late enough to show. 
 
 Much time and trouble were spent in preparing for the 
 Eugenics Education Society answers to many of the 
 questions submitted to it by the Committee, and the 
 Society may fairly claim, I think, that its original services 
 to this matter were well-continued. The present writer 
 also prepared for the Society a Memorandum (Minutes of 
 Evidence, p. 189), which perhaps fairly sums up, in the 
 briefest possible space, the indisputable relations between 
 alcohol and parenthood, and which may therefore be 
 reprinted here. The reader will notice an omission in 
 that nothing is said as to the effects of alcohol in injuring
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 241 
 
 the germ-cells of healthy stock of either sex. The 
 omission was made in order that nothing possibly dis- 
 putable might be included. It has already been argued 
 that on grounds both of fact and of theory there is every 
 reason to recognise in alcohol, as in syphilis and in lead, 
 a racial poison, originating racial degeneration which, 
 in accordance with generally recognised principles, shows 
 itself in the latest, highest and therefore most delicate 
 portions of the organism. 
 
 The Memorandum is as follows : 
 " It may be pointed out that the children of the 
 drunkard are on the average less capable of citizenship 
 on account of 
 
 " (a) The inheritance of nervous defect inherent in the 
 
 parent. 
 " (b) Intra-uterine alcoholic poisoning in cases where 
 
 the mother is an inebriate. 
 
 " (c) Neglect, ill-feeding, accidents, blows, etc., which 
 are responsible on the one hand for much infant 
 mortality, and combined with the possible 
 causes before mentioned, for the ultimate pro- 
 duction of adults defective both in body and 
 mind. 
 
 " It would appear, then, that the drunkard, if not 
 effectively restrained, conduces to the production of a 
 defective race, involving a grave financial burden upon 
 the sober portion of the community, to say nothing of 
 higher considerations. It therefore seems to the Eugenics 
 Education Society of extreme importance that some 
 substantial effort should be made for the reform of 
 existing drunkards, or the permanent control of the 
 irreformable. 
 
 " Scientific warrant for the foregoing propositions is 
 now to be found in no small abundance. Reference may 
 be made, for instance, to the chapter on ' Alcoholism and 
 Q
 
 242 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 Human Degeneration,' in Dr. W. C. Sullivan's recent 
 work Alcoholism (Nisbet, 1906). Dr. Sullivan quotes the 
 results of more than a dozen observers in this and other 
 countries, and special attention may be drawn to his 
 own well-known study of the history of 600 children 
 born of 120 drunken mothers. The works of Professor 
 Forel of Zurich are widely known in this connection, 
 notably Die Sexuel Frage, and The Hygiene of Nerves and 
 Mind (Translation, Murray, 1907). Parental alcoholism 
 as a true cause of epilepsy in the offspring is now generally 
 recognised. For numerous and detailed proofs from 
 many sources reference may be made to page 210 of the 
 last work named. 
 
 "It is not necessary, however, to go over the ground 
 which has doubtless been covered by the Royal Com- 
 mission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. 
 
 " The existing laws comply to only a very small and 
 almost negligible extent with the eugenic requirement. 
 They only deal with (a) the very minute proportion of 
 inebriates who can be induced to voluntarily sign away 
 their liberty, and (b) those who are also criminal or all 
 but hopeless and who have done harm already, either 
 as individuals or in becoming parents. The third group 
 of inebriates (c) not included in (a) or (b) constitutes 
 the overwhelming majority of the whole. They are 
 absolutely untouched by the present law, and further 
 powers are urgently required to deal with them. 
 
 " Such legislation would be by no means without pre- 
 cedent, and may avail itself of the experience of several 
 of our own colonies and various foreign countries. Such 
 methods as compulsory control on petition, guardianship 
 and so forth are in employment, for instance, in the 
 Australian Commonwealth and New Zealand, California, 
 Connecticut, Massachusetts, various cantons in Switzer- 
 land, Nova Scotia, etc.
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 243 
 
 "To sum up, the Society advocates the retention of the 
 present law so far as classes (a) and (b) are concerned, 
 but would most strongly urge the addition of powers to 
 deal with that great majority of inebriates whom the 
 present law does not touch." 
 
 The friends of alcohol. Those who defend the alco- 
 holic poisoning of the race may be easily classified. Some 
 few honestly stand for liberty. Like Archbishop Magee, 
 they would rather see England free than England sober, 
 not asking in what sense England drunken could be 
 called free. Some are merely irritated by the temperance 
 fanatic. Many fear that their personal comfort may be 
 interfered with. But probably the overwhelming majority 
 are concerned with their pockets. They live by this 
 cannibal trade ; by selling death and the slaughter of 
 babies, feeble-mindedness and insanity, consumption and 
 worse diseases, crime and pauperism, degradation of body 
 and mind in a thousand forms, to the present generation 
 and therefore to the future, the unconsulted party to the 
 bargain. Their motto is " Your money and your life." 
 So powerful are they that most of them are frank. They 
 form associations for their defence, and hold mass meetings 
 at which they condemn any temperance measure that is 
 before the country, " whilst ready to welcome any real 
 temperance reform." They demand adequate compensa- 
 tion: though, if they disgorged every farthing they 
 possess, and devoted themselves body and soul for the 
 rest of their lives to the human cause, they could never 
 compensate us who are alive, let alone the dead or the 
 unborn, for the human ruin on which they build their 
 success. They build their palaces before our eyes ; one 
 of the largest and newest, not far from Piccadilly Circus, 
 I often pass ; but where most see only fine stone, the 
 student of infant mortality, the lover of children, he who
 
 244 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 works and looks for the life of this world to come, sees the 
 bodies of the children of men and is tempted to recall the 
 curse of Joshua, " He shall lay the foundation thereof 
 in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up 
 the gates of it." 
 
 Alcoholic Imperialism. At least let the alcoholic 
 party refrain from calling themselves Imperialists. 
 Amongst them, for instance, is the " Imperial bard," the 
 " poet of empire," he who has appealed to the " god of 
 our fathers," and who warns us lest it shall be said that 
 " all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and 
 Tyre " : and appeals to deity 
 
 " Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget ! " 
 
 This prophet of what some may think a blasphemous 
 Imperialism gives his name to the association which 
 frankly in this matter of alcohol stands for gold as against 
 life. We are to beware lest " drunk with sight of power " 
 we boast as do the " lesser breeds " to whom the " awful 
 Hand " of God has not granted dominion : nor are we 
 to put our trust in reeking tube and iron shard. We 
 may freely caU ourselves Imperialists, however, even 
 though we should be numbered amongst those whom 
 Ruskin, himself the son of a wine merchant, called the 
 " vendors of death." One wonders whether the " Lord 
 God " exists that he can withhold his " awful Hand " at 
 such a spectacle as this. If some amongst us are to win 
 gold by the sale of this racial poison, and if it must be so, 
 let them at least be consistent, and label themselves the 
 very littlest of little Englanders, which they are. An 
 alcoholic Imperialism is of the kind which no Empire 
 can long survive. 
 
 Those of us whom such things as these make sick, and 
 who yet, with true poets like Wordsworth, are proud of
 
 RACIAL POISONS ALCOHOL 245 
 
 " the tongue that Shakespeare spake," and who with him 
 declare : 
 
 " It is not to be thought of that the Flood 
 Of British freedom, which, to the open sea 
 Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity 
 Hath flowed, 
 
 That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands 
 Should perish ; and to evil and to good 
 Be lost for ever " 
 
 those of us who know that the foundations of any 
 empire are living men and women, and that, to 
 quote Mr. Kipling, " when breeds are in the making 
 everything is worth while," may wonder what process 
 has been afoot that in three generations English poetry 
 should pass from the sonnets of Wordsworth to " Duke's 
 son, cook's son," etc. ; and may even at times, especially 
 those of us who know what alcohol costs in life, feel a 
 momentary recession of our faith that Great Britain need 
 not now be writing the last page of her great history. 
 Meanwhile, we read the controversy in Parliament and 
 the press concerning alcohol. We see the cannibal cause 
 of beer and spirits, which makes many widows and 
 orphans every day, 1 represented, with an effrontery to 
 which no parallel can ever be imagined, as the cause of 
 widows and children, and we recall the lines which 
 Wordsworth wrote rather more than a century ago : 
 
 " How piteous, then, that there should be such dearth 
 Of knowledge; that whole myriads should unite 
 To work against themselves such fell despite ; 
 Should come in frenzy and in drunken mirth, 
 Impatient to put out the only light 
 Of liberty that yet remains on earth ! " 
 
 1 A careful and detailed enquiry by the present writer, published in 
 the Westminster Gazette (Nov. 21, 1908), Daily Chronicle, and Manchester 
 Guardian, and hitherto unchallenged, showed that, on the most moderate 
 reckoning, alcohol makes 124 widows and orphans in England and 
 Wales every day, or more than 45,000 per annum.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE RACIAL POISONS : LEAD, NARCOTICS, SYPHILIS 
 
 THE term racial poisons teaches us to distinguish, amongst 
 substances known to be poisonous to the individual, 
 those which injure the germ-plasm : and amongst 
 substances poisonous to the expectant mother herself, 
 we must distinguish those which may also poison her 
 unborn child. Alcohol is pre-eminently the racial poison, 
 thus defined, and I plead for its recognition as primarily 
 a racial poison, this being immeasurably the most impor- 
 tant aspect of the whole alcohol question. Readers of 
 Professor Forel will not lightly question this assertion. 
 The total number of racial poisons is, of course, very 
 large. Amongst them must theoretically be included all 
 abortifacient drugs. There are also various poisons 
 of disease to be included in this category. Later 
 pages must be devoted to what is by far the most 
 important of these. But we may observe in passing that 
 such a disease as rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism 
 has especial significance for the student of race-culture 
 since, as he knows, its poisons circulating in the blood of 
 an expectant mother may not only injure her own heart 
 for life but may pass through the placenta and deform 
 the valves of the child's heart, with the subsequent result 
 loosely described as " congenital heart disease." The 
 conditions giving rise to rheumatic fever, then, are con- 
 ditions from which the expectant mother, even more 
 than the ordinary individual, is entitled to be protected. 
 But this is of minor importance. We may here refer, 
 however, to one or two striking cases, especially since 
 
 246
 
 RACIAL POISONS LEAD 247 
 
 they bear in some degree upon social and individual 
 duty. 
 
 The racial influence of lead. In the first place, it is 
 necessary to draw attention to a really notable racial 
 poison, viz., lead. 
 
 Says Sir Thomas Oliver, 1 " Lead destroys the repro- 
 ductive powers of both men and women, but its special 
 influence upon women during pregnancy is the cause of 
 a great destruction of human life." It may be said that 
 in a sense the production of miscarriages and still-births, 
 and also of infant mortality by lead, does not concern 
 the student of race-culture. Nevertheless some of these 
 children survive. Says Sir Thomas Oliver : "I have seen 
 both cretinism and imbecility in infants in whom, as there 
 could have been no possible influence of alcohol, and pre- 
 sumably none of syphilis, the occupation of one or other 
 parent as a lead worker must have determined the 
 imperfectly developed nervous system of the child." 
 Later he says (page 202) : " Salpetriere and Bicetre are 
 large hospitals in Paris set aside for the reception and 
 treatment of nervous diseases. The experience of the 
 physicians of these institutions is unrivalled. One of the 
 physicians, M. Roques, speaking of the degenerates found 
 in these hospitals, says that slowly induced lead poisoning 
 on the part of both parents or in one or other of them is 
 not only a cause of repeated abortions, high percentage 
 of still-births and high death-rate of infants, but is the 
 cause of convulsions, imbecility, and idiocy in many of 
 the children who survive the first year of existence. Of 
 nineteen children born to parents who were lead workers, 
 Rennert found that one child was still-born and that 
 seventeen were macrocephalic. In his studies upon 
 hereditary degeneration and idiocy, Bourneville places 
 house-painters in the unenviable first rank of the occu- 
 
 1 Diseases of Occupation, by Sir Thomas Oliver. (The New Library 
 of Medicine, 1908.)
 
 248 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 pations followed by parents of mentally weak children. 
 Out of eighty-seven cases relating to unhealthy trades, 
 fifty-one were connected with white lead in some form or 
 another, while syphilis was only responsible for nineteen." 
 This racial influence of lead is by no means gener- 
 ally recognised even by Royal Commissioners. Its 
 parallelism with the case of alcohol is striking. We 
 may note, for instance, that paternal lead-poisoning, 
 like paternal alcoholism, can cause degeneration in 
 the offspring, if not indeed death before or shortly 
 after birth. To quote Oliver again : " Taking seven 
 healthy women who were married to lead workers, and 
 in whom there was a total of thirty-two pregnancies, 
 Lewin tells us that the results were as follows : eleven 
 miscarriages, one still-birth, eight children died within 
 the first year after birth, four in the second year, five in 
 the third, and one subsequent to this, leaving only two 
 children out of thirty-two pregnancies, as likely to live 
 to manhood. In cases where women have a series of 
 miscarriages so long as their husbands worked in lead, 
 a change of industrial occupation on the part of the 
 husbands restores to the wives normal child-bearing 
 powers." According to the statistical enquiry of Rennert, 
 the malign influence of lead is exerted upon the next 
 generation, ninety-four times out of one hundred when 
 both parents have been working in lead, ninety-two 
 times when the mother alone is affected, and sixty-three 
 times when it is the father alone who has worked in lead. 
 Here, then, as in the case of alcohol, the racial poison 
 may act either through the father or through the mother, 
 but especially through the mother. The importance of 
 the demonstration as regards the father in the case of 
 both poisons is that it means a poisoning of the paternal 
 germ-cell. The facts may be commended to those 
 extremists, so much more Weismannian than Weismann,
 
 RACIAL POISONS LEAD 249 
 
 who regard the germ-cells as existing in a universe of 
 their own, wholly unrelated to the rest of existence. 
 
 Another extremely interesting parallel between these 
 two racial poisons may be noted. It is found, according 
 to Professor Oliver, that " while following a healthy 
 occupation these women, after having frequently mis- 
 carried when working in lead factories, would have two 
 or three living healthy children, but circumstances 
 necessitating the return of these women to town, and 
 resumption of work in the lead factory, they in each 
 successive pregnancy again miscarried." He then quotes 
 the following most remarkable case : " Mrs. K., aged 
 thirty-four, had four children before going into the 
 factory and two children after. She then had six mis- 
 carriages in succession, when she came under my care in 
 the Royal Infirmary, having become the victim of plumb- 
 ism and having lost the power in her arms and legs. 
 She made a slow but good recovery and did not return 
 to the lead works. In her next pregnancy she went to 
 full term and gave birth to a living child." 
 
 We see here that, as is also true in the case of alcoholism, 
 the germinal tissue itself may escape or at any rate may 
 recover from the effects of chronic poisoning of the 
 individual who is its host. The race is more resistant 
 than the individual. If, however, the poisoning con- 
 tinues whilst a new individual is being formed that is 
 to say, during pregnancy that new individual succumbs, 
 and indeed is far more gravely affected than its mother. 
 Such a pregnant woman presents three distinct living 
 objects for our study. Her own body is one : and this 
 is already developed. It has some measure of resistance 
 to the poison but is gravely affected. The embryo is the 
 second ; it is developing and because developing is 
 susceptible. It is usually killed before birth. The third 
 is the germ-plasm or the race, and this, as we have seen,
 
 250 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 may withstand the poison so well that when the poisoning 
 is discontinued healthy children may be produced from 
 it. Undoubtedly the case is the same as regards alcohol. 
 The race or germ-plasm is most resistant, the developing 
 individual is least resistant, and the adult individual 
 that is to say, the mother occupies an intermediate 
 position in this respect. 
 
 This parallelism, which has escaped previous observers, 
 may be pointed out and its remarkable interest and 
 significance suggested as a definite advance upon the 
 absurd view that the germ-plasm is incapable of 
 being poisoned. On the contrary, we know that many 
 poisons will kill it outright, so that sterility results. But 
 its high degree of resistance is a fact of great interest. 
 Doubtless Dr. Archdall Reid's acute explanation of it 
 is correct : namely, that natural selection would tend 
 to evolve a resistant germ-plasm. Dr. Reid will, I 
 think, be interested to notice in these remarkable observa- 
 tions on lead-poisoning a conspicuous illustration of this 
 resistance. 
 
 Our business here, however, is with the practical issue. 
 This fortunately is plain, nor are there the same difficulties 
 of vested interests which arise in the case of alcohol. 
 Lead-poisoning must be ended in the interests of race- 
 culture and the essential wealth of the nation, or, if it 
 is to be continued, it must at least have its clutches 
 kept clear of parenthood. 
 
 The possible racial influence of narcotics. Alcohol 
 is of course a narcotic poison, or, more precisely still, a 
 narcotic-irritant poison, but here we may briefly refer 
 to the possible racial influence of certain other poisons. 
 There is, for instance, the case, noted on p. 212, 
 of the disastrous racial consequences of the cocaine 
 habit. The matter demands only a paragraph, since 
 for the present, at least, it is of small general
 
 RACIAL POISONS NARCOTICS 251 
 
 importance, and since we must beware of going beyond 
 the facts ; but when once the idea of race-culture 
 has reached the popular and professional mind the 
 latter at present frequently feeding the pregnant woman 
 with alcohol, as we all know the whole question of 
 narcomania will have to be looked at from this aspect, 
 and the measure of danger in particular cases will then 
 be ascertained. It is probably safe to assume, however, 
 that, on the whole, alcohol will be found to stand some- 
 what apart from other narcotics, and for the reason that 
 it is not a pure narcotic but also an irritant. Thus, 
 to take the case of opium, it will probably be very difficult 
 and, one may hope, impossible to show that, shall we say, 
 opium smoking or eating has an injurious racial influence 
 where it is practised. Here we have a narcotic which 
 is not an irritant. The individual may recover perfectly 
 from its abuse, as he may often fail to recover from the 
 abuse of alcohol, since this poison leaves permanent 
 changes in the brain, and elsewhere, dependent upon the 
 fact that it is not merely a narcotic but also a local irritant. 
 The action of a pure narcotic on the germ-plasm as com- 
 pared with the action of a narcotic which is also an 
 irritant may afford a parallel. The abuse of opium by the 
 expectant mother (see p. 212) is not of the same order : 
 it means simply dosing a very small baby with opium. 
 
 Tobacco and the race. The poisonous compounds 
 absorbed from tobacco smoke are of interest in this 
 connection. The question as to the proportion of nicotine 
 included amongst them is immaterial here. It suffices 
 to know, as we do, that certain substances, doubtless 
 including some proportion of nicotine, rapidly absorbed 
 into the blood by the smoker, are poisons to the individual 
 body. The familiar fact of the acquirement of immunity 
 affects in no degree the statement as to the toxic character 
 of these substances.
 
 252 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 No one but the fanatic would venture to say that 
 any racial degeneration can be traced to tobacco-smoking. 
 It would be hard to prove the existence of any injury 
 thus inflicted upon the children of the father who is a 
 smoker, though the question of the acquirement of 
 immunity is not without relevance here. The immunising 
 substances or anti-toxins which are doubtless produced 
 in the smoker's blood may protect the germ-plasm which 
 he bears as well as his own body. 
 
 But in the case of the expectant mother there is more 
 warrant for offering an opinion even in the absence 
 hitherto of definite evidence. Apart from any opinion 
 as to the propriety of smoking by women in general, 
 there is a definite issue in the case of the expectant mother. 
 A very young child is now being exposed to the poisons 
 of tobacco smoke, and if we are right in passing laws 
 to prevent this poisoning in the case of the urchin of 
 eight years (who is really, of course, eight years and 
 nine months old), what shall we say regarding the unborn 
 child who is only eight months old ? I have observed 
 that the expectant mother may have her liking for 
 tobacco replaced by violent dislike during pregnancy. 
 
 The poison of syphilL*. Brief mention must here 
 be made of syphilis as a racial poison. Sooner or 
 later the eugenic campaign must and will face this 
 question, about which a murderous silence is now main- 
 tained. No other disease can rival syphilis in its hideous 
 influence upon parenthood and the future. But it is no 
 crime for a man to marry, infect his innocent bride and 
 their children : no crime against the laws of our little 
 lawgivers, but a heinous outrage against Nature's decrees. 
 When, at last, our laws are based on Nature's laws, 
 criminal marriages of this kind may be put an end to. 
 
 The lay reader should acquaint himself with the play 
 of Brieux, Les Avariis. The student may be referred to
 
 RACIAL POISONS SYPHILIS 253 
 
 Forel's Sexual Question, Dr. C. F. Marshall's Syphilology 
 and Venereal Diseases, and his article, " Alcohol and 
 Syphilis " in the British Journal of Inebriety, January, 
 1908. 
 
 This chapter and the last do not profess to do more 
 than indicate the field of eugenics which the term racial 
 poisons suggests. Our business in the present volume is, 
 if possible, to see eugenics whole : to treat of this new 
 science adequately is not for one author or one genera- 
 tion. It is earnestly to be hoped that the medical 
 profession will speedily take up this question of the 
 racial poisons. Already the profession is beginning to 
 become the great instrument of individual hygiene : and 
 every year will enhance the importance of this work, as 
 compared with the cure of disease. Now negative 
 eugenics is substantially racial hygiene : and the next 
 great epoch in the evolution of medicine and the medical 
 profession will be the enrolment of its knowledge and 
 influence in the cause of racial hygiene. May this book 
 do a little to hasten that day. 
 
 The two next chapters are designed to introduce that 
 aspect of our subject which may be called National 
 Eugenics, and especially with reference to decadence. 
 Here is a matter which appeals to minds of type and 
 training often very different from the typical medical 
 mind. But it is part of one's purpose to show, if possible, 
 that the historian must become a eugenist, just as the 
 physician must, for eugenics needs and claims the work 
 and help of both.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS I RACE-CULTURE AND HISTORY 1 
 
 THE reader will not expect to be insulted here with any 
 discussion of the garbage and gossip, records of scoundrels, 
 courts and courtesans, battles, murder and theft, which we 
 were taught at school, under the great name of history. 2 
 If history be, as nearly all historians have conceived 
 it, and as Gibbon denned it, " little more than the register 
 of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind," it 
 is an empty and contemptible study, save for the social 
 pathologist. But if history, without by any means 
 ignoring great men or underrating their influence, is, or 
 should be, the record of the past life of mankind, of pro- 
 gress and decadence, the rise and fall of Empires and 
 civilisations, and their mutual reactions ; if it be the 
 
 1 This chapter contains the substance of the author's Friday evening 
 discourse, entitled " Biology and History," delivered before the Royal 
 Institution of Great Britain and Ireland, February 14, 1908. The 
 substance of two lectures to the Royal Institution, entitled " Biology 
 and Progress," and delivered in February, 1907, is also included in the 
 present volume. 
 
 * " It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was 
 done, but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History (ever, 
 more or less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little 
 that were not as well unknown. Attila invasions, Walter-the-Penniless 
 Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty- Years' Wars : mere sin and misery ; not 
 work, but hindrance of work ! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly 
 green and yellow with her kind harvests ; the hand of the craftsman, the 
 mind of the thinker rested not : and so, after all, and in spite of all, we 
 have this so glorious high-domed blossoming World ; concerning which, 
 poor History may well ask, with wonder, Whence it came ? She knows 
 so little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would have 
 rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish choice, 
 is her rule and practice ; whereby that paradox, ' Happy the people whose 
 annals are vacant,' is not without its true side." CARLYLE, French 
 Revolution. 
 
 " In a little while it would come to be felt that the true history of a 
 nation was indeed not of its wars but of its households." RUSKIN, Time 
 and Tide. 
 
 254
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 255 
 
 record of the intermittent ascent of man, " sagging but 
 pertinacious " ; if this record be subject to the law of 
 causation, and therefore susceptible, in theory, at least, 
 of explanation as well as description ; if its factors are 
 at work to-day and will shape the destiny of all the to- 
 morrows ; if it be neither phantasmagoria nor panorama 
 nor pageant nor procession but process, in short, an 
 organic drama, then, indeed, it is more than worthy 
 of all the study and thought of all who ever study or ever 
 think. Especially must it appeal to us, who boast a 
 tradition greater than the world has ever yet seen, and 
 kinship with men who represent the utmost of which 
 the human spirit has yet shown itself capable, to us 
 who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but to 
 whom the names of all our Imperial predecessors, from 
 Babylon to Spain, serve as a perpetual memento mori. 
 Our special question here is whether there are inherent 
 and necessary reasons why our predecessors' fate must 
 sooner or later be ours. Must races die ? or, if we 
 are sceptical about races and more especially about the 
 so-called Anglo-Saxon race, must civilisations, states, 
 or nations die ? What comment does modern biology, 
 or the theory of organic evolution, make upon the familiar 
 words of Byron in his address to the ocean ? 
 
 " Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee 
 Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ? 
 Thy waters wasted them while they were free 
 And many a tyrant since : their shores obey 
 The stranger, slave, or savage." 
 
 And these, a few pages earlier in the same poem : 
 
 " There is the moral of all human tales ; 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
 First Freedom and then Glory when that fails, 
 Wealth, vice, corruption barbarism at last. 
 And History, with all her volumes vast, 
 Hath but one page "...
 
 256 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 Nations, races, civilisations rise, we shall all 
 agree, because to inherent virtue of breed they add 
 sound customs and laws, acquirements of discipline and 
 knowledge. But, these acquirements made, power 
 established, and crescent from year to year why do 
 they then fall ? If they can make a place for themselves, 
 how much easier should it not be to maintain it ? 
 
 Two explanations, each falsely asserting itself to be 
 rooted in biological fact, have long been cited and are 
 still cited in order to account for these supreme tragedies 
 of history. 
 
 The fallacy of racial senility. The first may claim 
 Plato and Aristotle as its founders, and consists of an 
 argument from analogy. Races may be conceived 
 in similar terms to individuals. There are many 
 resemblances between a society a " social organism," 
 to use Herbert Spencer's phrase and an individual 
 organism. Just, then, as the individual is mortal, so is 
 the race. Each has its birth, its period of youth and 
 growth, its maturity, and, finally, its decadence, senility 
 and death. So runs the common argument. 
 
 We must reply, however, that biology, so far from 
 confirming it, declares as the capital fact which contrasts 
 the individual and the race that, whilst the individual 
 is doomed to die from inherent causes, the race is naturally 
 immortal. The tendency of life is not to die but to live. 
 If individuals die, that is doubtless because, as I believe, 
 more life and fuller is thus attained than if life bodied 
 itself in immortal forms : but the germ-plasm is im- 
 mortal ; it has no inherent tendency either to degenerate 
 or to die. Species exist and flourish now which are milh'ons 
 of years older than mankind. " The individual withers, 
 the race is more and more." 
 
 It may be added that, in historical instances, civilisa- 
 tions have, on the one hand, persisted, and, on the other,
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 257 
 
 fallen, despite change, and even substitution, in the 
 races which created them : and, on the other hand, 
 the most conspicuously persistent of all races in the 
 historic epoch, the Jews, have survived one Empire 
 after another of their oppressors, but have never had 
 an Empire of their own. Thus, so far as the historian 
 is concerned, it is not races at all that die, but civilisations 
 and Empires. Plato's argument from the individual 
 to the race is therefore irrelevant, as well as untrue. 
 The fatalistic conception to which it tempts us, saying 
 that races must die, just as individuals must, and that 
 therefore it is idle to repine or oppose, is utterly un- 
 warrantable and extremely unhealthy. To take our own 
 case, despite the talk about our own racial decadence, 
 nearly all our babies still come into the world fit and strong 
 and healthy the racial poisons apart. We kill them in 
 scores of thousands every year, but this infant mortality 
 is not a sign that the race is dying, but a sign that even 
 the most splendid living material can be killed or damaged 
 if you try hard enough. The babies do not die because 
 races are mortal, but because individuals are and we 
 kill them. The babies drink poison, eat poison, and 
 breathe poison, and in due course die. The theory of 
 racial senility, inapplicable everywhere because untrue, 
 is most of all inapplicable here. If a race became sterile, 
 Plato and Aristotle would be right. There is no such 
 instance in history, apart from well-defined external, 
 not inherent, causes, as in the case of the Tasmanians. Dis- 
 missing this analogy, we may also dismiss, as based upon 
 nothing better, the idea that the great tragedies of history 
 were necessary events at all. We must look elsewhere 
 than amongst the inherent and necessary factors of 
 racial life for the causes which determine these tragedies ; 
 and we shall be entitled to assume as conceivable the 
 proposition that, notwithstanding the consistent fall of
 
 258 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 all our predecessors, the causes are not inevitable, but, 
 being external and environmental, may possibly be 
 controlled : man being not only creature but creator also. 
 
 The Lamarckian explanation of decadence. The 
 second of the two false interpretations of history in terms 
 of biology is still, and always has been, widely credited. 
 When historians have paid any attention to the breed of 
 a people as determining its destiny, they have invariably 
 added to the fallacy of racial senility this no less fecund 
 error. It is that, in consequence of success, a people 
 become idle, thoughtless, unenterprising, luxurious, and 
 that these acquired characters are transmitted to succeeding 
 generations so that, finally, there is produced a degenerate 
 people unable to bear the burden of Empire and then 
 the crash comes. The historian usually introduces the 
 idea already dismissed by saying that a " young and 
 vigorous race " invaded the Imperial territories and 
 so forth. The terms " young " and " old," applied to 
 human races, usually mean nothing at all. 
 
 The reader will recognise, of course, in this doctrine 
 of the transmission to children of characters acquired 
 by their parents, the explanation of organic evolution 
 advanced by Lamarck rather more than a century ago. 
 It is employed by historians for the explanation of both 
 the processes they record, progress and retrogression. 
 Thus they suppose that for many generations a race 
 is disciplined, and so at last there is produced a race 
 with discipline in its very bone ; or for many generations 
 a nation finds it necessary to make adventure upon the 
 sea, and so at last there is produced a generation of 
 predestined sailors with blue water in its blood. And 
 in similar terms moral and physical retrogression or 
 degeneration are explained. 
 
 Let us consider the contrast between the interpretation 
 which accepts the Lamarckian theory of the transmission
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 259 
 
 of acquired characters and that which does not. Con- 
 sider the babies of a new generation. According to 
 Lamarck, these have in their blood and brain the con- 
 sequences of the habits of their ancestors. If these 
 have been idle and luxurious, the new babies are pre- 
 destined to be idle and luxurious too. This, in short, 
 is a " dying nation." But, if acquired characters are 
 not transmitted, the new generation is, on the whole, 
 not much better, not much worse, than its predecessors 
 so far as this supposed factor of change is concerned. 
 Each generation makes a fresh start, as we see in the 
 babies of our slums to-day. It does not begin where the 
 last left off whether that means beginning at a higher 
 or at a lower level than that at which the last started : but 
 it makes a fresh start where the last did. 
 
 Now, in general, we have seen that Lamarck's theory 
 is discredited. The view of Mr. Galton is accepted, that 
 acquired characters are not transmitted, either for good 
 or for evil. If there are no other factors of racial de- 
 generation or racial advance, then races do not degenerate 
 or advance, but make a fresh start every generation : 
 and Empires rise and fall without any relation to the 
 breed of the Imperial people an incredible proposition. 
 
 The racial poisons and decadence. Certain apparent, 
 though not real, exceptions exist to the denial of 
 the Lamarckian theory of the transmission of acquired 
 characters. These exceptions are furnished by what 
 I have called the racial poisons. Alcohol, for instance, 
 is a substance, certainly poisonous in all but very 
 small doses, if not in them, which is carried by the 
 blood to every part of the body and may and does injure 
 its racial elements. Thus a true racial degeneration may 
 be caused by its means : and the possibility of this 
 is not to be ignored. Other poisons, such as those of 
 certain diseases, act similarly.
 
 260 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 We must therefore note in passing a biological factor 
 of historical importance, though hitherto entirely unre- 
 cognised by historians, and that is disease. Certain of 
 our diseases, and especially consumption or tuberculosis, 
 are at present making history by their extermination of 
 aboriginal races. Minute living creatures, which we call 
 microbes, are introduced into the new and favourable 
 environment constituted by the blood and tissues of 
 human races hitherto unacquainted with them : and the 
 consequences are known to all. But further, it has lately 
 been suggested as highly probable, by Professor Ross and 
 others, that the fall of Greece, that incalculable disaster 
 for mankind, was due to the invasion not of human foes 
 but of the humble living species which are responsible for 
 the disease miscalled malaria. The evidence for this view 
 is by no means slight, and the most recent explanation 
 of an event so abrupt and so disastrous is in all likelihood 
 the correct one. Malaria, like alcohol, produces true 
 racial degeneration, its poisons affecting those racial 
 elements of which the individual body, biologically con- 
 ceived, is merely the ephemeral host : recalling the great 
 line of Lucretius, " et quasi cursores, vital lambada tra- 
 dunt" To lame the runner is not to injure the torch 
 he bears acquired characters are not transmitted ; but 
 the racial poison makes dim the lamp ere the runner 
 passes it on. 
 
 Selection and racial change. But, leaving poisons out 
 of the question, races of men and animals do undergo 
 change, progressive and retrogressive, in consequence of 
 the action of another factor than that advanced by 
 Lamarck : and this is the factor of " natural selection " 
 or " survival of the fittest." If, of any generation, 
 individuals of a certain kind are chosen by the environ- 
 ment for survival and parenthood, the character of 
 the species will change accordingly. If what we call
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 261 
 
 the best are chosen, their goodness will be transmitted 
 in some degree, and the race will advance : if what we 
 call the worst are chosen, their badness will be transmitted 
 in some degree, and the race will degenerate. 
 
 The two kinds of progress. Now in the case of all 
 species other than man, the only possible progress is this 
 racial or inherent progress, dependent upon a choice or 
 selection of parents, and comparable in some measure, 
 as Darwin showed, with the change similarly produced 
 in the selective breeding or " artificial selection " of the 
 lower animals by man. But in the case of man himself, 
 there is a wholly different kind of progress also attainable, 
 which is not inherent or racial progress at all, but yet is 
 real progress : and which has the most important re- 
 lations to the inherent or racial progress that might be 
 achieved by the process of natural selection, or the choice 
 of parents. 
 
 It has been laid down that acquired characters are not 
 transmissible by heredity : but man has learnt and it 
 is well for him to circumvent the laws of heredity by 
 transmitting his spiritual acquirements through language 
 and art. Even before writing there was tradition, passed 
 on from mouth to mouth. As long as man was without 
 writing he advanced little faster than other creatures, we 
 may surmise : we know that he has an undistinguished past 
 of probably at least six million years : but with speech 
 and writing came the transmission of acquirements in this 
 special sense ; not that the past education of a- mother 
 will enlarge her baby's brain, but that she can teach her 
 daughter what she has learnt, and so the child can begin 
 where the parent left off, just as Lamarck wrongly 
 imagined to be the case with the young giraffe, that he 
 supposed to profit by the stretching of the parental 
 necks. It is this transmission of spiritual acquirements 
 outside the germ-plasm and in defiance of its laws that
 
 262 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 explains the amazing advance of man in the last ten or 
 twenty thousand years as compared with the almost 
 speechless ages before them. 
 
 This kind of progress is peculiar to man, J it is the gift 
 of intelligence, and we may call it traditional or acquired 
 progress. It is an utterly different thing from inherent 
 or racial progress, an improvement in the breed dependent 
 upon the happy choice of parents. And it is surely 
 evident, on a moment's consideration, that acquired 
 progress is compatible with inherent decadence. To use 
 Coleridge's image, a dwarf may see further than a giant 
 if he sits on the giant's shoulders : yet he is a dwarf and 
 the other a giant. Any schoolboy now knows more than 
 Aristotle, and that is true progress of a kind, but the 
 schoolboy may well be a dwarf compared with Aristotle, 
 and may belong to a race degenerate when compared 
 with his ; and that is inherent or racial decadence subsisting 
 with acquired or traditional progress. 
 
 Now whilst the accumulation of knowledge and art 
 and power from age to age is real progress, it evidently 
 depends for its stability and persistence upon the quality 
 of the race. 2 If the race degenerates through, say, the 
 selection of the worst for parenthood the time will come 
 when its heritage is too much for it. The pearls of the 
 ancestral art are now cast before swine, and are trampled 
 on : statues, temples, books are destroyed or burnt or 
 lost. If an Empire has been built, the degenerate race 
 cannot sustain it. There is no wealth but life : and if the 
 quality of the life fails, neither battleships nor libraries nor 
 symphonies nor anything else will save a nation. This we 
 all know, though no one who observed our legislation or 
 
 1 " Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of 
 demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms." 
 WILLIAM GODWIN. 
 
 1 See the Author's paper, " The Essential Factor of Progress," published 
 in the Monthly Review, April, 1906.
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 263 
 
 read our Parliamentary debates would suspect that it 
 had ever entered into our minds. Empires and civilisa- 
 tions, then, have fallen, despite the strength and magni- 
 tude of the superstructure, because the foundations 
 decayed : and the bigger and heavier the super- 
 structure the less could it survive their failure. If 
 the Fiji islanders degenerate, there is little con- 
 sequence : if the breed of Romans degenerate, all their 
 vast mass of acquired progress and power crushes 
 them into dramatic ruin. This image, I believe, truly 
 expresses the relation between the two wholly distinct 
 kinds of progress, which we have yet to learn to dis- 
 tinguish. Acquired progress will not compensate for 
 racial or inherent decadence. If the race is going down, 
 it will not compensate to add another colony to your 
 Empire : on the contrary, the bigger the Empire the 
 stronger must be the race : the bigger the superstructure 
 the stronger the foundations. Acquired progress is real 
 progress, but it is always dependent for its maintenance 
 upon racial or inherent progress or, at least, upon 
 racial maintenance. 
 
 Nothing fails like success. I believe, then, that 
 civilisations and Empires have succumbed because they 
 represented only acquired or traditional or educational 
 progress and this availed not at all when the races 
 that built them up began to degenerate. Now the 
 only explanation of racial degeneration yet offered 
 by the historians apart from the foolish one of racial 
 senility is the Lamarckian one of the transmission 
 of habits of luxury and idleness from parent to child : 
 an explanation which the modern study of heredity 
 empowers us to repudiate. What theory of this alleged 
 degeneration is there to offer in its place : and 
 especially what theory which explains racial degenera- 
 tion amongst not the conquered but the conquerors j
 
 264 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 amongst the successful, the Imperial, the cultured, the 
 leisured, the well-catered for in all respects, bodily and 
 mental ? Why is it that not enslaved but Imperial 
 peoples degenerate ? Why is it that nothing fails like 
 success ? 
 
 What I believe to be the true and sufficient answer has 
 been given by no historian : but the key to it is only 
 fifty years old. The reason is that no race or species, 
 vegetable or animal or human, can maintain much less 
 raise its organic level unless its best be selected for 
 parenthood. It is true of a race as of an individual that 
 it must work for its living so to speak if it is not to 
 degenerate. When the terms are too easy, down you go. 
 The tape-worm has given up even digesting for its living, 
 and we know its degeneracy all hooks and mouth. 
 Society works and hands over its predigested food to such 
 social parasites amongst ourselves. You must struggle 
 or you will degenerate even if only with rhyme or 
 counterpoint, not necessarily for bread. " Effort is the 
 law," as Ruskin said : whether for a livelihood or for 
 enjoyment. Living things are the product of the struggle 
 for existence : we are thus evolved stragglers by con- 
 stitution : and directly we cease to struggle we forfeit 
 the possibilities of our birthright. " Thou, O God," 
 said Leonardo, " hast given all good things to man at the 
 price of labour." 
 
 The case is the same with races. Directly the con- 
 ditions become too easy, selection ceases, and it is as 
 successful to be incompetent or lazy or vicious as to be 
 worthy. The hard conditions that kept weeding out the 
 unworthy are now relaxed and the fine race they made 
 goes back again. Finally there occurs the phenomenon 
 of reversed selection, when it is fitter to be bad than good, 
 cowardly than brave as when religious persecution mur- 
 ders all who are true to themselves and spares hypocrites
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 265 
 
 and apostates : or when healthy children are killed 
 in factories whilst feeble-minded children or deaf-mutes 
 are carefully tended until maturity and then sent into 
 the world to reproduce their maladies. Under reversed 
 selection such results are obtained as a breeder of race- 
 horses or plants would obtain if he went to work on 
 similar lines : the race degenerates rapidly : and if it 
 be an Imperial race its Empire comes crashing down 
 about its ears. All Empires and civilisations hitherto 
 have involved the partial or complete arrest or reversal 
 of the process of natural selection : and the racial de- 
 generation which necessarily ensued has been the cause 
 of their invariable doom. 
 
 When a primitive race is making its way by force, 
 selection is stringent. The weak, cowardly, diseased, 
 stupid are expunged from generation to generation. As 
 civilisation advances, a higher ethical level is reached : 
 all true civilisation tending to abrogate and ameliorate 
 the struggle for existence. The diseased and weakly and 
 feeble-minded are no longer left to pay the penalty 
 sternly exacted by Nature for unfitness : they are allowed 
 to survive and multiply. A successful race can ap- 
 parently afford to permit this, as a race that is fighting 
 for its existence cannot. But in reality no race can 
 afford this absolutely fatal process. 
 
 There is thus a real risk involved in the accumulation 
 of acquired, traditional or educational progress. Not 
 only does it tend to abrogate or even to reverse selection, 
 but it serves to disguise the consequences of this abroga- 
 tion. If a subhuman race degenerates the fact is evident : 
 but such a nation as our own may quite well degenerate 
 whilst the accumulation of acquired progress, transmitted 
 by education, almost complete!}/ cloaks the fact for a 
 time. We may be congratulating ourselves upon our 
 progress, upon our knowledge, our science and art, our
 
 266 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 institutions, legal and charitable, whilst all the time the 
 breed is undergoing retrogression. 
 
 We see now, I think, the explanation of the truth 
 expressed by Gibbon, " all that is human must retro- 
 grade if it do not advance." Why should this be so ? 
 Why should it not be possible merely to maintain a 
 position gained ? The answer is that the civilisation 
 which merely maintains its position is one in which 
 selection has ceased : if selection had not ceased, the 
 position would be more than maintained, there would be 
 advance. But without selection the breed will certainly 
 degenerate, the lower individuals multiplying more rapidly 
 than higher ones, in accordance with Spencer's law that 
 the higher the type of the individual the less rapidly does 
 he multiply ; and thus the race which is not advancing 
 is retrograding, as Gibbon declared. 
 
 Natural selection is the sole factor of efficient and 
 permanent progress, but the traditional or acquired pro- 
 gress which we call civilisation tends to thwart or abrogate 
 or even invert this process. I thus believe that the 
 conditions necessary for the secure ascent of any race, 
 an ascent secured in its very blood, made stable in its 
 very bone, have not yet been achieved in history : and 
 I advance this as the reason why history records no enduring 
 Empire. 
 
 Some historical instances. In the face of certain 
 facts of contemporary history I do not for a moment 
 assert that there are no other causes of Imperial failure 
 than the arrest or reversal of selection. But I do assert 
 that if this is not the cause, then, in the absence of 
 the transmission of acquired characters, the race has 
 not degenerated, and is capable of reasserting itself. 
 Only by the arrest or reversal of selection can a race 
 degenerate apart from the racial poisons. If, then, a 
 civilisation or Empire has fallen through causes altogether
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 267 
 
 non-biological through carelessness, or neglect of 
 motherhood or alteration of ideals the changes in 
 character so produced are not transmitted to the 
 children, and the race is not degenerate but merely 
 deteriorated in each generation. 
 
 For instance, we have been brought up to believe that 
 there is no possible future for Spain ; it is a dying nation, 
 a senile individual, a people of degenerates ; it has had 
 its day, which can never return. The historian explains 
 this by the false analogy between a race and an individual, 
 and by the false Lamarckian theory of heredity. To 
 these the biologist retorts with comments upon their 
 falsity, and with the conviction that since Spain, even 
 allowing for the anti-eugenic labours of the Inquisition, 
 has not been subjected to the only process which can 
 ensure real degeneration viz., the consistent and stringent 
 selection of the worst she is yet capable of regeneration. 
 Regeneration is not really the word, because there has 
 been little real degeneration, but only the successive 
 deterioration of successive and undegenerate generations. 
 
 If we took an animal species that has degenerated, such 
 as the intestinal parasites, and endeavoured to regenerate 
 them, we should begin to realise the magnitude of our 
 task. That is not the task for Spain, the biologist asserts. 
 Merely the environment must be altered, not the moun- 
 tain ranges and the rivers, Buckle notwithstanding, but 
 the really potent factors in the environment, the spiritual 
 and psychical and social factors and the deterioration 
 of each new generation, inherently undegenerate, will 
 cease. I am using these opposed terms with great care 
 and of set purpose. 
 
 And the biologist is right. The facts concerning which 
 so many historians have shaken their heads, and upon 
 which they have based so many moralisings and theories 
 of history, the facts which they have cited in support
 
 268 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 of their false analogies and misconceptions of heredity 
 due, of course, to the errors of former biology turn out 
 to be not facts at all, or, at any rate, only facts of the 
 moment. The " dying nation," as Lord Salisbury called it, 
 has occasion to alter its psychical environment. It intro- 
 duces the practice of education ; it begins to shake off the 
 yoke of ecclesiasticism ; and what are the consequences ? 
 
 The new generation is found to be potentially little 
 worse and little better than its predecessors of the six- 
 teenth century. There has been no national or racial 
 degeneration. The environment is modified for the 
 better, i.e., so as to choose the better, and Spain, as they 
 say in misleading phrase, " takes on a new lease of life." 
 The historian of the present day, knowing as a historian 
 what qualities of blood have been in the Spanish people, 
 and basing his theories upon sound biology, must con- 
 fidently assert that that blood, incapable, as he knows, 
 of degeneration by any Lamarckian process, may still 
 retain its ancient quality and will yet make history. 
 
 But the historian might well write a volume upon the 
 same thesis as applied to China and Japan. We know 
 historically what were the immediate effects in one 
 generation of a total change of environment in Japan. 
 That change has not yet occurred in China, but must 
 inevitably occur. Consider for a moment how the 
 historian, made far-sighted and clear-sighted by biology, 
 must contemplate the history of this astounding people. 
 The popular belief used to be that China illustrated the 
 so-called law of nations. It was the decadent, though 
 monstrous, relic of an ancient civilisation ; it had had 
 its day. Inevitable degeneration, which must befall all 
 peoples, had come upon it. Behold it in the paralysis 
 which precedes death ! 
 
 But in the light of the facts of Japan, the man in the 
 street and the historian alike have in this case found
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 269 
 
 modern biology superfluous in enabling them to arrive 
 at sound conclusions. They now believe what the 
 Darwinian has been compelled to believe for half a 
 century, and more strongly than ever during the latter 
 part of that period, when the doctrine of the transmission 
 of modifications was finally discredited. A clever writer 
 invents the phrase " the yellow peril," and people 
 discard their old theories. The metaphor must be 
 changed. This is not paralysis, but merely slumber. 
 Doubtless, it is an unnatural slumber ; doubtless, it is not 
 the slumber which brings renewed strength. It is suspense 
 or stupor, not recuperation ; but assuredly it is not 
 paralysis. Who now would dare to say that China has 
 had its day, even if he still clings to the old fictions about 
 Spain ? 
 
 Motherhood and history. Here, also, reference must 
 again be made to another factor of history to which, as I 
 think, the biologist must attach enormous importance, 
 but which no historian yet has adequately reckoned with. 
 Our prime assumption from beginning to end is that 
 " there is no wealth but life," or, if one may venture to 
 improve upon Ruskin, there is no wealth but mind ; 
 and in the attempt to suggest interpretations of history 
 based upon this truth, so little recked of by the historian, 
 we have considered the life in question from the point of 
 view of its determination by heredity, and its varying 
 value according to the inherent and transmissible char- 
 acters selected in each generation. But a word must be said 
 as to the other factor which, with heredity, determines 
 the character of the individual and that factor is the 
 environment. I wish merely to note the most important 
 aspect of the environment of human beings, and to observe 
 that historians hitherto have wholly ignored it ; yet its 
 influence is incalculable. I refer to motherhood.
 
 270 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 One might have the most perfect system of selection of 
 the finest and highest individuals for parenthood ; but the 
 babies whose potentialities heredity gives no more are 
 so splendid, are always, will be always, dependent upon 
 motherhood. What was the state of motherhood during 
 the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ? This factor 
 counts in history ; and always will count so long as, three 
 times in every century, the only wealth of nations is 
 reduced to dust, and is raised again from helpless infancy. 
 As to Rome we know little, whatever may be suspected : 
 but we know that here in the heart of the greatest Empire 
 in history and it is at the heart that Empires rot 
 thousands of mothers go out every day to tend dead 
 machines, whilst their own flesh and blood, with whom 
 lies the Imperial destiny, are tended anyhow or not at 
 all. It may yet be said by some enlightened historian 
 of the future that the living wealth of this people, in the 
 twentieth century, began to be eaten away by the cancer 
 which we call " married women's labour," and that, as 
 will be evident to that historian's readers, its damnation 
 was sure. To-day our historians and politicians think in 
 terms of regiments and tariffs and " Dreadnoughts " : the 
 time will come when they must think in terms of babies and 
 motherhood. We must think in such terms too if we wish 
 Great Britain to be much longer great. Meanwhile some of 
 us see the perennial slaughter of babies in this land, and the 
 deterioration of many for every one killed outright, the 
 waste of mothers' travail and tears : and we recall 
 Ruskin's words : 
 
 "Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which 
 I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among national 
 manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last 
 turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one ? Nay, in some far-away 
 and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may 
 cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations 
 among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 271 
 
 Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of 
 the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a 
 Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the 
 treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, 
 saying : 
 
 " These are MY Jewels." 
 
 Had all Roman mothers been Cornelias, would Rome 
 have fallen ? l Consider the imitation mothers no longer 
 
 1 Gibbon does not enlighten us much on such vital matters: but my 
 attention has been called to the following passage, not irrelevant here. 
 It is from the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Book xii., chap, i., written 
 about A.D. 150 Gibbon's critical epoch. I use the free translation of 
 Mr. Quintin Waddington : 
 
 " Once when I was with the philosopher Favorinus, word was 
 brought to him that the wife of one of his disciples had just given 
 birth to a son. 
 
 " ' Let us go,' said he, ' to enquire after the mother, and to congratulate 
 the father.' The latter was a noble of Senatorial rank. 
 
 " All of us who were present accompanied him to the house and 
 went in with him. Meeting the father in the hall, he embraced and 
 congratulated him, and, sitting down, enquired how his wife had come 
 through the ordeal. And when he heard that the young mother, 
 overcome with fatigue, was now sleeping, he began to b,peak more freely. 
 
 " ' Of course,' said he, ' she will suckle the child herself.' And when 
 the girl's mother said that her daughter must be spared, and nurses 
 obtained in order that the heavy strain of nursing the child should 
 not be added to what she had already gone through, ' I beg of you, 
 dear lady,' said he, ' to allow her to be a whole mother to her child. 
 Is it not against nature, and being only half a mother, to give birth 
 to a child, and then at once to send him away? To have nourished 
 with her own blood and in her own body a something that she had 
 never seen, and then to refuse it her own milk, now that she sees it 
 living, a human being, demanding a mother's care? Or are you one 
 of those who think that nature gave a woman breasts, not that she 
 might feed her children, but as pretty little hillocks to give her bust 
 a pleasing contour ? Many indeed of our present-day ladies whom 
 you are far from resembling do try to dry up and repress that sacred 
 fount of the body, the nourisher of the human race, even at the risk 
 they run from turning back and corrupting their milk, lest it should 
 take off from the charm of their beauty. In doing this they act 
 with the same folly as those, who, by the use of drugs and so 
 forth, endeavour to destroy the very embryo in their bodies, lest a 
 furrow should mar the smoothness of their skin, and they should 
 spoil their figures in becoming mothers. If the destruction of 
 a human being in its first inception, whilst it is being formed, 
 whilst it is yet coming to life, and is still in the hands of its artificer, 
 Nature, be deserving of public detestation and horror, is it not nearly 
 as bad to deprive the child of his proper and congenial nutriment to 
 which he is accustomed, now that he is perfected, is born into the 
 world, is a child ?
 
 272 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 mammalia to be found in certain classes to-day mothers 
 who should be ashamed to look any tabby-cat in the face ; 
 consider the ignorant and downtrodden mothers amongst 
 our lower classes ; and ask whether these things are not 
 making history. 
 
 The survival of the Jews. The principles the dis- 
 cussion of which has here been attempted had all 
 been set down before it suddenly seemed clear that 
 they found their warrant and application in the un- 
 exampled riddle of the persistence and success, through- 
 out more than two thousand years and a thousand 
 vicissitudes, of the Jewish people. It is true that 
 we have here no exception to the apparent law that 
 Empires are mortal, for within this period there never was 
 a Jewish Empire : the Jews were never subject to the 
 risk involved for racial or inherent progress by the posses- 
 sion of great acquired powers. But just as the fall of 
 Empires has often not been the fall of races various races 
 
 " But it makes no difference for as they say so long as the child 
 is nourished and lives, with whose milk it is done. 
 
 " Why does he who says this, since he is so dull in understanding 
 nature, think it also of no consequence in whose womb and from 
 whose blood the child is formed and fashioned ? For is there not now 
 in the breasts the same blood whitened, it is true, by agration and heat 
 which was before in the womb ? And is not the wisdom of Nature 
 to be seen in this, that as soon as the blood has done its work of 
 forming the body down below, and the time of birth has come, it 
 betakes itself to the upper parts of the body, and is ready to cherish 
 the spark of life and light by iurnishing to the new-born babe his 
 known and accustomed food ? And so it is not an idle belief, that, 
 just as the strength and character of the seed have their influence 
 in determining the likeness of the body and mind, so do the nature 
 and properties of the milk do their part in effecting the same results. 
 And this has been noticed, not in man alone, but in cattle as well. 
 For if kids are brought up on the milk of ewes, or lambs on that of 
 goats, it is agreed that the latter have stiffer wool, the former 
 softer hair. In the case of timber and fruit trees, too, the qualities of 
 the water and soil from which they draw their nourishment have more 
 influence in stunting or augmenting their growth than those of the 
 seed which is sewn, and often you may see a vigorous and healthy 
 tree when transplanted into another place perish owing to the poverty 
 of the soil. 
 
 " Is it then a reasonable thing to corrupt the fine qualities of the 
 new-born man, well endowed as to both body and mind so far as
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 273 
 
 having at various times carried on the same Imperial 
 tradition so the persistence of the Jews, as contrasted 
 with the impermanence of Empires, has been the per- 
 sistence of a race. I believe that the principles already 
 laid down offer us an adequate explanation of this unique 
 case : and further, that if we had begun with the case 
 of the Jews, endeavouring, by the investigation of their 
 case, to explain the contrasted case of other races and of all 
 Empires hitherto, we should have arrived at the same 
 principles. 
 
 It has been asserted that that race or people decays in 
 which selection ceases or is reversed ; that in the absence 
 of selection of the worthy for parenthood, no species, 
 vegetable, animal or human, can prosper much less pro- 
 gress. Now the Jews, the one human race of which we 
 know assuredly that it has persisted unimpaired, have 
 been the most continuously and stringently selected of 
 
 parentage is concerned, with the unsuitable nourishment of degenerate 
 and foreign milk ? Especially is this the case, if she whom you get 
 to supply the milk is a slave or of servile estate, and as is very often 
 the case of a foreign and barbarous race, if she is dishonest, ugly, 
 unchaste, or addicted to drink. For generally any woman who happens 
 to have milk is called in, without further enquiry as to her suitability 
 in other respects. Shall we allow this babe of ours to be tainted by 
 pernicious contagion, and to draw life into his body and mind from 
 a body and mind debased ? 
 
 " This is the reason why we are so often surprised that the children 
 of chaste mothers resemble their parents neither in body nor character. 
 
 "... And besides these considerations, who can afford to ignore 
 or belittle the fact that those who desert their offspring and send 
 them away from themselves, and make them over to others to nurse, 
 cut, or at least loosen and weaken that chain and connection of mind 
 and affection by which Nature attaches children to their parents. For 
 when the child, sent elsewhere, is away from sight, the vigour of 
 maternal solicitude little by little dies away, and the call of motherly 
 instinct grows silent, and forgetfulness of a child sent away to nurse 
 is not much less complete than that of one lost by death. 
 
 " A child's thoughts and the love he is ever ready to give, are occupied, 
 moreover, with her alone from whom he derives his food, and 
 soon he has neither feeling nor affection for the mother who bore him. 
 The foundations of the filial feelings with which we are born being 
 thus sapped and undermined, whatever affection children thus brought 
 up may seem to have for father and mother, for the most part is not 
 natural love, but the result of social convention."
 
 274 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 any race, I suppose, that can be named. Every measure 
 of persecution and repression practised against them by 
 the people amongst whom they have lived, has directly 
 tended towards the very end which those people least 
 desired to compass. Other peoples found themselves 
 prosperous through the efforts of their fathers ; the 
 struggle for existence abated ; it was, so to say, as fit to be 
 unfit as to be fit with the inevitable result. But this has 
 never been the case of the Jews. They have always had 
 to struggle for life intensely : and their unexampled 
 struggle has been a great source of their unexampled 
 strength. The Jew who was a weakling or a fool had no 
 chance at all ; the weaklings and the fools being weeded 
 out, intensity and strength of mind became the common 
 heritage of this amazing people. 
 
 Secondly, there was everything to favour motherhood. 
 Here religious precept and ethical tradition joined with 
 stern necessity to the same end the end which always 
 meant a new and strong beginning for the next generation. 
 Even to-day all observers are agreed that infant mortality 
 is at a minimum amongst the Jews ; their children are 
 superior in height and weight and chest measurement to 
 Gentile children brought up amidst poverty far less 
 intense in our own great cities ; in a better material 
 environment, but a far inferior maternal environment. 
 The Jewish mother is the mother of children innately 
 superior, on the average, since they are the fruit of such 
 long ages of stringent parental selection, and she 
 makes more of them because she fails to nurse them 
 only in the rarest cases, when she has no choice, and 
 because in every detail her maternal care is incomparably 
 superior to that of her Gentile sister. Given a high 
 standard of motherhood in a highly selected race, what 
 other result than that we daily witness and envy can we 
 expect ?
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 275 
 
 Thirdly, the Jews do not abuse alcohol, and thus avoid 
 one of the few causes of true racial degeneration apart from 
 selection of the worst for parenthood. 
 
 If these principles are valid, it is evident that our 
 redemption from the fate of all our predecessors is to be 
 found only in Eugenics the selection of the best for 
 parenthood. In his address to the Sociological Society 
 in 1904, in which he defined this term, Mr. Galton named 
 as one of the duties before the Society, " historical enquiry 
 into the rates with which the various classes of society 
 (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed 
 to the population at various times, in ancient and modern 
 nations." " There is strong reason for believing," he 
 continued, " that national rise and decline is closely 
 connected with this influence." l 
 
 What is a good environment ? Using the word 
 environment in its widest sense, including, for instance, 
 public opinion and its use in any sense less wide is 
 always erroneous and misleading we may say that it 
 is our business to provide the environment which selects 
 the best for parenthood and discourages the parent- 
 hood of the worst say the deaf and dumb, the feeble- 
 minded, the insane, the epileptic, the inebriate, those 
 afflicted wth hereditary disease of other kinds, and so 
 forth. Our principles should enable us, also, I think, to 
 define what we mean by a good environment. Com- 
 prehensive and indiscriminate charity means a good 
 environment for many in a sense, but it may also mean 
 the selection of the worst for parenthood e.g., the feeble- 
 minded. This "good" environment then means the 
 degeneration of the race. We must therefore appraise 
 environment in terms of its selective action. A good 
 environment is that which selects the good, and the best 
 
 1 Cf. the similar dicta of Darwin and Pearson (p. 279).
 
 276 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 environment is that which selects the best ; dis- 
 covers them, makes the utmost of them, and confers 
 upon them the supreme privilege and duty of parenthood. 
 That and that alone is the best environment, and all 
 other moral judgments upon environment are fallacious 
 and will be disastrous. 
 
 The necessary conclusion. National Eugenics teaches 
 that the first duty of all governments and patriots 
 and good citizens is, to quote Ruskin again, " the pro- 
 duction and recognition of human worth, the detection 
 and extinction of human un worthiness." The idea is 
 not new-fangled, but was clearly laid down by Plato, 
 and by Theognis two centuries before him. 
 
 Eugenics is a project of the most elevated and provident 
 morality, aiming at no object less sublime than the ennoble- 
 ment of mankind ; and if one may suggest its motto it 
 would be, The products of progress are not mechanisms but 
 men. It is based upon the principle of the selection or 
 choice of the superior for parenthood, which has been 
 the essential factor of all progress in the world of life, but 
 which all civilisations have tended in some degree to 
 abrogate or even to reverse, as when the feeble-minded 
 child is cared for till maturity and sent out into the world 
 to produce its like, whilst healthy children are daily 
 destroyed by ignorance and neglect. 
 
 " Through Nature only can we ascend " and the merit 
 of the eugenic proposal is that it is built upon " the solid 
 ground of nature." 
 
 To the economist, it declares that the culture of the racial 
 life is the vital industry of any people. 
 
 It is to work through marriage, an institution more 
 ancient than mankind, and supremely valuable in 
 its services to childhood with which lies all human 
 destiny.
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 277 
 
 Eugenics appeals to the individual, asking for a little im- 
 agination, which will make us realise that the future will one 
 day be the present and that to serve it is to serve no fiction 
 or phantom, but a reality as real as the present generation. 
 
 It teaches the responsibility of the noblest and most 
 sacred of all professions, which is parenthood, and it makes 
 a sober and dignified claim to be regarded as a constituent 
 of the religion of the future. 
 
 It goes to the root of the matter ; where the well-mean- 
 ing, but short-sighted, pin their faith on the hospitals, the 
 eugenist seeks to brand the transmission of hereditary 
 disease as a crime, and thus literally to extirpate it 
 altogether. 
 
 That its methods are practicable is proved by the fact 
 that it is practised as by the northern society for the 
 " permanent care of the feeble-minded," which serves 
 the present and the future simultaneously and reconciles 
 the law of love with the earlier law of nature which 
 asserts that parenthood must be denied to the unworthy 
 without blame or malice, but without exception. It 
 suggests the principles of a New Imperialism, and offers, 
 I submit, our sole chance of escape from the fate which 
 has overtaken all previous civilisations. It honours men 
 and women by declaring that human parenthood is crowned 
 with responsibility to the unborn, and to all time coming, 
 and that man, the animal in body, is also a self-conscious 
 being, " looking before and after," who is human because 
 he is responsible, and to whom the laws of nature have 
 been revealed, not to satisfy an intellectual curiosity, but 
 for the highest end conceivable the elevation of his race. 
 
 Let me quote a fine passage from Wordsworth's 
 " Prelude " : 
 
 "With settling judgments now of what would last 
 And what would disappear; prepared to find 
 Presumption, folly, madness, in the men
 
 278 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 Who thrust themselves upon the passive world 
 
 As Rulers of the world ; to see in these, 
 
 Even when the public welfare is their aim, 
 
 Plans without thought, or built on theories 
 
 Vague and unsound ; and having brought the books 
 
 Of modern statists to their proper test, 
 
 Life, human life, with all its sacred claims 
 
 Of sex and age, and heaven-descended rights, 
 
 Mortal, or those beyond the reach of death ; 
 
 And having thus discerned how dire a thing 
 
 Is worshipped in that idol proudly named 
 
 'The Wealth of Nations'; where alone that wealth 
 
 Is lodged, and how increased ; and having gained 
 
 A more judicious knowledge of the worth 
 
 And dignity of individual man, 
 
 No composition of the brain, but man 
 
 Of whom we read, the man whom we behold 
 
 With our own eyes I could not but enquire 
 
 Not with less interest than heretofore, 
 
 But greater, though in spirit more subdued 
 
 Why is this glorious creature to be found 
 
 One only in ten thousand ? What one is, 
 
 Why may not millions be ? What bars are thrown 
 
 By Nature in the way of such a hope ? " 
 
 Consider how far we have come, the base degrees^by 
 which we did ascend, and answer with Shakespeare, 
 " There are many events in the womb of time which will 
 be delivered."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS : MR. BALFOUR ON DECADENCE 
 
 (1) " If the various checks specified in the two last paragraphs, 
 and perhaps others as yet unknown, do not prevent the reckless, 
 the vicious, and otherwise inferior members of society from in- 
 creasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men, the 
 nation will retrograde, as has too often occurred in the history 
 of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable 
 rule. It is very difficult to say why one civilised nation rises, 
 becomes more powerful, and spreads more widely, than another ; 
 or why the same nation progresses more quickly at one time 
 than at another. We can only say that it depends on an in- 
 crease in the actual number of the population, on the number 
 of the men endowed with high intellectual and moral faculties, 
 as well as on their standard of excellence. Corporeal structure 
 appears to have little influence, except so far as vigour of body 
 leads to vigour of mind." DARWIN, The Descent of Man, 1871. 
 
 (2) Referring to " the rates with which the various classes of 
 society (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed 
 to the population at various times, in ancient and modern 
 nations," Mr. Francis Galton said " there is strong reason for 
 believing that national rise and decline is closely connected 
 with this influence." GALTON, Sociological Papers, 1904, p. 47. 
 
 (3) "The inexplicable decline and fall of nations following 
 from no apparent external cause receives instant light from the 
 relative fertility of the fitter and unfitter elements combined with 
 what we now know of the laws of inheritance." 1 PEARSON, 1904. 
 
 (4) To the question, What were the causes of the fall of Rome ? 
 Mr. Balfour replies, " I feel disposed to answer, Decadence." * 
 BALFOUR, 1908. 
 
 1 National Life from the Standpoint of Science, p. 99. 
 
 * "Decadence," Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, by the Rt. Hon. 
 A. J. Balfour, M.P., delivered at Newnham College, January 25, 1908. 
 (Cambridge University Press.) 
 
 279
 
 280 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 THE lecture of which the previous chapter is the written 
 form was prepared and delivered before I had an opportun- 
 ity of seeing Mr. A. J. Balfour's lecture on " Decadence " 
 delivered a few days before. That has since been printed, 
 and is well worthy of our attention. In Mr. Balfour 
 we have a representative political thinker, an experi- 
 mental statesman and, furthermore, a former President 
 of the British Association, deeply interested in, and 
 favourably disposed towards, scientific enquiry and 
 the scientific method. Further, this lecture has been 
 widely noticed, though all the criticisms I have seen 
 seem to me to miss the point. No apology, then, is 
 necessary for a special discussion of this most suggestive 
 lecture in direct relation with the foregoing theory of its 
 subject. 
 
 Political and national decadence is Mr. Balfour's theme, 
 and we note first that here is a contemporary thinker, 
 not unread in recent biology, including the work of 
 Weismann, who is prepared to make use of the idea 
 that societies are inherently mortal, as individuals are. 
 One wonders when we shall be rid of this pernicious 
 instance of the argument from analogy, which is already 
 much more than two thousand years old. 
 
 Next it may be noticed that, though Mr. Balfour has 
 deliberately discussed the idea of natural selection, he has 
 been led wholly astray from its true relation to the question 
 under discussion by reason of falling into the common 
 error which Sir E. Ray Lankester has recently exposed, 
 as Huxley did several decades ago. Mr. Balfour conceives 
 natural selection to issue from the struggle for existence 
 between species or societies. It has already been pointed 
 out that the all-important natural selection is not between 
 species or societies but within them. The struggle for 
 existence is fought out mainly between the immature indi- 
 viduals of any species or society. Its issue determines
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 281 
 
 the survivors for parenthood and the future. Mr. Balfour 
 must have read Professor Ray Lankester's recent Romanes 
 Lecture in which all this is so clearly shown, but he has 
 unfortunately retained the popular conception of natural 
 selection as acting between species or societies, and has 
 in consequence failed, I will not say to find, but even to 
 discuss in any adequate measure, the theory of racial and 
 national decadence, defined in the preceding chapter. 
 He merely discusses " competition between groups of 
 communities," and rightly finds it inadequate to account 
 for the great tragedies of history. 
 
 There follows a passage which may be heartily assented 
 to, on the very grounds on which the entire lecture may be 
 welcomed, namely, that it suggests the inadequacy of the 
 common explanations of national decadence advanced by 
 historians. Says Mr. Balfour : 
 
 "It is in vain that historians enumerate the public calamities 
 which preceded, and no doubt contributed to, the final catastrophe. 
 Civil dissensions, military disasters, pestilences, famines, tyrants, 
 tax-gatherers, growing burdens, and waning wealth the gloomy 
 catalogue is unrolled before our eyes, yet somehow it does not in 
 all cases wholly satisfy us : we feel that some of these diseases are 
 of a kind which a vigorous body politic should easily be able to 
 survive, that others are secondary symptons of some obscurer 
 malady, and that in neither case do they supply us with the full 
 explanation of which we are in search." 
 
 One must heartily thank the author for the abundant 
 demonstration which follows, well warranting our feeling 
 that these explanations do not suffice nor yet, in the case 
 of Rome, diminution of population, nor the " brutalities 
 of the gladiatorial shows," nor " the gratuitous distribu- 
 tion of bread to the urban mobs," nor yet slavery, lately 
 declared, by Mr. W. R. Paterson, in his Nemesis of Nations, 
 to be the cause of the fall of empires. As Mr. Balfour says, 
 " Who can believe that tliis immemorial custom could, 
 in its decline, destroy the civilisation which, in its vigour,
 
 282 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 it had helped to create ? " It would have been more 
 important, perhaps, to consider, as Mr. Balfour does not, 
 the latest view, advanced by Professor Ronald Ross, that 
 the incursion of malaria may have had something to do 
 with the fall of Rome. 
 
 Mr. Balfour's theory decadence the cause of 
 decadence. Mr. Balfour then falls back upon " deca- 
 dence " as the explanation, and to the critic of this 
 elegant hypothesis that decadence is due to decadence, 
 replies that it is something to recognise the possibility of 
 " subtle changes in the social tissues of old communities." 
 One regrets all the more that he should not have considered 
 anti-eugenic practices as possibly accounting for these 
 subtle changes. One must, however, quote the excellent 
 passage in which Mr. Balfour supports his use of the 
 word decadence, though one utterly disagrees with 
 the suggestion that the term " old age " might be its 
 equivalent. He says : " The facile generalisations with 
 which we so often season the study of dry historic fact ; 
 the habits of political discussion which induce us to 
 catalogue for purposes of debate the outward signs that 
 distinguish (as we are prone to think) the standing from 
 the falling state, hide the obscurer, but more potent, 
 forces which silently prepare the fate of empires." 
 
 We may note with interest (and surely with surprise 
 when we consider Japan and Spain and the China of 
 to-morrow), Mr. Balfour's rejection of the doctrine that 
 " arrested progress, and even decadence, may be but the 
 prelude to a new period of vigorous growth. So that 
 even those races or nations which seem frozen into eternal 
 immobility may base upon experience their hopes of an 
 awakening spring." It is, I fancy, Mr. Balfour's fondness 
 for the Platonic idea of senility in the race as in the 
 individual, that leads him to question what can surely 
 be no longer denied. Thus a little later we find him
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 283 
 
 saying, " // civilisations wear out, and races become effete, 
 why should we expect to progress indefinitely, why for 
 us alone is the doom of man to be reversed ? " 
 
 Nowhere in this lecture is there any recognition of 
 what, I confess, seems to me to be an obvious and neces- 
 sary truth, the distinction between the two kinds of 
 progress racial progress due to the choice of the best 
 for parenthood, and acquired or traditional progress. 
 It may be suggested that no one can usefully discuss 
 decadence or progress until he has seen and perceived 
 this absolutely cardinal distinction, suggested in my 
 Royal Institution lectures in February, 1907, as one of 
 the great lessons taught by the study of biology to the 
 student of progress. 
 
 Mr. Balfour does indeed avoid all those false solutions 
 which depend upon a Lamarckian belief in the trans- 
 mission of acquired characters. This, however, instead 
 of leading him to insist upon the Darwinian contribution 
 to the study of decadence the idea of selection causes 
 him to regard the racial question as unimportant. He 
 notes one or two of the fashions in which the quality of 
 a race may be modified, thus influencing national character, 
 and then dismisses this question (wherein, as I cannot 
 doubt, everything material lies) with the remark, " But 
 such changes are not likely, I suppose, to be considerable, 
 except perhaps those due to the mixture of races and that 
 only in new countries." Reaching page 45, the reader 
 finds himself confident that now at length the writer 
 has put his finger on the crux of the problem. Yet 
 that is how he dismisses it ; adding, indeed, to make it 
 quite clear, the following words : " The flexible element 
 in any society, that which is susceptible of progress or 
 decadence, must therefore be looked for rather in the 
 physical and psychical conditions affecting the life of 
 its component units, than in their inherited constitution."
 
 284 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 Not a word as to cessation of selection ! This omission, 
 which is, indeed, the omission of the fact of decadence, 
 mainly depends, one fancies, upon that erroneous 
 conception of natural selection as acting between species 
 and societies rather than within them, which for so 
 many decades the biologist has been at pains to correct. 
 One would indeed have thought that, for a scholar and 
 student like Mr. Balfour, Wordsworth's great sonnet 
 would have sufficed to set up a train of thought which, 
 fusing with ordinary biological principles, would have 
 led him to what I believe to be the truth. Let us for a 
 moment turn to its consideration : 
 
 " When I have borne in memory what has tamed 
 Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart 
 When men change swords for ledgers. . . ." 
 
 Should not this be enough to suggest to us the real 
 meaning of the consequence which has followed when men 
 changed swords for ledgers, and which even those who 
 hate war as a vile blasphemy against life must recognise ? 
 It is that, as we have seen, when a nation is making 
 its way there is selection of the fittest by the stern 
 arbitrament of war, in which the battle is to the individu- 
 ally strong and fleet and brave and quick-witted. Later, 
 " when men change swords for ledgers," selection ceases ; 
 and that is why nothing fails like success. Yet later 
 still, as France should know, selection by war must take 
 the form of reversed selection, the flower of a nation's 
 youth being immolated on the battle-field, whilst its 
 future is determined by the weak and small and diseased, 
 whom the recruiting sergeant rejects. " You are not 
 good enough to be a soldier," he says ; " stay at home 
 and be a father." That was what Napoleon did for 
 France. 
 
 But to return for the relations of war to eugenics 
 would really demand a volume it may be noted that,
 
 NATIONAL EUGENICS 285 
 
 though rejecting the Lamarckian theory the theory on 
 which nothing should succeed like success Mr. Balfour 
 nowhere emphasises the amazing paradox of history that 
 nothing fails like success. If we consider this fact with 
 the idea of natural selection in our minds (not between 
 societies but within them), we cannot fail to perceive 
 that success involves failure because it involves failure 
 of selection, and therefore indiscriminate survival ; or 
 indeed, survival of the worst. 
 
 Politics and domestics. It is, perhaps, a noteworthy 
 comment upon what may be called the political state of 
 mind, that even when the idea of natural selection has 
 entered it, the bias is towards associating it with inter- 
 national and not with intra-national or domestic politics. 
 The time will come, however, when the politician or 
 shall we say the statesman ? realises that it is the 
 domestic policy, it is the internal struggle for survival 
 within a society, that conditions and fore-ordains all 
 international politics. The history of nations is deter- 
 mined not on the battlefield but in the nursery, and 
 the battalions which give lasting victory are battalions 
 of babies. The politics of the future will be domestics. 
 
 Having rejected so many solutions of his problem, 
 and having ignored the solution which is advanced in 
 this volume, Mr. Balfour is reduced to such desperate 
 resorts as phrases like this : " The point at which the 
 energy of advance is exhausted " a mere meaningless 
 phrase ; and even such an explanation as that through 
 " mere weariness of spirit the community resigns itself 
 to ... stagnation." One is inclined to throw up one's 
 hands and ask Do you, then, who deny the Lamarckian 
 theory, suppose that the fresh children come into the 
 world with this " mere weariness of spirit " ? Has this 
 been observed in children ? Is there anything con- 
 ceivable that has been less observed in children, in all
 
 286 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 times and all places ? And if that be so, what kind of 
 explanation of decadence is this ? 
 
 Science and industry. Lastly, in a series of fine 
 passages, Mr. Balfour offers us some hope in the help 
 of science. Politics, says our ex-Premier, too often 
 means " the barren exchange of one set of tyrants or 
 jobbers, for another" : a Daniel come to judgment. We 
 owe the modern spirit and modern progress, he tells us, 
 neither to politicians nor to political institutions, nor 
 to theologians nor to philosophers, but to science, which, 
 he well says, " is the great instrument of social change, 
 all the greater because its object is not change but know- 
 ledge ; and its silent appropriation of this dominant 
 function, amid the din of political and religious strife, 
 is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked 
 the development of modern civilisation." 
 
 And our cause of hope is " a social force, new in magni- 
 tude if not in kind . . . the modern alliance between pure 
 science and industry." To this I answer a thousand 
 times yes, but I must define the kind of industry. It is 
 the culture of the racial life which is the vital industry 
 of any nation, and which Mr. Balfour has not even dis- 
 tantly alluded to. I agree that our hope for the future 
 is to be found in science : that, as has been said already, 
 perchance our acquired or traditional progress in know- 
 edge has now reached the point at which we have sufficient 
 to reveal to us the necessity of racial progress and the 
 means by which that may be effected. 
 
 " Science and industry," yes, indeed ! But the in- 
 dustry is to be the making not of machines but men. 
 The products of progress are not mechanisms but men, 
 and one may now ask, What is the industry whose products 
 can be named in the same breath with the men and 
 women who shall yet be produced by the supreme industry 
 of race-culture ?
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE 
 " The best is yet to be." 
 
 IN its form of what we have called negative eugenics, 
 the practice of our principle would assuredly reduce 
 to an incalculable extent the amount of human defect, 
 mental and physical, which each generation now exhibits. 
 This alone, as has been said, would be far more than 
 sufficient to justify us. A world without hereditary 
 disease of mind and body, and its grave social con- 
 sequences, would alone warrant the hint of Ruskin 
 that posterity may some day look back upon us 
 with " incredulous disdain." Yet, assuming that this 
 could be accomplished, as it will be accomplished, what 
 more is to be hoped for ? Must race-culture cease 
 merely when it has raised the average of the community 
 by reducing to a minimum the proportion of those who 
 are thus grossly defective in mind or body ? Such 
 disease apart, are we to be content, must we be content, 
 with the present level of mediocrity in respect of intelli- 
 gence and temper and moral sentiment ? Can we 
 anticipate a London in which the present ratio of musical 
 comedy to great opera will be reversed, in which the 
 works of Mr. George Meredith will sell in hundreds of 
 thousands, whilst some of our popular novelists will 
 have to find other means of earning a living ? Can 
 we make for a critical democracy which no political 
 party can fool, and which will choose its best to govern 
 it ? Yet more, can we undertake, now or hereafter, to 
 provide every generation with its own Shakespeare 
 
 287
 
 288 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 and Beethoven and Tintoretto and Newton ? What, 
 in a word, is the promise of positive eugenics ? It is 
 to this aspect of the question that Mr. Galton has mainly 
 directed himself. Indeed he was led to formulate the 
 principles and ideals of the new science by his study of 
 hereditary genius some four decades ago. Let us now 
 attempt to answer some of these questions. 
 
 The production of genius. And first as to the produc- 
 tion of genius. It is this, perhaps, that has been the 
 main butt of the jesters who pass for philosophers with 
 some of us to-day. It may be said at once that neither 
 Mr. Galton nor any .other responsible person has ever 
 asserted that we can produce genius at will. The diffi- 
 culties in the way of such a project at present are 
 almost innumerable. One or two may be cited. 
 
 In the first place, there is the cardinal but by no 
 means universal difficulty that the genius is too com- 
 monly so occupied with the development and expansion 
 of his own individuality that he has little time or energy 
 for the purposes of the race. This, of course, is an example 
 of Spencer's great generalisation as to the antagonism 
 or inverse ratio between individuation and genesis. 
 
 Again, there is the generalisation of heredity formulated 
 by Mr. Galton, and named by him the law of regression 
 towards mediocrity. It asserts that the children of those 
 who are above or below the mean of a race, tend to return 
 towards that mean. The children of the born criminal 
 will be probably somewhat less criminal in tendency than 
 he, though more criminal than the average citizen. The 
 children of the man of genius, if he has any, will probably 
 be nearer mediocrity than he, though on the average 
 possessing greater talent than the average citizen. It is 
 thus not in the nature of sheer genius to reproduce on its 
 own level. It is only the critics who are wholly ignorant 
 of the elementary facts of heredity that attribute to the
 
 PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE 289 
 
 eugenist an expectation of which no one knows the 
 absurdity so well as he does. 
 
 On the other hand, it is impossible to question that 
 the hereditary transmission of genius or great talent 
 does occur. One may cite at random such cases as 
 that of the Bach family, Thomas and Matthew Arnold, 
 James and John Stuart Mill : and the reader who is 
 inclined to believe that there is no law or likelihood in 
 this matter, must certainly make himself acquainted with 
 Mr. Galton's Hereditary Genius, and with such a paper 
 as that which he printed in Sociological Papers, 1904, 
 furnishing an " index to achievements of near kinsfolk 
 of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society." There 
 is, of course, the obvious fallacy involved in the possi- 
 bility that not heredity but environment was really 
 responsible for many of these cases. It must have 
 been a great thing to have such a father as James Mill. 
 But it would be equally idle to imagine that the evidence 
 can be dismissed with this criticism. A Matthew Arnold, 
 a John Stuart Mill, could not be manufactured out of 
 any chance material by an ideal education continued 
 for a thousand years. 
 
 The transmission of genius. One single instance of 
 the transmission of genius or great talent in a family 
 may be cited. We shall take the family which pro- 
 duced Charles Darwin, the discoverer of the fundamental 
 principle of eugenics, and his first cousin, Francis Galton. 
 Darwin's grandfather was Erasmus Darwin, physician, 
 poet and philosopher, and independent expounder of 
 the doctrine of organic evolution. Darwin's father was 
 a distinguished physician, described by his son as " the 
 wisest man I ever knew." Darwin's maternal grand- 
 father was Josiah Wedgwood, the famous founder of 
 the pottery works. Amongst his first cousins is Mr. 
 Francis Galton. He has five living sons, each a man of 
 T
 
 290 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 great distinction, including Mr. Francis Darwin and Sir 
 George Darwin, both of them original thinkers, honoured 
 by the presidency of the British Association. No one 
 will put such a case as this down to pure chance or to 
 the influence of environment alone. This is evidently, 
 like many others, a greatly distinguished stock. The 
 worth of such families to a nation is wholly beyond any 
 one's powers of estimation. What if Erasmus Darwin 
 had never married ! 
 
 No student of human heredity can doubt that, however 
 limited our immediate hopes, facts such as those alluded 
 to furnish promise of great things for the future. But 
 let us turn now from genius to what we usually call talent. 
 
 The production of talent. There can be no question 
 that amongst the promises of race-culture is the possi- 
 bility of breeding such things as talent and the mental 
 energy upon which talent so largely depends. In his 
 Inquiries into Human Faculty, Mr. Galton shows the 
 remarkable extent to which energy or the capacity for 
 labour underlies intellectual achievement. He says, 
 of energy 
 
 " It is consistent with all the robust virtues, and makes a large 
 practice of them possible. It is the measure of fulness of life ; the 
 more energy the more abundance of it ; no energy at all is 
 death ; idiots are feeble and listless. In the enquiries I made 
 on the antecedents of men of science no points came out more 
 strongly than that the leaders of scientific thought were generally 
 gifted with remarkable energy, and that they had inherited the 
 gift of it from their parents and grandparents. I have since found 
 the same to be the case in other careers. ... It may be objected 
 that if the race were too healthy and energetic there would be 
 insufficient call for the exercise of the pitying and self-denying 
 virtues, and the character of men would grow harder in 
 consequence. But it does not seem reasonable to preserve sickly 
 breeds for the sole purpose of tending them, as the breed of foxes 
 15 preserved solely for sport and its attendant advantages. There 
 is little fear that misery will ever cease from the land, or that the
 
 PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE 291 
 
 compassionate will fail to find objects for their compassion ; but 
 at present the supply vastly exceeds the demand: the land is 
 over-stocked and over-burdened with the listless and the incapable. 
 In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality 
 to favour ; it is, as we have seen, the basis of living action, and it 
 is eminently transmissible by descent." 
 
 Need it be pointed out that any political system which 
 ceases to favour or actively disfavours energy, making 
 it as profitable to be lazy as to be active, is anti-eugenic, 
 and must inevitably lead to disaster ? That, however, 
 by the way. Our present point is that eugenics can 
 reasonably promise, when its principles are recognised, 
 to multiply the human l and diminish the vegetable 
 type in the community. In so doing, it will greatly 
 further the production of talent, and therefore of that 
 traditional or acquired progress which men of talent and 
 genius create. Such a result will also further, though 
 indirectly, the production of genius itself. For, as Mr. 
 Galton points out, " men of an order of ability which is 
 now very rare, would become more frequent, because the 
 level out of which they rose would itself have risen." 
 
 This is by no means the only fashion in which an 
 effective and practicable race-culture would serve genius, 
 and I shall not be blamed for considering this matter 
 further by any reader who realises, however faintly, what 
 the man of genius is worth to the world. If it were 
 shown possible to establish such social conditions that 
 genius could never flower in them, we should realise that 
 their establishment would mean the putting of an end 
 to progress and the blasting of all the highest hopes of the 
 highest of all ages. 
 
 The immediate need of this age, as of all ages, is perhaps 
 not so much the birth of babies capable of developing 
 into men and women of genius, as the full exploitation 
 
 1 " Restless activity proves the man," as Goethe says.
 
 292 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 of the possibilities of genius with which, as I fancy, every 
 generation on the average is about as well endowed as 
 any other. There is, of course, the popular doctrine that 
 there are no mute inglorious Miltons, that " genius will 
 out," and that therefore if it does not appear, it is not 
 there to appear. In expressing the compelling power of 
 genius in many cases, this doctrine is not without truth. 
 Yet history abounds in instances where genius has been 
 destroyed by environment and we can only guess how 
 many more instances there are of which history has no 
 record. To take the single case of musical genius, it is 
 a lamentable thought that there may be those now living 
 whose natural endowments, in a favourable environment, 
 would have enabled them to write symphonies fit to 
 place beside Beethoven's, but whom some environmental 
 factors conventional, economic, educational, or what 
 not have silenced ; or worse, have persuaded to write 
 such sterile nullities as need not here be instanced. There 
 is surely no waste in all this wasteful world so lamentable 
 as this waste of genius. 
 
 If, then, anyone could devise for us a means by which 
 the genius, potentially existing at any time, were realised, 
 he would have performed in effect a service equivalent 
 to that of which eugenics repudiates the present possi- 
 bility the actual creation of genius. But if we consider 
 what the conditions are which cause the waste of genius, 
 we realise at once that they mainly inhere in the level 
 of the human environment of the priceless potentiality 
 in question. As we noted elsewhere, in an age like that 
 of Pericles genius springs up on all hands. It is en- 
 couraged and welcomed because the average level of the 
 human environment in which it finds itself is so high. 
 But if eugenics can raise the average level of intelligence, 
 in so doing not merely does it render more likely, as Mr. 
 Galton points out, the production of men of the highest
 
 PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE 293 
 
 ability, but it provides those conditions in which men of 
 genius, now swamped, can swim. We could not under- 
 take to produce a Shakespeare, but we might reasonably 
 hope to produce a generation which would not damage or 
 destroy its Shakespeares. And even if men of genius still 
 found it necessary, as men of genius have found it necessary, 
 to " play to the gallery," they would play, as Mr. Galton 
 says of the demagogue in a eugenic age, " to a more 
 sensible gallery than at present." 
 
 Darwin somewhere points out that it is not the 
 scientific, but the unscientific man who denies future 
 possibilities. Thus though an advocate of eugenics may be 
 applauded for his judgment if he declares that the creation 
 of genius will for ever be impossible, yet I should not care 
 to assert that the ultimate limitations of eugenics can thus 
 be defined. We have yet to hear the last of Mendelism. 
 
 Eugenics and unemployment. Let us look now at 
 another aspect of the promise of race-culture. When the 
 time comes that quality rather than quantity is the ideal 
 of those who concern themselves with the population 
 question, it is quite evident that not a few of the social 
 problems which we now find utterly insoluble will dis- 
 appear. In this brief outline, we can only allude to one 
 or two points. Take, for instance, the question of 
 unemployment. We know that some by no means small 
 proportion of the unemployed were really destined to 
 be unemployable from the first, as for instance by reason 
 of hereditary disease. It were better for them and 
 for us had they never been born. Many more 
 of the unemployed have been made unemployable 
 by the influence of over-crowding, to which they were 
 subjected in their years of development. Is there, can 
 there be, any real and permanent remedy for over- 
 crowding, but the erection of parenthood into an act of 
 personal and provident responsibility ?
 
 294 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 Eugenics and woman. Take, again, the woman 
 question. No one will deny that in many of its 
 gravest forms, especially in its economic form, and 
 the question of the employment of women, wisely 
 or horribly, this depends (to a degree which few, I 
 think, realise) upon the fact that there are now, for 
 instance, 1,300,000 women in excess in this country. Is 
 it then proposed, the reader will say, by means of race- 
 culture to exterminate the superfluous woman ? Indeed, 
 no. But is the reader aware that Nature is not respons- 
 ible for the existence of the superfluous woman ? There 
 are more boys than girls born in the ratio of about 103 
 or 104 to 100 : and Nature means them all to live, boys 
 and girls alike. If they did so live, we should have 
 merely the problem of the superfluous man, which would 
 not be an economic problem at all. But we destroy 
 hosts of all the children that are born, and since male 
 organisms are in general less resistant than female organ- 
 isms, we destroy a disproportionate number of boys, so 
 that the natural balance of the sexes is inverted. Unlike 
 ancient societies, we largely practise male infanticide. 
 Can the reader believe that there is any permanent and 
 final means of arresting this wastage of child-life, with 
 its singular and far-reaching consequences, other than 
 the elevation of parenthood, on the principles which 
 race-culture enjoins, even wholly apart from the 
 question of the selection of parents ? We shall not 
 succeed in keeping all the children alive (with a 
 trivial number of exceptions), thereby abolishing the 
 superfluous woman by keeping alive the boy who 
 should have grown up to be her partner, until we 
 greatly reduce the birth-rate ; as it must and will be 
 reduced when the ideal of race-culture is realised, and 
 no child comes into the world that is not already loved 
 and desired in anticipation.
 
 PROMISE OF RAGE-CULTURE 295 
 
 Eugenics and cruelty to children. This ideal, also, 
 offers us in its realisation the only complete remedy 
 for the present ghastly cruelty under which so many 
 children suffer even in Great Britain, even in the 
 twentieth century. Is the reader aware that the 
 National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Children enquired into the ill-treatment or cruel neglect 
 of 115,000 children in the year beginning April ist, 1906 ? 
 It has been reasonably and carefully estimated that 
 " over half a million children are involved in the total 
 of the wastage of child-life and the torture and neglect 
 of child-life in a single year." Surely Mr. G. R. Sims, 
 to whom I would offer a hearty tribute for his recent 
 services to childhood, is justified in saying, " Against the 
 guilt of race-suicide our men of science are everywhere 
 preaching their sermons to-day. It is against the guilt 
 of race-murder that the cry of the children should ring 
 through the land." As regards race suicide and the 
 men of science, I am not so sure as to the assertion. But 
 the truth of the second sentence quoted is as indisputable 
 as it is horrible. 
 
 Now no legislation conceivable will wholly cure this 
 evil nor avert its consequences. At bottom it depends 
 upon human nature, and you can cure it only by curing 
 the defect of human nature. This, in general, is of 
 course beyond the immediate powers of man, but evidently 
 we should gain the same end if only we could confine the 
 advent of children to those parents who desired them 
 that is to say, those in whom human nature displayed 
 the first, if not indeed almost the only, requisite for the 
 happiness of childhood. To this most beneficent and 
 wholly moral end we shall come, notwithstanding the 
 blind and pitiable guidance of most of our accredited 
 moral teachers to-day. By no other means than the 
 realisation of the ideal defined, that every new baby
 
 296 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 shall be loved and desired in anticipation an ideal 
 which is perfectly practicable can the black stain of 
 child murder and child torture and child neglect be 
 removed from our civilisation. 
 
 Ruskin and race-culture. The name of Ruskin, per- 
 haps, would not occur to the reader as likely to afford 
 support to the fair hopes of the eugenist. Consider then, 
 these words from Time and Tide : 
 
 " You leave your marriages to be settled by supply and demand, 
 instead of wholesome law. And thus, among your youths and 
 maidens, the improvident, incontinent, selfish, and foolish ones 
 marry, whether you will or not ; and beget families of children 
 necessarily inheritors in a great degree of these parental dis- 
 positions ; and for whom, supposing they had the best dispositions 
 in the world, you have thus provided, by way of educators, the 
 foolishest fathers and mothers you could find ; (the only rational 
 sentence in their letters, usually, is the invariable one, in which 
 they declare themselves ' incapable of providing for their children's 
 education'). On the other hand, whosoever is wise, patient, 
 unselfish, and pure among your youth, you keep maid or 
 bachelor ; wasting their best days of natural life in painful 
 sacrifice, forbidding them their best help and best reward, and 
 carefully excluding their prudence and tenderness from any offices 
 of parental duty. Is not this a beatific and beautifully sagacious 
 system for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British 
 Isles?" 
 
 Apart from the point as to wholesome law rather than 
 the education of opinion as the eugenic means, the fore- 
 going passage must win the assent and respect of every 
 eugenist. It indicates the promise of race-culture as it 
 appeared to John Ruskin. The passage has been quoted 
 in full not for the benefit of the ordinary thoughtful 
 reader but for that of the professional literary man who, 
 in this remarkable age, so far as I can judge, reads nothing 
 but what he writes, and thus qualifies himself for dismissing 
 Spencer or Darwin or Galton in any casual phrase
 
 PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE 297 
 
 meanwhile condemning Ruskin, whom he probably 
 professes to adore. 
 
 Race-culture and human variety. Now let us turn to 
 another question. Let it be asserted most emphatically 
 that, if there is anything in the world which eugenics or 
 race-culture does not promise or desire, it is the production 
 of a uniform type of man. This delusion, for which there 
 has never been any warrant at all, possesses many of the 
 critics of eugenics, and they have made pretty play with it, 
 just as they do with their other delusions. Let us note one 
 or two facts which bear upon this most undesirable ideal. 
 
 In the first place, it is unattainable because of the 
 existence of what we call variation. No apparatus con- 
 ceivable would suffice to eliminate from every generation 
 those who varied from the accepted type. 
 
 In the second place, this uniformity is supremely 
 undesirable from the purely evolutionary point of view, 
 because its attainment would mean the arrest of all 
 progress. Ah 1 organic evolution, as we know, depends 
 upon the struggle between creatures possessing vari- 
 ations and the consequent selection of those variations 
 which constitute their possessors best adapted or fitted 
 to the particular environment. If there is no variation 
 there can be no evolution. To aim at the suppression of 
 variation, therefore, on supposed eugenic grounds (which 
 would be involved in aiming at any uniform type of 
 mankind) would be to aim at destroying the necessary 
 condition of all racial progress. The mere fact that the 
 critics of race-culture attribute to evolutionists, of all 
 people, the desire to suppress variation, is a patho- 
 gnomic symptom of their critical quality. 
 
 And, of course, quite independently of the evolutionary 
 function of variation though this is cardinal and must 
 never be forgotten by the politician of any school, since 
 what we call individuality is variation on the human
 
 298 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 plane the value of variation in ordinary life is wholly 
 incalculable. It is not merely that, as Mr. Galton says, 
 " There are a vast number of conflicting ideals, of alter- 
 native characters, of incompatible civilisations ; but they 
 are wanted to give fulness and interest to life. Society 
 would be very dull if every man resembled the highly 
 estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede." The question 
 is not merely as to the interest of life. Much more im- 
 portant is the fact that it takes all sorts to make a world. 
 What is the development of society but the result of the 
 psychological division of labour in the social organism? 
 And how could such division of labour be carried out if 
 we had not various types of labourers ? What would be 
 the good of science if there were no poetry or music to 
 live for ? How would poetry and music help us if we 
 had not men of science to protect our shores from plague ? 
 Obviously the existence of men of most various types 
 is a necessity for any highly organised society. Even if 
 eugenics were capable as it is not of producing a 
 complete and balanced type, fit up to a point to turn 
 out a satisfactory poem, a satisfactory symphony or a 
 satisfactory sofa, the utmost could not be expected of 
 such a man in any of these directions. In a word, as 
 long as their activities are not anti-social, men cannot be 
 of too various types. We require mystic and mathe- 
 matician, poet and pathologist. Only, we want good 
 specimens of each. " The aim of eugenics," says Mr. 
 Galton, " is to represent each class or sect by its best 
 specimens ; that done, to leave them to work out their 
 common civilisation in their own way. . . . Special 
 aptitudes would be assessed highly by those who possessed 
 them, as the artistic faculties by artists, fearlessness of 
 enquiry and veracity by scientists, religious absorption 
 by mystics, and so on. There would be self-sacrificers, 
 self-tormentors, and other exceptional idealists." But at
 
 PROMISE OF RAGE-CULTURE 299 
 
 least it is better to have good rather than bad specimens 
 of any kind, whatever that kind may be. Mr. Galton 
 thinks that all except cranks would agree as to including 
 health, energy, ability, manliness and courteous dis- 
 position amongst qualities uniformly desirable alike in 
 poet and pathologist. We should desire also uniformity 
 as to the absence of the anti-social proclivities of the born 
 criminal. So much uniformity being granted, let us have 
 with it the utmost conceivable variety, more, indeed, 
 than most of us can conceive. 
 
 This point, of course, is cardinal from the point of view 
 of practice. No progress could be made with eugenics, 
 it would be impossible even to form a Eugenics Education 
 Society, if each of us were to regard the particular type he 
 belongs to as the ideal, and were to seek merely to obtain 
 the best specimens of that type. The doctrine that it 
 takes all sorts to make a world a doctrine very hard for 
 youth to learn, yet unconsciously learnt by all who are 
 capable of learning at all must be regarded as a cardinal 
 truth for the eugenist. But he wisely seeks good speci- 
 mens rather than bad. Poets certainly, but not poetasters ; 
 jesters certainly, but not clever fools, who stand Truth on 
 her head and then make street-boy gestures at her. 
 
 Time and its treasure. Taking the modern estimates 
 of the physicists, we are assured that the total period 
 of past human existence is very brief compared with 
 what may reasonably be predicted. Granted, then, 
 practically unlimited time, what inherent limits are 
 there to the upward development of man as a 
 moral and intellectual being ? Shall we answer this 
 question by a study of the nature of matter ? Plainly 
 not. Shall we answer it by a study of the nature of 
 mind ? Surely not, for the study of existing mind 
 cannot inform us as to what mind might be. One source 
 of guidance alone we have, and this is the amazing contrast
 
 300 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 which exists between the mind of man at its highest, and 
 mind in its humblest animal forms : or shall we say even 
 between the highest and lowest manifestations of mind 
 within the human species ? The measureless height of 
 the ascent thus indicated offers us no warrant for the 
 conclusion that, as we stand on the heights of our life, 
 our " glimpse of a height that is higher " is only an 
 hallucination. On the contrary. 
 
 There is no warrant whatever for supposing that the 
 forces which have brought us thus far are yet exhausted : 
 they have their origin in the inexhaustible. Who, gazing 
 on the earth of a hundred million years ago, could have 
 predicted life could have recognised, in the forces then 
 at work and the matter in which they were displayed, 
 the promise and potency of all terrestrial life ? Who, 
 contemplating life at a much later stage, even later 
 mammalian, could have seen in the simian the prophecy 
 of man ? Who, examining the earliest nervous ganglia, 
 could have foreseen the human cerebrum ? The fact 
 that we can imagine nothing higher than ourselves, that 
 we make even our gods in our own image, offers no 
 warrant for supposing that nothing higher will ever be, 
 What ape could have predicted man, what reptile the bird, 
 what amoeba the bee ? " There are many events in the 
 womb of time which will be delivered," and the fairest 
 of her sons and daughters are yet to be. 
 
 But even grant, for the sake of the argument, that the 
 intelligence of a Newton, the musical faculty of a Bach, 
 the moral nature of any good mother anywhere, represent 
 the utmost limits of which the evolution of the psychical 
 is capable. There is every reason to deny this, but let 
 us for the moment assume it true. There still remains 
 the thought of Wordsworth, "What one is, why may not 
 millions be ? " a thought to which Spencer has also 
 given utterance. What is shown possible for human
 
 PROMISE OF RAGE-CULTURE 301 
 
 nature here and there, he says, is conceivable for human 
 nature at large. It is possible for a human being, whilst 
 still remaining human, to be a Shakespeare or a St. 
 Francis : these things are thus demonstrably within the 
 possibilities of human nature. It is therefore at the 
 least conceivable that, in the course of almost infinite 
 time (even assuming, say, that intelligence must ever be 
 limited, as even Newton's intelligence was limited), some 
 such capacities as his may be common property amongst 
 men of the scientific type ; and so with other types. We 
 may answer Wordsworth that there is no bar thrown by 
 Nature in the way of such a hope. 
 
 What Is possible ? This, of course, is speculation and 
 of no immediate value. I would merely remind the reader 
 that the doctrine of optimism, as regards the future of man- 
 kind, which the principles of race-culture assume and which 
 they desire to justify, was definitely shared by the great 
 pioneers to whom we owe our understanding of those 
 principles. Notwithstanding grave nervous disorder, such 
 as makes pessimists of most men, both Darwin and Spencer 
 were compelled by their study of Nature to this rational 
 optimism as regards man's future. The doctrine of 
 organic evolution, and of the age-long ascent of man 
 through the selection of the fittest (who have, on the 
 whole, been the best] for parenthood, is one not of despair 
 but of hope. Exactly half a century ago it struck horror 
 into the minds of our predecessors. Man, then, is only 
 an erected ape, they thought as if any historical doctrine, 
 however true, could shorten the dizzy distance to which 
 man has climbed since he was simian : and man being 
 an ape, they thought his high dreams palpably vain, 
 But the measure of the accomplished hints at the measure 
 of the possible, and the value of the historical facts lies 
 not in themselves, all facts as such being as dead as are 
 the individual atoms of the living body, but in the
 
 302 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 principles which grow out of them. It is of no importance 
 as such that man has simian ancestors ; it is of im- 
 measurable importance that he should learn by what 
 processes he has become human, and by what, indeed, 
 they became simian which would have been a proud 
 adjective for its own day. The principles of organic 
 progress matter for us because they are the principles of 
 race-culture, the only sure means of human progress. 
 Our looking backwards does not turn us into pillars of 
 salt, but teaches us that the best is yet to be, and how 
 alone it is to be attained. 
 
 Elsewhere the optimistic argument of Wordsworth is 
 quoted. Hear also John Ruskin : 
 
 " There is as yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of person 
 and mind which the human creature may attain, by persevering 
 observance of the laws of God respecting its birth and training." * 
 
 and Herbert Spencer : 
 
 " What now characterises the exceptionally high may be 
 expected eventually to characterise all. For that which the 
 best human nature is capable of, is within the reach of human 
 nature at large." * 
 
 and Francis Galton : 
 
 " There is nothing either in the history of domestic animals 
 or in that of evolution to make us doubt that a race of sane 
 men may be formed, who shall be as much superior, mentally 
 and morally, to the modern European, as the modern European 
 is to the lowest of the Negro races. 
 
 " It is earnestly to be hoped that enquiries will be increasingly 
 directed into historical facts, with the view of estimating the 
 possible effects of reasonable political action in the future, in 
 gradually raising the present miserably low standard of the 
 human race to one in which the Utopias in the dreamland of 
 philanthropists may become practical possibilities." 3 
 
 1 Munera Pulveris, par. 6. 
 
 1 The Data of Ethics, par. 97. 
 
 * Hereditary Genius, Prefatory Chapter to Edition of 1902, pp. x. and
 
 PROMISE OF RACE-CULTURE 303 
 
 Conclusion Eugenics and Religion. In an early 
 chapter it was attempted to show that eugenics is 
 not merely moral, but is of the very heart of morality. 
 We saw that it involves taking no life, that, rather, 
 it desires to make philanthropy more philanthropic, 
 that, at any rate so far as this eugenist is con- 
 cerned, it recognises and bows to the supreme law of 
 love : and claims to serve that law, and the ideal of 
 social morality, which is the making of human worth. 
 Eugenics may or may not be practicable, it may or may 
 not be based upon natural truth, but it is assuredly 
 moral : though I, for one, "would proclaim eternal war 
 between this real morality and the damnable sham which 
 approves the unbridled transmission of the most hideous 
 diseases, rotting body and soul, in the interests of good. 
 
 And if religion, whatever its origin and the more 
 questionable chapters in its past, be now " morality 
 touched with emotion," I claim that eugenics is religious, 
 is and will ever be a religion. Elsewhere x I have at- 
 tempted to show that religion has survived and will 
 survive because of its survival-value its services to the 
 life of the societies wherein it flourishes. The religion 
 of the future, it was sought to argue, will be that which 
 " best serves Nature's unswerving desire fulness of life." 
 The Founder of the Christian religion said, " I am come 
 that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more 
 abundantly." It is higher and more abundant life that 
 is the eugenic ideal. Progress I define as the emergence 
 and increasing dominance of mind. Of progress, thus 
 conceived, man is the highest fruit hitherto. He is also 
 its appointed agent, and eugenics is his instrument. 
 
 To this end he must use all the powers which have 
 blossomed in him from the dust. He must claim Art : 
 and indeed in Wagner's great music-drama, at the 
 
 1 " The Survival-Value of Religion," Fortnightly Review, April, 1906.
 
 304 PRACTICE OF EUGENICS 
 
 moment when the prophetic Briinnhilde tells Sieglinde 
 who has just lost her mate that she, the expectant mother, 
 may look for the resurrection of the dead and the life 
 of the world to come in the child Siegfried ; and when 
 the heroic theme is pronounced for the first time and 
 followed by that which signifies redemption by love 
 then, I think, the eugenist may thrill not merely to the 
 music, or to the humanity of the story, but to the spiritual 
 and scientific truth which it symbolises. 
 
 If the struggle towards individual perfection be re- 
 ligious, so, assuredly, is the struggle, less egoistic, indeed, 
 towards racial perfection. If the historic meaning and 
 purport of religion are as I conceive them, and if its 
 future evolution may thence be inferred, there can be no 
 doubt in the prophecy that in ages to come those high 
 aspirations and spiritual visions which astronomy has 
 dishoused from amongst the stars, and which, at their 
 best, were ever selfish, will find a place on this human 
 earth of ours. If we have transferred our hopes from 
 heaven to earth and from ourselves to our children, they 
 are not less religious. And they that shall be of us shall 
 build the old waste places; for we shall raise up the 
 foundations of many generations : 
 
 " We feed the high tradition of the world, 
 And leave our spirits in our children's breasts."
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 CONCERNING BOOKS TO READ 
 
 THE preceding pages are of course only tentative, pre- 
 liminary and introductory. I have merely tried to make 
 a beginning. No better purpose can be achieved than 
 that the reader should proceed to study the subject for 
 himself. A few pages may therefore be devoted to the 
 names of some of the books which will be found useful. 
 This is in no sense a complete bibliography, nor even a 
 tithe of such a bibliography. But the reader who makes 
 a beginning with the books here named, or even with a 
 well-chosen half dozen of them, will thereafter need no 
 one to tell him that the culture of the human race on 
 scientific principles will be the supreme science of all the 
 future, the supreme goal of all statesmen, the object and 
 the final judge of all legislation. 
 
 Where it is thought that us <arks can be made 
 
 they will be made, but neither "esence nor absence 
 
 nor their length is to be taken as a.^ . .idex to the writer's 
 opinion of the relative value of the works in question. 
 
 Heredity. (The Progressive Science Series, 1908.) 
 By PROFESSOR J. A. THOMSON, M.A. 
 
 This is the most recent and most valuable for general 
 purposes of all books on the subject of heredity. No 
 layman should express opinions on heredity or eugenics 
 until he has read it, for it is extremely improbable that 
 they will be valuable. Professor Thomson covers the 
 whole ground with extreme lucidity and care and im- 
 partiality. The book is readable, nay more, fascinating 
 from end to end, and it is liberally and usefully illustrated, 
 u 305
 
 306 APPENDIX 
 
 It is the first general treatise on heredity which leads 
 consciously, yet as of necessity, towards eugenics as the 
 crown and goal of the whole study, and in this respect 
 it undoubtedly marks an epoch. 
 
 The Methods and Scope of Genetics. (1908.) By 
 W. BATESON, M.A., F.R.S. 
 
 This is the inaugural lecture, destined, I have little 
 doubt, to become historic, which was delivered by Professor 
 Bateson on his appointment to the new Darwin Chair of 
 Biology at Cambridge. It is purposely included here for 
 very good reasons. The reader who begins his serious 
 study of heredity with Professor Thomson's work must 
 be informed that though the author gives an interesting 
 account of Mendelism, he is not a Mendelian, and neither 
 his account of Mendelism nor his estimate of it is at all 
 adequate for the present day. In truth there is the 
 study of heredity before Mendelism and after, and 
 though eugenics owes its modern origin to the founder 
 of the school of biometrics, and though among his followers 
 there are to be found many who decry and oppose the 
 Mendelians, it is for the eugenist of single purpose to 
 take the truth wherever it is to be found. It is now 
 idle to deny either the general truth or the stupendous 
 promise of Mendelism. Many vital phenomena besides 
 heredity are studied by the statistical method, and are 
 put down by it to heredity. The Mendelians take seeds 
 of known origin, and plant them and note the result. 
 They carry out experimental breeding not only amongst 
 plants but amongst the higher animals, including 
 mammals who, in all essentials of structure and function, 
 are one with ourselves. It is not possible, I believe, to 
 over-estimate the supreme importance of Mendelian 
 enquiry for eugenics. Eugenics is founded upon heredity, 
 and genetics, which is Professor Bateson's name for the 
 physiology of heredity and variation, is now working at
 
 BOOKS TO READ 307 
 
 the very heart of those natural phenomena upon which 
 eugenics depends. This lecture of Professor Bateson's 
 is by the far the best introduction to Mendelism that 
 exists, besides being the most recent and the most 
 authoritative possible. With the lucidity of the born 
 teacher (whose faculty, I have no doubt, is a Mendelian 
 unit, not always inherited by the born observer) the 
 author explains the essence of Mendelism. The usual 
 expositor has not proceeded far upon his way before he 
 is encumbering himself and the learner with the phenom- 
 ena of dominance and recessiveness, which are not 
 cardinal and are highly involved. Professor Bateson 
 makes no allusion to them. But he gives an account of 
 Mendelism which it is impossible to put down without 
 finishing, and which is elementary in the highest sense of 
 the word. In the later pages the author preaches 
 eugenics with a vigour and conviction not unworthy of 
 notice as coming from the leader of a school which is 
 utterly opposed in principle and in methods, if not in 
 results, to the school of biometrics founded by the founder 
 of eugenics. I insist upon this because there is a half- 
 instructed ignorance abroad which has heard the name 
 of Mendel, and seeks thereby to discredit Darwin and 
 natural selection, Mr. Galton and eugenics. Hear 
 Professor Bateson : 
 
 " If there are societies which refuse to apply the new 
 knowledge, the fault will not lie with Genetics. I think 
 it needs but little observation of the newer civilisations to 
 foresee that they will apply every scrap of scientific know- 
 ledge which can help them, or seems to help them in the 
 struggle, and I am good enough selectionist to know that in 
 that day the fate of the recalcitrant communities is sealed." 
 
 Hereditary Genius, An Inquiry into its Laws and Con- 
 sequences. By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 This is the classical and pioneer enquiry, far beyond
 
 308 APPENDIX 
 
 my praise or appraisement. The main text is not long, 
 is easily read and is extremely interesting. The reader 
 should acquaint himself also with Mr. Constable's recent 
 criticism, Poverty and Hereditary Genius. 
 
 A Study of British Genius. (1904.) By HAVELOCK 
 ELLIS. 
 
 This is an extremely interesting book, which should be 
 read in association with the foregoing, to which it is a 
 criticism and supplement. The greater part of the 
 volume is concerned with the study of genius from the 
 point of view of heredity in terms of nationality and 
 race, and of individual parentage. Very great labour 
 and scholarship have been expended to very high purpose 
 in this work. 
 
 Inquiries into Human Faculty. (1883.) By FRANCIS 
 GALTON. 
 
 This is the next in order of Mr. Galton's works, Here- 
 ditary Genius dating from 1869. It has recently been 
 reprinted in Dent's " Everyman's Library," and can 
 thus be purchased for one shilling. 
 
 Natural Inheritance. (1889.) By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 Memories of my Life. (1908.) By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 This is Mr. Galton's latest book, and apart from its 
 personal fascination must be read by the serious eugenist 
 if only on account of its last five chapters, and especially 
 the last two, which deal with Heredity and Race Improve- 
 ment. What could be more interesting and significant, 
 for instance, than to find Mr. Galton in 1908 saying of 
 himself in 1865, " I was too much disposed to think of 
 marriage under some regulation, and not enough of the 
 effects of self-interest and of social and religious senti- 
 ment." Mr. Galton comments on the wrongheadedness 
 of objectors to eugenics. I fancy, however, that the 
 familiar misrepresentations will soon cease to be possible. 
 The whole of this brief last chapter must be carefully
 
 BOOKS TO READ 309 
 
 read and studied. At least I must quote the following 
 paragraph : 
 
 " What I desire is that the importance of eugenic 
 marriages should be reckoned at its just value, neither 
 too high nor too low, and that eugenics should form one 
 of the many considerations by which marriages are 
 promoted or hindered, as they are by social position, 
 adequate fortune, and similarity of creed. I can believe 
 hereafter that it will be felt as derogatory to a person of 
 exceptionally good stock to marry into an inferior one 
 as it is for a person of high Austrian rank to marry one 
 who has not sixteen heraldic quarterings. I also hope 
 that social recognition of an appropriate kind will be 
 given to healthy, capable, and large families, and that 
 social influence will be exerted towards the encourage- 
 ment of eugenic marriages." 
 
 This volume, a model for all future autobiographers, 
 ends with the following splendid statement of the eugenic 
 creed : 
 
 " A true philanthropist concerns himself not only with 
 society as a whole, but also with as many of the individuals 
 who compose it as the range of his affections can include. 
 If a man devotes himself solely to the good of a nation 
 as a whole, his tastes must be impersonal and his con- 
 clusions so far heartless, deserving the ill title of ' dismal ' 
 with which Carlyle labelled statistics. If, on the other 
 hand, he attends only to certain individuals in whom he 
 happens to take an interest, be becomes guided by 
 favouritism and is oblivious of the rights of others and 
 of the futurity of the race. Charity refers to the in- 
 dividual ; Statesmanship to the nation ; Eugenics cares 
 for both. 
 
 " It is known that a considerable part of the huge stream 
 of British charity furthers by indirect and unsuspected 
 ways the production of the Unfit ; it is most desirable
 
 3 io APPENDIX 
 
 that money and other attention bestowed on harmful 
 forms of charity should be diverted to the production 
 and well-being of the Fit. For clearness of explanation 
 we may divide newly married couples into three classes, 
 with respect to the probable civic worth of their off- 
 spring. There would be a small class of ' desirables/ 
 a large class of ' passables,' of whom nothing more will 
 be said here, and a small class of ' undesirables.' It 
 would clearly be advantageous to the country if social 
 and moral support as well as timely material help were 
 extended to the desirables, and not monopolised as it 
 is now apt to be by the undesirables. 
 
 " I take eugenics very seriously, feeling that its principles 
 ought to become one of the dominant motives in a 
 civilised nation, much as if they were one of its religious 
 tenets. I have often expressed myself in this sense, 
 and will conclude this book by briefly reiterating my 
 views. 
 
 " Individuals appear to me as partial detachments from 
 the infinite ocean of Being, and this world as a stage on 
 which Evolution takes place, principally hitherto by 
 means of Natural Selection, which achieves the good of 
 the whole with scant regard to that of the individual. 
 
 " Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings ; he 
 has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. 
 I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace 
 Natural Selection by other processes that are more 
 merciful and not less effective. 
 
 " This is precisely the aim of eugenics. Its first object 
 is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allow- 
 ing them to come into being, though doomed in large 
 numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the 
 improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of 
 the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their 
 children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive pro-
 
 BOOKS TO READ 311 
 
 duction and wholesale destruction ; Eugenics on bringing 
 no more individuals into the world than can be properly 
 cared for, and those only of the best stock." 
 
 Heredity and Selection in Sociology. (1907.) By 
 GEORGE CHATTERTON-HILL. 
 
 This is a useful and interesting work, the nature of 
 which is well indicated by its title. It contains many 
 purely eugenic chapters, and cannot be ignored by the 
 student. 
 
 The Germ-plasm, A Theory of Heredity. (The Contem- 
 porary Science Series. 1893.) By AUGUST WEISMANN. 
 
 This is Weismann's great work. It should be studied 
 by politicians and others who still interpret all social 
 phenomena in terms of Lamarckian theory, and also by 
 modern writers who are so much more Weismannian 
 than Weismann. 
 
 The Evolution Theory. (1904.) Translated by J. 
 Arthur Thomson and M. R. Thomson. By AUGUST 
 WEISMANN. 
 
 The Principles of Heredity. (1905.) By G. ARCHDALL 
 REID. 
 
 This is a very interesting and extremely Weismannian 
 book which contains the most recent statement of the 
 author's remarkable enquiries into the influence of disease 
 as a factor of human selection. 
 
 Variation in Animals and Plants. (The International 
 Scientific Series. 1903.) BY H. M. VERNON. 
 
 Variation, Heredity and Evolution. (1906.) By R. H. 
 LOCK. 
 
 The Origin of Species. (1869. Last (sixth) edition. 
 Reprinted 1901.) By CHARLES DARWIN. 
 
 The Descent of Man. (1871. Second edition, 1874. 
 Reprinted 1906.) By CHARLES DARWIN. 
 
 These classics now cost only half-a-crown apiece. 
 
 The beginner should read The Descent of Man first,
 
 312 APPENDIX 
 
 I think. Some of the earlier chapters are of the utmost 
 eugenic value, and would be found immensely interesting 
 by modern lecturers on decadence, and the like. 
 
 Darwinism To-day. (1907.) By VERNON L. KELLOGG. 
 
 An interesting and scholarly recent criticism, containing 
 much matter strictly relevant to eugenics. 
 
 The Evolution of Sex. (The Contemporary Science 
 Series. Revised edition, 1901. Originally published 
 in 1899.) By PATRICK GEDDES and J. ARTHUR 
 THOMSON. 
 
 A famous book, yet to be discovered by most 
 " authorities " on the Woman Question. 
 
 A History of Matrimonial Institutions. (1904.) By 
 G. E. HOWARD. 
 
 This is a three-volume treatise, extremely compre- 
 hensive, and especially valuable as a guide to the literature 
 of the subject. Only the professional student can be 
 expected to read it from cover to cover, but it is invaluable 
 for purposes of reference. 
 
 The History of Human Marriage. By E. WESTERMARCK. 
 
 This rightly celebrated and epoch-making work de- 
 monstrates in especial the survival-value of monogamy, 
 and its historical dominance as a marriage form. 
 
 The Evolution of Marriage. (The Contemporary Science 
 Series.) By PROFESSOR LETOURNEAU. 
 
 The Principles of Population. By T. R. MALTHUS. 
 
 The substance of this may be conveniently read in the 
 extracts published in the Economic Classics by Mac- 
 millan (1905). 
 
 The Principles of Biology. By HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 The last section, " The Laws of Multiplication," must 
 be read as the expression of the missing half of the truth 
 discovered by Malthus. It is tiresome, nearly half a 
 century after Spencer's enunciation of his law, to have to 
 read the remarks of some modern writers who continue
 
 BOOKS TO READ 313 
 
 to assume that Malthus expressed not merely the truth 
 but the whole truth. 
 
 The Republic of Plato. 
 
 Apart from the lines of Theognis quoted by Darwin in 
 The Descent of Man, which are some two centuries older 
 than Plato, the fifth book of the Republic is the earliest 
 discussion in literature of the idea of eugenics, and utterly 
 wild though we may consider most of the proposals of 
 Plato or Socrates to be, these early thinkers are yet 
 more modern and more scientific and more fundamental 
 than all their successors, even including our modern 
 Utopia makers who have come after Darwin, in recognising 
 that it is the quality of the citizen which will make a 
 Utopia possible. The following will suffice to show that 
 after more than two thousand years we can still learn 
 from the fundamental idea of Plato's fifth chapter : 
 
 "It is plain, then, that after this we must make marriages as 
 much as possible sacred ; but the most advantageous should be 
 most sacred. By all means. How then shall they be most ad- 
 vantageous ? Tell me that, Glauco, for I see in your houses 
 dogs of chace, and a great many excellent birds. Have you 
 then indeed ever attended at all, in any respect, to their 
 marriages, and the propagation of their species ? How ? said 
 he. First of all, that among these, although they be excellent 
 themselves, are there not some who are most excellent ? There 
 are. Whether then do you breed from all of them alike ? or 
 are you careful to breed chiefly from the best? From the best. 
 But how ? From the youngest or from the oldest, or from those 
 who are most in their prime ? From those in their prime. And 
 if the breed be not of this kind, you reckon that the race 
 of birds and dogs greatly degenerates. I reckon so, replied he. 
 And what think you as to horses, said I, and other animals ? 
 is the case any otherwise with respect to these ? That, said he, 
 were absurd." 
 
 Plato proposed to destroy the family, and to " practise 
 every art that no mother should know her own child." 
 He also approved of infanticide. Nevertheless, this fifth
 
 314 APPENDIX 
 
 book of the Republic is interesting and valuable reading, 
 and it is especially well to note that this pioneer of 
 Utopianism and Socialism possessed the idea which almost 
 all living Socialists, except Dr. A. R. Wallace and 
 Professors Forel and Pearson, lack, that we must first 
 make the Utopian and Utopia will follow. 
 
 The Family. (1906.) By ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS. 
 
 This recent, scholarly and lucid book, of which any 
 living^man might well be proud, may follow the reading 
 of the utterly unconcerned and taken-for-granted fashion 
 in which Socrates and Plato proposed to destroy the 
 family. Lecture VIII., on " Sexual Choice," is brief, 
 but the references following it are extremely valuable 
 and complete. It is evident that one of the books which 
 will have to be written on eugenics in the near future 
 must deal with the whole question of marriage and human 
 selection both in its historical and in its contemporary 
 aspects. 
 
 " The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under 
 Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment." Nature, 1901, 
 p. 659 ; Smithsonian Report, Washington, 1901, p. 523. 
 By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 This was the Huxley Lecture of the Anthropological 
 Institute in 1901, and the contemporary interest in 
 eugenics may be said to date from it. 
 
 " Eugenics, its Definition, Scope and Aims. (Socio- 
 logical Papers. 1904.) By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 This remarkable lecture constituted a further intro- 
 duction of the subject, and it is somewhat of the nature 
 of an impertinence for the professional jester, who is not 
 acquainted with a line of it, to dismiss eugenics with a 
 phrase as if this lecture had never been written or were 
 unobtainable. Mr. Galton there defined eugenics as " the 
 science which deals with all influences that improve the 
 inborn qualities of a race. . . ." The definition given
 
 BOOKS TO READ 315 
 
 in the Century Dictionary is unauthoritative, incorrect, 
 and misses the entire point. 
 
 An extremely valuable discussion follows this lecture, 
 and it is absolutely necessary for the student to acquaint 
 himself with the whole of these pages (45-99). 
 
 Restrictions in Marriage : Studies in National Eugenics : 
 Eugenics as a Factor in Religion. By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 These are memoirs communicated to the Sociological 
 Society in 1905, and published together with the subse- 
 quent discussions in Sociological Papers (1905). The 
 three memoirs are also published separately under one 
 cover. 
 
 Probability, the Foundation of Eugenics. The Herbert 
 Spencer Lecture of 1907. By FRANCIS GALTON. 
 
 This lecture contains a very brief historical outline 
 of the recent progress of eugenic enquiry and a 
 simple discussion of the mathematical method of study- 
 ing heredity. It must, of course, be read by every 
 serious student. 
 
 National Life from the Standpoint of Science. (1905.) 
 By KARL PEARSON. 
 
 This is a reprint of a lecture delivered by Professor 
 Pearson in 1900, together with some other valuable 
 contributions of his to the subject. There is scarcely a 
 better introduction to eugenics. 
 
 The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science 
 of National Eugenics. The Robert Boyle Lecture, 1907. 
 (Second edition, 1909.) By KARL PEARSON. 
 
 This fine lecture should be carefully read. It gives 
 some index to the quantity and quality of the work done 
 by Professor Pearson and his followers since the Francis 
 Galton Eugenics Laboratory was founded. 
 
 Population and Progress. (1907.) By MONTAGUE 
 CRACKANTHORPE, K.C. 
 
 Though only published recently, part of this book goes
 
 316 APPENDIX 
 
 back far. The first chapter is indeed a reprint of a eugenic 
 article published in the Fortnightly Review as far back as 
 1872. Some of us may perhaps be inclined to forget 
 that more than a generation ago Mr. Crackanthorpe had 
 grasped the great truths which we are now trying to 
 spread, and had courageously expressed them in the face of 
 ignorance and prejudice even greater than those of to-day. 
 This is unquestionably a book which every student must 
 read, but the press generally, with some notable ex- 
 ceptions, have fought rather shy of it. It was sent to 
 the present writer at his request from a leading morning 
 paper which trusts him, and he wrote a column on it, 
 most careful in diction and moderate in opinion, which 
 was, nevertheless, not printed. One of the leading 
 medical papers devoted a long article to the book, written 
 on the general principle that it is right for a medical 
 paper to differ from any non-medical person who ap- 
 proaches the closed neighbourhood of medical enquiry. 
 Another leading medical paper considered Mr. Crackan- 
 thorpe's " ideal " to be " beyond present accomplish- 
 ment," and feared it must have " many generations of 
 probation before it could hope to enter the sphere of 
 practical politics." I venture to say that Population 
 and Progress, dealing, as it does, with a subject that 
 really matters, contains more fundamental practical 
 politics in the true sense of that word than has been 
 discussed in most of our current newspapers since they 
 were first established. 
 
 Race-Culture or Race-Suicide. (1906.) By R. R. 
 RENTOUL. 
 
 This is a second and enlarged edition of a remarkable 
 pamphlet published by Dr. Rentoul in 1903 under the 
 title Proposed Sterilisation of Certain Mental and Physical 
 Degenerates. An Appeal to Asylum Managers and Others. 
 Dr. Rentoul's own description of this pamphlet is as
 
 BOOKS TO READ 317 
 
 follows : " In it I called attention to the large and 
 increasing number of the insane in the United Kingdom ; 
 to our disgraceful system of child-marriages ; to the 
 growing suicide rate ; to our disgusting system of inducing 
 certain mentally and physically diseased persons to 
 marry ; and to a slight operation which I was the first 
 to propose as a means of checking the increase in the 
 number of the insane, and in preventing innocent offspring 
 from being cursed by some parental blemish." 
 
 Education. (Originally published in 1861. New edition, 
 with the author's latest corrections, 1906.) By HERBERT 
 SPENCER. 
 
 This is the classic which marks an epoch in the personal 
 development of every one who reads it, and which made 
 an epoch in the history of education : the book was 
 probably of more service to woman, owing to its liberation 
 of girlhood, than any other of its century. 
 
 The Study of Sociology. (International Scientific Series. 
 Originally published in 1873. Twentieth edition, 1903.) 
 By HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 This is, of course, the introduction to sociology, written 
 for that purpose by a master, and in every respect a 
 masterpiece. It contains many eugenic references and 
 arguments. As far as the eugenic education of the 
 adult is concerned, this is rightly the preliminary 
 work. 
 
 Besides The Evolution of Sex and Mrs. Parson's book on 
 The Family, there are many others relevant to the question 
 of woman and eugenics, of which one or two may be noted 
 here. 
 
 Sex and Society, Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex. 
 (1907.) By W. I. THOMAS. 
 
 This is a very readable and recent work, and for 
 the general reader much the most suitable of any that 
 I know.
 
 318 APPENDIX 
 
 Man and Woman. (Contemporary Science Series.) 
 By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 A very clear and readable book. 
 
 Youth its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. (1907.) 
 By STANLEY HALL. 
 
 This is a new and'* abbreviated version of Professor 
 Stanley Hall's two well-known volumes on Adolescence, 
 published in 1904. For the general reader this much 
 smaller work is very suitable, and especial attention may 
 be directed to Chapter XI., " The Education of Girls." 
 
 It would have been presumptuous and absurd to 
 attempt, in the course of a merely introductory volume, 
 to deal, by anything more than allusion to its existence, 
 with the great question of human parenthood in relation 
 to race. Most urgently this question, of course, concerns 
 the negro problem in America. The student who has to 
 trust entirely to second-hand knowledge had best be 
 silent. Lest, however, the reader should imagine that 
 the older doctrines of race can be accepted without 
 reserve, he will do well to study very carefully the latter 
 part of Dr. Archdall Reid's book, already referred to, and, 
 with extreme caution, the following : 
 
 Race Prejudice. (1906.) By JEAN FINOT. 
 
 This book most of us must believe to be extreme, 
 but it should be read : it bears on what may be called 
 international eugenics , and the whole question of inter- 
 racial marriage. 
 
 On matters of transmissible disease and racial poisons 
 there is much literature. Only one or two books can be 
 referred to here. 
 
 The Diseases of Society : The Vice and Crime Problem. 
 (1904.) By G. F. LYDSTON. 
 
 This, of course, is not a pleasant book, and it is open to 
 much criticism in many respects, but it is well worth
 
 BOOKS TO READ 319 
 
 reading, especially in association with Dr. Rentoul's 
 work. 
 
 Malaria A Neglected Factor in the History of Greece and 
 Rome. (1907.) By W. H. S. JONES, with an introduction 
 by RONALD Ross. 
 
 This is a recent historical study and may be a very 
 substantial contribution to the study of decadence. 
 
 Alcoholism. (1906.) By W. C. SULLIVAN. 
 
 This little book of Dr. Sullivan's contains a useful and 
 scrupulously moderate chapter on the relation of alcohol 
 to human degeneration. 
 
 The Drink Problem. (1907.) By Fourteen Medical 
 Authorities. 
 
 The Children of the Nation. (1906.) By SIR JOHN GORST. 
 
 Infant Mortality. (1906.) By GEORGE NEWMAN. 
 
 The Hygiene of Mind. (1906.) By T. S. CLOUSTON. 
 
 Diseases of Occupation. (1908.) By Sir T. OLIVER. 
 
 The Prevention of Tuberculosis. (1908.) By A. 
 NEWSHOLME. 
 
 These volumes all deal in part with questions of 
 racial poisoning and racial hygiene. 
 
 Alcoholism A Study in Heredity. (1901.) By 
 ARCHDALL REID. 
 
 Alcohol and the Human Body. (1907.) By SIR VICTOR 
 HORSLEY and MARY D. STURGE. 
 
 Hygiene of Nerves and Mind. (The Progressive Science 
 Series. 1907.) By AUGUST FOREL. 
 
 Inebriety Its Causation and Control. (The second 
 Norman Kerr Memorial Lecture, published in the British 
 Journal of Inebriety, January, 1908.) By R. WELSH 
 BRANTHWAITE. 
 
 Reports of the Inspector under the Inebriates Acts. 
 Especially those for the years 1904, 1905, 1906. 
 
 The Cry of the Children: The Black Stain. (1907.) 
 By G. R. SIMS.
 
 320 APPENDIX 
 
 The above are especially recommended to politicians. 
 Sooner or later, as never yet, knowledge will have to be 
 applied to the drink question as it bears upon the quality 
 of the race. The knowledge exists, and is not difficult 
 to acquire or understand. The references given are quite 
 sufficient to enable any one of mediocre intelligence to 
 frame a bill dealing with alcohol which would be worth 
 all its predecessors put together, and would arouse far 
 less opposition than any one of them. 
 
 Reports of the National Conference on Infantile Mortality 
 1906 and 1908 (P. S. King & Co.). In the 1906 Report 
 note especially Dr. Ballantyne's paper on the unborn 
 infant, and in the 1908 Report, Miss Alice Ravenhill's 
 paper on the education of girls. 
 
 It must be repeated that the foregoing names are 
 merely noted as including, perhaps, the greater number 
 of the books with which the serious beginner would do 
 well to make a start. That is all. It would be both 
 unfair and unwise, however, to omit any mention of at 
 least three wonderful little books of John Ruskin's : 
 Unto this Last, Munera Pulveris and Time and Tide, which 
 add to their great qualities of soul and style some of the 
 most forcible and wisest things that have ever been 
 written on race-culture and its absolutely fundamental 
 relation to morality, patriotism and true economics. 
 
 If the reader desires the name of only one book, that is 
 certainly The Sexual Question (1908), by Professor 
 AUGUST FOREL. This has no rival anywhere, and 
 cannot be overpraised.
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 Ability, inheritance of 114 
 
 " Acquired characters," defined ... in 
 Acquired characters, Lamarckian theory 
 
 of the transmission of ... ... 283 
 
 progress ... ... ... ... 262 
 
 , dangers of ... 265 
 
 versus natural selection ... 266 
 
 Acquirements, transmission of, by the 
 
 art of writing ... ... ... ... 261 
 
 versus inborn characters ... ... 101 
 
 Acromegaly 67 
 
 "AdamBede" 298 
 
 "Adolescence," by Prof. Stanley Hall 318 
 
 Alcohol, a racial poison ... ... 211, 259 
 
 , an agent of selection ... ... 206 
 
 and eugenics ... ... ... 206 
 
 , and heredity ... ... ... 206 
 
 and human degeneration ... ... 242 
 
 and parenthood ... ... ... 241 
 
 , effects of, on the racial organs 208, 
 
 209, note 
 
 , elimination by ... ... ... 206 
 
 , the friends of ... 243 
 
 trade, the, and widows and orphans 245 
 
 " Alcohol and Infancy," by Dr. Saleeby 214 
 " Alcohol and the Human Body," by Sir 
 
 Victor Horsley and Mary D. Sturge . . . 319 
 
 Alcoholic Imperialism ... ... ... 244 
 
 Alcoholism and the London County 
 
 Council ... ... ... ... ... 206 
 
 , both a cause and a symptom of 
 
 degeneracy ... ... ... ... 217 
 
 , parental, its influence on the 
 
 offspring ... ... ... ... 211 
 
 " Alcoholism, a Chapter in Social Path- 
 ology," by Dr. W. C. Sullivan an, 242, 319 
 " Alcoholism, a Study in Heredity," by 
 
 G. Archdall Reid 319 
 
 Ancestral inheritance, the law of ... xii 
 
 Ancestry of men of genius ... ... 152 
 
 , paternal and maternal, of equal 
 
 importance ... ... ... ... 152 
 
 Animal life and monogamy ... ... 163 
 
 marriage ... ... 162 
 
 Animals and promiscuity ... ... 163 
 
 , the higher, and monogamy ... 163 
 
 Army, inferior intelligence of the, to that 
 
 of the Navy ... ... ... ... 98 
 
 "Atavism," defined ... ... ... in 
 
 " Attic Nights, The," of AulusGellius 271 (note) 
 
 Australia, control of drunkards in ... 242 
 " Autobiography " of Herbert Spencer 58, 152 
 
 " Avaries, Les," by Brieux ... ... 252 
 
 Bacteria, domination of 
 
 , rate of increase of 
 
 Bibliography of eugenics 
 
 of racial poisons 
 
 of transmissible diseases ... 
 
 Biography, as a guide to heredity 
 , neglect of ancestral data in 
 
 " Biology and History," by Dr. Saleeby 
 
 254 (note) 
 " Biology, The Principles of," by Herbert 
 
 Spencer 312 
 
 Biometrics, the study of xi 
 
 Birth-rate, falling, eugenic aspect of the 10 
 
 in China ... ... 78 
 
 93 
 1 60 
 305 
 
 152 
 
 152 
 
 PACK 
 
 Birth-rate in Japan 78 
 
 of man ... 72 
 
 , statistics of 74 
 
 Births, ratio of, of the sexes ... ... 294 
 
 " Black Stain, The," by G. R. Sims 237, 319 
 Body, the necessity of the ... ... 53 
 
 , relation of the, to the mind ... 52 
 
 Brains, breeding for ... 54 
 
 Breeding for brains 54 
 
 for energy ... 66 
 
 for intelligence ... 147, 150, 153 
 
 for motherhood ... ... 145, 146 
 
 Celibacy, non-eugenic results of ... 116 
 Census, the uselessness of the ... 6, 94 
 
 " Century Dictionary, The," on eugenics 314 
 
 Characters, inborn, versus acquirements 101 
 
 Child-birth, superstition about ... ... 106 
 
 Children, eugenics and cruelty to ... 295 
 , Society for the Prevention of 
 
 Cruelty to 295 
 
 " Children of the Nation, The," by Sir 
 
 John Gorst ... ... 319 
 
 China, the birth-rate in 78 
 
 , racial state of ... ... ... 274 
 
 Church, non-eugenic action of the ... 116 
 
 Civic worth 68 
 
 Civilisation, ideal 117 
 
 Civilisations, the decay of 255 
 
 Cocaine, the racial influence of ... 250 
 " Collectivism, Individualism and," by 
 
 Dr. Saleeby 101 (note) 
 
 Colour-blindness, see Daltonism 
 Conception, attitude of eugenics before 
 
 and after ... ... 30 
 
 "Congenital" denned 105, 112 
 
 "Conscientiousness" 117 
 
 Crime, eugenics and ... 177 
 
 , theories of 177 
 
 , treatment of ... 178 
 
 Criminality and civic worth ... ... 68 
 
 " Cry of the Children, The," by G. R. 
 
 Sims 237, 319 
 
 Daltonism and heredity ... ... 179 
 
 " Dark ages," caused by the celibacy of 
 
 the fittest n6 
 
 " Darwinism To-day," by Vernon L. 
 
 Kellogg 312 
 
 " Data of Ethics, The," by Spencer 302 (note) 
 
 Deaf-mutism and heredity 173 
 
 Death-rate, a low, the cause of the multi- 
 plication of man ... 73 
 
 , influence of density of population 
 
 on the 75 
 
 , limitation of the 78 
 
 , statistics of the 74 
 
 Decadence, National 279 
 
 "Decadence," by A. J. Balfour ... 279 
 "Degeneration," defined ... 25 (nott) 
 
 Degeneration, human, and alcohol 217, 242 
 
 racial 49 
 
 "Descent of Man, The," by Charles 
 
 Darwin 171, 191, 197, 279i 3 
 
 " Deterioration," defined ... 25 (note) 
 
 Diminution of offspring, the eugenic value 
 
 of 162 
 
 Disease, latency of 108 
 
 Diseases, transmissible, bibliography of 318 
 
 321
 
 322 
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 " Diseases of Occupation," by Sir 
 
 Thomas Oliver ... ... 247 (note\, 319 
 
 " Diseases of Society : The Vice and 
 
 Crime Problem," by G. K. Lydston ... 318 
 
 Domestics, the politics of the future 33, 285 
 " Drink Problem, The," by Fourteen 
 
 Medical Authorities ... ... ... 319 
 
 "Drink Problem, The," by Mrs. Schar- 
 
 lieb 214 
 
 Drunkard, influence of the, on the race 241 
 , marriage and parentage of the 220, 235 
 , the habitual, control of, in various 
 
 countries 242 
 
 , , treatment of, by the London 
 
 County Council... 39 (note), 5220-238 
 
 Drunkenness, habitual, imprisonment as 
 
 a treatment for ... ... ... 218 
 
 . increase of ... ... ... ... 218 
 
 Early Notification of Births Act ... 33 
 
 " Economic Classics " ... ... ... 312 
 
 Education, age at which to begin ... 125 
 
 and heredity ... ... ... 128 
 
 and inequality 131 
 
 and race culture 
 
 , eugenic 
 
 for parenthood 
 
 , .higher, of woman, 
 
 effects of 
 
 ... I2O 
 
 139 
 
 x, 138 
 non-eugenic 
 
 xi, 89 
 137 
 
 120 
 139 
 
 318 
 123 
 
 in the principle of selection 
 
 , modern, the destruction of mind 
 
 , sexual, of children , 
 
 , of girls 
 
 , the limits of 
 
 , the provision of an environment 12, 125 
 
 , the real functions of ... ... 136 
 
 "Education," by Herbert Spencer ... 317 
 Elephant, birth-rate of the ... 72 (note) 
 
 Emigration, the eugenic evils of ... ix 
 
 , a remedy for over-population ... 84 
 
 Energetic cost of reproduction, the ... 87 
 
 Energy, breeding for ... ... ... 66 
 
 , eugenic value of ... 291 
 
 Environment, education the provision of 12, 125 
 
 , effects of ... ... ... ... 103 
 
 , good, defined 275 
 
 and heredity ... ... ... 126 
 
 , of motherhood, the ... ... 270 
 
 Epilepsy, eugenics and 176 
 
 Erect attitude, the ... ... ... 55 
 
 " Essential Factor of Progress, The," by 
 
 Dr. Saleeby 262 
 
 Eugenic sense, the creation of a ... 144 
 
 Eugenics and alcohol ... ... ... 206 
 
 , bibliography of ... ... ... 305 
 
 and conception ... ... ... 30 
 
 and crime ... ... ... ... 177 
 
 and cruelty to children ... ... 295 
 
 and Daltonism ... ... ... 179 
 
 and haemophilia 179 
 
 and insanity ... ... ... 175 
 
 defined' ... ... vi, 315 
 
 epilepsy and ... ... ... 176 
 
 feeble-minded, the, and ... ... 174 
 
 higher education of woman, and... 89 
 
 in Germany 154 
 
 infant mortality, and ... ... 20 
 
 international ix 
 
 Nietzscheanism and ... ... 28 
 
 politics and 118 
 
 positive and negative ... ... 172 
 
 present influence of, on [marriage 187 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Eugenics, religion and ... ... ... 303 
 
 the aims of, summarised... 276,309 
 
 the classes of society and ... 119 
 
 the length of marriage engage- 
 ments and 198 
 
 the morality of ... ... ... 303 
 
 tuberculosis and ... ... ... 178 
 
 unemployment and 293 
 
 woman and ... ... ... 294 
 
 Eugenics Education Society, the 
 
 222, 229, 230, 299 
 
 , the history and objects 
 
 of 139 
 
 , the Inebriates Com- 
 mittee and 
 
 and 
 
 -, the reform of drunkards 
 
 " Eugenics as a Factor in Religion," by 
 F. Galton 
 
 " Eugenics, Its Definition, Scope, and 
 Aims," by F. Galton 
 
 " Eugenics, National, Studies in," by 
 F. Galton 
 
 " Eugenics, National, The Scope and Im- 
 portance to the State of the Science of," 
 by Karl Pearson ... 
 
 " Eugenics, Probability the Foundation 
 of," by F. Galton 
 
 240 
 241 
 
 315 
 
 315 
 
 315 
 
 315 
 
 "Eugenics, The Obstacles to," by Dr. 
 
 Saleeby 175 (note) 
 
 Evolution and progress ... ... ... 48 
 
 , introduction of the term... 
 
 " Evolution of Marriage, The," by Prof. 
 
 Letourneau ... ... ... ... 312 
 
 "Evolution of Sex, The," by Patrick 
 
 Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson ... 312 
 " Evolution, the Master Key," by Dr. 
 
 Saleeby 147 
 
 " Evolution Theory, The," by August 
 
 Weismann 311 
 
 Examinations, mental emetics 121 
 
 "Family, The," by Mrs. Elsie Clews 
 
 Parsons ... ... ... ... 161, 314 
 
 Fatherhood, eugenic, importance of ... 154 
 
 , individual 156 
 
 Feeble-minded, eugenics and the ... 174 
 
 , the London County Council and the 229 
 
 , the Royal Commission on the 215, 242 
 
 "Fittest," defined 43 
 
 France, effect of Napoleonic wars on 284 
 
 , increase of population in ... 76 
 
 Francis Galton Eugenics Laboratory, the 315 
 "French Revolution, The," by Carlyle 254 (note) 
 Fulmar petrel, the multiplication of the 
 
 73 (note) 
 
 Generation, the independence of every 3 
 
 Genesis, individuation and ... ... 87 
 
 " Genetics, the Methods and Scope of," 
 
 by Prof. W. Bateson 306 
 
 Genius, infertility of ... ... 87, 92 
 
 , the production of ... ... 289 
 
 , the transmission of ... ... 289 
 
 , the value of, to the world ... 291 
 
 " Genius, British, A Study of," by Have- 
 lock Ellis 308 
 
 " Genius, Hereditary," by F. Galton, see 
 
 Hereditary Genius 
 
 Germany, eugenics in ... ... ... 158 
 
 , increase of population in 76, 77 
 
 "Germinal," denned ... no 
 
 Germ-plasm, immortality of the ... 256
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 323 
 
 "Germ-plasm, A Theory of Heredity, 
 The," by August Weismann 208, 311 
 
 Girls, the sexual education of 318 
 
 Great Britain, increase of population in 76 
 
 Greece, the fall of 260 
 
 Gymnasium versus playing fields ... 63 
 Haemophilia and heredity ... ... 179 
 
 Hampstead, birth-rate of, the lowest in 
 
 London 78 
 
 " Health, Strength and Happiness," by 
 
 Dr. Saleeby H 9 (note) 
 
 Hereditary Genius," by F. Gallon 
 
 107, 114, 289, 302 (note), 307, 308 
 Heredity, alcohol and 206 
 
 biography a guide to 152 
 
 Daltonism and ... ... ... 179 
 
 deaf-mutism and ... ... ... 173 
 
 education and 128 
 
 environment and 126, 269 
 
 hemophilia and ... ... ... 179 
 
 obscured by acquired characters 99 
 
 race culture and ... ... ... 99 
 
 tuberculosis and 179 
 
 "Heredity," by Prof. J. A. Thomson 99, 305 
 "Heredity and Environic Forces," Dr. 
 
 T. D. MacDougal on 
 
 " Heredity and Selection in Sociology," 
 
 by George Chatterton-Hill 
 
 " Heredity, Alcoholism, A Study in," by 
 
 G. Archdall Reid 
 
 " Heredity, The Germ-Plasm, A Theory 
 
 of," by August Weismann 
 
 " Heredity, The Principles of," by G. 
 
 Archdall Reid 311 
 
 "History," defined ... ... ... 254 
 
 " History of Human Marriage, The," by 
 
 E. Westermarck ... 313 
 
 " History of Matrimonial Institutions, 
 
 A," by G. E. Howard 312 
 
 " Human Breed, The Possible Improve- 
 
 212 
 311 
 3*9 
 3" 
 
 314 
 
 308 
 27 
 
 253 
 65 
 
 319 
 319 
 
 ment of the, etc.," by F. Galton 
 " Human Faculty, Inquiries into," by 
 
 F. Galton 
 
 Humanitarianism, indiscriminate 
 Hygiene, individual and racial... 
 
 , school 
 
 " Hygiene of Mind, The," by T. S. 
 
 Clouston ... 
 
 " Hygiene of Nerves and Mind," by 
 
 August Forel 242 
 
 Imperialism, alcoholic ... ... ... 244 
 
 , the old and the new ... 33, 34 
 
 India as a wheat-producing country ... 80 
 Individual versus race ... ... ... 256 
 
 " Individualism and Collectivism," by 
 
 Dr. Saleeby 101 (note) 
 
 Individuation and genesis . ... 87 
 
 Inebriates, see Drunkards 
 
 Act, the] ... 222, 224, 225, 230 
 
 , reports of the inspector under 319 
 
 Committee, the Report of the ... 239 
 
 Inebriety, see Drunkenness 
 
 " Inebriety, Its Causation and Control," 
 
 by R. Welsh Branthwaite 
 
 Infancy, helplessness of ... 3, 147, 
 
 , the mind of ... 
 
 , the, of slum children 
 
 " Infancy, Alcohol and," by Dr. Saleeby 214 
 Infant mortality, 19, 97, iO4,ti5o, 207, 257, 294 
 
 among the Jews 274 
 
 , eugenics and... ... 20, 29, 31 
 
 319 
 148 
 124 
 
 102 
 
 Infant mortality, first public mention of 
 
 in the east 
 
 , polygamy and 
 
 , reports of the 1908 con- 
 ference on 
 
 , the war against 
 
 " Infant Mortality," by Dr. George New- 
 man S6, 
 
 "Inherent," defined 
 
 Inheritance, pecuniary, non-eugenic in- 
 
 33 
 76 
 
 320 
 
 109 
 
 fluence of 
 
 - , see Heredity 
 
 " Inquiries into Human Faculty," by F. 
 
 Galton ... ...... 92, 128, 290, 308 
 
 Inquisition, anti-eugenic effects of the 267 
 
 Insanity, "breach of promise" and ... 202 
 
 - , eugenics and ......... 175 
 
 - , increase of ............ 176 
 
 Instinct, plasticity of ...... 148, 149 
 
 Intelligence, breeding for 147, 150, 153 
 
 - , the creation of ... ...... 149 
 
 - , nature and ............ 40 
 
 "Intensity of life," the ...... 91 
 
 "Janus in Modern Life," by Prof. 
 
 Flinders Petrie ... ... ...... 22 
 
 Japan, birth-rate in ... ...... 78 
 
 - , the racial development of ... 268 
 Jews, the, alcohol and ......... 275 
 
 - motherhood and ... ...... 274 
 
 - , the survival of ......... 271 
 
 " Kingdom of Man, The," by Sir E. Ray 
 Lankester ......... 41 (note) 
 
 Lamarckian theory of heredity, the 134 
 
 135, 208, 283 
 
 -- of racial degeneration 258, 261 
 
 Lead, a racial poison ......... 247 
 
 "Leviathan," by Hobbes ... 106 (note) 
 Licensing Bill of 1908, the 223, 232-237 
 
 Life, the continuity of ......... 3 
 
 London County Council, alcoholism and 206 
 --- , feeble-minded children 
 
 and ............... 229 
 
 --- , the treatment of in- 
 
 ebriates by ...... 39 (note), 220-238 
 
 - Hospital, gift to ...... u (note) 
 
 Longevity, marriage and ...... 191 
 
 Love, eugenic value of ......... 70 
 
 - , motherhood and ......... 152 
 
 - , survival value of ......... 51 
 
 - , the two stages of ...... 186 
 
 " Making of Character, The," by Prof. 
 
 MacCunn ............ 124 
 
 Malaria, a racial poison ...... 260 
 
 " Malaria, A Neglected Factor in the 
 
 History of Greece and Rome," by 
 
 W. H. S. Jones ... 260, 282, 319 
 Man, the denudation and defencelessness 
 
 of ............... 58 
 
 - , the foundation of Empire ... 262 
 
 - , the future of ......... 299 
 
 - , the latest product of evolution 55 
 
 - , the multiplication of ...... 71 
 
 "Man and Woman," by Havelock Ellis 318 
 
 Marriage, animal ............ 162 
 
 - , average age at ......... 90 
 
 - , breach of promise of, and race culture 201 
 
 - , -- , the law of ...... 202 
 
 - , childless ............ 168
 
 324 
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 Marriage, contemporary, eugenic value of, 1 98 
 
 , control of ... ... ... 184, 186 
 
 , defined ... ... ... ... 170 
 
 , engagement of, eugenics and the 
 
 length of 198 
 
 , eugenic 309 
 
 , , preparation for ... ... 144 
 
 , , utility of ... 162, 163, 168 
 
 , happiness in, extent of 195 
 
 , human ... ... ... ... 164 
 
 , inter-racial ix 
 
 , longevity and ... ... ... 191 
 
 , "mixed" games and ... 196, 197 
 
 of cousins x, 168 
 
 of the deaf and dumb ... ... 173 
 
 , present influence of, on eugenics 187 
 
 , procreation, the paramount func- 
 tion of ... ... ... ... ... 158 
 
 , selection for ... ... ... 189 
 
 -, , by woman 194 
 
 -, socialism and ... ... ... 198 
 
 , survival- value of ... ... ... 164 
 
 systems, English and French ... 199 
 
 , the ball-room and ... 196, 197 
 
 , the field of choice in ... ... 195 
 
 , the Income Tax and ... ... 174 
 
 , the, of inebriates ... ... ... 235 
 
 , the sanctity of 313 
 
 , unselfish ... ... ... ... 144 
 
 " Marriage, Human, The History of," by 
 
 E. Westermarck 312 
 
 " Marriage, Restrictions in," Iby F. 
 
 Galton 185, 204, 315 
 
 " Marriage, The Evolution of," by Prof. 
 
 Letourneau 312 
 
 Married women's labour... ... ... 270 
 
 "Mass versus mind" ... ... ... 95 
 
 Maternal care, development of ... 150 
 
 impressions ... ... ... ... m 
 
 Maternalism, the principle of ... ... 169 
 
 Maternity, see Motherhood 
 
 " Matrimonial Institutions, A History 
 
 of," by G. E. Howard ... ... 312 
 
 " Memories of my Life," by F. Galton v, 308 
 
 Mendelism ... ... ... 108, 118, 293 
 
 " Methods and Scope of Genetics, The," 
 
 by Prof. W. Bateson 306 
 
 Mind, selection of ... ... ... 52 
 
 , the ascent of ... ... ... 300 
 
 , the determinator of leadership ... 59 
 
 , the master in war ... ... 97 
 
 , the relation of, to the body ... 52 
 
 versus mass... ... ... ... 95 
 
 muscle... ... ... ... 65 
 
 " Mind, The Hygiene of," by T. S. 
 
 Clouston 319 
 
 " Mind, Hygiene of Nerves and," by 
 
 August Forel' ... ... ... ... 319 
 
 Monogamy, eugenic value of ... 165, 170 
 , survival-value of ... ... ... 166 
 
 the ideal condition ... ... 150 
 
 the rule among higher animals 163 
 
 Morality, survival-value of ... ... 51 
 
 Morphinomania, parental, its influence on 
 
 the offspring ... ... 212 
 
 Motherhood 169 
 
 and love ... ... ... ... 152 
 
 , breeding for 145, 146 
 
 carried on by unskilled labour ... 151 
 
 during the decline of Rome 270, 271 (note) 
 
 , education for ... ... ... 151 
 
 , history and 269 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Motherhood, Jewish ... ... ... 274 
 
 , psychical 151, 153 
 
 , the elevation of ... ... ... 32 
 
 , the environment provided by ... 269 
 
 , the evolution of ... ... ... 149 
 
 , the safeguarding of 170 
 
 , the subsidisation of ... ... 151 
 
 Mothers, school for 151 
 
 Multiplication of man, a low death-rate 
 
 the cause of ... ... ... ... 73 
 
 , the laws of 86 
 
 , the rate of ... ... ... 90 
 
 of the unfit ... ... 189, 279 
 
 " Munera Pulveris," by John Ruskin 
 
 302 (note), 320 
 
 Muscle, right training of ... ... 62 
 
 , the cult of 60 
 
 versus Mind ... ... ... 65 
 
 Muscles, useless ... ... ... ... 61 
 
 Narcotics, irritant and non-irritant ... 251 
 
 , possible racial influence of ... 250 
 
 " National Life from the Standpoint of 
 
 Science," by Karl Pearson ... 279, 315 
 
 " Natural Inheritance," by F. Galton 308 
 
 Natural selection 35 et seq. 
 
 and racial degeneration ... 260 
 
 versus acquired progress . . . 266 
 
 Nature, the cruelty of ... ... ... 38 
 
 "Nature," defined ... ... ... no 
 
 " Nature of Map, The," by Metchinkoff 90 
 Navy, superior intelligence of the, to that 
 
 of the Army ... ... ... ... 98 
 
 "Nemesis of Nations, The," by \V. R. 
 
 Paterson 281 
 
 New Zealand, control of drunkards in 242 
 
 Nicotine, racial influence of ... ... 251 
 
 Nietzscheanism, eugenics and ... ... 28 
 
 Nitrogen, the fixation of ... ... 81 
 
 "Noteworthy Families" ... 114 (note) 
 
 "Nurture," defined ... ... ... no 
 
 " Obstacles to Eugenics, The," by Dr. 
 
 Saleeby ... ... ... ... 175 (note) 
 
 Opinion, individual, power of ... ... 138 
 
 , public, the education of... ...14,15 
 
 , the creation of ... ... ... 138 
 
 Opium, possible racial influence of ... 251 
 " Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The," by 
 
 George Meredith ... ... 112 (note) 
 
 " Origin of Species, The," by Charles 
 
 Darwin ... ... ... v, 73 (note), 311 
 
 " Origin of Vertebrates, The," by Dr. 
 
 W. H. Gaskell 50 (note) 
 
 Overcrowding ... ... ... ... 20 
 
 and tuberculosis ... ... ... 181 
 
 and unemployment ... ... 293 
 
 Parenthood, alcohol and... ... ... 241 
 
 , classification of society for 104 (note) 
 
 , education for ... ... x, 138 
 
 , eugenic power of ... ... ... 199 
 
 of inebriates ... ... ... 220 
 
 , selection for ... ... ... v, vi 
 
 , the elevation of ... ... 293, 294 
 
 , the link of life ... ... ... 3 
 
 , the most desirable ... ... 91 
 
 , the rise of ... ... 161 
 
 , the sanctity of ... ... ... 138 
 
 Parents, selection of ... ... ... 4 
 
 , proportion of, to population ... 4 
 Paris, hospitals in ... ... ... 247
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 325 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Physique, eugenic, importance of ... 69 
 Playing fields versus gymnasia ... 63 
 
 Politics, denned ... ... 286 
 
 , domestics the future ... 33, 285 
 
 , eugenics and ... ... ... n8 
 
 "Politics," Aristotle's ... ... ... 167 
 
 Polygamy and infant mortality ... 166 
 
 , significance of ... ... ... 165 
 
 Population, density of, influence of the, 
 
 on the death rate ... ... ... 75 
 
 , increase of, and the food supply 79 
 
 , , emigration a remedy for ... 84 
 
 , , safe extent of ... ... 93 
 
 , , statistics of 75, 76 
 
 , quantity versus quality of ... 93 
 
 , starvation a controller of ... 84 
 
 , statistics of, as data for prophecy... 93 
 
 , survival-value of ... ... 90, 91 
 
 , the test of ... ... ... ... 95 
 
 " Population and Progress," by Mon- 
 tague Crackanthorpe ... ... ... 315 
 
 " Population, The Principles of," by 
 
 T. R. Malthus 83, 85, 312 
 
 " Possible Improvement of the Human 
 
 Breed, etc.," by F. Gallon 314 
 
 Posterity, our duty to ... ... ... 10 
 
 " Poverty and Hereditary Genius," by 
 
 Constable ... ... 308 
 
 Prevention of Crimes Act, The 179 (note) 
 " Prevention of Tuberculosis The," by 
 
 Dr. A. Newsholme ... ... ... 319 
 
 " Principles of Biology, The," by 
 
 Herbert Spencer ... ... 86, 312 
 
 "Irinciples of Heredity, The," by G. 
 
 Archdall Reid ... ... ... ... 311 
 
 " Principles of Population, The," by 
 
 T. R. Malthus, see " Population, The 
 
 Principles of " 
 " Probability, the Foundation of 
 
 Eugenics," by F. Galton ... ... 315 
 
 Progress, acquired, see Acquired progress 
 
 defined 50,303 
 
 , evolution and 
 
 of achievement, and of the race 
 
 , racial and acquired , 
 
 " Progress, Population and," by Mon- 
 tague. Crackanthorpe " 
 
 Promiscuity among animals 
 
 Public opinion, education of ... i 
 
 315 
 163 
 , 15 
 
 Quality versus quantity ... 293 
 
 Race, immortality of ... ... ... 256 
 
 versus individual ... 256 
 
 Race-culture and human variety ... 297 
 
 , education and ... ... ... 120 
 
 , socialism and ... 133 
 
 , the promise of ... ... ... 287 
 
 " Race-Culture or Race Suicide," by 
 
 R. R. Rentoul 316 
 
 " Race Prejudice," by Jean Finot ... 318 
 
 Racial degeneration and natural selection 260 
 
 , cause of ... ... ... 263 
 
 , the Lamarckian theory of 258, 263 
 
 instinct, education of the ... ... x 
 
 poisons, the viii, 246 
 
 and decadence ... 259 
 
 , bibliography of ... ... 318 
 
 " Racial poisons," introduction of the 
 
 term 205 
 
 " Racial Hygiene or Negative Eugenics," 
 
 by Dr. Saleeby 205 
 
 Racial senility, the fallacy of 256 
 
 PAGE 
 
 238 
 
 " Reformatory," the word 
 
 Regression towards mediocrity, the law of 
 
 Religion, eugenics and ... 303 
 
 , the survival- value of 303 
 
 " Religion, Eugenics as a Factor in," by 
 F. Galton ... ... ... ... 3x5 
 
 Religious persecution, non-eugenic results 
 
 1 1 6, 264 
 
 185, 204, 315 
 
 Reversed selection 263 
 
 , the final cause of racial decay 264,266 
 
 , war a cause of 284 
 
 " Reversion," defined ... m 
 
 Rome, the decline of 281 
 
 , motherhood during the decline of 270 
 
 Russia, increase of population in ... 76 
 
 as a wheat-producing country 80, 81 
 
 " School hygiene " 65 
 
 " Scope and Importance to the State of 
 the Science of National Eugenics, The," 
 
 by Karl Pearson ... 315 
 
 Selection, alcohol an agent in 206 
 
 and racial change 260 
 
 by marriage ... 189 
 
 for parentage ... ... ... v, vi 
 
 , natural, see Natural Selection 
 
 of mind 52 
 
 of woman, for marriage 189 
 
 , reversed, see Reversed Selection 
 
 , sexual 67, 190, 197, 202 
 
 , the principle of, education in ... 137 
 
 " Sex and Society," by W. I. Thomas ... 317 
 "Sex, The Evolution of," by Patrick 
 
 Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson ... 312 
 
 "Sexual Choice" ... 314 
 
 Sexual education of children 139 
 
 of girls 318 
 
 selection 67, 190, 197, 202 
 
 " Sexual Selection in Man," by Havelock 
 
 Ellis 202 
 
 " Sexuel Frage, Die " (The Sexual Ques- 
 tion), by August Forel ... 130, 242, 253, 320 
 
 Siegfried, the story of 304 
 
 " Social Psychology," by Dr. McDougall 117 
 Socialism and education 129, 130, 132 
 and marriage ... 198 
 
 and race-culture 133 
 
 and selection for marriage ... 194 
 
 Society, the classification of, and eugenics 119 
 , classification of, for parenthood 
 
 104 (note) 
 " Society, The Diseases of," by G. F. 
 
 Lydston ... ... 318 
 
 " Society, Sex and," by W. I. Thomas ... 317 
 "Sociological Papers" 41, 114 (note), 
 
 185 (note), 279, 289, 314, 315 
 
 Sociological Society, the 275 
 
 " Sociology, Heredity and Selection in," 
 
 by G. Chatterton-Hill 311 
 
 " Sociology, The Study of," by Herbert 
 
 Spencer 317 
 
 Soldiers, mistaken muscular training of 63 
 
 Spain, the racial condition of ... 267, 268 
 
 "Spontaneous," defined 215 
 
 Starvation as a controller of population 84 
 
 , extent of, in England 82 
 
 Stepney, birth-rate of, the highest in 
 
 London 78
 
 326 
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 Sterilization of mental and physical 
 
 degenerates ... ... ... ... 316 
 
 Strength versus skill 62 
 
 "Struggle for existence," the ... 42, 83, 280 
 " Studies in National Eugenics," by F. 
 
 Gallon 315 
 
 " Studies in the Psychology of Sex " 202 
 " Study of British Genius, A," by Have- 
 lock Ellis 308 
 
 " Study of Sociology, The," by Herbert 
 
 Spencer 192,317 
 
 "Survival of the finest," the ... 43, 49 
 
 Survival-value 46 
 
 of love ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 of monogamy 51 
 
 of population ... ... 90, 91 
 
 of religion, the 303 
 
 of the tape-worm 47 
 
 , physical versus psychical ... 50 
 
 " Survival- Value of Religion, The," by 
 
 Dr. Saleeby 33 
 
 Syphilis, a racial poison 252 
 
 " Syphilology and Venereal Diseases," by 
 
 Dr. C. F. Marshall 253 
 
 Talent, the production of ... ... 290 
 
 Tape-worm, survival value of the ... 47 
 
 Tasmanians, racial disappearance of the 257 
 
 Taubach, the Driftmen of 59 
 
 Temperance legislation, the failure of... 236 
 " Time and Tide," by John Ruskin 
 
 96, 131, 254 (note), 296, 320 
 
 Tobacco and the race 257 
 
 , influence of, on pregnancy ... 252 
 
 Tuberculosis, eugenics and ... ... 179 
 
 , heredity and ... ... ... 180 
 
 , overcrowding and ... ... 181 
 
 , racial extermination by 260 
 
 " Tuberculosis, The Prevention of," by A. 
 
 Newsholme 3 r 9 
 
 Unemployment, eugenics and 293 
 
 , overcrowding and... ... ... 293 
 
 United States, control of drunkards in the 242 
 , higher education of woman 
 
 in the 89 
 
 , increase of population in the 76 
 
 , the, a wheat - producing 
 
 country 80, 81 
 
 "Unto this Last," by John Ruskin ... 320 
 
 Variation ... ... ... ... ... 297 
 
 " Variation, Heredity and Evolution," by 
 
 R. H. Lock 311 
 
 " Variations in Animals and Plants," by 
 
 H. M. Vernon ... ... ... ... 311 
 
 Vertebrates, evolution of the ... ... 55 
 
 Vital economy, the principle of 17, 19 
 
 War, a cause of reversed selection ... 284 
 
 , mind the master in ... ... 97 
 
 Wealth, Ruskin's definition of ... ... 17 
 
 " Westminster Gazette, The," on the 
 
 population and the food supply ... 79 
 
 Wheat, improvement in ... ... 82 
 
 problem, the ... ... ... 79 
 
 "Wheat Problem, The," by Sir William 
 
 Crookes ... ... ... ... ... 80 
 
 Wheat, Prof. Biffen's 109 
 
 Whiskey, defined ... ... ... ... 232 
 
 " Widows and Orphans," and the alcohol 
 
 trade ... ... ... ... ... 245 
 
 Woman and eugenics ... ... 193, 294 
 
 , employment of ... ... ... 294 
 
 , the higher education of, non-eugenic 
 
 effects of 89 
 
 Women, married, and labour ... ... 270 
 
 , secret {drinking by 232 
 
 , selection for marriage by ... 194 
 
 Work, the eugenic necessity of ... 264 
 Writing, the art of, as a means of trans- 
 mission 261 
 
 "Yellow Peril," the 78, 269 
 
 " Youth, its Education, Regimen and 
 
 Hygiene," by Stanley Hall 318
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Aristotle 262 
 
 on motherhood ... 167 
 
 on racial decay ... ... 256, 257 
 
 , "Politics," by ... 167 
 
 Arnold, Matthew 289 
 
 , Thomas ... 289 
 
 Asquith, H. H 234 
 
 Bach 300 
 
 family, the 289 
 
 Bacon on the command of Nature 13,26,41 
 
 Balfour, A. J.5 228 
 
 , , on decadence 234, 279, 280 
 
 , , on intemperance 235 
 
 , , on legislation ... ... 233 
 
 , , on Licensing Bill of 1908 ... 233 
 
 , , on politics ... ... ... 286 
 
 Ballantyne, Dr., on the unborn infant 320 
 Barker, Ernest, on the destruction of 
 
 marriage ... ... 167 
 
 Bateson, Prof. W., " Methods and Scope 
 
 of Genetics," by ... 306 
 
 Bateson, Prof. W., on education ... 120 
 
 , , on Mendelism ... ... 306 
 
 Beethoven 127, 146, 289, 292 
 
 Bertillon, M., on marital longevity ... 192 
 Biffen, Prof., and his experiments on 
 
 wheat ... ... 109 
 
 Booth, the Rt. Hon. Charles, on the 
 
 extent of starvation ... ... ... 82 
 
 Bouchacourt on the care of motherhood 145 
 Bourneville, on lead poisoning ... 247 
 Branthwaite, Dr. R. Welsh ... 228, 238 
 , , " Inebriety, Its_Causation and 
 
 Control," by ." 217 (note), 319 
 
 , , on alcoholism as a symptom 
 
 of degeneracy 217 
 
 Brieux, " Les Avaries " 252 
 
 Brooks, Graham, on the Negro race ... ix 
 
 Brouardel, parental morphinomania ... 21* 
 
 Browning, Robert 135 
 
 Buckle 267 
 
 Buddha 146 
 
 Bulstrode, Dr., on tuberculosis... 181 (note) 
 
 Burchell 52 
 
 Burns, the Rt. Hon. John, on motherhood 32 
 
 Byron on the decay of nations ... 255 
 
 Cakebread, Jane, the case of 222, 225, 228, 238 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas 309 
 
 , , on history 254 (note) 
 
 , " The French Revolution," 
 
 by 254 (note) 
 
 Chatterton-Hill, George, " Heredity and 
 
 Selection in Sociology," by 311 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., on eugenics 158 (note) 
 Clouston, T. S., "The Hygiene of Mind," 
 
 by 319 
 
 Cobden, Richard 17 
 
 Cohn on the multiplication of bacteria ... 160 
 
 Coleridge 262 
 
 Combemale, experiments of, in alcoholism 211 
 Constable, " Poverty and Hereditary- 
 Genius," by 308 
 
 Copernicus 180 
 
 Cottrell, Mr., on the population of 
 
 London 76 
 
 Crackanthorpe, Mr. Montague, on the 
 
 birth rate ... 95 
 
 , , " Population and Progress," 
 
 by 3,5 
 
 Crich ton-Browne, Sir James, on education 125 
 
 Crookes, Sir William 85 
 
 , , on the wheat supply .. 80 
 
 , , " The Wheat Problem," by 80 
 
 Darwin, Charles 42, 236, 296, 301, 307, 313 
 , , and the effect of music on 
 
 plants 127 
 
 , , centenary of the birth of... v 
 
 , , his talented ancestry and 
 
 kindred 289 
 
 , , on degeneration 171 
 
 , , on national rise and decline 
 
 275 (note) 
 
 , , on natural selection 
 
 8.3. 137, 260, 261 
 
 , , on sexual selection 67, 190, 197 
 
 , , on the elephant ... 72 (note) 
 
 , , on the future 293 
 
 , , on the multiplication of the 
 
 unfit ... 227, 279 
 
 , , on the queen bee 44 
 
 , on vitality and muscularity 
 
 67' (note) 
 
 , , Ruskin on 95 
 
 , , " The Descent of Man," by 
 
 171, 191, 197, 279, 311 
 
 , , "The Origin of Species," by 
 
 43, 73 (note) 311 
 Darwin, Erasmus, the grandfather of 
 
 Charles Darwin 289, 290 
 
 , Francis 290 
 
 , Sir George ... 290 
 
 Demme and parental alcoholism ... 212 
 
 Disraeli on circumstances 149 
 
 Down, Dr. Langdon, on drunkenness 
 
 and the feeble-minded 
 
 Dunlop, Dr. A. R., on habituardrunken- 
 
 219 
 219 
 
 Eccles, McAdam, on alcohol and the 
 
 racial organs 209 
 
 , , on drunkenness 221 
 
 Ellis, Havelock, "A Study of British 
 
 Genius," by 308 
 
 , , " Man and Woman," by 318 
 
 , , on drunkenness 219 
 
 , , on sexual selection... 202, 204 
 
 , , on socialism and education 132 
 
 , , " Sexual Selection in Man," 
 
 by 202 
 
 Emerson on mass versus mind ... 96 
 
 on the morality of the universe 37 
 
 Empedocles on survival value 46 
 
 Epictetus on fools 130 
 
 Etienne on opinion as ruler 234 
 
 F6r6 on alcohol 207 
 
 Ferrier, Prof. David, on habitual drunk - 
 
 I enness ... 219 
 
 Finot, Jean, on the Negro race ... ix 
 
 , , "Race Prejudice," by ... 318 
 
 Fleck, Dr., on drunkenness and the feeble- 
 minded 219 
 
 327
 
 3 28 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 PAGE 
 137 
 
 320 
 
 319 
 244 
 242 
 130 
 35 
 
 Forel, Prof. August 17 
 
 , , " Die Sexuel Frage," by 
 
 130, 242, 253 
 , , " Hygiene of Nerves and 
 
 Mind," by 242 
 
 , , on alcohol as a racial poison 
 
 , , on alcoholism and heredity 
 
 , , on education ... 129, 
 
 , , on our duty to posterity... 
 
 , , on the future of the race 
 
 , , on the nervous system ... 53 
 
 , , on the sexual education of 
 
 children ... 139 
 
 Gallon, Francis ... v, no, 206, 293, 307 
 , , and acquired characters, the 
 
 non-transmission of ... 114 (note), 216, 259 
 
 , , and biometrics ... ... xi 
 
 , , and eugenics, positive and 
 
 negative 172 
 
 , , and G. B. Shaw ... ... 155 
 
 , , and the law of regression 
 
 towards mediocrity ... ... ... 289 
 
 , , " Eugenics as a Factor in 
 
 Religion," by 315 
 
 , , " Eugenics, its Definition, 
 
 Scope, and Aims," by ... ... 314 
 
 , , " Hereditary Genius," by 
 
 107, 114, 289, 302 (note), 307,308 
 
 , , bis kinship to Darwin ... 289 
 
 , , " Inquiries into Human 
 
 Faculty," by ... 92, 128, 290, 308 
 
 , , " Memories of my Life," by v, 308 
 
 , , " Natural Inheritance," by 308 
 
 , , on ancestry, a rational pride 
 
 in 144 
 
 , , on breeding for ability 153 
 
 , , energy ... 67, 153 
 
 , , health ... 145, 153 
 
 , , on civic worth ... ... 68 
 
 , , on civilisation ... ... 117 
 
 , , on energy ... 193 (note), 290 
 
 , , on eugenics, Ihe meaning 
 
 and the aims of ... 157, 298, 315 
 , , on functionally produced 
 
 modifications, the non-inheritance of 211 
 
 , , on genius, hereditary 107, 114 
 
 , , , the quality of 114 (note) 
 
 , , on human intelligence ... 41 
 
 , , on human variety ... 298 
 
 , , on marriage, eugenic ... 168 
 
 , , , the subsidisation of 200 
 
 , , on motherhood, the sub- 
 sidisation of ... ... ... ... 157 
 
 , , on national eugenics ... 115 
 
 , , on national rise and decline 279 
 
 , , on public opinion, the forma- 
 tion of 15 
 
 , , on society, the eugenic value 
 
 of the various classes of ... ... 104 
 
 , , on sociology, the duties of... 275 
 
 , , on the desirable qualities 299 
 
 , -, on the future of man ... 302 
 
 , , on the production of genius 288 
 
 , , on the production of talent 292 
 
 , , " Probability the Founda- 
 tion of Eugenics," by ... ... 315 
 
 , , " Restrictions in Marriage," 
 
 by 185, 204, 315 
 
 , , " Studies in National 
 
 Eugenics," by 315 
 
 Gallon, Francis, " The Possible Improve- 
 ment of the Human Breed, under ex- 
 isting Conditions of Law and Senti- 
 menl," by ... ... ... ... 314 
 
 Gaskell, Dr. W. H., "The Origin of 
 Vertebrates," by 50 (note) 
 
 Geddes, Prof. Patrick, on Government 122 
 
 , , "The Evolution of Sex," by, 
 
 and Prof. J. A. Thomson 312 
 
 Gibbon ... ... ... ... 271 (note) 
 
 on history 254 
 
 on the necessity for advance or 
 
 retrogression ... ... ... ... 266 
 
 Gladstone, Herbert, and the Ireatment 
 of chronic inebriates by the London 
 County Council ... ... 222, 223 
 
 Godwin, William, on literature... 262 (note) 
 Goethe on activity ... ... 291 (note) 
 
 on fate and chance ... ... 12 
 
 on ignorance ... ... ... 223 
 
 on marriage ... ... ... 168 
 
 on the education of race ... 136 
 
 Gorst, Sir John, "The Children of the 
 
 Nalion," by 319 
 
 Hall, Prof. Slanley, "Adolescence," by 318 
 
 , , " Youth, its Education, 
 
 Regimen and Hygiene," by ... ... 318 
 
 Hel vetius on the influence of education ... 1 2 8 
 Hobbes, Thomas, on "Words "... ... 106 
 
 , , "Leviathan," by ... 106 (note) 
 
 Holmes, Mr. Thomas, on habitual drunk- 
 enness ... ... ... ... ... 220 
 
 Horsley, Sir Victor, and Mary D. 
 Sturge, " Alcohol and the Human 
 Body," by ... ... ... ... 319 
 
 Howard, G. E., "A History of Matri- 
 monial Instilulions," by 312 
 
 Huxley ... ... ...29,40,58,280,281 
 
 , "Evolution and Elhics," by ... 26 
 
 on cosmic nalure ... 26, 36, 39 (note) 
 
 on Pasleur ... ... ... ... 94 
 
 on public opinion ... ... ... 135 
 
 on the multiplication of the unfit ... 227 
 
 Im Thurn, Mr., on marriage customs of 
 Guiana ... ... ... ... ... 184 
 
 Jones, Dr. Robert, on Ihe case of Jane 
 Cakebread 228 
 
 Jones, W. H. S., " Malaria : a Neglected 
 Factor in the History of Greece and 
 Rome," by ... ... ... ... 319 
 
 Joubert ... ... ... ... ... 18 
 
 Kant 
 
 on the influence of education 
 
 Keats 
 
 Kellogg, Vernon L, 
 day," by 
 
 4; 87 
 . 128 
 
 46, 50 
 
 Darwinism To- 
 
 312 
 
 Kelvin, Lord, his services to life ... 95 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, and imperialism 244, 245 
 
 , , on breeds in the making . . . 245 
 
 , , on emigration ... ... 9 
 
 Kirby, Miss, on the feeble-minded ... 220 
 
 Kirkup, Thomas, on Malthusianism ... 84 
 
 Koch and tuberculosis ... iBo 
 
 Lamarck ... ... 36 
 
 on inheritance of acquired char- 
 acters 134, 258, 259, 261 
 
 versus Weismann ... 206, 207, 208
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 329 
 
 Lankester, Sir E. Ray, on man, the 
 
 controller of nature ... ... ... 41 
 
 , , on the multiplication of 
 
 man ... ... g f 71, 72 
 
 , , on the struggle for existence 
 
 42, 280 
 
 , , " The Kingdom of Man," by 
 
 41 (note) 
 
 Legrain on alcoholism and heredity ... 220 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci ... ... ... 264 
 
 Letourneau, Prof., "The Evolution of 
 
 Marriage," by ... ... ... ... 312 
 
 Lewin on lead poisoning 248 
 
 Lister, Lord, his services to life ... 95 
 Livingstone, Dr., on African marriage 
 
 customs ... ... ... ... ... 184 
 
 Lock, R. H., "Variation, Heredity and 
 
 Evolution," by ... ... ... 311 
 
 Lombroso, criminological work of ... 177 
 London, Bishop of, on the falling birth- 
 rate ... ... ... 96 
 
 Love, Dr., on deaf-mutism ... ... 174 
 
 Lowell, J. R., on human suffering ... 130 
 
 Lucretius ... ... ... ... 12, 260 
 
 Lydstpn, G. F., "The Diseases of 
 Society : the]Vice and Crime Problem," 
 
 by 318 
 
 MacCunn, Prof., on the infant mind ... 124 
 
 , , " The Making of Character," 
 
 by ... ... 124 
 
 MacDougal, Dr. T. D., on " Heredity and 
 
 Environic Forces" ... ... ... 210 
 
 McDougall, Dr. W., on infant mortality 23 
 
 , , on transmissible characters 117 
 
 , , "Social Psychology," by 117 
 
 Magee, Archbishop ... 243 
 
 Malthus, T. R., 17, 313 
 
 , , his theory ... 80,83 
 
 , , ignorance as to his essay ... 85 
 
 , , importance of his doctrine 
 
 to-day 85 
 
 , , "The Principles of Popula- 
 tion," by ... 83, 85, 312 
 
 Marcus Aurelius ... ... 298 
 
 Marshall, Dr. C. F., on alcohol and 
 
 syphilis 253 
 
 , , " Syphilology " by 253 
 
 Maudsley, Dr., on eugenics ... ... 187 
 
 Mendel, the theory of ... ... 108, 307 
 
 Meredith, George ... ... 37, 231, 287 
 
 , , "The Ordeal of Richard 
 
 Feverel," by ... 112 (note) 
 
 Metchnikoff, on age at marriage ... 90 
 
 , "The Nature of Man," by ... 90 
 
 Mill, James 289 
 
 , John Stuart 182, 289 
 
 , , on nature 38 
 
 Milton ... ... ... ... ... 292 
 
 Morgan, Prof. Lloyd, "Survival Value," 46 
 Mott, Dr. F. W., on habitual drunken- 
 ness 219 
 
 Mozart 126 
 
 Napoleon, the wars of, cause of reversed 
 
 selection in France ... ... ... 284 
 
 Newman, Dr. George, on the falling 
 
 birth-rate 86 (note) 
 
 , , " Infant Mortality," by 86, 319 
 
 Newsholme, Dr. A., on tuberculosis ... 182 
 , , " The Prevention of Tuber- 
 culosis," by 319 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac 6, 146, 288, 300, 301 
 
 , saved by motherhood 150 
 
 Nietzsche and the Darwinian theory ... 51 
 
 and the super-man theory 25 
 
 and " transvaluation " 101 
 
 on organic evolution 158 
 
 Oliver, Sir Thomas, on lead poisoning 
 
 247, 248, 249 
 
 , , "Diseases of Occupation," 
 
 by 247 (note), 319 
 
 Palestrina ... ... 127 
 
 Palmerston, Lord 131 
 
 Parsons, Dr. Elsie Clews, on diminution 
 
 of offspring 162 
 
 , , on parentage ... 161, 162 
 
 , , "The Family," by 314 
 
 Pascal ... ... ... 52 
 
 Pasteur and tuberculosis 180 
 
 , his value to the French nation ... 94 
 
 on the abolition of disease ... 73 
 
 Paterson, W. R., on slavery, the cause of 
 
 the fall of empires ... ... ... 281 
 
 , , " The Nemesis of Nations," by 281 
 
 Pearson, Prof. Karl ... 314 
 
 , , and biometrics xi 
 
 , , " National Life from the 
 
 Standpoint of Science," by ... 279, 315 
 
 , , on national rise and decline 
 
 275 (note), 279 
 , , on the multiplication of the 
 
 yellow races 78 
 
 , , " The Scope and Importance 
 
 to the State of the Science of National 
 
 Eugenics," by 315 
 
 Pericles ... 292 
 
 Petrie, Prof. Flinders, " Janus in Modern 
 
 I-ife," by 22 
 
 , , on infantile mortality ... 22 
 
 Plato and motherhood 166 
 
 and the destruction of the family 169, 313 
 
 on the duty of Governments ... 276 
 
 on racial decay 256, 257 
 
 on the sanctity of marriage ... 313 
 
 on the State as mother 313 
 
 , "The Republic," of 166, 313, 314 
 
 Pope, on genius and insanity 176 
 
 Potts, Dr. W. A., on " The "Relation of 
 
 Alcohol to Feeble-mindedness " 214, 216 
 
 Ranke, Prof., on the mind of man ... 59 
 Ravenhill, Miss Alice, on " Education 
 
 for Motherhood " ... 32 
 
 , , on the education of girls 320 
 
 Reid, Dr. Archdall, on alcohol 206, 211 
 , , on humanitarianism and 
 
 deterioration ... 24, 25 
 
 , , on the marriage of drunkards 235 
 
 , , on the resistance of the germ- 
 plasm 250 
 
 , , "Alcoholism, A Study in 
 
 Heredity," by 319 
 
 , , " The Principles of Heredity," 
 
 by 3" 
 
 Rembrandt 4 
 
 Rennert on lead poisoning ... 247, 248 
 Rentoul, Dr. R. R., on the sterilisation of 
 
 mental and physical degenerates ... 316 
 , , " Race Culture or Race 
 
 Suicide," by 316 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Alfred, on the treatment of 
 
 inebriates 226, 230
 
 330 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 Roche, Sir Boyle, on posterity ir 
 
 Roqucs on lead poisoning ... ... 247 
 
 Ross, Prof. Ronald, " Malaria, A Neg- 
 lected Factor in the History of Greece 
 and Rome," introduced by ... ... 319 
 
 , , on malaria as a cause of 
 
 national decay ... ... ... 260, 282 
 
 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, on the extent 
 of starvation ... ... ... ... 82 
 
 Ruskin, John, " Munera Pulveris," by 
 
 302 (note), 320 
 
 , "Time and Tide," by 96, 131, 
 
 254 (note), 296, 320 
 
 , "Unto this Last," by 320 
 
 on Darwin ... ... ... ... 95 
 
 on education and inequality ... 131 
 
 on life the only wealth 17, 133, 269 
 
 on marriage ... 296 
 
 on mass versus mind 96 
 
 on posterity ... ... ... 287 
 
 on the duty of Governments 18, 276 
 
 on the future of man ... ... 302 
 
 on the manufacture of souls ... 270 
 
 on the neglect of children ... 145 
 
 on the neglect of woman... ... 145 
 
 on true history ... ... 254 (note) 
 
 on work ... 264 
 
 St. Francis... ... ... ... ... 301 
 
 Saleeby, Dr., "Alcohol and Infancy," by 214 
 
 , , and G. B. Shaw, his con- 
 troversy on marriage with ... ... 157 
 
 , , " Evolution, the Master Key," 
 
 by 147 
 
 , , " Health, Strength and 
 
 Happiness," by 119 (note) 
 
 , , " Individualism and Collec- 
 tivism," by 101 (note) 
 
 , , " Obstacles to Eugenics," by 
 
 175 (note) 
 
 , , on biology and history 254 (note) 
 
 , , on London's inebriates, the 
 
 case of ... 226 
 
 , , on progress ... ... ... 262 
 
 , , on the survival-value of 
 
 religion ... ... ... ... 303 
 
 , , on widows and orphans made 
 
 by alcohol ... ... ... ... 245 
 
 , , "The Essential Factor of 
 
 Progress," by ... ... ... ... 262 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, his attack on evolution 
 
 -, on Spain a dying nation 
 
 45 
 268 
 Sandow ... ... '... ~ ... ... 135 
 
 and the development of physique 64 
 
 Scharlieb, Mrs., on maternal alcoholism 
 
 .214 (note) 
 
 , , "The Drink Problem," by 
 
 214 (note) 
 Schopenhauer on love intrigue 197 (note) 
 
 Schubert 46,50 
 
 Seton, Ernest Thompson, on animal 
 
 marriage ... ... ... ... 163 
 
 Shakespeare 6, 126, 146,245/255, 287, 293, 301 
 
 , ancestry of ... ... 107-109 
 
 , quoted ... x, 58 (note), 97, 231, 278 
 
 Shaw, Dr. Claye, on maternal alcoholism 213 
 
 , George Bernard ... ... 85, 169 
 
 , , on eugenics ... 155, 156 
 
 , , on heredity... ... ... 102 
 
 , , on marriage, his controversy 
 
 with Dr. Saleeby ... ... ... 157 
 
 , , on motherhood ... ... 166 
 
 PACK 
 
 Shaw, Dr. Claye, on the State as mother 156 
 Shelley 
 
 Simpson, Sir James, on the inheritance of 
 
 acquired characters 
 Sims, G. R., on children, the protection 
 
 of 
 
 136 
 
 237 
 , , on habitual drunkards, the 
 
 treatment of ... ... 222 
 
 , , " on the cry of the children " 295 
 
 , , " The Black Stain," by 237, 319 
 
 , , "The Cry of the Children,' ' by 
 
 237, 319 
 
 Smith, Adam 17 
 
 Socrates 313, 314 
 
 Sombart, Dr., on the population of 
 
 Germany 77 
 
 Sophocles, quoted... ... ... ... 52 
 
 Spencer, Herbert 4, 9, 85, 296, 300 
 
 , absence of early education of ... 120 
 
 and evolution ... ... 43, 48 
 
 and functionally produced modi- 
 fications ... ... ... ... ... in 
 
 and his reply to Lord Salisbury's 
 
 attack on evolution ... ... ... 45 
 
 and Huxley ... ... ... 26 
 
 and "social organisms" ... ... 256 
 
 on the cosmic process ... ... 25 
 
 on the defencelessness of man ... 58 
 
 on education ... ... ... 131 
 
 on education for parenthood ... 140 
 
 on human fertility 89, 90, 91, 92 
 
 on indiyiduation and genesis ... 288 
 
 on marital longevity ... 191, 192 
 
 on marriage ... ... ... 164 
 
 on natural selection ... ... 35 
 
 on parenthood ... ... ... 88 
 
 on the future of man ... 301, 302 
 
 on the laws of multiplication 86, 87, 
 
 266 
 
 on woman and selection for mar- 
 riage 193 
 
 , the ancestry of ... ... ... 152 
 
 , the "Autobiography" of 35, 58, 
 
 65, 152 
 
 , "The Data of Ethics," by 302 (note) 
 
 , " the survival of the fittest " 
 
 23 (note), 43, 44, 84, 260 
 
 , "Education." by ... 317 
 
 , "The Principles of Biology," by 
 
 86, 312 
 
 , " The Study of Sociology," by 192, 317 
 
 Spinoza ... ... ... ... 46, 50 
 
 Stark, Dr., on marital longevity ... 192 
 Sturge, Mary D., and Sir Victor Horsley, 
 
 "Alcohol and the Human Body," by 319 
 Sullivan, Dr. W. C., " Alcoholism," by 
 
 211, 242, 319 
 
 , , on alcohol and alcoholism 
 
 207, 211-213, 220 
 Sutherland on parental care ... ... 162 
 
 Theognis on pecuniary inheritance ... 101 
 
 on the duty of Governments ... 276 
 
 Thomas, W. I., "Sex and Society," by 317 
 
 Thompson, Francis ... ... ... 128 
 
 Thomson, Prof. J. A., "Heredity," by 
 
 99. 305 
 
 , , on "inheritance" no (note) 
 
 , , on race culture 99 
 
 , , on reversion ... ... in 
 
 , , " The Evolution of Sex," by, 
 
 and Patrick Geddes 312
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 Thompson, Prof. J. A., translator of 
 
 Weismann 311 
 
 , M. R., translator of Weismann... 311 
 
 Thoreau, quoted ... ... 173 
 
 Tille on man the wealth of nations ... 17 
 
 Tintoretto 288 
 
 Turner, Sir William, on the human foot 61 
 
 Urquhart, Dr. A. R., on habitual 
 
 drunkenness 219 
 
 Vernon, H. M., " Variations in Animals 
 
 and Plants," by 311 
 
 Villemin and tuberculosis 180 
 
 Waddington, Mr. Quintin, his translation 
 
 of Aulus Gellius 271 (note) 
 
 Wagner, "Siegfried" 303 
 
 Wallace, Alfred Russel 314 
 
 , , on matrimonial choice by 
 
 women 194 
 
 , , on natural selection ... 83 
 
 PAGE 
 Watson, William, the patriotism of ... viii 
 
 Watts, G. F 4 
 
 Wedgwood, Josiah, maternal grandfather 
 
 of Charles Darwin 289 
 
 Weismann, August 206, an, 216, 248, 280 
 
 , his controversy with Lamarck ... 208 
 
 , on parental alcoholism ... 208-210 
 
 , " The Germ-Plasm : a Theory in 
 
 Heredity," by 208, 311 
 
 , "The Evolution Theory," by ... 311 
 
 Wellington, Duke of ... ... ... 128 
 
 Wells, H. G., on the multiplication of the 
 
 unfit 14 
 
 on Spencer's terminology 43, 44, 49 
 
 Westermarck, Dr. E., on marriage 158, 165 
 
 , , on the control of marriage 184 
 
 , , "The History of Human 
 
 Marriage," by 312 
 
 Wordsworth 4, 244, 301, 302 
 
 , absence of early education of ... 120 
 
 on the decay of nations 284 
 
 , quoted 35, 277, 300 
 
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