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[Reprinted from «The Eugenics Review," October, 1909] 
 
 Eugenics and the Church 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. J. H. F. PEILE 
 
 Eugenics Education Society 
 
 6, York Buildings, Adelphi 
 
 London 
 
EUGENICS AND THE CHURCH 
 By The Rev. J. H. F. Peile 
 
 When I had the honour of reading this paper before the 
 Eugenics Education Society, I prefaced it with a few words, 
 which need not be repeated in print, on the opinion that it 
 needed some courage in a clergyman of the Church of England 
 to show publicly a sympathetic interest in the work and aims of 
 the Society. I do not share that opinion : but the mere fact that 
 it can be held and expressed by anyone suggests the question 
 why it should be accounted a remarkable thing that a minister 
 of religion should be interested in the problems which this 
 Society has been formed to study, and should take part in its 
 counsels and discussions. The pages which follow are chiefly 
 occupied with an attempt to answer that question. 
 
 I. Our first purpose then is to ascertain the reasons for the 
 Church's reluctance to take up the question of Eugenics. When 
 we say Church in this connexion, we mean, I think, the clergy, not 
 as exclusively forming the Church, but as expressing its average 
 corporate opinion. And as practical persons, we shall do well to 
 contemplate not exclusively an ideal, what the Church ought to 
 be ; but the existing fact, what the Church is — with which we 
 have to reckon. 
 
 {A) First then we must remember that the idea of a Science 
 of Eugenics is to most people a startling novelty. It involves 
 the application of the methods of exact study to conditions which 
 they have hitherto been taught to leave in a twilight of mystery ; 
 and proposes in the light of that study to guide and control the 
 working of laws which have hitherto been the especial sphere 
 of Nature ; that is to say modified and interfered with at random 
 by fortuitous and irrelevant changes which civilisation has 
 brought into the physical conditions of Mankind. The thought 
 that such study and such control are either desirable or possible 
 
is entirely new to the minds of a large majority even of educated 
 people. On the other hand, no one will deny that the Church is, 
 both intellectually and morally, a stronghold of conservatism and 
 caution. We may say that its characteristic attitude towards 
 new thought is, sometimes, rightly, an attitude of suspense and 
 criticism, sometimes, wrongly, an attitude of uncompromising 
 rejection. Of this conservatism in both its manifestations the 
 clergy as a whole are fairly representative. I suppose what we 
 ask of them is that they should adopt the attitude of suspense 
 and criticism. And here is a reason which holds back clergymen 
 from supporting this movement, namely, that most of the clergy 
 who have active and open minds, and the qualities which cause 
 them to be heard gladly, are exceedingly busy men ; and feel that 
 they cannot give to the question the time and study which would 
 justify them in speaking with decision. We must, I think, 
 respect the position that insufficient knowledge on the details of 
 so important a question forbids active support : and content 
 ourselves with a just protest against indiscriminate hostility 
 based on ignorance. 
 
 (B) There is, however, a stronger cause of reluctance than 
 natural conservatism, a cause so obvious that it needs but few 
 words : but one which cannot be passed over without notice, and 
 must be frankly and courageously faced. 
 
 Eugenic Science deals with a subject which at once alarms 
 conventional propriety, and has a most unfortunate attraction 
 for prurient curiosity. It is the task of Eugenics to bring one 
 whole chapter of life out of the shadows of questionable mystery 
 into the daylight of common sense and proper feeling. Our task 
 is to instruct, without offending or tempting, either kind of weaker 
 brethren. Now, of course, in this Society there is no question 
 about honesty and singleness of purpose : but we do need to add 
 to the innocence of the dove something of the wisdom of the 
 serpent. 
 
 The presentment of Eugenic truth has not been uniformly 
 without offence : it has been mixed up and, in the popular 
 estimate, identified with things which no Church can possibly 
 touch. The popular estimate may be just or unjust, but it is 
 our business to reckon with it and to correct it if it is wrong. 
 
Again a great deal of the literature of the subject is, to say the least 
 of it, not reassuring to the average lay mind. It is unconcilia- 
 tory and dogmatic in tone (and the dogmatism of a scientific 
 man with a pet hypothesis passes the dogmatism of theologians) 
 — it deals in terms and phrases which startle the sensibility of 
 the unlearned ; and it ignores, or explicitly rejects, a number of 
 things which Church people consider essential. 
 
 We may plead that our Society is in no sense responsible 
 for this literature : but we shall get the credit or discredit of it 
 as long as we allow the popular judgment to go by default. 
 And there can be no doubt that a breath of that discredit is a 
 cause of reluctance to join in the Society's work among people 
 who have the cause of religion much at heart. 
 
 (C) We enquire then how this reluctance can be overcome, 
 this misunderstanding — for it is essentially a misunderstanding 
 — be dissipated. 
 
 Firstf by that most effective weapon of all new causes — the 
 education of Public Opinion : the patient effort to make people 
 understand that these subjects nmst be approached for the sake 
 of humanity and civilisation, and that they can be approached 
 frankly and sensibly without danger to morals or good sense. 
 The clergy are after all human beings, that is to a great extent 
 the creatures and servants of their environment. They are, as 
 a class, representative of moderate educated conservatism in 
 thought and feeling : and, as a class, they may also justly be 
 credited with a strong moral sense and a desire for the welfare 
 of their fellow creatures rather more earnest and conscious than 
 the average. But they are not as a rule specially qualified to 
 introduce to the minds of their congregations novelties of thought 
 for which they are not fully prepared. It is by the general 
 enlightenment and conciliation of the intellectual class to which 
 they belong that the clergy can best be enabled to take on this 
 subject a definite line, which would probably be neither safe nor 
 expedient till the ground is prepared by the gradual spread of 
 information. 
 
 Second, this purpose of informing and conciliating public 
 opinion can best be attained by the setting forth a clear statement 
 of the objects and methods of the Society. This has in fact been 
 
already done in a paper from which I need not quote, as it 
 is well known to all members of the Society. It should, however, 
 be circulated as widely as possible among those who are not yet 
 members, since it furnishes a complete answer to the stock 
 objections which are commonly urged against any attempt in 
 the direction of Eugenics. 
 
 Third, if we desire to secure the support of the moral force 
 of the Church, stress must be laid upon the intellectual and 
 moral character of the aims of the Society. When Eugenic 
 Science deals with human beings it is plain that the physical side 
 cannot really be separated from the moral and intellectual, or 
 seriously viewed except as a necessary condition of the intellectual 
 and moral improvement of the stock : but it has undoubtedly 
 been thrown into prominence by some writers, as though it were 
 an end in itself: and in an age when material well-being is too 
 often regarded as the sole attainable good, there is a danger that 
 the low ideal of merely physical betterment may catch the fancy 
 of the vulgar, and by excluding higher ideals, may repel the 
 philosopher and alarm the moralist. 
 
 II. All that I have said so far, amounts in effect to this, 
 that the true aims of the Eugenics Education Society ought to 
 be put clearly before the minds of clergy and Church people. 
 Those aims, definitely stated, merely extend a principle to which 
 the Church is already committed: the principle that material 
 environment is a factor in spiritual welfare. This is the meaning 
 of the rapid growth of Public School and University Settlements 
 in the poorer parts of our great cities, and of the complicated 
 organisation of Clubs and Societies which now forms so 
 important a part of the Church life in town parishes, and drew 
 from an eminent Anglican layman the half-serious reproach that 
 the clergy are " leaving the Word of God to serve billiard tables." 
 And, in a way which more nearly concerns the objects of this 
 Society, the same principle underlies the whole of the philan- 
 thropic effort, so closely and so honourably connected with 
 Christian Religion, for the care of the helpless and suffering. 
 Hospitals, Orphan Homes, institutions for the care of the feeble- 
 minded, and all the many agencies for the relief and alleviation 
 of poverty and infirmity, obtain an amount of support from 
 
Christians as such, which plainly testifies that the Church is 
 willing and anxious to do everything in its power for children as 
 soon as they are born, to fit them for the battle of life and for the 
 Kingdom of Heaven : which to the Christian are two ways of 
 expressing the same thing. But Science, which is simply the 
 trained and co-ordinated observation of facts, teaches us that 
 pre-natal conditions are in a large proportion of cases as 
 important as post-natal : and it follows that the duty is to 
 prevent the causes rather than to alleviate the results of physical 
 and intellectual degeneracy. 
 
 I have said that the contemplation of this side of the 
 Church's work, what may be called its therapeutic side, nearly 
 concerns the objects of this Society : and it leads us in fact 
 directly to the startling paradox, which on consideration appears 
 to be a truism, that Philanthropy with the aid of modern 
 science has become one of the great contributory causes of the 
 condition of Cacogenics, the producing of bad and ineffectual 
 citizens, which it is the purpose of the Society to mend, and if 
 possible to end. People sometimes ask us why, if Eugenic 
 Science is such a beneficent and necessary thing, the world has 
 managed to get on without it up to the beginning of the twentieth 
 century a.d. And the answer is that the rapid advance of 
 medical science in the last hundred years has combined with 
 humanitarian sentiment to suspend the operation of the law of 
 the elimination of the unfit, by which Nature maintains racial 
 progress and checks racial degeneration. So long as Nature 
 was left to herself to work out the problem in her own way she 
 could be trusted to select for parentage the best types and the 
 best individuals. The methods which she employs may appear 
 to us crude and wasteful, carried out at the cost of an amount 
 of suffering which neither our instinct nor our reason wil 
 tolerate if we can prevent it : but at the same time we must 
 admit that those methods were effective for their purpose and 
 that the laws of natural selection and the survival of the fittest 
 did maintain at whatever cost a gradually rising standard in the 
 offspring from generation to generation. 
 
 What we know of the earlier civilisations shows that they 
 did little to interfere with the free operation of those laws and 
 
in some cases they appear to have worked deliberately on the 
 same lines, though as a rule perhaps with as little conscious 
 purpose as Nature herself. We read that in ancient Sparta 
 weak and sickly infants were allowed to die without any effort 
 being made to keep them alive. Here there appears to have 
 been a conscious intention of preventing the degeneration of a 
 fighting stock in which physical strength and endurance were 
 qualities necessary for the safeguarding and preservation of the 
 society. But it is not necessary to go to a special instance like 
 this. The natural law was everywhere strong enough to maintain 
 itself so long as no particular care and trouble were taken to 
 preserve the lives of the mentally and physically inferior from 
 the conditions which tend to eliminate them. But two great 
 causes which interfere with this elimination were absent from 
 every pagan civilisation. One of them has only come into full 
 effect within the memory of our own generation. These two 
 causes, as I have suggested above, are (i) the Christian sentiment 
 which teaches the absolute importance of every human life, and 
 regards the relief of suffering and the care of the sufferer as the 
 first of human duties, and (2) the medical zeal and skill, which 
 from quite another point of view regards the saving of a life as 
 an end in itself, and is in our time able, by means of a reasonable 
 and patient system of hygiene and therapeutics, to preserve and 
 bring to maturity a vast number of sickly lives which would 
 never have come into existence in really natural conditions, and 
 would have been rapidly cut off in the environment of a pre- 
 sanitary civilisation. Thus it has come about that those who 
 regard the welfare of the race from the eugenic standpoint have 
 to consider an entirely new factor which has not been present, at 
 any rate to an appreciable extent, in previous epochs of the 
 world's history : that is the existence of a great army of mental 
 and physical imbeciles, who are in the strictest sense artificially 
 kept alive, without regard to the eugenic interests of the nation 
 and one may almost say without regard to their own interest. To 
 these a humane and civilised criminal law adds another contingent 
 of the morally imbecile, what we call the habitual criminal ; 
 perhaps not a very numerous class, but one which is a serious 
 danger to society, because, as experience has already shown, 
 
it is capable of reproducing its type with exact fidelity, and 
 there is already something more than a danger of the growth 
 of a criminal tribe within the nation, which not only threatens 
 our lives and property, but continually infects and demoralises 
 the fringe of the normal stock which inevitably comes 
 in contact with it. We must mention, too, another type of 
 moral and physical imbecile which appears to be a product 
 of our economic system, the so-called unemployable : for in 
 this age of specialisation we find this class of specialists, whose 
 speciality it is to be able to do nothing in particular, and to 
 prefer to do very little of that. Now I need not tell you that 
 it has become a very urgent question how we are to deal with the 
 immediate existing generation of these various types of imbecile. 
 With regard to one of them, the unemployable, it has been 
 discovered that indiscriminate charity does not alleviate the evil 
 but increases it : and this discovery perhaps suggests the 
 principle which will have to guide the whole treatment of the 
 ineffective and degenerate. 1 do not for a moment propose 
 anything like a return to the inhuman indifference of the non- 
 Christian period. It would be in the first place highly immoral. 
 The spirit of tenderness for suffering, and the sense of duty to 
 sufferers, are an ethical asset which the human race cannot afford 
 to lose. In the second place it would be impossible. The 
 general conscience, trained by generations of Christianity, would 
 justly rise in revolt against such a cynical suggestion : and finally, 
 given the other conditions and complications of a civilised life 
 which remove almost the whole population from anything like a 
 natural environment, it would be more disastrous than the 
 blindest gropings of philanthropy. But it is possible and 
 necessary that philanthropy, with its ally medical science and 
 knowledge, should be guided by prudence and foresight to look 
 beyond the individual case to the larger issues of the future. It 
 is assuredly the duty of a Christian society on the one hand to 
 treat with forbearance, wisdom, and firmness, those who by no 
 fault of their own have come into the world so heavily handicapped 
 in the race of life : but, on the other hand, it is an even more 
 urgent duty to provide if possible that the children of the 
 generations to come shall be born with such equipment of 
 
8 
 
 qualities, physical, mental, and moral, as will make it reasonably 
 possible for them to grow up useful and happy citizens. 
 
 III. It would appear then that the Church as such is 
 committed, and has indeed already by its social action confessed 
 its obligation to the principles of Eugenic science. We must 
 now pass to the consideration of the methods a Church can best 
 use to carry out those objects : and here I am afraid I am going 
 to be intensely discouraging, in fact uniformly so with a single 
 reservation which I shall prudently keep for the end of my paper. 
 Enthusiastic Eugenists have pointed out to me that the Church 
 possesses a system of life-long instruction which might well be 
 directed to the enlightenment and conviction of Church people 
 on this important subject, but I am afraid that for the present 
 the sphere of its effective use is extremely limited. 
 
 (a) Eugenic education of the young, if it is to have its due 
 effect, must always find its place rather in the Day School than 
 in the Sunday School. It is commonly admitted that moral 
 teaching and the practical side of religious teaching are best 
 given to children by the regular teachers from whom they are 
 accustomed to receive instruction in other subjects ; and in this 
 particular subject it is absolutely necessary that the instructor 
 should be a trained teacher, and one who possesses some degree 
 of genuine scientific knowledge of what is on one side a highly 
 technical subject. Anything like vague and amateur teaching 
 would be not only useless but positively dangerous ; and further,^ 
 from the parish clergyman's point of view the time which can be 
 given to Sunday School is none too much for training the children 
 in some knowledge of the literature and history of their religion. 
 
 (6) The time of Confirmation has been suggested as a time 
 for the beginnings of eugenic teaching. Here we get back at 
 once to the necessity of educating general public opinion. At 
 present I am sure the vast majority of parents would resent 
 anything of the kind ; the vast majority of clergymen who are 
 preparing children for Confirmation would be neither qualified nor 
 willing to undertake such a task ; and in this case again the time 
 is fully occupied with teaching more immediately germane to the 
 matter in hand. In both these cases, the school and confirmation, 
 it may fairly be said that when public opinion is sufficiently 
 
educated to make some degree of eugenic teaching a regular 
 part of the curriculum of school training — and not till then — will 
 the Church be able to enforce the ethical aspects of eugenic duty 
 as a part of its spiritual teaching. 
 
 (c) When we pass from the consideration of children to the 
 case of grown-up people, it might naturally be supposed that the 
 pulpit would prove an effective instrument for the spread of 
 enlightenment and common sense on these topics and so to a 
 certain extent it may, and I hope it will. But here again the 
 sphere of usefulness is strictly limited. A course of sermons 
 from a great preacher or an authoritative pronouncement from 
 some leader of religious opinion would doubtless have an effect, 
 probably in immediate protest and opposition, but ultimately in 
 a profitable clearing of the air : but a casual sermon from a 
 clergyman with no special claim to be heard on a difficult subject 
 would, I think, unless he happened to be an unusually discreet 
 and learned minister, probably do more harm than good : and 
 that because the sermon is not the best form in the present age 
 for argument and exposition of this kind. In our day the 
 printed word reaches a far larger audience and has a more 
 permanent effect than the spoken word. New thought is best 
 promulgated, not from the pulpit, but by literature of all kinds, 
 in newspapers, in magazines, in light and attractive books, in 
 serious and scientific treatises : and when the spoken word is the 
 medium it gets a readier and more receptive hearing from the 
 platform at meetings, if one can only get the outside public to 
 come to them : and probably best of all in personal con- 
 versation : and it is there that the clergy, with the influence 
 that their position gives them, could really help : and it is 
 unquestionably the duty of clergymen to take such interest, and 
 to acquire such a degree of knowledge on an important subject 
 like this, as will enable them to speak the word in season with 
 authority and power. They are not justified in letting the thing 
 alone, or in adopting without enquiry the popular prejudice 
 which dismisses it as impossible. If they are, as they ought to 
 be, spiritual and intellectual guides to some part of their congre- 
 gation, they cannot honestly take refuge either in ignorance or 
 indifference. 
 
to 
 
 (d) And now to come to the reservation of which I spoke. 
 The Church has always claimed a right to regulate the marriage 
 of its members, and the marriage service of our Church declares 
 in terms so plain spoken that they offend some delicate ears, that 
 one of the purposes of marriage is the production of satisfactory 
 children. The Church still possesses in some degree the 
 power which is represented by this claim, and it will retain it in 
 proportion as it exercises it wisely and beneficially : but to that 
 end it must exercise it not in an arbitrary way, but in the light 
 of an enlarged and still increasing knowledge of the facts of nature. 
 
 (i) There are certain highly technical aspects of the matter, 
 conspicuously the question of the limitation of offspring, on which 
 we cannot expect a religious body as such to make any definite 
 pronouncement. The clergyman who has the necessary know- 
 ledge of the subject and the particular knowledge of the indi- 
 vidual case may as he thinks right give personal advice and use 
 his authority to enforce right action: but in general it is a 
 matter for the doctor and not for the parson, and it is a question 
 on which the best opinion, both moral and scientific, is still 
 strongly divided. 
 
 (2) But in another, and a wider, and therefore more im- 
 portant part of the field of eugenics, opinion is not divided : and 
 the clergy and definitely religious people as such have a great 
 opportunity and duty in the educating of a strong public opinion 
 on the subject of undesirable unions, not only in such extreme 
 cases as the mating for instance of a pair of deaf mutes, a 
 triumph of unenlightened philanthropic effort of which an 
 instance was brought to my notice quite lately with its 
 dreadful results, but in the case of other less obvious physical 
 and mental defects, where marriage is now freely allowed by 
 public opinion, and even admired by sentiment. I am not 
 speaking here of interference in particular cases. That may be a 
 duty, but it is for the person who undertakes it to judge his 
 responsibility and the wisdom of the means he takes to fulfil it : 
 but what it is really desirable to produce is a clear sense of right 
 and wrong on this question, which will make people instinctively 
 shrink from infringing the laws of eugenics instead of instinctively 
 neglecting them as they do at present. 
 
11 
 
 (3) There is a great deal to be done and there is existing 
 machinery to do it, — in the way of teaching women, especially 
 those of the poorer classes, certain simple and acknowledged 
 truths as to the care of infants both before and after birth. 
 There is a great deal to be done, for statistics show that a large 
 proportion of mothers are both ignorant and careless. They 
 need to be taught not only what is the right thing to do but that 
 it is their duty to themselves and to their children to do it ; and 
 it must be added that many mothers of the wealthier class are 
 lacking in the sense of duty if not in the opportunity of knowledge. 
 Instruction of this kind is being given, and should be given to a 
 much greater degree, and by persons carefully chosen for their 
 knowledge and power to teach, both in Parish Mothers' Meetings, 
 and more especially through the excellently organised machinery 
 of the Mothers' Union. 
 
 I may sum up all that I have said in a single paragraph. If 
 we do not wish to court disappointment, we shall not expect the 
 Church to lead in what is a very technical and hitherto a much 
 controverted question. We can and do ask from the Church a 
 calm and impartial consideration of our arguments, and en- 
 couragement and support to well-considered action in what is 
 proved to be true and beneficial to the race. 
 
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