William E. Kellicott

“ The dearth of ability at a time of crisis is the worst ill that can happen to a people. Sitting quietly at home, a nation may degenerate and collapse, simply because it has given full play to selective reproduction and not bred from its best. From the standpoint of the patriot, no less than from that of the evolutionist and Eugenist, differential fertility is momentous; we must unreservedly condemn all movements for restraint of fertility which do not discriminate between the fertility of the physically and mentally fit and that of the unfit. ”

“ And the biologist is grateful to the sociologist for reminding him that he, too, has sacred duties in this direction. He is too often forgetful that the real aim of his own, as of any science, is to be useful in real human life. It is pleasing to the biologist to feel that he is at last in possession of facts of value to the student of human society, for to him his debt is great. ”

“ The first thing we do toward advancing our places in the world is to absorb what we can of the same kind of thing our forbears absorbed, learn over again their lessons, repeat their experiences; and then we proceed straightway to increase the difficulties for the next generation by writing more books, discovering more facts, making a little more history, and so it goes: the load of tradition increases with every successive generation, and so it has gone since the beginning of man's civilization. ”

“ It is clear I take it, that the fact of human heredity does not concern only physical traits but extends to psychical traits as well, and with about the same intensity. This fact has been found true also for still less analyzable characters such as length of life, fertility or infertility and the like, and again about the same intensity of resemblance is found.
Human heredity is a fact then just as human variability is a fact. We have truly the raw materials and the means for racial improvement. The ability to direct the evolution of the human race makes this our supremest duty. ”

“ Let us now turn to another phase of our subject and consider the biological methods of the description and measurement of heredity, as a preliminary to our next chapter in which we shall discuss the bearings of the facts of human heredity upon the possibility of the formation of a permanently improved human breed.
The fact of heredity is one of the most familiar and patent things about organisms. "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" For we may define heredity as the fact of general resemblance between parent and offspring. ”

“ In truth, however, the fact that a boy, like his father, has a head and a heart and hands and feet, physical traits characteristic of the human species, that he begins to walk and talk and shave at about the same age as his father did—all this is the fact of heredity. The fact that guinea pigs produce guinea pigs and not rabbits is the fact of heredity. ”

“ For Man's warning or punishment the lightning struck, comets appeared, disease ravaged, insects tormented and destroyed. It was certainly very natural that Man should regard himself as a thing apart, particularly since he was able to control and to regulate Nature, and to take tribute from her so extensively. But the scientist regarded man differently; from him the world learned to recognize man as an integral factor in Nature—as one with Nature, possessing the same structures, performing the same activities, as other animals ”

“ Perhaps the only direction in which natural selection is the chiefly operative factor in human evolution to-day is in the development of immunity from infectious disease. Just as man is a new departure in the unfolding scheme of the world, so his presence and characteristics lead to new methods of evolution, of survival, and the like. Knowledge, reason, self-consciousness, will, are new processes in Nature, and it is these which have largely determined the direction of man's history. Nature's discipline of death is more or less successfully resisted by the will of man. Man is Nature's Rebel. ”

“ Any condition which leads to the multiplication of the innately defective and dependent classes must be sternly opposed. No matter how benign the guise of any form of relief or charity, if it encourages or permits even indirectly the free reproduction of these classes, it must be resolutely opposed and soon abandoned. "It is not enough to preach with horror and indignation against normal parents who restrict their families. Equal reprobation should be the lot of those who, with inherited insanity, feeble-mindedness, or disease, bring children into the world to perpetuate their infirmities. ”

“ Our knowledge of the causes of many of the conditions leading to gross physical and mental defect and criminality has progressed already to such a point that we could if we would eradicate them in large proportion from our civilization. The great horde of defectives, once in the world, have the right to live and to enjoy as best they may whatever freedom is compatible with the lives and freedom of the other members of society. ”

“ Just what the organism does at any given moment is in reality determined by two groups of factors: first, it depends, obviously, upon the structure of the organism acting, upon the organs it has to act with, and upon the precise condition of these organs and of the whole individual; and second, it depends upon the nature of those conditions outside of and affecting the organism which lead it to act at all. ”

“ The aim of Eugenics is the production of a more healthy, more vigorous, more able humanity. Again in the words of Galton "The aim of Eugenics is to represent each class ... by its best specimens; that done to leave them to work out their common civilization in their own way.... To bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute more than their present proportion to the next generation"; and further, we might add, to cause the useless, vicious classes to contribute to the next generation less than their present proportion. ”

“ At the outset we should say that the knowledge of human heredity is as yet largely of the statistical sort. We know how a great many characters are inherited, on the average. The subject of Mendelian heredity is so new that there has been hardly time to investigate more than a few human characteristics from this point of view. Certain conditions add to the difficulties here. First, many, probably most, of the more important human traits are complexes, not units, and it is a long and difficult process to analyze them into their units, with which alone Mendelism deals. ”

“ Very naturally, then, we have had social science studying man as Man, with a capital M: biological science studying man as a natural animal.
But now that modern trend of scientific synthesis which has brought forth a Physical-Chemistry and a Chemical-Physiology and a Bio-Chemistry, is combining the purely social and the purely biological studies of man into a new Bio-Sociology. And as one phase of this new partnership we have the subject of Eugenics—the science of racial integrity and progress, built upon the overlapping fields of Biology and Sociology. ”

“ Civilized man is the result of Nature plus Nurture. Civilization has been defined as "the sum of human contrivances which enable human beings to advance independently of heredity." The knowledge of fact, historic and scientific, of literature, of art, of custom, and manner, and all that goes to make up the culture and education which are the distinctive traits of our human lives—all this is no possession of ours when we make our first bow to society. Nor do these things become ours through a simple process of growth and development while we remain the passive [Pg 18] subjects. ”

“ It is a matter of common notice and remark that to-day, in England at any rate, there is a dearth of youthful ability. It exists in commerce, science, literature, politics, the bar, the church. We cannot dismiss as merely fashionable the statements that the able classes are not replacing themselves, that men of ability are less able than formerly. Whether or not this is also the condition in America to-day, we know that it soon will be the condition unless steps are taken to bring about a positive relation between civic desirability and ability and the numerical production of offspring. ”

“ Bring forcibly before the people the facts of human heredity. Teach them to understand the force of the eugenic ideal of good breeding. "The prevalent opinion that almost anybody is good enough to marry is chiefly due to the fact that in this case, cause and effect, marriage and the feebleness of offspring, are so distant from each other that the near-sighted eye does not distinctly perceive the connection between them." By education we must produce first of all a thoughtfulness in the community regarding the racial responsibilities of marriage and reproduction. ”

“ Why should the able and worthy and thrifty members of society be compelled to pay, as they are in this country alone, $100,000,000 annually, not to mention the vast sums voluntarily contributed toward "charitable" purposes, for the support of the criminal and [Pg 233] pauper and defective classes who themselves contribute nothing of value and whose very existence is evidence of criminal disregard of the right of every individual to be well born, into a healthy and sane life? The only answer, if it be an answer, is—because the competent are willing to foot the bill. ”

“ But the shifting of even one or two per cent of the individuals into or out of extreme positions has a very marked effect upon the character of the total group and upon the average. In the life of the State the character of the general average of the citizens is of the greatest importance, and comparatively small deviations in the average of civic worth may mean much as regards the history of a democracy. Of course the average individuals in a social group may not be those of greatest influence; even when taken all together they may not determine the trend of the life of the society ”

“ As Saleeby puts it: "There is no wealth but life; and if the inherent quality of life fails, neither battle-ships, nor libraries, nor symphonies, nor Free Trade, nor Tariff Reform, nor anything else will save a nation." ”

“ Is it even too much to hope that the idea that the "humanities" include only the study of man's comparatively recent past, may now more rapidly give place to a broader conception which shall include not only the whole of man's past, but the study of his future as well? Could any ideal be more [Pg 215] vitally, more profoundly human or more worthy of study and devotion, than this of the production of a race of men, clean and sound in mind and body? ”

“ An individual may be pure bred in certain of its characteristics, hybrid in others. Practically there is no such thing as an individual which is either pure bred or hybrid in all its traits. One of the chief contributions, then, of Mendelism to the subjects of Heredity and Eugenics is this—that a pure bred may be derived from a hybrid in one generation: the pure bred produced by a long series of hybrid individuals is just as pure as the pure bred which has never had a hybrid in its ancestry. ”

“ This conception, happily obsolete now among thinkers, though occasionally seen lurking in out of the way corners shaded from the light of modern philosophy and science, placed Man [Pg 7] and the rest of the universe in separate categories. Man was one, all the rest another. It was for Man's benefit or pleasure that the rains descended, that the corn grew and ripened, that the sun shone, the birds sang, the landscape was spread before the view. ”