John Berry Haycraft

“ Whether or not these fit will form an aristocracy of high merit will depend upon the kind of conditions with which they have to comply, in fact it will depend upon the selection that society makes.
Does it not appear that the present tendency is rather to give an advantage to the man who is capable, pushing and diplomatic; are we not selecting men with qualities of value in a struggle, qualities which savour still rather of talons and claws, while we are careless of qualities which we have learned already to value as those of a higher order? ”

“ Do we ever ask ourselves if it could not more truly be said that the generous are the poor, that generosity almost of necessity implies a temperament unsuited to the neck to neck struggle which society is increasingly imposing upon those of her citizens who aspire to be rich? ”

“ History shows that mankind is ever ready to sacrifice itself if cause be shown; that men and women will go far beyond the lengths of their devotion to self-interest, in their devotion to a cause, a hero, a religion, an ideal. If then it be shown that by sacrifice of the individual [162] so great a thing as racial reconstruction can be accomplished on certain well-understood lines, then from what we know of the stuff that is in humanity this racial reconstruction most assuredly will be carried out. ”

“ The advantages which the future holds out are, as they always have been, to the few and not to the many, for the struggle and competition is still there, and all cannot come in abreast. By a more complete and thorough sifting from all classes of the capable and intelligent, we are forming, and shall continue rapidly to form an aristocracy of real worth and distinction, separated more and more sharply from the masses, as each generation goes by. ”

“ The brute unconsciously struggles to survive through instinct of the dire necessity of self-preservation, but man’s struggle in too many cases is a pastime that is sweet to him, and one which he will pursue through his whole life-time, and will follow eagerly with the tottering steps of extreme old age, although he thereby dwarfs what is noblest and best in his humanity. ”

“ Just as there is no subject which will not yield food for the evil-minded, so there is no subject—having to do with the laws of nature—which cannot be naturally approached in all simple-mindedness. As soon, therefore, as it is realised, that this question we are dealing with is one which demands not only our closest attention, but also the advantage of public and private discussion, so soon shall we have acquired the habit of regarding it in quite a matter-of-fact and pure-minded way. ”

“ It would indeed be difficult to conceive any plan more inimical to the future of a race, or better devised to sap and undermine the power of a nation, than that of taking from it in perpetuity those possessed of innate capacity, a result which follows when the best citizens are induced, for the sake of gifts and honours, to relinquish their obligation to the race of being the parents of many children. ”

“ This debt that we owe to those who have gone before us we can only repay to those who come after us, and the sense of obligation will grow as we become better educated in the broad facts of life and history. We shall increasingly be prepared to forego our pleasures, and to undertake that which may be personally disagreeable for the sake of others. The good of others has been, and will increasingly be, that to which our energies will turn, and the most fundamental good that we can achieve is that which will add to the organic excellence of the race. ”

“ Each generation acts according to its own lights, and if our public conscience is sharpening, and our ideas of right and wrong are becoming clearer and are ruling our actions more emphatically, we must remember that this moral advance is a heritage which, like our intellectual and material possessions, we owe to our ancestors, and we may humbly endeavour that this, the most worthy of all possessions, shall not be lessened as it passes through our hands. ”

“ We, in this nineteenth century, are the inheritors of a vast fund of accumulated knowledge—an intellectual property—which is infinitely greater than that possessed by the Greeks at the time of Socrates and Plato, yet I do not think that anyone would venture to assert that an average Englishman of to-day has better brain tissue and corresponding intellectual activity than that which was possessed by an average ancient Greek; indeed, some with Galton would say that the Englishman’s brain power is very inferior. ”

“ It is, however, very improbable that the advanced politicians of any century will ever call for a general battue upon the inveterate drunkards or consumptives, nor is there any likelihood of the work of preventive medicine abating for one single instant, even for the sake of the race. The love of the individual is antecedent, both in the history of humanity and in the life history of each individual, to any regard for the race, and the latter is but an extension of the former feeling. ”

“ Long ago, when the family or clan formed a unit, the right of the father over the children and the women was a part of a very necessary discipline upon which probably the existence of all depended. These ideas have very naturally survived, for custom clings with wonderful pertinacity, and we have had the strange spectacle of the house divided against itself, the father clinging to his old rights, the wife and children clamouring for their new ones. ”

“ The value of an hypothesis depends, however, entirely upon whether we can put it to the test of experiment. If it is intangible, then it remains an hypothesis, while the great body of fact workers go on building their sciences, and in the completion of these it has no part. Darwin’s pangenesis has no value as an hypothesis, it seems to me, apart from its being a pictorial way of illustrating how use and disuse might be inherited. ”

“ When we turn to the experiences of life common to most of us, we shall find, I think, pretty strong evidence that surrounding conditions determine that, as a rule, the capable and ambitious man has fewer children than his fellows. Let us examine some of these facts of common experience. The agricultural labourer, of the intellectual value of whose education I have by no means a low opinion, nevertheless obtains this education without cost. Bred on the farm, he insensibly imbibes from what he sees around him the multifarious bits of information a farm hand requires. ”

“ Human Brain Power results merely in Wealth Accumulation.
The struggle between members of the same community is not therefore so much a struggle for existence as a struggle for a superfluity of the good things obtainable. It is a struggle for property, and not therefore necessarily a struggle in which the most successful will be the largest race producer. ”

“ We come here, however, to an outstanding difference between the results of the competition of one animal and another, and with that of one member of a community with another. In the animal world, the sickly, or the feeble, or deficient, have always tended towards destruction, their more capable fellows having as a rule an interest in their destruction. A sickly fowl or pigeon has not only to compete at great disadvantage with its fellows for its food, but it has to face a pitiless instinct which leads the healthy ones to destroy it as soon as its weakness is apparent. ”

“ STERILITY OF THE CAPABLES. We saw, in the last chapter, that in social communities the struggle of one individual with another for wealth and power is not a fair and open contest, but that all are more or less handicapped by surrounding conditions, lack of capital, education, or influence. We saw that recently more equal chances for success are being given to all, and with the result that the more capable and pushing are gradually tending to form a new upper class, and thereby draining from the labouring classes all those who possess the qualities we have alluded to. ”

“ In marriage we must bear in mind its end and aim, for the individual lives only till he has reproduced himself; each generation lives only to produce the next. If these facts are once widely understood there can be little doubt that they will influence men’s actions in respect to marriage, and with a growing sense of [170] obligation to others, the ratio of sickly and feeble-minded children may be diminished.
With the judicious selection of parents to be the race-producers, we need have no fear as to the care that modern civilisation and preventive medicine bestow upon the individuals. ”

“ England has been hitherto a laggard in her educational system, but education is now at last being brought to the door of the poor as well as of the rich. Primary education has been recast, and the universities and colleges in the great centres of population, and suited to the wants of, and within the means of, the poorer classes, are now being established, and an altogether different set of students are being equipped for the intellectual battle of life, students that are drawn not alone from the ranks of the English gentry, but also from the lower middle and artisan class. ”

“ When we consider the enormous sacrifice in modern times of what were at one period thought to be personal rights (such as the right of every man to ill-treat and neglect his wife or children, or to live in whatever insanitary house or room he pleases, or to work as long as he wishes, etc. etc.) , we can hardly draw, even in imagination, a line beyond which the State may not, at some future time, see its way to make claim upon the individual. ”

“ Now there is good reason to believe that the career necessary to individual success in the life-struggle of modern societies is one which carries with it and necessitates relative sterility; and if this is so, we have to face the certainty that talent is being bred out of us, as it were, and that the average capacity of the race must therefore assuredly deteriorate. And whereas, in the animal world, those qualities which determine the success of an individual in the battle of life become stamped upon its progeny, our modern [137] system entails just the reverse. ”

“ But the poor tramp, an outcast and a dependent, lives a life worse than that of the shepherd-dog in the fields, and perpetuates this misery from century to century. Here, as with the idiot or epileptic and others of this class, there is clearly a case for segregation. All are obviously unfit to perpetuate themselves, and in the best interests of the human species they should be prevented from so doing. ”

“ It is evident, therefore, that those people with the tuberculous variation who, even under the present circumstances, manage to contribute their quota to the population, would, were the bacillus tuberculosus altogether exterminated, contribute more than their share, and the type would become more common. And let it be remembered that this type, apart from the action of the bacillus, is a delicate and fragile one and liable to other affections, and the effect of giving the type any advantage in the struggle for life would surely imperil the well-being of the future of the race. ”

“ Those who cannot support themselves, from poverty of physique, disease, or mental or moral incapacity, are yet permitted by the community to exercise the functions of parenthood, which, in its nature and essence, implies an excess of power over and above that which is required for the individual’s own self-preservation. ”

“ With a certain amount of sacrifice, humanity by selection might free itself from those types who are a drag upon the resources of the community, and who suffer themselves, certainly in the melancholic cases, to a degree which it is impossible for an ordinary individual to experience. ”

“ The prison cell is warmer than the rock cranny or pit in which the primitive Briton sheltered himself, and the prison fare is better than was his food. Why, then, should the idle and reprobate vagabond receive the advantages of a civilisation built up by the busy toil of those around him, a toil in which he will take no part? ”

“ Believing in the advent of some sudden change, of the destruction of the present condition of things, they naturally thought and cared little for the preservation of a race, destined soon to have spiritual existence alone. Thus, it came about that millions of the most thoughtful and noble-minded men and women have in the past committed the fatal mistake of leaving the rest of humanity to carry on the race. ”