Michael F. Guyer

“ It remains for us as a people to decide whether we shall continue to let the large employers of cheap labor, the railroad and steamship agents and brokers, who care nothing about the innate fitness of the immigrants they bring, determine the character of our future population, or whether we shall insist on a proper regulation of this flood so that we may receive only an honest, intelligent, industrious and healthy stock. To continue to absorb these aliens with as little selection as we now do is nothing short of criminal carelessness. ”

“ But if it costs relatively little to discover and conserve millions of dollars’ worth of hereditary qualities in our plants and animals, what are we to think of ourselves, an intelligent people who, knowing that “every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit,” still go on placidly permitting the production of defectives and delinquents? Can we continue to drink the sluggish blood of the pauper and the imbecile into our veins and hope to escape unscathed? ”

“ Is the woolly-witted son of opulence, so abundant in our colleges to-day, who is boosted through by hook or by crook, of superior eugenical value to the alert eager boy—and his name is legion—destined for economic reasons to go to work at or before the completion of his high-school course, perhaps because of the very fact of an unlimited fecundity in his own family which necessitates his help for the general support? ”

“ So in viewing the problem of sexual hygiene the writer feels that our attempts toward damming the torrents in the adolescent by a belated effort at verbal instruction on sex-hygiene is at best only a palliative or an attempt to cure the symptoms of a more deeply-seated, organic, social malady. The treatment should have been in progress long before in the form of training in self-control, and in the inculcation of the sense of dignity and self-respect which springs from the individual’s consciousness of being, not a slave to his desires, but his own master. ”

“ We have to deal simply with the old questions of what is constitutionally in the germ, what is acquired by the body, and lastly, whether the somatically acquired is inherited. While we all know in a general way what is meant by disease, especially if some specific disorder such as scarlet fever, malaria or tuberculosis is mentioned, an attempt to give an accurate definition is much like trying to define a weed, inasmuch as what is functionally all right at one time or place may be all wrong at another, or what is normal in one animal may be abnormal in another. ”

“ But if it is necessary to restrain the man who would steal a purse or a horse, is it not still more urgent to restrain one who would poison the blood of a whole family or even of an entire stock for generations? ”

“ Before we can set out on a campaign of positive eugenics we must have some standard by which to steer, and it would be a rash advocate indeed who would assert that class distinction alone, or even success as measured by public opinion to-day should be our whole criterion of fitness. Shall we measure fitness in terms of how successfully one can acquire worldly goods, or in other words, by the property test, or what shall be our standard? ”

“ Just what is the measure of normality? To what extent by developing to their highest point certain inhibitive or opposing tendencies, can we counteract certain inherent proclivities for wrong-doing? By what means shall we sift the congenital defectives from the victims of suppressed opportunities? These and kindred questions confront us at the very outset of our studies of crime and delinquency. It is obvious that although we may institute the strictest elimination of the socially unfit, unless we can provide a wholesome environment for the fit, lapses into unfitness are sure to recur. ”

“ Our Duty to Afford the Opportunity and Provide the Proper Stimuli for the Development of Good Traits.—It is clearly our duty to see that the expression of good traits is made possible. We must throw a sheltering screen of social environment around the young individual which will fend off wrong forms of incitement and chances for harmful expression, and we must provide proper stimuli and afford opportunity for development of proper modes of expression. We must not forget that a normal instinct denied a legitimate outlet will not infrequently find an illegitimate one. ”

“ For it must be remembered that the organs of the adult do not exist as such in the germ but are present there only as potentialities. How, for example, can a change in the biceps muscle of one’s arm be registered in a germ-cell in which there is no biceps muscle, but merely the possibilities of developing one? Or how can increased mental ability which is contingent on the elaboration of certain brain-cells be impressed on a germ which has no brain-cells but only the capacity under certain conditions of producing such cells? ”

“ Interest is undeniably the open sesame to desirable mental development; but what he does protest against is that not uncommon interpretation of interest which deems it necessary to eschew most serious consideration of a subject and evade such parts as present difficulties. Certainly if there is any fact that stands out prominently in human experience it is the fact that nothing conduces to the development of moral stamina so much as the overcoming of difficulties, particularly distasteful difficulties. ”

“ Which Shall It Be?—As a matter of social evolution, human homes originated in the necessity of an abiding place for the nurture and training of the young past their first period of helplessness. Well in the foreground of the mental picture which arises when we hear the very word home, are children. What shall the home of the future be with regard to its most important assets, the children? Shall we as a people continue to be confronted at every turn by the dull countenance of the imbecile, the inevitable product of a bad parental mating ”

“ As a matter of fact no satisfactory classification of crime can be made since so many factors enter and in such varying degrees. Most classifications made in our legal codes are a hodge-podge based on a mixture of motive on the part of the participant, degree of turpitude involved, nature and extent of the injury inflicted, and the object against which the offense was perpetrated, whether an individual, society or the state. ”

“ We seldom require that our protégés make intelligent judgments based on evidence, we rarely exact of them decisions in matters of ethics, and almost never demand that they put their knowledge into efficient accomplishment. It can not be too strongly urged that we need less of formulæ learned by heart, less dead erudition pigeonholed in the brain like so many foreign bodies, and vastly more assimilation of knowledge into the living personality of the individual.
Where in school or home to-day do we find provision for such training? Our tendency is, in fact, just the opposite. ”

“ Once grasp the truth that a child’s fate in life is frequently decided long before birth, and that no amount of food or hospital service or culture or tears will ever wholly make good the deficiencies of bad “blood,” or in the language of the biologist, a faulty germ-plasm, and the conviction must surely be borne home to the intelligent members of society that one thing of superlative importance in life is the making of a wise choice of a marriage mate on the one hand, and the prevention of parenthood to the obviously unfit on the other. ”

“ Does heredity play a greater part in shaping one’s mind and body than does his environment? From that day to this he has listened to men and women in every walk of life discussing the relation of heredity to environment in determining human traits. Teachers and parents are constantly asking: “Are such and such characteristics in my children due to their inheritance or to the way they have been trained?” Students of juvenile delinquency and of mental defect and deficiency are searching everywhere for light on this matter. ”

“ Very few people have any precise knowledge of the mechanism of heredity. The whole thing is inscrutable to them, and is shrouded in mystery. Superstition flourishes among even intelligent persons in respect to heredity, and errors due to education, and tragedies resulting from vicious social organization are all alike ascribed to its uncontrollable forces. Most people are none the wiser because they do not know to what extent the physical and mental defects and deviations of individuals are due to inheritance or to the malign influences of the individual’s environment and training. ”

“ Construction of Ideals.—The construction of such ideals through example, through precept, through appeal and through actual practise in self-denial and self-control on the part of the child, should be the foremost duty of the parent or teacher. Above all it should be remembered that imitation of teacher, of parents, of companions, is more of a factor than intellect in the moral action of children. ”

“ But how can this oversight on the part of an enemy so affect the bodies and through them the germ-cells of such individuals as to develop so high a degree of protective coloration? Or how, indeed, could any of numerous adaptive structures which one can think of, such as the color or scent of flowers to lure insects for cross-pollenation, the various grappling devices on many seeds to secure wide distribution by animals, or the like, have been directly produced by use or disuse or by any variation produced in them by the agents to which they are adapted? ”

“ The Duality of the Body and the Singleness of the Germ.—Since every maternal chromosome in the ordinary cell has an equivalent mate derived from the male parent, it follows therefore, supposing the chromosomes do have the significance in inheritance attributed to them, that as regards the measurable inheritable differences between two individuals, the ordinary organism produced through the union of the two germ-cells is, potentially at least, dual in nature. ”

“ In the higher forms we should expect to see intelligence lapsing more and more into pure instinct. As a matter of fact, we see nothing of the kind. The lowest forms act by instinct so exclusively that we fail to get decided evidence of intelligence. In higher forms not a single case of intelligence lapsing into instinct is known. In forms that give indubitable evidence of intelligence we do not see conscious reflection crystallizing into instinct, but we do find instinct coming more and more under the sway of intelligence. ”

“ Since nine-tenths of the difficulty centers in a lack of self-restraint, and inasmuch as the mating instinct is one of the strongest that tugs at the flesh of humanity, it is obvious that those by nature deficient in volitional control will almost without exception give way to the call. So as might be expected the hordes of our feeble-minded and epileptic are always a source of grave danger in this respect. ”

“ So, many biologists argue, why have two explanations when one is sufficient, especially when the other has never been conclusively established as true in any case and is obviously untrue in certain test cases? The attitude of most investigators is that of the open mind. While feeling that the weight of probability is very decidedly against the theory of the inheritance of somatic modifications, they still stand ready and willing to accept any evidence in its favor which when weighed in the balance is not found wanting. ”

“ That social disapproval of certain unions can become a very real factor in preventing such marriage is evinced on all sides by the numerous barriers to marriage already in existence based on race, religious sect or social status. Even in our much vaunted democracies one is looked down on who marries “beneath” his or her social set. This sentiment of taboo, so readily and often so senselessly cultivated in our present human society, will inevitably spring up in consequence of a wide-spread knowledge of the facts of human heredity. ”

“ And when we face the issue squarely we have to admit that there is no more indication of the inheritance of parentally acquired characters as regards customs, knowledge, habits and moral traditions than there is of physical features. In fact, if such acquirements were inherited then we should soon have a race which would naturally, spontaneously as it were, do what its ancestors did with effort. Yet we do not find the children in our schools reading, doing sums and developing proper social relations without ceaseless prompting and urging on the part of the teacher. ”

“ I shall merely point out here that the general verdict of experts in nervous and mental disorders is to the effect that externally induced mental disorders are of rare occurrence except as the result of general poisoning or enfeeblement of the system in some way, or by traumatic conditions such as a blow on the head, and that there is no evidence of the transmission of the effects of such conditions. In most cases of insanity, supposedly caused by fright or worry, a close study of the family stock will reveal nervous instability of some kind. ”