Biological descent

“ It might perhaps even be argued that upon biological analogy, as the race becomes more specialized and its adaptations more complex, a lower birth rate, accompanied by greater care and preparation given to the offspring, may be a necessity. ”

“ The so-called scientific method of the eugenists is radically faulty, in spite of the rich display of colored plates, stained tables, glittering biological speculations, brilliant mathematical formulæ and complicated statistical calculations. ”

“ We know that rapidity of development is no less influenced by these two causes, and that, in general, the more subject an anatomical or physiological trait is to the influence of environment, the less definitely can we speak of a controlling influence of heredity, and the less are we justified in claiming that nature, not nurture, is the deciding element. ”

“ There are those that so believe, as well as those who see in them only the effects of inborn biological impulse. Perhaps these intermediate dubious traits are the results of a blending of nature and nurture, the strength of each factor varying according to each trait or individual examined. ”

“ When we come to the effects of use and disuse, we reach a much debated ground, and one complicated by the injection of a great deal of biological theorizing, as well as the presence of the usual large amount of faulty observation and inference.
It will be admitted by every one that a part of the body which is much used tends to increase in size, or strength, and similarly that a part which is not used tends to atrophy. ”

“ I emphasize the statement that certain mixtures of races may have a biological advantage. It is equally possible that other combinations may have a biological disadvantage. We are far from being able to state at present what combinations are beneficial and what are biologically injurious. ”

“ Everything which nature has caused individuals to acquire or lose by the influence of the circumstances to which their race may be for a long time exposed, and consequently by the influence of the predominant use of such an organ, or by that of the constant lack of use of such part, it preserves by heredity and passes on to the new individuals which descend from it, provided that the changes thus acquired are common to both sexes, or to those which have given origin to these new individuals. ”

“ It is, however, an open question what would happen to the selected strains owing to the changed social ideals; and it is inexcusable to refuse to consider those fundamental changes that would certainly be connected with eugenic practice, and to confine ourselves to the biological effect that may be wrought, for we know that in the great mass of a healthy population the social stimulus is infinitely more potent than the biological mechanism. ”

“ Civilization and culture perpetuate themselves through the permanence of social and economic conditions. Degeneration sets in with any slump of the forces that compel a constant repetition in each generation of the acts and thoughts of their immediate ancestors.
The eugenist concept of biologic development is that of a multitude of individual characters each of which becomes visible in specific external traits. Germ-cell changes are presupposed with each change in the statistical averages obtained by the measurement of individual parts or organs. ”

“ Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace each other, so that some finally become extinct? We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals. But the several considerations just referred to may be conveniently deferred for a time; and we will first see how far the bodily structure of man shows traces, more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form. ”

“ Physical and social environment influences these causes, which, on account of their growing complexity, create more and more obstacles to the normal evolution of the individual, while at the same time they force him to acquire greater and more varied aptitudes. ”

“ Degeneration, atrophy, atavism, are quite as much factors in evolution as variation and natural selection and development;—but the flowing of the eternal stream, the river of life, is heredity,—whatever form the ripples take. As I have given some twenty years’ study to these subjects, I am not likely to overlook any such thing as environment or climate or diet. You cannot, however, get a grasp of the system by reading only a digest of results—a study of biology and physiology is absolutely necessary before the psychology of the thing can be clearly perceived. ”

“ They rarely stop to think that man is an animal, or that the science of biology might conceivably have something to say about the means by which his species can be improved; but if they do, they commonly take refuge, deliberately or unconsciously, in the biology of half a century ago, which still believed that these changes of the body could be so impressed on the germ-plasm as to be continued in the following generation. ”

“ His doctrine of Eugenics shifts the centre of interest in Man's pedigree from the Past to the Future, Actually and in point of fact the worst bred of animals, Man has become so, because he of all animals has the highest potency for degeneration or for evolution. That is one of the truths revealed to us by evolutionary biology. ”

“ In spite of these presumptions which the biologist would, to say the least, consider worthy of careful investigation, the world is full of well-intentioned people who are anxious to improve the race, and who in their attempts to do so, wholly ignore the germ-plasm. They see only the body-plasm. They are devoted to the dogma that if they can change the body (and what is here said of the body applies equally to the mind) in the direction they wish, this change will in some unascertainable way be reproduced in the next generation. ”

“ What we have is simply hereditary repetition, the unfolding of a race habit, an instinct. In other words, a coordination of nerve cells and muscle fibers, which has become fixed by heredity through natural selection on account of its importance to the species, simply discharges itself in the presence of the appropriate stimu- lus. This constantly happens in the development of all animals, and so, it is reasonable to suppose, in the process of human development. Thus, much which seems to us imitation in human society may be imitation in form only. ”

“ Cases may be named of men conspicuous for activity, bodily and mental, who were also noted, not for less generative power than usual, but for more. As their superiorities indicate higher degrees of evolution, it may be urged that such men should, according to the theory, have lower degrees of reproductive activity. ”

“ To the student of genetics, man, like any other animal, is material for working out the manner in which characters, whether physical or mental, are transmitted from one generation to the next. Viewed in this way he must be regarded as unpromising, not only from the small size of his families, the time consumed in their production, and the long period of immaturity, but also because full experimental control is here out of the question. ”

“ Now that many studies on the physiology and hygiene of reproduction of man have been made, and many investigations on degeneration have been conducted, we may face the problem of the betterment of the race, from a practical standpoint.
If the eugenic action cannot yet strive directly against hereditary transmission of anomalies, it can fight successfully against the causes of degeneration which act during the development of the individual. ”

“ This regression, in every generation, takes place even when both parents have been selected for their high development of the organ in question; but when there is no such selection, and crosses are allowed among individuals of every grade of development, the deterioration will be very rapid; and after a time not only will the average size of the part be greatly reduced, but the instances of full development will become very rare. ”

“ Science teems with similar facts.
The predisposition to diseases is a sad and last proof of the bond which unites the successive generations of the same family. The best manner of correcting morbid hereditary predispositions, such as consumption, gout, cancer, scrofula, etc., is the crossing of races and temperaments, in order to establish a sort of compensation between the negative qualities of one organism, and the excess, in an opposite sense, of the other, whence results, in the last analysis, a profitable proportion for the offspring. ”

“ To sum up, there are so many features of natural selection, each of which must be separately weighed and the whole then balanced, that it is a matter of extensive inquiry to determine whether a certain war has a preponderance of eugenic or dysgenic results. ”

“ Thus, the species which are the latest in acquiring a stable form are the highest up in the biological scale, because the privilege of carrying forward the process of evolution belongs to those species which have not yet become fixed. An apparent weakness, instability, an active capacity for adaptation, are consequently so many signs of superiority, as regards a potential power of evolution—just as the nudity and sensibility of animal cells, for example, are signs of superiority, as compared with vegetable cells—and of man, as compared with the lower animals. ”

“ We cannot, perhaps, undertake definite experiments upon human evolution, but we [Pg 197] can and must take advantage of the wealth of experiment which Nature is carrying out around us and before our eyes could we but learn to read her results. We need to know more about the process of differential fertility, of human variability, of the effects of Nurture as well as of the conditions of Nature.
We do know pretty well the effects, upon the individual, of training, education, good and ill housing conditions and conditions of labor, of disease, alcoholism, underfeeding. ”

“ While such experiments must not be stretched too far, in application to the human species, they certainly offer striking evidence of the fact that the characters of any individual are mainly due to something in the germ-plasm, and that this germ-plasm is to a surprising degree independent of any outside influence, even such an intimate influence as that of the body of the mother in which it reaches maturity. ”

“ The human body is the result of physical causes; breeding tells as surely as it does in dogs or cows, and the probability of defects in the offspring of poverty and of lust is necessarily greater than in well-bred, well-fed, well-environed children. ”

“ The student in biology is not likely to doubt that the differences in men are due much more to inherited nature than to any influences brought to bear after birth, even though these latter influences include such powerful ones as nutrition and education within ordinary limits. ”

“ There are two fields in which eugenics may be applied—the first, Negative, the second, Positive. Through the establishment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will be restrained from mating and perpetuating their unfitness in the future. ”

“ And even these physical differences between races of men, it is held by those who account for them by natural selection and hereditary transmission, were brought out when man was much nearer the animal—that is to say, when he had less mind. ”

“ The problem is first to be defined.
It is evident that all characters which make up a man or woman, or any other organism, must be either germinal or acquired. It is impossible to conceive of any other category. ”

“ In our modern societies natural selection has been to some extent suspended; what test have we then of the identity of the most fertile and the most fit? It wants but very few generations to carry the type from the fit to the unfit. ”

“ But it is possible, with present knowledge, to say that human traits, mental as well as physical, are inherited, in a high degree. Even before the final details as to the inheritance of all traits are worked out—a task that is never likely to be accomplished—there is ample material on which to base action for eugenics. The basal differences in the mental traits of man (and the physical as well, of course) are known to be due to heredity, and little modified by training. ”

“ In spite of some defects such a program brings out clearly the principle of eugenics,—the substitution of a selective birth-rate for the selective death-rate by which natural selection has brought the race to its present level. Nature lets a multitude of individuals be born and kills off the poorer ones; eugenics proposes to have fewer poor ones and more good ones born in each generation. ”

“ In other words, if the organization is carried by successive generations to an extreme, that is, to a high nervous temperament—a predominance of the brain and nervous system—or, on the other hand, to a lymphatic temperament—a predominance of the mere animal nature—it operates unfavorably upon the increase of progeny. Accordingly, in the highest states of refinement, culture, and civilization of a people, the tendency has always been to run out in offspring ”

“ He believes that different types of man may reach the same civilization, that better health may be produced by better bringing up of any of the existing types of man. The anatomical differences to which the biologist reduces social phenomena are hereditary; the environmental causes which the anthropologist sees reflected in human form are individually acquired, and not transmitted by heredity. It would lead us too far to prove the correctness of the anthropologist’s view. ”

“ The entire field of race betterment and social improvement is divided between eugenics, which considers only germinal or heritable changes in the race; and euthenics, which deals with improvement in the individual, and in his environment. ”