Unregenerate

“ What is true of the organism as a whole is true of the cells forming its organs. It should be remembered that while cell life is altruistic or subordinated to the life of the organ, through the law of economy of growth, recognised by Aristotle, and through it to the life of the organism as a whole, altruism is not complete enough to prevent entirely a struggle for existence on the part of the cells or the individual organs. With rise in evolution this struggle decreases, to increase with the opposite procedure of degeneracy. From it results the phenomenon of arrested and excessive development. ”

“ Degeneration may be defined as a gradual change of the structure in which the organism becomes adapted to less varied and less complex conditions of life; whilst Elaboration is a gradual change of structure in which the organism becomes adapted to more and more varied and complex conditions of existence. In Elaboration there is a new expression of form, corresponding to new perfection of work in the animal machine. In Degeneration there is suppression of form, corresponding to the cessation of work. ”

“ One word on an important side-issue—the problem of evil in man, of stagnancy and degeneration in organic evolution. Degeneration often does occur—a reversal, in other words, of the main tendency. But the positive fact remains that the maximum level is progressively raised, and that we find that stagnation of development and even sometimes degeneration have been factors indirectly helping on the main direction. ”

“ The word "regeneration" has therefore in biology "come to mean, in general usage, not only the replacement of a lost part, but also the development of a new whole organism, or even a part of an organism, from a piece of an adult, or of an embryo, or of an egg." ”

“ Experience has made it well known that the children of the aged readily show degenerate types. Many children of old fathers have undoubtedly inherited all the characters of the weakness of the age in which they were begotten. Old age represents [Pg 90] the period of retrogression, of involution, and hence readily transmits the mark of degeneracy. The children of either too young or too old parents, failing to escape hereditary predisposition, may from birth inherit those characters which are proper to incomplete organic development or to the period of involution. ”

“ The category of life's extension includes, in fact, many possibilities which at first sight might appear of most unlikely kind; and, among these possibilities, that of extreme degeneration is by no means the least notable as an element in inducing the material variety of life we behold in the animal and plant worlds of to-day. The list of causes which lead to the degeneration of living beings includes, however, other fashions of producing retrogression than by fixation and parasitic habits, and operates in different ways upon organisms of varied structure and social or biological rank. ”

“ Nay, stranger still is it to discern that the full flush of life's vigor is accompanied by degenerative changes as typical as those which mark life's decline. For every tissue wastes as it works; and cells degenerate, die, and are cast off from every surface and tissue of our frames as the natural result of living and being. "Generally speaking," says a writer, in discussing the degeneration of human tissues, "those parts which live most slowly are those of which the duration is the greatest, and in which there is consequently the least frequent change. ”

“ The death of the huge agglomeration of highly specialized body-cells is a matter of little consequence, if the germ-plasm, with its power to reproduce not only these body-cells, but the mental traits—indeed, we may in a sense say the very soul—that inhabited them, has been passed on. The individual continues to live, in his offspring, just as the past lives in him. To the eugenist, life everlasting is something more than a figure of speech or a theological concept—it is as much a reality as the beat of the heart, the growth of muscles or the activity of the mind. ”

“ The historian thus proclaimed a physiological law, which most monogenists are glad to forget,—that all degeneracy ends necessarily in death; it kills itself, and always at the tenth generation, if not at the first. ”

“ If the mere anxiety connected with an ill-healing wound inflicted on but one generation is sometimes found to have so impressed the germ-cells that they hand down its scars to offspring, how much more shall not anxieties that have directed action of all kinds from birth till death, not in one generation only but in a longer series of generations than the mind can realize to itself, modify, and indeed control, the organization of every species? ”

“ Thus, to the other causes of degeneration in animal life and structure, we may append that which takes origin from the extreme or excessive development of one function over another. Physiological development in one direction, overstepping the natural and ordinary limits, runs concurrently with destruction of life's equilibrium, and naturally tends to produce degeneration and simplification of other organs and other duties of life. ”

“ High authority in matters biological may be found for the statement that degeneration is really a result of progress, that it is dependent on high development, and that, while it simplifies the living being, "it produces the same effect as differentiation, for it leads to variety in form." Thus there is a kind of evolution and progress inseparable even from degeneration itself. For the retrogression may in itself lead to variety and change, and in due time such variety may be the starting-point of new and higher developments. ”

“ To these the biologist retorts with comments upon their falsity, and with the conviction that since Spain, even allowing for the anti-eugenic labours of the Inquisition, has not been subjected to the only process which can ensure real degeneration—viz., the consistent and stringent selection of the worst—she is yet capable of regeneration. Regeneration is not really the word, because there has been little real degeneration, but only the successive deterioration of successive and undegenerate generations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have seen that degeneration, or the simplification of the general structure of an animal, may be due to the ancestors of that animal having taken to one of two new habits of life, either the parasitic or the immobile. Other new habits of life appear also to be such as to lead to degeneration. Let us suppose a race of animals fitted and accustomed to catch their food, and having a variety of organs to help them in this chase—suppose such animals suddenly to acquire the power of feeding on the carbonic acid dissolved in the water around them just as green plants do. ”

“ Hence, a partial failure of the inner man to meet the successive changes that are going on about him, means incomplete life or disease, and a complete failure of a similar adjustment signifies death. The transmission and the development of characters known as inheritance are made clear by the hypothesis of pangenesis, which, therefore, with your permission, let me give: "Every unit or cell of the body throws off gemmules or undeveloped atoms, which are transmitted to the offspring of both sexes, and are multiplied by self-division. ”

“ Nevertheless, it cannot reasonably be doubted that all the bodily signs or ‘stigmata’ of degeneration, all the arrests and inequalities of development that have been observed, have their origin in a bio-chemical and bio-mechanical derangement of the nerve-cell, or, perhaps, of the cell in general.
In the mental life of the degenerate the anomaly of his nervous system has, as a consequence, the incapacity of attaining to the highest degree of development of the individual, namely, the freely coming out from the factitious limits of individuality, i.e., altruism. ”

“ Their common [Pg 10] characteristic is hereditary transmission under graver conditions than normal heredity. With certain exceptional instances of regeneration, the progeny of degenerates presents progressive degradation. This may reach such limits that humanity is preserved by its excess. It is not necessary, however, that the ultimate stage of degradation be reached before sterility occurs. Morel confines degeneracy to a pathologic type, criticising F. Heusinger [10] for applying the term degenerate to domestic animals which “throw back” to the wild or original type. ”

“ All are agreed that the important point is degeneration beyond the point reached by panmixia, the establishment of the degenerating process, whatever it may be, in the germ, or, in other words, the breaking of the power of heredity. ”

“ From a sense of scientific accuracy no attempts have been made to demarcate, rigidly, abnormality from disease, or atavism from arrested development, except as may be done by the features of the cases in which the terms are used. The guiding principle adopted has been that the factors of degeneracy affect in the ancestor the checks on excessive action [Pg ix] acquired during the evolution of the race, thus producing a state of nervous exhaustion. The descendant in consequence is unable to reach the state of the ancestor thus nervously exhausted. ”

“ Degeneration is a necessary part of the process of organic evolution. All progress, whether anatomical, intellectual, or social, takes place through selection, and selection means the pining and ultimate passing away of that which is left. In individual evolution it is organs, ideas, and traits of character that are eliminated, and in social evolution it is customs and institutions. ”

“ What a wonderful phenomenon is this power in man to reappear in future generations by means of heredity, to transmit his own nature to his descendants by transfusing it—working it into their organism! And no less wonderful is it to see how not only instincts but organs gradually disappear in the course of generations when they are not put into action. ”

“ A differentiation of parts, which286 leads to a partial degeneration, and finally even to the loss of individual organs, is, when looked at by itself, a degeneration, but yet may be advantageous to the organism in the struggle for life. ”

“ With regard to ourselves, the white races of Europe, the possibility of degeneration seems to be worth some consideration. In accordance with a tacit assumption of universal progress—an unreasoning optimism—we are accustomed to regard ourselves as necessarily progressing, as necessarily having arrived at a higher and more elaborated condition than that which our ancestors reached, and as destined [60] to progress still further. On the other hand, it is well to remember that we are subject to the general laws of evolution, and are as likely to degenerate as to progress. ”

“ Heredity governs all the phenomena of degeneracy with the same results and the same energy as it controls moral and physical resemblances in the offspring. The individual who comes into the world is not an isolated being separated from his kindred. ”

“ It is the more remarkable whilst the possibility of a degeneration—a loss of organisation making the descendant far simpler or lower in structure than its ancestor—has been admitted for a few exceptional animals, that the same hypothesis should not have been applied to the explanation of other simple forms of animals. The hypothesis of Degeneration will, I believe, be found to render most valuable service in pointing out the true relationships of animals which are a puzzle and a mystery when we use only and exclusively the hypothesis of Balance, or the hypothesis of Elaboration. ”

“ It is natural that among every fine race eugenics should be almost an instinct or they would cease to be a fine race. It is equally natural that among our modern degenerates eugenics is an unspeakable horror, however much, as the psycho-analysts would put it, they rationalise that horror.
The way out of this clash of ideals—which has compelled us to hope impossibilities from the environment because we dreaded what seemed the only alternative—is, as we know, furnished by birth-control. ”

“ But everywhere and always, evolution is antagonistic to procreative dissolution. Whether it be in greater growth of the organs which subserve self-maintenance, whether it be in their added complexity of structure, or whether it be in their higher activity, the abstraction of the required materials implies a diminished reserve of materials for race-maintenance. And we have seen reason to believe that this antagonism between Individuation and Genesis, becomes unusually marked where the nervous system is concerned, because of the costliness of nervous structure and function. ”

“ If we took a narrower point of view, and if we only considered regeneration proper from the wound itself, we might probably at first be inclined to advocate the doctrine that the removing of some obstacles might in fact be the stimulus to the process of restoration; but, even then, why is it that just what is wanted grows out? Why is there not only growth, but specific growth, growth followed by specification? ”