Chapter XX: Appendix: Concerning Books to Read (1)

The preceding pages are of course only tentative, preliminary and introductory. I have merely tried to make a beginning. No better purpose can be achieved than that the reader should proceed to study the subject for himself. A few pages may therefore be devoted to the names of some of the books which will be found useful. This is in no sense a complete bibliography, nor even a tithe of such a bibliography. But the reader who makes a beginning with the books here named, or even with a well-chosen half dozen of them, will thereafter need no one to tell him that the culture of the human race on scientific principles will be the supreme science of all the future, the supreme goal of all statesmen, the object and the final judge of all legislation.

Where it is thought that useful remarks can be made they will be made, but neither their presence nor absence nor their length is to be taken as any index to the writer's opinion of the relative value of the works in question.

_Heredity._ (The Progressive Science Series, 1908.) By Professor J. A. Thomson, M.A.

This is the most recent and most valuable for general purposes of all books on the subject of heredity. No layman should express opinions on heredity or eugenics until he has read it, for it is extremely improbable that they will be valuable. Professor Thomson covers the whole ground with extreme lucidity and care and impartiality. The book is readable, nay more, fascinating from end to end, and it is liberally and usefully illustrated. It is the first general treatise on heredity which leads consciously, yet as of necessity, towards eugenics as the crown and goal of the whole study, and in this respect it undoubtedly marks an epoch.

_The Methods and Scope of Genetics._ (1908.) By W. Bateson, M.A., F.R.S.

This is the inaugural lecture, destined, I have little doubt, to become historic, which was delivered by Professor Bateson on his appointment to the new Darwin Chair of Biology at Cambridge. It is purposely included here for very good reasons. The reader who begins his serious study of heredity with Professor Thomson's work must be informed that though the author gives an interesting account of Mendelism, he is not a Mendelian, and neither his account of Mendelism nor his estimate of it is at all adequate for the present day. In truth there is the study of heredity before Mendelism and after, and though eugenics owes its modern origin to the founder of the school of biometrics, and though among his followers there are to be found many who decry and oppose the Mendelians, it is for the eugenist of single purpose to take the truth wherever it is to be found. It is now idle to deny either the general truth or the stupendous promise of Mendelism. Many vital phenomena besides heredity are studied by the statistical method, and are put down by it to heredity. The Mendelians take seeds of known origin, and plant them and note the result. They carry out experimental breeding not only amongst plants but amongst the higher animals, including mammals who, in all essentials of structure and function, are one with ourselves. It is not possible, I believe, to over-estimate the supreme importance of Mendelian enquiry for eugenics. Eugenics is founded upon heredity, and genetics, which is Professor Bateson's name for the physiology of heredity and variation, is now working at the very heart of those natural phenomena upon which eugenics depends. This lecture of Professor Bateson's is by the far the best introduction to Mendelism that exists, besides being the most recent and the most authoritative possible. With the lucidity of the born teacher (whose faculty, I have no doubt, is a Mendelian unit, not always inherited by the born observer) the author explains the essence of Mendelism. The usual expositor has not proceeded far upon his way before he is encumbering himself and the learner with the phenomena of dominance and recessiveness, which are not cardinal and are highly involved. Professor Bateson makes no allusion to them. But he gives an account of Mendelism which it is impossible to put down without finishing, and which is elementary in the highest sense of the word. In the later pages the author preaches eugenics with a vigour and conviction not unworthy of notice as coming from the leader of a school which is utterly opposed in principle and in methods, if not in results, to the school of biometrics founded by the founder of eugenics. I insist upon this because there is a half-instructed ignorance abroad which has heard the name of Mendel, and seeks thereby to discredit Darwin and natural selection, Mr. Galton and eugenics. Hear Professor Bateson:--

“If there are societies which refuse to apply the new knowledge, the fault will not lie with Genetics. I think it needs but little observation of the newer civilisations to foresee that _they_ will apply every scrap of scientific knowledge which can help them, or seems to help them in the struggle, and I am good enough selectionist to know that in that day the fate of the recalcitrant communities is sealed.”

_Hereditary Genius, An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences._ By Francis Galton.

This is the classical and pioneer enquiry, far beyond my praise or appraisement. The main text is not long, is easily read and is extremely interesting. The reader should acquaint himself also with Mr. Constable's recent criticism, _Poverty and Hereditary Genius_.

_A Study of British Genius._ (1904.) By Havelock Ellis.

This is an extremely interesting book, which should be read in association with the foregoing, to which it is a criticism and supplement. The greater part of the volume is concerned with the study of genius from the point of view of heredity--in terms of nationality and race, and of individual parentage. Very great labour and scholarship have been expended to very high purpose in this work.

_Inquiries into Human Faculty._ (1883.) By Francis Galton.

This is the next in order of Mr. Galton's works, _Hereditary Genius_ dating from 1869. It has recently been reprinted in Dent's “Everyman's Library,” and can thus be purchased for one shilling.

_Natural Inheritance._ (1889.) By Francis Galton.

_Memories of my Life._ (1908.) By Francis Galton.

This is Mr. Galton's latest book, and apart from its personal fascination must be read by the serious eugenist if only on account of its last five chapters, and especially the last two, which deal with Heredity and Race Improvement. What could be more interesting and significant, for instance, than to find Mr. Galton in 1908 saying of himself in 1865, “I was too much disposed to think of marriage under some regulation, and not enough of the effects of self-interest and of social and religious sentiment.” Mr. Galton comments on the wrongheadedness of objectors to eugenics. I fancy, however, that the familiar misrepresentations will soon cease to be possible. The whole of this brief last chapter must be carefully read and studied. At least I must quote the following paragraph:--

“What I desire is that the importance of eugenic marriages should be reckoned at its just value, neither too high nor too low, and that eugenics should form one of the many considerations by which marriages are promoted or hindered, as they are by social position, adequate fortune, and similarity of creed. I can believe hereafter that it will be felt as derogatory to a person of exceptionally good stock to marry into an inferior one as it is for a person of high Austrian rank to marry one who has not sixteen heraldic quarterings. I also hope that social recognition of an appropriate kind will be given to healthy, capable, and large families, and that social influence will be exerted towards the encouragement of eugenic marriages.”

This volume, a model for all future autobiographers, ends with the following splendid statement of the eugenic creed:--

“A true philanthropist concerns himself not only with society as a whole, but also with as many of the individuals who compose it as the range of his affections can include. If a man devotes himself solely to the good of a nation as a whole, his tastes must be impersonal and his conclusions so far heartless, deserving the ill title of ‘dismal’ with which Carlyle labelled statistics. If, on the other hand, he attends only to certain individuals in whom he happens to take an interest, he becomes guided by favouritism and is oblivious of the rights of others and of the futurity of the race. Charity refers to the individual; Statesmanship to the nation; Eugenics cares for both.

“It is known that a considerable part of the huge stream of British charity furthers by indirect and unsuspected ways the production of the Unfit; it is most desirable that money and other attention bestowed on harmful forms of charity should be diverted to the production and well-being of the Fit. For clearness of explanation we may divide newly married couples into three classes, with respect to the probable civic worth of their offspring. There would be a small class of ‘desirables,’ a large class of ‘passables,’ of whom nothing more will be said here, and a small class of ‘undesirables.’ It would clearly be advantageous to the country if social and moral support as well as timely material help were extended to the desirables, and not monopolised as it is now apt to be by the undesirables.

“I take eugenics very seriously, feeling that its principles ought to become one of the dominant motives in a civilised nation, much as if they were one of its religious tenets. I have often expressed myself in this sense, and will conclude this book by briefly reiterating my views.

“Individuals appear to me as partial detachments from the infinite ocean of Being, and this world as a stage on which Evolution takes place, principally hitherto by means of Natural Selection, which achieves the good of the whole with scant regard to that of the individual.

“Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.

“This is precisely the aim of eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock.”

_Heredity and Selection in Sociology._ (1907.) By George Chatterton-Hill.

This is a useful and interesting work, the nature of which is well indicated by its title. It contains many purely eugenic chapters, and cannot be ignored by the student.

_The Germ-plasm, A Theory of Heredity._ (The Contemporary Science Series. 1893.) By August Weismann.

This is Weismann's great work. It should be studied by politicians and others who still interpret all social phenomena in terms of Lamarckian theory, and also by modern writers who are so much more Weismannian than Weismann.

_The Evolution Theory._ (1904.) Translated by J. Arthur Thomson and M. R. Thomson. By August Weismann.

_The Principles of Heredity._ (1905.) By G. Archdall Reid.

This is a very interesting and extremely Weismannian book which contains the most recent statement of the author's remarkable enquiries into the influence of disease as a factor of human selection.

_Variation in Animals and Plants._ (The International Scientific Series. 1903.) By H. M. Vernon.

_Variation, Heredity and Evolution._ (1906.) By R. H. Lock.

_The Origin of Species._ (1869. Last (sixth) edition. Reprinted 1901.) By Charles Darwin.

_The Descent of Man._ (1871. Second edition, 1874. Reprinted 1906.) By Charles Darwin.

These classics now cost only half-a-crown apiece.

The beginner should read _The Descent of Man_ first, I think. Some of the earlier chapters are of the utmost eugenic value, and would be found immensely interesting by modern lecturers on decadence, and the like.

_Darwinism To-day._ (1907.) By Vernon L. Kellogg.

An interesting and scholarly recent criticism, containing much matter strictly relevant to eugenics.

_The Evolution of Sex._ (The Contemporary Science Series. Revised edition, 1901. Originally published in 1899.) By Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

A famous book, yet to be discovered by most “authorities” on the Woman Question.

_A History of Matrimonial Institutions._ (1904.) By G. E. Howard.

This is a three-volume treatise, extremely comprehensive, and especially valuable as a guide to the literature of the subject. Only the professional student can be expected to read it from cover to cover, but it is invaluable for purposes of reference.

_The History of Human Marriage._ By E. Westermarck.

This rightly celebrated and epoch-making work demonstrates in especial the survival-value of monogamy, and its historical dominance as a marriage form.

_The Evolution of Marriage._ (The Contemporary Science Series.) By Professor Letourneau.

_The Principles of Population._ By T. R. Malthus.

The substance of this may be conveniently read in the extracts published in the _Economic Classics_ by Macmillan (1905).

_The Principles of Biology._ By Herbert Spencer.

The last section, “The Laws of Multiplication,” _must_ be read as the expression of the missing half of the truth discovered by Malthus. It is tiresome, nearly half a century after Spencer's enunciation of his law, to have to read the remarks of some modern writers who continue to assume that Malthus expressed not merely the truth but the whole truth.

_The Republic of Plato._

Apart from the lines of Theognis quoted by Darwin in _The Descent of Man_, which are some two centuries older than Plato, the fifth book of the _Republic_ is the earliest discussion in literature of the idea of eugenics, and utterly wild though we may consider most of the proposals of Plato--or Socrates--to be, these early thinkers are yet more modern and more scientific and more fundamental than all their successors, even including our modern Utopia makers who have come after Darwin, in recognising that it is the quality of the citizen which will make a Utopia possible. The following will suffice to show that after more than two thousand years we can still learn from the fundamental idea of Plato's fifth chapter:--

“It is plain, then, that after this we must make marriages as much
as possible sacred; but the most advantageous should be most sacred.
By all means. How then shall they be most advantageous? Tell me
that, Glauco, for I see in your houses dogs of chace, and a great
many excellent birds. Have you then indeed ever attended at all,
in any respect, to their marriages, and the propagation of their
species? How? said he. First of all, that among these, although they
be excellent themselves, are there not some who are most excellent?
There are. Whether then do you breed from all of them alike? or are
you careful to breed chiefly from the best? From the best. But how?
From the youngest or from the oldest, or from those who are most
in their prime? From those in their prime. And if the breed be not
of this kind, you reckon that the race of birds and dogs greatly
degenerates. I reckon so, replied he. And what think you as to
horses, said I, and other animals? is the case any otherwise with
respect to these? That, said he, were absurd.”

Plato proposed to destroy the family, and to “practise every art that no mother should know her own child.” He also approved of infanticide. Nevertheless, this fifth book of the _Republic_ is interesting and valuable reading, and it is especially well to note that this pioneer of Utopianism and Socialism possessed the idea which almost all living Socialists, except Dr. A. R. Wallace and Professors Forel and Pearson, lack, that we must first make the Utopian and Utopia will follow.

_The Family._ (1906.) By Elsie Clews Parsons.

This recent, scholarly and lucid book, of which any living man might well be proud, may follow the reading of the utterly unconcerned and taken-for-granted fashion in which Socrates and Plato proposed to destroy the family. Lecture VIII., on “Sexual Choice,” is brief, but the references following it are extremely valuable and complete. It is evident that one of the books which will have to be written on eugenics in the near future must deal with the whole question of marriage and human selection both in its historical and in its contemporary aspects.

“The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment.” _Nature_, 1901, p. 659; _Smithsonian Report_, Washington, 1901, p. 523. By Francis Galton.

This was the Huxley Lecture of the Anthropological Institute in 1901, and the contemporary interest in eugenics may be said to date from it.

“Eugenics, its Definition, Scope and Aims.” (_Sociological Papers._ 1904.) By Francis Galton.

This remarkable lecture constituted a further introduction of the subject, and it is somewhat of the nature of an impertinence for the professional jester, who is not acquainted with a line of it, to dismiss eugenics with a phrase as if this lecture had never been written or were unobtainable. Mr. Galton there defined eugenics as “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race....” The definition given in the _Century Dictionary_ is unauthoritative, incorrect, and misses the entire point.

An extremely valuable discussion follows this lecture, and it is absolutely necessary for the student to acquaint himself with the whole of these pages (45-99).

_Restrictions in Marriage: Studies in National Eugenics: Eugenics as a Factor in Religion._ By Francis Galton.

These are memoirs communicated to the Sociological Society in 1905, and published together with the subsequent discussions in _Sociological Papers_ (1905). The three memoirs are also published separately under one cover.

_Probability, the Foundation of Eugenics._ The Herbert Spencer Lecture of 1907. By Francis Galton.

This lecture contains a very brief historical outline of the recent progress of eugenic enquiry and a simple discussion of the mathematical method of studying heredity. It must, of course, be read by every serious student.

_National Life from the Standpoint of Science._ (1905.) By Karl Pearson.

This is a reprint of a lecture delivered by Professor Pearson in 1900, together with some other valuable contributions of his to the subject. There is scarcely a better introduction to eugenics.

_The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics._ The Robert Boyle Lecture, 1907. (Second edition, 1909.) By Karl Pearson.

This fine lecture should be carefully read. It gives some index to the quantity and quality of the work done by Professor Pearson and his followers since the Francis Galton Eugenics Laboratory was founded.

_Population and Progress._ (1907.) By Montague Crackanthorpe, K.C.

Though only published recently, part of this book goes back far. The first chapter is indeed a reprint of a eugenic article published in the _Fortnightly Review_ as far back as 1872. Some of us may perhaps be inclined to forget that more than a generation ago Mr. Crackanthorpe had grasped the great truths which we are now trying to spread, and had courageously expressed them in the face of ignorance and prejudice even greater than those of to-day. This is unquestionably a book which every student must read, but the press generally, with some notable exceptions, have fought rather shy of it. It was sent to the present writer at his request from a leading morning paper which trusts him, and he wrote a column on it, most careful in diction and moderate in opinion, which was, nevertheless, not printed. One of the leading medical papers devoted a long article to the book, written on the general principle that it is right for a medical paper to differ from any non-medical person who approaches the closed neighbourhood of medical enquiry. Another leading medical paper considered Mr. Crackanthorpe's “ideal” to be “beyond present accomplishment,” and feared it must have “many generations of probation before it could hope to enter the sphere of practical politics.” I venture to say that _Population and Progress_, dealing, as it does, with a subject that really matters, contains more fundamental practical politics--in the true sense of that word--than has been discussed in most of our current newspapers since they were first established.

_Race-Culture or Race-Suicide._ (1906.) By R. R. Rentoul.

This is a second and enlarged edition of a remarkable pamphlet published by Dr. Rentoul in 1903 under the title _Proposed Sterilisation of Certain Mental and Physical Degenerates. An Appeal to Asylum Managers and Others._ Dr. Rentoul's own description of this pamphlet is as follows:--“In it I called attention to the large and increasing number of the insane in the United Kingdom; to our disgraceful system of child-marriages; to the growing suicide rate; to our disgusting system of inducing certain mentally and physically diseased persons to marry; and to a slight operation which I was the first to propose as a means of checking the increase in the number of the insane, and in preventing innocent offspring from being cursed by some parental blemish.”

_Education._ (Originally published in 1861. New edition, with the author's latest corrections, 1906.) By Herbert Spencer.

This is the classic which marks an epoch in the personal development of every one who reads it, and which made an epoch in the history of education: the book was probably of more service to woman, owing to its liberation of girlhood, than any other of its century.

_The Study of Sociology._ (International Scientific Series. Originally published in 1873. Twentieth edition, 1903.) By Herbert Spencer.

This is, of course, _the_ introduction to sociology, written for that purpose by a master, and in every respect a masterpiece. It contains many eugenic references and arguments. As far as the eugenic education of the adult is concerned, this is rightly the preliminary work.

Besides _The Evolution of Sex_ and Mrs. Parson's book on _The Family_, there are many others relevant to the question of woman and eugenics, of which one or two may be noted here.

_Sex and Society, Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex._ (1907.) By W. I. Thomas.

This is a very readable and recent work, and for the general reader much the most suitable of any that I know.

_Man and Woman._ (Contemporary Science Series.) By Havelock Ellis.

A very clear and readable book.

_Youth--its Education, Regimen and Hygiene._ (1907.) By Stanley Hall.

This is a new and abbreviated version of Professor Stanley Hall's two well-known volumes on _Adolescence_, published in 1904. For the general reader this much smaller work is very suitable, and especial attention may be directed to Chapter XI., “The Education of Girls.”

It would have been presumptuous and absurd to attempt, in the course of a merely introductory volume, to deal, by anything more than allusion to its existence, with the great question of human parenthood in relation to race. Most urgently this question, of course, concerns the negro problem in America. The student who has to trust entirely to second-hand knowledge had best be silent. Lest, however, the reader should imagine that the older doctrines of race can be accepted without reserve, he will do well to study very carefully the latter part of Dr. Archdall Reid's book, already referred to, and, with extreme caution, the following:--

_Race Prejudice._ (1906.) By Jean Finot.

This book most of us must believe to be extreme, but it should be read: it bears on what may be called international eugenics, and the whole question of inter-racial marriage.

* * * * *

On matters of transmissible disease and racial poisons there is much literature. Only one or two books can be referred to here.

_The Diseases of Society: The Vice and Crime Problem._ (1904.) By G. F. Lydston.

This, of course, is not a pleasant book, and it is open to much criticism in many respects, but it is well worth reading, especially in association with Dr. Rentoul's work.

_Malaria--A Neglected Factor in the History of Greece and Rome._ (1907.) By W. H. S. Jones, with an introduction by Ronald Ross.

This is a recent historical study and may be a very substantial contribution to the study of decadence.

_Alcoholism._ (1906.) By W. C. Sullivan.

This little book of Dr. Sullivan's contains a useful and scrupulously moderate chapter on the relation of alcohol to human degeneration.

_The Drink Problem._ (1907.) By Fourteen Medical Authorities.

_The Children of the Nation._ (1906.) By Sir John Gorst.

_Infant Mortality._ (1906.) By George Newman.

_The Hygiene of Mind._ (1906.) By T. S. Clouston.

_Diseases of Occupation._ (1908.) By Sir T. Oliver.

_The Prevention of Tuberculosis._ (1908.) By A. Newsholme.

These volumes all deal in part with questions of racial poisoning and racial hygiene.

_Alcoholism--A Study in Heredity._ (1901.) By Archdall Reid.

_Alcohol and the Human Body._ (1907.) By Sir Victor Horsley and Mary D. Sturge.

_Hygiene of Nerves and Mind._ (The Progressive Science Series. 1907.) By August Forel.

_Inebriety--Its Causation and Control._ (The second Norman Kerr Memorial Lecture, published in the _British Journal of Inebriety_, January, 1908.) By R. Welsh Branthwaite.

_Reports of the Inspector under the Inebriates Acts._ Especially those for the years 1904, 1905, 1906.

_The Cry of the Children: The Black Stain._ (1907.) By G. R. Sims.

The above are especially recommended to politicians. Sooner or later, as never yet, knowledge will have to be applied to the drink question as it bears upon the quality of the race. The knowledge exists, and is not difficult to acquire or understand. The references given are quite sufficient to enable any one of mediocre intelligence to frame a bill dealing with alcohol which would be worth all its predecessors put together, and would arouse far less opposition than any one of them.

_Reports of the National Conference on Infantile Mortality_ 1906 and 1908 (P. S. King & Co.). In the 1906 Report note especially Dr. Ballantyne's paper on the unborn infant, and in the 1908 Report, Miss Alice Ravenhill's paper on the education of girls.

It must be repeated that the foregoing names are merely noted as including, perhaps, the greater number of the books with which the serious beginner would do well to make a start. That is all. It would be both unfair and unwise, however, to omit any mention of at least three wonderful little books of John Ruskin's: _Unto this Last_, _Munera Pulveris_ and _Time and Tide_, which add to their great qualities of soul and style some of the most forcible and wisest things that have ever been written on race-culture and its absolutely fundamental relation to morality, patriotism and true economics.

If the reader desires the name of only one book, that is certainly _The Sexual Question_ (1908), by Professor August Forel. This has no rival anywhere, and cannot be overpraised.

Footnotes:

[1] A tribute is due to the anonymous pioneer of sane and provident philanthropy who lately gave £20,000 to the London Hospital for research. Such a thing is a commonplace in New York, it is unprecedented in London.

[2] The word is used in the ordinary loose sense, to which there is no objection provided that there be no misunderstanding of its exact scientific meaning, as in Spencer's phrase “survival of the fittest”--_i.e._ not the best, but the best adapted. See p. 43.

[3] “Degeneration,” I think, is the best word for the racial, “deterioration” for the individual, change.

[4] That is in the ordinary sense of the words, not in the more exact sense--as I think--in which a good environment would be defined as that which selects the good for parenthood.

[5] Italics mine.

[6] We have seen that Huxley's assertion of the fundamental opposition between moral and cosmic evolution is unwarrantable. We do recognise, however, that in our present practice this opposition exists. Our ancestors were cruel to the insane, but at least they prevented them from multiplying. We are blindly kind to them, and therefore in the long run cruel. But the dilemma, kind to be cruel, or cruel to be kind, is not necessary. It is quite possible, as we have asserted, to be at once kind to the individual and protective of the future. On the other hand, it is also possible to be cruel to both. The London County Council offers us, at the time of writing, a demonstration of this. Sending wretched inebriates on the round of police-court, prison and street, with intermittent gestations, rather than expend a shilling a day, per individual, in decently detaining them, it serves at least the philosophic purpose of demonstrating that it is possible to combine the maximum of brutality to the individual and the present with the maximum of injury to the race and the future.

[7] Reprinted in _The Kingdom of Man_ (Constable).

[8] _Sociological Papers_, 1905, p. 59.

[9] Whilst allowing due weight to Mr. Wells' opinion, we may also note that of Charles Darwin who, referring to his own phrase, natural selection, says, “But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate.” (_Origin of Species_, popular edition, p. 76.)

[10] _Collected Essays_, vol. i. p. 493. A valuable controversy but poor sport. Thinker _versus_ politician is scarcely a match.

[11] This is discussed at length in the writer's paper, “The Obstacles to Eugenics,” read before the Sociological Society, March 8, 1909.

[12] Spencer introduced the non-moral word evolution in 1857, _in order to_ avoid the moral connotation of the word progress, which he had formerly employed.

[13] In his recent work, _The Origin of Vertebrates_, Dr. W. H. Gaskell, F.R.S., has adduced much evidence in support of this thesis. He says, “The law of progress is this: The race is not to the swift nor to the strong, but to the wise.” And again; “As for the individual, so for the nation; as for the nation, so for the race; the law of evolution teaches that in all cases brain-power wins. Throughout, from the dawn of animal life up to the present day, the evidence given in this book suggests that the same law has always held. In all cases, upward progress is associated with the development of the central nervous system. The law for the whole animal kingdom is the same as for the individual. ‘Success in this world depends upon brains.’”

[14] We may recall the words of Lear:--

“Is man no more than this? Consider him well: Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume:.... Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.”

[15] Says Darwin, “So little is this subject understood, that I have heard surprise repeatedly expressed at such great monsters as the Mastodon ... having become extinct; as if mere bodily strength gave victory in the battle of life. Mere size, on the contrary, would in some cases determine ... quicker extermination from the greater amount of requisite food.” In the Russo-Japanese War, one of the effective factors was the greater area of the Russian soldier as a target, and the disparity between the food requirements of the little victors and the big losers.

[16] Quoted from a Paper read by Mr. Galton before the Eugenics Education Society, October 14, 1908, and published in _Nature_, October 22, 1908.

[17] See the author's paper, “The Psychology of Parenthood,” _Eugenics Review_, April, 1909.

[18] An authoritative statement on this point has already been quoted from Sir E. Ray Lankester's Romanes Lecture of 1905, p. 42.

[19] The exception of one or two large animals, like the elephant, is not important. In proportion to body weight man's birth-rate is lower than theirs. And it is to be noted that the “infant” mortality is very low in this case, where the birth-rate is so low. Says Darwin, of the young elephant. “None are destroyed by beasts of prey; for even the tiger in India most rarely dares to attack a young elephant protected by its dam.” The dam has no factory to go to, and no beast of prey to sell her alcohol.

[20] “The fulmar petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird in the world.” (_Origin of Species_, popular edition, p. 81).

[21] _The Wheat Problem_, by Sir Wm. Crookes, F.R.S., 2nd edition, 1905. The _Chemical News_ Office, 15, Newcastle St., Farringdon St., E.C.

[22] See Chap. iii. of the _Origin of Species_.

[23] Including even such an exceptional student as Dr. George Newman, who, in his book on _Infant Mortality_, regards a falling birth-rate as an essential evil, and actually declares without qualification that the factors “which lower the birth-rate tend to raise the infant death-rate.”

[24] It is not necessary to point out again the exception of the elephant, nor to explain it.

[25] Mr. Galton believes their number has been exaggerated.

[26] Quoted from the author's lectures on _Individualism and Collectivism_ (Williams and Norgate, 1906).

[27] As is usually the case, except when the mother or the father is alcoholic or syphilitic.

[28] If we make a diagram of society, with the social strata labelled, and then proceed to make a eugenic comment upon it, certainly the line dividing the sheep from the goats, _as for parenthood_, would not be horizontal, at any level. Nor would it be vertical--as if the proportions of worth and unworth were the same in all classes. Some would draw it diagonally, counting most of the aristocracy good and most of the lowest strata bad: others would slope it the other way. I should not venture to draw it at all: there are individuals good and bad in all classes and races, and their relative proportions are unknown, at least to me.

[29] “For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools” (Hobbes, _Leviathan_, Pt. I. chap iv.).

[30] It might be supposed that the words “inherent” and “inherited” were allied etymologically. This is not so. “Inherit” is derived from “heir,” and this from a verb meaning “to take.” In natural inheritance the heir inherits what is inherent in the germ-cells which make him. Says Professor Thomson: “The organisation of the fertilised ovum is the inheritance”--_and the heir_, we may add.

[31] Unless indeed it be an organism so lowly as only to consist of one cell throughout.

[32] The reader will remember the chapter, “A Berry to the Rescue.” “Says Lucy demurely: ‘Now you know why I read history, and that sort of books.... I only read sensible books and talk of serious things ... because I have heard say ... dear Mrs. Berry! don't you understand now?’”

[33] Contrast Mr. Galton, the propounder of the now accepted view:--

“As a general rule, with scarcely any exception that cannot be ascribed to other influences, such as bad nutrition or transmitted microbes, the injuries or habits of the parents are found to have no effect on the natural form or faculties of the child.” (_Hereditary Genius_, Prefatory Chapter to the Edition of 1892, p. xv.)

[34] In the later edition Mr. Galton discusses the question of the title, and says that if it could now be altered, it should appear as _Hereditary Ability_. We may note that, as the author says himself, “The reader will find a studious abstinence throughout the work from speaking of genius as a special quality.”

[35] The reader may note “A Eugenic Investigation: Index to Achievements of Near Kinsfolk of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society,” _Sociological Papers_, 1904, pp. 85-99 (Macmillan); also _Noteworthy Families_ (John Murray, 1906).

[36] These researches have not yet been published.

[37] In the later chapters of a former book, “Health, Strength, and Happiness” (Grant Richards, London; Mitchell Kennerley, New York, 1908), I have discussed various aspects of heredity from the eugenic point of view more fully than has been possible here.

[38] See the last sentence of the quotation from Forel on p. 130.

[39] For definition of these terms see Chap. xi.

[40] By some such means we may hope that man too may some day become domesticated without losing his fertility!

[41] 1 Corinthians xii. 22, 23, 24.

[42] Quoted from the Author's _Evolution the Master Key_.

[43] Mr. G. K. Chesterton, one of the most amusing of contemporary phenomena, has lately said: “The most serious sociologists, the most stately professors of eugenics, calmly propose that, ‘for the good of the race,’ people should be forcibly married to each other by the police.” Readers unacquainted with Mr. Chesterton's standard of accuracy and methods of criticism might be misled by this gay invention.

[44] _The Family_, p. 20.

[45] _Encyclopædia Medica_, vol. ii., Article “Deaf-Mutism.”

[46] In a lecture, “The Obstacles to Eugenics,” delivered before the Sociological Society, March 8, 1909.

[47] Since these words were written there has been passed the “Prevention of Crimes Act,” which is the first attempt in this country to apply the elementary truths of the subject in legislation. As an essentially eugenic proposal it is to be heartily welcomed.

[48] Dr. Bulstrode's Lecture to the Royal Institution, May 15, 1908.

[49] This suggestion, first made by the present writer in March, 1908, and in the paper referred to on p. 205, is, I believe, to be the subject of an official enquiry.

[50] _Sociological Papers_ (Macmillan, 1905), p. 3.

[51] “In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality to favour; it is, as we have seen, the basis of every action, and it is eminently transmissible by descent.”--Galton.

[52] _Fortnightly Review_, January, 1908.

[53] “As the German philosopher Schopenhauer remarks, the final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more importance than all other ends in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less than the composition of the next generation.... It is not the weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come, which is at stake.”--Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 893.

[54] _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. iv. (F. A. Davis Co., Philadelphia, 1905).

[55] Part of the matter of this chapter was included in papers entitled “Racial Hygiene or Negative Eugenics, with special reference to the Extirpation of Alcoholism,” read before the Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health, at Buxton, 1908, and “Alcoholism and Eugenics,” read before the Society for the Study of Inebriety, April, 1909.

[56] Italics mine.

[57] To-day many of the children who make our destiny are born drunk, owing to maternal intoxication during labour: I have myself attended the birth of such children, both in Edinburgh and in York.

[58] This was written in 1892, before the accumulation of the modern evidence on the subject.

[59] “Alcohol taken into the stomach can be demonstrated in the testicle or ovary within a few minutes, and, like any other poison, may injure the sperm or the germ element therein contained. As a result of this intoxication of the primary elements, children may be conceived and born who become idiots, epileptics, or feeble-minded. Therefore it comes about that even before conception a fault may be present.”--McAdam Eccles, F.R.C.S., in the _British Journal of Inebriety_, April, 1908.

[60] See p. 111.

[61] London: James Nisbet and Co., 1906.

[62] Will our modern extremists be good enough to remember that Mr. Galton is the prime author of the doctrine that functionally-produced modifications are not inherited?

[63] The use of this word thus is unusual, to say the least of it. Dr. Claye Shaw simply means _causal relation_.

[64] The subject of alcoholism and race-culture really demands a large volume. There is no space here to detail the fashion in which the drunken mother poisons her child after birth, when she nurses it, since, as has been chemically proved, alcohol is excreted in her milk. Says a most distinguished authority, Mrs. Scharlieb, “the child, then, absolutely receives alcohol as part of his diet, with the worst effect upon his organs, for alcohol has a greater effect upon cells in proportion to their immaturity” (“The Drink Problem,” in the New Library of Medicine), and Dr. Sullivan refers to “numerous cases on record of convulsions and other disorders occurring in infants when the nurse has taken liquor, and ceasing when she has been put on a non-alcoholic diet.” The reader may be referred to my brief paper, “Alcohol and Infancy,” published in the form of a tract by the Church of England Temperance Society.

[65] This is printed in the _British Journal of Inebriety_, January, 1908, under the title “Inebriety, its Causation and Control”--with comments by numerous authorities.

[66] The author says “inherent defect.” I have omitted the adjective, as it is obviously misused. _Antecedent_ would have been the better word, surely.

[67] Italics mine.

[68] Italics mine. A thousand pounds for cure--which does not cure--and twopence for prevention is, of course, the rule with a half-educated nation always.

[69] She died in a lunatic asylum. I have not heard that society ever offered her a public apology for its brutality to her.

[70] See _Times_ report, February 28, 1908.

[71] Report of the Inspector under the Inebriates Acts for the year 1906.

[72] This drinking by women, which means drinking by mothers present, expectant or possible, is rapidly increasing in Great Britain, though almost unknown in our Colonies. It is at the heart that Empires rot.

[73] Cd. 4438. Price 4½d. Volume of evidence Cd. 4439. Price 2s.

[74] A careful and detailed enquiry by the present writer, published in the _Westminster Gazette_ (Nov. 21, 1908), _Daily Chronicle_, and _Manchester Guardian_, and hitherto unchallenged, showed that, on the most moderate reckoning, alcohol makes 124 widows and orphans in England and Wales every day, or more than 45,000 per annum.

[75] _Diseases of Occupation_, by Sir Thomas Oliver. (The New Library of Medicine, 1908.)

[76] This chapter contains the substance of the author's Friday evening discourse, entitled “Biology and History,” delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain and Ireland, February 14, 1908. The substance of two lectures to the Royal Institution, entitled “Biology and Progress,” and delivered in February, 1907, is also included in the present volume.

[77] “It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was done, but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History (ever, more or less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little that were not as well unknown. Attila invasions, Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty-Years' Wars: mere sin and misery; not work, but hindrance of work! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly green and yellow with her kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which, poor History may well ask, with wonder, Whence _it_ came? She knows so little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would have rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish choice, is her rule and practice; whereby that paradox, ‘Happy the people whose annals are vacant,’ is not without its true side.”--Carlyle, _French Revolution_.

“In a little while it would come to be felt that the true history of a nation was indeed not of its wars but of its households.”--Ruskin, _Time and Tide_.

[78] “Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.”--William Godwin.

[79] See the Author's paper, “The Essential Factor of Progress,” published in the _Monthly Review_, April, 1906.

[80] Gibbon does not enlighten us much on such vital matters: but my attention has been called to the following passage, not irrelevant here. It is from the _Attic Nights_ of Aulus Gellius, Book xii., chap. i., written about A.D. 150--Gibbon's critical epoch. I use the free translation of Mr. Quintin Waddington:--

“Once when I was with the philosopher Favorinus, word was brought to him that the wife of one of his disciples had just given birth to a son.

“‘Let us go,’ said he, ‘to enquire after the mother, and to congratulate the father.’ The latter was a noble of Senatorial rank.

“All of us who were present accompanied him to the house and went in with him. Meeting the father in the hall, he embraced and congratulated him, and, sitting down, enquired how his wife had come through the ordeal. And when he heard that the young mother, overcome with fatigue, was now sleeping, he began to speak more freely.

“‘Of course,’ said he, ‘she will suckle the child herself.’ And when the girl's mother said that her daughter must be spared, and nurses obtained in order that the heavy strain of nursing the child should not be added to what she had already gone through, ‘I beg of you, dear lady,’ said he, ‘to allow her to be a whole mother to her child. Is it not against nature, and being only half a mother, to give birth to a child, and then at once to send him away? To have nourished with her own blood and in her own body a something that she had never seen, and then to refuse it her own milk, now that she sees it living, a human being, demanding a mother's care? Or are you one of those who think that nature gave a woman breasts, not that she might feed her children, but as pretty little hillocks to give her bust a pleasing contour? Many indeed of our present-day ladies--whom you are far from resembling--do try to dry up and repress that sacred fount of the body, the nourisher of the human race, even at the risk they run from turning back and corrupting their milk, lest it should take off from the charm of their beauty. In doing this they act with the same folly as those, who, by the use of drugs and so forth, endeavour to destroy the very embryo in their bodies, lest a furrow should mar the smoothness of their skin, and they should spoil their figures in becoming mothers. If the destruction of a human being in its first inception, whilst it is being formed, whilst it is yet coming to life, and is still in the hands of its artificer, Nature, be deserving of public detestation and horror, is it not nearly as bad to deprive the child of his proper and congenial nutriment to which he is accustomed, now that he is perfected, is born into the world, is a child?

“But it makes no difference--for as they say--so long as the child is nourished and lives, with whose milk it is done.

“Why does he who says this, since he is so dull in understanding nature, think it also of no consequence in whose womb and from whose blood the child is formed and fashioned? For is there not now in the breasts the same blood--whitened, it is true, by agration and heat--which was before in the womb? And is not the wisdom of Nature to be seen in this, that as soon as the blood has done its work of forming the body down below, and the time of birth has come, it betakes itself to the upper parts of the body, and is ready to cherish the spark of life and light by furnishing to the new-born babe his known and accustomed food? And so it is not an idle belief, that, just as the strength and character of the seed have their influence in determining the likeness of the body and mind, so do the nature and properties of the milk do their part in effecting the same results. And this has been noticed, not in man alone, but in cattle as well. For if kids are brought up on the milk of ewes, or lambs on that of goats, it is agreed that the latter have stiffer wool, the former softer hair. In the case of timber and fruit trees, too, the qualities of the water and soil from which they draw their nourishment have more influence in stunting or augmenting their growth than those of the seed which is sewn, and often you may see a vigorous and healthy tree when transplanted into another place perish owing to the poverty of the soil.

“Is it then a reasonable thing to corrupt the fine qualities of the new-born man, well endowed as to both body and mind so far as parentage is concerned, with the unsuitable nourishment of degenerate and foreign milk? Especially is this the case, if she whom you get to supply the milk is a slave or of servile estate, and--as is very often the case--of a foreign and barbarous race, if she is dishonest, ugly, unchaste, or _addicted to drink_. For generally any woman who happens to have milk is called in, without further enquiry as to her suitability in other respects. Shall we allow this babe of ours to be tainted by pernicious contagion, and to draw life into his body and mind from a body and mind debased?

"This is the reason why we are so often surprised that the children of chaste mothers resemble their parents neither in body nor character.

“... And besides these considerations, who can afford to ignore or belittle the fact that those who desert their offspring and send them away from themselves, and make them over to others to nurse, cut, or at least loosen and weaken that chain and connection of mind and affection by which Nature attaches children to their parents. For when the child, sent elsewhere, is away from sight, the vigour of maternal solicitude little by little dies away, and the call of motherly instinct grows silent, and forgetfulness of a child sent away to nurse is not much less complete than that of one lost by death.

“A child's thoughts and the love he is ever ready to give, are occupied, moreover, with her alone from whom he derives his food, and soon he has neither feeling nor affection for the mother who bore him. The foundations of the filial feelings with which we are born being thus sapped and undermined, whatever affection children thus brought up may seem to have for father and mother, for the most part is not natural love, but the result of social convention.’”

[81] Cf. the similar dicta of Darwin and Pearson (p. 279).

[82] _National Life from the Standpoint of Science_, p. 99.

[83] “Decadence,” Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, by the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., delivered at Newnham College, January 25, 1908. (Cambridge University Press.)

[84] “Restless activity proves the man,” as Goethe says.

[85] _Munera Pulveris_, par. 6.

[86] _The Data of Ethics_, par. 97.

[87] _Hereditary Genius_, Prefatory Chapter to Edition of 1902, pp. x. and xxvii.

[88] “The Survival-Value of Religion,” _Fortnightly Review_, April, 1906.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Ability, inheritance of, 114

“Acquired characters,” defined, 111

Acquired characters, Lamarckian theory of the transmission of, 283

---- progress, 262

---- ----, dangers of, 265

---- ---- _versus_ natural selection, 266

Acquirements, transmission of, by the art of writing, 261

---- _versus_ inborn characters, 101

Acromegaly, 67

“Adam Bede”, 298

“Adolescence,” by Prof. Stanley Hall, 318

Alcohol, a racial poison, 211, 259

----, an agent of selection, 206

---- and eugenics, 206

----, and heredity, 206

---- and human degeneration, 242

---- and parenthood, 241

----, effects of, on the racial organs, 208, 209 (_note_)

----, elimination by, 206

----, the friends of, 243

---- trade, the, and widows and orphans, 245

“Alcohol and Infancy,” by Dr. Saleeby, 214

“Alcohol and the Human Body,” by Sir Victor Horsley and Mary D.
Sturge, 319

Alcoholic Imperialism, 244

Alcoholism and the London County Council, 206

----, both a cause and a symptom of degeneracy, 217

----, parental, its influence on the offspring, 211

“Alcoholism, a Chapter in Social Pathology,” by Dr. W. C. Sullivan,
211, 242, 319

“Alcoholism, a Study in Heredity,” by G. Archdall Reid, 319

Ancestral inheritance, the law of, xiv

Ancestry of men of genius, 152

----, paternal and maternal, of equal importance, 152

Animal life and monogamy, 163

---- marriage, 162

Animals and promiscuity, 163

----, the higher, and monogamy, 163

Army, inferior intelligence of the, to that of the Navy, 98

“Atavism,” defined, 111

“Attic Nights, The,” of Aulus Gellius, 271 (_note_)

Australia, control of drunkards in, 242

“Autobiography” of Herbert Spencer, 58, 152

“Avariés, Les,” by Brieux, 252

Bacteria, domination of, 93

----, rate of increase of, 160

Bibliography of eugenics, 305

---- of racial poisons, 318

---- of transmissible diseases, 318

Biography, as a guide to heredity, 152

----, neglect of ancestral data in, 152

“Biology and History,” by Dr. Saleeby, 254 (_note_)

“Biology, The Principles of,” by Herbert Spencer, 312

Biometrics, the study of, xiii

Birth-rate, falling, eugenic aspect of the, 10

---- in China, 78

---- in Japan, 78

---- of man, 72

----, statistics of, 74

Births, ratio of, of the sexes, 294

“Black Stain, The,” by G. R. Sims, 237, 319

Body, the necessity of the, 53

----, relation of the, to the mind, 52

Brains, breeding for, 54

Breeding for brains, 54

---- for energy, 66

---- for intelligence, 147, 150, 153

---- for motherhood, 145, 146

Celibacy, non-eugenic results of, 116

Census, the uselessness of the, 6, 94

“Century Dictionary, The,” on eugenics, 314

Characters, inborn, _versus_ acquirements, 101

Child-birth, superstition about, 106