Chapter IV: Part 4

"As will be seen from the chart, this woman had four feeble-minded brothers and sisters [IV, 6, 10, 15, 16]. These are all married and have children. The older of the two sisters had a child by her own father, when she was thirteen years old. The child died at about six years of age. This woman has since married. The two brothers have each at least one child of whose mental condition nothing is known. The other sister married a feeble-minded man and had three children. Two of these are feeble-minded and the other died in infancy. There were six other brothers and sisters that died in infancy."

The paternal ancestry of this unfortunate woman is hardly less interesting, as may be seen from the diagram. All told, this family history, as far as it is known, includes 59 persons; the mental character of 12 of these is unknown; 10 died in infancy or before their characteristics were known; of the remaining 37, 30 were feeble-minded.

Turning now to defects of other kinds, an interesting history is illustrated in Fig. 23. Here a single individual fatally affected with angio-neurotic oedema gave rise, in four completed generations, to 113 persons, 43 of whom were affected. In 11 this disease was the direct cause of death. The Mendelian character of the heredity here can be neither asserted nor denied. In generations II-V matings between normal and affected gave 42 affected and 35 unaffected offspring.

Fig. 24 gives a brief family history showing pulmonary tuberculosis. In the history given susceptibility to this disease behaves as a Mendelian dominant. We cannot as yet say whether this is or is not a general rule. In describing the heredity of diseases primarily due to infection, one or two important cautions must be observed. Of course the source of the infection cannot be "hereditary," and apparently it is only in comparatively few instances that infection occurs during fetal life. To some infections certain persons are susceptible, others are not; some when susceptible are capable of developing immunity, others are not. When an infection is of such character and prevalence that practically all persons in approximately similar environments of a given character are infected, susceptibility or the power of developing immunity will determine whether or not an individual will exhibit the disease caused by the infective agent. Practically all persons living in the denser communities are infected with tuberculosis; those who are susceptible and incapable of developing immunity succumb, the insusceptible and those developing immunity do not. These conditions are heritable; but in speaking of the heredity of such a disease as tuberculosis it should be clear that the heredity concerned is really that of susceptibility and the power of developing immunity. Yet the person who is really susceptible can, by taking sufficient precaution, escape serious infection, and thus the result for that person would be the same as if he were insusceptible, but his offspring would have to take similar precautions if they were to escape the disease.

We cannot speak of heredity in connection with diseases to which all are susceptible and incapable of developing immunity. The presence or absence of such a disease is determined solely by the presence or absence of infection. Many physical and mental defects result from infection as the primary cause. If the infection is one to which all exposed are susceptible and incapable of developing immunity we cannot speak of the defect as in any way hereditary; if the infection is one to which some are susceptible, others not, to which some can develop immunity, others cannot, then we may speak of the defect as hereditary. Thus certain forms of blindness or insanity are due primarily to gonorrheal or syphilitic infection, insusceptibility to which is rare or unknown. Such defects cannot be considered as affording evidence of heredity though they reappear in successive generations.

In general the subject of the heredity of immunity and susceptibility forms one of the most important eugenic aspects of this whole subject. In a few cases it is known that immunity or insusceptibility to specific forms of infection is a unit character which follows Mendelian laws in heredity. It can be added to races or subtracted from them and pure bred immune races built up. So far this has not been demonstrated for man. There is some circumstantial evidence that immunity to specific forms of infection has been a great, although hitherto neglected, factor in man's evolution, and even in the history of his civilization and conquest. It is at once obvious that here is a great field for the common labor of the students of heredity and of medicine and of Eugenics.

Fig. 25 illustrates a family history of infertility. This is apparently hereditary, but before that could be asserted definitely to be so here or in any similar case, we should know that the infertility were not the result of an infection to which immunity is rare or unknown. That infertility is really hereditary in this instance is indicated, first, by the fact that the person marked A later, by a second marriage into fertile stock, had a large family, and second, by the fact that the individual B and his child by marriage into fertile stocks produced in the last generation again a large family and so saved this whole family from extinction.

Before leaving the subject of the heredity of the kinds of traits we have been using as illustrations, we should add just a word. It is often objected that one cannot properly speak of the heredity of such general things as "insanity" or "deaf-mutism" or "blindness" or "heart disease," because each of these includes a great variety of specific forms of these disorders which cannot strictly, medically, be compared. But the student of heredity replies that when he speaks of the heredity of insanity or heart disease, that is often just what he means. He means that often no particular form of these defects is necessarily strictly heritable as such, but that in a family there may be a general instability of nervous system or circulatory system, which may take any one of several possible specific forms, the form actually appearing depending upon particular conditions which are frequently environmental and beyond determination. In some cases specific forms of disorder are actually heritable as such.

Such an inclusive thing as "ability" may depend upon many different specific conditions. Yet there are families in which persons of exceptional ability are unusually frequent. The fact that persons of ability are more frequent in certain families than in the general population of the same social class and with about the same opportunity for the demonstration of inherent ability, gives evidence of its heredity, although we may not be able to summarize the facts under any particular law but must adhere to their statistical expression.

Figs. 26 and 27 illustrate two such pedigrees of ability. In each of these histories there is also a line of "unsoundness" the descent of which it is interesting to trace. It is instructive to compare here the progeny of matings of different kinds. In generation IV of Fig. 26, the 9th and 10th persons are brother and sister. The sister was of considerable ability and married into a family of ability, producing 8 offspring, 5 of whom were able. The brother was a "normal" person and married a similar individual, producing 10 "normal" children. It would be interesting to know the details regarding these two large families of cousins. Another interesting comparison is found in this pedigree. The four able brothers in generation III, coming from a stock of demonstrated ability, married women of undemonstrated ability and all told had 13 children (IV) of whom only 3 showed ability and all of these were in a single family. In this family of the fourth brother two of the able members married into able families, and among their 11 children (second and fifth families in generation V) 8 showed ability; the third able member of this family, however, married as her uncles had, a person not known as able, and none of their 6 children showed unusual ability (sixth family in generation V). Fig. 27 affords other illustrations of this same kind. Thus in generation III the 5th and 7th persons are able cousins of able parentage. The former married a normal and 1 of their 5 children showed ability; the latter married a person of ability and 5 of their 8 children showed ability. In both pedigrees the "careers" of those in the last generation are partly incomplete.

In discussing pedigrees of ability it should be borne in mind that the larger proportion of able males as compared with females is hardly significant for the study of heredity; it may merely reflect the unfortunate fact that women have not had the same opportunity to demonstrate inherent ability as have men; or it may evidence the still more unfortunate fact that the distinguished achievements of able women have not been socially recognized as such and recorded as they have been for the other sex.

Fig. 28 gives an interesting, though abbreviated, pedigree of three very able and well-known families. In this history only persons whose ability is in science are marked as able. Charles Darwin is the third individual in the third generation. His cousin, Francis Galton, the founder of Eugenics, is the next to the last person in the same generation.

Many similar cases of the unusual frequency of individuals of musical or religious ability in certain families have been published by Galton and are well known. "As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion of able offspring is a certainty, and ability is a more valuable heirloom in a family than mere material wealth, which, moreover, will follow ability sooner or later."

We might contrast with such families as have been recorded in the three preceding figures some well-known families at the other pole of society. As an interesting example we have the family described by Poellmann. This was established by two daughters of a woman drunkard who in five or six generations produced all told 834 descendants. The histories of 709 of these are known. Of the 709, 107 were of illegitimate birth; 64 were inmates of almshouses; 162 were professional beggars; 164 were prostitutes and 17 procurers; 76 had served sentences in prison aggregating 116 years; 7 were condemned for murder. This family is still a fertile one and the cost to the State, i. e., the taxpayers, already a million and a quarter dollars, is still increasing.

One of the best known families of this type is the so-called "Jukes" family of New York State so carefully investigated by Dugdale. This family is traced from the five daughters of a lazy and irresponsible fisherman born in 1720. In five generations this family numbered about 1,200 persons, including nearly 200 who married into it. The histories of 540 of these are well known and about 500 more are partly known. This family history was easier to follow than are some others because there was very little marriage with the foreign-born--"a distinctively American family." Of these 1,200 idle, ignorant, lewd, vicious, pauper, diseased, imbecile, insane, and criminal specimens of humanity, about 300 died in infancy. Of the remaining 900, 310 were professional paupers in almshouses a total of 2,300 years (at whose expense?); 440 were physically wrecked by their own diseased wickedness; more than half of the women were prostitutes; 130 were convicted criminals; 60 were habitual thieves; 7 were murderers. Not one had even a common school education. Only 20 learned a trade, and 10 of these learned it in State prison! They have cost the State over a million and a quarter dollars, and the cost is still going on. Who pays this bill? What right had an intelligent and humane society to allow these poor unfortunates to be born into the kind of lives they had to lead, not by choice but by the disadvantage of birth? Darwin wrote long ago "... except in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Probably the most complete family history of this kind ever worked out is that of the "Familie Zero"--a Swiss family whose pedigree has been recently unraveled in a splendid manner by Joerger. In the seventeenth century this family divided into three lines; two of these have ever since remained valued and highly respected families, while the third has descended to the depths. This third line was established by a man who was himself the result of two generations of intermarriage, the second tainted with insanity. He was of roving disposition, and in the Valla Fontana found an Italian vagrant wife of vicious character. Their son inherited fully his parental traits and himself married a member of a German vagabond family--Marcus, known to this day as a vagabond family. This marriage sealed the fate of their hundreds of descendants. This pair had seven children, all characterized by vagabondage, thievery, drunkenness, mental and physical defect, and immorality. Their history for the three succeeding generations is incompletely summarized in Fig. 29. In 1905, 190 members of this family were known to be living, and probably many living are unknown on account of illegitimate birth.

In 1861 a sympathetic and charitable priest attempted to save from their obvious fate many of these "Zero" children and others who resided in and near his village, by placing them in industrious and respectable families to be reared under more favorable auspices. The attempt failed utterly, for every one of the "Zero" children either ran away or was enticed away by his relatives.

The blame for such an atrocity as this family or the Jukes does not rest with these persons themselves; it must be placed squarely upon the shoulders and consciences of the intelligent members of society who have permitted these predetermined degenerates to be brought into the world, and who are to-day taking no broadly sympathetic view of their treatment by exercising preventive measures. _Laissez faire?_

At the risk of easing the conscience, let us finally return to the other side of society and look at a summarized statement of the Edwards Family given by Boies and drawn from Winship's account of the descendants of Jonathan Edwards. "1,394 of his descendants were identified in 1900, of whom 295 were college graduates; 13 presidents of our greatest colleges; 65 professors in colleges, besides many principals of other important educational institutions; 60 physicians, many of whom were eminent; 100 and more clergymen, missionaries, or theological professors; 75 were officers in the army and navy; 60 prominent authors and writers, by whom 135 books of merit were written and published and 18 important periodicals edited; 33 American States and several foreign countries, and 92 American cities and many foreign cities, have profited by the beneficent influence of their eminent activity; 100 and more were lawyers, of whom one was our most eminent professor of law; 30 were judges; 80 held public office, of whom one was Vice President of the United States; 3 were United States Senators; several were governors, members of Congress, framers of State constitutions, mayors of cities, and ministers to foreign courts; one was president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; 15 railroads, many banks, insurance companies, and large industrial enterprises have been indebted to their management. Almost if not every department of social progress and of the public weal has felt the impulse of this healthy and long-lived family. It is not known that any one of them was ever convicted of crime."

The serious consideration of bodies of facts like those contained in some of these pedigrees leads every thoughtful and sympathetic, every humanely minded, human being to ask--What _can_ we _do_ about it? The display of such conditions stimulates us to measures of relief. It is greatly to be regretted that the honest desire to do good often leads to the performance of ill-considered or unconsidered acts which may result in positive injury to the constitution of society, or at any rate at best merely in the amelioration of the immediate situation without reference to ultimate profit or penalty, or to the necessity for interminable amelioration. Such relief leaves out of account the fact that modifications are not heritable--not permanent, practically without effect in the long run. "Good intentions" have a certain well-known value as paving material, but not as building material.

The science of Eugenics includes not only the study of the data in this field, but further the formulation of definite courses of procedure; but it insists that these be based upon scientific principles and not upon emotional states. Philanthropic relief has become a serious business--is becoming a science. Eugenics is a science and it aims to put the human race upon such a level that the need for philanthropic relief will be less and continually less. We shall then be able to devote more of the resources of our time and money and energy to the production of permanent results. The Eugenist pleads in this work for more sympathetic consideration of the problems of relief--for a sympathy which is wider, which transcends the individual person and reaches the social group, even the nation or race. For just as a society is something more than the sum of its individual parts when taken separately, so the consideration of all the component individuals of a society taken separately and by themselves, results in something less than social consideration. Again "Charity refers to the individual; Statesmanship to the nation; Eugenics cares for both."

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What, then, does the Eugenist propose to do? What is the eugenic program? Eugenics is not an academic matter--not an armchair science. It is intensely practical--so very practical, indeed, that the Eugenist hesitates to make many suggestions of a definite nature looking directly and immediately toward specific action. Something must precede action. The Eugenist has been ridiculed as one responsible for the absurd schemes proposed in his name, perhaps seriously, by the unscientific but well-intentioned sympathizer. Many persons have been led to object to what they believed to be a eugenic program which is not a eugenic program at all. Thus the willingness of some to offer adverse criticism of the subject and its aims has grown largely out of a common misconception of the matter and has led Galton to say, "As in most other cases of novel views, the wrongheadedness of objectors to Eugenics has been curious." As a scientist the Eugenist realizes clearly and fully that his new science is in a very early stage of its development. It is just entering upon what are the first stages in the history of any science, namely, the periods of the formulation of elementary ideas and the collection of facts. There are certain groups of facts, however, of glaring significance and undoubted meaning, and upon these as a basis the Eugenist already has a few, a very few, concrete suggestions for eugenic practice. In conclusion, then, we may outline tentatively and briefly a conservative eugenic program somewhat as follows:

First of all there must be an extensive collection of exact data--of the facts regarding all the varied aspects of racial history and evolution. These facts must be collected with great care and under the strictest scientific conditions. In this matter particularly must we "desert verbal discussion for statistical facts." Figures can't lie, but liars can figure. What we need first of all is the accumulation of masses of cold, hard facts, uncolored by any point of view, untinged by any propaganda: facts regarding the net fertility of all classes; facts regarding the racial effects of all sorts of environmental and occupational conditions; facts regarding variability and variation in the race; facts regarding human heredity of normal and pathological conditions, of physical and psychical traits. We have merely scratched the surface of the great masses of such data to be had for the looking. As Davenport has recently put it in his valuable essay on "Eugenics"--

"While the acquisition of new data is desirable, much can be done by studying the extant records of institutions. The amount of such data is enormous. They lie hidden in records of our numerous charity organizations, our 42 institutions for the feeble-minded, our 115 schools and homes for the deaf and blind, our 350 hospitals for the insane, our 1,200 refuge homes, our 1,300 prisons, our 1,500 hospitals and our 2,500 almshouses. Our great insurance companies and our college gymnasiums have tens of thousands of records of the characters of human blood lines. These records should be studied, their hereditary data sifted out and ... placed in their proper relations" that we may learn of "the great strains of human protoplasm that are coursing through the country." Thus shall we learn "not only the method of heredity of human characteristics but we shall identify those lines which supply our families of great men: ... We shall also learn whence come our 300,000 insane and feeble-minded, our 160,000 blind or deaf, the 2,000,000 that are annually cared for by our hospitals and Homes, our 80,000 prisoners and the thousands of criminals that are not in prison, and our 100,000 paupers in almshouses and out.

"This three or four per cent of our population is a fearful drag on our civilization. Shall we as an intelligent people, proud of our control of nature in other respects, do nothing but vote more taxes or be satisfied with the great gifts and bequests that philanthropists have made for the support of the delinquent, defective, and dependent classes? Shall we not rather take the steps that scientific study dictates as necessary to dry up the springs that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm?

"Greater tasks than those contemplated in the broadest scheme of the Eugenics committee have been carried out in this country. If only one half of one per cent of the 30 million dollars annually spent on hospitals, 20 millions on insane asylums, 20 millions for almshouses, 13 millions on prisons, and 5 millions on the feeble-minded, deaf and blind were spent on the study of the bad germ plasm that makes necessary the annual expenditure of nearly 100 millions in the care of its produce we might hope to learn just how it is being reproduced and the best way to diminish its further spread. A _new_ plague that rendered four per cent of our population, chiefly at the most productive age, not only incompetent, but a burden costing 100 million dollars yearly to support, would instantly attract universal attention, and millions would be forthcoming for its study as they have been for the study of cancer. But we have become so used to crime, disease and degeneracy that we take them as necessary evils. That they were, in the world's ignorance, is granted. That they must remain so, is denied."

Of course one should not jump from this to the conclusion that the fact of heredity is responsible for all of this defect. Disease is so often the result of infections to which none is immune, and defect is frequently the result of such disease. Warbasse has recently stated that "At least one fourth of our public institutions for caring for defectives is made necessary by venereal disease." Doubtless an appreciable share of this fourth is the result of hereditary tendencies, the expression of which gives the opportunity for such infection. Here as elsewhere no single factor accounts for all of the facts, although when, as the result of the increase of knowledge, we shall become able to make more definite statements, we no doubt shall find that heredity is the most important single factor in the disgraceful prevalence of crime, disease, and defect in our communities: indeed this is practically demonstrated to-day. These are questions of the most fundamental importance in our national life-history: our only "hope of perpetuity" lies in the right solution of such problems. And the crying need is for facts, always more facts.

The Galton Laboratory for Eugenics is already doing much in this direction and is publishing in the "Treasury of Human Inheritance" scores of human pedigrees. An agency is already in operation in this country. The American Breeders Association has appointed a Committee and Sub-Committees under highly competent leaders for the collection of exact data of human heredity upon a large scale. There is opportunity for everyone to help in this work in connection with the Eugenics Record Office already referred to.

The second great element in the eugenic program is Research. It is not enough to collect the known facts; new facts must be forthcoming. We cannot, perhaps, undertake definite experiments upon human evolution, but we 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. We need now to know, not to guess at, the effects of these things upon the race, upon human stock. A mere beginning has been made here in the way of a scientific treatment of this question, although many persons have their minds already made up, firmly and fully, as to the "effects of the environment." But all that we have guessed here may be wrong.

The discussion of this subject is filled with pitfalls. The common form of the query as to which is of the greater importance, "heredity or environment," in determining individual characteristics betrays a completely erroneous view of what heredity is, and of the organism's relation to its environment. The living organism reacts to its environment at every stage of its existence, whether as an egg, an embryo, or an adult. In this reaction both factors are essential, the environment as essential as the organism. The result of this continued reaction is the development on the part of the organism of certain physiological processes and structural conditions or characteristics. The nature of these resulting states, depending upon the two factors--organism and environment--can be changed by altering either factor. In general, organisms develop under pretty much the same conditions as their parents and general ancestry did, and their germinal substances are directly continuous, and therefore very similar. Consequently, primary organic structure and environing conditions of development being alike through successive generations, the results of their interaction are alike. This alikeness is heredity--the fact of similarity between parent and offspring. The usually indefinite question as to the effect of the environment ordinarily has a real meaning however, and this is, or should be, whether the alteration of particular elements of the environment, the presence of special, unusual factors which cannot be said to be "normally" present--whether these produce any effect upon the organism which is truly heritable.

This is in reality the old question of the "inheritance of acquired characteristics," or, in a word, of modifications--a question which has been debated heatedly and at length. And as in many similar instances the number of essays and the length and heat of the debate have been inversely as the number and clearness of the pertinent facts. The large majority of biologists have long felt that the great bulk of the evidence was on one side, namely, that acquired traits were not heritable. At the same time they have recognized the difficulty of explaining certain apparently demonstrated contradictory facts. Some recent experimental work has largely cleared away the theoretical difficulties in this field, and the present status of the old and really fundamental question may be stated as follows: External conditions--climate, temperature, moisture, nutritional conditions, results of unusual activity, and the like--incidences of the environment, undoubtedly produce effects upon the structure and behavior of the organism, but these effects must be clearly grouped into two distinct classes.

In the first place the effect of "external" conditions may be to bring about a reaction between the _bodily_ parts affected and the environing conditions. Here the body alone is modified and not the germinal substance for the next generation within this body. Such responses to environing conditions do not affect nor involve the structure of the germ, and are therefore unrepresented in that series of reactions that result in the production of an individual of the next generation. In this class are found most of the instances of "functional modification" or acquired characteristics. In this category belong most of the stock illustrations--from the blacksmith's arm and the pianist's fingers, to the giraffe's neck and the fox's cunning. Here also belong the results of training and education; we can train and educate brain cells but not germ cells.

It is characteristic of most of these bodily reactions to external conditions that they are adaptive; that is, when a body reacts to such a condition it does so by undergoing a change which makes the organism better fitted to the new condition--better able to exist. The increased keenness of vision, the strengthened muscle, the thickened fur--all such changes meet new or unusual demands in such a way that the organism has better chances of survival than it would have had unmodified.

But in the second place there are certain environmental circumstances which do affect the structure of the germinal substance within the body of an organism. An unusually high temperature acting at a certain period in the life-history may bring about a change in the color of insects which is heritable--i. e., racial; but such a change results from the action of temperature upon the germ directly and not alone upon the body, which then itself affects the germ. It is essential to recognize that in all such cases it is not the structural change in the body that affects the germ, but it is the external condition itself that affects the germ directly. This is not the half of a hair; it is an extremely important and significant difference. The effects of this kind of action are not visible until the generation following that acted upon. They become expressed in the bodies of the organisms developed from the affected germs.

It is characteristic of such changes as these that they may not, usually do not, have an adaptive relation to the condition bringing about the change. There is no correspondence between the bodily and the germinal modifications resulting from the action of the same condition. Furthermore, there seems to be no adaptive relation between the general character of the germinal disturbance and the environmental disturbance. Rarely some of the organismal characters resulting from such germinal modification may be in the direction of greater adaptedness; usually they are neutral or in the direction of utter unfitness.

But such effects are heritable, whatever their nature with respect to adaptedness, and it becomes therefore very important to find out what are the conditions that may thus disturb the normal structure of the germ. Little more than a beginning has been made here and practically nothing can be said definitely with reference to the human organism in this respect. Enough is known, however, to make it clear that it is only rarely indeed that external conditions can thus affect the germinal structure. In most cases the effects of the incidence of environment are purely bodily. A most fruitful field for eugenic investigation is open here.

One of the first problems to be attacked from this point of view is that of the racial (i. e., heritable) effects of such poisons as alcohol. It is frequently said, for instance, that some of the effects of alcoholism are the weakened, epileptic, or feeble-minded conditions of the offspring, who are also particularly liable to disease and infection. It can hardly be said that this is as yet thoroughly demonstrated. On account of the importance of this question we might call specific attention to some recent investigations of the problem of the racial influence of alcohol. The effects of alcohol upon the individual are fairly well known, although still a matter for debate in some quarters. But this is not as important eugenically as the possible effect upon the offspring of the use and abuse of alcohol by the parents. An investigation has been carried on recently through the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics directed toward ascertaining the precise relation between alcoholism in parents and the height, weight, general health, and intelligence of their children. It was found to be perfectly true that alcoholism and tuberculosis show a high degree of association; but considering the nondrinking members of the same community just the same high frequency of tuberculosis was found. And the presence of alcoholism among parents was found to be practically without effect upon the height and weight of their offspring. "These results are certainly startling and rather upset one's preconceived ideas, but it is perhaps a consolation that to the obvious and visible miseries of the children arising from drink, lowered intelligence and physique are not added."

The difficulties surrounding investigation and the interpretation of the results of investigation in this particular field are evidenced by the fact that these results have been adversely criticised, on the one hand, because "alcoholism" was taken to mean the continued moderate use of alcohol, and on the other because "alcoholism" was taken to mean only the occasional excessive abuse of alcohol. Much of the confusion surrounding the discussion of the racial effects of alcohol grows out of the underlying confusion of statistical and individual statements. It may be left open, then, whether this result from the Galton Laboratory is clearly demonstrated and whether the basis of investigation was sufficiently broad to make the facts of general applicability.

The frequent association between alcoholism and certain forms of insanity is sometimes taken as evidence of a racial effect. Here again we find the question really left open when we appeal to facts taken in large numbers. In a few cases it seems to have been demonstrated that saturation of the bodily tissues with alcohol affects directly the structure of the germ cells formed at that time, and that this effect is seen in physical and mental disturbances of the offspring derived from such germ cells, and thus becomes hereditary or racial. But these results, like those mentioned above, need confirmation. The impairment of the child _in utero_ through maternal overindulgence in alcohol would not necessarily denote any corresponding germinal (i. e., racial) effect.

It is often the case that alcoholic excess, like other forms of excess, may be an indication of a lack of complete mental balance or sanity, sure to have become expressed in some form. The lack of balance in the offspring of such persons is a simple case of heredity and not the result of the parental use of alcohol. The alcoholism of the parent was a result, an indication, and not a cause. There may be instances of the direct action of external conditions upon the germ, and in a very true sense the body is a part of the external environment of the germ, but to say that such an action has been demonstrated for alcohol is premature. It should be easily possible to get real evidence upon this and similar questions. But at present it is safest to leave the whole question of the racial effects of alcohol entirely open pending more and better evidence.

To summarize, then, we may say that the evidence for an inherited effect of the misuse of alcohol is not as clear as one might wish; it may be true. There is the greatest need for the careful scientific investigation of this and allied problems. Much of the evidence here is not of the kind that can be used to prove things--it consists largely of the demonstration of the fact of association rather than of causation. In order to show that a changed environment has produced a change in the innate characters of the organisms affected it must be demonstrated that the organismal change continues to be inherited after the environment has again become what it was originally, and as yet this has not been done. Indeed when tested in this way it is found that a permanently heritable alteration can thus be produced only rarely and by environmental changes of the most profound character.

Research in another direction is greatly needed. We should examine and reexamine current as well as proposed social practices and reforms from the racial point of view. We should know before going much farther whether the extensive social improvements that are annually effected are to any considerable degree racially permanent. We should investigate not only the racial effects of the unfavorable social conditions themselves, but also the racial effects of the measures directed toward the relief of such conditions. It is conceivable that measures of relief may be practically without permanent effect or even racially detrimental. It would seem that the social worker and philanthropist should welcome any biologically fundamental truths touching these questions, and yet it is curiously true that there are some such persons who seem to prefer not to know the whole truth here, perhaps because they fear it may disclose the unwelcome fact that much of their effort has resulted in amelioration rather than in correction. It should be remembered that simple relief is well worth while, even though often without resulting racial benefit. When it is not actually detrimental racially, relief is an economic, social, and moral duty. The Eugenist, by disclosing the fact that racial effects can actually be accomplished, enlarges rather than diminishes the opportunities for relief and his knowledge should be welcomed and use made of it.

Heretofore the social point of view has been practically the only point of view in much of this work, and the result is that usually following when action is based upon half-truth. David Starr Jordan says: "Charity creates the misery she tries to relieve; she never relieves half the misery she creates," and he goes on to say that _unwise_ charity is responsible for half the pauperism of the world; that it is the duty of charity to remove the _causes_ of weakness and suffering and equally to see that weakness and suffering are not needlessly perpetuated. In this connection the following quotation from Elderton is apt: "... the influence of the parental environmental factor on the welfare of children is ... at present and has been in the past the chief direction of legislative and philanthropic attack on social evils. Degeneracy of every form has been attributed to poverty, bad housing, unhealthy trades, drinking, industrial occupation of women, and other direct or indirect environmental influences on offspring. If we could by education, by legislation, or by social effort change the environmental conditions, would the race at once rise to a markedly higher standard of physique and mentality? Much, if not the whole battle for social reform, has been based on the assumption that this question was obviously to be answered in the affirmative. No direct investigation has really ever been made of the intensity of the influence of environment on man. To modify the obviously repellent was the immediate instinct of the more gently nurtured and controlling social class. Was this direction of social reform really capable of effecting any substantial change? Nay, by lessening the selective death rate, may it not have contributed to emphasizing the very evils it was intended to lessen? These are the problems which occur to the eugenist and call for investigation and, if possible, settlement.... It is conceivable that the relation between children's physique, for example, and parental occupation is an indirect result of the inheritance of physique and a correlation between parents' physique and their occupation. In other words, what we are attributing to environment may be a secondary influence of heredity itself. A weakling may have no option but to follow an unhealthy trade, a man is a tailor or shoemaker, because he has not the physique for smith or navvy. His offspring may be physically inferior because he is a weakling and not because he follows an unhealthy trade. Clearly, to solve our problem, we must know if there be any correlation between the same character in the parent as we are observing in the child and the environment we are correlating with the child's character. Unfortunately data enabling us to determine the relationship of any mental or physical character of the parent with the environment which is supposed to influence the child is rarely forthcoming."

Just to suggest one further train of thought, we might point out that several movements apparently of high social value have been attended by a curious and largely unforeseen back action. Thus the enforcement of certain forms of Employer's Liability laws has led to discrimination against married persons by large employers of labor and a premium thus put upon nonmarriage. The result of Child Labor legislation has been in some cases an enormous rise in the death rate of young children among the classes concerned, indicating that the children receive less care, now that they have ceased to be a prospective family asset and have become chiefly a burden for many years. In other cases the result has been so serious a limitation in the birth rate that communities are dying out and factories are closing for want of sufficient help. Such problems are not only social but economic and eugenic, and they cannot be seen squarely from any single point of view. It is doubtless shocking to the cultured mind that the chief reason for bringing children into the world should be their economic value as contributors to the family income. But in reality does this point of view differ fundamentally from that very commonly taken of the value of a large family except in the nature of the standard by which their value is measured? May there not be a difference of opinion as to whether children are better or worse off when brought up with some degree of care to be employed under humane conditions of labor, than when left uncared for to die in large proportions of disease and neglect?

Finally, studies in heredity, whether on man or on other animals or on plants, are sure to be of value here because we know that the fundamental processes of heredity are the same in all organisms. Above all, the Eugenist needs to know more of Mendelian heredity in man. The facts of heredity stated in the statistical form of averages and coefficients do not affect the man in the street materially--he rather enjoys taking chances. An extensive eugenic practice can be established only when we can say definitely what the individual or family inheritance will be in a given instance--not what it will be with such and such a degree of probability, although that probability be high. We may not be such a long way off from this ideal, which is an essential for the inauguration of eugenic practice upon a large scale. For the Eugenist this is the richest field for investigation and one which is certain to yield large results.

The Eugenist's demand for more facts will doubtless become an important factor in the progress of biological science. The practical application of the knowledge of heredity in the production of domesticated or cultivated varieties of animals and plants is becoming annually more extensive; and with the recognition of the possibility of the application of this knowledge to the control of the evolution of man himself, will come a rapid increase in biological knowledge and in the earnestness of the student of heredity. And at the same time another result may be that the science of biology shall come to be appraised publicly more nearly at its real value. The biological worker knows that his science comes into contact with human life at every point, that a knowledge of the fundamental principles of the science of life cannot fail to enrich, enlighten, and ennoble the life of every human being. But the community does not yet realize this, to its own great loss. Is it not possible that the Eugenist, finding his fundamentals in biology, by emphasizing the facts of the possibility and the necessity of controlling human evolution, may be able to bring to society a vital sense of the importance of this science with a directness and a vividness which the bacteriologist and hygienist have not been able thus far to realize? Is it even too much to hope that the idea that the "humanities" include only the study of man's comparatively recent past, may now more rapidly give place to a broader conception which shall include not only the whole of man's past, but the study of his future as well? Could any ideal be more vitally, more profoundly human or more worthy of study and devotion, than this of the production of a race of men, clean and sound in mind and body? Be that as it may, the development of this bio-social field can scarcely fail to stimulate strongly the treatment of all social problems with a strictly scientific method. Nothing less than exact methods, and results exactly stated, will satisfy the genuine and really valuable social student of the near future. As one recent writer has feelingly put it: "We have had essays enough."

Eugenic practice for the immediate future is the third part of our program. Must we wait until more data are collected, more facts uncovered, before we undertake any definite proposals for eugenic procedure? Although this is the most difficult aspect of the subject, largely through lack of a sufficiently broad fact-basis, yet we are certainly in possession of enough information to make plain a few necessary steps. Most of the concrete proposals directed toward the reduction of the undesirables and the increase of the desirables have been visionary, impractical, or too limited in their view-point. Above all, they have been open to the objection that they have gone too far in the direction of that zone which separates the two classes. It should be said again that most of these proposals have been those of the amateur enthusiast, not of the seriously scientific Eugenist; they have grown out of that common habit of "getting far from the facts and philosophizing about them."

As Pearson points out, we must start from three fundamental biological ideas. First, "That the relative weight of nature and nurture must not _a priori_ be assumed but must be scientifically measured; and thus far our experience is that nature dominates nurture, and that inheritance is more vital than environment." Second, "That there exists no demonstrable inheritance of acquired characters. Environment modifies the bodily characters of the existing generation, but does not [often] modify the germ plasms from which the next generation springs. At most, environment can provide a selection of which germ plasms among the many provided shall be potential and which shall remain latent." Third, "That all human qualities are inherited in a marked and probably equal degree." "If these ideas represent the substantial truth, you will see how the whole function of the eugenist is theoretically simplified. He cannot hope by nurture and by education to create new germinal types. He can only hope by selective environment to obtain the types most conducive to racial welfare and to national progress. If we see this point clearly and grasp it to the full, what a flood of light it sheds on half the schemes for the amelioration of the people.... The widely prevalent notion that bettered environment and improved education mean a _progressive_ evolution of humanity is found to be without any satisfactory scientific basis. Improved conditions of life mean better health for the existing population; greater educational facilities mean greater capacity for finding and using existing ability; they do not connote that the next generation will be either physically or mentally better than its parents. Selection of parentage is the sole effective process known to science by which a race can continuously progress. The rise and fall of nations are in truth summed up in the maintenance or cessation of that process of selection. Where the battle is to the capable and thrifty, where the dull and idle have no chance to propagate their kind, there the nation will progress, even if the land be sterile, the environment unfriendly and educational facilities small."

As a concrete example of a most commendable eugenic practice we should mention the sterilization of certain classes of criminal and insane as it is now practiced in the States of Indiana and Connecticut. For the last four years (since March, 1907) the laws of Indiana have permitted the performance of the operation of vasectomy upon "confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles" after rigid scrutiny of all the mental and physical conditions of the individual case and upon the concurrent judgment of three competent and impartial persons. The title and significant parts of the text of this law are as follows:

_An Act_, entitled, An Act to prevent procreation of
confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and
rapists--providing that superintendents, or boards of
managers, of institutions where such persons are confined
shall have the authority, and are empowered to appoint a
committee of experts, consisting of two physicians, to
examine into the mental condition of such inmates.

_Whereas_, Heredity plays a most important part in the
transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility;

_Therefore_, Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the
State of Indiana, That on and after the passage of this act
it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the
State, entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals,
idiots, rapists, and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in
addition to the regular institutional physician, two (2)
skilled surgeons of recognized ability, whose duty it shall
be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the
institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of
such inmates as are recommended by the institutional
physician and board of managers. If, in the judgment of this
committee of experts and the board of managers, procreation
is inadvisable, and there is no probability of improvement of
the mental and physical condition of the inmate, it shall be
lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the
prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most
effective. But this operation shall not be performed except
in cases that have been pronounced unimprovable: Provided,
That in no case shall the consultation fee be more than three
(3) dollars to each expert, to be paid out of the funds
appropriated for the maintenance of such institution.

This operation of vasectomy, sometimes known as "Rentoul's operation," consists, in the male, in the removal of a small portion of each sperm duct; the individual is thus rendered sterile in a completely effective and permanent way. At the same time there are none of the harmful effects, either physical or mental, such as usually follow the better known forms of sterilization which are in reality asexualization rather than sterilization. Vasectomy is a simple "office" operation occupying only a few minutes and requiring at the most the application of only a local anaesthetic, such as cocaine; and there are no disturbing nor even inconvenient after effects. In the female the corresponding operation of ooephorotomy consists in removing a small portion of each Fallopian tube. In Indiana nearly a thousand persons have already been successfully treated, many upon their own request--a circumstance entirely unforeseen. Similar laws have been passed in Oregon and Connecticut, and are being carefully considered in several other States.

In order that the exact nature of such proposals may be better known generally we may give here also the text of the Connecticut law which is somewhat more inclusive and more flexible than that of Indiana. The Connecticut Statute, enacted in August, 1909, is as follows:

_An Act_, concerning operations for the Prevention of
Procreation.--Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives in General Assembly convened:

_Section 1._ The directors of the State prison and the
superintendents of State hospitals for the insane at
Middletown and Norwich are hereby authorized and directed to
appoint for each of said institutions, respectively, two
skilled surgeons, who, in conjunction with the physician or
surgeon in charge at each of said institutions, shall examine
such persons as are reported to them by the warden,
superintendent, or the physician or surgeon in charge, to be
persons by whom procreation would be inadvisable.

Such board shall examine the physical and mental condition of
such persons, and their record and family history so far as
the same can be ascertained, and if in the judgment of the
majority of said board, procreation by any such person would
produce children with an inherited tendency to crime,
insanity, feeble-mindedness, idiocy, or imbecility, and there
is no probability that the condition of any such person so
examined will improve to such an extent as to render
procreation by such person advisable, or, if the physical and
mental condition of any such person will be substantially
improved thereby, then the said board shall appoint one of
its members to perform the operation of vasectomy or
ooephorectomy, as the case may be, upon such person. Such
operation shall be performed in a safe and humane manner, and
the board making such examination, and the surgeon performing
such operation, shall receive from the State such
compensation, for services rendered, as the warden of the
State prison or the superintendent of either of such
hospitals shall deem reasonable.