CHAPTER X
The Future Evolution of Man
The disturbance of mind created by the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" would have amounted to nothing if the theory had been applied to the lower animals alone. Few people would have disputed that a cow and a buffalo had descended from the same ancestor, or that monkeys and apes were of a common blood. The whole theory would have been looked upon by those outside the biological world as entirely an academic question, in which they had little concern, and less interest. But within this century the scientist has so persuaded the world of the unity underlying the activities of the universe, that so soon as a principle is established men begin to run it out to the very end. Everyone knows perfectly well that if it could be proved that the dog and the horse had a common ancestor, still more if it could be made apparent that the dog and the frog and fish had sprung from the same stock, then there could be no question of what would be the final application of the theory. Man himself could be no exception to the law. So the battle dropped at once upon this most interesting point, and around this center the contest has waged.
What is the origin of man? Who are his ancestors? As soon as we ask the question there is no doubt whatever as to the answer, if we accept the principle of evolution. Our only means of judging relationship between animals is by the similarity of their structure. As soon as we come to examine the other creatures even in the most cursory fashion, there is only one group which in any close degree resembles the human species. Our nearest relatives among living animals must undoubtedly be the apes. Some little distance farther away stand the monkeys, and, structurally speaking, there is more difference between a monkey and an ape than there is between an ape and man. The gap between man and his relatives of this group, known as the primates, is a mental, not a physical one. While his brain and his mind have developed far beyond theirs, the rest of his body is comparatively close to that of an ape.
Probably no one can face the possibility of his being descended from creatures not unlike the ape, without feeling a stirring sense of repugnance. The least aristocratic of us hesitates to name in the line of his ancestry creatures so unlike himself as the members of this group. It seems to us impossible that we should have descended from creatures as lowly as they. If evolution is true, these are among our near ancestors. Back of the group of primates lies a far less developed set of insectivorous animals, behind them the reptiles, behind them the fishes. When we get back this far we are less certain but most probably the worms take up the story. So our ancestry runs back to the very beginning, when it originated in the one-celled animals which are also the ancestors of all the rest of the animal world. If we are inclined to deny our ancestors in the trees, what shall we say of our forefathers in the seas?
The question of course is not to be decided by our likes or our dislikes. If the evolution of man is true it will not make it less true because the process is not to our liking. It is our part, if this be the truth, to accept it as we do any other truth. Surely those of us who are moral of thought are not willing to disbelieve a truth because it is unpleasant.
The newness of the idea is the chief reason for our dislike of it. This lowliness of origin should not be distasteful to us. Nothing about Abraham Lincoln seems to us more wonderful than that a man who towered head and shoulders above his generation, indeed above most generations of men, in his fineness of life, in his nobility of purpose, in the integrity of his aims, should have been of exceedingly humble extraction. It only adds to the glory of his later achievements that he should have lived in a cabin, have spent his young manhood splitting rails and running a flat-boat, and have gained his education almost unaided from a few books and much meditation in front of a log fire.
That the greatest military General on the Union side of the Civil war should have been the son of a country tanner, and as a boy, not over-shrewd in the matter of bargains, adds to the glory of his later life. The simplicity of his childhood gives new luster to the power with which he led the forces of a nation to victory, and then went to a battle no less noble in his long fight for honor while suffering from disease and approaching death. Why then should we feel that such beginnings in the lower world are too humble for man? Why do we think his present superiority diminished by his lowly origin? Why can we not see that precisely the reverse is true? The more humble the level from which he sprang the more gloriously creditable is his present position. Instead of being ashamed of having risen from the brute, it should be the glory of man that he has so sprung. His chief superiority lies in the fact that while they have remained where they are, he has so completely outdistanced them as to have placed a gap between himself and them that seems almost impassable. Furthermore, if man with his present glory of intellect and of moral impulse, has sprung from a creature whose superiority to the ape lay chiefly in its potentialities, then it does not yet appear what he shall be. We can judge the future only by the past. Through the long ages the development has been very slow. Through the last hundred thousand years the development of man has been wonderfully rapid, compared with what went before, though it seems slow enough when we look at it from the standpoint of our historical and traditional reports. But with this added impulse, this rapid improvement that has come with the development of mind instead of muscle, of tooth and of claw, we have every promise of an evolution that shall far surpass anything that has yet come. To-day our leaders are way beyond the average of the mass. Who shall doubt that in a not too distant to-morrow, the masses shall be where the leaders of to-day now are. We shall not then have reached a dead level of superiority. Our leaders will have moved on as rapidly as have the masses, and will be as far ahead of them then as they are now. It shall be their work to apprehend new virtues, and to work them out in their lives. The masses, seeing the beauty of the lives of the leaders, recognizing in those lives the revelation of the divine power which they have apprehended, will hunger to learn of them and to lead lives like theirs. To this process who shall set an end? The advance is slow, as in all evolution; but anyone who wishes to do so may easily detect the direction of the current.
The evolution of man's physical frame probably has nearly ceased. Gradually organs that are useless to him are passing away. Slowly his hands are becoming more delicate and refined and skilled. But his evolution has begun to work itself out on entirely other lines. We sometimes hear that the men of the past were the full equivalent of the men of to-day. Scholars like to tell us that the population of Athens was finer in quality than any population that has existed since. We must remember that group after group of men may be expected to specialize intellectually and fail to develop morally and physically. Under these conditions this little branch of the human race runs through its forced flowering and comes to an end. With the study of history and the earnest investigation of these lives of the past, new possibilities arise within the human family. The next race that flowers may take longer to decay because it understands better the weaknesses that carried away the preceding civilization. In time there will arise a civilization that understands the past. A whole people will some time realize that intellectual development alone will not save it, or Athens would have lasted; that moral development alone will not suffice, or Judæa had been permanent; that physical development will not serve, or Sparta would stand to-day. Some day there will arise a nation that will see to it that every intellectual advance is accompanied by an equivalent moral and physical advance. When this time comes we shall have a race which can survive. Are we to be that race? The sins of man are generally the dregs of his brute ancestry. Bestiality of life was once common enough to attract no attention. Kings and nobles were not supposed to be clean so long as they confined their bestial relations to those below them in rank. Gradually men are becoming ashamed of uncleanness in life. Some day there will be no difference so far as purity of life is concerned, between the two who present themselves at the altar asking the blessing of God on their union.
If anyone doubts that English speaking people are becoming cleaner of life he needs only to consult the literature of the past. No one dreams of finding fault with Chaucer because his stories related in the company of men and women often would not bear such telling to-day. Shakespeare, with all his wonderful genius, needs expurgating if one would read him aloud comfortably to a mixed audience. And these are the shining stars. When we drop below them, the literature of their time becomes nearly impossible to read. Fielding and Smollett and Stern helped to build up the English novel, but the stories they tell speak of the grossness of their time in language that is unmistakable. We are by no means clean to-day. A fair proportion of our novels leave much to be desired. The stage is the scene of much we could wish to see cleaner. Above all this grossness there towers a sweetness and beauty of thought, and an earnestness of purpose, a sincerity of effort, which makes the present time fuller of moral purpose, fuller of the desire to be clean and to help others to be clean, than graced any previous period in the history of either England or America.
Under the change from country to city life man has suffered. Here too evolution is necessary. City life tells hard on the second generation and nearly destroys the third; but we have come to understand the difficulty and are fast remedying it. It is more than possible that the next generation will see such changes in the life of the worker in the great center, as shall effectively stop the physical deterioration that has come to the city dweller. God grant that modern civilization has had teaching enough and learned its lesson well enough. God grant further that we may give over slaughtering our most ambitious and vigorous young men in battle to settle questions which battle can never settle. God grant that we have come to a turning of the ways where the life of men, women and children, no matter how humble their station, shall stand higher in value than the profits of any commercial venture. God grant that we will soon be firm enough to declare that a business which can only live by sacrificing the health and strength of the workers must be counted an unprofitable business, and be allowed to cease. God grant finally that the American people may learn from the past to guard against a like fate in the future; that here may be the people whose strength, intelligence and uprightness shall lead the world; not for the sake of exceeding the world, but with the high mission of setting to the world an example of what can come to a vigorous, free and God-fearing people.
In the early history of the evolution of man the struggle almost always concerns the individual. Gradually the family comes to be the fuller unit. Only that is success which leads to the success of this higher group. After a time the family broadens to the tribe, and then the tribe to the nation. The evolution of social institutions is at present going on at an enormously rapid rate. Throughout the civilized world democracy is coming to its own. Even where the form of monarchy still prevails, the subjects of the monarch are having more and more rights. The people of England are surely as free as are the people of the United States. Increasingly all forms of government will secure for all their subjects, no matter what their station in life, a fair share of the general prosperity. In this field, human evolution is perhaps more rapid than in any other.
Any individual human being is a network of traits and peculiarities. He has all the ordinary attributes of humanity, but to the whole complex he gives an individual peculiarity which is totally his own. Where did he get his qualities? In the earlier times the fairies were supposed to have blessed him or cursed him in his cradle. A later age saw in the stars the rulers of man's destiny. He was jovial, or saturnine, or martial, depending on the planet which was in the ascendant at the time of his birth. Now we know "it is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." Everything a man is comes to him from within or from without; from nature or from nurture; from his heredity or from his environment. From our ancestors we get all the possibilities of our lives. To a certain extent we are slaves to our heredity, but not by any means to any such extent as to make us hopeless, unless our heredity is miserably bad. To the great mass of us come larger potentialities than we ever develop, and such possibilities of degradation as, fortunately, few of us ever reach. Within an enormously wide range, man is the architect of his own fortune. Only such traits develop as find a stimulus in the environment. Accordingly, a very large proportion of the development a man may achieve depends upon the circumstances under which he is placed, or, what is far more to the point, in which he may place himself. Man is not the blind sport of a relentless destiny. It is his to choose his environment; it is his to modify his environment when he cannot leave it. To an extent which no other animal has ever approached, man is the arbiter of his own destiny. A hypothetical ass may stand helpless between two equidistant bales of hay, but no human being is ever so helpless a sport of his environment. As it is, he may drift or he may rove as he pleases. To one man the current may be stronger than to another. There may be now and then a child so feeble-minded as to be unable to decide the course of its own life. It will not be long before society will see to it that such a life leaves behind it no strain cursed with its fatal weakness. In this effort to advance, man has all the advantage that comes from concentrated social effort. No man may live to himself. To every man in our community who desires it, a helping hand will be stretched. Often a hand will be stretched to him and he will be steadied whether he will or not, until his own will reforms itself and gains the mastery.
Inasmuch as all that is in man comes from his environment or from his heredity, the only way in which the race of men can be advanced is by improving their environment or by bettering their heredity. The first of these is the province of the sociologist; the second that of the eugenist. The sociologist has for some time been giving his careful attention to the improvement of the environment. In every large city, a man must build for himself a house fit to live in, if he build it at all. Whether he erects it for himself or for another makes no difference. Society will no longer allow him to build a home which is a detriment to the one who lives in it. Not only must he make himself a decent home but he must keep it in decent condition. The community will not allow him to endanger his own health, or that of his neighbor, by an insufficient method of attending to his garbage, or by a lack of ordinary cleanliness. If he will not clean his premises himself, the law sees to it that they are cleaned for him. Already we are beginning to understand that no man has a right to employ another man or woman or child at wages which are not sufficient to maintain the one thus employed. The wages of many people are exceedingly meager, notably those of women and children. He can read but ill the signs of the times who does not foresee an early end to the exploiting of the labor of these helpless creatures. Humanity has determined firmly that these things must pass, that the young child must not labor long or hard, that a woman must not be taxed beyond her strength. Already in England there is a partially successful movement which will doubtless spread to this country to provide that a woman be granted a little time before and after the birth of her child during which she shall not be allowed to suffer because her power to earn a wage is temporarily gone. These things cannot fail in the long run to strengthen the people. They strengthen chiefly the present generation. The blight of the fact that acquired characters cannot be transmitted, meets us here. This improved environment can only slowly, if at all, improve the race, and every effort made in this direction must be repeated with each generation.
Under such circumstances is it to be wondered at that the eugenist is hoping to raise the strain? Any improvement he can bring about is not only valuable for the generation in which it comes but is carried on into the generations which follow. This is the hope that strengthens and sustains him in his effort. The science of eugenics is so new, so little is surely known concerning the transmission of human characters, that no one is able as yet wisely to say what course is to be pursued in improving the race. But the problem is so interesting and its outcome so overwhelmingly important that men will never cease striving to know, and may, before many years, begin wisely to guide us in our efforts to provide a finer stock.
Heretofore our efforts at improving the strain have been confined to cattle, chickens and plants. An almost unalterable repugnance rises as soon as we speak of improving the human strain. Visions, if not stories, start up at once, of experimental matings of human beings, and of all other unspeakable abominations which no decent man expects to happen or even wishes to attempt. If there is one thing in human society the value of which has been demonstrated through the unending ages, it is the monogamic marriage. All ideal workers must point to the life-long union of a strong, vigorous, clean-minded and clean-lived man with a similarly fine, strong, clean-minded and clean-lived woman. Such an ideal may be slow in its attainment, but he aims too low who aims to secure anything less than this. The long struggle out of bestiality into pure monogamy has been so slow, so gradual, so noble in its attainments, and is still so far from perfection, that it would be an inconceivably stupid blunder to let go a single point that has been gained. Whether divorce shall be allowed to remedy a mistake may be a matter of dispute, but at best it is a bad remedy for a mistake that should never have been made. No ideal society could ever consider divorce as any permanent portion of its activities. Children are not like cattle. It is not simply a question of their being brought into the world sound and strong. Their long infancy which in the biological as well as in the legal sense, lasts until they are grown up, should be spent in surroundings which can minister, by example and precept, to moral and intellectual development. Surely no such end can possibly be attained when man and woman mate lightly, to part quickly.
At first sight it would seem a wise thing to require health certificates for those who would be married. I doubt not the Chicago Bishop who declined to marry his parishioners except under such conditions, will exert a beneficial effect upon the country by the attention he thus attracts to the subject. It would be a bad day for the city if all the clergy and all the other authorities who are authorized to solemnize marriage should take this step. We have not yet arrived at such a stage of development that a marriage certificate is essential to mating, and a restriction of this sort would simply mean that there could be no legitimate union except of those in strong health. To the burden of ill health would be added the still worse handicap of an illegitimate parentage, with all its bitter train of scorn and shame. Accordingly, it must be possible before the law for those who are not thoroughly vigorous to marry. But, year by year, we may come nearer accomplishing a finer mating by the aims and purposes we foster in the growing generation. Marriages will never be worth while when they are not freely entered into by the contracting parties. Choice must be free and unrestricted if it is to last for life; but this does not mean that it must be unguarded. It would be bitter folly for parents to leave to their children, without attempt to influence or restrain, the making of their marriages. The mating of our children must be inspired, not directed.
There is one taint from which society has the right and the duty of freeing itself, so far as in its power lies. This is the taint of feeble-mindedness. Of all the calamities that can befall a human being, feeble-mindedness is, perhaps, the worst. From most misfortunes it is possible to recover; with most of the rest one may exist without detriment to the race. To be feeble-minded simply means to hark back to the level of our animal ancestors, without regaining their power to guide life. The animal is provided with a bundle of instincts which tell him what to do in all the ordinary emergencies of life. The human species, in its development, has lost a large portion of its instincts, and has gained, instead, the power of intelligent choice and the ability to learn by imitation. When these drop away, man without his instincts or his intelligence is more helpless than the brute. Students of sociology are making clear to us that a large portion of the criminality of the world, much of the looseness of life, and a large part of the alcoholic excesses are due to this taint of feeble-mindedness. Recent investigations have made it clear that one feeble-minded family in a community may, in the course of years, poison the life of an entire state. The Jukes family in New York, the Kallikak family in New Jersey, have shown the awful possibilities of descent from a single feeble-minded ancestor. Prisons, almshouses, and houses of shame owe their population in no small degree to this bitter curse. It will not be long before society will learn to protect itself against such poisoning of the human stock. Nothing is more clear to the investigator of this subject than that the one overwhelming cause for feeble-mindedness is feeble-mindedness in the parentage.
There is one type of mental weakling, known as the Mongolian idiot, which may arise right out of the heart of an apparently sound family. But the number of these is comparatively small. The number of feeble-minded, who are feeble-minded because of their heredity, is dishearteningly and astonishingly large. Every attempt to examine large numbers of school children shows a sickening proportion of those who are distinctly feeble. Every little community seems to have its boy or girl who is what is known as silly. Such people rarely live long lives without leaving behind them feeble-minded children, no small proportion of whom are likely to be illegitimate. Against this fouling of the stream at its source, society must protect itself. Legislators revolt at the somewhat inhuman but certainly safe method of surgically preventing the possibility of the feeble-minded becoming parents. It would be more creditable and just as effective if society would take upon itself the tremendously expensive task of caring for all its feeble-minded in institutions during their entire life. The cost would be large for a generation, but would rapidly diminish and eventually become small. It certainly would be the humane way. These people in good institutions are by no means unhappy. Within the limit of their capacities they can do many things. Wise management usually will secure from them labor enough of wholesome and simple kind nearly to pay for their own support. Nothing could be better for them than to till the soil, care for the cattle, tend the chickens, and, in this way, provide very largely the materials on which they are fed. How this problem shall work out, time only can decide. With it once worked out, there is no doubt that the level of humanity will be distinctly raised. No other one feature in the program of eugenics seems more absolutely hopeful than this.
In several of the states of the Union it has recently become the practice to remove the possibilities of parenthood from certain classes of criminals. The purpose of this is clear and benevolent. Society has a right to prevent the oncoming of new generations of foreordained criminals. Underlying the practice is the theory that the children of criminals are born criminals. It is far from likely that this is the case. Criminality may be due to a wide range of causes. If the criminal is one of those actual born degenerates whose whole mental and physical make-up is so defective that nothing but criminality can be expected of him, then we have a case in which it is clear that society may, and should, remove the possibility of having more generations of the same kind. Probably only a moderate proportion of the criminals in our jails and penitentiaries belong to this class. Doubtless a distinct majority are criminals more through environment than through heredity. Born of average ability, or more, these people have been criminals simply because they were reared among criminals, because their surroundings were such as to lead them away from habits of industry, while they must live. These people were not bolstered by society, or the church, into a life of self-respect and self-help. Under these circumstances they fell into evil ways. There is nothing defective in their mental or physical make-up, that need appear in their children. If these children are removed from contact with the criminal class they stand every chance of being as vigorous, as intelligent, as upright as the average of the community.
At the recent Eugenics Congress in London one of the speakers expressed a preference for the son of a husky burglar over the son of a tuberculous bishop. This is doubtless quite correct, but why should the bishop be tuberculous? The truth of the matter is, the reverse is more likely to be the case. Personally, I should prefer to be the offspring of a husky bishop. In dealing with criminals, then, with a view to cutting off their posterity, we must be careful to understand whether we are dealing with a hereditary or an acquired criminality. If there is a genuine hereditary criminal taint, society is right in freeing itself of it. If it is acquired criminality, then it is not transmissible, and the offspring, if placed in a good environment, are likely to be good citizens. All of which means that, until we are clearly sure of what constitutes a hereditary criminal trait, we should move very slowly in the matter of mutilating criminals.
What steps may the eugenist, with his present limited knowledge, clearly, hopefully and confidently take to improve the future of the human species? There is one avenue open to us in this matter in which we can hardly go wrong. Even our mistakes can work little harm, and every well-done piece of work in this field will be a blessing to the race. This step lies in inculcating in our boys and girls high ideals of parenthood. This is more effective than legal prohibition of certain forms of marriage which cannot prevent matings, and adds the curse of illegitimacy to the other handicaps of the children of such unions. The first step in this process has already been reasonably well accomplished. Both our boys and our girls are in love with health. A good husband and a good wife should be healthy and vigorous. This does not mean that we expect a boy or girl who is looking forward to marriage to sit down and ask himself deliberately about the health of the person with whom he would mate. We must fill our children with the love of outdoor life, with the love of exercise. This will foster in them an admiration for people who are vigorous of body and alert of mind. It ought to become practically impossible for a hearty and vigorous boy to fall in love with a helpless and anæmic girl. It should be equally impossible for a hale and active girl to admire a man who was her inferior in either vigor or alertness. The modern taste for outdoor life has largely brought this to pass among such of our people as have leisure enough to indulge in vigorous sport. Among the crowded dwellers in the closer sections of the city such life has been so nearly impossible that no ideal of vigorous manhood or of radiant womanhood has had a chance to grow up. With the oncoming of the parks and play-grounds, all of this, we may hope, will change. Health and vigor will be no less attainable and hence no less adorable in the city than in the country. Rich and poor alike will be attracted by rosy cheeks and an elastic gait.
Our aim, however, should not cease with a vigorous body. We must teach our young men and young women the glory of a well disciplined mind. This should seem quite as admirable to them as a vigorous body. To them, straight thought ought to be as lovable as a firm and supple body. In this matter our young people are less exacting. The ordinary conversation of people gathered together for social purposes is not particularly intellectual, and any attempt to make it so at present seems priggish. With a broader education, will come keener demand for intelligence. We may hope the time is not too far distant when a question of governmental policy, a new book or play, or a new discovery in science will stimulate as much conversational zest as now seems to be gotten from a pack of cards.
A third feature of the ideals which should be instilled into the minds of our children is the moral phase. There seems little doubt that this is on the way. We must not mistake an evident laxness of religious observance as being synonomous with moral looseness. The revelations which our recent periodicals have brought us concerning the habits of business men, of politicians, and of society, have left on many minds the impression that this is distinctly an age of decadence. Exactly the reverse is the truth. This is the age of intense sensitiveness to wrong. In almost no particular is it worse than any previous age in the history of our country. We openly discuss things which we left untouched a little while ago. We insistently demand that business practices to which nobody particularly objected a dozen years ago must now certainly cease. All of this has produced an erroneous impression that the times are out of joint. But the dust and dirt in the air is the unavoidable accompaniment of house cleaning. When doubtful practices simply have publicity many are awakened to the sense of their duty to society. Persons who, of themselves, might be willing to live low and godless lives, dare not do so in the face of society when our social ideals are finer. I believe there is the utmost hope that within two generations our young men and young women will scorn meannesses which we are accepting with entire complacency.
A close acquaintance with thousands of young men and young women running through an experience of twenty-five years has taught me to believe that our young people of to-day are altogether cleaner of mind, of tongue, and of life than were their parents. There is freer, franker discussion of many things that their parents would scarcely have dared mention, yet I feel sure the moral tone is distinctly higher. I look with entire hopefulness to an early season when the young man who asks a woman to share her life with him will be met with the entirely proper question, "Have you kept your life clean for this event?" I believe that unless the answer can be in the affirmative the young woman will not be able to have admiration enough for the young man to cover uncleanness in his life.
There is one temporary phase of present life which seems discouraging. The increase in the cost of living, and still more rapid increase in the standard of living is shifting too late in life the age at which our young people marry. The result is that one of two things is likely to happen; either a large number of people are likely not to marry at all, or the romantic time of life is passed before the event occurs which it is intended to bless. A young man and young woman who are in this time of life can deny themselves for each other, can struggle and plan together, can hope and trust together to an extent that can never be the case if marriage is delayed beyond the romantic years.
The best foundation possible for a life of happiness is vigor, ability and good character. For the lack of none of these can wealth properly atone.
There is an apparent tendency to waken to the situation. I hope it will come soon enough for our young men and young women to get past a desire for such establishments in life as their parents already have. With this difficulty removed, with our widespread education, with the constant diffusion of both information and ideals from our periodical press I have every hope that the evolution of a new, a finer, and more vigorous race, will come with a rapidity which nothing that the past has done would lead us to expect.