THE INFLUENCE OF COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGICAL TRAINING ON SOCIAL WORK
Biological training of the order we have been considering is, we believe, desirable for all women in the interests, first, of the home and of the rearing of children. But it is equally desirable for the women who are not destined to be wives and mothers, and particularly so as a foundation for any kind of university work, even for the different literary or philosophical schools.
Here it is, perhaps, worth while to urge upon women the claims of the other great division of Biology, that of the laboratory. A considerable number of women who go up to the universities have, indeed, intellectual abilities deserving special cultivation, yet abilities which show no very distinct inclination in any one direction. These have been very commonly drafted into the study of history. It may be questioned whether some branch of Biology would not be better for them, and more useful to the community. Women working at Biology in the universities ought to serve, and to aim at serving, as the channels by which each fresh addition of scientific knowledge finds its way to, and its appropriate place in, the schemes of Common-sense Biology generally obtaining.
In another field—the field of public work—it is to be hoped that ere long a knowledge of biology will come to be considered a sine quâ non for women. It would be superfluous to point 61 out in how many kinds of public work women are gradually coming to the fore—in those especially which deal with education and with the care of the disabled. Already the influence and the peculiar gifts of women have in some degree made themselves felt; but these might operate much more powerfully if they were more commonly associated with scientific knowledge—with a knowledge of those branches of biology, more especially of bio-chemistry and bio-physics, which bear most nearly upon humanity.
It would take up too much space to give an account of the many ways in which biology is here of service: two great lines of utility may just be indicated as examples.
First, biology would lead to certain modifications of practice—particularly in our treatment of children, and of persons deemed criminal or insane. The biologist, when anything was amiss—before she pronounced any one to be mentally or morally unsound, defective, or bad—would presume, to start with, that there was some definite physical trouble to be set right, not necessarily anything dangerous in itself or mysterious. In New York they now make it a rule to examine for adenoids every young offender against the law, before punishing him; and it is amazing how often adenoids are found, and when removed carry the child’s wickedness away with them. Adenoids and divers glands are responsible for a great proportion of youthful wrongdoing; and yet other physical troubles will account for a great 62 proportion of the rest. The writer herself once came across a young girl who was, in intention and attempt, a murderess—yet was so only through the effect of a common physical condition, easy enough to treat when once ascertained. Until our general conception of a child—or indeed of a human being—is a more truly biological one, framed more closely upon the facts of its bodily life, we shall have but little effective intuition into its state. And such a sound biological conception is not to be had apart from some good measure of sound biological knowledge.
When, however, the most careful observation reveals no local or definite mischief to be dealt with in the person under consideration, the biologist will still not hastily set him down as bad—or even as unsound or defective. He will next suspect that he is one whose physical organisation is not fitted for its environment: if he can be placed in a better environment perhaps he will grow better. If this change is, from whatever circumstances, impossible, the biologist in treating him, however troublesome he may be, will still never regard him as wholly responsible for what he is, will still try to ascertain the exact ways in which the environment presses injuriously upon him, and to help him in those definite particulars. If we desire the work of our reformatories and prisons and the disciplinary work of our schools really to be and not merely to appear effective, it is only by such nicely-calculated methods that we shall attain our object.
This brings us to our second point. Biology, when a knowledge of it is more widely spread among us, will assuredly work a change in public opinion. We have among us thousands of men and women whom we account failures in life; whose existence constitutes our gravest social problem. The drunkard, the wastrel, the thief, the prostitute—these are characters whom society thrusts out. They have proved themselves unfitted for their environment; they cannot act in it with any regularity or seemliness: its laws are not their laws. And the assumption most generally is that these are beings of a lower stamp than the average, unhappily surviving in, or at war with, an environment which postulates a nobler sort of men and women. Is it so?
The finer and more delicately poised a mechanism—whether it be chemical balance, galvanometer, electroscope or what not—the more sensitive is it to its surroundings. Thus the instruments once at Kew Observatory have had to be transferred to the wilds of Scotland to ensure their perfect working—rendered impossible at Kew by the noise and vibrations of encroaching London. Thus, again, the mind of Darwin required for its proper functioning the quiet of a study at Down, in the heart of the country. A ray of light will spoil a delicate experiment: the presence in an observatory of one steel key will hinder the work of the instruments. A boy commits suicide because of the noise of the factory in which he is compelled to work. A girl drowns herself 64 because the worries of her home are intolerable.
The point I would press is that these different examples belong fundamentally to the same category. Whether it be the instrument devised by man, or whether it be the human nervous system itself, that which we are looking at is a mechanism too delicate for the cruel exigencies of an unyielding gross environment. We have but to reflect on one organ alone—on the exceeding fineness of structure, and nicety of adjustment, and definiteness of sense-limit, of the eye—in order to realise that the comparison between the human nervous system and the most delicate of our delicate instruments is more than justifiable.
How do we know, when dealing with any given drunkard, that we have not before us a fine, fine nature, to which the harsh and low conditions of our Western civilisation have simply proved intolerable? How do we know that, instead of blaming him and trying to adjust him to the world, we ought not rather to blame the world, and try to make it a fit place for him to live in?
This consideration—strictly scientific as it is—ought to have very great weight in that new department of biological work which has been named Eugenics. Before lightly saying of any stock that it is not good to breed from, or that it is good to breed from, pains should surely be taken to ascertain whether irregularities and disease evinced by members of that stock do not in 65 reality proceed from their superiority to their environment and to the average men and women about them. Individually they may be irreclaimable, yet, thrown out of gear, miserable and wasted as they are, they may be the carriers of the finest hopes of humanity, of a promise for the fulfilment of which we are not yet ready. Perhaps there is a tendency to be a little over-hasty in our estimates of good and bad stocks to breed from. Perhaps we have not yet fully learnt either the significance of recessive characters or the importance of the mere fact that the unit-characters of a human being are immensely numerous, and their inter-relations therefore extremely intricate. And yet, again, perhaps we are too intolerant of variety, too eager for uniformity.
Here in England we have a mixed population, sprung from many diverse origins. The differences between individuals are many and great. Yet the majority of the population is thrust into the grooves of one educational system, and thereafter compelled to settle down to occupations and modes of life which are the same for thousands together. Any attempt to leave the common rut is looked at askance. What wonder that there are rebels, and that the rebels are unhappy! A society constructed in conformity to true biological principles, instead of suppressing variety would give it welcome as one of the most precious of national characteristics, and would purposely adjust itself and its systems with more 66 accuracy so as to give every sort and type of person the best possible chance for developing his or her peculiar gifts. In a society so constituted, very rare indeed would be the occurrence of insanity.
These considerations should have weight in yet another direction: in determining the counsel which ought to be given to girls as to the choice of a mate.
The importance of soundness of stock has here too been well brought into prominence by the workers in Eugenics; and perhaps it may not be amiss to make one or two suggestions with a view to obviating a too narrow application of the principle of the sound stock.
We must remember, first, that disease is not necessarily evidence of unsoundness. Like some forms of moral obliquity, it may be merely evidence of a quality in the stock which renders it unable to tolerate a given environment. And this quality may be in itself an excellence of the most precious kind. This would be the true account of many cases of insanity, while others would be covered by the action of toxins on the brain. Heredity, we are told in many instances of “insanity,” is more probably a heredity of “special liability to the production of toxins or to the action of toxins on the brain,” than heredity of insanity proper. This view will naturally entail modifications in our methods of treating the “insane,” as well as a considerable change in public opinion with regard to the significance of insanity.
And, secondly, we must remember the importance of the environment, more especially of the human part of it. A man of sound stock is very commonly brought up as a sportsman, whose first idea is to kill; or as an idler, whose chief occupations are eating, drinking, and smoking, with travel and some amount of gambling thrown in by way of variety. Or he may easily be above all things a money-maker and a lover of money. His habits of this sort will determine to a very great extent the early—and that is the critical—environment of his children. The tendency in his family will be towards uniformity, towards one level, and that not a high level, of thought, activity, and character. His example and influence will go very far to counteract the advantages presumably ensured by the soundness of his stock.
On the other hand, a man whose ancestry is eugenically not flawless may have such wide interests, so many and such fine powers, so much skill in different activities, and so high and generous a personal ideal, that the environment which his manner of life would make for his children—the inspiration he would be to them—might well be expected very largely, if not wholly, to counteract the disadvantages of defects in the stock.
No doubt this principle should be applied with all reasonableness and care, but it is extremely important for the highest welfare, for the development of the best possibilities of the people, that it should be definitely recognised.