Moral depravity is still stigmatized. About physiological depravity, however, the world is frivolously indifferent. In the popular novels, which best reflect the spirit of the age, the heroine rejects a suitor, not because he has false teeth or chronic dyspepsia or varicose veins—such things are so common that they are never mentioned; but because he is “selfish,” or lacking in chivalry, or in “a sense of humour.” The hero whom she accepts may be less healthy, less complete anatomically than the man she rejects. He may also function less normally, have two or three false teeth and a furred tongue—in fact, he may be in every respect a much less desirable potential sire; but she considers his “soul,” as the expression goes; and every reader is satisfied that she behaves in the best possible way.
The spiritual atmosphere of our population, therefore, is one in which all stress seems to be laid on the soul, in which the severe standards are soul standards, and in which the importance of the body and its completeness are almost entirely overlooked. As an instance of this, it is interesting to note that there is no such thing to-day as a guilty conscience about bodily depravity. The results of hundreds of years of steady moralization has ended at last in the condition known as “guilty conscience” becoming restricted entirely to the soul and to the moral life. To say that so-and-so “can’t help it,” immediately stifles criticism and arrests nausea. This alone shows how purely moral our outlook is. Least of all are people able to despise themselves when their own teeth are false, or when they habitually assist normal functioning by means of artificial aids.
And in all these matters the unanimity of the modern civilized world is so striking that the conclusion is forced upon us that here we are confronted with the outcome of certain ruling and fundamental values which must be common to all the people we have been discussing. From the nature of the uniform attitude to which these values have led, we are also obliged to infer that they must have taught at least two very definite doctrines with unswerving consistency—(a) the over-emphasis of the importance of the soul, and (b) the contempt and general slander of the body. Or, to put it less offensively, they must have taught mankind not only to place soul always before body, but also to leave the body out of the reckoning when valuing the quality of human beings.
So much we know must have occurred, and we come to this conclusion merely from judging the results which we see about us to-day. When, however, we set out to inquire into the history of our population, and attempt to discover whether such values have indeed operated in forming their spiritual atmosphere, then, not only are our suspicions abundantly confirmed, but we are actually able to lay our finger on the body of doctrine containing the values whose existence we posited a priori.
Having attained this end, while we may still continue to deplore the results we see about us, we can no longer wonder at them. Indeed, we should marvel if, in such an atmosphere, we had failed to degenerate, or ceased from degenerating. The wonder is, not that we have become a nation of decadents and crocks, but that it should have taken all this time to make us such a nation.
If our values had not for scores of generations turned us away from strict standards concerning the body, it is inconceivable that we should have become what we are; it is inconceivable that this atmosphere of toleration and indifference towards bodily defects should have become so universal. A nation ultimately becomes the image of its values. The values are the die, the nation is the coin. From the face of the coin we judge the die. From the faces of modern English people we can judge their values.
Moreover, these values must have been so deeply rooted that they now mould opinion without those whose opinion is moulded by them being conscious of the source of their mental attitude. The best illustration of this is that, although these values ultimately derive from a great religion, the most irreligious people of the modern world share with the religious the spiritual atmosphere we have been describing. People no longer believing in the soul from the religious standpoint, nevertheless show by their tolerance towards bodily defects, in themselves and others, that they are being unconsciously influenced by the same atmosphere. They may even have ceased to identify their opinions with any fundamental values whatsoever, and regard their attitude as quite original, as many, particularly women, do. No matter! Let them reveal just that significant difference of standards in their judgment of human “fitness” and their judgment of the “fitness” of animals, and we know the ancestry of their mental attitude.
For this reason it is surely somewhat muddle-headed on the part of a writer like Dean Inge, situated as he is, to plead with such vehemence on behalf of Eugenics. For how can we hope for a reaction in favour of the body as long as the values which lay all stress on the soul and despise the body abide as an influence among us? Are they not the values by which he stands, and which he is officially expected to inculcate upon his generation?[[1]]
[1]. Mr. G. K. Chesterton is more consistent here, and shows a deeper understanding of his true position. He, like Dean Inge, accepts the fundamental values which by slow degrees have brought the modern world into existence, and he therefore very rationally rejects Eugenics.
If ever these values are proved before the whole world to be false, and cease to exercise any influence, no eugenic effort will then be required. Because, the moment we begin to value people according to their physiological as well as their spiritual worth—the moment, that is to say, we value them according to the promise which they give in their own bodies and minds of guaranteeing the survival of human life in a desirable form, eugenic mating will become quite as common and instinctive as dysgenic mating is to-day.