Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction / for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence

by Bernard Simon Talmey

The aim of eugenics is the production of a better humanity, especially by the elimination of bodily and mentally feeble stocks. With the discovery of the Mendelian law, eugenics was placed upon a scientific basis. The world knew by experience that desirable as well as undesirable traits are transmitted by heredity, but it thought that heredity could be controlled by environment. It believed in economic determinism. Mendel’s law revealed the inexorableness of the law of heredity.

The science of eugenics teaches that nature is stronger than nurture. The characters of any living being are determined by two factors, heredity and environment, or nature and nurture, but inheritance is more vital than environment. Heredity and education supply a potential figure, both multiplied give something, if one is nothing the result is nothing. But heredity is the weightier factor.[CH] When nature and nurture compete for supremacy on equal terms, says Galton, the former proves the stronger. Neither is self-sufficient; the highest natural endowments may be starved by defective nurture, while no carefulness of nurture can overcome the evil tendencies of an intrinsically bad physique, weak brain or brutal disposition.

No degenerate or feeble stock can ever be converted into a healthy and sound stock by environment, such as sanitary surroundings, good laws, education, wealth, etc., as the radical doctrinaires would like to make us believe. Such means may render individual members of the stock passable or even strong members of society, but the same process will have to be gone through again and again with their offspring. Improved conditions of life mean better health for the existing population, greater educational facilities mean greater capacity for using existing ability. But lasting improvement can only be secured by breeding from good stock. The development of the future generations will be little influenced by environmental improvements, if the conditions of the blood have been neglected. Nothing can be brought out from a child by euthenics which is not within him.

The elimination of the feeble stock, met with not only in the slums but also in the quarters of wealth, which weighs down the body politic, can only be effected by the prevention of the propagation of those afflicted with undesirable characters.

There are three methods to effect the elimination of the undesirables—segregation, sterilization and castration. In the early history of the human race artificial devices were unnecessary. Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, was the most potent factor of the elimination of the weak. Later on, in the periods of the Greek and Roman civilizations, the exposure of sickly children, famines, epidemics and the lack of hygiene served as the best means of weeding out the feeble and the weak in mind and body. But as civilization advances a higher ethical level is reached. The diseased, the weak and feeble are allowed to survive. Especially since the appearance of Christianity, which originated among the poor and lowly, charity to the sick, poor, weak and afflicted has become to be considered the first duty of human society. The greatest part of all our charities is in the service of the defectives and the degenerates. The ever-broadening sympathy and altruism of civilized humanity makes it possible for the dependent and delinquent classes to survive. We make the fostering of the unfit and of the cripple our highest duty. Especially in modern times, the great strides made in hygiene and in the other medical sciences operate to prolong the existence of the unfit till the period of propagation. War on infant mortality and surgical aid have enabled defectives to become parents. We are trying to make environment safer for the feebler in mind and body. Manifold facilities are offered for the survival of the unfit. A social contra-selection has thus set in. All our sentimental activities in the interest of charity, praiseworthy as they are, are in the last analysis anti-social.

Our anti-social perverted sentimentality shows itself particularly in the stand we are taking towards marriage. Marriage and racial anti-suicide are preached in and out of season. Almost anybody, the criminal in the Tombs and the deaf-mute in the asylum, is considered good enough to marry and to propagate. The result of this preaching is that the improvident, incontinent, selfish and foolish follow the advice and marry. The less individualized, the lower the types, the more nearly animal, the earlier they marry and the more they are fertile. On the other hand, the superior men and women either do not marry at all (e. g., Catholic priests, nuns, teachers, nurses, etc.), or marry very late and practise the voluntary elimination of the family in the bargain. For the prevention of conception is an accepted principle among the better classes of every civilized country.[CI] Hence the fall of the birth-rate among the most desirable classes, such as the professional people, best artisans, skilled mechanics, etc. This falling birth-rate in itself is not at all a great calamity to humanity, as some reformers and politicians try to make us believe. It may be dangerous to a smaller State when threatened by a more populated one, or to an aristocracy when threatened to be ousted from its privileged position by the common people. Otherwise the fall of the birth-rate brings rather benefit than damage to the family and to society. The deplorable thing is that only the superior classes practise the limitation of the family; the inferior classes multiply like rabbits. In this way society is overburdened with the listless and the incapable. Our reformatories, prisons, asylums and homes for the defective are overcrowded.

The endeavor of eugenics is to restore the former selection of the fit in place of the present disastrous selection of the unfit. This eugenics wishes to be effected not by following the brutal philosophy of a Nietzsche, or by abolishing all charities, or by exposing weak children, as practised by the ancient Spartans. The moral law and human sympathy dictate that the children, once born, should be preserved by all known means. But in the interest of the race, such children should be prevented from being born. This need not be accomplished by abolishing the absolute freedom of selection of marriage-mates, as advocated by some pseudo-sociologists in Europe. There is no need for the overthrowing of all human institutions and for the imitation of the method of the stud-farm, as advocated by the modern race-culturists. The freedom to contract even of an unsuitable marriage is always preferable to the tyranny of the state directing the personal affairs of its citizens.[CJ] The first essential for human development is liberty. Liberty is the atmosphere in which character is formed. No one has a right to exclude two free-born individuals from marriage. This right is inalienable. To exclude such a man and woman from marriage relations would be assaulting the inalienable rights of man which no legislature or even constitution may do, except by brutal force.

But man has no right to injure his own children. The careless or wilful procreation of a vicious progeny is not only a crime against humanity but a wrong to the children who ought to have remained unborn. Hence it is the solemn duty of any couple, if there be a taint in their ancestry, voluntarily to exclude themselves from parenthood. If their mentality does not enable them to exercise such control, society has a right, nay the duty to effect the exclusion in its own interest as well as in the interest of the offspring, who would become a burden to themselves.

This exclusion cannot be realized by laws against marriage of individuals, physically or morally inferior. Such laws are entirely futile in relation to propagation. Only hypocrites or perfect fools do not see it. The sex-urge plays a particular rôle in degenerates. They suffer from a diseased exaggeration of the sex impulse. No laws, except it be segregation, can prevent the seduction of the feeble-minded woman or the rape by the criminal man, and a new generation of deteriorants would arise, marriage or no marriage. The baneful sentimentality or sordid economy which allows moral weaklings to roam at large on parole or suspended sentence can only lead to the breeding of mental and moral cripples. If the number of the undesirable and unfit should be decreased, not the marriage but the breeding of the defectives should be prevented.

Among the means of prevention of propagation, the segregation of the defectives in different homes (such as asylums for epileptics, for feeble-minded or for deaf-mutes) would be the most humane method, but also the most unsafe (temporary escape is never impossible), and the most burdensome for society. To segregate people who are still able to support themselves and deprive society of their earning capacity represents a great economic loss to the body politic.