Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

Better still is the word inherent, which, of course, literally means “sticking in.” By anything inherent we mean that which was there from the first as part and parcel of, as indeed essential to, the entity to which we refer. Now inherent characters are always inherited in the accurate sense that they inhere in the germ-cells, which are the inherited material. As these germ-cells make us or as we are made out of them, it follows, of course, that all our potentialities whatsoever, our ultimate fates in every particular, partly depend upon inheritance.[30]

Nature and nurture are antithetic terms of Shakespearean origin which are in frequent use and much favoured by Mr. Galton. That which comes by nature is the inborn, inherent, or germinal; and that is due to nurture which is the result of the converse of the germinal with the environment—a man's accent, for instance.

Perhaps, in some ways, germinal is the most useful word of all, though inherent is so convenient and familiar, as well as being accurate etymologically, that it has been employed throughout this book. Not only is the word germinal strictly accurate, but also it suggests the idea of the germ-plasm, and has the particular virtue of avoiding all reference to the change of environment to which young mammals are subjected and which is called birth.

There remains the terminological difficulty that, as I have tried to show, the individual may display characters which were potential in the germ, inherent and necessarily inherited, though they did not appear in the parent nor yet in any ancestor. We have to face the paradox, then, that in natural inheritance a parent can transmit what he has not got, though this does not apply to the unnatural inheritance of property in human society. Now what word is there which shall indicate the origin or at least the time and conditions of origin, of such characters as these? They are germinal, yet they are—in some cases—not wholly present in either of the germ-cells which united to form the new individual in question. They are present, however, in the new single cell from which this individual, like every living organism, takes its origin.[31] The terms “congerminal” or “conceptional” might be employed.

“Acquired character,” even, is a bad term. It replaced “functionally-produced modification,” which was long employed by Spencer. The blacksmith's biceps answers to this phrase. It is this and other such modifications that are non-transmissible. Alcoholic degeneration is not a “functionally-produced modification,” but it is an “acquired character,” as is lead poisoning. These do produce results in offspring—naturally enough. If the older phrase were still the one employed, we should see that the Weismannian argument as to non-transmission does not apply to such “acquired characters.”

The word “reversion,” also, not to say “atavism,” may well be dropped. The attempted justification of its older meaning by Professor Thomson has led to severe and conclusive Mendelian criticism. The “reversion” of fancy pigeons to the blue ancestor is simply due to the coming together of Mendelian units long separated. The “reversion” of the feeble-minded is not reversion but the result of poisoning—diversion, or perversion, if you like. Primitive man was not feeble-minded, nor is the ape. Science has no further use for the word as it is at present employed.

Maternal impressions.—We are now, at last, after our attempt to clear up the vocabulary of heredity, in a position to consider certain doctrines and popular beliefs which bear very directly upon race-culture. Realising, for instance, that “congenital” means nothing; realising as perhaps some of us have not so clearly realised before, when exactly it is that the new human being comes into existence, we shall be prepared to understand how definite and indisputable are the denials which science offers to certain popular ideas.

Thus, for instance, in the interests of race-culture, or, to be more particular, in the interests of her unborn baby, the expectant mother may faithfully follow the example of Lucy in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.[32] Does this have its intended effect? The answer is an unqualified negative. Consider the case. The baby is at this time already a baby, though rather small and uncanny, floating in a fluid of its own manufacture. Its sole connection with its mother is by means of its umbilical cord—that is to say, blood vessels, arterial and venous. There is no nervous connection whatever: absolutely nothing but the blood-stream, carried along a system of tubes. This blood is the child's blood, which it sends forth from itself along the umbilical cord to a special organ, the placenta or after-birth, half made by itself and half made by the mother, in which the child's blood travels in thin vessels so close to the mother's blood that their contents can be interchanged. Yet the two streams never actually mix. The child's blood, having disposed of its carbonic acid and waste-products to the mother's blood, and having received therefrom oxygen and food, returns so laden to the child. Pray how is the mother's reading of history to make the child a historian? If, after birth, a small operation were performed, so that some of the mother's blood should run along an artificial tube into one of her baby's veins, the effective connection between the two organisms would in a sense be actually closer than it was before birth, when, as has been said, the two streams are always kept apart. Should we expect such an operation to serve the child for education? If the mother then acquired a scar should we expect it to give the child a similar scar?

We see now why the learning of geometry on the part of the mother before its birth will not set her baby upon that royal road to geometry of which Euclid rightly denied the existence—any more than after its birth. Such a thing does not happen, and there is no conceivable means by which it could happen—unless we are to call in telepathy. All maternal hopes and efforts of this kind are utterly misguided: as misguided as if the father entertained similar hopes. Let the devoted mother acquaint herself not with what historians are pleased to call history, but with the history of the developing human mind and body, so that she may be a fit educator of her child when it is born.

Let her also realise that her blood is everything to her child. It is food and air and organ of excretion. If she introduces alcohol into her blood in any considerable quantity she is feeding her child on poisoned food. Surely the reader must see the distinction between a case like this and the supposed transmission of historical knowledge or even historical aptitude from mother to baby by the diligent perusal of histories. Yet though the distinction is so palpable and evident, there are extremists who believe and even print their beliefs that the denial of the one (supposed) possibility, which is palpably inconceivable, logically carries with it a denial of the other possibility, which is indeed a palpable necessity. Or, to state the criticism in another way, there are those who, if we protest that the introduction of poisons into the mother's organism must surely involve risk to the child who is nourished by her blood, will retort, “Oh, well, I suppose you believe that if you learn a number of languages before your next child is born, he or she will be a linguist!”[33]