Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

“... the tax which the propertied middle classes have to pay on marriage.... To take a few instances. Two persons each having £160 a year marry. Previous to marriage they were exempt from income tax; after marriage they pay £6 per annum. Two persons each having £400 a year pay £18 before and £30 after marriage. Similarly the additional income tax payable on marriage by people each having £600 a year is £9, by those having £1,200 a year £30, and by those having £2,000 a year £50. It is difficult to see how our legislators arrived at this result unless they started to average the incomes of married people and then forgot to divide by two.... If, as I contend, a man and his wife should be counted as two people, not one, should not children also be counted in any scheme of graduated taxation, and an income be divided by the number of persons it has to support in order to fix the rate at which the tax is to be charged? It is ridiculous to suppose that a man with a wife and six children is as well off on £1,000 a year as a bachelor with the same income. It is, I believe, acknowledged that the moderately well-off professional classes marry later and have fewer children than the wage-earners, and I think there can be no doubt that the special burthens they have to bear is a material influence contributing to this result. Thus, while we are deploring the decadence of the race, the State is doing what it can to discourage marriage in a class whose children would in all probability prove its most valued citizens.”

But it is in negative eugenics that we can accomplish most at this stage, and in so doing can steadily educate public opinion, the professional jesters notwithstanding. There is here a field for action which does not demand a great revolution in the popular point of view; and, further, does not require us to wait for certainty until the facts and laws of heredity have been much further elucidated. The services which a conscious race-culture, thus directed, may even now accomplish, can scarcely be over-estimated; and even if we cannot reach the public heart at once we can reach the public head by means of the public pocket—which will benefit obviously and greatly when these proposals are carried out. As Thoreau observes, for a thousand who are lopping off the branches of an evil there is but one striking at its roots. If we strike at the roots of certain grave and costly evils of the present day, we shall abundantly demonstrate that this is a matter of the most vital economy.

The deaf and dumb.—We might begin with the case of the deaf and dumb, since the facts here are utterly beyond dispute. The condition known as deaf-mutism is congenital or due to innate defect in about one-half of all the cases in Great Britain. Says Dr. Love,[45] “In every institution examples may be found of deaf-mute children who have one or two deaf parents or grand-parents, and of two or more deaf-mute children belonging to one family.” A recent report from Japan is of a similar order, and the evidence might be multiplied indefinitely. The obvious conclusion that the inherently deaf should not marry “is generally conceded by those who work amongst the deaf, but the present arrangements for the education of the deaf, and their management in missions and institutes for the deaf during the period of adolescence, is eminently fitted to encourage union between the congenitally deaf. If not during the school period, at least during the period of adolescence, everything should be done to discourage the association of the deaf and dumb with each other, and the danger of their meeting with those similarly afflicted should be constantly kept before the congenitally deaf by those in charge of them.” Dr. Love quotes the following newspaper report: “At an inquest yesterday, on William Earnshaw, 59, a St. Pancras saddler, it was stated that the relatives could not identify the body, as the wife and sister were blind, deaf and dumb, and that the four children were deaf and dumb. The deceased was deaf and dumb, and was so when he was married.”

The feeble-minded.—The case of the feeble-minded is of course parallel. The problem would be at once reduced to negligible proportions if all cases of feeble-mindedness were dealt with as they should be. These unfortunate people might lead quite happy lives, the utmost be done for their feeble capacities, the supreme demands of the law of love be completely but providently complied with. The feeble-minded girl might be protected from herself and from others—her fate otherwise is often too deplorable for definition—and the interests of the future be not compromised. These words were written whilst awaiting the long overdue Report of the Royal Commission on this subject—which abundantly confirms them. The proportion of the mentally defective in Great Britain is now 0.83 per cent., and it is doubtless rising yearly. Only by the recognition and application of negative eugenics can this evil be cured. I have elsewhere[46] discussed the supposed objection which will be raised in the name of “liberty” by persons who think in words instead of realities. The right care of the feeble-minded involves the greatest happiness and liberty and self-development possible for them. The interests of the individual and the race are one. What liberty has the feeble-minded prostitute, such as our streets are filled with?

The insane.—As regards obvious insanity, the same principles of negative eugenics must be enforced. It is probably fair to say that the whole trend of modern research has been to accentuate the importance, if not indeed the indispensableness, of the inherent or inherited factor in the production of insanity. Yet, on the other hand, the trend of treatment of the insane has undoubtedly been towards permitting them more liberty, sometimes of the kind which the principles of race-culture must condemn. It is well, of course, that we should be humane in our treatment of the insane. It is well that curative medicine should do its utmost for them, and it seems well, at first sight, that the proportion of discharges from asylums on the score of recovery should be as high as it is. But at this point the possibility of the gravest criticism evidently arises. I have no intention whatever of exposing the question of race-culture to legitimate criticism by laying down dogmatically any doctrines as to the perpetual incarceration of insane persons, including those who have been, but are not now, insane. Pope was, of course, right when he hinted at the nearness of the relation between certain forms of genius and certain forms of insanity. It may well be that if we could provide a fit environment we might welcome the children of some of those, highly and perhaps uniquely gifted in brain, who, under the stress of the ordinary environment of modern life, have broken down for shorter or longer periods. On the other hand, there are forms of insanity which, beyond all dispute, should utterly preclude their victims from parenthood. As a result of recent controversies it seems on the whole probable, if not certain, that the apparent persistent increase in the proportion of the insane in civilised countries generally during many years past, is a real increase, and not due simply to such factors as more stringent certification or increase of public confidence in lunatic asylums. If, then, there be in process a real increase in the proportion of the insane, who will question that no time should be lost in ascertaining the extent—undoubtedly most considerable—to which the principles of negative eugenics can be invoked in order to arrest it?

As regards epilepsy and epileptic insanity there can be no question. There is, of course, such a thing as acquired epilepsy, and we may even assume for the sake of the argument that no inherent and therefore transmissible factor of predisposition is involved in such cases. Yet, wholly excluding them, there remains the vast majority of cases in which epilepsy and epileptic insanity are unquestionably germinal in origin, and therefore transmissible. The principle of negative eugenics cannot too soon be applied here.

The criminal.—When we come to consider the question of crime the cautious and responsible eugenist is bound to be wary—chiefly, perhaps, because such a vast amount of sheer nonsense has been written on this subject. The whole question, of course, is the old one, Is it heredity or environment that produces the criminal? If and when it is the environment, race-culture has nothing to do with the question, since the merely acquired criminality is, as we know, not in any degree transmissible. If the criminal, however, is always or ever a “born criminal,” then the eugenist is intimately concerned. At the one extreme are those who tell us that the idea of crime is a purely conventional one, that the criminal is the product of circumstances or environment, and that we, in his case, would have done likewise. The remedy for crime, then, is education. It is pointed out, however, that education merely modifies the variety of crime. There is less murder but more swindling, and so forth. Then, on the other hand, there are those who declare that criminality is innate, and that if we are to make an end of crime we must attach surgeons to our gaols; or at any rate must extend the principle of the life-sentence.

Doubtless, the truth lies between these two extremes. In the face of the work of Lombroso and his school, exaggerated though their conclusions often be, we cannot dispute the existence of the born criminal, and the criminal type. There are undoubtedly many such persons in modern society. There is an abundance of crime which no education, practised or imaginable, would eliminate. Present-day psychology and medicine, and, for the matter of that, ordinary common-sense, can readily distinguish cases at both extremes—the mattoid or semi-insane criminal at one end, and the decent citizen who yields to exceptional temptation at the other end. Thus, even though there remain a vast number of cases where our knowledge is insufficient, we could accomplish great things already if the born criminal, the habitual criminal and his like were rationally treated by society, on the lines of the reformatory, the labour colony, indeterminate sentences, and such other methods as aim, successfully or unsuccessfully, at the reform of the individual, whilst incidentally protecting the race. Here, as in some other cases, the nature of the environment provided for their children by certain sections of the community may be taken into account when we decide whether they are to be prohibited from parenthood. Heredity or no heredity, we cannot desire to have children born into the alcoholic home; heredity or no heredity, we cannot desire to have children born into the criminal environment. In Great Britain we are no longer to manufacture criminals in hundreds by sending children to prison. It remains to be seen, after the practical disappearance of the made criminal, what proportion of crime is really due to the born criminal. He, when found, must certainly be dealt with on the lines indicated by our principles.[47]

Other cases.—So far we have considered exclusively diseases and disorders of the brain, the question of alcoholism being deferred to a special chapter. When we come to other forms of defect or disease we find a long gradation of instances: at the one extreme being cases where the fact of disastrous inheritance is palpable and inevitable, whilst at the other extreme are kinds of disease and defect as to which the share of heredity is still very uncertain. In some instances, then, the eugenist is bound to lay down the most emphatic propositions, as, for instance, that parenthood on the part of men suffering from certain diseases is and should and must be regarded and treated as a crime of the most heinous order: whilst in other instances all we can say is that here is a direction in which more knowledge is needed.