Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

Surely all the foregoing suffices to show, first, that eugenics or race-culture is compatible with marriage, and secondly, that it is compatible with the love of the sexes—two conclusions of the most cardinal and fundamental importance. This importance it is, and the obstinate stupidity of critics of a kind, which must excuse me for having devoted so much space to propositions which the thoughtful reader would naturally have arrived at for himself.

The present influence of marriage on race-culture.—We must turn now from the past to the present aspect of the question, viz., the actual relation of marriage to eugenics at the present day. Its nature is very much disputed. On the one hand, there are those who see in our present methods what has elsewhere been called reversed selection—that is to say, an anti-eugenic process, involving the mating of the least desirable. On the other hand, there are many conservative critics who, starting from a general opposition to any new thing, such as eugenics, maintain that we are doing very well as we are, and that, without any conscious interference, as they call it—as if there were no such interference—selection by marriage is actually working for the eugenic end. Dr. Maudsley, for instance, is “not sure but that nature in its own blind impulsive way does not manage things better than we can by any light of reason”: an astounding opinion from the veteran pioneer who has devoted so many decades to successfully modifying natural processes by the light of his own splendid reason!

This most important question, as to what is actually happening within the limits of marriage, may legitimately be regarded as substantially equivalent to the question of the extent and nature of selection, for good or for evil, as it occurs in society to-day. If we remember that an overwhelming proportion of children are born in wedlock, that the death-rate of illegitimate children is gigantic, whilst the illegitimate birth-rate is generally falling, we shall be fully entitled to assume that the answer to the one question is the answer to the other; in a word, if under the present conditions of selection for marriage we find a eugenic tendency or an anti-eugenic tendency or a mere neutrality, the answer will be, on the whole, the approximate answer to the larger question as to the present state of selection for parenthood and therefore of our racial prospects, marriage or no marriage. The conclusion which we shall maintain is that both forms of selection occur in society to-day—the selection of the desirable and the selection of the undesirable. We shall go ludicrously wrong if we agree, with one party, that society in general to-day exhibits reversed selection; or, with the second party, that everything is going on admirably on the whole; or, with the third party, which jumbles the whole mass of facts and tendencies, and declares that there is no process of selection of any kind occurring in society to-day—an opinion which, in the face of disease, the enormous premature death-rate, and the fact that whilst vast numbers of women are unmarried, the choice of women for marriage does not occur by lot, beggars comment; is a girl with a birth-mark covering half her face, or a nose destroyed by transmissible disease, as likely to marry as a “beauty”? If not, surely we actually select to-day for beauty and therefore for whatever beauty depends upon—for instance, health. But really it cannot be necessary to deal seriously with the proposition that no selection occurs in society to-day.

Let us attempt to state clearly the point at issue. There is granted, in the first place, that by far the greater part of all parenthood, in civilised and uncivilised communities alike, occurs within the limits of marriage; to which may be added that, owing to the excessive death-rate of illegitimate children, the proportion of effective parenthood, so to say, that occurs within the limits of marriage is even larger; and this intervention of marriage, and any selection that may be involved in it, steadily recur from generation to generation. Thus even those born outside wedlock will nevertheless be selected for parenthood, on their own part, mainly by the selective factors in marriage.

Selection by marriage has the last word.—It follows, then, though the fact is almost constantly ignored by eugenic writers, that selection by marriage in effect has the last word. Thus supposing that all other forms of selection, depending upon, for instance, the various causes of death amongst the immature, were what we call reversed selection; or supposing that, as is actually the case, society permitted large numbers of the so-called unfit to survive,—even so, marriage selection (if it meant that many or most of these were rejected by it) would control and correct the dangerous tendency. On all hands, scientific and unscientific, we have writers telling us of the disastrous multiplication of the unfit. Such multiplication does occur and is disastrous. Yet hitherto they have failed to recognise that if—to take an extreme case—all these unfit are rejected by marriage selection—that is to say, do not themselves become parents—this alarming multiplication is, after all, not a persistent factor in racial change, but merely the throwing up or throwing aside in each generation of a certain number of undesirables whose breed gets no further. Of course there would be much less urgent need for eugenics if this last were wholly and happily the case. Our object, indeed, is to make it the case: but so long as selection by marriage exists,—and its occurrence is palpably indisputable—it is a serious flaw in the common argument to assume that the production and preservation of undesirables necessarily involves their own parenthood in due course. It is necessary that strict statistical enquiry be made on this point. It would show, I believe, that the marriage-rate and the birth-rate amongst the grossly unfit is much lower than that of the general community, or, in other words, that the influence and value of selection by marriage (which, as we have shown, is in effect selection for parenthood, the only selection that ultimately matters) has not yet been fully appreciated. I very strongly incline to the view that if this protective factor were not constantly at work, the “multiplication of the unfit” would long ago have led to the destruction of every civilised nation on the earth: they would have swamped us long ago. Indeed, the proposition may be laid down that, supreme and indispensable as are the services of marriage to race-culture, in its protection of motherhood, and the support of motherhood by fatherhood, probably the services of marriage as in effect the working of sexual selection are worthy of being rated almost, if not quite, as high.

Sexual selection is certainly true of mankind.—Before adducing the outlines of the evidence in favour of marriage as an instrument of selection, it may be well to point out that here we are really discussing what Darwin called “sexual selection,” modified by the psychology and peculiar characters of mankind. We must protect ourselves from the critics who will remind us that sexual selection is very largely discredited to-day, rather more than a generation after Darwin's enunciation of it in The Descent of Man (1871). The controversy regarding sexual selection as the producer of feathers and markings and song, and so forth, amongst the lower animals, is fortunately quite irrelevant to our present discussion, which is concerned with mankind. We can afford to note with equanimity the observation that, in lower species, no mature female goes unmated, for instance; the fact remains that in the case of mankind a very considerable percentage of women remain unmarried. The case is similar as regards the male sex. In short, one may declare that, whether or not sexual selection is possible, or occurs, or accomplishes anything, in the case of the lower animals, it palpably and patently is possible, and does occur, amongst mankind, and especially amongst civilised peoples, in the form of selection by or for marriage—which, as we have seen, is in effect selection for parenthood. Let us first note the statistical evidence regarding marriage-selection of health and energy.

Spencer on marital longevity.—We are all aware that married people live longer, on the average, than unmarried people, the conclusion being, “of course,” that marriage is good for the health. But some are taken and others left in this respect, and if, for any conceivable reason, health is a factor making for selection by marriage, that may be a real explanation, in whole or in part, of the longer life of married people. Considering the risks to life involved in motherhood, the superior longevity of married as compared with unmarried women would be incomprehensible except on some such assumption. Yet it is the fact, so imperfect still is the entry of the idea of selection into the popular and even the expert mind, that the superior longevity of married people is still constantly asserted to mean that marriage makes for long life; every year, when the statistics are printed, this argument may be seen in the newspapers, and I remember encountering it in the Encyclopædia Britannica, to my utter astonishment.

This uncritical conclusion was disposed of by the author of the phrase “the survival of the fittest”—appropriately enough—more than thirty years ago. If the reader will turn to Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology (a masterpiece which may be commended to the publishers for the purpose of indexing—twenty editions without an index are too many) he will find in Chapter V. a discussion of this question. It is an astonishing thing that though Spencer conclusively exposed it a generation ago, the childish fallacy is still apparently as flourishing as ever. He shows how the greater healthfulness of married life was supposed to be proved by Dr. Stark from comparison of the rates of mortality among the married and among the celibate. Then no less an authority than M. Bertillon went into the matter and contributed a paper called “The Influence of Marriage”—thus begging the question in its very title—to the Brussels Academy of Medicine. He showed that, from twenty-five to thirty years of age, several Continental countries being taken into the reckoning, “the mortality per thousand is 4 in married men, 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widows. This beneficial influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, being always more strongly marked in men than in women.” The absurdity of the apparent conclusion regarding widows is surely, as Spencer says, too obvious for discussion. But, for the rest, Spencer goes on to show that, in reality, “marriage and longevity are concomitant results of the same cause”—in other words, “that superior quality of organisation which conduces to long life also conduces to marriage. It is normally accompanied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting marriage; there goes along with it that power[51] which can secure the means of making marriage practicable; and it increases the probability of success in courtship.” Spencer shows how “of men whose marriages depend upon getting the needful income,” those who will succeed are in general “the best, physically and mentally—the strong, the intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced.” He shows also how “women are attracted towards men of power—physical, emotional, intellectual; and obviously their freedom of choice leads them, in many cases, to refuse inferior samples of men; especially the malformed, the diseased, and those who are ill-developed, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as marriage is determined by female selection, the average result on men is that while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst are left without wives.”

Very likely the stupid conclusion into which so many distinguished men have been betrayed will survive for many years yet amongst less distinguished people, but at any rate we may free our minds from it here, and may recognise in the figures to which I have referred, and which are of the same order to-day, the statistical proof of what any observer, however casual, might have inferred from what he sees even amongst his own friends only—that marriage is, as it probably always has been, a selective agent of much value in preserving and augmenting the desirable inherent qualities of the race. It is, of course, the object of race-culture or eugenics to strengthen the hands of marriage in this respect to the utmost possible degree.

Woman as practical eugenist.—We must especially note one most important matter, radically affecting race-culture, which is referred to by Herbert Spencer in the passage cited, and has been greatly insisted upon by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection. The matter in question is the possibility of race-culture through the choice of their husbands by women. Not long ago Dr. Wallace[52] described selection through marriage as the “more permanently effective agency through which the improvement of human character may be achieved.” This, in his opinion, can only be perfectly achieved “when a greatly improved social system renders all our women economically and socially free to choose; while a rational and complete education will have taught them the importance of their choice both to themselves and to humanity.... It will act through the agency of well-known facts and principles of human nature, leading to a continuous reduction of the lower types in each successive generation, and it is the only mode yet suggested which will automatically and naturally effect this.” Thus “for the first time in the history of mankind his Character—his very Human Nature itself—will be improved by the slow but certain action of a pure and beautiful form of selection—a selection which will act, not through struggle and death, but through brotherhood and love.”