Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

There is thus a real risk involved in the accumulation of acquired, traditional or educational progress. Not only does it tend to abrogate or even to reverse selection, but it serves to disguise the consequences of this abrogation. If a subhuman race degenerates the fact is evident: but such a nation as our own may quite well degenerate whilst the accumulation of acquired progress, transmitted by education, almost completely cloaks the fact for a time. We may be congratulating ourselves upon our progress, upon our knowledge, our science and art, our institutions, legal and charitable, whilst all the time the breed is undergoing retrogression.

We see now, I think, the explanation of the truth expressed by Gibbon,—“all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.” Why should this be so? Why should it not be possible merely to maintain a position gained? The answer is that the civilisation which merely maintains its position is one in which selection has ceased: if selection had not ceased, the position would be more than maintained, there would be advance. But without selection the breed will certainly degenerate, the lower individuals multiplying more rapidly than higher ones, in accordance with Spencer's law that the higher the type of the individual the less rapidly does he multiply; and thus the race which is not advancing is retrograding, as Gibbon declared.

Natural selection is the sole factor of efficient and permanent progress, but the traditional or acquired progress which we call civilisation tends to thwart or abrogate or even invert this process. I thus believe that the conditions necessary for the secure ascent of any race, an ascent secured in its very blood, made stable in its very bone, have not yet been achieved in history: and I advance this as the reason why history records no enduring Empire.

Some historical instances.—In the face of certain facts of contemporary history I do not for a moment assert that there are no other causes of Imperial failure than the arrest or reversal of selection. But I do assert that if this is not the cause, then, in the absence of the transmission of acquired characters, the race has not degenerated, and is capable of reasserting itself. Only by the arrest or reversal of selection can a race degenerate—apart from the racial poisons. If, then, a civilisation or Empire has fallen through causes altogether non-biological—through carelessness, or neglect of motherhood or alteration of ideals—the changes in character so produced are not transmitted to the children, and the race is not degenerate but merely deteriorated in each generation.

For instance, we have been brought up to believe that there is no possible future for Spain; it is a dying nation, a senile individual, a people of degenerates; it has had its day, which can never return. The historian explains this by the false analogy between a race and an individual, and by the false Lamarckian theory of heredity. To these the biologist retorts with comments upon their falsity, and with the conviction that since Spain, even allowing for the anti-eugenic labours of the Inquisition, has not been subjected to the only process which can ensure real degeneration—viz., the consistent and stringent selection of the worst—she is yet capable of regeneration. Regeneration is not really the word, because there has been little real degeneration, but only the successive deterioration of successive and undegenerate generations.

If we took an animal species that has degenerated, such as the intestinal parasites, and endeavoured to regenerate them, we should begin to realise the magnitude of our task. That is not the task for Spain, the biologist asserts. Merely the environment must be altered,—not the mountain ranges and the rivers, Buckle notwithstanding, but the really potent factors in the environment, the spiritual and psychical and social factors—and the deterioration of each new generation, inherently undegenerate, will cease. I am using these opposed terms with great care and of set purpose.

And the biologist is right. The facts concerning which so many historians have shaken their heads, and upon which they have based so many moralisings and theories of history, the facts which they have cited in support of their false analogies and misconceptions of heredity—due, of course, to the errors of former biology—turn out to be not facts at all, or, at any rate, only facts of the moment. The “dying nation,” as Lord Salisbury called it, has occasion to alter its psychical environment. It introduces the practice of education; it begins to shake off the yoke of ecclesiasticism; and what are the consequences?

The new generation is found to be potentially little worse and little better than its predecessors of the sixteenth century. There has been no national or racial degeneration. The environment is modified for the better, i.e., so as to choose the better, and Spain, as they say in misleading phrase, “takes on a new lease of life.” The historian of the present day, knowing as a historian what qualities of blood have been in the Spanish people, and basing his theories upon sound biology, must confidently assert that that blood, incapable, as he knows, of degeneration by any Lamarckian process, may still retain its ancient quality and will yet make history.

But the historian might well write a volume upon the same thesis as applied to China and Japan. We know historically what were the immediate effects in one generation of a total change of environment in Japan. That change has not yet occurred in China, but must inevitably occur. Consider for a moment how the historian, made far-sighted and clear-sighted by biology, must contemplate the history of this astounding people. The popular belief used to be that China illustrated the so-called law of nations. It was the decadent, though monstrous, relic of an ancient civilisation; it had had its day. Inevitable degeneration, which must befall all peoples, had come upon it. Behold it in the paralysis which precedes death!

But in the light of the facts of Japan, the man in the street and the historian alike have in this case found modern biology superfluous in enabling them to arrive at sound conclusions. They now believe what the Darwinian has been compelled to believe for half a century, and more strongly than ever during the latter part of that period, when the doctrine of the transmission of modifications was finally discredited. A clever writer invents the phrase “the yellow peril,” and people discard their old theories. The metaphor must be changed. This is not paralysis, but merely slumber. Doubtless, it is an unnatural slumber; doubtless, it is not the slumber which brings renewed strength. It is suspense or stupor, not recuperation; but assuredly it is not paralysis. Who now would dare to say that China has had its day, even if he still clings to the old fictions about Spain?