Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics

by C. W. Saleeby

Apart from the point as to wholesome law rather than the education of opinion as the eugenic means, the foregoing passage must win the assent and respect of every eugenist. It indicates the promise of race-culture as it appeared to John Ruskin. The passage has been quoted in full not for the benefit of the ordinary thoughtful reader but for that of the professional literary man who, in this remarkable age, so far as I can judge, reads nothing but what he writes, and thus qualifies himself for dismissing Spencer or Darwin or Galton in any casual phrase—meanwhile condemning Ruskin, whom he probably professes to adore.

Race-culture and human variety.—Now let us turn to another question. Let it be asserted most emphatically that, if there is anything in the world which eugenics or race-culture does not promise or desire, it is the production of a uniform type of man. This delusion, for which there has never been any warrant at all, possesses many of the critics of eugenics, and they have made pretty play with it, just as they do with their other delusions. Let us note one or two facts which bear upon this most undesirable ideal.

In the first place, it is unattainable because of the existence of what we call variation. No apparatus conceivable would suffice to eliminate from every generation those who varied from the accepted type.

In the second place, this uniformity is supremely undesirable from the purely evolutionary point of view, because its attainment would mean the arrest of all progress. All organic evolution, as we know, depends upon the struggle between creatures possessing variations and the consequent selection of those variations which constitute their possessors best adapted or fitted to the particular environment. If there is no variation there can be no evolution. To aim at the suppression of variation, therefore, on supposed eugenic grounds (which would be involved in aiming at any uniform type of mankind) would be to aim at destroying the necessary condition of all racial progress. The mere fact that the critics of race-culture attribute to evolutionists, of all people, the desire to suppress variation, is a pathognomic symptom of their critical quality.

And, of course, quite independently of the evolutionary function of variation—though this is cardinal and must never be forgotten by the politician of any school, since what we call individuality is variation on the human plane—the value of variation in ordinary life is wholly incalculable. It is not merely that, as Mr. Galton says, “There are a vast number of conflicting ideals, of alternative characters, of incompatible civilisations; but they are wanted to give fulness and interest to life. Society would be very dull if every man resembled the highly estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede.” The question is not merely as to the interest of life. Much more important is the fact that it takes all sorts to make a world. What is the development of society but the result of the psychological division of labour in the social organism? And how could such division of labour be carried out if we had not various types of labourers? What would be the good of science if there were no poetry or music to live for? How would poetry and music help us if we had not men of science to protect our shores from plague?

Obviously the existence of men of most various types is a necessity for any highly organised society. Even if eugenics were capable—as it is not—of producing a complete and balanced type, fit up to a point to turn out a satisfactory poem, a satisfactory symphony or a satisfactory sofa, the utmost could not be expected of such a man in any of these directions. In a word, as long as their activities are not anti-social, men cannot be of too various types. We require mystic and mathematician, poet and pathologist. Only, we want good specimens of each. “The aim of eugenics,” says Mr. Galton, “is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilisation in their own way.... Special aptitudes would be assessed highly by those who possessed them, as the artistic faculties by artists, fearlessness of enquiry and veracity by scientists, religious absorption by mystics, and so on. There would be self-sacrificers, self-tormentors, and other exceptional idealists.” But at least it is better to have good rather than bad specimens of any kind, whatever that kind may be. Mr. Galton thinks that all except cranks would agree as to including health, energy, ability, manliness and courteous disposition amongst qualities uniformly desirable—alike in poet and pathologist. We should desire also uniformity as to the absence of the anti-social proclivities of the born criminal. So much uniformity being granted, let us have with it the utmost conceivable variety,—more, indeed, than most of us can conceive.

This point, of course, is cardinal from the point of view of practice. No progress could be made with eugenics, it would be impossible even to form a Eugenics Education Society, if each of us were to regard the particular type he belongs to as the ideal, and were to seek merely to obtain the best specimens of that type. The doctrine that it takes all sorts to make a world—a doctrine very hard for youth to learn, yet unconsciously learnt by all who are capable of learning at all—must be regarded as a cardinal truth for the eugenist. But he wisely seeks good specimens rather than bad. Poets certainly, but not poetasters; jesters certainly, but not clever fools, who stand Truth on her head and then make street-boy gestures at her.

Time and its treasure.—Taking the modern estimates of the physicists, we are assured that the total period of past human existence is very brief compared with what may reasonably be predicted. Granted, then, practically unlimited time, what inherent limits are there to the upward development of man as a moral and intellectual being? Shall we answer this question by a study of the nature of matter? Plainly not. Shall we answer it by a study of the nature of mind? Surely not, for the study of existing mind cannot inform us as to what mind might be. One source of guidance alone we have, and this is the amazing contrast which exists between the mind of man at its highest, and mind in its humblest animal forms: or shall we say even between the highest and lowest manifestations of mind within the human species? The measureless height of the ascent thus indicated offers us no warrant for the conclusion that, as we stand on the heights of our life, our “glimpse of a height that is higher” is only an hallucination. On the contrary.

There is no warrant whatever for supposing that the forces which have brought us thus far are yet exhausted: they have their origin in the inexhaustible. Who, gazing on the earth of a hundred million years ago, could have predicted life—could have recognised, in the forces then at work and the matter in which they were displayed, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life? Who, contemplating life at a much later stage, even later mammalian, could have seen in the simian the prophecy of man? Who, examining the earliest nervous ganglia, could have foreseen the human cerebrum? The fact that we can imagine nothing higher than ourselves, that we make even our gods in our own image, offers no warrant for supposing that nothing higher will ever be, What ape could have predicted man, what reptile the bird, what amœba the bee? “There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered,” and the fairest of her sons and daughters are yet to be.

But even grant, for the sake of the argument, that the intelligence of a Newton, the musical faculty of a Bach, the moral nature of any good mother anywhere, represent the utmost limits of which the evolution of the psychical is capable. There is every reason to deny this, but let us for the moment assume it true. There still remains the thought of Wordsworth, “What one is, why may not millions be?”—a thought to which Spencer has also given utterance. What is shown possible for human nature here and there, he says, is conceivable for human nature at large. It is possible for a human being, whilst still remaining human, to be a Shakespeare or a St. Francis: these things are thus demonstrably within the possibilities of human nature. It is therefore at the least conceivable that, in the course of almost infinite time (even assuming, say, that intelligence must ever be limited, as even Newton's intelligence was limited), some such capacities as his may be common property amongst men of the scientific type; and so with other types. We may answer Wordsworth that there is no bar thrown by Nature in the way of such a hope.