Within the last few years Schiller has entered a new field, the eugenics movement, where his keen wit and power of analysis are doing good service. In his review of Nietzsche's work[16] he recognizes that Nietzsche is not without reason when he asserts that the moral qualities he dislikes, such as pity and sympathy, may lead to decadence, for, as Schiller elsewhere shows, social reform, unless it is eugenically directed, may lead to the growth of the evils it aims to alleviate. In a very remarkable article published shortly before the outbreak of the war,[17] he foretold the collapse of European civilization and suggested that the Japanese or Chinese, through the greater importance they attach to the family, might be found more worthy of preeminence.
If the ancestor-worship of the animist can be developed into the descendant-worship of the eugenist, I can see no reason why one should not prognosticate for both of them a rosier future and a more assured continuance than for our European societies, if these latter yield to the pressure of those, whether called individualists, socialists, or militarists, who tempt them to destruction.
The danger to European culture lies, he says, in that "our Hellenistic political philosophy exhibits all the marks of senile dementia and progressive paranoia."
The evidence goes to show that throughout the most valuable part of the nation, not only in the upper classes but also in the middle classes and in the best parts of the working classes, the birth-rate per marriage has in a generation sunk from four and a half to two, and is now only half the size required to keep up the numbers in those classes. In other words, society is now so ordered that in every generation it sheds one-half of the classes it itself values most highly, and supplies their places with the offspring of the feeble-minded and casual-labourer classes, whose families still average more than seven. What seriously aggravates the evil is the whole trend of social legislation. Social reform costs money, and the money is raised by taxation, which bears very hardly on the middle classes, who cannot curtail luxuries like the rich, and will not lower their standard of comfort. They meet the extra expense, therefore, by further postponing the age of marriage, and further reducing their output of children. One of the chief effects, therefore, of our present methods of improving social conditions is to deteriorate the race. And this in a twofold manner: they eliminate the middle class, and they promote the survival of the unfit and defective.
It is perfectly possible, therefore, to tax the middle classes out of existence. Indeed, it has been done. History exhibits a great object-lesson in the decline of the Roman empire. This appears to have been mainly due to an unscientific system of taxation which crushed the middle class and left no breeding ground for ability and ambition between the millionaire nobles, who had nothing to rise to, and the pauperised masses, who had no chance of rising. Consequently, the empire had to take from without its borders the men it needed to conduct its military and civil administration. The barbarians alone could furnish the men to run the empire, and consequently the barbarians inevitably came to overrun the empire.
The Great War which he could not foresee has immeasurably accelerated the degenerative process which he foretold. The death roll of university students and graduates, representing, however inadequate the examination system, a selected class of young men of superior intellectual ability, is probably higher than in any other class. When I visited Oxford a few years before the war the students were already drilling for the impending conflict and practically all who were eligible enlisted at the first call. Raising an army by appeals to patriotism as was done in England means sending to the front to bear the brunt of battle longest those who are most energetic, self-sacrificing, and intelligent, while the slackers, the incompetent, the weaklings, the selfish, and the dull were left to the last or not taken at all.
Besides this the burden of taxation resting upon the middle classes that Schiller thought unbearable in 1914 has been multiplied and will act as a deterrent to large families more strongly than ever in the future. A Royal Commission has been appointed to consider methods for checking the alarming decline in the birth-rate.
One anti-eugenic agency which Schiller fails to mention but which strikes an outsider as very serious is Labanism. It was formerly the custom to require all Oxford fellows to remain celibate. Later they were allowed to marry after serving seven years, whence the name. Recently this prohibition has been removed, but the antiquated social organization of the colleges acts as a practical deterrent of marriage. So by this elaborate and expensive system of examination, competitions, and promotions—which unfortunately is not so inefficient as its occasional mistakes might lead us to think—the university prevents those whom it deems to have the brightest minds from transmitting their mental endowments to posterity. The devil could not have devised a more ingenious scheme for the promotion of mediocrity. Since Oxford has been in existence for about eight hundred years it must have had a considerable influence on the reduction of British genius.
As Schiller points out, any measures to be eugenically effective must apply to the young. The rewards bestowed upon ability are not only frequently misapplied but they are invariably too long delayed. The youthful genius is too often forced to give up having a family or compelled to support it on faith, hope and charity. To this defect in our civilization Schiller has given the apt name of "social hysteresis."[18]
In all the professions (except, perhaps, that of the actress) the young are underpaid, and established reputations are overpaid. It would be eugenically preferable to do the opposite. Yet the existing practice is largely due to unintentional stupidity, and failure to discover ability soon enough. Now to the individual this system brings compensation, if he lives long enough, because he continues to be rewarded for work he has done long ago, and even is no longer capable of doing, and is eventually raised to the status of a "grand old man" whom ancient institutions delight to honour, by dint of sheer longevity. But eugenically this social hysteresis, this delay in recompensing merit, has a fatal effect. It renders the capable, ambitious and rising members of the professional classes unduly sterile, owing to compulsory celibacy, postponement of marriage, overwork, etc. Thus a large proportion of the ability which rises to the top of the social ladder lasts only for one generation, and does not permanently benefit the race.
From this passage it will be seen that Schiller does not fall into the common fallacy of unconsciously assuming that the upper classes of our present social system necessarily consist of superior individuals. But he does lay stress upon something often overlooked, that this assumption is more justified as society becomes more democratic: