The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

Galton invented from a Greek word a name for the science of the amelioration of the race, Eugenics. He showed that civilised man, so far as care for the amelioration of the race is concerned, stands on a much lower plane than savages, not to speak of Sparta which did not allow the weak, the too young, and the too old to marry, and where national pride in a pure race, a strong offspring, was so great that individuals were sacrificed to the attainment of this end. Galton, like Darwin, Spencer, A. R. Wallace, and others, has brought out the fact that the law of natural selection, which in the rest of nature has secured the survival of the fittest, is not applicable to human society, where economic motives lead to unsuitable marriages, made possible by wealth. Poverty hinders suitable marriages. Besides the development of sympathy has come into the field as a factor which disturbs natural selection. The sympathy of love, chooses according to motives that certainly tend to the happiness of the individual, but this does not mean that they guarantee the improvement of the race. And while other writers hope for a voluntary abstinence from marriage in those cases, where an inferior offspring is to be expected, Galton, on the other hand, is in favour of very strict rules, to hinder inferior specimens of humanity from transmitting their vices or diseases, their intellectual or physical weaknesses. Just because Galton does not believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, selection has the greatest significance for him.

On the other side, he advocates using all means to encourage such marriages, where the family on both sides gives promise of distinguished offspring. For him, as later for Nietzsche, the purpose of married life is the production of strong, able personalities.

Galton makes it plain that civilised man, by his sympathy with weak, inefficient individuals, has helped to continue their existence. This tendency on its own side has lessened the possibility of the efficient individuals to continue the species. Wallace, too, and several others, have on different occasions declared that men in relation to this question must have harder hearts, if the human race is not to become inferior. The moral, social, and sympathetic factors, they say, which in humanity work against the law of the survival of the fittest, and have made it possible for the lower type, to continue and to multiply in excess, must give way to new points of view where certain moral and social questions are concerned. So the natural law will be supported by altruism, instead of as now being opposed by this sentiment.

Spencer's thoughts contain a great truth. They have been quoted in just this connection. He says: We see the germ of many things that later on are developed in a way no one now suspects. Profound transformations are worked in society and its members, transformations which we could not have hoped for as immediate results, but which we could have looked for in confidence as final consequences. The effort to find natural laws which cause racial progress or deterioration is one of these germinal ideas. As to scientific investigation in this field, we can apply another maxim of the same thinker, one often overlooked by science. "The passion to discover truth must be accompanied by the passion to use it for the welfare of mankind." But science must really reach universally accepted conclusions before we can expect humanity to begin seriously its self-purification; but it is certain to come then. When we read in ethnographical and sociological works what restrictions in marriage are imposed by savage people on themselves, and religiously obeyed on the ground of superstitious prejudice, we have a right to hope that civilised men will one day bow before scientific proofs. This hope is not too optimistic.

Wallace pleads not for such absolute regulations as Galton, in order to prevent the marriages of the less worthy and to encourage the marriages of the superior types of humanity. He perceives that the problem is tremendously complicated. One thing is, that the personal attraction of love is extremely essential from the point of view of the improvement of the race. If human beings could be bred like prize cattle, it is not likely that a superior type of humanity would be produced. In the Middle Ages, the human race deteriorated, Galton said, because the best fled to the monasteries and the worst reproduced themselves. But if Galton's strict requirements had to be carried out in every case before a marriage could be allowed, not only would marriage lose its deepest meaning, but the race also would lose its noblest inheritance.

But even with a strict limitation of Galton's principles and with a wise limitation of his requirements, science has already shown the truth of so many of the first, that the significance of the last, taken as a whole, must be granted. We know that in the inherited tendencies of children, often another form is taken from that which appears in their parents. Of three hundred idiots, one hundred and forty-five had alcoholic parents. Epilepsy, too, is often produced by the same cause. It is known that apparently sound individuals are often attacked at the same age by a disease to which their parents were subject. On the other hand, there are fortunately proofs that individuals endowed with power of will can resist certain dangerous inherited weaknesses. In the discussion on this subject, it should also be justly brought out, that it is possible for the unsound tendency of one parent to be neutralised in the case of children, by the soundness of the other. But this result, as well as the many other questions involved, as I have shown above, are far from being established.

The question as to the inheritance of mental diseases has been especially examined by Maudsley. In this case, too, nervous and psychic diseases of the parents often change their character in the children. He requires medical testimony before marriage, and asks that the appearance of mental diseases after marriage shall form a legitimate ground for divorce. And he hopes that a pure descent, in a new sense of the word, will be as important for the marriages of the future, as for aristocratic marriages in early times. One of Maudsley's statements is so interesting that it should be mentioned here. Fathers, he says, who have directed their whole energy towards attainment of wealth, have degenerate children; for this sort of nerve strain undermines the system as infallibly as alcohol or opium. If this statement be true, we would add another point of view to the many already existent, that show how hostile to life is our best social order, which aims at power and gain. It proves how necessary is that transformation of existence which will make work and production serve a new end. Each man should claim to live wholly, broadly, and in a way worthy of humanity. He should be able to leave behind him a posterity provided with all capacities for a similar life. When this day dawns people will regard, as a terrible atavism, that expression on the face of a child, which an artist of the present day has preserved in a picture of a boy represented as a future millionaire.

I will mention now from literary sources, some of Nietzsche's work on this subject. Although this author did not base his ideas of the "superman" directly on Darwin's theories, yet they are, as Brandes has lately shown, the great consequences of Darwinism, that Darwin himself did not see. In no contemporary was there a stronger conviction than in Nietzsche that man as he now is, is only a bridge, only a transition between the animal and the "superman." In connection with this, Nietzsche looked upon the obligations of man for the amelioration of the race as seriously as Galton, but he expressed his principles with the power of poetic and prophetic expression, not with scientific proof.

Literature on this subject is increasing every day; different opinions press one another hard. As long as this is the case, there is every reason to observe the warning of the German sociologist Kurella, who says that we must reckon with social as well as with anthropological factors if we wish to prevent the degeneration of the human species. A vital point in his position is, that it is a matter of indifference whether the Darwinian theory of the transmission of acquired characteristics, or its contrary is victorious. The former is the theory of an unchangeable germ plasm transmitted by the parents to the children; so that better types can only originate through a new combination of the characteristics of father and mother, and also by natural selection in the struggle for existence. We must be careful before beginning to act in a social and political way on the basis of anthropological motives. He finally lays down with perfect justice, that the material to be gathered from the works of Spencer, Galton, Lombroso, Ferri, Ribot, Latourneau, Havelock Ellis, J. B. Haycraft, Colajanni, Sergi, Ritchie, and others, must be systematically worked over. The sociologist must be zoölogist, anthropologist, and psychologist before his plans for civilising man, and for elevating the human race could be carried out.

As to intellectual characteristics it has been maintained that exceptionally gifted men have mostly inherited their characteristics from the mother. This fact has in our day, so very much increased the interest taken in the mothers of famous men. This truth is supposed to hold good for a son, but if the daughter is gifted, her talent is held to come from the father. Another and certainly a better founded phenomenon seems to be this: That when in a family characteristics find their culmination in a world genius, this genius either remains childless or his children are not only ordinary, but often insignificant. It may be that nature has exhausted her power of production in these great personalities, or as is often assumed, the creative power of genius in an intellectual direction, diminishes the creative power in the physical direction.