Essays in eugenics

by Francis Galton

The duties attached to family property led to the history, which is very strange to the ideas of the present day, of Ruth’s advances to Boaz under the advice of her mother. “It came to pass at midnight” that Boaz “was startled (see marginal note in the Revised Version) and turned himself, and behold a woman lay at his feet,” who had come in “softly and uncovered his feet and laid her down.” He told her to lie still until the early morning and then to go away. She returned home and told her mother, who said, “Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall, for the man will not rest until he have finished the thing this day.” She was right. Boaz took legal steps to disembarrass himself of the claims of a still nearer kinsman, “who drew off his shoe”; so Boaz married Ruth. Nothing could be purer from the point of view of those days, than the history of Ruth. The feelings of the modern social world would be shocked if the same thing were to take place now in England.

Evidence from the various customs relating to endogamy show how choice in marriage may be dictated by religious custom. That is, by a custom founded on a religious view of family property and family descent. Eugenics deal with what is more valuable than money or lands, namely the heritage of a high character, capable brains, fine physique, and vigour; in short, with all that is most desirable for a family to possess as a birthright. It aims at the evolution and preservation of high races of men, and it as well deserves to be strictly enforced as a religious duty, as the Levirate law ever was.

3. Exogamy is, or has been, as widely spread as the opposed rule of endogamy just described. It is the duty enforced by custom, religion, and law, of marrying outside one’s own clan, and is usually in force amongst small and barbarous communities. Its former distribution is attested by the survival in nearly all countries, of ceremonies based on “marriage by capture.” The remarkable monograph on this subject by the late Mr. McLennan is of peculiar interest. It was one of the earliest, and perhaps the most successful, of all attempts to decipher prehistoric customs by means of those now existing among barbarians, and by the marks they have left on the traditional practices of civilised nations, including ourselves. Before his time those customs were regarded as foolish, and fitted only for antiquarian trifling. In small fighting communities of barbarians, daughters are a burden; they are usually killed while infants, so few women are found in a tribe who were born in it. It may sometimes happen that the community has been recently formed by warriors who brought no women, and who, like the Romans in the old story, could only supply themselves by capturing those of neighbouring tribes. The custom of capture grows; it becomes glorified because each wife is a living trophy of the captor’s heroism, and marriage within the tribe soon comes to be considered an unmanly, and at last a shameful act. The modern instances of this among barbarians are very numerous.

4. Australian Marriages. The following is a brief clue, and apparently a true one, to the complicated marriage restrictions among Australian bushmen, which are enforced by the penalty of death, and which seem to be partly endogamous in origin and partly otherwise. The example is typical of those of many other tribes that differ in detail.

A and B are two tribal classes; 1 and 2 are two other and independent divisions of the tribe (probably by totems). Any person, taken at random, is equally likely to have either letter or either numeral by birthright, and his or her numeral and letter are well known to all the community. Hence the members of the tribe are sub-classed into four sub-divisions, A1, A2, B1, B2. The rule is that a man may marry those women only, whose letter and numeral are both different to his own. Thus A1 can marry only B2, the other three sub-divisions A1, A2, and B1 being absolutely barred to him. As to the children, there is a difference of practice in different parts: in the cases most often described, the child takes its father’s letter and its mother’s numeral, which determines class by paternal descent. In other cases the arrangement runs in the contrary way, that is by maternal descent.

The cogency of this rule is due to custom, religion and law, and is so strong that nearly all Australians would be horrified at the idea of breaking it. If anyone dared to do so, he would probably be clubbed to death.

Here then is another restriction to the freedom of marriage which might with equal propriety have been applied to the furtherance of some form of Eugenics.

5. Taboo. The survival of young animals largely depends on their inherent timidity, their keen sensitiveness to warnings of danger by their parents and others, and to their tenacious recollection of them. It is so with human children, who are easily terrified by nurses’ tales and thereby receive more or less durable impressions.

A vast complex of motives can be brought to bear upon the naturally susceptible minds of children, and of uneducated adults who are mentally little more than big children. The constituents of this complex are not sharply distinguishable, but they form a recognisable whole that has not yet received an appropriate name, in which religion, superstition, custom, tradition, law, and authority all have part. This group of motives will for the present purpose be entitled “immaterial” in contrast to material ones. My contention is that the experience of all ages and all nations shows that the immaterial motives are frequently far stronger than the material ones, the relative power of the two being well illustrated by the tyranny of taboo in many instances, called as it is by different names in different places. The facts relating to taboo form a voluminous literature, the full effect of which cannot be conveyed by brief summaries. It shows how, in most parts of the world, acts that are apparently insignificant, have been invested with ideal importance, and how the doing of this or that has been followed by outlawry or death, and how the mere terror of having unwittingly broken a taboo, may suffice to kill the man who broke it. If non-eugenic unions were prohibited by such taboos, none would take place.

6. Prohibited Degrees. The institution of marriage, as now sanctified by religion and safeguarded by law in the more highly civilised nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it be universally accepted in future times, but it is the best that has hitherto been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their children, for home life, and for society. The degrees of kinship within which marriage is prohibited, is with one exception quite in accordance with modern sentiment, the exception being the disallowal of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife, the propriety of which is greatly disputed and need not be discussed here. The marriage of a brother and sister would excite a feeling of loathing among us that seems implanted by nature, but which further inquiry will show, has mainly arisen from tradition and custom.