Consanguinity in the parents has no perceptible influence upon the number of children or upon their masculinity, and has little, if any, direct effect upon the physical or mental condition of the offspring.
The most important physiological effect of consanguineous marriage is to intensify any or all inheritable family characteristics or peculiarities by double inheritance. The degree of intensification probably varies with the nature of the characteristic; degenerate conditions of the mind, and of the delicate organs of special sense being the most strongly intensified.
It is probable also that in the absence of degenerative tendencies the higher qualities of mind and body are similarly intensified by marriage between highly endowed members of the same family. Dr. Reibmayr believes that inbreeding is necessary to the higher evolution of the race: "A settled abode, natural protection from race mixture and the development of a closely inbred social class are the basic conditions of every culture period." But inbreeding must not be carried too far: "In the course of generations the ruling class begins to degenerate mentally and physically, until not only is the class destroyed, but for lack of capable leadership the people (Volk) itself is subjugated and a crossing of blood again takes place."[[95]]
In the breeding of animals the closest inbreeding is frequently resorted to in order to improve the stock, and many examples can be given of the closest possible inbreeding for generations without apparent detriment, but it is universally admitted that the animals selected for such inbreeding must be sound constitutionally, and free from disease. After a certain number of generations however, degeneration apparently sets in. The number of generations through which inbreeding may be carried varies with the species, and the purpose for which the animals are bred. Where they are bred primarily for their flesh, as for beef, mutton or pork, it can be pursued farther and closer than where they are bred for achievement in which a special strength is required—for instance in the breeding of race horses. This would indicate that the more delicate brain and nervous system is sooner affected than the lower bodily functions.
In man, however, freedom from hereditary taint cannot so easily be secured. Individuals cannot be selected scientifically for breeding purposes. Furthermore, the human body is more delicately constructed than that of the lower animals, and the nervous system is more highly developed and specialized, so that it is reasonable to suppose that in man degeneration would set in earlier in the process of inbreeding, and that it would be impossible to breed as closely as with the lower animals. Instances are well known, however, where incestuous unions have been productive of healthy offspring, and successive generations of offspring of incestuous connection are not unknown; but, although statistics are lacking, it seems to be very often true that children of such unions are degenerate. It may be that the reason for this is that with the laws and social sentiments now prevailing in all civilized communities, only degenerates ever contract incestuous alliances. Desirable as it may be from a social point of view that this strong sentiment against incest should continue, it is not yet proven that even the closest blood relationship between the parents is directly injurious to the offspring. The "instinctive horror of incest" is a myth, for although a horror of incest does very properly exist in civilized, and in some tribal societies, it is purely a matter of custom and education, and not at all a universal law.
Double heredity may account for all the observed ill effects of consanguineous marriage, including the high youthful death-rate, the higher percentage of idiocy, deafness and blindness, and probably also the scrofulous and other degenerate tendencies; nevertheless, there may be in some instances a lowering of vitality which this hypothesis does not fully explain.
The tendency of inbreeding in animals, it is well known, is to fix the type, the tendency of crossing, to variation. Inbreeding then, tends to become simple repetition with no natural variations in any direction, a stagnation which in itself would indicate a comparatively low vitality. Variation and consequent selection is necessary to progress. "Sex," according to Ward[[96]] "is a device for keeping up a difference of potential," and its object is not primarily reproduction, but variation.[[97]]
It is organic differentiation, higher life, progress, evolution.... But difference of potential is a social as well as a physiological and physical principle, and perhaps we shall find the easiest transition from the physiological to the social in viewing the deteriorating effects of close inbreeding from the standpoint of the environment instead of from that of the organism. A long-continued uniform environment is more deteriorating than similarity of blood. Persons who remain for their whole lives, and their descendants after them, in the same spot, surrounded by precisely the same conditions, and intermarry with others doing the same, and who continue this for a series of generations, deteriorate mentally at least, and probably also physically, although there may not be any mixing of blood. Their whole lives, physical, mental, and moral, become fixed and monotonous, and the partners chosen for continuing the race have nothing new to add to each other's stock. There is no variation of the social monotony, and the result is socially the same as close consanguineal interbreeding. On the other hand, a case in which a man should, without knowing it, marry his own sister, after they had been long separated and living under widely different skies, would probably entail no special deterioration, and their different conditions of life would have produced practically the same effect as if they were not related.[[98]]
Professor Ward's idea of "difference of potential," or contrast, as essential to the highest vigor of the race as well as to that of the individual offspring, offers an alternative explanation of the observed results of consanguineous marriages, and one which does not necessarily conflict with the explanation already given. All the phenomena of intensification are simply due to a resemblance between husband and wife in particular characteristics, such as a common tendency toward deafness or toward mental weakness. This resemblance, which may or may not be the result of a common descent, renders more probable the appearance of the trait in the offspring. If the parents closely resembled each other in many respects they would be more likely to "breed true" and the children would resemble one another in their inherited traits, thus accounting for the high average of deaf-mutes to the family, observed in the Irish statistics.[[99]]
The theory of contrast and resemblance supplements that of intensified heredity where the resemblance is general, rather than in particular traits or characteristics. In such a case the absence of the stimulating effects of contrast might result in a lowering of vitality, which in turn would react upon the youthful death-rate.