(Abstract.)
By Professor Achille Loria,
University of Turin.
Artificial selection could be perfectly applied to the human species, in which case marriages would be arranged between persons better endowed, physically and mentally, and the worse endowed would be excluded from marriage. But this selection encounters the gravest practical difficulties; because, if it is relatively easy to estimate the physical qualities of man, nothing on the other hand is harder than to estimate his mental qualities. A dynamometer of intelligence does not exist, and Galton's method of observing the points of merit of University graduates is very insufficient and fallible.
In face of these difficulties there naturally arises the idea of inferring the psycho-physical aptitudes of individuals from their social and economic position, or from their income, which is easily measured. In accord with this idea, it would be a question of acting so that marriages would be effected exclusively and predominantly amongst individuals provided with superior incomes, and to prevent, as far as possible, marriages between persons of inferior incomes, or of no income at all.
But all this would be plausible if there should be a real analogy between the economic élite, and the psycho-physical élite, or if the former were really a product of the latter. Now, this is precisely what I deny. The economic élite is not in the least the product of the possession of superior qualities, but is simply the result of a blind struggle between incomes, which carries to the top those who, at the start, possess a larger income through causes which may be absolutely independent of the possession of superior endowments. (See my Sintesi economica—Paris, Giard et Briard, 1911.) Hence, nothing makes it impossible that the wealthier people should be precisely the worst endowed, physically and mentally, and this as a matter of fact happens in innumerable cases.
Besides, we have an indirect proof of this in the very results of selective processes as, until now, they are practised. And, in fact, conjugal selection to-day takes place precisely amongst individuals of the same class, or belonging to the same standard of income, so that persons of the upper classes always marry exclusively amongst each other. So then these marriages, which, according to the theory, ought to give more splendid results, give, on the contrary, more wretched results. Galton's same law of "return to the mean," or the fact that the descendants of persons of high class sometimes have inferior endowments as compared with the average of the race, could not be fulfilled if persons of the upper classes who marry with each other were really select persons, physically and mentally.
There would also be in this case a falling off from the super-normal qualities of an exceptionally gifted parent, but in that case the characters of the children would always be superior to those of the descendants of the lower classes. If this does not happen, if the children of the upper classes show qualities inferior to those of the average of children of the lower classes, this proves conclusively that married people of the superior classes were not in the least endowed with specially high aptitudes, but, on the contrary, presented the opposite characteristics. Thus, the same law of Galton, properly interpreted, shows the absolute independence of largeness of income and excellence of individual qualities, hence the absurdity and danger of Eugenics upon an economic foundation, such as many desire.
The researches of Fahlbeck upon the Swedish nobility, which show the rapid extinction of the upper classes who practise Economic Eugenics, is a further proof of the absence of any link between economic superiority and psycho-physical superiority; since if the wealthier people, who usually intermarry, were really the better endowed, their descendants would never show those phenomena of extinction which betray a leaven of inner degeneration.
I conclude that Economic Eugenics is already practised to-day upon a large scale, and hence it is already possible to form an accurate judgment upon its results—which are those of return to the mean—degeneration and extinction of race. Now, these same results show that the economically superior classes are not at all the best endowed, and often even degenerate, and that, therefore, the only method calculated to effect a conjugal selection which would be socially useful is not to unite in marriage the richer people, but individuals really possessing superior qualities, and to exclude from marriage those who do not possess them.