CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
[INTRODUCTORY.] |
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| [Muscle and Brain versus Political Organisation]—[The Muscles and Brains of a Race are not bound to decay]—[The Fall of Greek and Roman Political Organisation]—[The Permanence of the Scandinavian and Jewish Types]—[Possible Racial Degeneration in Spain]—[Our Power to ensure our own Racial Progress]—[The Knowledge we possess regarding the Laws of Racial Change]—[Evolution]—[Modern Philanthropic Effort]—[Are these conducive to Racial as well as to Individual Well-being?] | 1–18 |
CHAPTER II.
[THE STANDPOINT OF BIOLOGISTS.] |
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| [Lamarck’s View on Heredity]—[Darwin’s Law of Selection]—[Three Ideas involved in Selection]—[Selection is a Fact, not a Theory]—[How much is explainable by Selection?]—[Galton and Weismann]—[Are Acquired Characters Transmitted?]—[Many Cases of Supposed Transmission to be explained by Selection]—[Paucity of Experimental Evidence of such Transmission]—[The Reproductive and the Body Cells]—[Reproductive Cells unaffected by Local Changes in the Body Cells]—[Constitutional Change may, though it rarely does, affect the Reproductive Cell]—[The Facts of Evolutive Selection known to the Gardener and Breeder] | 19–43 |
CHAPTER III.
[CAUSES AND SIGNS OF PHYSICAL DETERIORATION.] |
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| [Modern Care for the Individual]—[Preventive Medicine]—[Micro-organisms of Diseases and their Extermination]—[The Reproductive Cells as a Rule unaffected by them]—[Man has been selected by the Action of the Microbes of Fever]—[Leprosy an Exterminator of the Unhealthy]—[Germs of Phthisis and Scrofula, our Racial Friends]—[If we stamp out Infectious Diseases we perpetuate Poor Types]—[Births, Deaths, and Marriages]—[Increase of Constitutional Weakness]—[Death-rate for Advanced Years on the Increase]—[Life Tables compared]—[Physical Degeneration of the Race already indicated] | 44–68 |
CHAPTER IV.
[INSANITY AND ALCOHOLISM.] |
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| [Nerve Derangements, Insanity]—[The Importance of preventing its Transmission]—[Marriages of Insane Persons]—[Alcoholism a Habit, and Alcoholism a Sign of Mental Instability]—[Drink is a Selective Agency]—[Parents who drink from Habit may have Debilitated Offspring]—[Preventive Measures]—[Drink among Australian Convicts]—[Drink and Prevention in America]—[Public Habit and Conscience the best Preventive]—[The Power of the Community over the Individual]—[The Necessity for replacing one Selective Agency by another]—[How it is that the Production of Children by Diseased Parents is tolerated]—[The Necessity for producing Posterity out of our Best Types] | 69–89 |
CHAPTER V.
[THE CRIMINALS, INCAPABLES, AND THOSE IN DISTRESS.] |
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| [Crime is often an Acquired Habit]—[The Innate Criminal]—[The Jukes Family]—[Intermarriage does not stamp out Criminal Tendencies]—[Segregation of the Criminal an Ultimate and Effectual Resort]—[Our Unfortunate Use of the Word “Poor”]—[The Unfortunate, the Aged, the Incapables, and the Vicious, are treated alike]—[Our Poor-law Regulations are at Fault]—[The Idle and Vicious are Subjects for the Criminal Law]—[The Poor in very Deed]—[Our Misguided Attitude to these]—[The Incapables]—[Segregation Ultimately Required for their Elimination]—[Incapables to be Treated like Chronic Hospital Patients] | 90–110 |
CHAPTER VI.
[COMPETITION.] |
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| [Competition of Brain against Brain]—[Does the Race show Increased Brain Capacity?]—[The Neolithic compared with the Modern English Skulls]—[Abeyance of Brain Development since Neolithic Times]—[Social Communities do not permit of the Destruction of the Less Intellectually Capable]—[Human Brain Power results merely in Wealth Accumulation]—[Further Study of Individual Competition]—[Those Competing are Handicapped by Property]—[Property is not always acquired by the Most Capable]—[Property Holders Less Capable than Property Acquirers]—[The Poor Child is scratched against the Rich Child]—[Modern Democratic Attempts to equalise the Struggle]—[Those who Succeed are Not Always the Best] | 111–134 |
CHAPTER VII.
[STERILITY OF THE CAPABLES.] |
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| [Are the More Capable Relatively Sterile?]—[If so, we are Breeding from our Incapables]—[Capable and Ambitious Men Marry Late in Life]—[Many Unmarried Persons among Upper Classes]—[Lower Class Marriages are the Most Prolific]—[Their Infant Mortality is Greater]—[Artificial Restriction of the Family]—[Fertility of French and English Marriages Contrasted]—[Possible Swamping of the Capables by the Incapables]—[Artificial Restrictions at Present Most Disastrous] | 135–153 |
CHAPTER VIII.
[OBLIGATION IN PARENTHOOD.] |
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| [Are we prepared to carry out Selective Methods?]—[Rights of the Individual, and Obligations to the Community]—[Rights of Children and our Obligation to them]—[Our Sense of Obligation is Developing]—[Social Philosophers and Social Reformers]—[Segregation is Not yet Practicable]—[Segregation no New Idea, and ultimately a Necessary Practice]—[The Masses must be Taught the Main Facts of Heredity and Evolution]—[The End and Aim of Marriage]—[Our False Ideas regarding Marriage]—[The Stream of Life] | 154–170 |
| [Appendix] | 171–180 |
DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS.
In the history of the world, nations have arisen from comparative obscurity, have occupied positions of eminence and power, and have then sunk into obscurity again. The Egyptians, who built their pyramids and temples by the hands of the peoples they had conquered in war and enslaved, were themselves conquered by Greeks; and these conquerors, at first ignorant and savage, developed on the bases of Eastern and Egyptian civilisation to a point never before reached. But the Greeks in their turn were replaced by the younger Latin race, who were also at first less civilised than the nations they conquered. The Romans then developed and established an empire, which men believed would be everlasting, but it, too, disappeared, to give place to the Teutonic states of modern Europe. So strikingly alike in their progression have been the histories of the peoples of the past that it is quite a commonplace to hear the life of a nation compared to that of a man as being a history of growth, maturity and decay.
But the analogy is at most a very imperfect one, and, if content with having made it, we leave the subject, we shall fail to note the real facts of racial development as indicated in the pages of history.
We may regard a nation from two points of view. First, we may look at the muscle and brain power of the individuals who comprise it; secondly, we may view it as a political organisation struggling against the effects of climate, geographical position and other rival organisations. These aspects are, of course, not mutually exclusive, for the success of a nation in its political struggle will depend in great measure upon its innate muscle and brain power; but, on the other hand, a nation possessing admirable innate or organic qualities may fail as a political organisation on account of insurmountable obstacles placed in its way. When therefore we read of the fall of the Roman Empire or the conquest of the Greek states, we may be dealing with a question of actual racial and organic deterioration comparable in some slight degree to senility; or, on the other hand, we may have before us a question entirely apart from this, that of the struggle of a people against obstacles which have at last become insuperable. It will be necessary to examine the facts of history in greater detail in order to find out whether a race undergoes of necessity any organic change comparable to growth, maturity and decay, exclusive of the changes which may occur in the political organisation of the race and its fortuitous position in respect to other organisations.