Darwinism and Race Progress

by John Berry Haycraft

[26] Consult “Darwinism and Politics,” by Professor D. G. Ritchie, 2nd Edit., p. vi., upon the interference of property with natural selection.

[CHAPTER VII.
STERILITY OF THE CAPABLES.]

We saw, in the last chapter, that in social communities the struggle of one individual with another for wealth and power is not a fair and open contest, but that all are more or less handicapped by surrounding conditions, lack of capital, education, or influence. We saw that recently more equal chances for success are being given to all, and with the result that the more capable and pushing are gradually tending to form a new upper class, and thereby draining from the labouring classes all those who possess the qualities we have alluded to.

[Are the More Capable Relatively Sterile?]

So far we have viewed this as a struggle for wealth and position, and have purposely kept out of view its influence upon those who will come after us: this we have now to consider. Provided the successful and capable competitors contribute on an average an equal number of children per head, as do the unsuccessful and less capable, it is evident that talent will neither increase nor suffer decrease; it will merely undergo a sifting process, and tend to find its place more and more in the ranks of the aristocracy. If, however, it should be found that the successful ones are less prolific, from one cause or another, then talent will tend to diminish, and the aristocracies will tend to dwindle by the side of the more prolific democracy, and will possibly eventually disappear. In assuming this result, we, of course, conclude that there will be comparatively few marriages between members of widely different classes, and we have reason for conjecturing that this will be the case from the fact that distinctions of class have ever been a bar to free intermarriage, even when these class distinctions have been of the most artificial kind.

[If so, we are Breeding from our Incapables.]

Now there is good reason to believe that the career necessary to individual success in the life-struggle of modern societies is one which carries with it and necessitates relative sterility; and if this is so, we have to face the certainty that talent is being bred out of us, as it were, and that the average capacity of the race must therefore assuredly deteriorate. And whereas, in the animal world, those qualities which determine the success of an individual in the battle of life become stamped upon its progeny, our modern system entails just the reverse. In the animal world, fitness results in life and reproduction, and unfitness in death and sterility; while amongst men, the capable and successful are rewarded by honour and wealth, but are relatively sterile, and the man that society is inclined to overlook contributes a large percentage to the race of the future.

It would indeed be difficult to conceive any plan more inimical to the future of a race, or better devised to sap and undermine the power of a nation, than that of taking from it in perpetuity those possessed of innate capacity, a result which follows when the best citizens are induced, for the sake of gifts and honours, to relinquish their obligation to the race of being the parents of many children. Such a plan must continually withdraw from the nation those qualities which are most admired, and which, it must be presumed, it is most desirable to preserve.[27] A nation subjected for long to such a treatment can only become, like the mould of a garden from which the produce has been taken for many years, but to which nothing has been added in return, a soil prolific enough in weeds and brambles, but incapable of growing any of the choicer plants.

If, then, we find that our more democratic views of to-day are tending to bring about such a result, we must admit the danger into which we are passing, and see whether there is not a way of escape. We cannot but feel a strong sympathy with every plan which tends to place a round man in a round hole, and to develop to the utmost whatever of capacity, whatever of goodness, there may be present at any one time in the social community. Our sympathy for the downtrodden, and our efforts to assist those who are willing to do life’s better work, are but expressions of the fact that we live and have lived together socially, because we have it in us to love, and to value the love of others. It would indeed be a sad tale if that love had never acted in perhaps unwise excess, if it had not prompted us to action, which we may afterwards realise is not in itself and by itself the most judicious.