The Meaning of Evolution

by Samuel Christian Schmucker

Heretofore our efforts at improving the strain have been confined to cattle, chickens and plants. An almost unalterable repugnance rises as soon as we speak of improving the human strain. Visions, if not stories, start up at once, of experimental matings of human beings, and of all other unspeakable abominations which no decent man expects to happen or even wishes to attempt. If there is one thing in human society the value of which has been demonstrated through the unending ages, it is the monogamic marriage. All ideal workers must point to the life-long union of a strong, vigorous, clean-minded and clean-lived man with a similarly fine, strong, clean-minded and clean-lived woman. Such an ideal may be slow in its attainment, but he aims too low who aims to secure anything less than this. The long struggle out of bestiality into pure monogamy has been so slow, so gradual, so noble in its attainments, and is still so far from perfection, that it would be an inconceivably stupid blunder to let go a single point that has been gained. Whether divorce shall be allowed to remedy a mistake may be a matter of dispute, but at best it is a bad remedy for a mistake that should never have been made. No ideal society could ever consider divorce as any permanent portion of its activities. Children are not like cattle. It is not simply a question of their being brought into the world sound and strong. Their long infancy which in the biological as well as in the legal sense, lasts until they are grown up, should be spent in surroundings which can minister, by example and precept, to moral and intellectual development. Surely no such end can possibly be attained when man and woman mate lightly, to part quickly.

At first sight it would seem a wise thing to require health certificates for those who would be married. I doubt not the Chicago Bishop who declined to marry his parishioners except under such conditions, will exert a beneficial effect upon the country by the attention he thus attracts to the subject. It would be a bad day for the city if all the clergy and all the other authorities who are authorized to solemnize marriage should take this step. We have not yet arrived at such a stage of development that a marriage certificate is essential to mating, and a restriction of this sort would simply mean that there could be no legitimate union except of those in strong health. To the burden of ill health would be added the still worse handicap of an illegitimate parentage, with all its bitter train of scorn and shame. Accordingly, it must be possible before the law for those who are not thoroughly vigorous to marry. But, year by year, we may come nearer accomplishing a finer mating by the aims and purposes we foster in the growing generation. Marriages will never be worth while when they are not freely entered into by the contracting parties. Choice must be free and unrestricted if it is to last for life; but this does not mean that it must be unguarded. It would be bitter folly for parents to leave to their children, without attempt to influence or restrain, the making of their marriages. The mating of our children must be inspired, not directed.

There is one taint from which society has the right and the duty of freeing itself, so far as in its power lies. This is the taint of feeble-mindedness. Of all the calamities that can befall a human being, feeble-mindedness is, perhaps, the worst. From most misfortunes it is possible to recover; with most of the rest one may exist without detriment to the race. To be feeble-minded simply means to hark back to the level of our animal ancestors, without regaining their power to guide life. The animal is provided with a bundle of instincts which tell him what to do in all the ordinary emergencies of life. The human species, in its development, has lost a large portion of its instincts, and has gained, instead, the power of intelligent choice and the ability to learn by imitation. When these drop away, man without his instincts or his intelligence is more helpless than the brute. Students of sociology are making clear to us that a large portion of the criminality of the world, much of the looseness of life, and a large part of the alcoholic excesses are due to this taint of feeble-mindedness. Recent investigations have made it clear that one feeble-minded family in a community may, in the course of years, poison the life of an entire state. The Jukes family in New York, the Kallikak family in New Jersey, have shown the awful possibilities of descent from a single feeble-minded ancestor. Prisons, almshouses, and houses of shame owe their population in no small degree to this bitter curse. It will not be long before society will learn to protect itself against such poisoning of the human stock. Nothing is more clear to the investigator of this subject than that the one overwhelming cause for feeble-mindedness is feeble-mindedness in the parentage.

There is one type of mental weakling, known as the Mongolian idiot, which may arise right out of the heart of an apparently sound family. But the number of these is comparatively small. The number of feeble-minded, who are feeble-minded because of their heredity, is dishearteningly and astonishingly large. Every attempt to examine large numbers of school children shows a sickening proportion of those who are distinctly feeble. Every little community seems to have its boy or girl who is what is known as silly. Such people rarely live long lives without leaving behind them feeble-minded children, no small proportion of whom are likely to be illegitimate. Against this fouling of the stream at its source, society must protect itself. Legislators revolt at the somewhat inhuman but certainly safe method of surgically preventing the possibility of the feeble-minded becoming parents. It would be more creditable and just as effective if society would take upon itself the tremendously expensive task of caring for all its feeble-minded in institutions during their entire life. The cost would be large for a generation, but would rapidly diminish and eventually become small. It certainly would be the humane way. These people in good institutions are by no means unhappy. Within the limit of their capacities they can do many things. Wise management usually will secure from them labor enough of wholesome and simple kind nearly to pay for their own support. Nothing could be better for them than to till the soil, care for the cattle, tend the chickens, and, in this way, provide very largely the materials on which they are fed. How this problem shall work out, time only can decide. With it once worked out, there is no doubt that the level of humanity will be distinctly raised. No other one feature in the program of eugenics seems more absolutely hopeful than this.

In several of the states of the Union it has recently become the practice to remove the possibilities of parenthood from certain classes of criminals. The purpose of this is clear and benevolent. Society has a right to prevent the oncoming of new generations of foreordained criminals. Underlying the practice is the theory that the children of criminals are born criminals. It is far from likely that this is the case. Criminality may be due to a wide range of causes. If the criminal is one of those actual born degenerates whose whole mental and physical make-up is so defective that nothing but criminality can be expected of him, then we have a case in which it is clear that society may, and should, remove the possibility of having more generations of the same kind. Probably only a moderate proportion of the criminals in our jails and penitentiaries belong to this class. Doubtless a distinct majority are criminals more through environment than through heredity. Born of average ability, or more, these people have been criminals simply because they were reared among criminals, because their surroundings were such as to lead them away from habits of industry, while they must live. These people were not bolstered by society, or the church, into a life of self-respect and self-help. Under these circumstances they fell into evil ways. There is nothing defective in their mental or physical make-up, that need appear in their children. If these children are removed from contact with the criminal class they stand every chance of being as vigorous, as intelligent, as upright as the average of the community.

At the recent Eugenics Congress in London one of the speakers expressed a preference for the son of a husky burglar over the son of a tuberculous bishop. This is doubtless quite correct, but why should the bishop be tuberculous? The truth of the matter is, the reverse is more likely to be the case. Personally, I should prefer to be the offspring of a husky bishop. In dealing with criminals, then, with a view to cutting off their posterity, we must be careful to understand whether we are dealing with a hereditary or an acquired criminality. If there is a genuine hereditary criminal taint, society is right in freeing itself of it. If it is acquired criminality, then it is not transmissible, and the offspring, if placed in a good environment, are likely to be good citizens. All of which means that, until we are clearly sure of what constitutes a hereditary criminal trait, we should move very slowly in the matter of mutilating criminals.

What steps may the eugenist, with his present limited knowledge, clearly, hopefully and confidently take to improve the future of the human species? There is one avenue open to us in this matter in which we can hardly go wrong. Even our mistakes can work little harm, and every well-done piece of work in this field will be a blessing to the race. This step lies in inculcating in our boys and girls high ideals of parenthood. This is more effective than legal prohibition of certain forms of marriage which cannot prevent matings, and adds the curse of illegitimacy to the other handicaps of the children of such unions. The first step in this process has already been reasonably well accomplished. Both our boys and our girls are in love with health. A good husband and a good wife should be healthy and vigorous. This does not mean that we expect a boy or girl who is looking forward to marriage to sit down and ask himself deliberately about the health of the person with whom he would mate. We must fill our children with the love of outdoor life, with the love of exercise. This will foster in them an admiration for people who are vigorous of body and alert of mind. It ought to become practically impossible for a hearty and vigorous boy to fall in love with a helpless and anæmic girl. It should be equally impossible for a hale and active girl to admire a man who was her inferior in either vigor or alertness. The modern taste for outdoor life has largely brought this to pass among such of our people as have leisure enough to indulge in vigorous sport. Among the crowded dwellers in the closer sections of the city such life has been so nearly impossible that no ideal of vigorous manhood or of radiant womanhood has had a chance to grow up. With the oncoming of the parks and play-grounds, all of this, we may hope, will change. Health and vigor will be no less attainable and hence no less adorable in the city than in the country. Rich and poor alike will be attracted by rosy cheeks and an elastic gait.

Our aim, however, should not cease with a vigorous body. We must teach our young men and young women the glory of a well disciplined mind. This should seem quite as admirable to them as a vigorous body. To them, straight thought ought to be as lovable as a firm and supple body. In this matter our young people are less exacting. The ordinary conversation of people gathered together for social purposes is not particularly intellectual, and any attempt to make it so at present seems priggish. With a broader education, will come keener demand for intelligence. We may hope the time is not too far distant when a question of governmental policy, a new book or play, or a new discovery in science will stimulate as much conversational zest as now seems to be gotten from a pack of cards.

A third feature of the ideals which should be instilled into the minds of our children is the moral phase. There seems little doubt that this is on the way. We must not mistake an evident laxness of religious observance as being synonomous with moral looseness. The revelations which our recent periodicals have brought us concerning the habits of business men, of politicians, and of society, have left on many minds the impression that this is distinctly an age of decadence. Exactly the reverse is the truth. This is the age of intense sensitiveness to wrong. In almost no particular is it worse than any previous age in the history of our country. We openly discuss things which we left untouched a little while ago. We insistently demand that business practices to which nobody particularly objected a dozen years ago must now certainly cease. All of this has produced an erroneous impression that the times are out of joint. But the dust and dirt in the air is the unavoidable accompaniment of house cleaning. When doubtful practices simply have publicity many are awakened to the sense of their duty to society. Persons who, of themselves, might be willing to live low and godless lives, dare not do so in the face of society when our social ideals are finer. I believe there is the utmost hope that within two generations our young men and young women will scorn meannesses which we are accepting with entire complacency.

A close acquaintance with thousands of young men and young women running through an experience of twenty-five years has taught me to believe that our young people of to-day are altogether cleaner of mind, of tongue, and of life than were their parents. There is freer, franker discussion of many things that their parents would scarcely have dared mention, yet I feel sure the moral tone is distinctly higher. I look with entire hopefulness to an early season when the young man who asks a woman to share her life with him will be met with the entirely proper question, "Have you kept your life clean for this event?" I believe that unless the answer can be in the affirmative the young woman will not be able to have admiration enough for the young man to cover uncleanness in his life.