The Super Race: An American Problem

by Scott Nearing

There appears to be some question as to whether the best of the Greek athletes exceeded in strength and skill the modern professional athlete, but there is no doubt at all that the average citizen of Athens was a more perfect specimen physically than the average citizen of twentieth century America.

Some students insist that the level of intellectual capacity has been raised, yet Galton, after a careful survey of the field, concludes in his Hereditary Genius that the average citizen of Athens was at least two degrees higher in the scale of intellectual attainment than the average Englishman; Carl Snyder[4] boldly maintains that the intellectual ability of scientific men is less to-day than it was in past centuries; while Mrs. Martin,[5] in a study more novel than scientific, insists that the genius of the modern world is on a level distinctly below that of the genius of Greece.

Perhaps American commercial aggressiveness is equal to the military aggressiveness of the Romans, the early Germans, and the followers of Attila. We have concentrated most of our efforts upon industry, yet even here, our concentration is no greater than that of the poets of the Elizabethan era, or the religious zealots of the Middle Ages. Our sympathy with beauty is at so low an ebb that we fail even to approach the standard of past ages. Neither in art, in sculpture, nor in poetry do our achievements compare with those of the earlier Mediterranean civilizations; while our knowledge of men as revealed in our literature is not above that of the Romans or the Athenians. As for vision, we still accept and strive to fulfill the commandments of the Prophet of Nazareth. In all of these fields, twentieth century America is equaled, if not outdone by the past.

Thus the distinctive qualities of the Super Man appear in the past with an intensity equal if not superior to that of the present. History records the transmutation of vegetable and animal species, the revolution of industry, the modification of social institutions, and the transformation of governmental systems; but in all historic time, it affirms no perceptible improvement in the qualities of man. “We must replace the man by the Super Man,” writes G. Bernard Shaw.[6] “It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger generation.”

Nevertheless, the possibility of race improvement exists. “What now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterize all, for that which the best human nature is capable of is within the reach of human nature at large.”[7] After years of intensive study, Spencer thus confidently expressed himself. Since he ceased to work, each bit of scientific data along eugenic lines serves to confirm his opinion. Armed with such a belief and with the assurance which scientific research has afforded, we are preparing in this eleventh hour to fulfill Spencer’s predictions.

There are two fields in which eugenics may be applied—the first, Negative, the second, Positive. Through the establishment of Negative Eugenics the unfit will be restrained from mating and perpetuating their unfitness in the future. Through Positive Eugenics the fit may be induced to mate, and by combining their fitness in their offspring, to raise up each new generation out of the flower of the old. Negative Eugenics eliminates the unfit; Positive Eugenics perpetuates the fit.

The field of Negative Eugenics has been well explored. No question exists as to the transmission through heredity of feeble mindedness, idiocy, insanity and certain forms of criminality. “There is one way, only one way, out of this difficulty. Modern society ... must declare that there shall be no unfit and defective citizens in the State.”[8] The Greeks eliminated unfitness by the destruction of defective children; though we may deplore such a practice in the light of our modern ethical codes, we recognize the end as one essential to race progress. By denying the right of parenthood to any who have transmissible disease or defect, our modern knowledge enables us to accomplish the same end without recourse to the destruction of human life.

Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the science of Eugenics, writes, in his last important work, “I think that stern compulsion ought to be exerted to prevent the free propagation of the stock of those who are seriously afflicted by lunacy, feeble-mindedness, habitual criminality and pauperism.”[9] Yet society, in dealing with hereditary defect, presents some of its most grotesque inconsistencies. “It is a curious comment on the artificiality of our social system that no stigma attaches to preventable ill-health.” An empty purse, or a ruined home may mean social ostracism, but “break-down in person, whatever the cause, evokes sympathy, subscription and silence.”[10]

Certain defects are known to be transmissible by heredity from parent to child, until the crétin of Balzac’s Country Doctor is reproduced for centuries. The remedy for this form of social self-torture lies in the denial of parenthood to those who have transmissible defects. Individually, such a denial works hardships in this generation: socially, and to the future generations, it means comparative freedom from individual, and hence from social defect.

The problem of Positive Eugenics presents an essentially different aspect. As Ruskin so well observes—“It is a matter of no final concern, to any parent, whether he shall have two children or four; but matter of quite final concern whether those he has shall or shall not deserve to be hanged.” The quality is always the significant factor. Whether in family or national progress, an effort must be made to insure against hanging, or against any tendency that leads gallowsward.