Positive Eugenics is the science of race building through wise mating. “As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion of able offspring is a certainty.”[11] What prospective parent does not fondly imagine that his children will be at least near-great? Yet how many individuals, in their choice of a mate, set out with the deliberate intention of securing a life partner whose qualities, when combined with his own, must produce greatness?
The Darwin-Galton-Wedgwood families boast sixteen men of world fame in five generations; in the Bach family there were fifty-seven musicians of note in eight generations; Wood’s study of Heredity in Royalty shows the evident transmission of special ability; yet men and women of ability, anxious for able offspring, mate without any rational effort to secure the end which they desire. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred our mathematician marries a woman whose family did not count a single astronomer, physicist or other mathematical mind among it members. The result of such a union is what could be expected. Although genius does not generally die out right away in the first generation, it decreases by half, and further dilutions soon bring it down to nothingness.”[12]
This, in brief, is the problem of Negative and of Positive Eugenics. Both defect and ability are transmitted by heredity; both are the product of the mating process known as marriage; since society can and does control marriage, it may, through this control, exercise a real influence upon the character of future generations.
The science of Eugenics is in its infancy, yet, widely established and vigorously applied, it may revolutionize the human species. The Super Race may come, because “looked at from the social standpoint, we see how exceptional families, by careful marriages, can within even a few generations, obtain an exceptional stock, and how directly this suggests assortative mating as a moral duty for the highly endowed. On the other hand, the exceptionally degenerate isolated in the slums of our modern cities can easily produce permanent stock also: a stock which no change of environment will permanently elevate, and which nothing but mixture with better blood will improve. But this is an improvement of the bad by a social waste of the better. We do not want to eliminate bad stock by watering it with good, but by placing it under conditions where it is relatively or absolutely infertile.”[13]
“But what of love?” wails the sentimentalist; “in your scheme Eugenics outweighs Cupid!” Perhaps, but what of it? Cupid has proved in the past a sad bungler, whose mistakes and failures grimace from every page of our divorce court records. Far from hindering his activities, however, Eugenics will assist Cupid by bringing together persons truly congenial—hence capable of an enduring love. Too many men have married a natty Easter bonnet, or a cleverly tailored suit. Too many women have fallen a prey to a tempting bank account or a pair of glorious mustachios. Blind Cupid limps but lamely over the rugged path of matrimonial bliss. The questionable success of his best efforts proves his sure need of a guide.
Eugenics represents an effort to bring together those people who have complementary qualities and complementary interests; who are capable of maintaining congenial relationships in the present; and creating able offspring in the future. Selection and parenthood are the cradle of the future. Hence the individual who, in the exercise of his choice, overlooks their significance overlooks one of his most important racial responsibilities.
Society is interested in Eugenics, because it is through Eugenics that the hereditary traits of the Super Race are perpetuated and perfected. Eugenics, rightly understood and applied, is a social asset of unexcelled value. How long, then, shall our society continue to feed on the husks, neglecting the grain which lies everywhere ready at hand?
Eugenics is indeed one means of race salvation, yet what care do we take to perfect eugenic measures? “If through sheer chance, some great mathematician is evolved one day out of the crowd, the state—who should be ever on the watch for such events and whose main care should be to preserve and increase such sources of light, progress and national glory—does nothing to protect the man of genius against care, disease or anything likely to shorten life nor to multiply the splendid thinking machine.”[14] A great state must have for its component parts great men and women. Did we truly seek greatness, how many measures for its attainment lie neglected at our very doors!
Every well regulated state of antiquity eliminated defectives in the interest of the group, and of the future. What more effective means of social preservation could be imagined than some measure through whose operation the defective classes in society would be eliminated, and the social structure, bulwarked by stalwart manhood and womanhood, made proof against the ravages of time. How serious a thing is the propagation of defect! Murder is a crime, punishable by death, yet a murderer merely eliminates one unit from the social group. The destruction of this one life may cause sorrow; it may deprive society of a valued member; but it is, after all, a comparatively insignificant offense. The perpetuation of hereditary defect is infinitely worse than murder. Consider, for example, a marriage, sanctioned by church and state, between two persons both having in their blood hereditary feeble-mindedness.
Investigations of thousands of feeble-minded families show that, in such a case, every one of the offspring may be and probably will be feeble-minded—a curse to himself and a burden to society. Pauperism, crime, social dependence, vice, all follow in the train of mental defect, and the mentally defective parents hand on for untold generations their taint—sometimes in more, sometimes in less virulent form, but always bringing into the world beings not only incapable of caring for themselves, but fatally capable of handing on their defect to the future. The murderer robs society; the mentally defective parent curses society, both in the present and in the future, with the taint of degeneracy. The murderer takes away a life; but the feeble-minded parent passes on to the future the seeds of racial decay.