The Social Direction of Evolution: An Outline of the Science of Eugenics

by William E. Kellicott

One of the first problems to be attacked from this point of view is that of the racial (i. e., heritable) effects of such poisons as alcohol. It is frequently said, for instance, that some of the effects of alcoholism are the weakened, epileptic, or feeble-minded conditions of the offspring, who are also particularly liable to disease and infection. It can hardly be said that this is as yet thoroughly demonstrated. On account of the importance of this question we might call specific attention to some recent investigations of the problem of the racial influence of alcohol. The effects of alcohol upon the individual are fairly well known, although still a matter for debate in some quarters. But this is not as important eugenically as the possible effect upon the offspring of the use and abuse of alcohol by the parents. An investigation has been carried on recently through the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics directed toward ascertaining the precise relation between alcoholism in parents and the height, weight, general health, and intelligence of their children. It was found to be perfectly true that alcoholism and tuberculosis show a high degree of association; but considering the nondrinking members of the same community just the same high frequency of tuberculosis was found. And the presence of alcoholism among parents was found to be practically without effect upon the height and weight of their offspring. "These results are certainly startling and rather upset one's preconceived ideas, but it is perhaps a consolation that to the obvious and visible miseries of the children arising from drink, lowered intelligence and physique are not added."

The difficulties surrounding investigation and the interpretation of the results of investigation in this particular field are evidenced by the fact that these results have been adversely criticised, on the one hand, because "alcoholism" was taken to mean the continued moderate use of alcohol, and on the other because "alcoholism" was taken to mean only the occasional excessive abuse of alcohol. Much of the confusion surrounding the discussion of the racial effects of alcohol grows out of the underlying confusion of statistical and individual statements. It may be left open, then, whether this result from the Galton Laboratory is clearly demonstrated and whether the basis of investigation was sufficiently broad to make the facts of general applicability.

The frequent association between alcoholism and certain forms of insanity is sometimes taken as evidence of a racial effect. Here again we find the question really left open when we appeal to facts taken in large numbers. In a few cases it seems to have been demonstrated that saturation of the bodily tissues with alcohol affects directly the structure of the germ cells formed at that time, and that this effect is seen in physical and mental disturbances of the offspring derived from such germ cells, and thus becomes hereditary or racial. But these results, like those mentioned above, need confirmation. The impairment of the child in utero through maternal overindulgence in alcohol would not necessarily denote any corresponding germinal (i. e., racial) effect.

It is often the case that alcoholic excess, like other forms of excess, may be an indication of a lack of complete mental balance or sanity, sure to have become expressed in some form. The lack of balance in the offspring of such persons is a simple case of heredity and not the result of the parental use of alcohol. The alcoholism of the parent was a result, an indication, and not a cause. There may be instances of the direct action of external conditions upon the germ, and in a very true sense the body is a part of the external environment of the germ, but to say that such an action has been demonstrated for alcohol is premature. It should be easily possible to get real evidence upon this and similar questions. But at present it is safest to leave the whole question of the racial effects of alcohol entirely open pending more and better evidence.

To summarize, then, we may say that the evidence for an inherited effect of the misuse of alcohol is not as clear as one might wish; it may be true. There is the greatest need for the careful scientific investigation of this and allied problems. Much of the evidence here is not of the kind that can be used to prove things—it consists largely of the demonstration of the fact of association rather than of causation. In order to show that a changed environment has produced a change in the innate characters of the organisms affected it must be demonstrated that the organismal change continues to be inherited after the environment has again become what it was originally, and as yet this has not been done. Indeed when tested in this way it is found that a permanently heritable alteration can thus be produced only rarely and by environmental changes of the most profound character.

Research in another direction is greatly needed. We should examine and reëxamine current as well as proposed social practices and reforms from the racial point of view. We should know before going much farther whether the extensive social improvements that are annually effected are to any considerable degree racially permanent. We should investigate not only the racial effects of the unfavorable social conditions themselves, but also the racial effects of the measures directed toward the relief of such conditions. It is conceivable that measures of relief may be practically without permanent effect or even racially detrimental. It would seem that the social worker and philanthropist should welcome any biologically fundamental truths touching these questions, and yet it is curiously true that there are some such persons who seem to prefer not to know the whole truth here, perhaps because they fear it may disclose the unwelcome fact that much of their effort has resulted in amelioration rather than in correction. It should be remembered that simple relief is well worth while, even though often without resulting racial benefit. When it is not actually detrimental racially, relief is an economic, social, and moral duty. The Eugenist, by disclosing the fact that racial effects can actually be accomplished, enlarges rather than diminishes the opportunities for relief and his knowledge should be welcomed and use made of it.

Heretofore the social point of view has been practically the only point of view in much of this work, and the result is that usually following when action is based upon half-truth. David Starr Jordan says: "Charity creates the misery she tries to relieve; she never relieves half the misery she creates," and he goes on to say that unwise charity is responsible for half the pauperism of the world; that it is the duty of charity to remove the causes of weakness and suffering and equally to see that weakness and suffering are not needlessly perpetuated. In this connection the following quotation from Elderton is apt: "... the influence of the parental environmental factor on the welfare of children is ... at present and has been in the past the chief direction of legislative and philanthropic attack on social evils. Degeneracy of every form has been attributed to poverty, bad housing, unhealthy trades, drinking, industrial occupation of women, and other direct or indirect environmental influences on offspring. If we could by education, by legislation, or by social effort change the environmental conditions, would the race at once rise to a markedly higher standard of physique and mentality? Much, if not the whole battle for social reform, has been based on the assumption that this question was obviously to be answered in the affirmative. No direct investigation has really ever been made of the intensity of the influence of environment on man. To modify the obviously repellent was the immediate instinct of the more gently nurtured and controlling social class. Was this direction of social reform really capable of effecting any substantial change? Nay, by lessening the selective death rate, may it not have contributed to emphasizing the very evils it was intended to lessen? These are the problems which occur to the eugenist and call for investigation and, if possible, settlement.... It is conceivable that the relation between children's physique, for example, and parental occupation is an indirect result of the inheritance of physique and a correlation between parents' physique and their occupation. In other words, what we are attributing to environment may be a secondary influence of heredity itself. A weakling may have no option but to follow an unhealthy trade, a man is a tailor or shoemaker, because he has not the physique for smith or navvy. His offspring may be physically inferior because he is a weakling and not because he follows an unhealthy trade. Clearly, to solve our problem, we must know if there be any correlation between the same character in the parent as we are observing in the child and the environment we are correlating with the child's character. Unfortunately data enabling us to determine the relationship of any mental or physical character of the parent with the environment which is supposed to influence the child is rarely forthcoming."

Just to suggest one further train of thought, we might point out that several movements apparently of high social value have been attended by a curious and largely unforeseen back action. Thus the enforcement of certain forms of Employer's Liability laws has led to discrimination against married persons by large employers of labor and a premium thus put upon nonmarriage. The result of Child Labor legislation has been in some cases an enormous rise in the death rate of young children among the classes concerned, indicating that the children receive less care, now that they have ceased to be a prospective family asset and have become chiefly a burden for many years. In other cases the result has been so serious a limitation in the birth rate that communities are dying out and factories are closing for want of sufficient help. Such problems are not only social but economic and eugenic, and they cannot be seen squarely from any single point of view. It is doubtless shocking to the cultured mind that the chief reason for bringing children into the world should be their economic value as contributors to the family income. But in reality does this point of view differ fundamentally from that very commonly taken of the value of a large family except in the nature of the standard by which their value is measured? May there not be a difference of opinion as to whether children are better or worse off when brought up with some degree of care to be employed under humane conditions of labor, than when left uncared for to die in large proportions of disease and neglect?

Finally, studies in heredity, whether on man or on other animals or on plants, are sure to be of value here because we know that the fundamental processes of heredity are the same in all organisms. Above all, the Eugenist needs to know more of Mendelian heredity in man. The facts of heredity stated in the statistical form of averages and coefficients do not affect the man in the street materially—he rather enjoys taking chances. An extensive eugenic practice can be established only when we can say definitely what the individual or family inheritance will be in a given instance—not what it will be with such and such a degree of probability, although that probability be high. We may not be such a long way off from this ideal, which is an essential for the inauguration of eugenic practice upon a large scale. For the Eugenist this is the richest field for investigation and one which is certain to yield large results.

The Eugenist's demand for more facts will doubtless become an important factor in the progress of biological science. The practical application of the knowledge of heredity in the production of domesticated or cultivated varieties of animals and plants is becoming annually more extensive; and with the recognition of the possibility of the application of this knowledge to the control of the evolution of man himself, will come a rapid increase in biological knowledge and in the earnestness of the student of heredity. And at the same time another result may be that the science of biology shall come to be appraised publicly more nearly at its real value. The biological worker knows that his science comes into contact with human life at every point, that a knowledge of the fundamental principles of the science of life cannot fail to enrich, enlighten, and ennoble the life of every human being. But the community does not yet realize this, to its own great loss. Is it not possible that the Eugenist, finding his fundamentals in biology, by emphasizing the facts of the possibility and the necessity of controlling human evolution, may be able to bring to society a vital sense of the importance of this science with a directness and a vividness which the bacteriologist and hygienist have not been able thus far to realize? Is it even too much to hope that the idea that the "humanities" include only the study of man's comparatively recent past, may now more rapidly give place to a broader conception which shall include not only the whole of man's past, but the study of his future as well? Could any ideal be more vitally, more profoundly human or more worthy of study and devotion, than this of the production of a race of men, clean and sound in mind and body? Be that as it may, the development of this bio-social field can scarcely fail to stimulate strongly the treatment of all social problems with a strictly scientific method. Nothing less than exact methods, and results exactly stated, will satisfy the genuine and really valuable social student of the near future. As one recent writer has feelingly put it: "We have had essays enough."