We saw in the preceding chapter that during quite recent years the dangers of early life have been greatly lessened because of our increased knowledge of infantile hygiene, and from the fact that the infective diseases, which are always most dangerous to the young, have been greatly abated. We saw, however, at the same time, that the constitutional weaknesses of humanity are by no means lessened, and that there are strong grounds for believing that during the last thirty years the race has observably degenerated, a result to be anticipated from the withdrawal of selective influences during childhood and early life. Amongst these constitutional weaknesses we may specially notice defects in the respiratory, circulatory, nervous and other systems, as being of interest and importance, and their observation worthy of our close attention. In this little treatise it is impossible however to do more than shortly to allude to hereditary defects in the nervous system associated with incapacity, a tendency to insanity, or to excesses in the use of alcohol. The subject is not only one of popular interest, but it can be understood by those who are not technically instructed.

Just as no two men agree in the possession of equally sound mucous membranes or lung tissues, so we may have decided variations in the brain tissues. Together with unsound brain tissue we have symptoms which we call mental derangement, and of these we have an infinite variety, starting from the mentally too excitable, or too inert, and passing on to those who are more obviously diseased and useless, and finally to those who are dangerous to society at large. Now, these brain affections are markedly hereditary—proverbially so indeed. It is true that an overplus of work, or anxiety, or depressing surroundings, may produce insanity or other nervous conditions in one who under better surroundings would undoubtedly escape. These are, no doubt, true exciting factors, but they act with alarming ease in the case of certain types, while in others their action is relatively inoperative. This type, an organic variation, is transmitted, it is not destroyed. As Dr.Bastian says: “It is now a well-established fact that persons who are endowed with a neurotic habit of body very frequently transmit a similar tendency to their children. It is not a tendency to any particular nervous disease, but a vulnerability of the nervous system as a whole, which is transmitted, so that under the influence of even a comparatively slight strain the weakness may manifest itself in one or other of several ways.” Speaking of the suicidal tendency, Dr.Maudsley remarks: “It is, indeed, striking and startling to observe how strong the suicidal bent is apt to be in those who have inherited it, and how seemingly trivial a cause will stir it into action. Persons affected by it will sometimes put an end to themselves on the occasion of a petty contrariety, or when they are a little out of sorts, and with almost as little concern as if they were taking only a slight journey.” In half his cases Dr.Maudsley traced an inherited fault of organisation. And again, speaking of the many ways in which a neurotic taint may manifest itself, he says: “In families where there is a strong predisposition to insanity, one member will sometimes suffer from one form of nervous disease, and another from another form: one perhaps has epilepsy, another is afflicted with a severe neuralgia, or with hysteria, a third may commit suicide, a fourth become maniacal or melancholic, and it might even happen sometimes that a fifth evinced remarkable artistic talents.”

It is generally supposed by the members of the medical profession that insanity is on the increase, and this is in accordance with the fact that deaths from several diseases of the nervous system are on the increase too. This supposition has, however, been hotly disputed, and may be left in other hands for final settlement, for it must be remembered that our statistics date back but a few years, a day as it were in history, and we must not presume to be able to settle offhand every problem that arises.

The Importance of preventing its Transmission.

For our present purpose the hereditary nature of the neurotic temperament is the important point that we have to consider, for its hereditary nature places it in the category of affections, which ought to be eliminated by selective means, instead of being provided for merely by the personal treatment of those who suffer from it. It is true that by the selection suggested the world might lose the occasional genius which is found here and there in families with a strong taint of insanity, but on the other hand it must be remembered that by far the greater number of distinguished men and women have been derived from vigorous and mentally sound parentage; for the association which we make between genius and insanity is due not so much to its common occurrence as to the possibility of the co-existence at all in the same family circle of these two things that at first sight must appear so strangely opposed to each other.

With a certain amount of sacrifice, humanity by selection might free itself from those types who are a drag upon the resources of the community, and who suffer themselves, certainly in the melancholic cases, to a degree which it is impossible for an ordinary individual to experience.

Marriages of Insane Persons.

While there has so far been no organised effort to bring about this selection, for we have not yet turned our attention with sufficient interest to the race as a whole, yet there is a popular and widespread feeling against the marriage of those with a distinct family history of insanity. This feeling has had in the past an undoubtedly selective influence, and has in some measure diminished the number of marriages with neurotic families; and the strengthening of this feeling in the future is the only thing we have to look to, as matters stand, as a means whereby the race may free itself from an inherent weakness of a most distressing kind.

Alcoholism a Habit, and Alcoholism a Sign of Mental Instability.

Not unfrequently we hear of the hereditary tendency to alcoholism, and it is generally understood that a specific tendency to drink alcohol is transmitted. To me it appears that the facts at our disposal seem rather to warrant the conclusion that most of those cases which are supposed to be examples of transmission, are really due to the permanence of intemperate habits in the same family or district perhaps for generations, and that in these cases the children drink from the force of imitation. In other cases I would rather infer that unbalanced vicious temperaments are transmitted, but that as to the way in which these will manifest themselves it depends much upon the circumstances and surroundings of the individual, who may become a drinker, an opium eater, or a profligate, or perhaps a combination of all three.

Drink is a Selective Agency.

Among the lower classes at the present day there are, no doubt, whole families who generation after generation have had a bad name for drunkenness; but it would appear that in these cases the drunkenness is but one manifestation of the same careless or vicious temperament, which shows itself also in idleness and crime. Among the middle and upper classes a generation or two ago families of hard drinkers were often known. In these cases, as one may learn nowhere better than from Barrington’s “Sketches of Irish Life,” the drinking was a part of a general devil-may-care temperament, or was even in many cases associated with a pride in the accomplishment itself. At the present day, when drunkenness is looked down upon as disgraceful by the better and more educated classes, excessive drinking has vastly diminished. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that, while what we may term unbalanced temperaments and instincts of self-indulgence are inherited, the actual way in which these instincts will manifest themselves depends upon the surrounding conditions which may happen to prevail. Such unbalanced persons would under certain surroundings of training and education fall a prey to drink, as when they are associated with drunken parents or friends; under other surroundings they may be guilty of crime or debauchery and tend in any case to avoid the quiet, orderly routine of citizenship. While, therefore, we can hardly say that the tendency to drink is hereditary, yet we may affirm that certain type variations, running, no doubt, in families, are especially liable to drink and other forms of vice. It follows, too, that drink may be looked upon as a selective agency—one constantly thinning the ranks of those who are weak enough by nature to give way to it, and leaving unharmed those with healthy tastes and sound moral constitutions.

Parents who drink from Habit may have Debilitated Offspring.

In a former chapter we have suggested that the alcohol circulating in the parental veins may affect the germinal cells, not in such a manner as to make those cells develop into individuals with a tendency to drink, but rather with the result that debilitated offspring are often thereby produced. It is quite conceivable that this latter effect may be brought about, although our study of the infective diseases has indicated to what lengths the whole system may be affected without the production of any permanent change in the germ cells; but it is, I think, greatly over-stating the case to adduce examples such as one brought forward by Galton, in which we are told of a man who had begotten children of the ordinary type becoming a drunkard, and afterwards having imbecile children. This seems to me to be very questionable evidence indeed. We can seldom ground any general rule on the basis of a few isolated cases, and just as one may support almost any argument by means of a text of Scripture, so one might bring forward isolated cases to support almost any view of heredity. Amongst the some forty million instances of transmission to be seen at the present day in the British Islands and the many thousands of imbeciles and drunken parents, one hardly wonders at what may after all be only a coincidence. That this is a coincidence, and that the production of the imbecile children had no necessary connection with the drunken habits of the parent will seem to us very probable when we reflect that in the Scottish Lowlands, large English towns, and in parts of Germany, habitual heavy drinking is exceedingly common; therefore, did such startling cases of transmission occur, they would occur frequently, and be matter of common observation and comment. While refusing to accept this case in evidence, it is still probable on general grounds that the offspring of habitual drunkards suffer hereditarily, but definite evidence on this score appears still to be wanting.

Preventive Measures.

This leads us to the question as to whether or not legislation with a view to prevent the sale of alcohol would further or retard race progress. Experiments of this kind have been, and are being tried—notably in Scandinavia and the United States; and there are those who strongly advocate preventive legislation in our own country.

But has this enforced diminution of one particular form of vice given us any guarantee as to immunity from the other forms into which the habitual drunkard may develop? That preventive measures have diminished drunkenness cannot for a moment be denied, but this diminution is certainly not more notable than the corresponding change in the habits of the English upper classes brought about entirely by the force of conscience and habit. Granted that preventive measures will improve the individual, we have to ask ourselves the question, how will they improve the race?

Drink among Australian Convicts.

Dilke informs us[19] that the convict element may now be disregarded in Australian society. In the case of some their crime was an accident, and criminal tendencies would not be transmitted to the children they left behind them. On the other hand, the genuine criminal and also the drunken ne’er-do-well left no children. Drink and vice among the “assigned servants” class of convicts, and an absence of all facilities for marriage worked them off the face of the earth, and those who had not been killed before the gold discovery generally drank themselves to death upon the diggings.

We have here a very clear case in which alcohol acted as a most beneficial selecting influence. Had there been prohibiting laws, preventing the sale of alcohol, the innately depraved would have left behind them descendants imbued with the paternal instincts.

Drink and Prevention in America.

In the United States there is and has been a strong feeling against the liquor traffic, not only on the part of those who hold that drinking is in itself wrong, and leads to crime and misery, but on political grounds as well. The Americans drink, not at meals as we do, but at the drinking-saloons and bars, and the habit of “treating” to liquor is universal. These drinking-saloons are, too, the cause of much of the political corruption deplored by the better class of Americans; there are many reasons, therefore, for the introduction of local option, or even prohibition, and in many of the states stringent anti-liquor laws are consequently enforced. Inasmuch as these laws have been in operation for some years, we can study their effect on those who have been subjected to them.

We are told[20] that in Maine a Prohibitionary Law was enforced in 1851, lapsed for two years (1856 and 1857), but has continued since that time up to the present date. We have, therefore, an experiment in liquor prohibition lasting for forty years. In Maine, the manufacture and sale of alcohol in any form is illegal, and punished by imprisonment and fine. The law is enforced, and we are told[21] regarding its operation that, “by tending to drive the traffic into by-ways and disreputable ‘dives,’ by removing the visible temptation offered by open bars and saloons, by making it relatively if not absolutely difficult to obtain drink, and by throwing a general atmosphere of subterfuge and disrepute about the trade, it has been a material agent in suppressing a demand which is not only regarded by many as morally wrong and physically ruinous, but is rendered by the operation of the law disreputable. These tendencies, receiving support from the general voice and sentiment of the women, have so influenced manners that, whatever share in the result ought to be assigned to the effect of prohibition, it is a fact that the demand for liquor, or the desire for it, either in large quantities or small, proceeds only from a limited section of the population.” If now we turn to the statistics of crime, pauperism, and insanity, we shall find a result which may appear a startling one to many. The statistics of the Insane Hospital show a great and progressive increase of patients, from 75 in 1850–51 to 685 in 1891–92. In regard to in-door paupers, the ratio is slightly lower than that of the neighbouring states:—

In regard to out-door paupers, the census attaches to Maine a number very considerably in excess of the average. As regards prison population, Maine has a low but decidedly increasing ratio, which comes out especially clearly in the case of the juvenile offenders in reform schools:—

In Kansas, another state in which prohibition prevails, dating from 1881, the United States census tells us that there were more prisoners in its penitentiary and county gaols in proportion to its population in 1890 than there were in 1880, and that of all the neighbouring states Kansas had in 1890 absolutely the largest ratio of prisoners to population. In Iowa, the third state in which prohibition has been most effectually carried out, we are told[22] that “in one small town prohibition was so effectually enforced that, when the bishop of the diocese visited it, an intended celebration of the Sacrament had to be abandoned because no wine could be obtained. In this town we are also told that opium dens are formed as the alleged result of prohibition, and my informant, whose testimony was unimpeachable, was told by a physician practising there that the use of opium in the place was a positive curse; he had twenty or thirty cases on his hands of persons suffering from the habit, both men and women.”

Public Habit and Conscience the best Preventive.

One may often draw false deductions from statistical evidence through ignorance of facts, which qualify and give quite another colour to the figures quoted, but the above data suggest that any lasting prohibition, other than the dictates of a man’s own conscience and sense of self-respect, may do more harm than good; for when not upheld as a fashion, excessive drinking can only be looked upon as a symptom of a debilitated or depraved nature, which, without access to drink, would show itself depraved in other ways, and which, if artificially kept sober and assisted thereby to live, will tend to perpetuate itself and widen the circle of its depravity.

May it not be said that a clear case is to be made out for the introduction of preventive measures in districts where drunkenness has become a matter of universal habit or fashion, where, therefore, the selective action of alcohol—from the fact that almost all take it—is reduced to a minimum, and where, from its general consumption in injurious quantity, the debility possibly transmitted may be considered as reaching towards a maximum? In this case preventive measures, introduced perhaps for a few years only, would be instrumental in getting the people into more reasonable habits of living, and might enable those who possessed the necessary tastes to cultivate such pastimes and recreations as mould keep them free from falling victims to a vice, to which they had previously given way rather from force of imitation than from any strong personal predilection. On the other hand, from our point of view, that of racial progress, the case for preventive interference is not so clear when introduced into a district where the population have in the mass learnt to lead sober lives, where drunkenness is looked upon as a vice, and where only those naturally without self-respect and proper self-control fall victims to drink; the artificial interference prevents the operation of a selective influence which eliminates from society many of its most undesirable elements. Under these conditions excessive drinking is but the symptom of something which lies deeper, namely, an organic defect, a poor and vicious type, and its prevention cures the symptom, while the disease remains and perpetuates itself to the hapless children of the future.

The Power of the Community over the Individual.

It might appear to the superficial reader that I am advancing arguments which would give a moral sanction to the broadcast scattering of the germs of phthisis and enteric fever, and to the leaving of unlimited whisky as a stumbling block at the doorsteps of one’s weaker neighbours. This is far from being the case. While it is undoubtedly true that the germs of phthisis have from time immemorial been freeing humanity from an unhealthy variation to which we are subject, and while alcohol has on the whole been ridding us of the vicious and uproarious since our forefathers first drank mead from the teats of the she-goat Heidhrun, yet it does not follow that any individual or set of individuals have a right to take upon themselves the responsibility of retaining and meting out such selective treatment.

Were there, indeed, no other means of improving the race and eliminating its at present inherent faults, it might be different, and, perhaps, one could hardly say that society might not take upon itself the responsibility of the actual outrooting of these faults by drastic measures; but other ways are open to it. At present society claims the right to exterminate the murderer, and a few decades back the life of the thief was also taken. But while these lives were taken by a custom which is the survival of retribution, and in which the State takes the place of the injured person or family, there is a growing feeling that such a motive is not of the best or highest, and that the only excuse for the disposal of the life or person of the individual is that of the seeking of the general well-being of the State. When we consider the enormous sacrifice in modern times of what were at one period thought to be personal rights (such as the right of every man to ill-treat and neglect his wife or children, or to live in whatever insanitary house or room he pleases, or to work as long as he wishes, etc. etc.), we can hardly draw, even in imagination, a line beyond which the State may not, at some future time, see its way to make claim upon the individual. It is, however, very improbable that the advanced politicians of any century will ever call for a general battue upon the inveterate drunkards or consumptives, nor is there any likelihood of the work of preventive medicine abating for one single instant, even for the sake of the race. The love of the individual is antecedent, both in the history of humanity and in the life history of each individual, to any regard for the race, and the latter is but an extension of the former feeling. While, therefore, there are certain and sure means of improving the race by simple and unheroic measures, no one would for a moment dream of depriving the individual of all that modern medicine and civilisation can do for him.

The Necessity for replacing One Selective Agency by Another.

The microbes and other selective agencies have been improving the race, or at any rate have in the past been preventing its deterioration, but it by no means follows that this action is to be permitted to them in the future. We have studied them and have followed out their life histories; we know on what they thrive, and also that which is injurious to them; we can exterminate them; and human affection, that emotion beyond all others that we have to trust to for race perfection, demands complete control over “their reckless inroads.” But if the selecting microbe is to disappear, we have to replace it by something else. If the individuals of to-day are to have the advantage of better surface drainage, and an absence of their microscopic foes, the children of the future must not be the sufferers; and we must replace the selective influence of the microbe by the selective action of man’s forethought, which shall provide that these children shall alone be produced by healthy parents. We need have no fear of the removal of the selective influences that at present surround us, provided a selection is still carried on; but if we remove selective influences without replacing them by others, then racial decay is certainly and inevitably upon us. At the present time people with strong strains of insanity or phthisis marry freely. The dangers are to a certain extent realised, but these are generally overcome by the power either of personal attraction or dowry. A man may be summoned for neglecting to send his son to school, but at present there is no strong public feeling against the knowingly begetting a son who all his life may suffer from weak lungs or brain, and hence obvious disease is no bar in the marriage market.

How it is that the Production of Children by Diseased Parents is tolerated.

We cannot wonder at this state of things when we recall the fact that in less advanced times than the present a rapidly recruited population was often the determining cause of a nation’s continued existence. The depopulation produced by war and zymotic disease was often so dreadful that nations with great fertility alone survived; and thus it came about that all minor questions were sunk in the one great necessity, namely, that of keeping the population large enough to resist extinction or to effect foreign conquest.

Added to this, most of the sickly diseased offspring died in infancy as a result of improper feeding or want of care, and there was no such thing as the existence of a large section of the community evincing an increase of hereditary weakness. Under these conditions the parents of large families added so much the more to the strength and power of the community, and the production of children came to be regarded as a virtue. This view of the question very naturally survives, and is probably the reason why at the present day marriage with a diseased person is not viewed as a sin against the children that are to be produced, and against the community at large.

The Necessity for producing Posterity out of our Best Types.

But the end towards which we have to aim is the production in each generation of children from the best and healthiest of the population alone, for it is surely only reasonable that we should as a community pay the same care and attention to our own race propagation that a gardener does to his roses or chrysanthemums, or a dog-fancier to his hounds or terriers, or a cattledealer to his southdowns or shorthorns. That there is no means of improving our race so efficaciously as by selection we may be certain, and that there is no other way is highly probable; our interest in the subject, and the value we place upon changes the effects of which we shall never live to see, will determine whether we are prepared to adapt our ideas and modes of action to the lines that reason and the knowledge of the times have clearly pointed out as the only ones which it is expedient to follow.

I have so far only indicated in most general terms the aim which in my opinion we should have in view. We have in the two succeeding chapters to consider several problems somewhat similar to those which we have already discussed, and then it will be more easy to obtain a general view of the whole question. We may then consider what steps it may be advisable to take with a view to bringing about satisfactory selection of the population, remembering always that in such a matter nothing can be accomplished which has not the sanction and approval of the mass of the community. The education and conviction of the masses must precede legislation, so that we shall have to consider what is expedient, from a practical point of view, for us to do at the present time, and we shall leave speculation as to possible future action to those who have greater gifts of foresight, and who believe in the possibility of predicting the future action of such a complex machine as an empire of men and women.

FOOTNOTES

[19] “Problems of Greater Britain,” vol.i., chap.ii.

[20] “Liquor Legislation in the United States and Canada.” Rathbone and Fanshawe.

[21] Op. cit., p. 104.

[22] Op. cit., p. 170.