[1] A tribute is due to the anonymous pioneer of sane and provident philanthropy who lately gave £20,000 to the London Hospital for research. Such a thing is a commonplace in New York, it is unprecedented in London.

[2] The word is used in the ordinary loose sense, to which there is no objection provided that there be no misunderstanding of its exact scientific meaning, as in Spencer's phrase “survival of the fittest”—i.e. not the best, but the best adapted. See p. 43.

[3] “Degeneration,” I think, is the best word for the racial, “deterioration” for the individual, change.

[4] That is in the ordinary sense of the words, not in the more exact sense—as I think—in which a good environment would be defined as that which selects the good for parenthood.

[5] Italics mine.

[6] We have seen that Huxley's assertion of the fundamental opposition between moral and cosmic evolution is unwarrantable. We do recognise, however, that in our present practice this opposition exists. Our ancestors were cruel to the insane, but at least they prevented them from multiplying. We are blindly kind to them, and therefore in the long run cruel. But the dilemma, kind to be cruel, or cruel to be kind, is not necessary. It is quite possible, as we have asserted, to be at once kind to the individual and protective of the future. On the other hand, it is also possible to be cruel to both. The London County Council offers us, at the time of writing, a demonstration of this. Sending wretched inebriates on the round of police-court, prison and street, with intermittent gestations, rather than expend a shilling a day, per individual, in decently detaining them, it serves at least the philosophic purpose of demonstrating that it is possible to combine the maximum of brutality to the individual and the present with the maximum of injury to the race and the future.

[7] Reprinted in The Kingdom of Man (Constable).

[8] Sociological Papers, 1905, p. 59.

[9] Whilst allowing due weight to Mr. Wells' opinion, we may also note that of Charles Darwin who, referring to his own phrase, natural selection, says, “But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate.” (Origin of Species, popular edition, p. 76.)

[10] Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 493. A valuable controversy but poor sport. Thinker versus politician is scarcely a match.

[11] This is discussed at length in the writer's paper, “The Obstacles to Eugenics,” read before the Sociological Society, March 8, 1909.

[12] Spencer introduced the non-moral word evolution in 1857, in order to avoid the moral connotation of the word progress, which he had formerly employed.

[13] In his recent work, The Origin of Vertebrates, Dr. W. H. Gaskell, F.R.S., has adduced much evidence in support of this thesis. He says, “The law of progress is this: The race is not to the swift nor to the strong, but to the wise.” And again; “As for the individual, so for the nation; as for the nation, so for the race; the law of evolution teaches that in all cases brain-power wins. Throughout, from the dawn of animal life up to the present day, the evidence given in this book suggests that the same law has always held. In all cases, upward progress is associated with the development of the central nervous system. The law for the whole animal kingdom is the same as for the individual. ‘Success in this world depends upon brains.’”

[14] We may recall the words of Lear:—

“Is man no more than this? Consider him well: Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume:.... Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.”

[15] Says Darwin, “So little is this subject understood, that I have heard surprise repeatedly expressed at such great monsters as the Mastodon ... having become extinct; as if mere bodily strength gave victory in the battle of life. Mere size, on the contrary, would in some cases determine ... quicker extermination from the greater amount of requisite food.” In the Russo-Japanese War, one of the effective factors was the greater area of the Russian soldier as a target, and the disparity between the food requirements of the little victors and the big losers.

[16] Quoted from a Paper read by Mr. Galton before the Eugenics Education Society, October 14, 1908, and published in Nature, October 22, 1908.

[17] See the author's paper, “The Psychology of Parenthood,” Eugenics Review, April, 1909.

[18] An authoritative statement on this point has already been quoted from Sir E. Ray Lankester's Romanes Lecture of 1905, p. 42.

[19] The exception of one or two large animals, like the elephant, is not important. In proportion to body weight man's birth-rate is lower than theirs. And it is to be noted that the “infant” mortality is very low in this case, where the birth-rate is so low. Says Darwin, of the young elephant. “None are destroyed by beasts of prey; for even the tiger in India most rarely dares to attack a young elephant protected by its dam.” The dam has no factory to go to, and no beast of prey to sell her alcohol.

[20] “The fulmar petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird in the world.” (Origin of Species, popular edition, p. 81).

[21] The Wheat Problem, by Sir Wm. Crookes, F.R.S., 2nd edition, 1905. The Chemical News Office, 15, Newcastle St., Farringdon St., E.C.

[22] See Chap. iii. of the Origin of Species.

[23] Including even such an exceptional student as Dr. George Newman, who, in his book on Infant Mortality, regards a falling birth-rate as an essential evil, and actually declares without qualification that the factors “which lower the birth-rate tend to raise the infant death-rate.”

[24] It is not necessary to point out again the exception of the elephant, nor to explain it.

[25] Mr. Galton believes their number has been exaggerated.

[26] Quoted from the author's lectures on Individualism and Collectivism (Williams and Norgate, 1906).

[27] As is usually the case, except when the mother or the father is alcoholic or syphilitic.

[28] If we make a diagram of society, with the social strata labelled, and then proceed to make a eugenic comment upon it, certainly the line dividing the sheep from the goats, as for parenthood, would not be horizontal, at any level. Nor would it be vertical—as if the proportions of worth and unworth were the same in all classes. Some would draw it diagonally, counting most of the aristocracy good and most of the lowest strata bad: others would slope it the other way. I should not venture to draw it at all: there are individuals good and bad in all classes and races, and their relative proportions are unknown, at least to me.

[29] “For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools” (Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. I. chap iv.).

[30] It might be supposed that the words “inherent” and “inherited” were allied etymologically. This is not so. “Inherit” is derived from “heir,” and this from a verb meaning “to take.” In natural inheritance the heir inherits what is inherent in the germ-cells which make him. Says Professor Thomson: “The organisation of the fertilised ovum is the inheritance”—and the heir, we may add.

[31] Unless indeed it be an organism so lowly as only to consist of one cell throughout.

[32] The reader will remember the chapter, “A Berry to the Rescue.” “Says Lucy demurely: ‘Now you know why I read history, and that sort of books.... I only read sensible books and talk of serious things ... because I have heard say ... dear Mrs. Berry! don't you understand now?’”

[33] Contrast Mr. Galton, the propounder of the now accepted view:—

“As a general rule, with scarcely any exception that cannot be ascribed to other influences, such as bad nutrition or transmitted microbes, the injuries or habits of the parents are found to have no effect on the natural form or faculties of the child.” (Hereditary Genius, Prefatory Chapter to the Edition of 1892, p. xv.)

[34] In the later edition Mr. Galton discusses the question of the title, and says that if it could now be altered, it should appear as Hereditary Ability. We may note that, as the author says himself, “The reader will find a studious abstinence throughout the work from speaking of genius as a special quality.”

[35] The reader may note “A Eugenic Investigation: Index to Achievements of Near Kinsfolk of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society,” Sociological Papers, 1904, pp. 85–99 (Macmillan); also Noteworthy Families (John Murray, 1906).

[36] These researches have not yet been published.

[37] In the later chapters of a former book, “Health, Strength, and Happiness” (Grant Richards, London; Mitchell Kennerley, New York, 1908), I have discussed various aspects of heredity from the eugenic point of view more fully than has been possible here.

[38] See the last sentence of the quotation from Forel on p. 130.

[39] For definition of these terms see Chap. xi.

[40] By some such means we may hope that man too may some day become domesticated without losing his fertility!

[41] 1 Corinthians xii. 22, 23, 24.

[42] Quoted from the Author's Evolution the Master Key.

[43] Mr. G. K. Chesterton, one of the most amusing of contemporary phenomena, has lately said: “The most serious sociologists, the most stately professors of eugenics, calmly propose that, ‘for the good of the race,’ people should be forcibly married to each other by the police.” Readers unacquainted with Mr. Chesterton's standard of accuracy and methods of criticism might be misled by this gay invention.

[44] The Family, p. 20.

[45] EncyclopÆdia Medica, vol. ii., Article “Deaf-Mutism.”

[46] In a lecture, “The Obstacles to Eugenics,” delivered before the Sociological Society, March 8, 1909.

[47] Since these words were written there has been passed the “Prevention of Crimes Act,” which is the first attempt in this country to apply the elementary truths of the subject in legislation. As an essentially eugenic proposal it is to be heartily welcomed.

[48] Dr. Bulstrode's Lecture to the Royal Institution, May 15, 1908.

[49] This suggestion, first made by the present writer in March, 1908, and in the paper referred to on p. 205, is, I believe, to be the subject of an official enquiry.

[50] Sociological Papers (Macmillan, 1905), p. 3.

[51] “In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality to favour; it is, as we have seen, the basis of every action, and it is eminently transmissible by descent.”—Galton.

[52] Fortnightly Review, January, 1908.

[53] “As the German philosopher Schopenhauer remarks, the final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more importance than all other ends in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less than the composition of the next generation.... It is not the weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come, which is at stake.”—Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 893.

[54] Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iv. (F. A. Davis Co., Philadelphia, 1905).

[55] Part of the matter of this chapter was included in papers entitled “Racial Hygiene or Negative Eugenics, with special reference to the Extirpation of Alcoholism,” read before the Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health, at Buxton, 1908, and “Alcoholism and Eugenics,” read before the Society for the Study of Inebriety, April, 1909.

[56] Italics mine.

[57] To-day many of the children who make our destiny are born drunk, owing to maternal intoxication during labour: I have myself attended the birth of such children, both in Edinburgh and in York.

[58] This was written in 1892, before the accumulation of the modern evidence on the subject.

[59] “Alcohol taken into the stomach can be demonstrated in the testicle or ovary within a few minutes, and, like any other poison, may injure the sperm or the germ element therein contained. As a result of this intoxication of the primary elements, children may be conceived and born who become idiots, epileptics, or feeble-minded. Therefore it comes about that even before conception a fault may be present.”—McAdam Eccles, F.R.C.S., in the British Journal of Inebriety, April, 1908.

[60] See p. 111.

[61] London: James Nisbet and Co., 1906.

[62] Will our modern extremists be good enough to remember that Mr. Galton is the prime author of the doctrine that functionally-produced modifications are not inherited?

[63] The use of this word thus is unusual, to say the least of it. Dr. Claye Shaw simply means causal relation.

[64] The subject of alcoholism and race-culture really demands a large volume. There is no space here to detail the fashion in which the drunken mother poisons her child after birth, when she nurses it, since, as has been chemically proved, alcohol is excreted in her milk. Says a most distinguished authority, Mrs. Scharlieb, “the child, then, absolutely receives alcohol as part of his diet, with the worst effect upon his organs, for alcohol has a greater effect upon cells in proportion to their immaturity” (“The Drink Problem,” in the New Library of Medicine), and Dr. Sullivan refers to “numerous cases on record of convulsions and other disorders occurring in infants when the nurse has taken liquor, and ceasing when she has been put on a non-alcoholic diet.” The reader may be referred to my brief paper, “Alcohol and Infancy,” published in the form of a tract by the Church of England Temperance Society.

[65] This is printed in the British Journal of Inebriety, January, 1908, under the title “Inebriety, its Causation and Control”—with comments by numerous authorities.

[66] The author says “inherent defect.” I have omitted the adjective, as it is obviously misused. Antecedent would have been the better word, surely.

[67] Italics mine.

[68] Italics mine. A thousand pounds for cure—which does not cure—and twopence for prevention is, of course, the rule with a half-educated nation always.

[69] She died in a lunatic asylum. I have not heard that society ever offered her a public apology for its brutality to her.

[70] See Times report, February 28, 1908.

[71] Report of the Inspector under the Inebriates Acts for the year 1906.

[72] This drinking by women, which means drinking by mothers present, expectant or possible, is rapidly increasing in Great Britain, though almost unknown in our Colonies. It is at the heart that Empires rot.

[73] Cd. 4438. Price 4½d. Volume of evidence Cd. 4439. Price 2s.

[74] A careful and detailed enquiry by the present writer, published in the Westminster Gazette (Nov. 21, 1908), Daily Chronicle, and Manchester Guardian, and hitherto unchallenged, showed that, on the most moderate reckoning, alcohol makes 124 widows and orphans in England and Wales every day, or more than 45,000 per annum.

[75] Diseases of Occupation, by Sir Thomas Oliver. (The New Library of Medicine, 1908.)

[76] This chapter contains the substance of the author's Friday evening discourse, entitled “Biology and History,” delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain and Ireland, February 14, 1908. The substance of two lectures to the Royal Institution, entitled “Biology and Progress,” and delivered in February, 1907, is also included in the present volume.

[77] “It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was done, but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History (ever, more or less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little that were not as well unknown. Attila invasions, Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty-Years' Wars: mere sin and misery; not work, but hindrance of work! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly green and yellow with her kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which, poor History may well ask, with wonder, Whence it came? She knows so little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would have rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish choice, is her rule and practice; whereby that paradox, ‘Happy the people whose annals are vacant,’ is not without its true side.”—Carlyle, French Revolution.

“In a little while it would come to be felt that the true history of a nation was indeed not of its wars but of its households.”—Ruskin, Time and Tide.

[78] “Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.”—William Godwin.

[79] See the Author's paper, “The Essential Factor of Progress,” published in the Monthly Review, April, 1906.

[80] Gibbon does not enlighten us much on such vital matters: but my attention has been called to the following passage, not irrelevant here. It is from the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Book xii., chap. i., written about A.D. 150—Gibbon's critical epoch. I use the free translation of Mr. Quintin Waddington:—

“Once when I was with the philosopher Favorinus, word was brought to him that the wife of one of his disciples had just given birth to a son.

“‘Let us go,’ said he, ‘to enquire after the mother, and to congratulate the father.’ The latter was a noble of Senatorial rank.

“All of us who were present accompanied him to the house and went in with him. Meeting the father in the hall, he embraced and congratulated him, and, sitting down, enquired how his wife had come through the ordeal. And when he heard that the young mother, overcome with fatigue, was now sleeping, he began to speak more freely.

“‘Of course,’ said he, ‘she will suckle the child herself.’ And when the girl's mother said that her daughter must be spared, and nurses obtained in order that the heavy strain of nursing the child should not be added to what she had already gone through, ‘I beg of you, dear lady,’ said he, ‘to allow her to be a whole mother to her child. Is it not against nature, and being only half a mother, to give birth to a child, and then at once to send him away? To have nourished with her own blood and in her own body a something that she had never seen, and then to refuse it her own milk, now that she sees it living, a human being, demanding a mother's care? Or are you one of those who think that nature gave a woman breasts, not that she might feed her children, but as pretty little hillocks to give her bust a pleasing contour? Many indeed of our present-day ladies—whom you are far from resembling—do try to dry up and repress that sacred fount of the body, the nourisher of the human race, even at the risk they run from turning back and corrupting their milk, lest it should take off from the charm of their beauty. In doing this they act with the same folly as those, who, by the use of drugs and so forth, endeavour to destroy the very embryo in their bodies, lest a furrow should mar the smoothness of their skin, and they should spoil their figures in becoming mothers. If the destruction of a human being in its first inception, whilst it is being formed, whilst it is yet coming to life, and is still in the hands of its artificer, Nature, be deserving of public detestation and horror, is it not nearly as bad to deprive the child of his proper and congenial nutriment to which he is accustomed, now that he is perfected, is born into the world, is a child?

“But it makes no difference—for as they say—so long as the child is nourished and lives, with whose milk it is done.

“Why does he who says this, since he is so dull in understanding nature, think it also of no consequence in whose womb and from whose blood the child is formed and fashioned? For is there not now in the breasts the same blood—whitened, it is true, by agration and heat—which was before in the womb? And is not the wisdom of Nature to be seen in this, that as soon as the blood has done its work of forming the body down below, and the time of birth has come, it betakes itself to the upper parts of the body, and is ready to cherish the spark of life and light by furnishing to the new-born babe his known and accustomed food? And so it is not an idle belief, that, just as the strength and character of the seed have their influence in determining the likeness of the body and mind, so do the nature and properties of the milk do their part in effecting the same results. And this has been noticed, not in man alone, but in cattle as well. For if kids are brought up on the milk of ewes, or lambs on that of goats, it is agreed that the latter have stiffer wool, the former softer hair. In the case of timber and fruit trees, too, the qualities of the water and soil from which they draw their nourishment have more influence in stunting or augmenting their growth than those of the seed which is sewn, and often you may see a vigorous and healthy tree when transplanted into another place perish owing to the poverty of the soil.

“Is it then a reasonable thing to corrupt the fine qualities of the new-born man, well endowed as to both body and mind so far as parentage is concerned, with the unsuitable nourishment of degenerate and foreign milk? Especially is this the case, if she whom you get to supply the milk is a slave or of servile estate, and—as is very often the case—of a foreign and barbarous race, if she is dishonest, ugly, unchaste, or addicted to drink. For generally any woman who happens to have milk is called in, without further enquiry as to her suitability in other respects. Shall we allow this babe of ours to be tainted by pernicious contagion, and to draw life into his body and mind from a body and mind debased?

"This is the reason why we are so often surprised that the children of chaste mothers resemble their parents neither in body nor character.

“... And besides these considerations, who can afford to ignore or belittle the fact that those who desert their offspring and send them away from themselves, and make them over to others to nurse, cut, or at least loosen and weaken that chain and connection of mind and affection by which Nature attaches children to their parents. For when the child, sent elsewhere, is away from sight, the vigour of maternal solicitude little by little dies away, and the call of motherly instinct grows silent, and forgetfulness of a child sent away to nurse is not much less complete than that of one lost by death.

“A child's thoughts and the love he is ever ready to give, are occupied, moreover, with her alone from whom he derives his food, and soon he has neither feeling nor affection for the mother who bore him. The foundations of the filial feelings with which we are born being thus sapped and undermined, whatever affection children thus brought up may seem to have for father and mother, for the most part is not natural love, but the result of social convention.’”

[81] Cf. the similar dicta of Darwin and Pearson (p. 279).

[82] National Life from the Standpoint of Science, p. 99.

[83] “Decadence,” Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, by the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., delivered at Newnham College, January 25, 1908. (Cambridge University Press.)

[84] “Restless activity proves the man,” as Goethe says.

[85] Munera Pulveris, par. 6.

[86] The Data of Ethics, par. 97.

[87] Hereditary Genius, Prefatory Chapter to Edition of 1902, pp. x. and xxvii.

[88] “The Survival-Value of Religion,” Fortnightly Review, April, 1906.