Darwinism and Race Progress

CHAPTER I.. Introductory.

INTRODUCTORY. PAGE Muscle and Brain versus Political Organisation--The Muscles and Brains of a Race are not bound to decay--The Fall of Greek and Roman Political Organisation--The Permanence of the Scandinavian and Jewish Types--Possible Racial Degeneration in Spain--Our Power to ensure our own Racial Progress--The Knowledge we possess regarding the Laws of Racial Change--Evolution--Modern Philanthropic Effort--Are these conducive to Racial as well as to Individual Well-being? 1–18

CHAPTER II.. The Standpoint of Biologists.

THE STANDPOINT OF BIOLOGISTS.

Lamarck’s View on Heredity--Darwin’s Law of Selection--Three Ideas involved in Selection--Selection is a Fact, not a Theory--How much is explainable by Selection?--Galton and Weismann--Are Acquired Characters Transmitted?--Many Cases of Supposed Transmission to be explained by Selection--Paucity of Experimental Evidence of such Transmission--The Reproductive and the Body Cells--Reproductive Cells unaffected by Local Changes in the Body Cells--Constitutional Change may, though it rarely does, affect the Reproductive Cell--The Facts of Evolutive Selection known to the Gardener and Breeder 19–43

CHAPTER III.. Causes and Signs of Physical Deterioration.

CAUSES AND SIGNS OF PHYSICAL DETERIORATION.

Modern Care for the Individual--Preventive Medicine--Micro-organisms of Diseases and their Extermination--The Reproductive Cells as a Rule unaffected by them--Man has been selected by the Action of the Microbes of Fever--Leprosy an Exterminator of the Unhealthy--Germs of Phthisis and Scrofula, our Racial Friends--If we stamp out Infectious Diseases we perpetuate Poor Types--Births, Deaths, and Marriages--Increase of Constitutional Weakness--Death-rate for Advanced Years on the Increase--Life Tables compared--Physical Degeneration of the Race already indicated 44–68

CHAPTER IV.. Insanity and Alcoholism.

INSANITY AND ALCOHOLISM.

Nerve Derangements, Insanity--The Importance of preventing its Transmission--Marriages of Insane Persons--Alcoholism a Habit, and Alcoholism a Sign of Mental Instability--Drink is a Selective Agency--Parents who drink from Habit may have Debilitated Offspring--Preventive Measures--Drink among Australian Convicts--Drink and Prevention in America--Public Habit and Conscience the best Preventive--The Power of the Community over the Individual--The Necessity for replacing one Selective Agency by another--How it is that the Production of Children by Diseased Parents is tolerated--The Necessity for producing Posterity out of our Best Types 69–89

CHAPTER V.. The Criminals, Incapables, and Those in Distress.

THE CRIMINALS, INCAPABLES, AND THOSE IN DISTRESS.

Crime is often an Acquired Habit--The Innate Criminal--The Jukes Family--Intermarriage does not stamp out Criminal Tendencies--Segregation of the Criminal an Ultimate and Effectual Resort--Our Unfortunate Use of the Word “Poor”--The Unfortunate, the Aged, the Incapables, and the Vicious, are treated alike--Our Poor-law Regulations are at Fault--The Idle and Vicious are Subjects for the Criminal Law--The Poor in very Deed--Our Misguided Attitude to these--The Incapables--Segregation Ultimately Required for their Elimination--Incapables to be Treated like Chronic Hospital Patients 90–110

CHAPTER VI.. Competition.

COMPETITION.

Competition of Brain against Brain--Does the Race show Increased Brain Capacity?--The Neolithic compared with the Modern English Skulls--Abeyance of Brain Development since Neolithic Times--Social Communities do not permit of the Destruction of the Less Intellectually Capable--Human Brain Power results merely in Wealth Accumulation--Further Study of Individual Competition--Those Competing are Handicapped by Property--Property is not always acquired by the Most Capable--Property Holders Less Capable than Property Acquirers--The Poor Child is scratched against the Rich Child--Modern Democratic Attempts to equalise the Struggle--Those who Succeed are Not Always the Best 111–134

CHAPTER VII.. Sterility of the Capables.

STERILITY OF THE CAPABLES.

Are the More Capable Relatively Sterile?--If so, we are Breeding from our Incapables--Capable and Ambitious Men Marry Late in Life--Many Unmarried Persons among Upper Classes--Lower Class Marriages are the Most Prolific--Their Infant Mortality is Greater--Artificial Restriction of the Family--Fertility of French and English Marriages Contrasted--Possible Swamping of the Capables by the Incapables--Artificial Restrictions at Present Most Disastrous 135–153

CHAPTER VIII.. Obligation in Parenthood.

OBLIGATION IN PARENTHOOD.

Are we prepared to carry out Selective Methods?--Rights of the Individual, and Obligations to the Community--Rights of Children and our Obligation to them--Our Sense of Obligation is Developing--Social Philosophers and Social Reformers--Segregation is Not yet Practicable--Segregation no New Idea, and ultimately a Necessary Practice--The Masses must be Taught the Main Facts of Heredity and Evolution--The End and Aim of Marriage--Our False Ideas regarding Marriage--The Stream of Life 154–170

Appendix 171–180

DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Muscle and Brain versus Political Organisation.

In the history of the world, nations have arisen from comparative obscurity, have occupied positions of eminence and power, and have then sunk into obscurity again. The Egyptians, who built their pyramids and temples by the hands of the peoples they had conquered in war and enslaved, were themselves conquered by Greeks; and these conquerors, at first ignorant and savage, developed on the bases of Eastern and Egyptian civilisation to a point never before reached. But the Greeks in their turn were replaced by the younger Latin race, who were also at first less civilised than the nations they conquered. The Romans then developed and established an empire, which men believed would be everlasting, but it, too, disappeared, to give place to the Teutonic states of modern Europe. So strikingly alike in their progression have been the histories of the peoples of the past that it is quite a commonplace to hear the life of a nation compared to that of a man as being a history of growth, maturity and decay.

But the analogy is at most a very imperfect one, and, if content with having made it, we leave the subject, we shall fail to note the real facts of racial development as indicated in the pages of history.

We may regard a nation from two points of view. First, we may look at the muscle and brain power of the individuals who comprise it; secondly, we may view it as a political organisation struggling against the effects of climate, geographical position and other rival organisations. These aspects are, of course, not mutually exclusive, for the success of a nation in its political struggle will depend in great measure upon its innate muscle and brain power; but, on the other hand, a nation possessing admirable innate or organic qualities may fail as a political organisation on account of insurmountable obstacles placed in its way. When therefore we read of the fall of the Roman Empire or the conquest of the Greek states, we may be dealing with a question of actual racial and organic deterioration comparable in some slight degree to senility; or, on the other hand, we may have before us a question entirely apart from this, that of the struggle of a people against obstacles which have at last become insuperable. It will be necessary to examine the facts of history in greater detail in order to find out whether a race undergoes of necessity any organic change comparable to growth, maturity and decay, exclusive of the changes which may occur in the political organisation of the race and its fortuitous position in respect to other organisations.

The Muscles and Brains of a Race are not bound to decay.

We are dealing in the following pages with race rather than nation; with muscle, blood and brain, rather than with political power and influence; let us turn then to history in order to find out whether or not organic deterioration must actually close the history of every race, for if this is the case, our studies of racial change, though of none the less intellectual interest, will have lost their promise of practical utility. But, fortunately for the hopefulness of our future work, we may anticipate by saying that history shows us that the innate and organic is that which is most permanent and lasting, and that change and catastrophe in a nation’s career have in most cases been due to circumstances which we may term surrounding or accidental. We shall see that races, unlike individuals, may remain through the whole of their historic period without any sign of organic decay, but that the organisations, on the part of individuals of the race for purposes of trade or protection, may be prone to dangers which sooner or later overtake them.

The Fall of Greek and Roman Political Organisation.

A few illustrations will assist in making these points clear, and we may begin with the fall of the Greek states under Macedonian rule. It is here quite wrong to assume that the Greeks were at the time of their first conquest a deteriorated race; individually their conquerors were probably inferior to them; indeed, Alexander, the Macedonian, is reported to have said in a burst of passion, “The Greeks are demigods among Macedonian brutes.” The Greeks from earliest times lived in small and independent states, jealously competing with each other, and unwilling to join hands in the face of a common danger. Their political organisation was from the first of the weakest kind, and they were at all times in their history liable to fall a prey to any aggressors who might have a stronger and bigger political organisation than theirs. This want of cohesion all but gave Greece to Persia; indeed during the Persian invasion the independence of Greece was almost lost owing to the selfish neutrality or active treachery of several Greek states. It is evident, therefore, that the want of cohesion between a collection of small states carried with it an element of danger, and that the chances were that they would fall a prey sooner or later to foreign conquest. In the case of the Roman Empire we are dealing with a political organisation which has a place in the world’s history only second in importance to that of the British Empire. In its growth, maturity and fall, we do not trace the history of any particular race, for it bound together nearly all the ancient world. It is said that when Constantine removed the seat of government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, there were no Romans of pure blood in Rome itself, and the inhabitants of Rome, who migrated with Constantine, and took up their residence in Constantinople, soon lost even the Latin tongue, and Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire. But this organisation of Greeks, Thracians, Persians, Egyptians and Hellenized Asiatics lasted till Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 1453, and here the climax was due to other causes than those resulting from internal racial decay. Constantinople, the gate of the East, was by its position the richest and the most powerful city of the Eastern world, and while this was so, the organisation of which it was the centre remained comparatively secure. When, however, the merchants of Genoa and Venice opened up other routes of trade, the Eastern Roman capital lost its importance by the source of its power being diverted into other channels, and it was conquered by a race that formerly it had held in check. With the conquest of Constantinople the organisation of the Eastern Roman Empire ceased to exist.

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