The Groundwork of Eugenics (1909)Pear

8/2/2019 The Groundwork of Eugenics (1909)Pear

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,4-1 UNIVERSITY OF LONDONGALTO.N LABORATORY FOR NATIONAL lA UEUGENICS LABORATORY LECTURE SERIES. !

The Groundwork ofEugenics

i;v

KARL PEARSON, F.R.S

LONDONDLLAU AND CO., 37 SOHO SQUAR) W

1909Pri,r One muUiiig nci


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UiNlVERSlTY OF LONDONThe Francii3 GaSton Eugenics Laboratory

OLLEGE, GOWER STREET. W.C.

Pearson, F.R.S., in consultation with Mr. FranciisX, F.R.S. Galton Research Fellow : David Heron.Galton Research Scholar: Ethel M. Eldei

Computer : Amy Barrington.Natimml Eui^'cnics is the study of agencies under social

control, ilh! impair the racial qualilfuture generations^ cither physically .or mentally.

^ the intention of the Foundd\ that the Laborator\(i) as a storehouse of statistical material bearini;

Ofi me mental and physical conditions in man, and therelation of these conditions to inheritance and environment:

^s a^ centre for the publication or other form of distribu-information concerning National Eugenics ; (iii) as

training and assisting research-workers in specialpr',:b;L!r.:- Ill Ky

jvided for those who are engag'


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The Groundwork of Eugenics

BY

KARL PEARSON, F.R.S.

" You ask whether I shall discuss ' man.' I think I shall avoid the subject, asso surrounded with prejudices ; though I fully admit it is the highest and mostinteresting problem for the naturalist." Letter of Darwin to Wallace, 1857

LONDONPUBLISHED BY DULAU AND CO.37 SOHO SQUARE, W.

1909Price One Shilling


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PREFATORY NOTEThis paper gives the substance of two lectures deliveredas an introduction to a Course on the Science of NationalEugenics at the Galton Laboratory, February 23 and March2, 1909.

It is published because the Staff of that Laboratory hasfound the need of some introduction to the science ofEugenics, which shall place the results of their investiga-tions in a simple form before the layman. The aim of thepresent series of publications is to state the conclusionsdrawn from laborious statistical investigations and theirbearing on national welfare in non-technical language suitedto the general reader.

S'?/


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS.Does a real biological science of the evolution of humansocieties exist ? This is the problem foremost in the mindsof many thinkers to-day, and likely in the near future toforce itself irresistibly on the attention not only of statesmen,but of all who have the national welfare at heart.Can we place ourselves outside the community of which

we form a part, and study the effects upon it of environ-ment, of occupation, of nourishment and of breeding in thesame judicial manner as the owner of a herd of shorthornsapproaches the like problems? The question cannot beanswered with a light ' Yes ' or ' No ' according to the tasteor sentiment of the respondent. We are not in the positionof the owner, but we are members of the herd ourselveswith all the feelings of our class, the prejudices of our edu-cation or want of education, the strong emotions of our sex,and the complex passions of our race and stock. We cannotmake direct experiments on our fellow-men, and study train-ing and nurture and parentage as it is possible for the ownerof a thoroughbred stud to do. Yet if these admitted diffi-culties forced us to answer ' No ' to our question, they wouldequally compel us to deny the possibility of a real study ofmedicine. The clinical ward, the post-mortem room, thepathological laboratory, the asylum and the sanatoriumnay, the bared soul as well as the bared body of many aprivate patientcompel the higher type of medical man,who is ever student as well as adviser, to repress sternly theA 2


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4 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSpersonal and place himself outside the herd for the further-ance of his science and the effectiveness of his craft.To him also social conditions render direct experiment

largely impracticable. He can only seek for and may pos-sibly discover a group of his fellows, who are making therequired experiment on their own initiative. But such isthe great variety of human conduct and taste, such theextent of human blindness and folly, that it is possible withtime and energy to discover and observe groups of individualsmaking most of the experiments, that the student of medicineor eugenics might wish to institute had he the aloofness ofa superman controlling a herd of men.Man himself makes the experiments which are directly

impossible for the eugenist. This stock marries kin for sixgenerations ; those parents surfeit themselves with alcoholthere the tuberculous taint meets insanity ; here the man ofgenius marries into his class ; there he takes a woman of thepeople. There is hardly a phase of nurture and of environ-ment, or of parentage and of ancestry which cannot befollowed up,not in a single experiment, but in repeatedexperiments,if the time and energy to investigate areforthcoming.The science of eugenics does not propose to experiment

on man ; it endeavours to lay before us the results of man'sexperiments on himself, and this in such numerous casesthat the evidence must carry with it conviction. Our objectis to form an analytical record of man's experiments onhimself, to draw from the history of his successes and failuresthe biological laws which govern his social development,and upon the basis of the knowledge thus gained to predictwhat lines of conduct foster, what lines check national wel-fare. Conduct may be enforced by a social or by a legalsanction. The possibilities of enforcing conduct by such


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 5sanctions form the subject of 'Practical Eugenics,' which Ishall exclude entirely front consideration in this lecture. Itcan only be properly discussed after we have rrieasured thepresent state of our knowledge, and are able to estimate itsrelation to our existing social organisation. Before discussingpractical eugenics we must know the relative weight ofnature and nurture, of heredity and race, of environmentand training. These are wide subjects, on which at presenteven if we confine our attention to manwe have onlypartial knowledge. Some phases of what we do know willbe discussed in the later lectures, and when these are con-cluded we can return with greater fitness to what is feasiblein practical eugenics.

Meanwhile I return to my point that, while the student ofeugenics can make no direct experiments on man, he canobserve those experiments which mankind is every day onso vast a scale making upon itself. And he has to observethose experiments in the calm scientific manner of thephysician in his clinic ; he must not be led away to immedi-ate action by the first individual case, which appeals to hissympathy and emotions. The general rule can only belearnt when the statistics of many individual cases have beendealt with. Each characteristic, each virtue and each viceis protean in its forms, and not until we have massed caseupon case in our experience can we deduce the general driftof the whole series.

I would illustrate this by an attempt to consider some ofthe sources of feeble-mindedness in the children of theindustrial classes made to my knowledge quite recently in alarge manufacturing town. The family history of severalhundred mentally defective children was followed up withconsiderable energy and success. The result was that amost striking amount of alcoholism was demonstrated to


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6 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSexist in the ancestry, and it was supposed that this investi-gation confirmed the view that alcoholism in the parent wasone of the chief sources of mental defect in the children. Isuggested that a control series of normal children from thesame school districts should also have their family historiesworked out ; this was a harder task as the parents naturallyresented inquiry, but the result showed a ' striking amountof alcoholism ' in the parents of the normal children ! Itwould have taken far larger and more detailed data to deter-mine whether the intensity of alcoholism was greater in theancestry of the mentally defective or in that of the normalchildren. My informanta very keen and active socialworkeradopted the view that the prevalent alcoholismshowed that the whole industrial population of the districtwas degenerate, and that it was purely the result of chancethat some families had and some had not produced mentallydefective children. All that had been done was to dividethe population into two groups by the presence or absence ofchildren of this character.Now personally I might not be prepared to accept this

view; I might argue that alcoholism is a sign, just as muchas feeble-mindedness, of mental abnormality and not thecause of the latter. But the important point I want to em-phasise at present is : that we are not compelled becausewe find alcoholic parents to the feeble-minded to assumethat alcohol is the source of feeble-mindedness. It is avery complex statistical problem to determine whetheralcoholism is more or less prevalent in the parents of one orother class of children. And had it been determined asmore prevalent, it would not follow that alcoholism was thesource of the feeble-mindedness ; both may be differentmanifestations of the same ancestral weakness. You willfind this a useful point to bear in mind, when you note how


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS /alcoholism occurs in association with insane, feeble-minded,deaf-mute, criminal and generally defective stocks. Butassociation is not necessarily causation, and we may wasteon the fight against alcohol energy which could only destroythe admitted social evils, if it were directed to the ex-termination of the degenerate stocks themselves.

I have dwelt somewhat at length on this problem offeeble-minded ness in children and alcoholism in ancestrybecause it is not only a typical case, but a nationally im-portant case. It is such an easy stage to pass from theinspection of a few individual instances to a state of intensesocial feelingto a demand for the use of the axe in thebeer saloonthat we want above all things some calmscientific investigation of human society and its biologicalgrowth removed from the cries of the market-place andthe appeals of political parties. It is on this ground thatthe study of human society must, I claim, be admitted to anadequate place in the curriculum of our universities. It isnot so many years ago since the professor of animalbiology and the biological laboratory were unknown to theacademic world. Think what that absence meant for theknowledge of living formsnay, for the general culture ofmankind, for it marks a date before Charles Darwin hadrevolutionised our outlook on life ! Are we to assert thatthis great biological movement, which has won its way toequal rights in the academic fraternity, is to stop shortwhen it approaches the subject of man as a gregariousanimal? Is there no science of those vital factors whichmay improve or impair, physically or mentally, the racialqualities of future generations? And if there be such ascience is it not the first duty of the universities to discoverand propound its laws ?Now the genuine man of science will never admit that


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8 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSany portion of nature, that any group of mental or physicalphenomena is anoDiic, or without definite and discoverablesequences. We do not despair of meteorology because themethod or the man that will make it a fairly precise scienceis yet in the seeking. Astronomy sprang triumphant fromastrology, and the great Kepler himself, son of a womantried for witchcraft, started life by writing horoscopes. Itwould be as reasonable to throw alchemy and Paracelsusin the balance against modern chemical science, as to assertthat we must measure the possibilities of a study of humansociety to-day by the sociology of yesterday and the socialscience of the day before.The difference is great and it is threefold. In the first

place it is a difference of mental training and intellectualattitude. It is the difference between the student of human-ities and the student of science. Take a text-book ofpolitical economy such as is put into the hands of everystudent, for example that of President Walker ; there is nota single numerical association worked out, the very numericaltables given are purely hypothetical constructions of theauthor introduced to illustrate the logomachy; the wholereasoning is a reasoning about verbal notions, where we de-mand a determination of the correlation of associated causesbased upon recorded experience. Social science followedthe earlier political economy, and provided verbose discus-sion, where the first need was well-selected and well-recordedobservation. The fundamental change in our attitude is fromthat of the essay writer to that of the scientific inquirer. I>etme illustrate my point by a concrete example. I take theinfluence of the unhealthy trade of the father and the factoryoccupation of the mother on the health and intelligence ofthe children. Well, very much has been talked, very muchhas been written, on that subject ; but the only real way to


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 9answer the problem is by examining statistically the effect onsome 20,000 or 30,000 children of the occupations of theirparents. This is precisely what Miss Elderton has recentlydone, and I do not believe that any verbal discussion on whatought to follow can be anything like as satisfactory as notingwhat actually has happened. The next point is that evenwhen a few generations ago statistics were collected andexhibited, there was no effective method of deducing thekernel from them. Our power of interpreting statistics, ofmeasuring the exact,degree of relationship between associatedphenomena, has enormously increased during the last fewdecades. We have really to deal with the discovery of anew calculus, which means not only for social problems, butin many other fields, a very potent instrument for analysingnumerical records. The association of phenomena, the in-terrelationship of quality and environment, the dependenceof characters on'nurture and on nature can now be measuredwith an ease and accuracy which were practically unknowntwenty years ago.When we come to deal with man in the mass, to estimate

the characters of each group of the social body, to weighthe amounts of virtue and of vice, of health and disease, ofintelligence and mental defect, it is not of the individualbut of the assemblage or array with certain qualities that wehave to treat. This array may consist of several hundredsor thousands, and its common or ' recognition ' marks, bethey social or anti-social, its fertility, its dominance or decaymust form the subject of our study.

If you consider that point for a moment, namely, that wepropose to study the differentiated groups of mankind withinthe same social body, to ascertain which of these differ-entiated groups is, owing to its characteristics, the mosteffective for this or that purpose, to determine not only its


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lO THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSrate of increase, but the extent to which its quaHties aretransmitted to its offspring and modified by environment,then you will perceive that what we are concerned with inthe main is the actuaj'ial treatment of large numbers. Youwill understand why great statistical advances had to bemade, before it became possible in an effective and notmerely periphrastic manner to study those agencies whichmay improve or impair the racial qualities of future genera-tions, in a word, to study eugenics. We may have to collectour data from individual cases, but our results apply to thedifferentiated group as a whole. In this sense the scienceof eugenics is not personalpractical eugenics may touchpersonal conductbut the generalisations of the scienceapply as I have endeavoured to indicate to groups of manyindividuals, differentiated by this or that series of characters,and subject to this or that nurture or environment.

This transition from declamatory assertion to statisticalproof is the characteristic feature of eugenics. And I needto insist on it Jiere. It is not many weeks ago since thefolly of the Eugenics Laboratory was held up to the studentsof this College because it was asserted to lay much stresson nature and little on nurture, to emphasise heredity andneglect environment. I have heard elementary teachersassert that we were depriving them of their raison detre^ whichthey told us was the conversion of bad material into goodby a fitting environment, by a judicious course of trainingand nurture. Far be it from me to underrate without studythe effects of environment ; I hold no brief against environ-ment ; I am not pledged to any formula of nature againstnurture. But I am unable to find that our declamatoryfriends have themselves made any quantitative study of therelative value of nature and nurture, and while they pro-claimed our folly downstairs, there was comfortably lodged


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS I Iin the pigeon-holes in the Laboratory upstairs a good dealof evidence as to the relative intensity of the inheritanceand the environment factors. I refer to this point as anillustration of what I mean, when I say that the method ofinvestigating the laws of human societies is changing fromthe verbal to the statistical, and the problem of the partsplayed by nature and nurture cannot be solved by appealingvaguely to the excellent work of the schoolmaster or to theadmitted advantages of Peabody Buildings.As we are here on the site of what is not unlikely to proveone of the great battlefields of eugenics, I would illustrate,by one example only, how the problem of nature versusnurture has been prejudged. There is hardly a practicaltext-book on ophthalmology which does not accept thetheory that the school is the hotbed for the production ofshort-sight. Ifyou endeavour to tracethis traditional attitudeto its source, you will find that the main authority for it isthe work of a German ophthalmologist, Cohn, who examinedthe eyes of several thousand children, and recorded theirincreasing myopia with increased number of years at school.From this it is easy, but not logical, to assert that years ofschool life produce myopia. It would be equally valid toassert that the number of years a boy spends on arithmeticlengthen his head, or, perhaps, more valid still to say thatthe lengthening of his head produces myopia. Unfortun-ately modern civilisation does not admit of our studyingseveral thousand children of civilised parents with normalhome environment, growing up without school, and ascer-taining whether their short-sight would or would not in-crease with growth.

But Cohn's original work gives us ground for pause ; hehas not only published a table giving the years at school,,but also a table giving the years of age in conjunction witK


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12 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSshort-sight, and thence flow by modern statistical methodstwo definite facts :

(i) That myopia is more closely connected with years oflife than with the number of years at school.

(ii) That allowing for the high correlation between yearsof life and years at school, then for a constant age there issensibly no relation between the intensity of short-sightednessand the length of school life.Myopia is thus quite sensibly related to age, but if age be

a measure of some continued and detrimental environment,that environment does not appear to be school life.

I cite this widely accepted theory'that school is the hot-bed for the production of short-sightednessas an excellentillustration of the old and the new methods.

Miss Barrington, who has recently been investigating thisspecial subject of vision., has endeavoured to find some featureof home environmentthe overcrowding, or the economic,moral and physical surroundings of home and parentagewhich may be definitely associated with defective sight.She fails to discover any substantial influence at alltheintensity of environmental influence is insignificant as com-pared with the strength we can demonstrate to exist in thiscase for the factor of inheritance.As I have said I hold no brief for nature against nurture,

but I do demand that their relative intensity shall bemeasured, not theorised about. There will in the future bebig battles on this field of nurture and nature ; I would askthose of you who hold the lists to see that the combatantsshall fight not with opinions and words, but with facts, and,what is more, properly interpreted facts.

Let us pass from the spirit and method of eugenics tothe third cause which has made it possible for a real studyof the laws of human society to be evolved now. That


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 1cause is the great progress in the knowledge of hereditywhich has been made by biology in recent years. With themain features of that knowledge most of you are probablyfamiliar, but there are certain fundamental points of itwhich bear so closely on the science of eugenics, that wemust linger briefly over them. Foremost among these isthe far-reaching distinction between the somatic and germcells of an individual. By aid of the latter and the latteronly, can, at least in the higher forms of life, a new individualstart, and directly from the germ cells of the parent arise inthe first place the germ cells of the new life. This hypo-thesis of the continuity of the germ plasma has beenfundamental as a biological conception since it was pro-pounded by Weismann, and its important bearing oneugenics is manifest ; it does not involve but it is closelyallied to the principle of the non-inheritance of acquiredcharacters. Darwin thought it desirable to invent a vastsystem of particles which pass from each body-cell and carryits characters to the germ cells of the parent, whence they aretransmitted to the offspring. The actual manner of passagefrom somatic to germ cell, whether by blood or nerve, hasnever been settled, the ' pangene' has never been corporeallylocated. In the more modern view the bodily resemblanceof parent and offspring arises, not because the somatic cellsof the one have contributed to the somatic cells of the other,but because both are the product in the moiety of a con-tinuous germ plasm. There is not the least doubt that thisexplanation is simpler and more consonant with our presentknowledge. But once accepted, we see :

(i) That the possibility of transmitting an acquired char-acter depends on the somatic cells being able to affect thegerm cells.

(ii) That the effect on the germ cells must be to produce


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14 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSa character similar to that acquired by the original somatic^ells in a second somatic product.Now there is no logical reason for a priori denying that

some modifications of the somatic cells may disturb theequilibrium of the germ cells. The continuity of the germplasm is not equivalent to its uniqueness. The slightestexamination of a human family shows that all the germcells of one individual cannot be alike, the germ plasm con-tains many possibilities. It is conceivable that modifyingthe somatic cells as by excessive under- or over-nourishment,some of these germ possibilities may be rendered less prob-able or even eliminatedage might achieve the same end.But without something corresponding to Darwin's ' pangenes 'it is inconceivablethat change in the somatic cells could produce-an allied possibility in the same direction in the germ cells.

The improbability of the somatic cells discharging materialcharacter-bearers to be reabsorbed by the germ cells isphysiologically great, but it might have to be faced, if therewere any good evidence for the inheritance of acquiredcharacters. The evidence for this may be classed as follows :

{a) If acquired characters were inherited evolution would^have proceeded at a much greater rate. The reply to this isthat in the light of recent physical work there is no needto quicken up evolution ; we now know that the biologistsand geologists were right and the physicists and mathe-maticians wrong in the length they fixed for the life of the'earth. Further, if acquired characters were inherited, theywould certainly have involved the inheritance of acquired de-generacy and defect as well as of acquired advantage, andthis would not have worked wholly for progression.

{b) Direct experiments.^1 We are only concerned with those on mammals. In the case of plants

,and insects there is at present much controversy and little firm ground.


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 1(i) The most famous are those of Brown-Sequard, who

is usually asserted to have produced epilepsy artificiallyin guinea-pigs, and found it inherited in the offspring. Theactual experiments are by no means of this decisive char-acter. The injured animals had among their young nineteenwho suffered from some defect of their nervous system, andmerely two out of these nineteen had a disease which mightbe termed epilepsy. Westphal undertook twelve years latera similar set of experiments and found one case in whichthe two offspring of an epileptic pair were epileptic. Ober-steiner in 1875 found in thirty-two young two cases in whichhe believed the artificial epilepsy of the parents to be foundagain in the offspring. In the fifteen following years hefailed to repeat the experiment, because he could not arti-ficially create the epilepsy, which suggests that the firstmaterial may have belonged to an epileptic stock. Sommerin trying again to repeat such experiments came only tonegative results. It will be seen that the Brown-Se'quardexperiments are wholly inconclusive and must remain so.

(ii) A second section of experimental work is that onacquired immunity. Very small doses of poison graduallyadministered produce an immunity against large doses. Ithas been found that this immunity is transmitted to the off-spring and the offspring are for a limited time immune tothe poison. Important experiments of Ehrlich have beenclaimed as evidence of the inheritance of acquired characters.But there is a striking exception to the rule, ivununity ofthe father produces no effect on the offspring. It is only theimmunity of the mother which influences the offspring. Theview that the immunity is produced by ' antibodies ' in theserum of the blood, depends upon other results as to im-munity, but it suffices to explain without any inheritance ofacquired characters how the mother transmits to unborn off-


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1 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSSpring immunity, as she is well known to be able to transmitdisease.

A direct experiment on a large scale is that of vaccination,which, continued for many generations, has not produced per-manent immunity from small-pox in the race. Precisely thesame result occurs with diphtheria immunity. Werniche hasshown that an immune mother, but )iot an iniDuine father,will produce immune children. The immunity thus acquiredmay last as long as three months, but it disappears with thegrandchildren.

It would be as reasonable to speak of these cases as the' inheritance ' of acquired characters, as it would be to speakof a newly vaccinated baby 'inheriting' from the calf an im-munity from small-pox.

(iii) Actual experiments have been made on mutilation-inheritance. In 1887 Zacharias, at the gathering of GermanNaturalists, appeared with two tailless kittens, the offspringof a mother who had been curtailed. But the pedigree offather and mother for many generations would have to becarefully scanned in order that we might be clear as to ances-try, and cats are not infrequently born tailless without a tail-less family history. Weismann in twenty-two successivegenerations of curtailed mice had 1,592 tailed offspring andnone born in any degree tailless, and Bos and Von Rosenthalhave confirmed on both rats and mice these experiments.^

That unhealthy life, alcohol, excess of any kind, may causeweakened somatic cells to react on the germ cells, and affectthe physique of the offspring, may be accepted, but this doesnot involve the inheritance of acquired characters. Indeedthe whole of the proofs recently given that drunkenness isfound in the parents of idiots, epileptics, the insane and the

' Martius (Patho^cnesc innerer Krankhdten, 1909) gives a trenchantcriticism of all this evidence to which I am much indebted.


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 1criminal, and of women who cannot suckle their own off-spring, fail because they do not satisfactorily demonstratethat the drunkenness was acquired by a normal stock, in whichno degeneracy was known before the parent took to drink. Ifwe start, not from the offspring of the alcoholic, but from thealcoholic themselves, and work backwards, we find in themajority of cases that they come of alcoholic, epileptic ordegenerate stocks. Hence while we are not forced to denythat injured somatic cells may sometimes degrade the germcells, we must be very stringent in our criticism of the typeof proof habitually given of such interaction. It would in-deed seem that while Nature had made it easy for an indivi-dual to modify his bodily cells, she has made it very hard forthe toxine in either blood or lymph to reach the germ cells.As Martins puts it : ' The individual stands in far greaterdanger than the race '.

It may not be out of place at this point to remind you ofthe experiments by which Mr. Galton endeavoured to testDarwin's theory of pangenesis. He interchanged the bloodof two types of rabbits, but found absolutely no change inthe character of the offspring procreated after the inter-change. This is strong, if not wholly conclusive, evidencethat no ' pangenes ' are carried by the blood.

{c) Lastly we have a great deal of loose and illusoryargument, which centres round the name of Herbert Spencer,and which is not uncommonly used by educationalists, whentryingwhich is quite unnecessaryto justify their work totheir fellow-men. There is a very apt tale about HerbertSpencer, told by Mr. Galton in his 'Memories'. HerbertSpencer once said in the presence of Huxley and others:' You fellows would little think that I wrote a tragedy whenI was young'. Huxley said promptly: 'I know what itwas about '. Spencer declared it was impossible as he had


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1 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSnever shown or even spoken of it to any one before. Huxley-persisted. Spencer put him to the test. Huxley replied : ' Itwas the history of a beautiful induction killed by a nasty littlefact'.The beautiful induction, that human progress has been ac-

celerated by the acquired results of education inherited bythe offspring, is killed by the nasty little fact, that no con-clusive experiment on mammals which showed definiteaction of somatic cells upon germ cells in an aUuneci^ directionhas ever been made, and from the standpoint of modernbiology such action is not only nigh unthinkable, but must beas largely harmful as useful. The race has evolved protec-tion for itself from individual excess, by rendering the germcells largely independent of the somatic cells and theirchanges.

It is not only at this point, but at another also, thateugenics must receive help from modern biological knowledge.Without pledging ourselves to any special physiologicaltheory of heredity, it is quite possible to investigate the factsof heredity and to measure the rate of inheritance of anycharacter in man living in a community. If we accept thetheory of Mendel we reach in broad lines the same theoreticalresults as the Biometric School has reached from dealingsolely with the statistics of populations, namely, there is anaverage degree of resemblance between parent and child, andthis degree is lessened in geometrical progression as we passto grandparents and great-grandparents. Now as eugenistsour object is to determine to what extent a differentiated classof the community impresses its characters on its offspring,and the average effect is what we are seeking. It is not need-ful to pledge ourselves to any one theory of inheritance. Whatwe want to ascertain are the proportions of children whowill be born able in able stocks and in dull stocks ; what


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 1are the proportion of children who will develop insanity insound and in unsound stocks. The exact mechanism bywhich these proportions are maintained is of vital interestto science, it is not essential when we have to deal withmankind in the mass and prescribe social treatment fordifferentiated clases.

In later lectures you will be shown how these problemsof inheritance have been approached from the statisticalstandpoint. It will be indicated to you that with our presentknowledge we can safely affirm that not only physical butpsychical characters, and not only psychical characters butmorbid and pathological constitutions, are largely, and prob-ably in absolutely equal degree, the product of inheritance.Indeed were we the ' superman ' we could breed a race ofabnormally shy men, as we could breed a race of abnormallytall men ; and we could breed a race in which six fingerswere the rule or one in which nearly every member was adeaf-mute.To sum up, then, this preliminary statement of what

eugenists may claim as bricks for the foundations of ournew structure :

(i) We depart from the old sociology, in that we desertverbal discussion for statistical facts.

(2) We apply the new methods of statistics which formpractically a new calculus.

(3) We start from three fundamental biological ideas:(a) That the relative weight of nature and nurture must

not a priori be assumed but must be scientifically measured ;and thus far our experience is that nature dominates nurture,and that inheritance is more vital than environment.

{b) That there exists no demonstrable inheritance ofacquired characters. Environment modifies the bodilycharacters of the existing generation, but does not modify


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20 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSthe germ plasms from which the next generation springs.At most environment can provide a selection of which germplasms among the many provided shall be potential andwhich shall remain latent.

(c) That all human qualities are inherited in a markedand probably equal degree.

, If these ideas represent the substantial truth, you will seehow the whole function of the eugenist is theoreticallysimplified. He cannot hope by nurture and by educationto create new germinal types. He can only hope by selectiveenvironment to obtain the types most conducive to racialwelfare and to national progress. If we see this pointclearly and grasp it to the full, what a flood of light itsheds on half the schemes for the amelioration of thepeople, and half the projects of unthinking charity ! Thewidely prevalent notion that bettered environment andimproved education mean a progressive evolution of humanityis found to be without any satisfactory scientific basis.Improved conditions of life mean better health for theexisting population ; greater educational facihties meangreater capacity for finding and using existing ability ; theydo not connote that the next generation will be eitherphysically or mentally better than its parents. Selectionof parentage is the sole effective process known to scienceby which a race can continuously progress. The rise andfall. of nations are in truth summed up in the maintenanceor cessation of that process of selection. Where the battleis to the capable and the thrifty, where the dull and idlehave no chance to propagate their kind, there the nation willprogress, even if the land be sterile, the environment un-friendly and educational facilities small. Give educationalfacilities to all, limit the hours of labour to eight-a-dayproviding leisure to watch two football matches a week


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 2 1give a minimum wage with free medical advice, and yetyou will find that the unemployables, the degenerates andthe physical and mental weaklings increase rather thandecrease. Then when your society is on the down-grade, youwill perceive that in granting what each democracy must de-mand and what each individual claims as a social right, youhave made the grant in such a way that the old safeguardfor national welfare, the selection of parentage, has beensacrificed, and that it has to be laboriously re-established bynew social sanctions. If these fail, then the collapse of yourcivilisation follows, and it will be replaced by a barbarismwhich pays little heed to or even rejoices in the cruelties ofuncontrolled natural selection. Loaves and the circuswages for the unemployable and the public football matchto kill timeare as much signs now as of old that selectionis being suspended, and that suspension undoubtedly meansthe rapid multiplication of the unfit at the expense of the fit.The man in the street looks upon society and the nation as

a very stable structure, which continues from generation togeneration to exhibit the like social habits and the likemarked racial features.

But is this really a correct view ? I must confess thatwhen I approach any class of the nation and statistically studyit through two generations I fail to find this supposed sta-bility. Mentally and physically each stratum of the com-munity appears to be ever in flux. Nor I think are thereasons for this change far to seek. They will be found inthe two demonstrable facts :

(i) That a selective death-rate is always at work in humansocieties ; and,

(ii) That the rate of reproduction of the various sectionsof any community is widely different.Man is a slow-thinking animal ; he takes a long time to


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2 2 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSgrasp a new idea, and a still longer time to let it take itsplace in the atmosphere of associations, which is the mediumthrough which he views his own relations to the universe,and discriminates the social and the anti-social in conduct.It is now fift}^ }'ears since the Origin of Species was published.We can now determine, and we have determined, themeasure of the selective death-rate in man. Death is not arandom archer, as he was thought to be of old. In from 50to 75 per cent, of cases the bolt of death is not random, butseeks the weak joint in the armour, the constitutional defect,the predisposition, which we know in many cases to be aninheritance. To the individual and his immediate friendsdeath and the crippling of activity by sickness and diseaseappear as the harshest contrasts of natural law and humanhope and sympathy. So great is, and must be, the personalfeeling in this matter, that in fifty years we have scarcelyrisen to the conception that death in its chief formtheselective death-rateis the principal factor which main-tains and elevates racial fitness ; that the great function ofeliminating the weeds is maintained in the garden of humanlife b\' the hand of death. Individually we shall never, per-haps, be able to realise in this wastage of life the hand ofa beneficent gardener. But for those who would endeavourto study human life from the outside, and judge what tendsto improve or to impair its efficiency, the selective death-ratemust remain a great and racially beneficent factor. Thereare two lines which often ring in my ears, and which pre-sumptuously I would have had the poet express somewhatotherwise :

So careful of the type she seems,So careless of the single life.

The welfare of the type is the outcome not of the careless,but of the heedful destruction of the sino^le life.


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS.

ILLUSTRATION OF NATURAL SELECTION


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Plate III,

SELECTIVE DEATH RATE IN MAN

LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHER.

Fig. (v).

PERCENTAGE ^qDEATHS 40OF CHILDREN

UN DER 2 1 3(females) 20

I o

o


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 23It is not the repression of human emotions, but the ex-

amination of life from a different I will not venture to sayhigheraspect which leads some of us to-day to questionwhether the many social changes which soften life to theindividual, which lessen the selective death-rate, tend to thefinal welfare of humanity. The conception of the destructionof the less fit as a beneficent factor of human growth mustbecome part of our mental atmosphere, we must look uponit as a chief cause of the mental and physical growth ofmankind in the past, not as a blind and hostile naturalforce carelessly crushing the single life, but as the source ofail that we value in the intellect and physique of the highesttype of mankind to-day.The time may come when human society can undertake

for itself what natural selection has wrought for it in thepast ; but the suspension of the selective death-rate must gostep by step with reforms which shall consciously replace thevigorous effectiveness of the old system. Therein lies thepurport of eugenics. For how does Nature work throughthe selective death-rate ? Simply and effectively. By thedeath ->( those who cannot stand the strain of life, she re-moves the weaker stock before it has had any, or its fullquotum, of offspring. When man knows better than atpresent what are the qualities which fit him for his task andfor his environment, he may consciously undertake whatNature has done for him by her selective death-rate ; to pre-pare him for this function is the true aim of tlie science ofeugenics. But when the eugenist realises the difficultiesin his way, when he comes in the future to sum up his successand his failure, I fancy he will turn with a feeling akin togratitude to that blind force of Naturethe selective death-ratewhich led man in his younger days irresistibly alongthe path of progress. There are religious faiths which look


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24 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSUpon pain as a divinely administered goodas a beneficialdiscipline. May not something of the same kind be realisedb\' those who stand on the firm platform of evolutionaryscience in the fiftieth year of its life ? Death, not the randomarcher of mediaeval notion, but the skilful marksman whoseaim is planned, has been in the past, and may perhaps longcontinue to be. the chief source of human progress as awhole. On the martyrdom of men is built the triumph ofmankind.

I have wandered somewhat from my pointthe unstablecharacter of human society owing to the selective death-ratebut I would impress upon you the fact that unless theeugenist realises the vastness of the forces at present atwork moulding human life, he cannot hope to take definiteactionan action based upon firm knowledgewhen hecomes to the criticism of present social tendencies.The eugenist as far as lies in his power has to replace

the selective death-rate by a selective birth-rate. The pasthas depended for progress on Natural Selection, can thefuture depend for progress on Reproductive Selection ? Myaim to-day is to insist on the gigantic part these two forcesplay in the evolution of human communities.You may not unreasonably say that I have so far talkedmuch about the selective death-rate but given you no proofthat natural selection really plays a part in human develop-ment. I gave the proof many years ago as a modest reply toLord Salisbury's famous Oxford address asserting that nobodyhad seen Natural Selection at work. Of course no biologistpaid any attention to my proof at the time, and it remainedthe special knowledge of biometricians, until Professor Floetzof Munich turned it up the day before yesterday and re-asserted its correctness.

The measure of the selective death-rate is extraordinarily


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 2Ssimple. It consists in the fact that the inheritance of thelength of life between parent and offspring is found statisti-cally to be about one-third of the average inheritance ofphysical characters in man. This can only be due to thefact that the death of parent or of offspring in a certainnumber of cases is due to random and not to constitutionalcauses.Let/ be the chance of death from a random, not a consti-

tutional source, then i - / is the chance of a selective deathin parent and i - p again of a selective death in the case ofan offspring, then ^

(i - /) ^ must equal about \ = '^6 more exactly.-. I -/ - -6

and / = '40. In other words 6o per cent, of deaths areselective. I put this resulttested from many seriesquitebroadly, and concluded that 50 to 75 per cent, of deaths inman were due to Natural Selection. I can bring this facthome to you by Figs, (v) and (vi) of Plate III. It is the samematter looked at from another light. You will note thesteady decrease of the death-rate with the greater con-stitutional strength of the parents.TABLE I. INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION OFPARENTS ON THE DEATH-RATE OF THEIR OFFSPRING.

A. Mothers and Daughters.Age of Mother at Death.

Offspring.


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26 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSB. Fathers and Daughters.

Ai^c of Father at Death.

Offspring.


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 27demonstrably a reall)' gigantic factor of continuous changein human societies.

If I turn to my second factor of social instabilitythedifferential birth-rate I must strive to convince you that re-productive selection is only second to natural selection in itsvast reaching effects on human life. If society is to reproduceitself without change from generation to generation, then,accepting the inheritance of human characters, each subclassof the community endowed with its special grade of intelli-gence or physique must be equally fertile. If it is not, thenthe successive generations will not be identical, and can onlybe made identical owing to a selective death-rate.

There are few persons who realise on how relatively smalla portion of each population the next generation depends.We have first to consider that many never reach the repro-ductive age at all. Here is the chief harvest of the selectivedeath-rate. In England of 1,000 males born only 680 liveto be twenty, and of 1,000 women only 708. Out of theseadults we have next to estimate how many never marry ordie without offspring. Here is the field not only of theselective death-rate, but of the selective marriage-rate. Itis very difficult from any English statistics to determine howmany adults never marry. No information on this point isasked in the death schedule for males ; it is asked, but im-perfectly answered, in the case of the schedule for females.From statistics of other countries,^ it seems to me that about

^One of the many grave detects of the English system of census and re-gistration returns is the absence of any record of civil condition in the maledeath registration. The Registrar-General informs me that the record of civilcondition in the case of female deaths is worthless, and that no useful returncan be made from it. In the Argentine I find that 60 per cent, die unmarried.In the returns for 1861 and 1862 for Scotland, 39,318 females died unmarriedout of 65,467 deaths, again almost exactly 60 per cent. Working on thelast United States Census I find that 51 per cent, of the population diedunmarried, and on the last two English Censuses and the Annual Reports


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28 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSanother 20 per cent, to 30 per cent, of adults never marry.To be on the safe side let us say that 50 to 60 per cent, ofthose born leave no offspring. Lastly, among those who domarry, how are the offspring distributed ? Clearly those whohave large families are responsible for a relatively large propor-tion of the next generation. Fig, vii, Plate IV, illustrates thedistribution of size of completed families in Quaker stocks.You will notice at once that the mean family is about 4*2children. On the other hand about half the families haveless, half more, than 3 3 children. Let us call families withless than y;^ children subfertile and those with more super-fertile. Then let us ask what relative amount of offspringthe 50 per cent, of subfertile and the 50 per cent, of super-fertile parents produce. The dotted curve gives the answer ;it represents in percentages the total number of childrenproduced, and we find the 50 per cent, of subfertile parentsonly provide about 25 per cent, of the next generationwhereas the superfertile parents give 75 per cent. This lawis practically universal for mankind ; it has been confirmedfor Denmark and for New South Wales (Fig. viii, Plate IV).^Fifty per cent, of the married population provide 75 percent, of the next generation. The same rule may be ex-pressed in another way : 50 per cent, of the next generationis produced by 25 per cent, of the married population, orabout 12 per cent, of all the individuals born in the lastgeneration provide half the next generation. This is notonly a general law, but it is practicall}- true for each class inthe community. This law of mine holds in a lessened degreethat 48 per cent, died unmarried. This indirect method of reaching the resultis, however, not very satisfactory. We may, I think, conclude in roundnumbers that 40 per cent, of the population dies before it reaches twenty-one(see Figs, v and vi) and that probably another 20 per cent, are never married.

^ I am inclined to differ from Powys and consider that this diagram indicatesmuch artificial sterility.


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS.

1 CURVE OF FERTILITY IN MAN.ENGLISH.

CURVES OF FERTILITY !N MAMNEW SOUTH WALES

Pig. (viii).


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Plate IVILLUSTRATION OF EFFECT OF ARELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FERTILITY

& INTELLIGENCE


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 29for other forms of life, but it appears to reach its highestintensity in the case of man (Table II). And I believe thatTABLE n. PROPORTION OF MATED INDIVIDUALS WHOPRODUCE 50 PER CENT. OF THE NEXT GENERATION.

Species.


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30 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSfertile 75 per cent. If you look at Fig. ix, Plate IV, givingthe distribution of intelligence in the population, based uponobservations of about 4,000 school-children and 1,000Cambridge graduates, you will see that 25 per cent, corre-sponds to about the range of slow, dull and mentally de-fective. I have taken 100 units of intelligence, which Iterm mentaces, to correspond to the range of the intellectswhich fall between the specially able and the average man.Now if we assume that the imbecile has zero intelligence,you will find that the average man has about 300 or perhapsrather more mentaces, and if we define genius to be about' the one man in a thousand ' level of ability, the genius hassome 600 or 700 mentaces. Now if we divide our popula-tion at 25 per cent., the mean number of mentaces of thisrather slow and dull group is 173 and of the 75 per cent.342, the average man having 300 mentaces. Now noticewhat happens if the line between the superfertile and sub-fertile be that of intelligence. In the next generation therewill be 50 per cent, of lower and 50 per cent, of the highergrade of intelligence, with an average for the whole com-munity of 257 mentaces, a fall of 43 mentaces in the generalability of the population : in the next stage the superfertileincrease to 78 per cent, of the population and the averageability has fallen to 210 mentaces; in the third generationthe superfertile element has risen to 98 per cent, of thewhole and the average intelligence has fallen to 180 mentaces.In Fig. X, Plate IV, this drop is represented by the con-tinual decrease in the areas of the circles, as the lower in-telligences with the higher fertility rapidly predominate.You will note the progression from genius towards extremedullness. To impress this dwindling of a character owingto reproductive selection on my readers, I will suppose as asecond illustration that cranial capacity is associated with


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 3the subfertile group. Skull I to the right of Plate Imarks the average man and skulls II, III and IV the de-generation which would follow in three generations. I donot intend by this to assert that intelligence is proportionalto cranial capacity ; it is not. But I want to emphasise thedeterioration which must follow association between fertilityand inferiority in any racially valuable characteristic. Bearthose skulls in mind and you will not easily forget the rate ofdegeneration which must follow any differentiation of theintelligence or worth of the population into superfertile andsubfertile groups. What I have said here applies not onlyto intelligence and cranial capacity but to every quality whichmay be associated with a differentiated grade of fertility.

I do not think anything can be more eugenicly impressivethan this principle that if fertility be correlated with anycharacter, the population must be unstable.And now I want to make a somewhat remarkable ad-

mission. Not only in man but in other types of life, it isextremely hard to find any character whatever which organi-cally is inai'kedly associated ivith fertility . Nature seems tohave effectually hindered living forms from undoing by re-productive selection her great achievements produced bynatural selection. It will be obvious to you that if one classwhich died twice as fast as a second, yet produced three timesas many offspring, the increased fertility would more thancompensate for the selective death-rate. I do know characterswhich are slightly related to fertility in mannotably acharacter which I will term ' toughness of constitution 'and measurable by longevitythe husband and wife wholive to eighty will have on the average before fifty years ofage more children than the pair who only live to sixty-five.But in Nature as a whole there is little relation of fertilityto any good or bad qualities of the individual.


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32 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSWhere, then, is the moral of my tale, if there be no organic

correlation between fertility and intelligence ? The answer'lies in emphasising the word organic. What Nature hasavoided man has artificially produced. That is the kernelo'i the whole matter for the science of eugenics. Approachthe problem as we will, the conclusion forced upon us is everthe same, the physically inferior, the mentally slow are notnaturally more fertile than the stronger in body and mind,but they are in our community to-day the more fertile, andthe process of deterioration I have exaggerated in that seriesof skulls is in progress. The moment w^e suspend the fullvigour of natural selection, the moment we artificially correlatefertility with any defect of physique or intelligence, we startthat downward movement. To check this movement Itake to be the special function of practical eugenic action.The correlation between fertility and unfitness will no

doubt be discussed more fully later in these lectures ; but Ishould like to indicate how complex the problem is, and howvery difficult it is to obtain the facts one desires to knowfrom the manner in which returns are made in governmentstatistical offices. One has to turn to the countries of theother world to get data which ought to be provided in thisand then the social conditions are so different that we haveto allow for wide possibilities of divergence in our results.

If we look upon society as an organic whole, we must as-sume that class distinctions are not entirely illusory; thatcertain families pursue definite occupations, because they havea more or less specialised aptitude for them. In a rough sortof way we may safely assume that the industrial classes are-not on the average as intelligent as the professional classesand that the distinction is not entirely one of education.Now the points we have to bear in mind are the following :

v(i) the size of completed families; (ii) the child mortality;


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS ^7,(iii) the relative marriage-rate ; (iv) the relative adult death-rate for each class. Only when we know all these fully, shallwe be quite certain as to how the different classes in a com-munity are altering. New South Wales ^ is one of the fewcountries where such data are effectively recorded, and TableIII illustrates the nature of the successive allowances to

TABLE III. FERTILITY WEIGHTS OF VARIOUS SOCIALCLASSES.

Completed Families. New South Wales.


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34 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSnet offspring or those that survive to fifteen are in the sameclass order; each industrial family has on an average halfa child more surviving than the average professional family.So far the balance is still in favour of the industrial class.But the next column shows you that this is not the wholegain. The industrial classes are marrying at a far morerapid rate than any other class ; five industrial marriages takeplace for every four professional marriages and roughly forevery two pastoral marriages. These rates are not true forEurope. Westergaard and Rubin believe the marriage-rateof the professional classes in Denmark to be one-third lessthan that of the industrial classes. In our own country Idoubt whether the professional marriage-rate exceeds halfthat of the industrial classes. Again, the small marriage-rate of the pastoral classes would only apply to a countrywhere the agriculturist is largely a pioneer. So far, how-ever, the race is markedly in favour of the industrial ascompared to the professional group. But here a new featurecomes inthe industrial classes may need a larger increase,because their wastage is greater. In the next column I haveplaced the death-rates for the several classes, consideringonly adults over twenty. We find the death-rate is selective^but it by no means compensates for the greater marriage-rate and greater net birth-rate. In the last column I haveallowed for marriage and death-rates of the various classes,and obtained what I term the fertility weight of the differentclasses. The lesson to be learnt from this last column istwofold : (i) that society is not a stable whole, the differentsocial classes multiply at very different rates, and (ii) thatsociety recruits itself from below, the rate of reproduction ofthe industrial classes being 30 per cent, greater than that ofthe professional classes.We cannot apply these result*? directly to the state of


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THE' GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 35affairs in England. The marriage-rate of the professionalclasses is much lower, and of the pastoral classes higherthe relatively low rate of those in domestic employment isof course maintained, but the inadequate multiplication ofthe domestic class is met by recruits, perhaps, as much fromthe pastoral as from the industrial classes. My object,however, is not to draw conclusions as to social classes, butto point out that our principle of treatment must be thesame, whether we deal with social classes, intellectual grades,or mentally or physically defective groups. We have ineach case to investigate their fertility weight as comparedwith that of other types. The aim of the eugenist is to en-force the principle, that society in every case must recruititself ' from above,' where 'above' has now to be interpretednot as referring to a social class level, but to the group withthe higher grade of the nationally desirable characteristic.Thus far we . have seen the large part played by selective

death-rates, selective birth-rates and selective marriage-ratesin determining the nature of the community, and in this youmay have realised how the science of eugenics is really em-braced in the statistical or actuarial study of the growth ofhuman society. But a study of death and fertility wouldcarry us but little way, had we not some measure of how theparental characters of each differentiated group are handeddown to their offspring. The results I am going to try andimpress upon you in conclusion to-day are based upon themeasurement of more than 1,000 families, and, as will beshown you in later lectures, may be considered closely truenot only for physical, not only for pathological, but for mentalcharacters.Man and woman do not mate at random ; our measure-

ments and observations show that for practically all char-acters there is a selective mating, like tends in a sensible but

C 2


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36 THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSsmall degree to mate with like. Assuming this ' assortativemating ' to exist, let us term exceptional the man or womanwho possesses more of a given character than every nineteenpersons out of twenty. Thus the tallest man in a randomtwenty shall be called exceptionally tall ; the best in arandom class of twenty students exceptionally intelligent.This is nothing more than a definition of what we will callfor the time being ' exceptional '. Now I find from ourstudy of the inheritance of human characters that fifty-twomarriages in 10,000 are of an exceptional man and woman,9,948 are of pairs of which neither or only one are excep-tional. In the fifty-two exceptional marriages, exceptionalchildren are produced in the ratio of nearly 26 exceptional to26 unexceptional, or about half the children are excep-tional. Of the 9,948 unexceptional pairs, the ratio will be474 exceptional to 9,474 unexceptional children, or ratherless than one-twentieth of the children will be exceptional.Thus while eighteen times as many exceptional children

will be born of commonplace as of exceptional parents, thecommonplace pairs only produce exceptional children atone- tenth of the rate of the exceptional parents. That greatmen are usually born of commonplace parents is only aparadox, when we forget that commonplace pairs of parentsare 200 times as frequent as pairs of exceptional parents, andthat accordingly the small chance of an exceptional sonoccurring to any commonplace pair is made up for by thefar greater number of such pairs.The model photographed in Plate II is an endeavour to

illustrate the point on which after all most eugenic inquiriesmust turn. In the relatively small cube in the corner is aprofusion of individuals represented by black peas bearingthe character you want for national purposes. In the greatmass of the general population represented by the remainder


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 37of the cube you see the sparsity of persons gifted with this ad-vantageous character. The bulk do not possess it, or perhapspossess its opposite, a detrimental attribute. Even in thegeneral population the majority of these scattered black peaswould be found concentrated round the exceptional corner.Now grasp this to the fulla minority in the community

producing the coloured or desirable in profusion, a majorityproducing the desirable very sparsely, and the colourless orundesirable profusely. Grasp further that social and politicalmeasures have reduced and will continue to reduce thestringency of the selective death-rate between these twoclasses. In the present state of social feeling we have onlyone resource for remedying thisthe selective birth-rate.In the light of the recent work of Heron and others, canwe definitely place our fingers on any desirable social char-acteristic to-day which has a selective birth-rate in its favour ?

I believe that there is not a single character which makesfor national welfare, which can be shown definitely to befavoured by a selective birth-rate at the present time. Socialconditions have allowed prepotent birth-rate to be associatedwith a tabid and wilted stock. It would matter little werenot the same conditions suspending also the old selectivedeath-rate. Combined, these two factors must give in thefuture the degeneracy I have endeavoured to illustrateto-night.These are the chief lessons which biological truths as ap-

plied to man have to teach us. Natural fertility is not markedlyassociated with good or bad characteristics. Given a highbirth-rate and a heavy death-rate Nature will preserve andadvance her human type with a cruelty to the individual,which social feeling is too strong at present to permit of, andpolitical power too democratic to leave unchecked. Butwhen the selective death-rate is reduced, as far as legislation,


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^S THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICSmunicipal hygiene, state support, medical progress and un-limited charity can reduce it, then what means are left bywhich mankind can consciously undertake the task whichNature has hitherto so ruthlessly carried out ?With the advance of civilisation the birth-rate as well as

the death-rate has become more and more artificial. But ithas become artificial in an individualistic and anti-social way.The purport of eugenics is to study the causes of this change,to create a strong public opinion, a new moral sense on thiscardinal factor of national welfare. A progressive and im-perial nation can only afford to be kind to its weak in body ormind if that kindness synchronises with the determinationthat each successive generation shall be better born. Wehave to take social customs as we find them. We must re-cognise to the full that human fertility changes in highlycivilised states from the natural to the artificial phase. Suchchange led, in my opinion, to the collapse of the great civi-lisations of the ancient world. It will lead to the downfall ofthe great civilisations of to-day, unless our clearer scientificinsight enables us to recognise, our more intense social spiritleads us to stem in time, the ills which inevitably flow fromthe suspension of the selective death-rate, and the artificialcreation of a cacogenic selective birth-rate.

It is a hundred years since Charles Darwin was born, fiftyyears since he turned the search-light of natural selection onthe then dark mystery of living forms. It is fitting that thisanniversary year should proclaim that the knowledge thusgained has a great practical application to the welfare ofhuman societies. The coping-stone is not of necessity themost structurally important block in every building. Yet inasserting that the science of eugenics forms the coping-stoneto the science of life, we shall emphasise that the highest func-tion of science is to be of direct practical service to man, the


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THE GROUNDWORK OF EUGENICS 39lower functions are to discipline and train his mind, to oc-cupy and interest his leisure. The fitness of eugenics as anacademic branch of study lies not alone in the training itrequires, which carries us at the same time into the newworld of biological conceptions and into the older world ofaccurate quantitative analysis. It lies also in the groundworkit supplies for the treatment of those great social problems,on the adequate and expeditious solution of which lies, in theopinion of the more thoughtful men and women of to-day,the main, if not the sole, safeguard for future national pro-gress.

ABERDEEN : THE UNIVERSITY PRESS


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JSuoenics t-aborator^ IpublicationsISSUED BY

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