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Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Offspring Through Wiser Generation

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Title: Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Offspring Through Wiser Generation

Author: M. L. Holbrook


        
Release date: November 12, 2010 [eBook #34299]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMO-CULTURE; OR, THE IMPROVEMENT OF OFFSPRING THROUGH WISER GENERATION ***




Produced by Bryan Ness, Lisa Reigel, Michael Zeug, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)







Transcriber's Notes: Words in italics in the original are surrounded by
_underscores_. Variations in spelling and hyphenation remain as in the
original. Ellipses match the original. A complete list of typographical
corrections as well as other notes follows the text.


[Illustration: THE THEORETICAL BABY AT 18 MONTHS.]




                            HOMO-CULTURE;

                                 OR,

                 THE IMPROVEMENT OF OFFSPRING THROUGH
                          WISER GENERATION.


                      BY M. L. HOLBROOK, M. D.,
        EDITOR OF "THE JOURNAL OF HYGIENE," AUTHOR OF "HYGIENE
            OF THE BRAIN," "HOW TO STRENGTHEN THE MEMORY,"
                 "ADVANTAGES OF CHASTITY," ETC., ETC.


       A New Edition of "Stirpiculture," Enlarged and Revised.


                              NEW YORK:
                         M. L. HOLBROOK & CO.

                               LONDON:
                          L. N. FOWLER & CO.

                                1899.


                            _Copyright by
                           M. L. Holbrook._
                               _1897._


                    _Entered at Stationers' Hall._




PREFACE.


During all ages since man came to himself, there have been enlightened
ones seeking to improve the race. The methods proposed have been
various, and in accordance with the knowledge and development of the
time in which they have appeared. Some have believed that education and
environment were all-sufficient; others that abstinence from
intoxicating drinks would suffice. A very considerable number have held
the idea that by prenatal culture alone the mother can mould her unborn
child into any desired form. The disciples of Darwin, many of them, have
held that natural and sexual selection have been the chief factors
employed by nature to bring about race improvement.

No doubt all these factors have been more or less effectual, but the
time has come for man to take special interest in his own evolution, to
study and apply, so far as possible, all the factors that will in any
way promote race improvement. In the past this has not been done. We are
not yet able to do it perfectly, our knowledge is too deficient, lack of
interest is too universal, but we can make a beginning; greater
thoughtfulness may be given to suitable marriages; improved environment
may be secured; better hygienic conditions taken advantage of; food may
be improved; the knowledge we have gained in improving animals and
plants, so far as applicable, may aid us; air, exercise, water,
employment, social conditions, wealth and poverty, prenatal conditions,
all have an influence on offspring, and man should be able, to some
extent, to make them all tell to the advantage of future generations.

Whatever the conditions of existence, man is able by his intellect to
modify and improve them, and make them favorably serve unborn children.

Herbert Spencer says: "On observing what energies are expended by father
and mother to attain worldly successes and fulfil social ambition, we
are reminded how relatively small is the space occupied by their
ambition to make their descendants physically, morally and
intellectually superior. Yet this is the ambition which will replace
those they now so eagerly pursue, and which, instead of perpetual
disappointments, will bring permanent satisfactions."

If the chapters included in this volume should help to arouse in the
minds of readers, and especially the younger portion of them, some
healthy feelings relating to the improvement of offspring it will have
fulfilled its aim.

Two of them have been given as lectures before societies, the main
object of which was the discussion of subjects bearing on evolution and
human progress, and they are included in this volume because they have a
close relation to the main subject, but the others were written
especially for this work.

While there may appear in a few cases a slight amount of repetition, the
author trusts the reader will not consider it as unpardonable.

With these few words I send the work on its mission hoping it will bear
good fruit.

                                                         M. L. H.




CONTENTS.


STIRPICULTURE.
                                                                 _Page._
     Plato's Restrictions on Parentage; Lycurgan Laws; Plutarch
     on the Training of Children; Infanticide Among the Greeks;
     Group Marriage; Making Children the Property of the State;
     Grecian Methods Not Suitable to Our Time; Sexual Selection;
     Difficulties in the Way; An Experiment in Stirpiculture;
     Intermarriage; Woman's Selective Action; Man's and Woman's
     Co-operation; The Individual's Rights; Spiritual Sympathy in
     Marriage;                                                         9


PRENATAL CULTURE.

     Jacob's Flocks; An Illustrative Case; Beliefs of Primitive
     Peoples; Birthmarks Rare; Why Children Resemble Parents;
     Life's Experiences Affecting Child; Germ-plasm; Congenital
     Deformities; Psychical Diseases; Telegony; Power of Heredity;
     Sobriety in the Father; Sacredness of Parentage; Self-control;   55


HEREDITY AND EDUCATION.

     Theories; Continuity of the Germ-plasm; A Rational View
     of Heredity; Heredity and the Education of Children;
     Intellectual Acquirements; Instinct; Knowledge or Heredity;
     Individuality; Spectre of Heredity;                             100


EVOLUTION'S HOPEFUL PROMISE FOR A HEALTHIER RACE.

     Sexual Selection; Human Selection; Natural Selection;
     Conflict between Evolutionary Theories and our Humane
     Sentiments; Ideal of Health; Adaptation to Environment;
     Knowledge; Effects of Living at High Pressure; Girls in
     Manufacturing Districts; Co-operation: an Example; Hygiene;     130


THE GERM-PLASM; ITS RELATION TO OFFSPRING.

     What is the Germ-plasm? The Primitive Egg; Fertilization of
     the Mother-cell Necessary to Produce True Germ-plasm; What
     Fertilization Does; Its Process; Helps to Explain Heredity;
     Health of the Germ-plasm Necessary in Stirpiculture; Surplus
     Vitality Necessary for Producing the Best Children; Duncan's
     Statistics as to Ages of Parents of Finest Children; Effects
     of Alcohol on Offspring; Food and the Germ-plasm; Effect
     of Air and Water on Germ-plasm; Effect of Diseases on
     Germ-plasm; Every Child Born an Experiment;                     162


FEWER AND BETTER CHILDREN.

     Darwin's Opinions; Race Modifications by Natural Selection;
     Grant Allen's Views; Spencer's Views on Parental Duties;
     Limiting Offspring Among the Natives of Uganda; The Fijians;
     Children of Large Families often Superior to those in Small
     Families; Some Reasons for this;                                179


A THEORETICAL BABY.

     Our First Baby; We had Theories; What Some of Them Were; My
     Wife's Love for Me; My Sentiments; The Child's Easy Birth;
     Mother's Rapid Convalescence; The Child's First Bath;
     Forming Good Habits Early; No Crying at Night; Never Rocked
     to Sleep; His Bed; Keeping the Stomach and Bowels Right;
     Colic, Irritability and the Necessity for Diapers
     Eliminated; Number of Meals Daily; The Infant's Clothing; At
     One Year Old; Teething Gives Little Trouble; Requires
     Considerable Water; Learning to Creep, Stand, Walk and Talk
     by His Own Efforts; Invents His Own Amusements;
     Companionship With Parents; Mothering; Learning
     Self-control; Obedience; Playmates;                             184

     Notes                                                           199




STIRPICULTURE.


Natural selection, which is the central doctrine of Darwinism, has been
explained as the "survival of the fittest." On this process has depended
the progress observable throughout organic nature to which the term
evolution is applied; for, although there has been from time to time
degradation, that is, a retrogression, this has had relation only to
particular forms, organic life as a whole evidencing progress towards
perfection. When man appeared as the culmination of evolution under
terrestrial conditions, natural selection would seem almost to have
finished its work, which was taken up, however, by man himself, who was
able by "artificial" selection to secure results similar to those which
Nature had attained. This is true especially in relation to animals, the
domestication of which has always been practiced by man, even while in a
state of nature. Domestication is primarily a psychical process, but it
is attended with physical changes consequent on confinement and
variation in food and habits. This alone would hardly account, however,
for the great number of varieties among animals that have been long
domesticated, and it is probable that actual "stirpiculture" has been
practiced from very early times. This term is derived from the Latin
_stirpis_, a stock or race, and _cultus_, culture or cultivation, and it
means, therefore, the cultivation of a stock or race, although it has
come to be used in the sense of the "breeding of offspring," and
particularly of human offspring. It is evident, however, that in
relation to man this is too restricted a sense, and it must be extended
so as to embrace as well the rearing and training as the breeding of
children, in fact, _cultivation_ in its widest sense, in which is always
implied the idea of improvement.

Stirpiculture in this extended sense was not unknown to the ancients,
both in theory and in practice. As to the former, the most noted example
is that of Plato, who, in his "Republic," proposed certain arrangements
as to marriage and the bringing up of children which he thought would
improve the race, and hence be beneficial to the State. The State was to
Plato all in all, and he considered that it should form one great
family. This idea could not be carried into effect, however, so long as
independent families existed, and therefore those arrangements had for
one of their chief aims the abolition of what we regard as family life.
This Plato thought was the best for the State, and the advantage which
was supposed to accrue to it by the absence of separate families is
expressed in a marginal note, which says: "There will be no private
interests among them, and therefore no lawsuits or trials for assault or
violence to elders."


PLATO'S RESTRICTIONS ON PARENTAGE.--The end would hardly seem to justify
the means, in these days, at least, when violence to elders is an
uncommon incident; but how was the community of wives and children by
which it was sought to be attained to be brought about? It is said, "The
best of either sex should be united with the best as often, and the
inferior with the inferior as seldom, as possible." Thus the people were
to be classified into "best" and "inferior," and while the former were
to be brought together as often as possible, the latter were not to be
united at all if it could be avoided. There was no question of marriage
in either case. In the one, the union was for the purpose of obtaining
children, and in the other for the simple gratification of the passions;
for only the offspring of the union between the sexes in the "best"
class were to be reared. The children of the inferior class were not to
be reared, "if the flock is to be maintained in first-class condition."
This infanticide would matter little to the parents, as they had no
control over their coming together, nor concern with the rearing of
their offspring. Lots were to be drawn by the "less worthy" on each
occasion of their being brought together. This was that they might
accuse their ill-luck and not the rulers, in case their partners were
not to their liking. The State was to provide not only what men and
women were to be sexually united, but the ages within which this was to
be permitted for the purpose of obtaining offspring. For a woman, the
beginning of childbearing for the State was fixed at twenty years of
age, and it was to continue until forty. For men, the period of
procreation is said to be between twenty-five and fifty-five years of
age. After the specified ages men and women were to be allowed to "range
at will," except within certain prescribed degrees, but on the
understanding that no children born to such unions were to be reared. It
is evident that under such a system the actual relationship between the
members of the State family could be known only to its rulers; but to
provide against the union of persons too nearly related by blood, all
those who were "begotten at the time their fathers and mothers came
together" were regarded as brothers and sisters. But even brothers and
sisters might be united "if the lot favors them, and they receive the
sanction of the Pythian oracle." Thus far for the breeding of children
laid down in Plato's "Republic." As to the rearing of them, we need only
say that the children allowed to live were to be placed in the custody
of guardians, to be appointed by the State from among the most worthy
of either sex, who were to bring them up in accordance with the
principles of virtue.

The idea which formed the basis of the regulations as to marriage in the
"Republic" was carried into practice by Lycurgus in his government of
Sparta. We are told by Plutarch in his "Lives," that Lycurgus considered
children not so much the property of their parents as of the State, "and
therefore he could not have them begotten by ordinary persons, but by
the best men in it." But he did not attempt to break up the private
family, as was proposed by Plato. He sought rather to enlarge its
boundaries by allowing the introduction of a fresh paternal element when
this could be done with advantage to the State. Thus, he approved of a
man in years introducing to his young wife a "handsome and honest" young
man, that she might bear a child by him. Moreover, if a man of character
became impassioned of a married woman on account of her honesty and
beautiful children, he might treat with her husband for the loan of her,
"that so planting in a beauty-bearing soil, he might produce excellent
children, the congenial offspring of excellent parents." The principles
which influenced Lycurgus were the same as those sought to be applied by
Plato, although in a different way. Plutarch says, "He observed the
vanity and absurdity of other nations, where people study to have their
horses and dogs of the finest breed they can procure, either by
interest or money, and yet keep their wives shut up, that they may have
children by none but themselves, though they may happen to be doting,
decrepid or infirm." Hence Lycurgus sought to drive away the passion of
jealousy "by making it quite as reputable to have children in common
with persons of merit, as to avoid all offensive freedom in their own
behaviour to their wives."


LYCURGAN LAWS.--According to Plutarch, the regulations enforced by
Lycurgus, so far from encouraging licentiousness of the women, such as
afterwards prevailed in Sparta, did just the reverse, as adultery was
not known among them. That the system was beneficial to the State by
tending to secure healthy offspring is probable; but Lycurgus took other
means of bringing about this result. His requiring girls to dance naked
in public was intended to teach them modesty. But we are told further:
"He ordered the virgins to exercise themselves in running, wrestling and
throwing quoits and darts, that their bodies being strong and vigorous,
the children produced by them might be the same; and that, thus
fortified by exercise, they might the better support the pangs of
childbirth, and be delivered with safety." Moreover, he provided against
the propagation of disease and deformation by directing that only such
children should be reared as passed examination by the most ancient men
of the tribe. If a child were strong and well-proportioned, they gave
orders for its education and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares
of land. Thus infanticide was a recognized part of the Spartan system,
as it was in that of Plato. The elders of the tribe were very careful
about the nurses to whom the children were assigned. When seven years
old, the children were enrolled in companies, where they were all kept
under the same order and discipline, and had their exercises and
recreations in common. The boy of best conduct and courage was made
captain, and their whole education was one of obedience. As for
learning, Plutarch says they had just what was absolutely necessary; and
certainly it was not such as could be recommended for imitation in these
days.

Xenophon, in his essay on "The Lacedemonian Republic," adds little to
what Plutarch tells us with reference to the marriage regulations of
Lycurgus. He remarks, however, that marriage was not allowed until the
body was in full strength, as this was conducive "to the procreation of
a robust and manly offspring." He affirms, also, that those who were
allowed by arrangement to associate with other men's wives were men who
had an aversion to living with a wife of their own!


PLUTARCH ON THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.--In his "Morals," Plutarch gives
a dissertation on the training of children, the first portion of which
deals with stirpiculture in the limited sense of the term, but is very
inadequate. Indeed, the only advice he gives is that a man should not
keep company with harlots or concubines, because children by them are
"blemished in their birth" by their base extraction; and that no man
should "keep company with his wife for issue's sake but when he is
sober," lest he beget a drunkard. The main portion of Plutarch's
treatise is concerned with the education of children, which is the
second part of stirpiculture as a system of complete cultivation.
Introductory to the subject of education he speaks of nursing, to which
he attaches much importance. Plutarch insists on the necessity of
mothers nursing their own children; nature, by providing them with two
breasts, showing them that they can nurse even twins. But if they
cannot, they are to choose the best nurses they can get, and such as are
bred after the Greek fashion. For, "as it is needful that the members of
children should be shaped aright as soon as they are born, that they may
not afterwards prove crooked and distorted, so it is no less expedient
that their manners be well fashioned from the very beginning; for
childhood is a tender thing, and easily wrought into any shape."

After referring to the importance of the choice of good companions for
a child, Plutarch proceeds to consider the question of education, which
he speaks of as the matter of most concern. As to education in general,
he points out that a concurrence of three things is necessary to the
"completing of virtue in practice," which is the aim of that process,
that is: Nature, reason or learning, and use or exercise; For, "if
nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be
not assisted by nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the
assistance of both, it is imperfect as to the attainment of its end."
There cannot be "instruction"--a term which is here used as equivalent
to "education," although the latter has a wider signification than the
former, and being equivalent to mental cultivation,--without a teacher,
and Plutarch says well, "we are to look after such masters for our
children as are blameless in their lives, not justly reprovable for
their manners, and of the best experience in teaching. For the very
spring and root of honesty and virtue lies in the felicity of lighting
on good education." He is, indeed, so much impressed with its value that
he affirms: "The one chief thing in this matter--which compriseth the
beginning, middle and end of all--is good education and regular
instruction." These two "afford great help and assistance towards the
attainment of virtue and felicity." He adds: "Learning alone, of all
things in our possession, is immortal and divine."

Plutarch dwells on various other matters connected with education
better fitted for his times than ours, but he refers to the importance
of example in words that are deserving of careful consideration. He
says: "The chiefest thing that fathers are to look to is, that they
themselves become effectual examples to their children, by doing all
those things which belong to them, and avoiding all vicious practices,
that in their lives, as in a glass, their children may see enough to
give them an aversion to all ill words and actions. For those that chide
children for such faults as they themselves fall into unconsciously
accuse themselves, under their children's names. And if they are
altogether vicious in their own lives, they lose the right of
reprehending their very servants, and much more do they forfeit it to
their sons. . . . . Wherefore we are to apply our minds to all such
practices as may conduce to the good breeding of our children."

It is not improbable that the marriage regulations ascribed to Lycurgus
were based on institutions already in existence among the Spartans. From
the statement of Polybius, that the brothers of a house often had one
wife between them, it has been inferred that in Sparta the Tibetan form
of polyandry was practiced. According to Plutarch, another curious
marriage custom prevailed, showing that the Spartans, who differed in
various respects from other Greeks, had retained primitive habits.
Thus, the bridegroom carried off the bride by violence, and for some
time after this "marriage by capture" he visited her "with great caution
and apprehension" of being discovered by the rest of the family; the
bride at the same time exerted all her art to contrive convenient
opportunities for their private meetings. And this they did, not for a
short time only, but some of them even had children before they had an
interview with their wives in the daytime! This custom had much in
common with the _sadica_ marriages of the early Arabs, who, as we are
told by Professor Robertson Smith, allowed a woman, while she remained
with her own tribe, to receive the clandestine visits of a lover. Her
offspring were recognized as legitimate and became members of the tribe.
The incident of "capture" could not occur, as it was a general custom in
ancient Arabia for a husband to live among his wife's kinsfolk.


INFANTICIDE AMONG THE GREEKS.--The practice of infanticide, which was
the only mode by which Lycurgus, or even Plato in his imaginary
republic, could really insure the existence of a healthy and vigorous
population, was undoubtedly a survival from primitive times. The
sacredness of infant life is the result of the high moral tone which has
accompanied the spread of Christianity; and it may be said to be almost
unknown outside of the Christian era. Various reasons are assigned by
different peoples for the practice of infanticide; but one cause
universally operative is the objection to rearing malformed or unhealthy
offspring. Savages adopt various modes of improving, according to their
ideas, the physical appearance of their children. Giving the proper form
to the nose is considered a very important matter by the native
Australian mother and by the Polynesian Islanders; as, indeed, it was by
the ancient Persians, among whom the molding of the nose to the proper
curve was essential, especially in the royal family. The flat head of
the American Indian of the northwest coast was at one time considered a
beauty, and was restricted to the members of the tribe, slaves not being
allowed to undergo the necessary head compression. The small artificial
foot of the Chinese lady is another case in point. But however much the
physical appearance might be altered, no effect could thus be made in
the general physique of the race. The most easy way of keeping this up
to a proper standard is to destroy all the infants that possess physical
defects; and such a course is adopted by many savages, although it is by
no means the most influential cause of infanticide.


GROUP MARRIAGE.--A remarkable system of relationships, with which is
combined a series of regulations framed with the object of pointing out
what persons are entitled to enter into the marital relation, is found
to be prevalent in nearly all uncivilized peoples. The members of a
tribe are divided into two or more groups, each of which consists of
persons who are nearly related by blood, and who are forbidden,
therefore, to intermarry. One of the tribes of Central Australia, the
Dieyerie, has a legend which explains the marriage system common to them
and to all the other tribes, as being intended to prevent the evil
effects of intermarriage between persons very near of kin. The story is
valuable as showing the opinion entertained by savages as to the effect
on the race of breeding in and in--a subject to which we may have
occasion to make further reference. Dr. J. F. McLennan and other writers
on primitive marriage refer to the practice among certain _civilized_
peoples of antiquity of what we regard as incestuous marriage, in
support of the view that in the early history of mankind intercourse
between the sexes was promiscuous.[21:A] Such an explanation is entirely
uncalled for, however, as the custom was intended to secure purity of
blood, that is, blood of a particular line of ancestors. Such marriages
were known only to a few peoples, and they were evidently of
comparatively late origin. Whether the purity of blood was attended with
improvement of the stock may be doubted; as, whatever may have been the
actual origin of the marriage regulations of the numerous peoples among
whom the classificatory system of relationship is established, they are
intended, without question, to prevent the intermarriage of persons who
are regarded as near blood relations, the general disapproval of which
must have had some sufficient reason, or, at all events, must have
originated in ideas supposed to furnish good grounds for it.


MAKING CHILDREN THE PROPERTY OF THE STATE.--The principles which were
embodied in the scheme proposed by Plato, in his "Republic," to bring
about an improvement in the race are mainly two: First, restriction on
the formation of procreative unions; second, infanticide. The breaking
up of private or separate families necessarily resulted from the
operation of his "marriage" regulations, and was intended to emphasize
the idea which Plato, like Lycurgus, insisted on, that the children
belonged to the State. Lycurgus sought to enforce the same idea by
allowing wives to have intercourse with other men than their husbands,
thus making children "common" in some sense, while retaining the
separate family intact. Thus he introduced, or rather it should be said,
established a modified form of polyandrous marriage; Plato's system, on
the other hand, being one of mere pairing, as in the breeding of
animals. In either case the union of very near relations was not
permitted, that is, between brother and sister, or parent and child. Yet
Lycurgus allowed marriage between a half-brother and sister by the same
mother. Curiously enough, this was forbidden by the Athenian law, which
permitted a brother and sister by the same father only to intermarry.
The Greek rule, as laid down in Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities," was that "proximity of blood or consanguinity was not,
with some few exceptions, a bar to marriage," although direct lineal
descent was so. Moreover, there was no attempt to enforce consanguineous
marriages, so as to ensure purity of blood, such as was customary among
the Incas of Peru, the laws of which required that the oldest son and
daughter of the sovereign should intermarry because the Incas were
descended from the Sun, and the Sun had married his sister the Moon, and
had united in marriage his two first children! A more practical reason
was found in the rule that the kingdom should be inherited through both
parents. Hence it was not permitted to mix the blood of the Sun, or
rather of those who claimed solar descent, with that of men.


GRECIAN METHODS NOT SUITABLE TO OUR TIME.--It is evident that the
principles which governed the ancients in their endeavors to improve the
race are not capable of application at the present day, under the
conditions of modern civilization. Instead of placing further
restrictions on marriage, the tendency now is to loosen those which have
hitherto existed, although certain regulations, such as relate to age,
consent, etc., are recognized as necessary for the interests of the
State. Moreover, greater facilities are given than were formerly allowed
for dissolving ill-assorted unions, thus getting rid of the excuse for
the formation of irregular connections. Nevertheless, the interests of
neither society at large nor of individuals will permit of the
introduction of the temporary or occasional pairing system, which is a
return to an animal state, and, therefore, not worthy of the dignity
implied in the term, marriage, and which is inconsistent with true
family life. It would be liable to all kinds of abuse, and would become,
in most cases, a legalized system of prostitution, thus dragging society
down to a lower level instead of raising it, and tending to the
deterioration, instead of the improvement, of the race, if not to its
extinction. As to infanticide, this certainly would not be tolerated by
public opinion, although it is now largely resorted to under the guise
of abortion. To legalize child-killing under any circumstances would be
to offer a premium for murder, even if it were permitted only with the
express sanction in every case of the officials of the State. There is
now no justification for such a course, as the education of those who
appear to be on a mental level with the animals has been carried so far
that the term "idiot" may soon have to be dropped from our vocabulary.

It must be affirmed, however, that the whole subject of the improvement
of the race was dealt with by Plato, and, indeed, by the ancients
generally, in a very crude and superficial manner. This has been well
pointed out by Professor B. Jowett in the Introduction to his
translation of Plato's "Republic." Professor Jowett objects generally
that the great error in the speculations of Plato and others on the
improvement of the race is, "that the difference between men and the
animals is forgotten in them." The human being is regarded with the eye
of a dog or bird fancier, or at best of a slave owner; the higher or
human qualities are left out. The breeder of animals aims chiefly at
size or speed or strength; in a few cases, at courage and temper; most
often the fitness of the animal for food is the greatest desideratum.
But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for their superiority in
fighting or in running or in drawing carts. Nor does the improvement of
the human race consist merely in the increase of the bones and flesh,
but in the growth and enlightenment of the mind. Hence there must be a
marriage of true minds as well as of bodies; of imagination and reason
as well as of lusts and instincts. Men and women without feeling or
imagination are justly called brutes; yet Plato takes away these
qualities and puts nothing in their place, not even the desire of a
noble offspring, since parents are not to know their own children. The
most important transaction of social life he who is the idealist
philosopher converts into the most brutal. For the pair are to have no
relation to each other but at the hymeneal festival; their children are
not theirs, but the State's; nor is any tie of affection to unite them.
Yet the analogy of the animals might have saved Plato from a gigantic
error if he had not lost sight of his own illustration! For the "nobler
sort of birds and beasts" nourish and protect their offspring and are
faithful to one another! It is certainly surprising, as Jowett says,
that the greatest of ancient philosophers should, in his marriage
regulations, have fallen into the error of separating body and mind. He
did so probably through a false notion of the antagonism between the
family and the State, and hence, as Lycurgus did not aim at destroying
family life he escaped that error.

And yet there is nothing to show that the marriage regulations of
Lycurgus had any real effect on the children of the State. That the
early Spartans were a hardy and courageous people is undoubtedly true;
but apart from the practice of infanticide, which would necessarily get
rid of the weak, their character and conduct can be explained by
reference merely to the system of training, both of youth and maidens,
which Lycurgus rigidly enforced. Lacedemon was essentially a military
republic, and its rulers aimed to breed soldiers, rather than men in the
noble sense in which the term "man" is now used. Indeed, there is
nothing to show that any compulsory attempt to improve the race has ever
been successful, apart from the effect which the destruction of feeble
and deformed offspring may have, and the influence of the severe
training of those who are allowed to survive.

Nevertheless, the human race has vastly improved since its first
appearance on the earth, if the teachings of the doctrine of evolution
are true and applicable to man as well as to the inferior animals. The
passage from the native Australian to the European is a long one, and
yet they are supposed to represent a common primitive stock. The steps
by which the European has been gradually developed, with his special
characteristics, cannot now be traced; but one of the chief agencies to
which the result is due is that to which Darwin applied the term,
"sexual selection." As natural selection has relation to _adaptation_,
and its aim is "the survival of the fittest," so sexual selection has
reference to _beauty_, and its object is the perpetuation of the most
beautiful, according to the taste of the peoples practicing it. Darwin
was the first to point out the importance of sexual selection for
certain purposes which, as stated by Professor G. J. Romanes, in his
"Darwin and after Darwin,"[28:A] "have no reference to utility or the
preservation of life." The latter writer in treating of the subject
affirms it is universally admitted that the higher animals do not pair
indiscriminately, the members of either sex preferring "those
individuals of the opposite sex which are to them most attractive." Many
birds and certain mammals clearly display the esthetic sense, which is
shown by the former particularly in the adorning of their nests with
colored objects; and it is reflected in the personal appearance of the
animals themselves. During the pairing season, birds take on their most
brilliant plumage, and the males take great pains to exhibit their
charms before the females, actively competing with one another in so
doing. There is similar rivalry among song birds, who strive to see
which can best please the females by their singing.


SEXUAL SELECTION.--Professor Romanes, after referring to those facts,
which are considered in detail by his great predecessor, states the
theory of sexual selection as follows: "There can be no question that
the courtship of birds is a highly elaborate business, in which the
males do their best to surpass one another in charming the females.
Obviously the inference is that the males do not take all this trouble
for nothing; but that the females give their consent to pair with the
males whose personal appearance, or whose voice, proves to be the most
attractive. But, if so, the young of the male bird who is thus
_selected_ will inherit his superior beauty; and thus, in successive
generations, a continuous advance will be made in the beauty of plumage
or of song, as the case may be,--both the origin and development of
beauty in the animal world being thus supposed due to the esthetic taste
of the animals themselves."

It is not necessary to refer particularly to the evidence in support of
the theory of sexual selection. There can be no doubt that it is a most
important factor in the perpetuation and increase of certain characters,
those which come within the category of "beautiful," the very existence
of which proves them to be beneficial to the stock to which the animals
exhibiting them belong. The fundamental fact is that they have "the
effect of charming the females into a performance of the sexual act;" an
opinion which is supported by the more general fact that "both among
quadrupeds and birds, individuals of the one sex are capable of feeling
a strong antipathy against, or a strong preference for, certain
individuals of the opposite sex."

These statements are applicable also to man, with whom the principle of
sexual selection must have been influential to at least the same degree
as among the lower animals. It may be expected, indeed, to be more
influential, as the esthetic taste with which it is associated becomes
more highly developed with man than with any member of the animal
kingdom. Even here it is not a question of mere coloration. The theory
of sexual selection as framed by Darwin is concerned, as Romanes points
out, not so much with color itself as with the particular disposition of
color in the form of ornamental patterns. These have a kind of
_structural_ value, and certain birds, moreover, possess actual
structural peculiarities, such as ornamental appendages to the beak, the
only use of which would appear to be to charm the female during
courtship. We may suppose, therefore, that sexual selection has affected
not merely what may be termed the superficial characters of man, but to
some extent, at least, those which have a structural value.

The principle of sexual selection is applicable primarily to the
characteristics of the male; but Darwin supposes them to have been
transferred to the other sex, and through them transmitted to the race
generally. In his "Descent of Man," he remarks of the actual influence
over the race of that principle: "The nervous system not only regulates
most of the existing functions of the body, but has indirectly
influenced the progressive development of various bodily structures and
of certain mental qualities. Courage, pugnacity, perseverance, size and
strength of body, weapons of all kinds, musical organs, both vocal and
instrumental, bright colours and ornamental appendages have all been
indirectly gained by the one sex or the other, through the exertion of
choice, the influence of love and jealousy, and the appropriation of the
beautiful in sound, colour or form; and these powers of the mind
manifestly depend on the development of the brain."

That sexual selection has actually resulted in modification of human
physical structure, Darwin thinks can be shown by reference to the
ancient Persians, whose type was greatly improved by intermarriage with
the beautiful Georgian and Circassian women. He refers to several
similar cases, and particularly to the Jollofs of West Africa, whose
handsome appearance is said to be due to their retaining for wives only
their most beautiful slaves, the others being sold.

Sexual selection may be operative for the improvement of the race
through the action of either man or woman, and the conditions of its
activity are different in either case. As to the action of man, Darwin
says in relation to primitive peoples: "The strongest and most vigorous
men--those who could best defend and hunt for their families, who were
provided with the best weapons and possessed the most property, such as
a large number of dogs or other animals--would succeed in rearing a
greater average number of offspring than the weaker and poorer members
of the same tribe. There can, also, be no doubt that such men would
generally be able to select the more attractive women. At present, the
chiefs of nearly every tribe throughout the world succeed in obtaining
more than one wife."

With reference to selection by the women, Darwin shows that among
savages they have much more to say in their marriages than is usually
supposed. He remarks: "They can tempt the men they prefer, and can
sometimes reject those whom they dislike, either before or after their
marriage. Preference on the part of the women, steadily acting in any
one direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe, for
the women would generally choose, not merely the handsomest men,
according to their standard of taste, but those who were at the same
time best able to defend and support them. Such well-endowed pairs would
commonly rear a larger number of offspring than the less favored."
Darwin adds: "The same result would obviously follow in a still more
marked manner if there were selection on both sides, that is, if the
more attractive, and at the same time more powerful men were to prefer,
and were preferred by, the more attractive women. And this double form
of selection seems actually to have occurred, especially during the
earlier periods of our long history."

The investigations of Darwin as to the operation of sexual selection had
reference chiefly to the modification of physical characters. He did not
altogether lose sight, however, of its possible influence in affecting
for the better the mental characteristics of the race. He concludes his
enquiry by the remark that "Man might by selection do something, not
only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for
their intellectual and moral qualities. Both sexes ought to refrain from
marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but
such hopes are Utopian, and will never be even partially realized until
the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. Every one does good
service who aids towards this end."

It is in the application of the principle of sexual selection to the
mental characteristics of man, that any real improvement of the race,
viewed as consisting of human beings and not of mere animals, must be
brought about. Beauty of physical form and feature is of importance in
human relations only so far as it is associated with beauty of mind and
character, that is, with high intellectual and moral attainments. That
these often go together is true, but it is not always the case. Grant
Allen says: "To be sound in wind and limb; to be healthy of body and
mind; to be educated; to be emancipated; to be free, to be
beautiful--these things are ends towards which all should strive, and by
attaining which all are happier in themselves, and more useful to
others." But physical and intellectual perfection are not always found
together, as was observed by Darwin, when he mentioned among the causes
which interfere with the physical action of sexual selection the fact
that men are largely attracted by the mental charms of women. Professor
Jowett affirms truly that "Many of the noblest specimens of the human
race have been among the weakest physically. Tyrtaens or AEsop, or our own
Newton, would have been destroyed at Sparta, and some of the fairest and
strongest men and women have been among the wickedest and worst." Hence,
he properly infers that "Not by the Platonic device of uniting the
strong and the fair with the strong and the fair, regardless of
sentiment and morality, nor yet by his other device of combining
dissimilar natures, have mankind gradually passed from the brutality and
licentiousness of primitive marriage to marriage Christian and
civilized."

The truth of this inference cannot be denied, because to leave out of
view considerations of sentiment and morality would fatally vitiate any
scheme for the improvement of the human race. But Professor Jowett
affirms that, "We do not know how by artificial means any improvement in
the breed can be effected." The problem is no doubt a complex one. As he
points out, a child has usually thirty progenitors only four steps back,
and whatever truth there may be in the inheritance of special physical
characters, "We have a difficulty in distinguishing what is a true
inheritance of genius or other qualities, and what is mere imitation or
the result of similar circumstances. _Great men and great women have
rarely had great fathers and mothers._" Professor Jowett thinks, indeed,
that too much importance may be ascribed to heredity. He says: "The
doctrine of heredity may seem to take out of our hands the conduct of
our lives, but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really terrible to
us. For what we have received from our ancestors is only a fraction of
what we are or may become. The knowledge that drunkenness or insanity
has been prevalent in a family may be the best safeguard against their
recurrence in a future generation. The parent will be most awake to the
vices or diseases in his child of which he is most sensible within
himself. The whole of life may be directed to their prevention or cure.
The traces of corruption may become fainter, or be wholly effaced; the
inherited tendency to vice and crime may be eradicated. And so heredity,
from being a curse, may become a blessing. We acknowledge that in the
matter of our birth, as in our nature generally, there are previous
circumstances which affect us. But on this platform of circumstances, or
within this wall of necessity, we have still the power of creating a
life for availment by the reforming energy of the human will."

There is much truth in these remarks of Professor Jowett, but they do
not affect the argument in favor of the possibility of bringing about an
improvement in the race if the proper means are adopted. It would not be
any wiser for the strong and healthy to marry with the sick and weak,
because the latter happen to be highly intellectual or moral, than to
marry with the strong and healthy if these physical characters are
united with mental weakness or immorality. There is a consensus of
opinion at the present day, that what should be aimed at is the union of
physical perfection with that of intellect and character, in the
persuasion that steps towards this end will ultimately lead to the
general improvement of the human race.


DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY.--The difficulty is to devise and carry out some
scheme for the purpose which shall be both feasible and agreeable to
public sentiment. The latter consideration would prevent any attempt at
active stirpiculture under State direction, although the State might
indirectly affect the result by subsidiary regulations as to marriage
and training of children. There is nothing, however, to prevent the
systematic efforts of private individuals, and in such cases the causes
which Darwin cites as interfering with the physical action of sexual
selection would not operate. The most systematic experiment in
stirpiculture of modern times was that originated by John Humphrey Noyes
at the Oneida Community, in central New York, from 1868 to 1879. A paper
on this experiment was read by Anita Newcomb McGee before the American
Science Association in August, 1891, which was published in "The
American Anthropologist," 1891, and the following facts are taken from
that paper.


AN EXPERIMENT IN STIRPICULTURE.--Noyes was the founder of a religious
sect, the members of which, owing to their desire for freedom from sin,
were called Perfectionists. Holiness was the first principle of their
creed, and Noyes thought to transmit that condition from one generation
to another by a process of stirpiculture. To overcome the "selfishness"
of monogamic marriage he devised a "system of regulated promiscuity,
beginning at earliest puberty, and by a method of his own invention he
separated the amative from the propagative functions." Its first
principle was that of a judicious in and in breeding, with occasional
mingling of foreign blood, as in stock-raising. The second principle
adopted was that of "careful selection of individuals for breeding
purposes. Genealogies were studied and medical histories compiled." A
committee, headed by Noyes, selected the holiest members who were free
from physical defects, intellectual and other considerations being given
less weight at first, although in later years they received more
consideration. The parents were of all ages, but the father was always
older than the mother. Some sympathy between the persons mated was
always required; and if a proposition for union came from two
individuals it was allowed if no objections were found. Noyes held that
uncle and niece are as much related as father and daughter, because
brothers have identical blood, and that cousins are in the same relation
to each other as half brothers. In the Oneida Community uncles and
nieces twice paired, and it is noticeable that a considerable proportion
of the children had Noyes' blood on one or both sides. The founder
himself had nine children in the Community, to which belonged also his
brother, his two sisters and their children. As to the care of the
children, this belonged exclusively to the mothers for the first nine
months, after which for a further nine months they took charge of their
offspring at night only. When eighteen months old, the children were
transferred to a separate department which was managed by those who had
shown themselves specially fitted for the work.

Let us see what was the result of Noyes' experiment. Of the sixty[39:A]
children born, five died at or near childbirth from unforeseen causes
depending upon the mother. All the others were alive at the date of Mrs.
McGee's communication, except a boy who was reared in spite of weakness,
and died from a trifling malady when about sixteen years of age. All the
children were strong and healthy, the boys being tall--several over six
feet--broad-shouldered and finely proportioned; the girls robust and
well-built. It is remarkable, that among the children between five and
nine years of age, thirteen were boys and six only were girls. With
reference to their intellectual ability, it is stated by Mrs. McGee
that, of the oldest sixteen boys, ten were in business, chiefly employed
as clerks, foremen, etc., in the manufactories of the joint stock
company. The eleventh was a musician of repute; another a medical
student; one passed through college and studied law; one was a college
senior, and one entered college after winning State and local
scholarships, and gave great mathematical promise. The sixteenth boy was
a mechanic, and the only one employed in manual labor. Of the six girls
between eighteen and twenty-two years, three are said by Mrs. McGee to
be especially intellectual. The mothers of these children usually
belonged to the classes employed in manual labor, while the fathers,
with the exception of the Noyes family and half a dozen lawyers, doctors
and clergymen, were all farmers and mechanics. It is noteworthy that, as
a rule, the fathers were the intellectual superiors of their mates, "and
enquiry develops the fact, known in the Community, that in these cases
the children are markedly superior to the maternal stock."

When this system of complex marriage had been in operation twenty years,
the desire to return to the old system of monogamy arose, and it became
so strong in the Community that its founder retired from it, and on
August 26, 1879, complex marriage was renounced, although nominally "in
deference to public sentiment." Twenty-five couples who had been married
before entering the Community again became husband and wife, and twenty
marriages between other individuals took place within four months after
the abandonment of the stirpicultural experiment. There were then in the
Community two hundred and sixteen adults and eighty-three children under
twenty years of age.

So far as the real object which the founder of the Oneida Community had
in view in his marriage system, it was undoubtedly a failure, as of the
offspring, in spite of their early doctrinal training, only a very few
are church members, and but one is a Perfectionist. This is the son of
an uncle and a niece, both of Noyes' blood. From a physical and
intellectual standpoint the experiment would seem to have given promise
of success, but it continued too short a time to be of much scientific
value. The result may be stated in the words of Mrs. McGee, who says
that the complete failure to perpetuate the church through stirpiculture
"would seem to indicate that, while our race would doubtless be greatly
benefited by more attention to laws of breeding, yet to attempt
promulgation of a belief by this means alone is only to court defeat. In
spite of the energy and magnetism of so remarkable a man as Noyes, in
spite of his long-continued efforts, and just when success seemed within
his grasp, his one misjudgment of human nature bore fruit, the neglected
instinct of monogamy arose in its might and crushed to nothing the whole
structure, and he, the builder, went last of all. With the close of his
life, April 13, 1886, ended a unique and interesting history."


INTERMARRIAGE.--We have seen that the founder of the Oneida Community
permitted the intermarriage of uncle and niece, although he considered
them related as nearly as father and daughter. This question of the
intermarriage of near blood relations is an important one in its bearing
on the question of stirpiculture, and as already mentioned, it has
engaged the attention of nearly all the lower races of mankind. It has,
indeed, been provided against by the marriage restrictions of most
uncultured peoples, and their systems of relationship clearly point out
what persons are within the permitted limits of marriage. It appears to
be the general rule that the children of two brothers or of two sisters,
whether own or tribal, cannot intermarry, but that the children of a
brother and those of a sister may be thus united, although sometimes
this is not allowed where own brother and sister are concerned.[42:A]

The question of the effect on offspring of consanguineous marriages was
some time ago particularly enquired into by Mr. A. H. Huth, who, after a
consideration of all the information available, came, in his work, "The
Marriage of Near Kin," to the following conclusions:

"1--That any deterioration through the marriage of near kin, _per se_,
even if there be such a thing in the lower animals, is impossible in
man, owing to the slow propagation of the species.

"2--That any deterioration through the chance accumulation of an
idiosyncrasy, though more likely to occur in families where the marriage
of blood relations was habitual, practically does not occur oftener than
in other marriages, or it would be more easily demonstrated.

"3--That, seeing the doubt, to say the least of it, which exists
concerning the effect for harm of marriages between near kin, and on the
other hand the certainty that whenever and wherever marriage is impeded
a direct and proportionate impulse is given to the practice of
immorality, it is advisable not to extend the prohibition against
marriage beyond the third collateral degree, and to permit all marriages
of affinity excepting those in the direct ascending or descending line."

There appears to be no doubt that what are regarded among Christian
peoples as incestuous marriages are not desirable. How far marriage
unions between first cousins are advisable depends, as appears from Mr.
Huth's remarks, on considerations which affect the question generally.
If there are any serious physical, intellectual or moral defects on
either side, no marriage should take place.


WOMAN'S SELECTIVE ACTION.--Apart from the question of consanguinity, the
principles which should govern all marriages is that of sexual
selection, which should have reference, however, not merely to physical
characters, but also to mental and moral characteristics. In applying
this principle, it must be remembered that while man, like the male of
all animals, does the courting, woman, like all females, makes the
selection; at least this is the general rule among the most cultured
peoples. Thus it is evident that woman possesses the power of largely
influencing the improvement of the human race, and in this fact we may
see the possibility of this being effected by the operation of general
social causes, without having recourse to individual experiments, such
as that undertaken by Noyes, which are necessarily limited in their
action, and may, after all, have like practical result. _If all women
could be induced to combine for that end they could probably bring about
the desired improvement by their own efforts._

On this subject the well-known naturalist, Mr. A. R. Wallace, has some
judicious remarks in an article on "Human Progress, Past and Future," in
_The Arena_ for January, 1892. Mr. Wallace, who accepts the views of
Weismann as to the non-inheritance of acquired characters, thinks that
the physical and moral evils and degradation attendant on the conditions
of modern city life will have no permanent effects, when a more rational
and elevating system of social organization is brought about. The most
important agency in this social regeneration will be the selective
action of woman, under the influence of her newly acquired freedom and
higher education. Says Mr. Wallace: "When such social changes have been
effected that no woman will be compelled, either by hunger, isolation or
social compulsion, to sell herself, whether in or out of wedlock, and
when all women alike shall feel the refining influence of a true
harmonizing education, of beautiful and elevating surroundings, and of a
public opinion which shall be founded on the highest aspirations of
their age and country, the result will be a form of human selection
which will bring about a continuous advance in the average status of the
race. Under such conditions, all who are deformed either in body or
mind, though they may be able to lead happy and contented lives, will,
as a rule, leave no children to inherit their deformity. Even now we
find many women who do not marry because they have never found the man
of their ideal. When no woman will be compelled to marry for a bare
living or for a comfortable home, those who remain unmarried from their
own free choice will certainly increase in number, while many others,
having no inducement to an early marriage, will wait until they meet
with a partner who is really congenial to them. In such a reformed
society the vicious man, the man of degraded taste or of feeble
intellect, will have little chance of finding a wife, and his bad
qualities will die out with himself. The most perfect and beautiful in
body and mind will, on the other hand, be most sought and therefore be
most likely to marry early, the less highly endowed later, and the least
gifted in any way the latest of all; and this will be the case with both
sexes. From this varying age of marriage, as Mr. Galton has shown, there
will result a more rapid increase of the former than of the latter, and
this cause continuing at work for successive generations will at length
bring the average man to be the equal of those who are now among the
more advanced of the race."

We have here the application of the principle of sexual selection in its
highest sense, although limited in action to women, and it is
undoubtedly the phase of stirpiculture which will become operative when
the "emancipation of women" is completed. There is one feature of modern
society which may retard its operation, and which was referred to by
Darwin as interfering with the physical effect of sexual selection in
the past. Wealth is now, more than ever before, an important factor in
society, and not only man's but woman's choice in matrimony is often
governed by money considerations. The possession of wealth may be
evidence of mental astuteness, but not necessarily of high morality, and
until it ceases to be sought after in marriage it will seriously
interfere with the improvement of the race on its higher planes.

The sexual selection which Mr. Wallace so ably advocates is to be
exercised by woman, and hence its efficiency will depend on the fitness
of woman, not only to choose proper partners in marriage, but to
communicate the highest physical and mental characters to her offspring.
She can transmit only what she herself possesses, and she will choose
that which is in sympathy with her own feelings and desires, so that if
she is to affect the race beneficially, she must seek first her own
perfection. Hence the great importance of the woman's movement of the
present day, the basis of which is the better development of her
physical, mental and moral faculties, without which she cannot expect to
have the increased social privileges to which she may aspire. The
greatest social privilege women can have is to be the chief agent in the
improvement of the race, and through it the regeneration of society
itself. Lady May Jeune, in reply to those who think that the present
relations between mothers and daughters threaten family disruption,
observes, "That woman was created for the purpose of being the wife and
mother of mankind no one can deny, and that none of the discoveries of
science or any attempt to solve the mysteries of life have brought her
one bit nearer the knowledge of how to unburden herself of these
responsibilities, is also a fact." This must be true if the race is to
be continued; for without wives there can be no mothers. Being possible
mothers, therefore, it is necessary, if the race and society are to be
improved, that women shall acquire the highest physical, intellectual
and moral education they are capable of, and if they require the same
qualities in their husbands, the problem we are considering will be
solved.


MAN'S AND WOMAN'S CO-OPERATION.--We have here the central idea of the
New Hedonism advocated by Mr. Grant Allen, whose views necessitate the
active agency of man as well as of woman. This is only reasonable,
seeing that offspring depend on the co-operation of two factors, and
that if either of them is defective the offspring must share in the
defect. "Self-development is an aim of all," says Mr. Grant Allen, "an
aim which will make all stronger and braver, and wiser, and better. It
will make each in the end more helpful to humanity. To be sound in wind
and limb; to be healthy of body and mind; to be educated, to be
emancipated, to be free, to be beautiful--these things are ends towards
which all should strive, and by attaining which all are happier in
themselves, and more useful to others." Hence the New Hedonism teaches
that "to prepare ourselves for the duties of paternity and maternity, by
making ourselves as vigorous and healthful as we can be is a duty we owe
to all our children unborn and to one another." This applies as well to
"the body spiritual, intellectual and esthetic" as to the physical
body. Mr. Grant Allen thinks the theory he advocates will introduce a
new system, which "will not include the selling of self into loveless
union for a night or for a lifetime; the bearing of children by a mother
to a man she despises or loathes or shrinks from; the production by
force, sanctified by law, of hereditary drunkards, hereditary
epileptics, hereditary consumptives, hereditary criminals. We shall
expect in the future a purer and truer relation between father and
mother, parent and child. We shall expect some sanctity to attach to the
idea of paternity, some thought and care to be given beforehand to the
duties of motherhood. We will not admit that the chance union of two
unfit persons, who ought never to have made themselves parents at all,
or ought never to have made themselves parents with one another, can be
rendered holy and harmless by the hands of a priest extended to bless a
bought love, or a bargain of impure marriage. In one word, for the first
time in the history of the race, we shall evolve the totally new idea of
responsibility in parentage. _And as part of this responsibility we
shall include the two antithetical, but correlative, doctrines of a
moral abstinence from fatherhood and motherhood on the part of the
unfit, and a moral obligation to fatherhood and motherhood on the part
of the noblest, the purest, the sanest, the healthiest, the most able
among us. We will not doom to forced celibacy half our finest mothers._"


THE INDIVIDUAL'S RIGHTS.--From the racial standpoint these views are
just and cannot be controverted, but something must be allowed to the
individual. The relative position and rights of the race and the
individual are in a dispute, which has become intensified since the
development of the theory of evolution. _But the individual is the
beginning of the race and he should be its end._ Therefore, in seeking
to improve the race, violence must not be done to the highest sentiments
of the individual. It is a fact that many highly cultured individuals
have a repugnance to certain aspects of married life, and this
repugnance appears to be justified by the further fact that a high state
of refinement is often attended with loss of physical productiveness.
One of the most curious results of Galton's enquiries into heredity was
that wealthy families have a tendency to die out in heiresses, which is
partly, but not wholly, dependent on the fact that childbearing is more
often the accompaniment of poverty than of luxurious living.

The personal disinclination to marry attendant on intellectual
refinement is still more likely to be possessed by those of high
spirituality. This is quite natural, notwithstanding the statement of
Mr. Grant Allen, which is undoubtedly true, that the origin and basis
of all that is best and highest within us is to be found in the
sex-instinct. Love may have begotten "all higher arts and all higher
customs," and yet love may in the process itself become sexless, as it
is when it assumes the noblest form, that of divine charity for our
fellowmen. As well might we continue to perpetuate in our highest
actions the nature of the ape-man because we are descendants of this
creature, as let the idea of sex always rule our thoughts. With the
individual the physical influence of sex is weakened and finally ceases,
although it ever remains constant in the race, and hence the influence
of the idea of sex over the mind of the individual should be similarly
affected. "In Heaven," said the founder of Christianity, "there is
neither marrying nor giving in marriage," and in that highest mental
condition, which is heaven on earth, the sense of sex has ceased to be
operative, having given place to the spiritual sense which is the
noblest attribute of man because the last to be developed.

We have here, however, a question between the individual and the race,
and it does not affect the main contention that the improvement of the
race, which includes that of the individual, is to be found in the
application of the principle of selection. This must necessarily be
chiefly in the hands of women, although both men and women must
co-operate to bring about the best results, by seeking first of all to
improve their own natures by physical, intellectual and moral culture.
The statement of the case according to that principle, and the aim to be
attained, exhibit the dignity and importance of the subject of
stirpiculture. Theoretically this is admitted on all hands, and as soon
as the conditions of the subject are clearly understood there will be no
practical difficulty in carrying the principle into effect, so that it
may have its legitimate consequences.

What parents have to realize is the necessity of so training and
instructing their children that they may become capable of being the
parents of perfect offspring. The good tree only can bear good fruit.
But this is not the real starting point of stirpiculture. An essential
factor, and one that is seldom thought of, is the spirit in which the
inception of offspring is undertaken. Marriage was to the ancients a
sacred state, because it was associated with the religion of the
domestic altar, and because the perpetuation of the family, which was
its aim, was required by the necessity of having a son to perform the
sacred rites at that altar after the death of his father. The
perpetuation of the family was thus a sacred duty, and the consummation
of marriage partook of this character. According to the ancient Persian
religion, the union of man and woman is the act most agreeable to God,
and the act of consummation is directed to be sanctified, and a prayer
directed to God that He would bless it. Marriage must be conducted in
this spirit, rather than as a means of gratifying the passions, if the
happiest results are to be obtained from the application of the
principle of sexual selection.


SPIRITUAL SYMPATHY IN MARRIAGE.--That supposes, however, the existence
of spiritual sympathy between those who are united in marriage, and this
sympathy must form the true basis of all improvements in the race. It
was the neglect of this feature, the want of which must render any
attempt to carry out Plato's ideas on the subject of marriage futile,
that put a stop to the experiments undertaken by his latest imitator,
Noyes. His adherents simply made a return to the monogamy which is the
heritage of all the Aryan peoples, and which is based on the union of
two hearts, and not merely of two persons. This is the first application
of the principle of sexual selection above the animal plane, and it must
be continued notwithstanding that the range of selection is extended so
as to embrace also the intellectual and moral planes.

How far the State may ultimately be called on to aid in the improvement
of the race, in accordance with the ideas we have been considering, is
doubtful. It can aid very materially in placing restraints on too early
marriage, and by insisting on the attainment of a proper standard of
physical training and of mental culture before marriage is entered on.
There is no reason, moreover, why the State should not interfere to
prevent the marriage of those who are too near of kin, or who by reason
of physical or mental ailment, or by their moral defects are not fit
subjects for the propagation of the race. The objection to this
interference with personal liberty is so strong, however, that even so
rational a procedure as preventing the spread, through marriage
alliances, of disease and crime cannot yet obtain the sanction of public
opinion. This will be educated with the general improvement of the race
that must gradually take place through other agencies, and then the
State will have merely to carry into effect the decrees of the people,
which will be expressed in no uncertain language when woman has attained
to the influence to which her own perfected condition will entitle her.


FOOTNOTES:

[21:A] Mr. Darwin accepted this view at first; but in a note to the
second edition of his "Descent of Man" he says: "C. Staniland Wake
argues strongly against the views held by these three writers on the
former prevalence of almost promiscuous intercourse." See "Development
of Kinship and Marriage." Redway, London. 1888.

[28:A] The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago. 1892.

[39:A] It should be sixty-one.

[42:A] See Lorimer Fison, in "The Journal of the Anthropological
Institute," May, 1895, page 361. The whole subject is exhaustively
treated by C. Staniland Wake, in his "Development of Kinship and
Marriage."




PRENATAL CULTURE.


In the last preceding chapter we have considered the subject of the
improvement of the race, especially through the action of sexual
selection, or, as it may be expressed, selective action in the pairing
of individuals, whether brought about compulsorily by the controlling
influence of the State or some other external authority, or by the
actual choice of one or both of the individuals immediately concerned.
We have now to deal with the subject of the influence over offspring of
affections of the individual organisms from whose union such offspring
is derived.


JACOB'S FLOCKS.--The story of Jacob dealing with the flocks of Laban,
given in Genesis xxx, is usually alluded to in corroboration of the
belief that offspring may be physically affected before birth, by
anything which strongly influences the imagination of the mother. Jacob
is represented as making an agreement with Laban, his father-in-law,
that Jacob should receive as his hire all the ringstreaked and spotted
he-goats and all the black she-goats, and also those that were speckled
and spotted. When this arrangement had been made, Laban sought to
benefit by it by removing from the flock all the goats that answered to
that description, and giving them into the care of his sons, leaving the
rest of the flock in Jacob's charge. This was undoubtedly an attempt on
the part of Laban to cheat his son-in-law out of his wages, but the
latter was not to be so cheated, and he adopted a plan which gave him
the pick of the flock, leaving the feeble goats to his less wily parent.

In describing this operation, the Bible story says: "And Jacob took him
rods of fresh poplar [or storax tree] and of the almond and of the plane
tree, and peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which
was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled over against
the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs where the flocks came
to drink; and they conceived when they came to drink. And the flocks
conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth ringstreaked,
speckled and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces
of the flocks toward the ringstreaked and all the black in the flock of
Laban; and he put his own droves apart, and put them not unto Laban's
flock. And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger of the flock did
conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the
gutters, that they might conceive among the rods; but when the flock
were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the
stronger Jacob's."

Whether or not this incident actually occurred as stated we do not know.
According to the subsequent part of the narrative, the effect of setting
up the peeled rods was ascribed to God's interference in his behalf; but
it is not improbable that we have in the story a reference to ancient
shepherd lore, based on the superstitious notions still so common in the
East. In the earlier part of the same chapter is a story relating to
mandrakes, which were supposed to have influence on human generation.
Jacob is said to have used three kinds of rods, those of the poplar or
storax tree, the almond, and the plane tree, which produced
ringstreaked, speckled and spotted lambs.

The influence exerted by Jacob's rods was of a different character from
that which is supposed to give rise to the marking of offspring before
birth, which is not uncommon if we are to accept as true all the cases
mentioned in books referring to the subject. What occurred took place
_before_ conception, and not subsequent to it, as in these cases.
Nevertheless, both classes of phenomena are recognized by so competent
an authority as M. Th. Ribot, who, in his "Heredity,"[57:A] when
criticising Dr. Lucas' explanation of the origin of the numerous
exceptions to the law of heredity, as being due to the operation of the
law of spontaneity, affirms that there is no law of spontaneity, but
that all such exceptions may be explained by reference to certain causes
of diversity. M. Ribot gives three causes of diversity, which are:
1--Antagonistic heredities of two parents; 2--Accidental causes in
action at the moment of generation; 3--External and internal influences
subsequent to conception. He assigns but little importance to causes
acting after birth, such as diet, climate, circumstances, education,
physical and moral influences, because, though they may produce serious
effects, these are not radical. Possibly, however, since the advance
made in the education of those who are born with defects of the sensory
apparatus, M. Ribot would somewhat modify his opinion on that point. As
to the causes which operate at the period of conception, or subsequent
thereto and before birth, he says, in relation to the latter class, they
"are all the physical and moral disturbances of uterine existence--all
those influences which can act through the mother upon the fetus during
the period of gestation; impressions, emotions, defective nutrition,
effects of imagination." He adds: "These causes are very real, despite
the objections of Lucas, who attacks them in order to establish his law
of spontaneity. We see from examples that between considerable causes
and their effects there exists an amazing disproportion."

The causes of diversity which operate at the instant of conception
depend, says Ribot, "less upon the physical and moral natures of the
parents than on the particular state in which they are at the moment of
procreation." This fact is referred to by M. de Quatrefages as fully
proving the universality of the law of heredity, and M. Ribot adds, "It
enables us to understand that those transitory states which exist at the
moment of conception may exert a decisive influence on the nature of the
being procreated, so that often, where now we see only spontaneity, a
more perfect knowledge of the causes at work would show us heredity."

Professor E. D. Cope, the well-known author of "The Origin of the
Fittest," would seem to doubt the truth of the stories of birthmarks on
the ground that "the effect of temporary impressions on the mother is
not strong enough to counterbalance the molecular structure established
by impressions oftener repeated throughout much longer periods of
time."[59:A] And yet there is no doubt that birthmarks do occasionally
occur, although it is very difficult to obtain properly authenticated
cases of them.


AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE.--How great is the influence on unborn offspring
of the mother's mental condition, as well as the effect over them of
pleasant surroundings, is shown by the following case. A young girl
attracted attention by her beauty and by the superiority of the type she
exhibited over that of either of her parents, and on her mother being
spoken to on the subject she remarked:

"In my early married life my husband and I learned how to live in holy
relations, after God's ordinance. My husband lovingly consented to let
me live apart from him during the time I carried this little daughter
under my heart, and also while I was nursing her. Those were the
happiest days of my life. Every day before my child was born, I could
have hugged myself with delight at the prospect of becoming a mother. My
husband and I were never so tenderly, so harmoniously, or so happily
related to each other, and I never loved him more deeply than during
those blessed months. I was surrounded by all beautiful things, and one
picture of a lovely face was especially in my thought. My daughter looks
more like that picture than she does like either of us. From the time
she was born she was like an exquisite rosebud--the flower of pure,
sanctified, happy love. She never cried at night, was never fretful or
nervous, but was all smiles and winning baby ways, filling our hearts
and home with perpetual gladness. To this day, and she is now fourteen
years old, I have never had the slightest difficulty in bringing her up.
She turns naturally to the right, and I never knew her to be cross or
impatient or hard to manage. She has given me only comfort; and I
realize from an experience of just the opposite nature that the reason
of all this is because my little girl had her birthright."

The future experience of this lady was, however, of a very different
nature. She added:

"A few years later I was again about to become a mother, but with what
different feelings! My husband had become contaminated with the popular
idea that even more and frequent relations were permissible during
pregnancy. I was powerless against this wicked sophistry, and was
obliged to yield to his constant desires. But how I suffered and cried;
how wretched I was; how nervous and almost despairing! Worst of all, I
felt my love and trusting faith turning to dread and repulsion.

"My little boy, on whom my husband set high hopes, was born after nine
of the most unhappy, distressing months of my life, a sickly, nervous,
fretting child--myself in miniature, and after five years of life that
was predestined by all the circumstances to be just what it was, after
giving us only anxiety and care, he died, leaving us sadder and wiser.

"I have demonstrated to my own abundant satisfaction that there is but
one right, God-given way to beget and rear children, and I know that I
am only one of many who can corroborate this testimony."

The following case of prenatal culture appeared in _The Philosophical_
for October 5, 1895, above the signature of "John Allyn," who says:

"About forty years ago I was a neighbor of a young couple who had been
recently married. They were of fair natural abilities, but not highly
educated. The wife could play on the piano well and accompany it with
her voice. The husband was a house-building contractor. Before their
first child was born the wife was provided with instruments for drawing,
and interested herself in their use and mathematical calculations
connected with them. The child proved to be a boy, who took to
architectural drawing as by instinct. With very little effort he became
proficient, and is now employed at a high salary by the Southern Pacific
Railroad as their architect.

"Some years later, before the second child was born, the mother
interested herself with music with reference to the effect it would have
on the unborn child. This child proved to be a girl, who is now an
expert singer, finding ready employment in opera companies. Though not a
star, she has a superior talent for music which enabled her to take
advantages of musical training easily."


BELIEFS OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.--Whenever such cases happen, it is under
the influence of some very strong emotion, during the period of
gestation, arising from the action on the nervous system of the mother
by an external object presented to the sight, the organ of which would
seem to have an intimate association with the general muscular system.
There is nothing to show that primitive peoples recognized the action of
prenatal influence through the senses; but there is a very curious
custom, which is so widespread at the present time that we may well
suppose it to have been formerly almost universal, dependent upon the
imagined effect of the eating of animal flesh. All primitive peoples
believe that a man acquires physical or mental characteristics from
animals of whose flesh he partakes. Cannibalism is closely connected
with this notion, as the man who eats part of the body of a foe is
thought to become endowed with the victim's courage, strength or other
special quality. Probably the Mosaic regulations as to unclean animals,
that is, animals unfit for food, was based on such an idea; and
certainly the command to abstain from eating blood was thus connected;
as we are told the blood is the life, and if so, then it must be the
carrier of vital influences.

The custom above referred to, which is known to ethnologists as _la
couvade_, or "hatching," supposes injurious action on the organism of
the child of food eaten by its parents, as appears from the facts
brought together by Dr. E. B. Tylor in his "Researches into the Early
History of Mankind." The couvade usually has reference to the period
immediately following the birth of a child; but among the native tribes
of South America, where it is more extensively prevalent than elsewhere,
it is observed while the child is still unborn. Thus, in Brazil,
according to Von Martius, "A strict regimen is preserved before the
birth; the man and the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of
certain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits." The peculiarity
of the couvade custom, and that which gives it its special interest, is
the fact that it usually concerns the father and not the mother, as
injury to the child is supposed to be due to the conduct of the former
rather than of the latter. Thus, among the Land Dyaks of Borneo, "The
husband, before the birth of his child, may do no work with a sharp
instrument, except what is necessary for the farm; nor may he fire guns,
nor strike animals, nor do any violent work, lest bad influences should
affect the child; and after it is born the father is kept in seclusion
indoors for several days, and dieted on rice and salt, to prevent not
his own but his child's stomach from swelling."

Here food abstinence takes place after the birth of the child, but,
according to Brett, in Guinea "Some of the Acawois and Caribi nations,
when they have reason to expect an increase of their families consider
themselves bound to abstain from certain kinds of meat, lest the
expected child should, in some mysterious way, be injured by the
partaking of it. The acouri (or agouti) is thus tabooed, lest, like that
little animal, the child should be meager; the haimara, also, lest it
should be blind--the outer coating of the eye of the fish suggesting
film or cataract; the labba, lest the infant's mouth should protrude
like the labba's, or lest it be spotted like the labba, which spots
would ultimately become sores."

Another related case, of more recent observation, is that of the
Motumotu of New Guinea, who say that after conception the _mother_ must
not eat sweet potato or taro, lest the head of the child grow out of
proportion, and the _father_ must not eat crocodile or several kinds of
fish, lest the child's legs grow out of proportion. At Suan, a husband
shuts himself up for some days after the birth of his first child, and
will eat nothing.[65:A]

Various explanations of the custom of couvade have been offered, and
probably C. Staniland Wake is right when he states that it is connected
with the idea that the father is the real source of the child's
life.[66:A] As he points out, on the authority of M. Girard-Teulon,
among the European Basques, even at the present day, a husband enters
his wife's abode only "for the purpose of reproduction, and to work for
the benefit of his wife." Mr. Wake remarks that, "With some of the
Brazilian tribes, when a man becomes a father he goes to bed instead of
his wife, and all the women of the village come to console him for the
pain and suffering he has had in making this child." This agrees with
the idea entertained by so many peoples that the child is derived from
the father only, the mother being merely its nourisher. When such an
idea is held, it is not surprising if, as among the Abipones, the belief
is formed that "the father's carelessness influences the new-born
offspring, from a natural bond and sympathy of both," or if the father
abstains, either before or after the child's birth, from eating any
food, or performing any actions which are thought capable of doing it
harm. Still more so, if the child is regarded, as is sometimes the case,
as the reincarnation of the father, a notion which is supported by the
fact, pointed out by Mr. Gerald Massey, that in the couvade the parent
identifies himself with the infant child, into which he has been
typically transformed.

That conclusion agrees with the opinion expressed by Mr. Tylor, that
the couvade "implicitly denies that physical separation of 'individuals'
which a civilized man would probably set down as a first principle
common by nature to all mankind. . . . It shows us a number of distinct
and distant tribes deliberately holding the opinion that the connection
between father and child is not only, as we think, a mere relation of
parentage, affection, duty, but that their very bodies are joined by a
physical bond, so that what is done to the one acts directly upon the
other."[67:A] The couvade custom is thus closely connected with the
question of the special relationship of a child to one or other of its
parents. Curious notions on this subject have been formed from time to
time; but the ancients almost universally entertained the idea held by
the Greeks that "the father, as endowed with creative power, was clothed
with the divine character, but not the mother, who was only the bearer
and nourisher of the child." Professor Hearn accepts this view in his
work, "The Aryan Household," and suggests as the Aryan thought on the
subject: "A male was the first founder of the house. His descendants
have 'the nature of the same blood' as he. They, in common, possess the
same mysterious principle of life. The life spark, so to speak, has
been once kindled, and its identity, in all its transmissions, must be
preserved. But the father is the life-giver. He alone transmits the life
spark, which from his father he received. The daughter receives, indeed,
the principle of life, but she cannot transmit it."

M. Ribot, who, as we have seen, endorses the popular belief as to the
possibility of the fetus being affected, during uterine existence,
through the organism of the mother, reduces all the obscure causes of
deviation from heredity to two classes. Of these, the first is the
disproportion of effects to causes, already mentioned; and the second is
the transformation of heredity. As to the first of these causes, he lays
it down as a general truth that "the more complicated the mechanism, the
greater the disproportion between accidental causes and their effects."
He supports this conclusion by reference to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's
researches on the production of monsters, and he affirms that the
disproportion between cause and effect cannot be foreseen by measuring,
but is known only by experience, as "psychological laws are analogous
now to mechanical and now to chemical laws," so that it is impossible to
proceed by deduction from causes to effects. (Page 207.)


BIRTHMARKS RARE.--And yet the very fact that cases of birthmarks are
comparatively rare, proves the greatly preponderating influence of
heredity over the constitution of the offspring, modified by the
disposition of the parents at the time of procreation. Professor Cope
has some explanatory remarks on that subject which deserve quotation. He
says--after referring to the hypothesis that growth-force may be,
through the motive force of the animal, directed to any locality,
whether the commencement of an executive organ has begun or not--that "A
difficulty in the way of this hypothesis is the frequently unyielding
character of the structure of adult animals, and the difficulty of
bringing sufficient pressure to bear on them without destroying life.
But, in fact, the modifications must, in most instances, take place
during the period of growth. It is well known that the mental
characteristics of the father are transmitted through the spermatozoid,
and that, therefore, the molecular movements which produce the mechanism
of such mental characters must exist in the spermatozoid. But the
material of the spermatozoid is combined with that of the ovum, and the
embryo is compounded of the animal contents of both bodies. In a
wonderful way the embryo develops into a being which resembles one or
both parents in minute details. This result is evidently determined by
the molecular and dynamic character of the original reproductive cells
which necessarily communicate their properties to the embryo which is
produced by their subdivisions." Professor Cope goes on to say, "Richard
Hering has identified this property of the original cells with the
faculty of memory. This is a brilliant thought, and, under restriction,
probably correct. The sensations of persons who have suffered amputation
show that their sensorium maintained a picture or map of the body so far
as regards the location of all its sensitive regions. This simulcrum is
invested with consciousness whenever the proper stimulus is applied, and
the character of the stimulus is fixed by it. This picture probably
resides in many of the cells, both sensory and motor, and it probably
does so in the few cells of simple and low forms of life. The
spermatozoid is such a cell, and, how or why we know not, also contains
such an arrangement of its contents, and contains and communicates such
a type of force. It is probable that in the brain-cell this is the
condition of memory of locality. If, now, an intense and long-continued
pressure of stimulus produces an unconscious picture of some organ of
the body in the mind, there is reason to suppose that the energies
communicated to the embryo by the spermatozoid and ovum will partake of
the memory thus created. The only reason why the oft-repeated stories of
birthmarks are so often untrue, is because the effect of temporary
impressions on the mother is not strong enough to counterbalance the
molecular structure established by impressions often repeated
throughout much larger periods of time."[71:A]


WHY CHILDREN RESEMBLE PARENTS.--That children reproduce the general and
physical and mental characteristics of their parents in combination is
unquestionable truth, although the particular mode in which they are
communicated is yet undetermined, notwithstanding the fact mentioned by
Professor Cope that they are somehow conveyed by the microscopic sperm
and germ in the union of which the new being has its beginning. Thus
every individual must possess the general characteristics of the
primitive human family from which through a vast number of ancestors he
has descended. And yet at every stage of descent the organism may have
obtained fresh characters, or at least have undergone some modification.
As remarked by Dr. G. H. Th. Eimer, "Every character which must have
been formed through the activity of the organism is an acquired
character. All characters, therefore, which have been developed by
exertion are acquired, and these characters are inherited from
generation to generation. The same holds for all organs atrophied
through disease--the degree of atrophy is acquired and inherited. In the
first class we see especially the action of direct adaptation; in the
second, the results of the cessation of the action. A third class of
acquired characters is to be traced simply to the immediate action of
the environment on the organism, and, originally, at the commencement of
their appearance, all characters must have belonged to this
class."[72:A] We have here a general argument in opposition to the
theory propounded by Professor Weismann, that acquired characters are
not transmissible. Elsewhere (page 382) Dr. Eimer observes: "Phyletic
growth, or the evolution of the organic world ever into higher and more
complex forms, or at least into forms of different structure, is, as I
have said, merely the sum of the processes of growth of the
ancestors--together with the result of external influences on the forms
during their development and their existence. This additional
modification which the individuals as such undergo is--together with the
influence of crossing--the very cause of the constantly progressing
evolution. All that the members of a series of individuals directly
connected by descent acquire constitutes together the material for the
formation of a new species."


LIFE'S EXPERIENCES AFFECTING CHILD.--Unless characteristics acquired by
an individual, that is, the modifications of the organism due to his
own life experiences, are capable of being handed down to his offspring,
it is difficult to see how any progress could be made in the development
of the race. Weismann's declaration that acquired characters are not
transmissible was a surprise to the scientific world when first made,
but it has been accepted by many Darwinians. His conclusion is dependent
on his doctrine of heredity, which differs from that propounded by
Darwin, but is by no means new; as its leading ideas, as pointed out by
Professor G. J. Romanes,[73:A] are largely a reproduction of those of
Mr. Francis Galton, whose work on heredity attracted much attention when
first published. The views of Darwin, Galton and Weismann on that
subject have been compared by Professor Romanes, who explains the
distinction between them. He says (page 133), after referring to the
supposed continuity of the germ-plasm, common to the theories of Galton
and Weismann, but not required by that of Darwin, "The three theories
may be ranked thus--The particulate elements of heredity all proceed
centripetally from somatic-cells to germ-cells (gemmules): the
inheritance of acquired characters is therefore habitual.

"These particulate elements proceed for the most part, though not
exclusively, from germ-cells to somatic-cells (stirp): the inheritance
of acquired characters is therefore but occasional.

"The elements in question proceed exclusively in the centrifugal
direction last mentioned (germ-plasm): the inheritance of acquired
characters is therefore impossible."

The first of these theories is that of Darwin, and the last that of
Weismann, whose notion of the continuity of germ-plasm supposes that no
part of an organism generates any of the formative material which goes
to make up its offspring. This material is regarded in much the same
light as the sperm which the male parent confides to the keeping of the
female, according to the notion of the ancient world above referred to.
For, as Romanes states (page 26): "In each generation a small portion of
this substance [germ-plasm] is told off to develop a new body to lodge
and nourish the ever-growing and never-dying germ-plasm--this new body,
therefore, resembling its so-called parent body simply because it has
been developed from one and the same mass of formative material; and,
lastly, that this formative material, or germ-plasm, has been continuous
through all generations of successively perishing bodies, which
therefore stand to it in much the same relation as annual shoots to a
perennial stem: the shoots resemble one another simply because they are
all grown from one and the same stock."

Although Professor Weismann denies that acquired characters, that is,
individual peculiarities arising as the result of personal experience,
are transmitted, he admits that congenital characters, that is,
peculiarities with which an individual is born, are transmitted to
offspring. As congenital characters must, originally, have been
individual, it is not easy at first sight to perceive Weismann's real
meaning. It is necessary, therefore, to enter more particularly into a
consideration of his theory, which he regards as in general accord with
Darwin's theory of pangenesis. Darwin supposes that all the cells of the
body continually give off great numbers of _gemmules_, which are
conveyed by the blood and deposited in the germ-cells of the organism.
These cells are thus endowed with the power of developing a new organism
of the same kind, each gemmule reproducing the cell from which it was
derived. These ultimate vital units are called by Weismann _biophors_,
but he supposes them not to be the ultimate "bearers of vitality." They
are said to be arranged in groups to which the term _determinants_ is
applied, and these groups are combined so as to form ancestral _ids_ or
germ-plasms. Each determinant, which is made up of perfectly definite
numbers and combinations of biophors, is the primary constituent of a
particular cell, or of a group of cells, such as a blood corpuscle. The
determinants thus "control the cell by breaking up into biophors, which
migrate into the cell body through the nuclear membrane, multiply there,
arrange themselves according to the forces within them, and determine
the histological structure of the cell," impressing upon it its
inherited specific character. The structure of the cell, and of every
subsequent stage, exists therefore potentially in the inherited
structure of the id, and the determination of its character "depends on
the biophors which the corresponding determinant contains, and which it
transmits to the cell."


GERM-PLASM.--While Weismann regarded germ-plasm as absolutely stable,
the only mode by which congenital variation could be brought about was
that of _amphimixis_, or intermingling of individuals in the process of
generation. As modified, however, by his latest work, "The Germ-plasm, a
Theory of Heredity," published in 1892, his theory now allows the plasm
to be capable of modification, and he ascribes that variation to the
direct effects of external influences on the biophors and determinants
of the germ-plasm. The instability of this substance is so slight,
however, that congenital variations cannot be acted on and perpetuated
by natural selection, and the influence of amphimixis is thus required
for the purpose. Mr. Herbert Spencer, however, in criticising
Weismann's theory, declares that "functionally produced modifications of
structure are transmissible," and he refers in support of his contention
to the remarkable effect of arrested nutrition on the structure and
habits of wasps and bees. It especially affects the reproductive organs,
and hence there is no occasion to call in the aid of amphimixis to
perpetuate the variations produced, its office being the blending of the
elements on which the characteristics of offspring depend.

If it be asked how modifications are actually transmitted, we may say
that it can be only by an affection of the germ-cell. This probably
takes place by deviations in the structure of what Weismann calls
determinants, or of groups of determinants, through rearrangement of
their primary units. The modification would be preceded, however, by a
corresponding change in the nerve centers concerned in the use or disuse
of the organs affected. Mr. Spencer shows that under certain conditions
changes take place in the conduct of certain insects, and that "the
maternal activities and instincts undergo analogous changes,"[77:A]
facts which point to a loss of nervous energy and to an intimate
connection between the nervous system and the reproductive function. Use
or disuse first increases or diminishes the activity of certain nerve
centers, and this leads to a modification of the corresponding
germ-cells. If so, the determinants, instead of being first affected, as
proposed by Weismann, and thus determining the variations, are in
reality modified as the result of the functional changes, and are thus
capable of transmitting these changes to succeeding generations.

In a subsequent article, published in _The Contemporary Review_ for
October, 1894, Mr. Spencer recapitulates his argument in favor of the
transmission of acquired characters, and refers to observations made by
Professor Hertwig and others, which he regards as "showing, firstly,
that all the multiplying cells of the developing embryo are alike; and,
secondly, that the soma-cells of the adult severally retain, in a latent
form, all the powers of the original embryo-cell," facts which he
rightly considers disproves Weismann's hypothesis of _panmixia_. If this
is surrendered, then, says Mr. Spencer, "all that evidence collected by
Mr. Darwin and others, regarded by them as proof of the inheritance of
acquired characters, which was cavalierly set aside on the strength of
this alleged process of panmixia is reinstated. And this reinstated
evidence, joined with much evidence since furnished, suffices to
establish the repudiated interpretation."

Great stress was laid by Professor Weismann, as evidence in support of
his theory, on the supposed fact that the inheritance of injuries
sustained during life has not been proved. Particular attention has been
paid to this point by Dr. Eimer, in relation to which he remarks: "That
injuries incurred during life are but seldom transmitted to the
offspring does not appear to me wonderful: the inheritance of the
complete form and complete activities of the organism, which took root
such enormously long periods of time ago, and has been strengthened at
each generation, will, as a rule, counterbalance in the offspring any
such injuries incurred only once and not repeated."[79:A] This is the
same argument as was used, as quoted above, by Professor Cope, to
disprove the occurrence of birthmarks, and Dr. Eimer goes on to state
that there are injuries which are not transmitted to offspring, although
they are constantly repeated, as an instance of which he refers to the
rupture of the hymen. He adds, however: "In such cases we must presume a
specially effective power of correlative activity, directed to the part
affected and residing in the whole organism--the same compensating power
which leads in lower animals, during the life of the individual, to the
regeneration of parts which have been lost or artificially removed. But
these cases do not prove the general proposition that injuries are not
inherited; they do not prove that even injuries which have been
repeated during a considerable period are not inherited. Hitherto little
importance has been attached to the demonstration of the inheritance of
injuries. Yet single cases of the inheritance of injuries only once
incurred seem to me to be thoroughly authentic."


CONGENITAL DEFORMITIES.--Professor Weismann, in replying to the
criticisms of Professor Virchow, admitted the existence of a number of
congenital deformities, birthmarks and other individual peculiarities,
which are inherited, but he affirms that we do not know from what causes
they first appeared, and that a great proportion of them proceed from
the germ itself, and are due, therefore, to alteration of the germinal
substance. There is no proof of this, however, according to Dr.
Eimer,[80:A] who appeals to various facts in support of his contention
that injuries and diseases are inherited. He thinks the degeneration of
the tail in the higher mammals is a case in point, although it has
required great periods of time to complete. Among other instances of
inherited injuries mentioned by Dr. Eimer is one in which a scar over
the left ear and temple, caused to a girl by being thrown from a
carriage, was transmitted to her son and grandson, the son of the latter
also showing absence of hair on the injured spot, although the defect
gradually disappeared with him, nearly a hundred years after the
accident. The case of Dr. Nosseler, who inherited from his mother a
crushed finger joint, caused by an accident which happened two years
before his birth, would seem to be conclusive proof that injuries are
transmissible. Dr. Eimer refers also to the breeding of short-tailed
pointers from dogs whose tails had been artificially shortened; and also
to Brown-Sequard's experiments with guinea pigs, in which epilepsy was
inherited by their offspring, who showed also the loss of certain
phalanges, or even whole toes of the hind feet, the parents having
suffered a similar loss owing to the division of the sciatic nerve. He
adds that numerous other instances of the inheritance of injuries have
been recorded, as "inheritance of the artificially shortened tail of the
bull, of artificially produced hornlessness in cattle, many cases of
inheritance in man of curvature in a finger, caused by injury,
inheritance of the absence of one eye which had been lost by the father
during life or by disease, etc."

The question of the inheritance of deformities and diseases, and the
causes of the germ-variations on which it depends, have been considered
by Zeigler, whose conclusions, as quoted by Dr. Eimer (page 186), are
too important to be omitted. The causes which Zeigler assigns for the
origin of such germ-variations are of three kinds. These are: 1--Union
of sexual nuclei which are not adapted for copulation; 2--Disturbance of
the copulatory process itself; 3--Injurious influences which affect the
sexual nuclei or the fertilized ovum at a time when separation of the
sexual cells from the body cells has not yet occurred. "If the embryo is
injuriously affected at a later period," says Zeigler, "either a
malformation or a constitutional anomaly arises, which is not inherited,
or only the sexual cells are injured, in which case the body-cells
develop normally, and a disturbance shows itself only in the development
of the next generation." The union of sexual nuclei not adapted for
copulation appears, however, to be "the most frequent and most important
cause of hereditary local malformations as well as of hereditary morbid
tendencies, or of a defect in any system of the whole organism." If the
nuclei are altogether unadapted to each other, sterility occurs, as in
the sexual nuclei of distinct species.


PSYCHICAL DISEASES.--Zeigler's conclusions are supported by reference to
the enquiries of the distinguished psychiatrist, D. Von Krafft-Ebings,
who has considered the heredity of psychical diseases, and in connection
therewith mentions three "essential facts" which it is necessary to keep
in view when dealing with that subject. The first of these facts is
Atavism, by which "the bodily and mental organization and character can
be transmitted from the first to the third generation, without any
necessity that the second and intermediate one should exhibit the
peculiarities of the first--thus the condition of the life and health of
the grandparents are of interest for us." Secondly, "Only in rare cases
is the actual disease transmitted in procreation (congenital insanity,
hereditary syphilis), as a rule only the disposition thereto. Actual
disease only occurs when accessory injurious influences produce an
effect based upon that disposition. . . . We must, therefore, consider
also the state of health of the relatives (uncles, cousins, aunts), and
since here also the law of atavism holds good, the possible diseases of
great-uncles and great-aunts." Thirdly, Dr. Von Krafft-Ebings says,
"Only exceptionally does the same disease develop in ascendant as
in descendant lines, in consequence of the transmission of morbid
dispositions. On the contrary, there exists a remarkable variability in
the forms of disease which may almost claim the value of a law (the law
of polymorphism or transmutation)."

This law is referred to by M. Ribot as one of the causes of deviation
from heredity, and he speaks of it as "transformation." As examples of
transformation of heredity, Ribot refers to fixed ideas in the
progenitor, which may become in the descendants "melancholy, taste for
meditation, aptitude for the exact sciences, energy of will, etc.;" the
mania of progenitors may be changed in the descendants into "aptitude
for the arts, liveliness of imagination, quickness of mind,
inconsistency in desires, sudden and variable will." "Just as real
insanity," says Moreau of Tours, "may be hereditarily reproduced only
under the form of eccentricity, may be transmitted from progenitors to
descendants only in modified form, and in more or less mitigated
character, so a state of simple eccentricity in the parent--a state
which is no more than a peculiarity or a strangeness of character--may
in the children be the origin of true insanity. Thus in transformations
of heredity we sometimes have the germ attaining its maximum intensity;
and again, a maximum of activity may revert to the minimum."[84:A]

It should be borne in mind, as mentioned by Von Krafft-Ebings,[84:B]
that everything which debilitates the nervous system and the generative
powers of the parents, "be it immaturity or too advanced old age,
previous debilitating diseases (typhus, syphilis), mercurial treatment,
alcoholic and sexual excesses, overwork, etc., may give rise to
neuropathic constitutions, and thereby indirectly to every possible
nervous disease in the descendants."


TELEGONY.--There is one remarkable phenomenon, spoken of by various
writers as _telegony_, which has an important bearing on the subject of
the transmission of acquired characters, and shows the action of
prenatal influence in an unexpected form. It is referred to by Professor
Romanes, when he says, "It has not unfrequently been observed, at any
rate in mammals, that when a female has borne progeny to a male of one
variety, and subsequently bears progeny to a male of another variety,
the younger progeny presents a more or less unmistakable resemblance to
the father of the older one."[85:A] This curious fact was considered, in
relation to plants especially, by Darwin, who affirms, as quoted by
Romanes, that it is of the highest theoretical importance, as "The male
element not only affects, in accordance with its proper function, the
germ, but at the same time various parts of the mother-plant, in the
same manner as it affects the same parts in the seminal offspring from
the same two parents. We thus learn that an ovule is not indispensable
for the reception of the influence of the male element."

The curious phenomenon of telegony is not limited, however, to plants.
Mr. Herbert Spencer drew attention, in _The Contemporary Review_ for
March, 1893, to a case which has long been known to horsebreeders, and
which may be said to have become classic. The facts were brought, by the
Earl of Morton, to the attention of the Royal Society of Great Britain,
as long ago as the year 1820. The Earl, who possessed a male quagga,
said, in a letter to the President: "I tried to breed from the male
quagga and a young chestnut mare of seven-eighths Arabian blood, and
which had never been bred from; the result was the production of a
female hybrid, now five years old, and bearing, both in her form and in
her colour, very decided indications of her mixed origin. I subsequently
parted with the seven-eighths Arabian mare to Sir Gore Ouseley, who has
bred from her by a very fine black Arabian horse. I yesterday morning
examined the produce, namely, a two-year-old filly and a one-year-old
colt. They have the character of the Arabian breed as decidedly as can
be expected, where fifteen-sixteenths of the blood are Arabian; and they
are fine specimens of that breed; but both in their colour and in the
hair of their manes they have a striking resemblance to the quagga.
Their colour is bay, marked more or less like the quagga in a darker
tint. Both are distinguished by the dark line along the ridge of the
back, the dark stripes across the forehead, and the dark bars across the
back part of the legs." Mr. Spencer refers to an analogous case of the
influence of a wild boar over the subsequent progeny of a domestic sow,
and it now appears that such effects are not so uncommon as the
scientific world has supposed.

Professor Romanes made particular enquiries on this subject of
professional and amateur breeders of animals, and he says most of his
correspondents "are quite persuaded that it is of frequent occurrence,
many of them regard it as a general rule, while some of them go so far
as to make a point of always putting a mare, bitch, etc., to a good
pedigree male in her first season, so that her subsequent progenies may
be benefited by his influence, even though they be engendered by
inferior sires."[87:A] His own more modest conclusion is that the
evidence he obtained "is enough to prove the fact of a previous sire
asserting his influence on a subsequent progeny, although this fact is
one of comparatively rare occurrence."

The English Darwinian met with only one case in which the offspring of a
woman by a second husband, who was a white man, showed the influence of
her first husband, who was a negro. Mr. Herbert Spencer would seem to
have been more successful. In _The Contemporary Review_ for May, 1893,
Mr. Spencer gives the result of his own enquiries as to the effect on a
white woman's subsequent progeny of a previous union with a negro, and
he quotes the opinion of a "distinguished correspondent," that
information given to him many years ago was to the effect that "the
children of white women by a white father had been _repeatedly_ observed
to show traces of black blood, in cases where the woman had previous
connexion with [i. e., a child by] a negro." Mr. Spencer refers also to
Professor Marsh as authority for such a case, and to the opinion of
several medical professors who assured him, through Dr. W. J. Youmans,
that the alleged result "is generally accepted as a fact." He gives as
authoritative testimony the following statement by Dr. Austin Flint,
taken from his "Text-book of Human Physiology:" "A peculiar and, it
seems to me, an inexplicable fact is, that previous pregnancies had an
influence upon offspring. This is well known to breeders of animals. If
pure blooded mares or bitches have been once covered by an inferior
male, in subsequent fecundations the young are likely to partake of the
character of the first male, even if they be bred with males of
unimpeachable pedigree. What the mechanism of the influence of the first
conception is, it is impossible to say; but the fact is incontestable.
The same influence is observed in the human subject. A woman may have,
by a second husband, children who resemble a former husband, and this is
particularly well marked in certain instances by the color of the hair
and eyes. A white woman who has had children by a negro may
subsequently bear children to a white man, these children presenting
some of the unmistakable peculiarities of the negro race."

This phenomenon would alone seem to answer the question of the
transmission of acquired characters in the affirmative, for its
explanation is to be found in the facts brought out by Darwin, as to the
action of foreign pollen on the structure of the mother plant; in
relation to which Professor Romanes remarks: "When one variety
fertilizes the ovules of another not unfrequently the influence extends
beyond the ovules to the ovarium, and even to the calyx and
flower-stalk, of the mother plant. This influence, which may affect the
shape, size, colour, and texture of the somatic tissues of the mother,
has been observed in a large number of plants belonging to many
different orders."[89:A] May we not have here the explanation of the
fact, which has frequently been pointed out, that husband and wife show
a tendency to grow like each other, both physically and mentally, the
resemblance after a long married life being sometimes very striking?


POWER OF HEREDITY.--The most important fact brought out in the
discussion of the possibility of the transmission of acquired characters
is the power of heredity. If organisms did not reproduce their own
special characteristics, there could be no fixity of form and no order
in organic nature. Nevertheless, if there were no change by individual
modification or divergence, in whatever way this may be rendered
permanent in the race, there could be no evolution. Hence we can say,
with Dr. Eimer, "Any one who thus completely renders allegiance to the
supremacy of the principles of the unity of the organic world, who
rejects everything which contradicts that principle, cannot help
admitting that in truth, as I assert, the ultimate origin of the various
kinships in the animal and vegetable kingdom is to be traced to
individual differences, and that the difference between the former, like
the latter, must be essentially determined by external conditions, by
the modification of organic growth."

The causes of diversity which interfere with the action of heredity may
operate, as we have seen, at the moment of conception, or subsequent to
conception. The former class of causes is of great importance, in
accordance with the principle, laid down by M. Ribot, of the
disproportion of effects to causes, and it is essential, therefore, if
children are to be well-born, that their parents should be careful that
at the moment of procreation they are fitted for the performance of so
serious an act. Mr. J. F. Nisbet in his "Marriage and Heredity" (page
126), well observes, "Twins usually bear a closer resemblance to each
other than to their brothers and sisters born at a different period;
and the reason generally assigned is that they are conceived under
precisely similar conditions. If so, it follows that the difference
existing between ordinary members of a family is due to their being born
at considerable intervals of time and therefore under changed conditions
on the part of their parents."


SOBRIETY IN THE FATHER.--Especially does it concern the father, who is
the most active agent in reproduction, to see that he is then in a fit
condition. This is quite apart from the question of the diseased
condition of the organism treated of by Dr. Von Krafft-Ebings, and
refers to temporary rather than to continuing causes. Sobriety is in
this connection of great importance, and, as appears from a passage,
already quoted, in Xenophon, was insisted on at the time of procreation,
by the ancients.

Zeigler points out, as quoted by Dr. Eimer, that "substances taken up
from without, as, for example, poisons, are brought by the blood to the
sexual cells, and others produced in the body are conveyed to the sexual
organs."[91:A] It is suggested that alcohol has such an effect, and
there can be no doubt that a tendency to the drinking habit may be
implanted in a child by a parent intoxicated at the time of
procreation, with the possibility of its leading to other evils in
succeeding generations, ending in the early extinction of the family.
Nisbet refers to several cases of this character, and remarks (page 112)
that, "There is a limit to the transmission of abnormal characters,
either in an original or in a disguised form. Always striving after
perfection, or rather uniformity of type, Nature either purifies a race
of its physical and moral defects, or, if the type be too vicious,
exterminates it, as in the case of the Caesars, the Stuarts, and many
other historical families." Doutrebente came to the conclusion, however,
that insanity--and doubtless it is true of other conditions--may be
worked out of a family by the infusion of healthy blood, except where
both parents were insane, in which case their offspring will become
extinct.

The law of Leviticus (chap. x, verse 9) provides, under penalty of
death, that the priests should not drink wine or strong drink before
going into the tent of meeting. The more stringent regulations provided
by this law in relation to intercourse between Jehovah and His people
require physical and moral perfection in those who approach the deity,
and they may be studied with advantage at the present day by those who
wish to aid in the perfecting of the race. The man who had a blemish was
not allowed to go near the altar of sacrifice, that the sanctuary might
not be profaned; and the sanctuary of the human organism should no less
be preserved from profanation.


SACREDNESS OF PARENTAGE.--It would be well if the sacred act of
procreation were performed more often in the spirit of the ancients, who
regarded marriage as a sacred institution, designed not only for the
perpetuation of the race, but also for the carrying on of the religion
of the domestic hearth. The first-born child especially was considered
to have been sent by the gods, and care was taken, therefore, that it
should be well-born. Prayer and offerings were made to the spirits
before the nuptial bed was approached, and everything was done to ensure
the gift they were asked for should be in every respect worthy of them.
Among the ancient Hebrews the first-born of "all that openeth the womb"
was dedicated to Jehovah (Exodus xxxiv, 19), and hence the rights of the
eldest son could not be defeated by his father: "for he is the beginning
of his strength" (Deut. xxi, 17).

The disturbance of uterine existence between conception and birth is
that which has engaged most attention, and the fact that such
disturbances can take place requires that the expectant mother should be
protected from anything that can so act on her own organism as to
prevent the due operation of the law of heredity. The precautions taken
by primitive peoples in relation to food may have some foundation in
fact, and any food should be avoided by the enceinte woman which will
injuriously influence the system, or give rise to organic disturbances
that may affect the blood by which the embryo is nourished. Emotional
disturbances are to be no less avoided, as through the nervous system
they act on the blood itself. How far the action of the emotions can
influence the physical organism has become a moot question with
psychologists, who now seem inclined to think that "movements are not
caused by the emotions, but are aroused reflexly by the object." Thus,
if the sight of a disagreeable object affects by reflex action the
muscular system of the mother, it will arouse in her a concomitant
emotion, which being transmitted to the embryo may act on its muscular
system, leaving the impression as a birthmark, which may be regarded as
a reflection from the cerebral nerve center of the mother, whether
emotion is the cause or effect of muscular movement.

If the unborn child can be affected injuriously by disturbances of the
mother's environment, it is reasonable to suppose that the child can be
influenced in the opposite direction by making that environment as
conducive to the normal activity of the material organism as possible.
The story of Jacob and Laban, referred to at the beginning of this
chapter, affords an important lesson as to the surroundings with which
the wife should be provided. The bedchamber itself may become a means
of influencing offspring for good or evil, and hence it should contain
only what is agreeable to the senses, and capable of giving rise to
pleasant imaginings. Especially should this be the case where a woman is
of a highly sensitive nature. Impressions received from without depend
largely for their force and influence, however, on the condition of the
receptive mind, and beautiful surroundings cannot make up for the want
of inward harmony. A happy and contented mind is the best guarantee that
the due action of the law of heredity will not be disturbed at the time
of conception or afterwards. Thus, bickerings between husband and wife
must have a disturbing effect, especially if carried into the
bedchamber. The sage of old said: "Let not the sun go down upon thy
wrath," and parents should make it a point of duty, for the sake of
their future offspring, never to let the disputes of the daytime--if
unfortunately they occur--be carried into the night. The bedchamber is
the place for mental as well as physical repose.

The surest guarantee against the occurrence of conditions which may
injuriously affect the future offspring, either at the time of
procreation, or during the subsequent period of gestation, is to be
found in the general life of the parents. This will give the general
impress which affects the disposition of the child as a whole, and it
will show what are the conditions of the family life under the
influence of which it was born. The nature of the "home" is thus an
important factor in determining that of the offspring, and it will
necessarily be a reflection of the general character of those on whom it
depends. A noble life in the parent will bear fruit in the physical,
intellectual and moral character of the child, and although this is true
in relation to the father as well as to the mother, it is doubly true as
to the latter, seeing that the mother alone is the bearer and nourisher
of offspring during the period of gestation. During this period the
child acquires probably many of the characters which it inherits from
its mother, and the maternal influence may thus be extended to the
period of lactation. The importance attached to fosterage, where this
practice became an established custom, as with the early Irish and
Arabs, would seem to prove that the characteristics of the nurse were to
some extent transmitted to the child with the milk. The early Arabs
regarded the milk-tie as constituting a real unity of flesh and blood
between the foster mother and the foster child, and between foster
children, so much so as to be a bar to marriage.


SELF-CONTROL.--One very serious matter which should be kept in mind by
an expectant mother is the duty of exercising self-control. The
influence of this principle in relation to the general life and conduct
has been repeatedly pointed out, and it is referred to by Jennie
Chandler in _The Journal of Hygiene_ for August, 1895, where we are
told: "The power of self-mastery is believed by scientists to be the
last one acquired by the human race in the process of evolution, and the
last powers acquired are not so firmly fixed in our natures as some
which have been longer in our possession. The result is, it becomes
deranged more readily than more fixed forces. In many cases,
self-control has never been acquired at all, and so the person can only
partly master himself. As a rule, children have little of this power.
They are like animals. Little by little, as they grow older, it grows,
and in some it becomes so well developed that it is almost perfect. In
others, like music in those who never acquire it, or any other faculty,
it never becomes a potent factor in life."

Dr. Chandler adds, "Woman as well as man needs to learn self-mastery.
With a large amount of feeling in her nature, it is very hard for her to
do it, but she should try. Too many of us go through life never making
any effort to be our own masters. We give way to caprices, whims,
feelings, follies, far more than is good for our health. Hysteria gives
us a good example of the loss of self-control. Any uncontrolled passion
gives an equally vivid example. Men and women often say they can't
govern themselves; that is admitting they have defects of character
which are their masters. They ought to make effort and see if they are
not mistaken. The worst effect of lack of self-control are on the
health. It allows every kind of bad habit in eating, drinking, dressing,
sleeping, to gain possession of the person, and the result is a weak
instead of a strong character."

Considering the effect which the organic disposition of the mother has
on the future offspring, it is evident that whether a child shall have
the power of self-control depends very largely on the mother herself,
and it is all-important, therefore, that she should have and exercise
that power herself. As Dr. Chandler remarks, "No matter how much you
have been to school, how many college degrees you have, you are not
educated till you have a reasonable control of your own nature, and can
direct your own lives rather than have them directed for you by your
feelings and emotions." This truth obtains fresh significance when we
consider that a woman's conduct affects the direction not only of her
own life, but the lives of her future children, and possibly of
succeeding generations.

Although much has yet to be done to prove the actual effects on
offspring of the conduct of its parents, enough is known to establish
the fact that both the general disposition and the particular conduct of
father or mother may interfere with the orderly action of the law of
heredity. This law ensures the inheritance of race and individual
characters; but when these are good, a noble life will cause the
tendencies towards good to be still further strengthened in offspring,
and if they are evil, then the disposition will receive an inclination
in the opposite direction, or, at least, the further development of evil
will be arrested. On the other hand, a degrading life will produce bad
effects on offspring, causing deterioration of the organic disposition
and strengthening the tendency to evil it may have inherited, or
weakening its tendencies towards the good.


FOOTNOTES:

[57:A] "Heredity." By Th. Ribot (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875), p.
201.

[59:A] "The Origin of the Fittest." By E. D. Cope (D. Appleton & Co.,
New York). Page 408.

[65:A] "Pioneering in New Guinea." By James Chalmers. 1887. Page 165.

[66:A] "Development of Kinship and Marriage." Page 264.

[67:A] "Researches into the Early History of Mankind." Page 292.

[71:A] Cope's "Origin of the Fittest." (Redway, London. 1889.) Page 407.

[72:A] "Organic Evolution." Translated by J. T. Cunningham, M. A.
(London, Macmillan & Co., 1890.) Page 86.

[73:A] "Examination of Weismannism." The Open Court Publishing Co.,
Chicago. 1893.

[77:A] _The Contemporary Review_, September, 1893.

[79:A] "Organic Evolution." Translated by J. T. Cunningham, M. A. Page
13.

[80:A] "Organic Evolution," page 176.

[84:A] "Organic Evolution," page 211.

[84:B] Op. cit., page 201.

[85:A] "Examination of Weismannism," page 77.

[87:A] "Examination of Weismannism," page 22.

[89:A] "Examination of Weismannism," page 79.

[91:A] "Organic Evolution," page 187.




HEREDITY AND EDUCATION.

_A Lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Ethical Association._


In presenting the subject of heredity and its relation to education, it
seems to me best to consider first what is meant by the term, and after
this the views held on the subject by our leading evolutionists, when
its relation to education will be easier and, I hope, more satisfactory.

In common parlance, heredity is the transmission of any trait or
peculiarity from the parent to the offspring, as the color of the hair,
the form of the nose, the tones of the voice; or any disease, or any
special character that may exist in either parent.

If a horse has a star on its forehead like one of its ancestors, we say
it is due to heredity. If an ox has color marks on its body like its
parent, it is a case of heredity. If a human being has a disease which
his ancestors had, very often he declares he inherited it from them,
even if it be only a common catarrh. But this is a narrow view of the
subject, and does not include all that a biologist means when he uses
this word.

By heredity he understands the production from a fertilized ovum of an
individual, with all the general characteristics of structure and
function of body and brain of the species to which it belongs. It means
that the offspring, however much they may vary in general characters,
will always be of the same species as the parents. The offspring of dogs
will be dogs; of wolves, wolves; of negroes, negroes, and of white men,
white men. Anything less is not heredity in its full sense.

Darwin, whom we all love and honor, says: "The whole subject of
inheritance is wonderful," and in this he but voices the universal
sentiment of those who have given any serious consideration to it. Let
me try to show you how wonderful it is by an illustration. From very
ancient times the horse has been the constant companion of man. This
animal, with his splendid muscular system, the most perfect, perhaps, of
any creature, has for his food and shelter, and not always the best of
these, rendered mankind almost infinite service. Now, every horse that
has ever been born into the world began life as a minute ovum, which
under the microscope presents no appearance of a horse, or any other
animal, and, strange to say, this ovum is, to all appearance, like the
ovum of other animals, and no amount of study, without knowing its
origin, can decide whether it will develop as a dog, an ox, a horse or a
man. After, however, it has gone through the process of gestation, this
apparently simple egg becomes an animal of a very complex nature, with
heart, lungs, brain, eyes, ears, mouth, stomach, and blood vessels, all
where they should be and ready to perform their functions; with mental
traits of a peculiar kind which adapt him to the service which man
requires. Nay more: In the process of the evolution of the horse, little
by little he has changed in various ways, and many, if not all of these
changes in his bodily constitution and in his mental characteristics,
which have been found useful or made him more serviceable to man, his
greater docility, his increased size, his enormous strength and speed,
his wonderful beauty, through a wise selection and the weeding out of
the unfit on the part of the breeder, have been transmitted through
heredity to his offspring, so that today only a paleontologist can tell
us if he finds the remains of a primitive horse, that it belongs to the
same class of animals as the horse of our time.


THEORIES.--Our theories of heredity will depend on the extent of our
knowledge, and especially our knowledge of embryology. In the last
century knowledge on this subject was very meagre, especially that part
of embryology which could only be studied with the microscope;
consequently the views of scientists and others of that time were
exceedingly crude. The most important was that of Malphigi and Bonnet,
who maintained that the miniature animal existed in the egg; that
fertilization by the male element simply furnished it with food for
growth, and that this was added to and stored up in its interstices.
Cuvier, Haller and Leibnitz adopted substantially these views. The
latter found them to support his opinion that everything was the result
of growth from monads, and that there was no such thing in all nature as
generation.

Such a theory was very simple, but it explained nothing except the bare
production of offspring. It gave no clue to their endless variations,
nor to the fact that they often resembled the father more than the
mother. According to this theory the offspring should resemble the
mother, as the complete individual is formed by her and should be in her
image.

Leeuwenhock, one of the early microscopists, by the aid of his lenses,
opened a new world to mankind, and discovered the sperm cells to be
active, living, moving elements, and he gave a death-blow to the belief
that the perfect organism exists in the ovum; but he went to the
opposite extreme, and maintained that it exists in the male cell and
that it is only fed and developed by the female. Even today we find in a
vague way both these theories held by educated persons.

We are indebted to Harvey in the early part of the eighteenth century
for advocating the view held by Aristotle, now known as _Epigenesis_,
and combatting the view of growth from a miniature, but already
perfectly formed animal, to a visible one. Epigenesis consists in the
successive differentiation from the relatively homogeneous elements as
found in the egg, to the complicated parts and structure as seen in the
offspring.

According to Huxley, this work of Harvey alone would have entitled him
to recognition as one of the founders of biological science, had he not
immortalized himself as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood.

Not long after Harvey's publication, Casper Frederick Wolf established
the theory of epigenesis upon a firm foundation, where it still remains.

The doctrine of _epigenesis_ has very much complicated the whole
question of heredity. No wonder even so great a mind as that of Darwin
exclaimed, "The whole subject is wonderful." How can an egg, which in
structure is comparatively simple, an aggregation of cells, not one of
which bears the slightest resemblance to any organ in the body, develop
into the perfect individual? How can this egg, formed in special organs,
develop other organs than those like the ones in which it was formed?
How can sexual cells develop brain cells, with their wonderful modes of
action?

We cannot explain the philosophy of heredity without being able to
answer these questions; but difficult as is the problem, our biologists
have made various attempts at an explanation. I cannot go over all the
various speculations, but only those most intimately connected with the
subject will be mentioned.

The first is Darwin's own attempt at an explanation by the theory of
_pangenesis_, or genesis from every part. He saw the necessity of having
in the sexual cells some power or force to represent the other organs
and functions of the body, else how could these organs be formed in the
embryo? Pangenesis was supposed to be accomplished as follows: Every
organ through its cells gives off _gemmules_. These are inconceivably
small, too small for any microscopical vision; also inconceivably great
in numbers, and with great power of growth and multiplication. They pass
from the various organs in which they are formed to the special sex
organs for generating the sexual cells; some of them are stored up as
representatives of the various organs from which they have been given
off. The consequence is that every egg has in it something from every
organ in the body of both parents which is able, during gestation, to
develop into that organ.

According to this theory, for instance, if no gemmules are given off
from the brain, then no brain can be developed from the egg, and so of
other organs. As in a representative government, all parts of the
country send representatives to the capitol to do the bidding of the
people, so every organ of the body sends representatives to the sexual
cells to form their respective organs; without them these organs would
not be formed.

There are many objections to pangenesis, but they need not be named
here. It occurred to Galton, whose studies in heredity have been more
prolific of good than those of any other man, to test it by practical
experiment. If these gemmules are circulating in the blood of animals
before being stored up in the sexual cells, by transfusing blood from
one variety of any species to another it ought to affect the offspring
of this other. For his test cases he chose eighteen silvergrey rabbits
which breed true, and into their bodies he transfused the blood of other
different varieties, in several cases replacing one-half of this fluid.
There were eighty-six offspring bred at once from these silvergrey
rabbits, and all true silvergreys. The theory did not work. But if it
did not work in practice, it certainly worked on the intellects of
biologists everywhere, exactly what Darwin wished; it set them to
thinking. It acted as a ferment, so to say, and brought forth a rich
harvest in speculation if not in actual knowledge.[106:A]


CONTINUITY OF THE GERM-PLASM.--The only other theory which I shall
mention is that of Weismann, which has been before the public for more
than a decade, and it is safe to say it has produced a more profound
impression upon biologists than all others. It has its basis in what he
calls _continuity of the germ-plasm_. By the germ-plasm is meant that
part of the germ cell containing all the chemical and physical
properties, including the molecular structure, which enables it to
become, under appropriate conditions, a new individual of the same
species as the parents. In it lies hidden all the characteristics both
of the species and of the future individual. In it lies all the
phenomena of heredity. It is the product of the coalescence of the male
and female elements requisite for reproduction. Only, however, in the
nuclear substance is to be found the hereditary tendencies. Now, this
germ-plasm is _continuous_, that is to say, it contains not only
material from both parents, but from grandparents and greatgrandparents,
and so on indefinitely. This germ-plasm is exceedingly minute in
quantity, but has great power of growth. Not all is used up in the
production of any individual, but some is left over and stored up for
the next generation. The germ-plasm might be represented as a long
creeping root, from which arise at intervals all the individuals of
successive generations. The amount of ancestral germ-plasm in each
fertilized ovum is calculated in the same way that stock breeders
calculate the amount of blood of any ancestor running in any individual.
For instance: The germ-plasm contributed by the father and mother is
each one-half; each grandparent one fourth, and so on. Ten generations
back each ancestor contributes only one part in one thousand and
twenty-four parts. This continuity has by some been called the
immortality of the germ-plasm. Theoretically, the original Adam and Eve
have contributed an infinitesimal part. This probably explains why there
is so much of the original Adam in most of us. By it we are able to
explain that wonderful fact of _atavism_, or the appearance of
characters from a remote ancestor in offspring. Some of the germ-plasm
from this ancestor by some means has had an opportunity to grow rapidly
and contribute more than its share in the production of the individual
in which it appears.

It also enables us to explain the fact that no two individuals are quite
alike, but that there is constant variation. Each person is the product
of a multitude of ancestors, and the germ-plasm which produced them is
never mixed, in quite the same proportion, nor do the different parts
grow with quite the same vigor.

It was on this theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm that Weismann
built his doctrine of the non-transmission of acquired characters. On
this subject he says: "Hence it follows that the transmission of
acquired characters is an impossibility, for if the germ-plasm is not
formed anew in each individual, but is derived from that which preceded
it, its structure, and above all, its molecular constitution, cannot
depend upon the individual in which it happens to occur, but such an
individual only forms, as it were, the nutritive soil at the expense of
which it grows, while the latter possessed its character from the
beginning, that is, before the commencement of growth." Of this,
however, I will speak later.


A RATIONAL VIEW OF HEREDITY.--I might continue giving other theories of
heredity--Haeckel's, for instance--or the metaphysical theory, but it is
hardly necessary. I do not accept in full any of them. Their authors, it
seems to me, have not worked along the lines of evolution, but have gone
further than was necessary into the fields of speculation. Darwin, in
his theory of Pangenesis, admitted this frankly, and yet he clung to the
idea with great tenacity. If we take the unicellular organisms which
multiply by division, we may see that heredity is simple. One
unicellular individual growing larger than is convenient, divides into
two. Each is like the other. It could hardly be different. Reproduction
by spores or buds is practically the same thing. The spores or buds are
minute particles of the parent organism. When it comes to the
coalescence of the germ and sperm elements from two organisms, the
phenomena become more complicated, and it is still more so as the animal
rises in the scale of creation; but I believe the processes of organic
evolution have gone on so slowly that the sexual cells have acquired the
power to transmit the whole organism without the necessity of the
germ-plasm being continued from parent to offspring indefinitely, and
also without the aid of pangenesis.

The egg has acquired a tendency to develop in a certain direction. Just
how we cannot tell, further than to say that it was probably the result
of variation first and natural selection selecting out those variations
most suitable. It is this tendency to vary that gives rise to many of
the phenomena of heredity. The subject is, for the present, beyond our
power to settle satisfactorily, and so hypotheses must be resorted to.
The sexual cells, comparatively simple in anatomical structure, must be
highly complex in their molecular structure; and the more highly evolved
the organism, the more complex becomes this molecular structure. If it
were possible to study this molecular structure we should be able to
understand the whole subject far better than is possible now. But this
is not possible, and there is little hope that we shall ever be able to
accomplish it.


HEREDITY AND THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.--The next question which comes
up for consideration is that of the education of children and its
relation to heredity. This brings us at once to the problem as to
whether acquired characters are transmitted to offspring or not. If
acquired characters are transmitted, the relation of heredity to
education must be very close and important. If acquired characters are
not inherited, then heredity and education have a very different
relation. That acquired characters are transmitted has long been
believed. It was the belief of Lamarck. He tried to explain the
structure of the organism by this principle. The illustration of the
long neck of the giraffe is familiar to every one. It originated by the
constant stretching of this part to obtain food from the trees. In times
of scarcity, he had to exert himself in this way still more to reach the
higher branches. The young of the giraffe had longer necks than their
parents because of the efforts of the latter in this way. So the keen
sight of birds, it was argued, was acquired in the same manner. The hawk
had to exercise his eyes most vigorously to discern his prey at a
distance, and his offspring inherited this keenness of sight acquired by
the exercise of his ancestors.

Darwin believed that the effects of the exercise of any part were
transmitted. He says: "We may feel assured that the inherited effects of
the use and disuse of parts will have done much in the same direction
with natural selection in modifying man's structure of body."

We may say that this belief has been held by the common people,
uneducated in science. They not unfrequently get at truths in a rude way
long before the scientists do. Many parents tell us their children are
strongly influenced by some particular occupation of the mother during
pregnancy. So strong is this belief, that many mothers are in our times
trying to influence the character of their unborn children by special
modes of life, by cultivating music or art, or science, in order to give
the child a love for these pursuits.

It is by Herbert Spencer that this has been most ably presented. Indeed,
he holds that there is no explanation of evolution without the
transmission of the effects of the use and disuse of parts. His words
are: "If there has been no transmission of acquired character there has
been no evolution."

He also says: "If we go back to the genesis of the human type from some
lower type of primates, we see that while the little toe has ceased to
be of any use for climbing purposes, it has not come into any
considerable use for walking or running. It is manifest that the great
toes have been immensely developed since there took place the change
from arboreal to terrestrial habits. A study of the mechanism of walking
shows why this has happened. Stability requires that the line of
direction--the vertical line, let fall from the center of gravity--shall
fall within the base, and the walking shall be brought at each step
within the area of support, or so near that any tendency to fall may be
checked at the next step. A necessary result is that _if_ at each step
the chief stress of support is thrown on the outer side of the foot, the
body must be swayed so that the line of direction may fall within the
outside of the foot, or close to it; and when the next step is taken it
must be similarly swayed in an opposite direction, so that the outer
side of the foot may bear the weight. That is to say, the body must
oscillate from side to side, or waddle. The movement of the duck when
walking shows what happens when the points of support are far apart.
This kind of movement conflicts with efficient locomotion. There is a
waste of muscular energy in making these lateral movements, and they are
at variance with the forward movement. We may infer, then, that the
developing man profited by throwing the stress as much as possible on
the inner side of the feet, and was especially led to do this when going
fast, which enabled him to abridge the oscillations, as indeed we see it
now in the drunken man. Then there was thrown a continually increasing
stress upon the inner digits as they progressively developed from the
efforts of use, until now the inner digits, so large compared with the
outer, bear the greater part of the weight, and being relatively near
one another render needless any swaying of the body from side to side in
walking. But what has meanwhile happened to the outer digits? Evidently
as fast as the great toes have come more and more into play and the
small ones have gone more and more out of play, dwindling for--how long
shall we say?--perhaps 100,000 years." In other and simpler words, the
great toe of man has wonderfully developed since he began to walk
upright. This has been from greater use, and the transmission of the
effects of this use to offspring. The small toe has decreased in size
proportionately. This we can reasonably infer has been the result of
disuse, the effects of which were also transmitted to offspring.

A still more remarkable illustration of the effects of use and disuse is
seen in the sense of touch in different parts of the body. Prof. Weber,
in his laboratory for experimental psychology, has worked out this
difference most minutely. He finds that by taking a pair of compasses,
the points of which are less than one-twelfth of an inch apart, the end
of the forefinger is not able to distinguish more than one point. Going
to the middle of the back we have the least discriminating power in the
skin, for the points must be separated two and one half inches before
the nerves can decide that there are two. Any one may test this on
himself. Between these extremes we have many differences. The end of
the nose has four times as great power of discrimination as the
forehead. When we come to the tip of the tongue, we find it far excels
any part of the body in its power of tactual discrimination, it being
twice that of the forefinger. In every case we find there is greatest
delicacy of touch in those parts where this sense has been most
exercised. The tongue is being constantly exercised on our food, on the
roof of the mouth, the teeth, etc. It is rarely idle. There is in man no
advantage for his survival, Mr. Spencer asserts, by having such a
sensitive tongue. He could get on just as well without it. He regards it
as a case where the exercise of a function has exalted it remarkably,
and this exaltation has been transmitted to offspring. Natural
selection, he thinks, is not sufficient to account for it. Natural
selection only preserves those characters which will give their
possessor some advantage in the struggle for existence.

Still another argument is drawn from the whale. This monster once lived,
it is believed, partly on land, probably on low land near water, and
must have been smaller than now. It had hind legs; but since it has
lived continuously in the water its tail has so developed as to make a
far better organ of locomotion, and the legs have dwindled from disuse,
so that now there is only a remnant left, and this is hidden beneath
the skin. The tail has become more efficient from use, and this has been
transmitted so that all whales are born with well developed tails. The
legs have dwindled for want of use until they have almost disappeared;
and this effect of disuse has also been transmitted to offspring.

Another illustration is furnished by Havelock Charles, an English
surgeon, who has spent much time among the Punjab tribes in India, and
studied them anthropologically. His account is given in "The Journal of
Anatomy," in a paper on the structure of the skeletons of these people.
It appears they have facets on the bones, fitting them for the sitting
posture. These do not develop after birth, but are seen in the fetus. It
seems hardly possible that these facets could have any other origin
except by transmission after being acquired by ages of use of sitting
posture.

Another argument is drawn from the coadaptation of parts. We know that
the male sheep, likewise the goat, the stag, and the males of many other
animals, have large horns. They are supposed to be useful in fighting
with rivals in order to secure as large a number of females as possible.
Now these large horns require at the same time a greater development of
the bones of the head to hold them, also larger and stronger vertebrae of
the neck and back, and larger muscles of these parts to maintain and
use them effectively. In other words, there must be coadaptation of all
the parts, otherwise these larger horns would be an incumbrance and
useless. Now, if we accept the theory of the inheritance of acquired
characters, this is all simple. The use of the head in butting against
other males exercises all these parts simultaneously, and they develop
equally and at the same time. If, however, inheritance has no part in
the matter, then we must fall back on variation in the germ-plasm and
natural selection for an explanation; but it is difficult or, as Spencer
says, impossible to conceive of variation producing large and heavy
horns on these animals and at the same time coadaptation of all the
other parts to hold and use them. Sometimes coadaptation does not take
place, as in the common brook crab, familiar to every country boy. Its
foreclaws or fingers are out of all proportion to the rest of the leg,
and its awkwardness is well known. The lobster is another case. Even in
human beings we have instances of non-coadaptation, as where the head
and brain are out of proportion to the size of the body, or the reverse.
I need not multiply instances.

Now, if acquired characters are transmitted, any system of training
which exists for a considerable time must necessarily appear in the
structure of the body and in the character. If the training is not in
accord with the laws of evolution, it causes the race to deviate from
the true line of progress, and by just so much hinder advancement. If,
on the other hand, our systems of education conform to correct
principles, progress is advanced by them.

Quite recently an entirely new theory has grown up, opposed to
Lamarckianism, and the theory of the transmission of acquired
characters. It has been before the world little more than a decade and
has made remarkable progress, though it is too soon to say it has been
established beyond dispute. Prof. Weismann, its author, is well equipped
as a biologist to maintain and defend it. I have already stated briefly
his theory of heredity, namely, that the germ-plasm is continuous from
parent to offspring. This necessitates a remodeling of commonly accepted
views, an entire giving up of the Lamarckian belief that use and disuse
have their effect on progeny. If the germ-plasm continues from one
generation to another, then it must already have been formed, or at
least provided for, even before the birth of the parents. They may
modify it, through growth and nutrition, but not through exercise of any
function. Prof. Weismann went at the demonstration of his views in a
thoroughly scientific way by the making of experiments on living animals
and the collection of facts. From his experiments it is now pretty well
established that wounds and injuries, which he considers to be acquired
characters, are not transmitted. No matter for how many generations you
cut off the tails of dogs, cats, horses or sheep, the effects of this
removal do not appear in the progeny. Most parents have some mark on the
body, received in early life, some cut or bruise, some scratch, but
their children do not inherit them. The famous experiment of cutting off
the tails of mice, for generation after generation, and then breeding
from them was one of Weismann's methods of substantiating the theory
that acquired character is not inherited. The offspring of these
mutilated mice had as long tails as if those of their parents had not
been removed. The explanation is, the germ-plasm was not in any way
affected by the bodily mutilation. The practice of the Flathead Indian
is another case. The children of parents whose heads have been
artificially flattened are not affected by it. The small feet of Chinese
women, made so by binding them and preventing their growth, may also be
mentioned.


INTELLECTUAL ACQUIREMENTS.--Not to depend on such evidence, however, he
adduces that of a very different character, namely, the non-transmission
of intellectual acquirements. Language is an example. Although human
beings have been communicating their thoughts to each other from very
ancient times by speech, yet every child has to learn how to do this
for itself. No matter how many languages the parents master, their
children have to go over all the ground the parents did, make all the
toil and effort to learn to speak. The children of the most gifted
linguists, if brought up without coming in contact with those who can
teach them to talk, will never learn a single word. There are, it is
claimed, a few cases on record of children who never acquired their
natural tongue because they had lived among animals and not among human
beings. They learned to make the same vocal sounds the animals did, no
more. The environment in this case was everything, the parental
acquirements nothing.

Music, like language, is also an acquired character, and it is probably
not transmitted. Our musical geniuses are not the children of great
musicians, but in most cases the reverse. They seem to spring into
existence from lowly sources, or at least from parents whose advantages
for a musical education have been very limited, though generally they
have had good health, and a climatic environment of a favorable kind.
Great musical talent usually dies out in any family in a few
generations, no matter how much it is cultivated, or, if it does not die
out entirely, it becomes mediocre; and yet the opportunities of the
children of great musicians, and the ambition of their parents for its
culture, are usually very favorable.


INSTINCT.--In accepting the theory of the non-transmission of acquired
characters, it becomes necessary to give up prevailing views of the
origin of instinct. According to the old belief it was a gift of God,
and not acquired by any effort on the part of its possessor. In speaking
of the instinct of bees, Sidney Smith says: "_Providence has done it._
There are the bees, there is the comb, and the honey, get rid of it or
find some other explanation if you can."

The early evolutionists changed all this, and made instinct the
inheritance of an oft-repeated act. The young kitten, as soon as old
enough, hunts for a mouse and catches it without any training. The sight
of the mouse acts on its nervous system in such a way as to compel it to
creep up softly, jump on it, toy and play with it, and finally kill and
eat it. It would have required long practice on the part of its
ancestors before so wonderful a character could have become fixed. The
same is true of the setter dog.

The new view is, that instincts arise from variations in the germ-plasm.
The union of the germ elements of two individuals causes it to vary more
or less from either parent. These variations will be favorable and
unfavorable. The unfavorable ones will produce offspring handicapped in
the struggle for life and they will disappear. The favorable variations
will produce descendants possessing advantages for survival and leave
numerous offspring.

It is not easy to accept this view, but I think there are some facts
that support it. I will advance a few. The hive of the honey-bee
contains three kinds of insects: the queen, the drones or males, and the
workers. The queen makes her nuptial flight but once in a life-time, and
does it from instinct. How can an instinct like this have been acquired
by being performed but once? The drones are derived from unfertilized
eggs; yet their instincts are those of the male, not of the female. As
they have no male ancestors, it seems probable there was in the
germ-plasm of some queen bee, at a time far back, some change which
allowed unfertilized eggs to produce males.

The workers are all females, not fully developed sexually on account of
a diet with too small a proportion of nitrogenous food and containing so
large a proportion of the hydrocarbons. They inherit from the mother, or
rather from the germ-plasm, the instinct to gather honey, yet neither
their male nor female ancestors ever gathered any honey in their lives,
nor have they for ages. Far back in antiquity the queen, no doubt, did
gather honey, but the disuse of this instinct has not caused it to
disappear in the working bee, as it should have done according to the
Lamarckian theory of disuse causing decay of function. Is there any way
to account for this, except on the theory that the germ-plasm produces
working bees as well as the other kinds, irrespective of the habits of
the queen? Her character in this respect is fixed and does not change.
Is it unreasonable to think that some time in the past, in some queen
bee, was formed a germ-plasm capable of producing three varieties, and
that there was such an advantage in it for survival, that it has been
continued ever since by natural selection? Queens not able to do this
have not been selected, left no offspring, and thus the perfection of
the stock has been assured.

One more case. Some years ago, when interested in agricultural
entomology, I made a study of the so-called seventeen-year locust.
Noting the wonderful precision with which the female cuts into a soft
twig of a tree and lays its eggs in two rows, the thought was suggested
to me, how can an instinct, used only a few hours, once in seventeen
years, be acquired by exercise and persist in the offspring seventeen
years later? Weismann's theory of the origin of instinct from favorable
variations in the germ-plasm offers, it seems to me, a rational
explanation.

I do not need to extend illustrations which abound in the insect world,
especially among the ants, which furnish cases of coadaptation that
cannot be transmitted, as they do not propagate, so I will not mention
them here.

Now, if acquired characters _are not_ transmitted to offspring, how
should these facts affect our methods of educating children?

One advantage will be evident, I think, to all. Erroneous systems of
training, which do not injure the health, will not appear through
heredity in the offspring of parents thus wrongly trained, except as a
result of environment. That is to say, the injury does not become
congenital--will not be in the blood--and, consequently, it will be less
difficult to eradicate it and to introduce better systems. This may be
considered an advantage. But it is not all. If heredity takes place only
through the germ-plasm, then it seems to me that whatever promotes a
knowledge of how to maintain it in a high degree of health, and how to
favor more perfectly natural selection, are subjects with which our
educators may busy themselves far more than they do. That is to say, the
study of biology, of life--of the laws of human growth and development,
and of evolution, will become, more and more, important factors in our
school curriculum. We can hardly imagine how much our common every-day
life has been aided by even the slight knowledge of mathematics gained
by an acquaintance with addition, subtraction, multiplication and
division. By it we are able to keep our little accounts correctly, and
neither cheat our creditors nor be cheated by them. Could we not by a
knowledge of the laws of evolution, and also the laws of growth and
development, keep our larger account with nature in a far better
condition? Could we not keep ourselves from being cheated out of our
health and happiness, and also do something to put an end to physical,
intellectual and moral deterioration which threatens so many families
and even races? It seems to me that the time is not far distant when
these studies will be quite as much attended to as the not unimportant
ones of arithmetic and grammar.


KNOWLEDGE OF HEREDITY.--Whatever doctrine of heredity prevails, however,
one thing is certain, some knowledge of the subject will be very useful
to those who have in care the training of children. To them, often more
than to the parent, is entrusted the task of developing the character
and the individuality of the child. Can he do this well if he knows
nothing of what the bent of the child's genius from ancestral influence
is? I doubt very much if any of us realize how important it is that this
individuality should have its proper share of attention. As the
evolution of society goes on, more and more must there be
differentiation of our various activities. If every boy and every girl
can be educated so that to a considerable extent they can follow the
bent of their genius, _whenever that bent is a normal one_, will not the
available intellectual and moral energy of society be considerably
augmented? If you educate a boy which nature intended for a blacksmith
for a preacher, has not the world lost something? Educate another for a
blacksmith who should have been a preacher, is there not also a great
loss? There are a few children who will come out all right, no matter
how much they are schooled, or whether they have any schooling, so well
have they been born, but with the majority this is not the case. Now it
seems to me that the teacher who knows the natures of his pupils, and
something of their ancestors', can direct their energies more
satisfactorily than the one who does not. If there are hereditary
defects of intellect or morals, he can more easily correct them. If
there are ancestral tendencies to disease through imperfections of
certain organs, for instance, the lungs or the brain, he can often put
the child on such a course of physical culture or mental training as to
lift it above danger, so that it may go through life a useful person
instead of a feeble one or a lunatic. Even the tendency to crime might
be averted.


INDIVIDUALITY.--If we could educate the young so as to bring out more
fully their normal individualities we should be able to cultivate in
them more independence of character. On this subject Prof. Mills says:
"With all its imperfections, I am bound to say that the individuality
of the pupils in the old log school-house was often more developed than
in the city public schools of today, where for a boy to be himself
frequently brings with it the ridicule of his fellows--a condition of
things that has its effect afterward on the lad at college. I find that
this fear of being considered odd,--out of harmony with what others may
think,--one of the greatest drawbacks to the development of independent
investigating students at college. The case is still worse for girls.
When women begin to be really independent in thought, in feeling, in
action, I shall be more hopeful of the progress of mankind. Happily, the
dawn of this day is already begun."

We must not forget that there is also a spectre of heredity. It is seen
under different forms. The physician is often reminded by his patients
that they have inherited this or that disease from father or mother, or
an ancestor farther back. Now, there are few diseases which come to us
directly through inheritance. In a majority of cases they are not
transmitted. Even consumption is not. If we accept the modern theory of
its origin, as we must, this plague is the result of germs floating in
the air being introduced into our bodies by respiration, or in food, or
through contact with abraided Surfaces. Those with weakened
constitutions are more liable to it than the strong, and a weakened
constitution may be inherited, for in this case the germ-plasm will not
be well nourished and will suffer; but those thus handicapped in the
race of life will get on far better by endowing themselves with
knowledge and obeying the laws of life than they can by living under the
shadow of the great spectre of heredity, and casting anathemas at their
ancestors for not having done more for them. No doubt most of them have
done the best they could; and if life is worth living, as most of us
believe, we owe them many thanks for having brought us into the world.


THE SPECTRE OF HEREDITY.--There is a spectre of heredity of a more
serious nature. It is the spirit of the dead past, with its mighty hand
on society, on institutions, on modes of life. Wendell Phillips used to
tell a story, in his anti-slavery addresses, which illustrates the evil
effect of this inherited spectre. It ran in this wise. In an Eastern
temple, an idol, in the image of a god, stood calmly on its pedestal. It
was sacrilege to touch it with human hands; but rats having no such
feelings of awe in the presence of a deity, began to gnaw about it in
various places, yet no one was bold enough to remove it to a place of
safety; and so the rats gnawed on and on, and built their nests within
the sacred image. In time they loosened it from its firm foundation, and
one morning, when the worshippers came in to pay their devotions, they
found their god had fallen prostrate on the floor. So it is sometimes
with our inherited beliefs. They hold us back from progress like a heavy
weight. We fear to remove them, for they are sacred inheritances, idols,
gods, and so our institutions decay, perish.


FOOTNOTES:

[106:A] Darwin did not regard this experiment as settling this question.
He had great affection, so to speak, for this poor, despised theory, and
believed it would finally be established as in the main true.




EVOLUTION'S HOPEFUL PROMISE FOR A HEALTHIER RACE.

_Given before the Greenacre Conference of Evolutionists._


We have most of us in the past looked upon health as a matter of
inheritance, or temperance and moderation in working, in eating and
drinking; or as depending on climate; or exercise, or plenty of sleep,
pure water and a morning bath, or some other secret, one or more of
which is pretty sure to be in the possession of most persons who have
lived long enough to have had some experience with those things that do
them good or harm. All these agencies have great value; but I think few
of us realize that nature, through the laws of evolution, has long been
working to produce a brave and strong, healthy and hardy race of men and
women by other methods than those health habits which most of us value
so highly.

Nature has been doing this chiefly by two methods, and it seems
necessary that I should say something about them in order to present my
subject as I wish to present it. The methods to which I refer are those
of sexual and natural selection. It is to these two processes that we
are largely indebted for race improvements--more perfect bodies, more
active brains, and the high degree of health which a considerable
portion of the race enjoys.


SEXUAL SELECTION.--By sexual selection is meant that preference which
the male or the female has for certain characteristics of the other sex.
It also includes the advantages which the stronger and more capable male
has over the weaker one in obtaining a choice, or, among polygamous
animals, a larger number of females, thus allowing offspring to be
generated by the most capable, and preventing the most incapable from
procuring mates.

The first principle of sexual selection, that of preference, would imply
a considerable development of the intellect, and some taste, but I do
not think it has had great influence on the lower forms of life. It is
difficult to study the preferences of insects, for instance; but I have
studied the moth of the silkworm, and could never observe that either
male or female had a choice for any particular mate. They always appear
to take the first one that comes along. I think this is the conclusion
come to by those entomologists who have had opportunities for studying
other insects. The spider might perhaps be studied in this relation to
advantage, as the female is ferocious, often eating her male suitors
while they are trying to woo her. Nor do I believe that it is a very
important matter in many other animals. Certainly among the domestic
ones--the sheep, the horse, the bull and the cow--a superior male and
female will mate with inferior ones of the opposite sex, apparently
without the slightest objection. I have sometimes thought I had observed
in pigeons a preference, having occasionally seen a male leave his mate
for a more attractive female; at least one that seemed more attractive
to me.

When it comes to sexual selection through struggle, no doubt there has
been great advantage, and it has produced important effects. This occurs
among polygamous and also among non-polygamous animals, and the strong
males are certain to secure the largest number of females and,
consequently, leave the largest number of offspring. This would, no
doubt, through the laws of inheritance, be beneficial in producing
animals of greater vigor and more perfect health. But even in this case,
the males seem to have little preference for any particular female; and
so while the least vigorous ones would leave few, and many no offspring,
the least vigorous females would leave nearly as many as the more
vigorous ones. Still, through pure-blooded males alone, stockbreeders
tell us, herds of cattle can be brought up to a high degree of
perfection in three or four generations, even if the females, at the
beginning of the experiment, are inferior. The first generation would
be half pure blood; the second three-fourths; the third, seven-eighths,
and the fourth fifteen-sixteenths, or almost thoroughbred.

When it comes to man, however, the case is different. With him sexual
selection is more important, and the preference shown by both sexes is
very marked. Many women have strong prejudices against marrying men with
certain characteristics, and nothing will induce them to such a union.
So strong are the desires many of them have for mates with particular
qualities, that they prefer to remain single rather than marry one not
possessing these qualities. Through this preference, on the whole, the
better and those most adapted mate with those most suited to them, and a
considerably larger class of physically and mentally inferior ones do
not mate at all, or, if they do, leave few offspring. The idiot would
stand no chance of securing a mate, although, if left free, he would
unite with another idiot, like an animal. Such things have happened, and
the offspring were not idiots, as might have been expected; but they
were not superior beings. The most deformed in body would, in most
cases, unless they had mental traits of a high order to counterbalance
them, rarely find mates. Thus, through this agency, some of the poorest
specimens of both sexes do not produce offspring, and this raises the
standard of the health and ability of the race.

There are many characters which have come into existence, it is
believed, through sexual selection. One is beauty in women, greater
beauty of form, of hair, of eyes, of grace, fidelity, chastity, power of
love, etc. These all give pleasure to the opposite sex, and have an
element of usefulness in them. Whenever these characters have appeared
in women they have given the possessors a better chance to find a
partner with superior characters. The same is true of men. Woman being
debarred from the hardest labor through maternity has found it useful,
even in early times, to choose men who were strong, brave, courageous
and capable of defending and caring for her, so far as was possible, and
thus by sexual selection she has indirectly promoted health and vigor in
man, for these qualities are inseparable from it.

But the results of sexual selection are by no means perfect. The sexes
are nearly equally divided, and as polygamy is not to any great extent
practiced among human beings, with the exception of those already named,
most men and women can find mates if they wish, even though they may
have many serious imperfections of body and mind, and from them many
children will be born physically and mentally incompetent.

There is no doubt that sexual selection is coming more and more into
play, however. We have abundant evidence of this in the growing
sentiment against the marriage of those with a tendency to any serious
disease, as insanity, syphilis, etc. Only a little while ago was
published an account of a suit for a breach of promise brought by a
young woman in an English court against her suitor. He, having in view
the value of a healthy wife, and also of children well endowed
physically, asked her before the engagement if any of her near relatives
had died of consumption, and she replied that none had, which he
afterwards found was not true. On learning of it he refused to marry
her. I am sorry to say that she won her suit. One of the questions asked
in court was: "Is it possible that a lover would ask such questions of
his sweetheart as would be asked of a candidate for life insurance?"

Courtship is such a delightful occupation for the young, that it seems a
pity to mar it by bringing in questions of health. Yet men and women are
often such deceivers, and frequently so ignorant, that some way must be
devised to prevent deception if sexual selection is ever expected to
have its full influence on race improvement.


HUMAN SELECTION.--Under the head of human selection Galton and Wallace
have made some interesting and valuable suggestions for improving the
health and quality of man. Mr. Galton proposed a system of marks for
family health, intellect and morals, and those members of families
having the highest number were to be encouraged to marry early by state
endowments sufficient to enable them to make a good start in life, early
marriages being favorable to large families. It was a bold suggestion,
savoring too strongly of socialism or state control of marriage to suit
many of us.

Professor Wallace's plan is that women shall, so far as possible, be
made independent, so that they will not feel the necessity of marrying
for a home. Her time might be occupied either in public duties or
self-culture, or any occupation she might prefer. She should be educated
to believe it degrading to marry for a home, without love and
adaptation, and equally wrong to marry her inferior. This would compel
men to be more manly, to leave off their bad habits and many vices, in
order to obtain wives; and the idle, selfish, sickly and deformed would
not easily get them. One difficulty in the way of carrying out this plan
is the greater number of women in society as it exists today, owing to
the larger mortality among boys. But by a better hygiene which is likely
to result from the evolution of the race, this greater mortality of the
masculine sex is certain in the future to be prevented, and there will
then be an excess of men instead of women. This will be a real
advantage, for a scarcity of women would give her a greater influence
in selection, and the result would be, the worst men would not be able
to get wives.

Being in a minority, women would be held in higher esteem, be more
sought for, and have a real choice in marriage by being able to reject
unsatisfactory suitors, which is certainly not the case now to any
considerable extent.

Mr. Wallace's plan would not require such early marriages as that of Mr.
Galton's, and this would be a positive benefit to the physical vigor of
the children, for we know that the progeny of too early marriages are
more delicate, and reproduction before bodily maturity lowers the
standard of health in parents as well as of their offspring. Marriage
being delayed, and the culture of the mind being more attended to than
is possible when it is early, would reduce the number of children in any
family, and this would enable parents to bestow more care upon them. It
would also prevent, to a limited extent, over-multiplication of the
race, which is a real evil, for if every couple left three or four
children the whole world would soon be full, and over-population would
result in much disease.

Mr. Wallace's scheme has in view the prevention of marriage by the weak
and worthless. He believes that if this can be done little more will be
required, for the superior would be the only ones to procreate, and this
would be quite sufficient in a few generations to produce a strong and
healthy race. He calls his plan that of "human selection," but it may
be considered practically as a modification of sexual selection.


NATURAL SELECTION.--Natural selection is another process which takes
place on an enormous scale and constantly among all organisms, whether
animal or vegetable. Natural selection is the result of the operation of
certain laws in the natural world which brings about the survival of
those best fitted for their environment. It is a weeding-out system by
the destruction of a certain portion, at least, if not all, of the weak
and the bad, and it occurs because there is such a rapid increase of
most organisms. We speak of it as the survival of the fittest, but it is
also, at the same time, the destruction of the unfit.

Mr. Darwin says: "We have seen that man is variable in body and mind,
and that the variations are induced either directly or indirectly by the
same general causes, and obey the same general laws as with the lower
animals. Man has spread widely over the face of the earth, and must have
been exposed during his incessant migrations to the most diversified
conditions. They must have passed through many climates and changed
their habits many times before they reached their present homes. They
must have been exposed to a struggle for existence and, consequently, to
the rigid law of natural selection. Beneficial variations of all kinds
have been preserved and injurious ones eliminated. If, then, the
progenitors of man, inhabiting any district, especially one undergoing
some changed conditions, were divided into two equal bodies, the
one-half including those with the best adapted powers for movement, for
gaining a subsistence, for self-defence, would, on the average, have
more offspring than the other and the less well endowed half."

We may have a good object lesson in the elimination of the unfit going
on about us constantly. In New York City, for 1891, the deaths of
children under five years of age was 18,112; for 1892 it was 17,577, or
slightly less. This is more than one-third, but not quite one-half, of
the total deaths at all ages for these years. A very large proportion of
these deaths occurred in the tenement house districts, and a very
natural question arises in the mind: Are the children of those who live
in tenement houses more unfit to survive than those who live in houses
in which only one family dwells. No doubt in most cases the children of
those are most fit who are most able to provide them with hygienic
surroundings, the better food and most suitable care; such are usually
the prudent and the capable. The love of children is usually stronger in
them. The intelligent affection of parents for their young is one of the
incentives to their best training. It certainly is not nearly so strong
among the residents of the crowded quarters of a city as among the more
prosperous. Any one may observe this by going with a company of mothers
on the excursions of some fresh air society, which may be seen in most
cities. It is hard to find one of these mothers who shows what we may
call intelligent affection or intelligent care of her young. Some
pathetic instances illustrating this might be mentioned.

When it comes to the question of their physical or mental inferiority, a
cursory inspection is all that is required to show they are far below
the average. There is a great want of symmetry of body and
mind--evidence of degeneration. In order to test the strength of
constitution, which is a good way to get at one form of physical fitness
for survival, it seems to me, I made a study of the blood of a
considerable number of these children and found the amount of protoplasm
in the colorless blood corpuscles deficient. This shows that their power
to resist disease is slight. It must be borne in mind, however, that a
strong constitution alone is not evidence of fitness for survival. A
strong person may not have prudence, foresight, keenness of perception,
judgment, and many other qualities equally important. The characters
just mentioned may constitute fitness when there is only a moderately
vigorous body. Mr. Darwin recognized this when he said: "We should bear
in mind that an animal possessing great size, strength and ferocity, and
which, like the gorilla, could defend itself from all enemies would not,
perhaps, have become sufficiently social, and this would effectually
have checked the acquirement of the higher mental qualities, such as the
sympathy and love of his fellows. Hence, _it might have been of immense
advantage to men to have sprung from some comparatively weak but social
creature_."

Fitness is a complicated condition and not a simple one. It depends upon
so many external conditions. Fitness in one place would be unfitness in
another. Still, other things being equal, strength of constitution is a
very important factor, and must not be left out of consideration. With
it there is a surplus of material in the body beyond what is required
for digestion, assimilation, circulation and other bodily functions, to
enable the parents not only to do hard labor, but also to endow their
offspring with vigor equal to their own, often greater vigor. The feeble
individuals will have a small amount of stored up material in their
bodies which we may designate as physiological capital to give
continuous food, warmth and protection to their young; they will not be
so well adjusted to their environment, and, consequently, natural
selection will cause their non-survival--or their offspring, if not
immediately, at no distant period.

This doctrine of natural selection has been designated as cruel, harsh,
inexorable, and under the influence of the human feeling every effort is
in our time being made to prevent this wholesome check upon the
processes of nature from having its due influence upon evolution and
race progress. Modern hygiene undertakes to put an end to disease, to
save all who are born, to surround them with every influence which can
favor their health and development. It would stamp out diphtheria,
scarlet fever, summer complaint, consumption and a host of other
diseases which now decimate the ranks of the unfit, and often, no doubt,
of the comparatively fit. This would perpetuate a type of feeble,
unhealthy persons. There would not be much hope of more perfect health
for the race if our hygienists could carry out this daring scheme along
the lines now working. There seems an antagonism between nature's
methods of bettering the physical condition of the race and the efforts
of man himself, acting under the guidance of his moral feelings, to
prevent the action of natural law. Mr. Darwin recognized this, and
referred to it in his great work, "The Descent of Man," where he says:
"With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated, and those
that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized
men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of
elimination. We build asylums for the imbeciles, the maimed and the
sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost
skill to save the life of every one to the last moment."

"There is," says he, "reason to believe that vaccination has preserved
thousands who from a weak constitution would have succumbed to smallpox.
Thus the weak members of civilized communities propagate their kind. No
one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt but
this must be highly injurious to the human race. Excepting in the case
of man himself hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst
animals to breed."

Other evolutionists, in more recent times, have taken a still more
somber view of this danger of race deterioration through the prevention
of the full action of the law of natural selection.

Dr. John Berry Haycraft, in a recent work entitled "Darwinism and Race
Progress," has sounded the alarm in no uncertain tones. He says: "Races,
therefore, subject to epidemics of a particular fever, suffer selections
in the hands of the microbes of that fever, and those living are
survivals, cast in the most resisting mould. It may not be flattering to
our national vanity to look upon ourselves as the product of the
selection of the micro-organism of measles, scarlet fever, smallpox,
etc.; but the reasonableness of the conclusion seems to be forced upon
us when we consider his immunity from these diseases as compared with
the natives of the interior of Africa, or the wilds of America, whose
races have never been so selected, and who, when attacked for the first
time by these diseases, are ravaged almost to extinction. By
exterminating these diseases we shall no doubt preserve countless lives
to the community who will, in their turn, become race producers; but in
as much as the individuals thus preserved will, in most cases, belong to
the feebler and less resisting of the community, _the race will not
become more robust_."

The same author concludes in these words: "In the meantime we may view,
and not without inquietude, the probability that our statistics, as far
as they go, indicate that race deterioration has already begun as a
consequence of that care for the individual which has characterized the
efforts of modern society. The biologist, from quite another group of
facts, has independently arrived at conclusions which render this view
in the highest degree probable."

"Thus, the great English race, once so hardy, so powerful," says this
modern writer, "by hygiene and better physical conditions, is becoming
weaker and weaker."

This view of the case is growing largely in England and, perhaps, other
European countries. There is already some evidence of its truthfulness
in statistics. The death rate for those in middle life is rather
increasing than diminishing. This arises from the fact that the great
number of children who formerly died in infancy have lived, but being of
more feeble constitutions, they swell the death rate later on. It is
felt, also, in many educational institutions in the larger number of
youths who cannot stand the strain and stress of student life. They are,
high medical authority says, the youth saved from early death by modern
hygienic and medical care. Formerly, natural selection would have chosen
them as unfit to survive, and there would have remained alive few
besides the hardy ones with good constitutions, capable of great strain,
with great powers of endurance.

It is also shown in the stress of modern competition, in which there are
multitudes who cannot stand this strain. It is from these, in some
degree, that we hear the cry for governmental aid. "We must make the
conditions of life easier for them," say our social reformers, "or they
will become 'a submerged class.'"


CONFLICT BETWEEN EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES AND OUR HUMANE SENTIMENTS.--And
now I wish to consider another phase of my subject. Those who have
followed closely what was said concerning natural selection will have
seen that there appears to be a conflict between evolutionary theories
and the humane sentiment of the age--a want of correspondence between
what is being done by natural law and what man is trying to do under the
inspiration of his loving heart. Can we reconcile this want of
correspondence? To some extent no doubt we can.

In the first place, the growth of the moral nature has always been held
in high esteem by every nation and every race. Our moral giants stand
higher in the scale of being than our great generals or statesmen, even
in an age when moral culture is at a low ebb. We draw our moral
inspiration from Buddha, Socrates and Christ rather than from Aristotle;
their science may be, yes, is, faulty, but their spirit is lofty.

And the moral nature is cultivated in laboring for the good of others,
in trying to save for a better life the poor, the weak, the distressed.
All that is required is that we do this work wisely, not unwisely, under
the guidance of reason, not feelings. We want to prevent these
calamities rather than cure them.

Another satisfaction arises from the fact that in learning how to
perfect the lives of the feeble so that they may live longer, we also
learn how to perfect, in a still higher degree, the lives of the strong,
or those we call the fit, so that they also will not only live longer,
but be able to live with much greater satisfaction the complex lives of
our times.

The knowledge which helps the first may help the second even more than
the first, for they have better opportunities and can take advantage of
it. We may also comfort ourselves with the fact that a majority of those
with feeble constitutions, whose lives have been for a time snatched
from the operation of the laws of natural selection, will not, after
all, contribute very extensively to the increase of the population.
Great powers of generation and numerous offspring rarely go with
physical weakness. If there are exceptions they are explainable. It is,
I think, pretty certain that a great majority of such leave few, often
no offspring. They find their way into places where work is light and
the pay small, and they cannot afford to marry and care for families,
and do not do it.

The law of natural selection will continue to work on them so long as
its action is required, with little regard to the efforts of man to
abrogate it. Nature works continuously for ages, and she works on every
part of man, every organ, every function. We may almost say she is
omnipotent; that she watches for every slight improvement; that she
knows what to do under every circumstance. Foiled in one direction, she
has other means, infinite means, for gaining her ends. Man can no more
put a stop to the operation of natural law than he can put a stop to the
flow of Niagara. He may turn off a trifle of its water to whirl wheels
and spindles, but the mighty river flows on until nature makes some
changes in the watersheds, that make its flow impossible. Man, on the
other hand, acts on his own body in a finite way. He works mainly for
immediate, not remote, ends. He changes his methods as his needs change,
or his knowledge increases. Today he works with limited knowledge of
hygiene, inspired by old ideas of philanthropy. Tomorrow he may have a
vastly extended knowledge of this subject and an entirely new social
science which will enable him to do more good and less harm.


IDEAL OF HEALTH.--Let me now consider some of the things necessary to
give us a greater hope for the future of human health, of ourselves and
for our children.

The first thing necessary is to get a higher ideal of bodily or physical
perfection than we have today. Sir James Paget, in a lecture on National
Health, in 1884, put this in the following words:

"We want," says he, "more ambition for health. _I should like to see a
personal ambition for health as keen as that for bravery, for beauty, or
for success in our athletic games or field sports. I wish there was such
an ambition for the most perfect national health as there is for
national renown in war, in art or in commerce._" Sir James then gives
his own ideal. It is for man or woman to be so full of health as to be
comparatively indifferent to the external conditions of l

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