Applied Eugenics Part 2

Dr. Woods divided all the individuals in his study into ten cla.s.ses for intellectuality and ten for morality, those most deficient in the qualities being put in cla.s.s 1, while the men and women of preeminent intellectual and moral worth were put in cla.s.s 10. Now if preeminent intellect and morality were at all linked with the better chances that an inheritor of succession has, then heirs to the throne ought to be more plentiful in the higher grades than in the lower. Actual count shows this not to be the case. A slightly larger percentage of inheritors is rather to be found in the lower grades. The younger sons have made just as good a showing as the sons who succeeded to power; as one would expect if intellect and morality are due largely to heredity, but as one would not expect if intellect and morality are due largely to outward circ.u.mstances.

Are "conditions of turmoil, stress and adversity" strong forces in the production of great men, as has often been claimed? There is no evidence from facts to support that view. In the case of a few great commanders, the times seemed particularly favorable. Napoleon, for example, could hardly have been Napoleon had it not been for the French revolution. But in general there have been wars going on during the whole period of modern European history; there have always been opportunities for a royal hero to make his appearance; but often the country has called for many years in vain. Circ.u.mstances were powerless to produce a great man and the nation had to wait until heredity produced him. Spain has for several centuries been calling for genius in leadership in some lines; but in vain. England could not get an able man from the Stuart line, despite her need, and had to wait for William of Orange, who was a descendant of a man of genius, William the Silent. "Italy had to wait fifty years in bondage for her deliverers, Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel."

"The upshot of it all," Dr. Woods decides, "is that, as regards intellectual life, environment is a totally inadequate explanation. If it explains certain characters in certain instances, it always fails to explain many more, while heredity not only explains all, or at least 90%, of the intellectual side of character in practically every instance, but does so best when questions of environment are left out of discussion."

Despite the good environment almost uniformly present, the geniuses in royalty are not scattered over the surface of the pedigree chart, but form isolated little groups of closely related individuals. One centers in Frederick the Great, another in Queen Isabella of Spain, a third in William the Silent, and a fourth in Gustavus Adolphus. Furthermore, the royal personages who are conspicuously low in intellect and morality are similarly grouped. Careful study of the circ.u.mstances shows nothing in the environment that would produce this grouping of genius, while it is exactly what a knowledge of heredity leads one to expect.

In the next place, do the superior members of royalty have proportionately more superior individuals among their close relatives, as was found to be the case among the Americans in the Hall of Fame? A count shows at once that they do. The first six grades all have about an equal number of eminent relatives, but grade 7 has more while grade 8 has more than grade 7, and the geniuses of grade 10 have the highest proportion of nearer relatives of their own character. Surely it cannot be supposed that a relative of a king in grade 8 has on the average a much less favorable environment than a relative of a king in grade 10.

Is it not fair, then, to a.s.sume that this relative's greater endowment in the latter case is due to heredity?

Conditions are the same, whether males or females be considered. The royal families of Europe offer a test case because for them the environment is nearly uniformly favorable. A study of them shows great mental and moral differences between them, and critical evidence indicates that these differences are largely due to differences in heredity. Differences of opportunity do not appear to be largely responsible for the achievements of the individuals.

But, it is sometimes objected, opportunity certainly is responsible for the appearance of much talent that would otherwise never appear. Take the great increase in the number of scientific men in Germany during the last half century, for example. It can not be pretended that this is due to an increased birth-rate of such talent; it means that the growth of an appreciation of scientific work has produced an increased amount of scientific talent. J. McKeen Cattell has argued this point most carefully in his study of the families of one thousand American men of science (_Popular Science Monthly_, May, 1915). "A Darwin born in China in 1809," he says, "could not have become a Darwin, nor could a Lincoln born here on the same day have become a Lincoln had there been no Civil War. If the two infants had been exchanged there would have been no Darwin in America and no Lincoln in England." And so he continues, urging that in the production of scientific men, at least, education is more important than eugenics.

This line of argument contains a great deal of obvious truth, but is subject to a somewhat obvious objection, if it is pushed too far. It is certainly true that the exact field in which a man's activities will find play is largely determined by his surroundings and education. Young men in the United States are now becoming lawyers or men of science, who would have become ministers had they been born a century or two ago. But this environmental influence seems to us a minor one, for the man who is highly gifted in some one line is usually, as all the work of differential psychology shows, gifted more than the average in many other lines. Opportunity decides in just what field his life work shall lie; but he would be able to make a success in a number of fields.

Darwin born in America would probably not have become the Darwin we know, but it is not to be supposed that he would have died a "mute, inglorious Milton": it is not likely that he would have failed to make his mark in some line of human activity. Dr. Cattell's argument, then, while admissible, can not properly be urged against the fact that ability is mainly dependent on inheritance.

We need not stop with the conclusion that equality of training or opportunity is unable to level the inborn differences between men. We can go even farther, and produce evidence to show that equality of training _increases the differences_ in results achieved.

This evidence is obtained by measuring the effects of equal amounts of exercise of a function upon individual differences in respect to efficiency in it. Suppose one should pick out, at random, eight children, and let them do problems in multiplication for 10 minutes.

After a number of such trials, the three best might average 39 correct solutions in the 10 minutes, and the three poorest might average 25 examples. Then let them continue the work, until each one of them has done 700 examples. Here is equality in training; does it lead to uniform results?

Dr. Starch made the actual test which we have outlined and found that the three best pupils gained on the average 45 in the course of doing 700 examples; while the three poorest gained only 26 in the same course of time.

Similar tests have been made of school children in a number of instances, and have shown that equality of training fails to bring about equality of performance. All improve to some extent; but those who are naturally better than their comrades usually become better still, when conditions for all are the same. E. L. Thorndike gives[12] the following tabular statement of a test he conducted:

THE EFFECT OF EQUAL AMOUNTS OF PRACTICE UPON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE MENTAL MULTIPLICATION OF A THREE-PLACE BY A THREE-PLACE NUMBER

Amount done Percentage of per unit of correct figures time in answers

Hours of Practice | | First 5 Examples First 5 Examples | | | | | Last 5 or 10 | Last 5 or 10 | | Examples | Examples | | | | | | | | Gain | | Gain

Initial highest five individuals 5.1 85 147 61 70 78 18 " next five " 5.1 56 107 51 68 78 10 " " six " 5.3 46 68 22 74 82 8 " " six " 5.4 38 46 8 58 70 12 " " five " 5.2 31 57 26 47 67 20 " " one individual 5.2 19 32 13 100 82 -18

Similar results have been obtained by half a dozen other experimenters, using the tests of mental multiplication, addition, marking A's on a printed sheet of capitals, and the like. It would be a mistake to conclude too much from experiments of such restricted scope; but they all agree in showing that if every child were given an equal training, the differences in these traits would nevertheless be very great.

And although we do not wish to strain the application of these results too far, we are at least justified in saying that they strongly indicate that inborn mediocrity can not be made into a high grade of talent by training. Not every boy has a chance to distinguish himself, even if he receives a good education.

We are driven back to the same old conclusion, that it is primarily inborn nature which causes the achievements of men and women to be what they are. Good environment, opportunity, training, will give good heredity a chance to express itself; but they can not produce greatness from bad heredity.

These conclusions are familiar to scientific sociologists, but they have not yet had the influence on social service and practical attempts at reform which they deserve. Many popular writers continue to confuse cause and effect, as for example H. Addington Bruce, who contributed an article to the _Century Magazine_, not long ago, on "The Boy Who Goes Wrong." After alleging that the boy who goes wrong does so because he is not properly brought up, Mr. Bruce quotes with approval the following pa.s.sage from Paul Dubois, "the eminent Swiss physician and philosopher:

"If you have the happiness to be a well-living man, take care not to attribute the credit of it to yourself. Remember the favorable conditions in which you have lived, surrounded by the relatives who loved you and set you a good example; do not forget the close friends who have taken you by the hand and led you away from the quagmires of evil; keep a grateful remembrance for all the teachers who have influenced you, the kind and intelligent school-master, the devoted pastor; realize all these multiple influences which have made you what you are. Then you will remember that such and such a culprit has not in his sad life met with these favorable conditions; that he had a drunken father or a foolish mother, and that he has lived without affection, exposed to all kinds of temptation. You will then take pity upon this disinherited man, whose mind has been nourished upon malformed mental images, begetting evil sentiments such as immoderate desire or social hatred."

Mr. Bruce indorses this kind of talk when he concludes, "The blame for the boy who goes wrong does not rest with the boy himself, or yet with his remote ancestors. It rests squarely with the parents who, through ignorance or neglect, have failed to mold him aright in the plastic days of childhood."

Where is the evidence of the existence of these plastic days of childhood? If they exist, why do not ordinary brothers become as much alike as identical twins? How long are we to be asked to believe, on blind faith, that the child is putty, of which the educator can make either mediocrity or genius, depending on his skill? What does the environmentalist _know_ about these "plastic days"? If a boy has a drunken father or foolish mother, does it not suggest that there is something wrong with his pedigree? With such an ancestry, we do not expect him to turn out brilliantly, no matter in what home he is brought up. If a boy has the kind of parents who bring him up well; if he is, as Dr. Dubois says, surrounded by relatives who love him and set him a good example, we at once have ground for a suspicion that he comes of a pretty good family, a stock characterized by a high standard of intellectuality and morality, and it would surprise us if such a boy did not turn out well. But he turns out well because what's bred in the bone will show in him, if it gets any kind of a chance. It is his nature, not his nurture, that is mainly responsible for his character.

CHAPTER II

MODIFICATION OF THE GERM-PLASM

Every living creature was at some stage of its life nothing more than a single cell. It is generally known that human beings result from the union of an egg-cell and a sperm-cell, but it is not so universally understood that these germ-cells are part of a continuous stream of germ-plasm which has been in existence ever since the appearance of life on the globe, and which is destined to continue in existence as long as life remains on the globe.

The corollaries of this fact are of great importance. Some of them will be considered in this chapter.

Early investigators tended naturally to look on the germ-cells as a product of the body. Being supposedly products of the body, it was natural to think that they would in some measure reproduce the character of the body which created them; and Darwin elaborated an ingenious hypothesis to explain how the various characters could be represented in the germ-cell. The idea held by him, in common with most other thinkers of his period, is still held more or less unconsciously by those who have not given particular attention to the subject. Generation is conceived as a direct chain: the body produces the germ-cell which produces another body which in turn produces another germ-cell, and so on.

But a generation ago this idea fell under suspicion. August Weismann, professor of zoology in the University of Freiburg, Germany, made himself the champion of the new idea, about 1885, and developed it so effectively that it is now a part of the creed of nearly every biologist.

Weismann caused a general abandonment of the idea that the germ-cell is produced by the body in each generation, and popularized the conception of the germ-cell as a product of a stream of undifferentiated germ-plasm, not only continuous but (potentially at least) immortal.

The body does not produce the germ-cells, he pointed out; instead, the germ-cells produce the body.

The basis of this theory can best be understood by a brief consideration of the reproduction of very simple organisms.

"Death is the end of life," is the belief of many other persons than the Lotus Eaters. It is commonly supposed that everything which lives must eventually die. But study of a one-celled animal, an Infusorian, for example, reveals that when it reaches a certain age it pinches in two, and each half becomes an Infusorian in all appearance identical with the original cell. Has the parent cell then died? It may rather be said to survive, in two parts. Each of these daughter cells will in turn go through the same process of reproduction by simple fission, and the process will be continued in their descendants. The Infusorian can be called potentially immortal, because of this method of reproduction.

The immortality, as Weismann pointed out, is not of the kind attributed by the Greeks to their G.o.ds, who could not die because no wound could destroy them. On the contrary, the Infusorian is extremely fragile, and is dying by millions at every instant; but if circ.u.mstances are favorable, it _can_ live on; it is not inevitably doomed to die sooner or later, as is Man. "It dies from accident often, from old age never."

Now the single-celled Infusorian is in many respects comparable with the single-celled germ of the higher animals. The a.n.a.logy has often been carried too far; yet it remains indisputable that the germ-cells of men reproduce in the same way--by simple fission--as the Infusorian and other one-celled animals and plants, and that they are organized on much the same plan. Given favorable circ.u.mstances, the germ-cell should be expected to be equally immortal. Does it ever find these favorable circ.u.mstances?

The investigations of microscopists indicate that it does--that evolution has provided it with these favorable circ.u.mstances, in the bodies of the higher animals. Let us recall in outline the early history of the fertilized germ-cell, the _zygote_ formed by the union of ovum and spermatozoon. These two unite to form a single cell, which is essentially the same, physiologically, as other germ-cells. It divides in two similar cells; these each divide; the resulting cells again divide, and so the process continues, until the whole body--a fully developed man,--has been produced by division and redivision of the one zygote.

But the germ-cell is obviously different from most of the cells that make up the finished product, the body. The latter are highly differentiated and specialized for different functions--blood cells, nerve cells, bone cells, muscle cells, and so on, each a single cell but each adapted to do a certain work, for which the original, undifferentiated germ-cell was wholly unfit. It is evident that differentiation began to take place at some point in the series of divisions, that is to say, in the development of the embryo.

Th. Boveri, studying the development of a threadworm, made the interesting discovery that this differentiation began at the first division. Of the two daughter-cells produced from the zygote, one continued dividing at a very slow rate, and without showing any specialization. Its "line of descent" produced only germ-cells. The products of division of the other daughter-cell began to differentiate, and soon formed all the necessary kinds of cells to make up the body of the mature worm. In this body, the cells from the first daughter-cell mentioned were inclosed, still undifferentiated: they formed the germ-cells of the next generation, and after maturity were ready to be ejected from the body, and to form new threadworms.

Imagine this process taking place through generation after generation of threadworms, and one will realize that the germ-plasm was pa.s.sed on directly from one generation to the next; that in each generation it gave rise to body-plasm, but that it did not at any time lose its ident.i.ty or continuity, a part of the germ-plasm being always set aside, undifferentiated, to be handed on to the next generation.

In the light of this example, one can better understand the definition of germ-plasm as "that part of the substance of the parents which does not die with them, but perpetuates itself in their offspring." By bringing his imagination into play, the reader will realize that there is no limit to the backward continuity of this germ-plasm in the threadworm. Granted that each species has arisen by evolution from some other, this germ-cell which is observed in the body of the threadworm, must be regarded as part of what may well be called a stream of germ-plasm, that reaches back to the beginning of life in the world. It will be equally evident that these is no foreordained limit to the forward extension of the stream. It will continue in some branch, as long as there are any threadworms or descendants of threadworms in the world.

The reader may well express doubt as to whether what has been demonstrated for the threadworm can be demonstrated for the higher animals, including man. It must be admitted that in many of these animals conditions are too unfavorable, and the process of embryology too complicated, or too difficult to observe, to permit as distinct a demonstration of this continuity of the germ-plasm, wherever it is sought. But it has been demonstrated in a great many animals; no facts which impair the theory have been discovered; and biologists therefore feel perfectly justified in generalizing and declaring the continuity of germ-plasm to be a law of the world of living things.

Focusing attention on its application to man, one sees that the race must represent an immense network of lines of descent, running back through a vast number of different forms of gradually diminishing specialization, until it comes to a point where all its threads merge in one knot--the single cell with which it may be supposed that life on this globe began. Each individual is not only figuratively, but in a very literal sense, the carrier of the heritage of the whole race--of the whole past, indeed. Each individual is temporarily the custodian of part of the "stuff of life"; from an evolutionary point of view, he may be said to have been brought into existence, primarily to pa.s.s this sacred heritage on to the next generation. From Nature's standpoint, he is of little use in the world, his existence is scarcely justified, unless he faithfully discharges this trust, pa.s.sing on to the future the "Lamp of Life" whose fire he has been created to guard for a short while.

Immortality, we may point out in pa.s.sing, is thus no mere _hope_ to the parent: it is a _real possibility_. The death of the huge agglomeration of highly specialized body-cells is a matter of little consequence, if the germ-plasm, with its power to reproduce not only these body-cells, but the mental traits--indeed, we may in a sense say the very soul--that inhabited them, has been pa.s.sed on. The individual continues to live, in his offspring, just as the past lives in him. To the eugenist, life everlasting is something more than a figure of speech or a theological concept--it is as much a reality as the beat of the heart, the growth of muscles or the activity of the mind.

This doctrine of the continuity of germ-plasm throws a fresh light on the nature of human relationships. It is evident that the son who resembles his father can not accurately be called a "chip off the old block." Rather, they are both chips off the same block; and aside from bringing about the fusion of two distinct strains of germ-plasm, father and mother are no more responsible for endowing the child with its characters except in the choice of mate, than is the child for "stamping his impress" on his parents. From another point of view, it has been said that father and son ought to be thought of as half-brothers by two different mothers, each being the product of the same strain of paternal germ-plasm, but not of the same strain of maternal germ-plasm.

Biologically, the father or mother should not be thought of as the _producer_ of a child, but as the trustee of a stream of germ-plasm which produces a child whenever the proper conditions arise. Or as Sir Michael Foster put it, "The animal body is in reality a vehicle for ova or sperm; and after the life of the parent has become potentially renewed in the offspring, the body remains as a cast-off envelope whose future is but to die." Finally to quote the metaphor of J. Arthur Thomson, one may "think for a moment of a baker who has a very precious kind of leaven; he uses much of this in baking a large loaf; but he so arranges matters by a clever contrivance that part of the original leaven is always carried on unaltered, carefully preserved for the next baking. Nature is the baker, the loaf is the body, the leaven is the germ-plasm, and each baking is a generation."

When the respective functions and relative importance, from a genetic point of view, of germ-plasm and body-plasm are understood, it must be fairly evident that the natural point of attack for any attempt at race betterment which aims to be fundamental rather than wholly superficial, must be the germ-plasm rather than the body-plasm. The failure to hold this point of view has been responsible for the disappointing results of much of the sociological theory of the last century, and for the fact that some of the work now carried on under the name of race betterment is producing results that are of little or no significance to true race betterment.

On the other hand, it must be fairly evident, from the pains which Nature has taken to arrange for the transmission of the germ-plasm from generation to generation, that she would also protect it from injury with meticulous care. It seems hardly reasonable to suppose that a material of this sort should be exposed, in the higher animals at least, to all the vicissitudes of the environment, and to injury or change from the chance of outward circ.u.mstances.