Facts And Fictions Of Life Part 15

"I can give you hundreds of cases where there is no escape from the proof that the children are born with the taint of an 'acquired character'

from which they cannot free themselves. Sometimes it is shown in one form, sometimes in another, but it is as unmistakable as the color of the eyes or the number of the toes. To deny it is to deny all experience. I am not a biologist and I do not undertake to explain how it is done, but I will undertake to prove that it is done to the satisfaction of the most sceptical. Come in this ward. There is a child whose parents were robust, healthy, strong country folk until"--and then followed the history of the parents who had "acquired" the "character"

which they transmitted--which had made the mental, moral and physical cripple in the ward before me. "Now here is what they transmitted. Do you fancy that if that half idiot should ever have children they will be 'whole'? No argument but vision is needed here. That child's condition is the result of acquired character. Its children and its children's children will carry the acquirement--for we are not wise enough yet to eliminate even such as that from among active propagators of the race!

If it were possible (which, thank Heaven, is not likely) that the other parent of this half imbecile's children would be of a sane and lofty type there might be a modification upward again in the progeny, but even then we would not soon lose the direct, undeniable, patent 'acquirement'

which you see here."

It was the same story from each and every pract.i.tioner. The hospital and asylum experts, the specialists in diseases of mind or body which were due to direct acquirement (such as drunkenness, syphilis and acquired epilepsy), were particularly strong in their contempt for even the theory that acquired character and condition are not transmittible. One laughingly said: "I'll grant that if I cut off a man's leg or a few of his fingers, his children will not be likely to be deformed because of that operation. This is not a permeating const.i.tutional condition, it is a mere local mutilation. But if I were to take out a part of his brain so as to produce ["acquired"] epilepsy upon him I believe his children will be affected, and if he is a bad syphilitic [acquired] I know his children will be. Mind you, I don't say exactly what they will have, and they may not all have the same thing, but I do say that their 'germ plasm' or whatever they come from, will carry the results of the acquired condition and character." *

*"Brown-Sequard observed that injury to the central or peripheral nervous system (spinal cord, oblongata, peduncle, corpora quadrigem-ina, sciatic nerve) of guinea pigs produced epilepsy, and this condition even became hereditary. Westphal made guinea pigs epileptic by repeated blows on the skull, and this condition also became hereditary."--** Manual of Human Physiology," by L. Landou, translated with additions by W. Sterling. 1885.

Dr. L. Putzell, in his "Treatise on the Common Forms of Functional Nervous Diseases," 1880, after describing the methods by which Brown-Sequard produced epilepsy traumatically in guinea pigs, says: "Brown Sequard also made the curious observation that the young of guinea pigs who had been made epileptic in this manner, may develop the disease spontaneously. These experiments have been verified by Schiff, Westphal and numerous other observers."

So I beg of you to remember that while the fact and law of heredity is as certain as death itself, its course of action, its variability of operation, is as the March winds. To say that the const.i.tutions of your children will be de* termined in great part by the condition of your body and mind is but to utter a truism; but to say exactly how--in what given channel this effect will flow--is not, in the present state of biological knowledge, possible.

For the sake of ill.u.s.tration it is usually the part of wisdom to give the most probable trend of a given disorder; but to a.s.sert dogmatically that the son of a lunatic will be insane or that the daughter of a woman of the street will live as her mother did, is quite as unsafe as to say that a fall from a fourth-story window on to an iron door would be certain death. You must not forget that you may, if you want to take the chances, drop an infant out of a fourth-story window on to an iron door with no bad results to the infant (door not heard from), for I have known that to happen; you may sleep with a bad case of small-pox and not take it--as I once did; you may shoot a ball into a boy's head, taking in with it several pieces of bone, you may extract the bone and leave the ball there and the boy appear to be as good as new afterward; you may live all your life long with a roue and your children not be inmates of hospital, lunatic asylum or prison. All these things have been done, but it is not the part of wisdom to infer that for this reason either one of them would be a safe or desirable course of action; for in this world it behooves us to deal--when we are attempting to study nature--with the law of probability. The accidents, the exceptions, will take care of themselves.

Notwithstanding this fact it will not be exactly fair to me for you to report that I say that every single one of Jane Smith's children will have fits and fall in the fire before they are twenty-one because she or their father is an epileptic. Perhaps one or two of those children may die in infancy, instead, or go insane--or to Congress; one may have hydrocephalus, and another be a moral idiot and astonish the natives because "His parents were such upright people." One may simply have a generally weak const.i.tution--and another may win the American cup for wrestling; but the chances are that confirmed epilepsy (or what not) of the parent is going to "tell" in one form or another in the children.

What I say of epilepsy is equally true of syphilis. This latter is so true that it can be readily told by the teeth of the children of a seriously infected case. That will strike the average "unprofessional"

reader as impossible, yet it is well known to biologists, medical men and many dentists, so that a great many wholly innocent people who sit in a dentist's chair reveal more private family history than could be drawn from them with stronger instruments than mere forceps.

I have been asked to write this paper because at the present time there is a tendency to discredit some of the well-known and easily proven facts of heredity, as a result of certain statements supposed to have been made by the recent school of biologists headed by Weismann. But in the hands of the laity much that Weismann did say is misunderstood and misstated and much that he never said is inferred. To professional biologists the loose inferences from Weismann's suggestions and speculations are absurd, and to experienced medical men and experts in the lines of practice indicated above, the arguments are beneath discussion. It is in this particular line of practice that proof is easy and abundant, where the "acquired" nature of the modified "character" is readily traced and the transmission (or heredity) susceptible of proof beyond controversy.

It is for this reason that the ill.u.s.trations are all taken from this field of investigation. If they were taken from consumption, tuberculosis or any of the various ordinary "transmittible" disorders, the cheerful opponent would a.s.sert (and no one could disprove if he held to the "germ plasm" theory back far enough) that the "tendency" had been inherent in the plasm since the days of "Adam"--that it was not an "acquired" character or condition which was transmitted. But with artificially produced epilepsy (either by accident or purposely as in the cases of Brown-Sequard's guinea pigs) or in the other so frequent and so frightful disorder mentioned above, it is a simple matter to trace the "acquirement" as well as the transmission. But when a new light arises in the literary or scientific world there are always many persons ready to spring forth with the declaration that they agree with the new point of view without first taking the precaution to ascertain what the recent theory really is. "Oh, I agree with him, the old theory is quite dead," greets the ear, and the placid pupils of the rising light so warp and distort the real opinion of the master as to make of him an absurdity. This has been markedly true of Weismann and his theory of heredity.

In ordinary cases of scientific discussion the misconceptions of the laity would soon adjust themselves and little or no harm would be done meantime; but in such a problem as the present far more is involved than appears upon the surface. The ethical and moral results--not to mention the physical--of a reckless mistranslation or misconception of a scientific theory of this nature cannot be readily estimated, nor can it be confined to one generation. It is pathetic to realize that many fairly well-educated and well-meaning people, who would protect with their lives the children they give to the world and shield them against all possible physical, moral or mental distortion, mutilation or deformity, will stamp upon those children far worse mutilations and distortions (and even physical disorders) through and because of a half-understood version of u the new theory of heredity. Therefore I repeat that so far as the public is concerned, so far as the sociological features of the problem of heredity are involved, so far as the new theory relates to conduct and to physical and mental condition and their transmission, this controversy belongs to the laboratory--to the how and not to the fact of hereditary transmission, as I trust the above ill.u.s.trations (which might be multiplied a thousand times) will serve to show.

ENVIRONMENT: CAN HEREDITY BE MODIFIED

But heredity is not the whole story, any more than the foundation is the whole house.

Several times when I have spoken or written upon the basic principle of heredity, I have been met by questions like this: "Then you must think it is hopeless. With these awful facts and ill.u.s.trations of the power and persistence of heredity before us, we must recognize that we are doomed before we are born, must we not? If there is, as you say, no escape from our heredity and its power and influence, what is the use of trying? Why not let go and just drift on the tide of inherited conditions? If these conditions are unfortunate for us, why not just accept the tragedy; if favorable, drift in the sunlight that our ancestors turned upon us, and let the world wag as it will?--we are not responsible." I confess that each time this sort of reasoning comes to me it finds me in a state of surprise that it is possible for thoughtful people--and naturally those are the ones interested in reading or talking upon the subject--I confess it surprises me anew each time to find that it is possible for such people to reason so inadequately and to see with but one eye.

It is undoubtedly true that, do what we will, labor as we may, heredity has established beyond the possibility of doubt that an apple cannot be cultivated into a peach. Once an apple always an apple. That is the power of heredity. That is the foundation of the house. But there is another story. Plant your apple tree in hard and rugged soil; give it too little light and too much rain; let some one hack its bark with a knife from time to time; when the boys climb the tree let them strain and break it; let Bridget throw all sorts of liquids about its roots,--in short, let it take "pot luck" on a barren farm with Ignorance for an owner and Shiftlessness for his wife, and the best apple tree in the world will not remain so for many years. The apples will not degenerate into potatoes, however; heredity will attend to this. But they will become hard and knotty and sour and feeble and few as to apples; environment will see to that.

Now suppose you had sold that farm to Intelligence and given him for a wife Observation or Thrift. Suppose that they had dug and fertilized and nourished and pruned that tree (I do not mean after it had been ruined, but from the start). It is quite true that you need never expect it to bear Malaga grapes. Heredity will still hold its own, and the kind of fruit was determined at birth (if I maybe permitted the form of speech), but very much of the quality of the fruit will depend upon the conditions under which it grew--the environment. So while it is true that our heredity is as certain as the eternal hills, and, as a famous biologist recently said in my hearing, dates back of the foundation of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, so that each of us carries within us mementos of an age when language was not and, as he humorously said, "Man has in his anatomy a collection of antiques--we are full of reminiscences"; still it is equally true that the power of environment, the conditions under which we develop or restrict our inherited tendencies, will determine in large part whether heredity shall be our slave-driver or our companion in the race for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Let me ill.u.s.trate in another way. Suppose that you are born from a family which has for its heritage a history of many and early deaths from consumption. Suppose that you have discovered that the tendency is strong within yourself. Is it for that reason absolutely necessary that you buy a coffin-plate to-morrow and proceed to die with lung trouble?

By no means. Knowing your inherited weakness you guard with jealous care the health you have, and it may be that your intelligent consideration may secure to you, in spite of your undoubted inheritance, the threescore years and ten; while your robust neighbor, with lungs like a bellows and the inheritance from a race of athletes, may succ.u.mb to the March winds which he braved and you did not. Maybe "quick consumption"

will carry him off while you remain to mourn his loss, and quite possibly leave with your posterity a growing tendency toward strong lungs.

I know a man in New York City who had what is called a "family history"

of consumption, who was rejected on that account by every life insurance company in this country thirty years ago. Well, that frightened him within an inch of his life; but with that inch he set to work to build his house "facing the other way," as he expressed it to me when I met him ten years ago, when he was, as he still is, a hale, hearty old gentleman. He is not and never could have been exactly robust; but he is as well, as happy and as content as the average man who has not inherited his unfortunate potentiality. It is true that nothing but intelligent and wise care all these years, nothing but his temperate and judicious life, could have compa.s.sed this end. I use the word temperate in its general sense. So far as I know he has not denied himself any of the best of life, which he has been amply able to secure; but he has at all times kept his house "facing the other way." His hereditary threat, while it has not driven him with a lash, has, it is true, lived in the back yard--which it does and will and must with us all, no matter what our environment or wisdom may be; but we need not foolishly throw open the windows, swing back the doors and invite it to take possession, while our own individuality moves down into the coal cellar.

I have taken as ill.u.s.trations in both of these papers inherited disease and its developments, but this is done only for convenience and because it will explain more fully, clearly and easily to most people what is meant. That our heredity is equally strong and certain in its mental and moral potentialities and tendencies is also true.* It is likewise true that the environment--the conditions under which we develop, curb or direct our natural tendencies--has a great and modifying role to play.

* "Alienists hold, in general, that a large proportion of mental diseases are the result of degeneracy; that is, they are the offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic and consumptive parents, and suffer from the action of heredity."--Dr. Arthur McDonald, author of "Criminology."

It is sometimes asked, if children were changed in the cradle, and those of fortunate parentage carried to the slums to be nurtured and taught and those from the slums.

"To one at all familiar with the external aspect of insanity in its various forms, it seems incredible that its physical nature was not sooner realized. Had the laws of heredity been earlier understood, it would have been seen that mental derangements, like physical diseases and tendencies, were transmitted."--Prof. Edward S. Morse.

If placed in the cradles of luxury, would not all trace of mental, moral and physical heredity of a fortunate type disappear from the darlings of Murray Hill in their adopted environment of squalor and vice; and would not the haggard and half-starved, ill-nurtured waifs of Mulberry Bend blossom as the rose in strength and virtue in their new environment of luxury and of wholesome and healthful surroundings? Just here a digression seems necessary; for while I have no doubt that the change (even on the terms usually implied) would work wonders in both sets of infants, still it is to be remembered that for such a test to tell anything of real value to science, the exchange would need to be made upon another basis from that which is generally used as an argument, because it is incorrectly a.s.sumed that the children of luxury (as a rule) are born with clean and lofty heredity. This is, alas, so far from the case that it is almost a truism that "the highest and the lowest"

(meaning the richest and the poorest) are "nearest together in action and farthest apart in appearance, only." They both frequently give to their children tainted mental, moral and physical natures with which to contend. The self-indulgence of the young men of the "upper cla.s.ses"

leaves a burned-out, undermined and tainted physical heredity almost a certainty for their children, while the ethical tone of such men--their moral fibre--is higher only in appearance and the ability to do secretly that which puts the tough of Mulberry Bend in the penitentiary because he has not the gold to gild his vices and to dazzle the eyes of society.

The exchanged children, therefore, would not be so totally different in inherited qualities, after all. They would have alike a tainted ancestry. Their physical natures are the hotbeds of vices or diseases that are to be developed or curbed according as environment shall determine. But the foundation in both cases--the ground--both mental, moral and physical, is sowed down and harrowed in with the tainted heredity. The mother in both instances, as a rule, is but an aimless puppet who dances to the tune played by her male owner--a mere weak transmitter or adjunct of and for and to his scale of life. Therefore to point to the fact that to change these cla.s.ses of infants in the cradle is to exchange (by means of their environment only) their mature development, also, from that of a Wall Street magnate to a Sing Sing convict, tells nothing whatever against the power and force of heredity.

It tells only what is always claimed for fortunate or unfortunate environment--that "It gilds the straitened forehead of the fool," or that

"Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all; plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it."

Let us start fair. Let us understand that no environment can create what is not within the individuality--that heredity has fixed this; but that environment does and must act as the one tremendous and vital power to develop or to control the inheritance which parents stamp upon their children. Notwithstanding, you are personally responsible for the trend, the added power and development you give to much that you inherit. You are personally responsible to the coming generation for the fight it will have to make and for the strength you transmit to it to make that fight. Many a father and mother transmitted to their "fallen" daughter the weakness and the tendency to commit the acts which they and their fellows whine about afterward as "tarnishing the family honor." If they had tied her hand and foot and cast her into the midst of the waves of the sea expecting her to save herself they would be no more truly responsible for her death, be it moral or physical.

And let me emphasize here that I do not attribute all of the moral and physical disasters of the race to the fathers of the race. By no means.

I believe with all my heart that the mothers have to answer for their full share of the vice, sorrow and suffering of humanity. Woman has not, perhaps, been such an active agent, and much of the wrong she has done to her children has been compa.s.sed, through what have been regarded as her very virtues--her sweetest qualities--submission, compliance, self-abnegation! In so far as the mothers of the race have been weakly subservient, in that far have they a terrible score against them in the transmission of the qualities which has made the race too weak to do the best that it knew--too cowardly to be honest even with its own soul.

I do not believe that the s.e.xes, in a normal state, would differ materially in moral tone. Why? Simply because throughout all nature there is no line of demarcation between the s.e.xes on moral grounds.

The male and the female differ in qualities, but neither is "better,"

"purer" nor "wiser" than the other--dividing them on the basis of s.e.x alone. I do not believe that women are (under natural and equal conditions) better or purer than men, as is so often claimed. I do not believe that men are (under natural and equal conditions) wiser and abler than women. These are all artificially built up conditions, and they have fixed upon the race a very large share of its sorrow, its crime, its insanity, its disease and its despair. They have weakened woman and brutalized man. Children have been bom from two parents, one of whom is weakly self-effacing and trivial, narrow in outlook and petty in interests--a dependant, and therefore servile; while the other parent is unclean, unjust, self-a.s.sertive and willing to demand more than he is willing to give. These conditions have morally perverted the race so that it will continue long to need those evidences against, instead of for, civilization--almshouses, insane asylums, reformatories and prisons.

It is usual to point with vast pride to the immense sums of money we spend year by year to support such charitable and eleemosynary inst.i.tutions, instead of realizing, in humiliation and shame, that what we need to do, and what we can do, in great part, is to lock the stable door before the horse is stolen; that what we need to do, and what we can do, in large measure, is to regulate conditions and heredity so that we may congratulate ourselves in pointing to the small sums of money needed year by year to care for the unfortunate victims of inherited weakness or vice. We don't want our country covered with magnificently equipped hospitals, asylums, poor-houses and prisons. What we want is intelligent and wise parentage which shall depopulate eleemosynary, charitable and penal inst.i.tutions. We don't want to continue to boast of a tremendous and increasing population of sick or weak minds encased in sick or weak bodies--half-matured, ill-born, mental, moral and physical weaklings who drag out a few wretched years in some retreat and then miserably perish.

We want men and women on this continent who shall be well and intelligent and free and wise enough to see that not numbers but quality in population will solve the questions that perplex the souls of men. We want parents who are wise and self-controlled enough to refuse to curse the world and their own helpless children with vitiated lives, and who, if they cannot give whole, clean, fine children to the world, will refuse to give it any. Nothing but a low, perverted and weak moral and ethical sense makes possible the need of an argument on this subject.

It is self-evident the moment one stops to ask himself a few simple and primitive questions: "Am I willing to buy my own comfort and pleasure at the expense of those who are helpless? Am I willing to be a moral and physical pauper preying upon the rights of my children? Am I willing to be a thief and misappropriate their physical, mental and moral heritage?

Am I willing to be a murderer and taint with slow poison their lives before they get them? Am I willing to do this by giving to them a weak and dependant and silly mother and a father who is less than the best he can be--who arrogates to himself the prerogative of dictator who has no account to render?"

All these questions apply to the health of the nation and to what it shall be in the future. When we speak of the health of a nation, we are so given to thinking of the physical condition, only, of its citizens that the more comprehensive thought of their mental, moral, ethical and business health is likely to escape our minds. Indeed, I fancy that few persons realize that even in the matter of business ethics and general moral outlook (including the nation's political policy, of course) heredity cuts a very wide swath. But it is true that national business morals are as distinctive from generation to generation as are the physical characteristics, well-being or mental qualities of the different peoples. Some one will say, "True, but all this is due to difference of environment,"--forgetting that the special features of our environment itself (outside of climate and soil) are due primarily to the hereditary habits and bias of a people. Natural selection, _per se_, ceased to have full force the moment man reached the stage when he was able to control artificial means of protection or power.. The "fittest"

ceased to be so upon the basis of inborn quality. Artificial means--from the use of a sharp stone to overcome a stronger (or "fitter") antagonist, on up to the skilful application of money where it will do the most good--took the place of primary "natural selection," and the "fittest" to survive in the mental, moral, physical, financial or political arena became he who could command the artificial means of guiding and controlling the natural forces of primary "selection."

The "tough" lives in the "slums" primarily because his parents did. He inherited his social and ethical outlook as well as his physical form, and the mould in which his thoughts have run was fashioned by nature and secondarily fixed by an environment or surrounding which also came to him as a part of his inheritance.

Heredity and environment act and react upon each other with the regularity and inevitability of succession of night and day. Neither tells the whole story; together they make up the sum of life; and yet it is true that the first half--the part or foundation upon which all else is based and upon which all else must depend--has been taken into account so little in the conduct and scheme of human affairs that total ignorance of its very principle has been looked upon as a charming attribute of the young mothers upon whose weak or undeveloped shoulders rest the responsibility, the welfare, the shame or the glory, the very sanity and capacity, of the generations that are to come!