Part 39 (1/2)

Many of them, such as the economic and social changes we have suggested in earlier chapters, are an important part of eugenics. Every euthenic measure should be scrutinized from the evolutionary standpoint; if it is eugenic as well as euthenic, it should be whole-heartedly favored; if it is dysgenic but euthenic it should be condemned or adopted, according to whether or not the gain in all ways from its operation will exceed the damage.

In general, euthenics, when not accompanied by some form of selection (i. e., eugenics) ultimately defeats its own end. If it is accompanied by rational selection, it can usually be indorsed. Eugenics, on the other hand, is likewise inadequate unless accompanied by constant improvement in the surroundings; and its advocates must demand euthenics as an accompaniment of selection, in order that the opportunity for getting a fair selection may be as free as possible. If the euthenist likewise takes pains not to ignore the existence of the racial factor, then the two schools are standing on the same ground, and it is merely a matter of taste or opportunity, whether one emphasizes one side or the other. Each of the two factions, sometimes thought to be opposing, will be seen to be getting the same end result, namely, human progress.

Not only are the two schools working for the same end, but each must depend in still another way upon the other, in order to make headway.

The eugenist can not see his measures put into effect except through changes in law and custom--i. e., euthenic changes. He must and does appeal to euthenics to secure action. The social reformer, on the other hand, can not see any improvements made in civilization except through the discoveries and inventions of some citizens who are inherently superior in ability. He in turn must depend on eugenics for every advance that is made.

It may make the situation clearer to state it in the customary terms of biological philosophy. Selection does not necessarily result in progressive evolution. It merely brings about the adaptation of a species or a group to a given environment. The tapeworm is the stock example. In human evolution, the nature of this environment will determine whether adaptation to it means progress or retrogression, whether it leaves a race happier and more productive, or the reverse.

All racial progress, or eugenics, therefore, depends on the creation of a good environment, and the fitting of the race to that environment.

Every improvement in the environment should bring about a corresponding biological adaptation. The two factors in evolution must go side by side, if the race is to progress in what the human mind considers the direction of advancement. In this sense, euthenics and eugenics bear the same relation to human progress as a man's two legs do to his locomotion.

Social workers in purely euthenic fields have frequently failed to remember this process of adaptation, in their efforts to change the environment. Eugenists, in centering their attention on adaptation, have sometimes paid too little attention to the kind of environment to which the race was being adapted. The present book holds that the second factor is just as important as the first, for racial progress; that one leg is just as important as the other, to a pedestrian. Its only conflict with euthenics appertains to such euthenic measures as impair the adaptability of the race to the better environment they are trying to make.

Some supposedly euthenic measures opposed by eugenics are not truly euthenic, as for instance the limitation of a superior family in order that all may get a college education. For these spurious euthenic measures, something truly euthenic should be subst.i.tuted.

Measures which show a real conflict may be typified by the infant mortality movement. There can be no doubt but that sanitation and hygiene, prenatal care and intelligent treatment of mothers and babies, are truly euthenic and desirable. At the same time, as has been shown, these euthenic measures result in the survival of inferior children, who directly or through their posterity will be a drag on the race. Euthenic measures of this type should be accompanied by counterbalancing measures of a more eugenic character.

Barring these two types, euthenics forms a necessary concomitant of the eugenic program; and, as we have tried to emphasize, eugenics is likewise necessary to the complete success of every euthenic program.

How foolish, then, is antagonism between the two forces! Both are working toward the same end of human betterment, and neither can succeed without the other. When either attempts to eliminate the other from its work, it ceases to advance toward its goal. In which camp one works is largely a matter of taste. If on a road there is a gradient to be leveled, it will be brought down most quickly by two parties of workmen, one cutting away at the top, the other filling in the bottom. For the two parties to indulge in mutual scorn and recrimination would be no more absurd than for eugenics and euthenics to be put in opposition to each other. The only reason they have been in opposition is because some of the workers did not clearly understand the nature of their work. With the dissemination of a knowledge of biology, this ground of antagonism will disappear.

APPENDIX A

OVARIAN TRANSPLANTATION

In 1890, W. Heape published an account of some experiments with rabbits.

Taking the fertilized egg of an angora rabbit (i. e., a long-haired, white one) from the oviduct of its mother previous to its attachment to the wall of the uterus, he transferred it to the uterus of a Belgian hare, a rabbit which is short-haired and gray. The egg developed normally in the new body and produced an animal with all the characteristics, as far as could be seen, of the real mother, rather than the foster-mother. Its coat was long and white, and there was not the slightest trace of influence of the short, gray-haired doe in whose body it had grown.

Here was a case in which environment certainly failed to show any modifying influence. But it was objected that the transplanted egg was already full-grown and fertilized when the transfer was made, and that therefore no modification need be expected. If the egg were transferred at an earlier stage, it was thought, the result might be different.

W. E. Castle and J. C. Phillips therefore undertook an experiment to which this objection should not be possible.[195]

”A female albino guinea-pig just attaining s.e.xual maturity was by an operation deprived of its ovaries, and instead of the removed ovaries there were introduced into her body the ovaries of a young black female guinea-pig, not yet s.e.xually mature, aged about three weeks. The grafted animal was now mated with a male albino guinea-pig. From numerous experiments with albino guinea-pigs it may be stated emphatically that normal albinos mated together, without exception, produce only albino young, and the presumption is strong, therefore, that had this female not been operated on she would have done the same. She produced, however, by the albino male three litters of young, which together consisted of six individuals, all black. The first litter of young was produced about six months after the operation, the last about one year.

The transplanted ovarian tissue must have remained in its new environment therefore from four to ten months before the eggs attained full growth and were discharged; ample time, it would seem, for the influence of a foreign body upon the inheritance to show itself were such influence possible.”

While such experiments must not be stretched too far, in application to the human species, they certainly offer striking evidence of the fact that the characters of any individual are mainly due to something in the germ-plasm, and that this germ-plasm is to a surprising degree independent of any outside influence, even such an intimate influence as that of the body of the mother in which it reaches maturity.

APPENDIX B

”DYNAMIC EVOLUTION”

As C. L. Redfield has secured considerable publicity for his attempt to bolster up the Lamarckian theory, it deserves a few words of comment.

His contention is that ”the energy in animals, known as intelligence and physical strength, is identical with the energy known in mechanics, and is governed by the same laws.” He therefore concludes that (1) an animal stores up energy in its body, in some undescribed and mystical way, and (2) that in some equally undescribed and mystical way it transmits this stored-up energy to its offspring. It follows that he thinks superior offspring are produced by parents of advanced age, because the latter have had more time to do work and store up energy for transmission. In his own words:

”Educating the grandfather helps to make the grandson a superior person.... We are, in our inheritance, exactly what our ancestors made us by the work they performed before reproducing. Whether our descendants are to be better or worse than we are will depend upon the amount and kind of work we do before we produce them.”