Part 18 (1/2)
This being premised, it will suffice to faintly sketch out some sort of basis for eugenics, it being now an understanding that we are provisionally agreed, for the sake of argument, that the improvement of race is an object of first-cla.s.s importance, and that the popular feeling has been educated to regard it in that light.
The final object would be to devise means for favouring individuals who bore the signs of members.h.i.+p of a superior race, the proximate aim would be to ascertain what those signs were, and these we will consider first.
The indications of superior breed are partly personal, partly ancestral. We need not trouble ourselves about the personal part, because full weight is already given to it in the compet.i.tive careers; energy, brain, morale, and health being recognised factors of success, while there can hardly be a better evidence of a person being adapted to his circ.u.mstances than that afforded by success. It is the ancestral part that is neglected, and which we have yet to recognise at its just value. A question that now continually arises is this: a youth is a candidate for permanent employment, his present personal qualifications are known, but how will he turn out in later years? The objections to compet.i.tive examinations are notorious, in that they give undue prominence to youths whose receptive faculties are quick, and whose intellects are precocious.
They give no indication of the directions in which the health, character, and intellect of the youth will change through the development, in their due course, of ancestral tendencies that are latent in youth, but will manifest themselves in after life.
Examinations deal with the present, not with the future, although it is in the future of the youth that we are especially interested.
Much of the needed guidance may be derived from his family history.
I cannot doubt, if two youths were of equal personal merit, of whom one belonged to a thriving and long-lived family, and the other to a decaying and short-lived family, that there could be any hesitation in saying that the chances were greater of the first-mentioned youth becoming the more valuable public servant of the two.
A thriving family may be sufficiently defined or inferred by the successive occupations of its several male members in the previous generation, and of the two grandfathers. These are patent facts attainable by almost every youth, which admit of being verified in his neighbourhood and attested in a satisfactory manner.
A healthy and long-lived family may be defined by the patent facts of ages at death, and number and ages of living relatives, within the degrees mentioned above, all of which can be verified and attested. A knowledge of the existence of longevity in the family would testify to the stamina of the candidate, and be an important addition to the knowledge of his present health in forecasting the probability of his performing a large measure of experienced work.
Owing to absence of data and the want of inquiry of the family antecedents of those who fail and of those who succeed in life, we are much more ignorant than we ought to be of their relative importance. In connection with this, I may mention some curious results published by Mr. F.M. Holland[18] of Boston, U.S., as to the antecedent family history of persons who were reputed to be more moral than the average, and of those who were the reverse. He has
been good enough to reply to questions that I sent to him concerning his criterion of morality, and other points connected with the statistics, in a way that seems satisfactory, and he has very obligingly furnished me with additional MS. materials. One of his conclusions was that morality is more often found among members of large families than among those of small ones. It is reasonable to expect this would be the case owing to the internal discipline among members of large families, and to the wholesome sustaining and restraining effects of family pride and family criticism. Members of small families are apt to be selfish, and when the smallness of the family is due to the deaths of many of its members at early ages, it is some evidence either of weakness of the family const.i.tution, or of deficiency of common sense or of affection on the part of the parents in not taking better care of them. Mr. Holland quotes in his letter to me a piece of advice by Franklin to a young man in search of a wife, ”to take one out of a bunch of sisters,” and a popular saying that kittens brought up with others make the best pets, because they have learned to play without scratching. Sir William Gull[19] has remarked that those candidates for the Indian Civil Service who are members of large families are on the whole the strongest.
[Footnote 18: _Index Newspaper_, Boston, U.S. July 27, 1882.]
Far be it from me to say that any scheme of marks for family merit would not require a great deal of preparatory consideration. Careful statistical inquiries have yet to be made into the family antecedents of public servants of mature age in connection with their place in examination lists at the earlier age when they first gained their appointments. This would be necessary in order to learn the amount of marks that should be a.s.signed to various degrees of family merit. I foresee no peculiar difficulty in conducting such an inquiry; indeed, now that compet.i.tive examinations have been in general use for many years, the time seems ripe for it, but of course its conduct would require much confidential inquiry and a great deal of trouble in verifying returns. Still, it admits of being done, and if the results, derived from different sources, should confirm one another, they could be depended on.
[Footnote 19: _Blue Book C_--1446, 1876. On the Selection and Training of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service.]
Let us now suppose that a way was seen for carrying some such idea as this into practice, and that family merit, however defined, was allowed to count, for however little, in compet.i.tive examinations.
The effect would be very great: it would show that ancestral qualities are of present current value; it would give an impetus to collecting family histories; it would open the eyes of every family and or society at large to the importance of marriage alliance with a good stock; it would introduce the subject of race into a permanent topic of consideration, which (on the supposition of its _bona fide_ importance that has been a.s.sumed for the sake of argument) experience would show to be amply justified. Any act that first gives a guinea stamp to the sterling guinea's worth of natural n.o.bility might set a great social avalanche in motion.
ENDOWMENTS.
Endowments and bequests have been freely and largely made for various social purposes, and as a matter of history they have frequently been made to portion girls in marriage. It so happens that the very day that I am writing this, I notice an account in the foreign newspapers (September 19, 1882) of an Italian who has bequeathed a sum to the corporation of London to found small portions for three poor girls to be selected by lot. And again, a few weeks ago I read also in the French papers of a trial, in reference to the money adjudged to the ”Rosiere” of a certain village.
Many cases in which individuals and states have portioned girls may be found in Malthus. It is therefore far from improbable that if the merits of good race became widely recognised and its indications were rendered more surely intelligible than they now are, that local endowments, and perhaps adoptions, might be made in favour of those of both s.e.xes who showed evidences of high race and of belonging to prolific and thriving families. One cannot forecast their form, though we may reckon with some a.s.surance that in one way or another they would be made, and that the better races would be given a better chance of marrying early.
A curious relic of the custom which was universal three or four centuries ago, of entrusting education to celibate priests, forbade Fellows of Colleges to marry, under the penalty of losing their fellows.h.i.+ps. It is as though the winning horses at races were rendered ineligible to become sires, which I need hardly say is the exact reverse of the practice. Races were established and endowed by ”Queen's plates” and otherwise at vast expense, for the purpose of discovering the swiftest horses, who are thenceforward exempted from labour and reserved for the sole purpose of propagating their species.
The horses who do not win races, or who are not otherwise specially selected for their natural gifts, are prevented from becoming sires.
Similarly, the mares who win races as fillies, are not allowed to waste their strength in being ridden or driven, but are tended under sanatory conditions for the sole purpose of bearing offspring. It is better economy, in the long-run, to use the best mares as breeders than as workers, the loss through their withdrawal from active service being more than recouped in the next generation through what is gained by their progeny.
The college statutes to which I referred were very recently relaxed at Oxford, and have been just reformed at Cambridge. I am told that numerous marriages have ensued in consequence, or are ensuing. In _Hereditary Genius_ I showed that scholastic success runs strongly in families; therefore, in all seriousness, I have no doubt, that the number of Englishmen naturally endowed with high scholastic faculties, will be sensibly increased in future generations by the repeal of these ancient statutes.
The English race has yet to be explored and their now unknown wealth of hereditary gifts recorded, that those who possess such a patrimony should know of it. The natural impulses of mankind would then be sufficient to ensure that such wealth should no more continue to be neglected than the existence of any other possession suddenly made known to a man. Aristocracies seldom make alliances out of their order, except to gain wealth. Is it less to be expected that those who become aware that they are endowed with the power of transmitting valuable hereditary gifts should abstain from squandering their future children's patrimony by marrying persons of lower natural stamp? The social consideration that would attach itself to high races would, it may be hoped, partly neutralise a social cause that is now very adverse to the early marriages of the most gifted, namely, the cost of living in cultured and refined society. A young man with a career before him commonly feels it would be an act of folly to hamper himself by too early a marriage.
The doors of society that are freely open to a bachelor are closed to a married couple with small means, unless they bear patent recommendations such as the public recognition of a natural n.o.bility would give. The att.i.tude of mind that I should expect to predominate among those who had undeniable claims to rank as members of an exceptionally gifted race, would be akin to that of the modern possessors of ancestral property or hereditary rank. Such persons feel it a point of honour not to alienate the old place or make misalliances, and they are respected for their honest family pride.
So a man of good race would shrink from spoiling it by a lower marriage, and every one would sympathise with his sentiments.