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HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

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HEREDITY AND
-SOCIETY

BY

WILLIAM CECIL DAMPIER WHETHAM

M.A., F.R.S.

FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

AND

CATHERINE BURNING WHETHAM

HIS WIFE

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1912

All rights reserved

PREFACE

SINCE the appearance in 1909 of our book on The
Family and the Nation, we have published occasional
papers and articles extending some of the ideas therein
contained. Although the present volume reproduces the
substance of some of these papers, the larger portion of
it consists of hitherto unprinted work. To prevent the
need of reference to the former book, certain sections
have been abstracted and re-written, such as the one
on the scientific aspect of Variation, and the statistical
portion of the chapter on the Birth-rate ; but any
one who desires to study these and kindred subjects in
more detail must consult the earlier volume, especially
the chapters on Inheritance and Variation in Mankind,
the Inheritance of Mental Defect and Ability, and the
Selective Birth-rate. The causes of the decline in the
birth-rate are there likewise discussed.

We wish especially to guard against one miscon-
ception into which certain of our former readers and
reviewers seem to have fallen. Both this book and its
predecessor are written avowedly to draw attention
to the problem of heredity, a conception which has
hardly yet penetrated consciously into modern sociology,
where the subject of environment has held hitherto
almost limitless sway. We find it necessary continually
to point out that improved conditions of life will not

vi HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

by themselves alone secure certain and corresponding
improvement in the inborn qualities of the race.
Selection also is needed. We have deliberately con-
centrated our attention chiefly on one side of a very
complex and involved problem. But it is not necessary
in actual life to disregard the effects of a better environ-
ment in order to realize the importance of the workings
of heredity ; and to point out that the present trend of
modern civilization produces certain dangers, is not to
discourage further attempts to improve the surroundings
of mankind, whatever may be felt on the subject by
impulsive philanthropists or unresting politicians.

It is clear that social and legislative action is con-
tinually changing the average composition of every
race, for better or for worse ; yet, for the most part,
people are unconscious of the fact. The nation whose
rulers first grasp and act on the essential principles
of the new knowledge will surely assume a leading
position in the rivalry of states, and may quickly and
rightfully establish a predominant influence in the
realm of international affairs. From this aspect alone, it
is desirable to draw attention to the connection between
the structure of society and the workings of heredity.

We desire to thank those correspondents, at home,
abroad and overseas, who have drawn our attention
to various facts bearing on our inquiries, who have
sent us pedigrees and notes of family history, and
have encouraged by their appreciation, criticism and
execration this new presentment of the ideas which we
have endeavoured to bring into more general notice.

CAMBRIDGE, December 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

INTRODUCTION i

CHAPTER II

VARIATION AND HEREDITY . . . . .10

CHAPTER III

NATURAL SELECTION . . . . .32

CHAPTER IV

THE BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION . . .43

CHAPTER V
THE BIRTH-RATE . . -57

CHAPTER VI

THE POSITION OF WOMEN — A SURVEY . . .72

CHAPTER VII

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN , , 88

vij

viii HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

CHAPTER VIII

PAGE

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION . . .104

CHAPTER IX
HEREDITY AND POLITICS • I23

CHAPTER X

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE . 164

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

IN all the races of mankind, and even in the higher
species of the animal kingdom, the family, in one or
other of its many forms, is the unit of the communal
life and forms the basis of the social structure. In
all times and in all civilizations, tradition, custom and
law have worked together to strengthen and consolidate
the ties of kinship, recognizing therein, consciously or
unconsciously, an essential factor in any stable and
successful society.

The natural ties of affection and dependence which
bind husband to wife, parent to child, kinsman to
kinsman — ties without which the human race could
never have succeeded in establishing itself in a position
of predominance on the earth — are far more deeply
engrained in our species than others which depend merely
on habits of association or relations of mutual benefit
or convenience. Even under the artificial conditions
of much of our modern civilization, under social
and economic pressure tending to break up and dis-
integrate the natural and fundamental relations of life,
it remains true, times without number, that blood is
thicker than water.

i

2 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

This universal recognition of the family as the true
social unit and of the ties of kinship as the most
powerful of binding forces is in effect a tacit recog-
nition of the part played by heredity in fashioning
human society. Were there to exist no correlation of
qualities between parents and children, brothers and
sisters, kinsmen and kinswomen, either in physical or
mental characteristics, the problem of forming coherent
societies and of creating and maintaining an environment
suitable for succeeding generations would be insoluble.
It is because persons belonging to the same race have
certain definite characters in common that they are
capable of thriving in the same conditions of climate,
in the same mental and moral atmosphere, of under-
taking the same class of labour, of resisting the same
diseases. Thus the human populations of the globe,
like the flora and fauna, have separated out into the
various species, inhabiting in comfort the different
geographical zones, and showing marked differences of
appearance, of capacities, of requirements. It is because
families who are united by ties of blood are in like
manner, but to a less marked degree, separated off from
their fellow-men, that it has been possible for the indi-
viduals of each race, as for animals, to differentiate
among themselves and to develop and extend the various
manifestations of those qualities inherent in the human
race which are essential to the increasing complexity of
modern civilization. In the same way the exigencies
of natural selection and of human need have divided
the qualities inherent in the equine race between the
hardihood of the Shetland pony, the strength of the
Clydesdale or Shire horse, and the speed and mettle of

INTRODUCTION 3

the thoroughbred racer. No one animal could possess
the qualities of all three.

From the practical point of view of daily life, the
influence of heredity is constantly taken into account.
An acquaintance with the family is found to give an
insight and a completion to our knowledge of the
individual, his capacities, his character, his strong
points and his failings. A man of whose parentage
and antecedents nothing is known remains of necessity
a stranger long after he himself has ceased to provide
any cause for surprise or suspicion. Yet when his
offspring stand before us, the surprise may return and
deepen into dismay, and the suspicions which had been
lulled into forgetfulness may arise and transform them-
selves into some lamentable certainty.

The family may be considered from many points of
view. It has a political aspect, a romantic aspect, an
economic aspect, a religious aspect. From each of
these points of view it has been considered by the
leaders of thought of every succeeding generation.
But, during the last century, which may be called the
scientific age, while the co-ordination of natural know-
ledge has gradually been illuminating many of the
dark places of the human intelligence, we have come
to see that the family has also a scientific or biological
aspect. From this last standpoint, especially in the
light of our growing knowledge of heredity, we are
chiefly to deal with it here.

Time was — and not many decades ago — when the
biological views of Lamarck of the inheritance by
offspring of characteristics acquired during life by

4 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

their parents were applied confidently to the pheno-
mena of social evolution. The comfortable and
optimistic doctrine was preached that we had only
to improve one generation by more healthy surround-
ings, or by better education, and, by the mere action
of heredity, the next generation would begin on a
higher level of natural endowments than its pre-
decessor. And so, from generation to generation,
on this theory, we could hope continually to raise
the inborn character of a race in an unlimited progress
of cumulative improvement.

Much of the impetus given to educational and
philanthropic work during the past century seems
to have been due to the spread of this belief, which
had been put aside by most men of science almost
before its effects were felt among the general public.
A multitude of workers arose who were inspired by
a zeal for social service and unselfish travail and
endeavoured to realize the vision of universal well-
being which the discredited doctrine had dangled before
their eyes.

But, half a century ago, Lamarck's explanation of
evolution was replaced by that of Darwin ; and, of
recent years, the work of Weissmann and others has
led biologists to doubt more and more whether
characters acquired during life by the action of the
environment are inherited at all by the offspring.
Yet, deceived by their hopes and aspirations, and led
astray by incorrect elementary knowledge, our philan-
thropists, and still more our politicians, continued to
talk and act as though improvement in the mere
material surroundings of life would, of itself and

INTRODUCTION 5

unaided, suffice to improve the race. Had they but
watched the results and understood the methods of
practical cattle-breeders, whose labours, though still
in the empirical stage, were already transforming the
nature of our flocks and herds, they would have
appreciated the fact that improvement in the environ-
ment alone would do little for a race compared with
the transcendent power of selective breeding.

Nevertheless, improvement in surroundings and
social conditions represents the only conscious share
taken hitherto by man in raising the level of his race,
and for its own sake, it is worthy of the efforts made
to secure it. But the measures used to bring about
such an amelioration require to be scrutinized carefully,
both in regard to their immediate effects and to their
possible indirect influence on future generations.

From the racial point of view, there is at least one
advantage in lightening the pressure of circumstances
on the lower ranks of society. There are always a
certain number of families at the bottom of each social
stratum that have fallen through accident, such as the
death or ill-health of the bread-winner, a change of
trade, or other external cause. With improved sur-
roundings and greater opportunities of self-help,
people of this type will readily separate themselves
out from the families who have fallen into the depths
by reason of the badness of their inborn qualities.
Thus a new classification is obtained, which is of real
value from the point of view of the race. Fresh
recruits are obtained for the effective sections of the
communal life, and the residue can be more justly
dealt with as a separate problem of degeneration.

6 , HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

Any movement among the population which tends
to bring about a more correct segregation of the
different classes eases the conditions in which the
biological factor can accomplish its mission. Indeed,
from one point of view, the work of civilization has
been to differentiate between one type of character and
ability and another, and to fit each, as far as possible,
into that portion of the social structure where it can
be of the greatest value. There is no record of any
race that has risen into prominence without having first
of all undergone a lengthy process of careful gradua-
tion. A disintegration of society and the breaking up
of these natural divisions seems to be a preliminary
step in national decay.

Doubtless material improvement in the physical
conditions of mankind benefits the present generation
by easing the circumstances of life, and lessening the
struggle for existence among those least able to bear
it ; doubtless it even raises somewhat the next generation
by improving the conditions of its nurture in infancy.
But the process has definite limits, quickly reached.
There are even, as we shall see later on, special dangers
attached to any progressive lowering of the standard
of individual exertion necessary to maintain a family
in a position of independence.

But, if races are not moulded by the inheritance of
the powers and qualities imprinted on each generation
by education, training and environment, to what are we
to look to explain the undoubted changes in race which
have gone on in the past ? Progress there has certainly
been ; and every believer in the future of the human

INTRODUCTION 7

race must look forward most ardently to further pro-
gress and to the evolution of a higher and more constant
type of humanity. Yet we know that the slow upward
progress of mankind has not moved evenly on its
way ; that there have been catastrophes and disasters
on a large scale ; that nations of great promise have
been wiped out ; that empires have disappeared ; that
civilizations of old standing and high achievement
have vanished ; that nations, empires and civilizations
have crumbled away at the first touch of contact with
some despised, barbaric, untamed people, whose only
merit was the purity and vigour of their stock, the
simplicity of their habits, and the sanctity and strength
of their family life.

Looking back down long vistas of history, at the
wrecks of great nations, we may well ask what agency
we may invoke to prevent the deterioration of our
race in time to come, and to secure its regeneration
at the fount of strength, virtue and virility.

If we are to reckon as inadequate efforts permanently
to improve a race by alterations in the conditions of
life, by improvement in education and hygiene, by
equalization of opportunity and of the fruits of achieve-
ment, the necessary complement is some process of
natural selection, that survival and preponderating re-
production of the fittest, the theory of which was first
clearly stated by Darwin and Wallace, and has been
amplified, corrected and extended by many biologists
since first they propounded it.

And here another caution is necessary. The
" fittest " in the process of natural selection are the
fittest for the existing environment. If the environ-

8 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

ment favour worthy qualities, the fittest are also the
worthiest, and all is well. But if the environment be
such that bad qualities are an advantage to their
possessor, those bad qualities secure a preponderating
reproduction, and the racial progress may be downhill.
Hence once more we see the need of scrutinizing pro-
posed changes in the environment from the point of
view of natural selection and heredity.

But it is in modifying the external conditions of life
that the dominion of men on this globe has registered
its greatest successes, and it is unfortunately possible
for a time artificially to create circumstances in which
the least admirable qualities can thrive and secure a
preponderating reproduction quite as easily as to main-
tain those where industry, foresight and ability receive
their due reward.

Natural selection and the survival of the fittest, then,
will not of themselves perform miracles of regenera-
tion. They represent the method followed by the
workings of heredity. Where the human race is con-
cerned, men have now the power consciously to direct
them into barren or into profitable channels. The
whole fate of civilization hangs on the question of
whether this mighty engine of construction or destruc-
tion is to be used for good or evil.

It is not a mere phrase to say that our knowledge
of the workings of natural selection, our conceptions
of the range and influence of heredity, have advanced
by leaps and bounds during the past twenty years.
There is no branch of scientific inquiry which has
attracted keener and better equipped brains to its
service, or of which the results are more fraught

INTRODUCTION 9

with the knowledge of good and evil for the whole
human race.

It is impossible here, in the short space at our dis-
posal, to give any just idea of the methods by which
this knowledge has been acquired or of its extent and
authority. Here we can only summarize and simplify
a few of the results, which we have set forth at greater
length in a previous work.1

1 The Family and the Nation, 1909.

CHAPTER II

VARIATION AND HEREDITY

THE individuals of every race of living things vary
among themselves. No one is exactly like any other.
Even sheep can be distinguished by their shepherd,
Members of Parliament by the Speaker. Some are
taller, some shorter than the average. Some are
brighter and some are duller ; some are morally better
and some are morally worse. A part of these variations
may be due to differences in fortune, upbringing and
surroundings — how much it is impossible to say. A
naturally tall man may be stunted by slum life, or
add half an inch to his stature by physical exercise. A
dunce may have a modicum of knowledge beaten into
his head, and a man on the border of crime may be
reclaimed by love or fear. But these acquirements
or alterations in a man depend again on his innate
susceptibility to the stick or to an appeal to his better
feelings. These impressed variations are not inherited
directly by his offspring, although the tendency to
receive them may be handed down. We have taught
many generations to read without seeing the slightest
prospect of giving birth to a generation endowed with
an innate knowledge of the alphabet, although the

10

VARIATION AND HEREDITY n

children of apt scholars will ofttimes emulate the
parental achievement of " teaching themselves to read "
as the saying goes. It is this inborn part of a man's
endowment which tends to appear again in his
descendants.

On the results of large numbers of measurements,
we find that the sons of naturally tall fathers are taller
than the average, and that the children of able and
industrious parents show a higher level of ability and
require less attention and expenditure of energy to
enable them to attain an average standard of achieve-
ment than do the bulk of the population. The
children of habitual criminals more often show vicious
tendencies even in youth, while the offspring of men-
tally defective parents are themselves feeble-minded.
Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ?

It is on these inborn variations that selection has
to work. Some variations will give a man an advantage
in the struggle for life ; some will cause him more
easily to succumb. In a primitive community, where
the forces of heredity are acting naturally, unconsciously
and effectively, men of the first type will tend to live
and beget offspring ; men of the second type will more
often die in infancy or youth, and either leave no
progeny or leave them with but precarious chances of
survival. Thus the more favourable variations tend
to appear by the process of heredity in the next genera-
tion, while the unfavourable variations tend to get
stamped out. In this way the race is continually more
and more moulded to fit its environment ; it is relieved
of the strains of blood of the failures which tend more
and more to become encumbrances on the better stocks,

12 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

and it finds itself more and more able to overcome
the difficulties which beset its upward path.

Such, in broad outline, is the scheme of natural
selection as put forward by Darwin to explain the
process of organic evolution, and to account for the
origin of different species of plants and animals.
Whether or no it be capable of working all the
wonders of creation which naturalists have assigned to
it, or whether eventually we shall have to look behind
its mechanism to some non-mechanical creative energy
which uses matter as its medium, natural selection, be
it cause or means, must still be effective in modifying
the average character of existing species. Hence arises
the importance of tracing its action in civilized com-
munities, and of investigating the causes which are
now at work as efficient selective agencies.

For the sake of convenience, if for no more funda-
mental reason, variation may be divided into two kinds :
continuous and discontinuous. In continuous variation
we have every possible value of the character through-
out wide limits. Thus it would be possible to find
men for every tenth of an inch of stature between
5 feet and 6 feet 4 inches, though the numbers are
greatest for those values nearest the average height of
5 feet 8 inches. On the other hand, variation some-
times occurs in definite steps. A flower has either four
petals or five, a man either has or has not brown
pigment in his eyes.

Continuous variation is much the more common,
and, till recently, it alone was studied by biologists.
Of late years, however, much attention has been paid

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 13

to discontinuous variation, and the investigations of
Bateson and others, founded on the rediscovered work
of Gregor Mendel, abbot of Brtlnn, have brought to
light many definite laws.

As an example of these laws, let us take the case of
eye-colour. While many grades are known in the
intensity of brown colouration, it is possible to say
whether brown pigment is present at all. Its presence
and absence are contrasted characteristics. Now the
presence of brown pigment in the eye seems to be
associated with a definite character in the germ cells of
the individual. If that character be present in all the
germ cells of either parent, all the offspring will possess
brown eyes. If neither parent possesses it, the eyes of
none of the children will contain brown pigment, they
will all be grey or blue. The brown colour is what is
called a dominant character — it always shows if it be
present. Greyness or blueness is simply due to the
absence of brown. If one parent is pure-bred " blue "
and the other pure-bred " brown," all the children will
be brown-eyed. Hence while brownness is said to be
dominant, blueness is said to be "recessive."

But the brown-eyed children of a mixed couple will
not be pure-bred with regard to eye-colour, though,
owing to its dominant character, brownness shows in all
their eyes. Half their germ cells will carry the brown
character, and half not. Hence, by the theory of
chances, if two such half-bred individuals mate, one
quarter of their children will, on the average, be
developed from the union of two " brown " germ cells
and be pure-bred " browns," one quarter will be pro-
duced by the union of two " blue " cells and be pure-

i4 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

bred " blues," while two quarters will be produced by
the union of two cells, one " brown " and one " blue,"
and be cross-bred with regard to eye-colour like their
parents. And like them, since brown is dominant,
their eyes will contain brown pigment, like those of
their pure-bred " brown " brothers and sisters.

If we denote an individual with the dominant
character as D and one with the recessive character as
R we get the scheme :

A " dominant " marries a " recessive " D x R

and has offspring

all cross-bred but outwardly resembling the dominant D R x D R
One of these cross-breeds marries a similar cross-breed

and has offspring
equally divided between (i) pure-bred

" dominants," (2) mixed-bred " domi- DD DR RD RR
nants recessives," (3) mixed -bred

" recessive-dominants," (4) pure-bred (i) (2) (3) (4)
recessives. (2) and (3) are identical.

Now, as long as the pure dominants at one end and
the pure recessives at the other find mates similar to
themselves with respect to the character considered,
they breed true, notwithstanding their mixed parent-
age. The individuals called DR or RD, however,
contain the recessive character concealed in their germ
cells, whence it may reappear in their offspring.

There is thus an essential difference in the inherit-
ance of a character, according as it is dominant or reces-
sive. A dominant character, whether good or evil, will
show if it be present. If an abnormality be dominant,
normal people will never reproduce it, even though
born of an abnormal family, for, as they do not show
the character, they are free from it. Certain physical
deformities have been shown to be dominant characters.

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 15

But, if the character be recessive, it may lie concealed
in the germ cells of some of those who outwardly
show no sign of it. Some forms of deaf-mutism
seem to be recessive. Hence it is specially dangerous
for normal folk who both come from deaf-mute stock
to intermarry. The defect is likely to reappear in
their children. Some types of mental defect show the
same relations. A pair both of whom are afflicted
breed " true " ; they produce none but feeble-minded
offspring. A pair who are themselves normal but come
from weak-minded stocks, will find about one quarter
of their children mentally defective.

It will now be seen how essential it is to extend our
knowledge of these forms of Mendelian inheritance.
In these cases, we can predict the probable or certain
result of a proposed marriage, and foretell whether it
should or should not be entered upon.

We have begun with those cases in which simple
Mendelian inheritance already has been made out,
because, in the present state of our knowledge, in them
alone we can predict the probable average composition
of a large family if we know the family history of the
parents. But Mendel's laws have been demonstrated
as yet for only a few cases of human inheritance, and
for most characters we are thrown back upon vaguer
methods of inquiry.

Let us take a typical instance of continuous variation,
such as difference in stature. Let us suppose that the
average height of the men in a certain race is 5 feet
8 inches. Let us select as many fathers as we can find
whose height is approximately 6 feet — that is, 4 inches
more than the average. A measurement of the height

1 6 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

of the sons of any one of them would tell us very little.
Any one family might be affected by quite accidental
circumstances. But, if we measure the height of all
the sons of all our many six-foot fathers, the accidental
circumstances will tell as often in one direction as in
the other, and we shall be able to discover whether
or no, on the average, the sons of tall fathers exceed
the normal height of the race. As a matter of fact,
we shall find that the average height of the sons in
the case we have taken will be very nearly 5 feet 10
inches — that is, 2 inches more than the average. Their
mean deviation from the normal is just about half that
of their fathers. In this case, we have said nothing
about the mothers. Had we restricted our choice of
six-foot fathers to those who had married women as
much taller than the average for women as they them-
selves were taller than the average for men, we should,
have found that the sons would, on the results of large
numbers, have more nearly approached the average
abnormal height of their parents, but that they would
still have fallen somewhat short of that excessive stature.
Let us now return to the relation between one parent
and his children of the same sex. We may express
the fact that the children deviate from the mean by
one-half as much as the parent by saying that the
" coefficient of correlation " for that particular character
is one-half, or 0*5.

Turning to mental characteristics, we have greater
difficulty in exact measurement. But the marks of
candidates in an examination give a favourable instance
of variation. In a good examination, when the

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 17

number of candidates is large, the marks are found
to group themselves round a mean value in just the
same way as do the figures expressing the stature of a
number of men of the same race. Most candidates
obtain marks in the neighbourhood of 50 per cent, of
the total, while fewer and fewer candidates are found
as we get nearer to zero at one end and to 100 per cent,
at the other. If the results group themselves in an
irregular manner either at one end or the other of the
scale, it is fair to assume that either the papers, the
candidates or the examiners were unsuited to the
occasion.

To estimate the intensity of inheritance in these
mental characters, the positions in the Oxford Univer-
sity class-lists of a large number of fathers and their
sons were compared, and the relative position in the
forms of public schools of brothers, between whom, of
course, there should be correlation if heredity is strong,
since they have the same parentage. In the case both
of parental inheritance and of fraternal relationship,
the coefficients of correlation were found closely to
agree with those for physical characters. Thus we
obtain one class of evidence bearing on the important
result that mental qualities are inherited in the same
way, and with the same intensity, as are physical
characters. We may not be able to predict the mental
powers of any given family in the same exact way in
which we can foretell its probable composition with
regard to the physical characters for which definite
Mendelian inheritance has already been made out ; but,
if we consider, not one family, but a large number of
families, the results statistically are no less accurate and

2

1 8 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

predetermined. Just as we know, from the Registrar-
General's returns for past years, approximately how
many people in the coming year will die between the
ages of fifty and sixty, and how many will die between
sixty and seventy, though we cannot predict the death
of any one individual, so we can tell from previous
investigations on heredity, if we deal with large num-
bers, how many of the children of different types of
parents will show the parental characteristics.

In order to make sure that we are not deceived
by casual coincidences, it is necessary, when we are
investigating the inheritance of any specific character,
to study statistically large numbers. A single family
pedigree, unless it be an extensive one, and unless it
show definite Mendelian phenomena, is not enough
to prove a case, although it may and frequently does
suggest valuable lines of inquiry. Nevertheless, single
pedigrees may well be used for purposes of illustration.

Galton called attention to the eminence and perman-
ence of the ability created by the intermarriages of
the families of Montagu, Sidney and North, from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In the remark-
able pedigree of these interrelated families as given by
Galton, we find recorded four Chief Justices, one Lord
Chancellor, seven other Judges, two Ambassadors, two
well-known Statesmen, two Viceroys, one Lord High
Admiral, one Bishop, one Abbot, and eight other men
or women distinguished in some branch of learning ;
while no less than thirteen separate peerages were
won by members of these families during the period
under review.

In later times the family of Grey has produced some

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 19

eighteen men of great ability. Among them were
three Cabinet Ministers, three Generals, two Admirals
and one other distinguished sailor who was created a
K.C.B. and a Baronet, one Bishop, one Governor and
one Governor-General.

As an illustration of the inheritance of scientific
ability we may take the doubly related families of
Darwin and Wedgwood, and the allied family of
Galton — a specially appropriate example for the purpose
in hand. Beginning in the middle of the eighteenth
century with Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood and
S. G. Galton, in five generations these interconnected
families have produced no less that sixteen men of
marked scientific attainments, of whom nine were
Fellows of the Royal Society.

In all such cases, the reproduction of ability seems
chiefly to depend on a right choice of mates. It is
well for a country when its able families of special
types consort together socially, so that the rising
generation naturally select their partners from an
appropriate circle of like ability to their own.

The effect of this association is brought out clearly
by an inquiry1 made by the present writers into the
ancestry and offspring of men of ability, on the lines
of Galton's classical work on the subject, but with the
advantage of the more modern material collected in the
pages of the Dictionary of National Biography. Names
of men living between the years 1720 and 1820 were
taken from a portion of the Dictionary. A notice of
twenty lines in the summary contained in the index

1 Nineteenth Century and After, May 1911.

20 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

volume was accepted as a standard of eminence, while
admission to the Dictionary was received as proof of
distinction. It was found necessary to divide the
names into three groups.

The first group included thirty-one names of men
who were born into families possessing a peerage or
who themselves received peerages. Nearly the whole
of these men distinguished themselves in politics or
administration, either civil, military or diplomatic.
According to the standard given by admission to the
Dictionary they had fifty-four relatives of distinction
on their fathers' side, forty-six on the mothers', while
forty-one were descendants of the parents of the
eminent men. These thirty-one men had between
them one hundred and forty-one separate relatives of
distinction, or about 4*5 apiece, of whom the great
majority showed ability of the same type as their own.

The second group consisted of men of similar
characteristics to the first group, with the exception
of the fact that they neither received peerages nor
belonged to families possessing that distinction. Here
we find that eleven men give but six (possibly seven)
able relatives, none of whom were on the side of the
mother.

The third group contained fifty-eight men of dis-
tinction drawn from all classes, including some of the
great names of English life and thought during the
eighteenth century. These men have a total of sixty-
one relatives of distinction, or about one apiece, as
compared with the 4*5 realised by the first group.
Thirty-two of these persons are on the fathers' side,
twenty-three are descendants of the parents, and only

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 21

six can be assigned to the mothers' family. Of these
relatives of ability the Wesley family is responsible
for nine, while the Wordsworths supply six and the
Wollastons four. These three families afford an in-
structive example of the persistence of talent, owing to
a series of appropriate marriages.

These results are certainly striking, and at first sight
one might be tempted to think that high administrative
capacity was heritable, and the other aptitudes, artistic,
literary, inventive, were not so or were only heritable
in a much less degree.

A superficial explanation of these differences might
refer them all to the family influence possessed by
members of the first group, who had attained to the
rank of a peerage. As regards the descendants and
younger relatives of the men of distinction, such a con-
sideration must probably be taken into account. But
on a closer examination it seems to be insufficient to
explain the results. It would be a bold man who
would refer to the influence of a great official the
success of grandparents and great-uncles, living before
the birth of the fortunate man who obtained the peerage.
Yet the figures show that it is as necessary to explain
the pre-eminence of the forebears as the distinction of
the descendants, so that, with all due allowance for
family interest, it seems more rational to endeavour to
find a further reason which will account for both
phenomena.

It must be remembered, too, that the Dictionary of
National Biography professes to notice merit, ability and
eminence, and not merely high station or important
office. Moreover, it is impossible to study its pages

22 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

without coming to the conclusion that ability of a
literary or scientific kind is more fully recognized than
that which shows itself in successful administration —
the special characteristic of the first class — so that the
record of the numerical proportion of all relatives is
actually weighted against the type that comes out at
the head of the list. Again, the anomalous position
of Lords Thurlow, Eldon and Stowell — who have
practically no relatives of distinction — shows that even
the position of Lord Chancellor, with its extraordinary
opportunities in the disposal of patronage, is unable to
discover ability in a family circle where it does not
exist in reality. In the same way, in the third group,
Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Christopher Wren, both
of whom attained social positions leaving nothing to be
desired, were nevertheless unable to point to a younger
generation who should follow in their footsteps, where-
as the Wesleys, Wordsworths and Wollastons, inter-
marrying for several generations with families of
corresponding qualities, show all the phenomena of
recurrent distinction chiefly associated with members
of the first group.

But a careful study of the biographical details reveals
to us that the key to the mystery lies in the marriage
of the men and their relation to their social surround-
ings. From this point of view, the difference in the
number of relatives of distinction to be found in each
group in the families of the mothers is of great import-
ance. When we turn to the list of names in our first
group, read their family histories and recall the gradual
building up of the social life of the country, we are
aware that, through long centuries, much of the national

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 23

stock of political, administrative, military and legal
talent had been separated out by a process of like-to-
like mating and the formation of a class, which, if not
apart, was undoubtedly distinct, from the general mass
of the population. Now administrative ability is essen-
tial to a nation at every stage of its development, and
consequently has been sorted out earlier and possibly
to a greater extent than any other characteristic, as an
essential accompaniment of successful national develop-
ment through the last thousand years of history.
From intermarriages among the picked members of
this class, we obtained a constant and assured succession
of men of a certain type of ability and character.

In the case of the second and third groups, which
deal for the most part with men in whose families
there is little or no previous record of ability, it
seems as if the particular marriage of the parents had
brought the required elements together in a manner
which could not have been foreseen. Out of the
hundreds of thousands of chance alliances, usually in
the middle classes and seldom of a very low social
standard, some one marriage will give birth to a man
of eminence, but, in what department of life he will
be eminent, there is no means of predicting.

This point is emphasized by the more frequent
appearance of ability of the same type in the brothers
and sisters of the eminent man of this class rather
than among his other relatives. We may recall the
sisters Bronte", the brothers Tennyson, the Rossetti
family, and other fraternal groups which could be
added to that of Reynolds and his sister, Romney and
his brother, the brothers Wilberforce, the two Southeys,

24 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

the Scott brothers, the Thurlow brothers, the two
Wordsworth groups and the two pairs of Wesley
brothers. It seems clear that in the second and third
groups we have usually to consider persons who are
exceptions to their social surroundings and naturally
belong to the classes where the satisfactory perform-
ance of daily duties rarely brings with it any public
notice.

This aspect of our subject leads us to inquire into
the sociological meaning of the groups of men of
differing types and professions which we recognize in
our midst. Owing to the localized geographical dis-
tribution of the various branches of industry through-
out the country, we have probably whole classes of
persons, more or less distinct from each other in
physical and mental qualifications, where marked ad-
ministrative, commercial, industrial or technical ability
have been segregated, and exist, duly graded, from top
to bottom of the group.

This differentiation of type, as an essential concomi-
tant of civilization, is probably the origin of the class
distinctions which exist among us, and which, sometimes
crystallizing out into a " caste " system, have existed as
far as we can tell in every civilization. It is evident
that a much higher and more certain proportion of
ability of any required sort can be obtained through
persistent social association, with its corollary of like-
to-like mating, rather than by any chance system of
general settlement and mingled intermarriage.

Very little work has yet been undertaken to throw
light on the sociological principles which underlie these
questions, but all the evidence available goes to show

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 25

that the class association by which we obtain segrega-
tion of type and specialization of innate endowments
has a real evolutionary meaning, corresponding to
the increasing complexity of social requirements, and
is probably playing some useful part in the biological
development of the human race.

Turning to the other side of the picture, we are
met by terrible instances of families in which physical
unsoundness, mental defect and criminal propensities
are inherited from generation to generation in unfail-
ing succession. The classical instance is the family
to which the pseudonym of " Jukes " has been given
by their historian. The pedigree contains some 830
known individuals, all descended from five sisters
born about 1760. A large proportion of these in-
dividuals have been in prison, some of them for
serious crimes. Frequently, the women have con-
sorted with criminals of other stocks. Many of the
race have been paupers, supported wholly or partly
by the community. The total direct loss to their
country caused by this one family has been estimated
at about £260,000, while the indirect loss is probably
much greater.

The study of criminal types has of late years become
a branch of penal jurisprudence, and owes much of
its success to the labours and stimulus of the Italian
criminologist, Cesare Lombroso. The modern school
of criminology has made a careful investigation of
criminals of various types, and has shown that they
exhibit numerous anomalies in facial structure, in
skeletal peculiarities, in nervous conditions which

26 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

denote a close relationship between certain types of
habitual criminals and the savage, and lead to the
conclusion that criminal tendencies are often due to
a reversion towards a primitive and lower type of
humanity. Occasionally they exhibit structural abnor-
malities, especially in the brain, characteristic, not only
of primitive savages, but of still lower types, as far
back as the carnivora.

These born criminals, known to come, wherever their
ancestry can be traced, out of families already over-
burdened with a history of crime, are believed to
constitute about one-third of the mass of offenders —
as far as Italian statistics are concerned. They form
the most important part of the offenders, for their
crimes are usually of a peculiarly monstrous character,
and they reappear before the public notice almost as
soon as they are set at liberty. Heredity, according
to Lombroso, is the principal organic cause of criminal
tendencies : direct heredity from criminal parentage ;
indirect heredity from a generically degenerate family,
showing also frequent cases of insanity, deafness,
syphilis, epilepsy and alcoholism among its members.
Almost all forms of chronic constitutional disease,
especially those of a nervous character, may give rise
to criminality in the descendants.

Lombroso considers that certain villages in Italy
which are hotbeds of crime probably owe their pre-
eminence to ethnical causes. The frequency of homi-
cide in Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia he attributes to a
large admixture of African and Oriental elements in
the population.

Of the second class of criminals, those drawn from

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 27

degenerate families, not necessarily with a previous
history of violent crime, who form another third of
the population of the police courts and prisons, it is
probably true to say that many of them are at times
morally insane. They have physical and mental char-
acteristics in common with both the born criminal and
the epileptic ; but, unlike the born criminal, they fre-
quently exhibit remorse for their crimes, and between
their outbreaks are amenable to the influence of a good
environment. It is an open question how far their
criminal actions are committed during some suspension
or alteration of the intellectual and moral faculties, in
which case they can hardly be said to be responsible
for their doings, although they are none the less
dangerous to the community.

Some of the Continental criminologists class hysteria,
usually considered to be a distinct disease, as a mild
form of epilepsy, especially prevalent among women.
This condition also is traced to hereditary influences,
similar to those found in cases of actual epilepsy, and
is also transmitted by neurotic and inebriate parents ;
although, like epilepsy, it is occasionally due to illness,
such as meningitis, to a fall, a blow, or a fright.
Hysterical patients are known to be profoundly ego-
istical, and are frequently willing to do anything to
attract attention, whether favourable or unfavourable,
a peculiarity of many recognizedly insane persons.
Lombroso notes that hysterical women take special
delight in slandering and bringing false accusations,
charging their servants and neighbours with dis-
honesty, their male relatives with indifference, neglect
or indecency, and that anonymous letter-writing, with

28 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

these intents, is so common among hysterical persons
that it may be considered almost an indication of the
existence of the condition.

Although statistics from every country show that
women contribute a very small share of the serious
crime of a nation — probably not more than ten per cent.,
— yet a careful physical and anatomical examination
of the women who have led immoral lives discloses
the fact that it is they, rather than the occasional
female offender, who exhibit a large proportion of
those deviations from the normal type, which are
associated with men classed by Lombroso as born
criminals. According to this mode of calculation, on
the biometric basis, there is but a very slight difference
in criminality between the two sexes, leaving perhaps
a slight predominance of criminal instincts among
women. The history of the " Jukes " family, already
referred to, bears out this classification.

Instances of families which, generation after genera-
tion, are an expense to the community and a danger
to the race are given in the Poor Law number of
the Eugenics Review (November 1910). It is there
shown that a large proportion of the so-called able-
bodied paupers are the victims of congenital defect
either of mind or body. Pedigree after pedigree is
given illustrating the recurrence of persistent pauper-
ism for three, four or five generations in one family
or group of allied families. As an instance we may
take a case where the history of five generations com-
prising in individuals is set forth. This total is
made up of 34 chronic or permanent paupers, 2 1
occasional paupers, 21 children who died young, while

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 29

only the remaining 35 are not known to have been
chargeable on the rates.

With such results before us we may well despair
of solving the problem of the poor law by administra-
tive changes alone. "To aim at economic change,
without seeking to change the quality of the human
element, is to waste good energy to no purpose."

Many diseases which are themselves infectious, and
propagated by infection, are much more prevalent
or much more fatal in certain families than in others —
much more so than the increased chances of infection
would warrant. While the disease itself is not here-
ditary, the predisposition to the disease is hereditary.
With a disease like tuberculosis, which is so prevalent
in this country that everyone is exposed more or less
to the risk of infection — certainly everyone living in
the crowded quarters of towns — the chances of escape
or attack depend very largely indeed on comparative
immunity or susceptibility. Pedigrees can be given
showing that, with specially tuberculous stock, an
enormous proportion of the individuals are attacked.
They would not have been attacked without infection,
but, equally, they would have escaped untouched had
they been more resistant to the disease.

Certain types of mental defect are definitely here-
ditary. Two feeble-minded parents of these types
seem never to produce a normal child. Defective
families are well known in every district to those
who, with their eyes open, administer poor relief or
justice — families of which some or all of the members,
generation after generation, have to be supported by

30 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

the State — that is, by the labour of their more com-
petent fellow-men. They fill the workhouses, for
they cannot regularly support themselves ; they fill the
prisons, for much of the petty crime of the country
is due to feebleness of mind and is simply a hereditary
disease. Feeble-minded women are specially prolific,
and return again and again to the maternity wards of
our hospitals and infirmaries to add yet another to
the defective population. Several years ago, a Royal
Commission reported in favour of the compulsory and
permanent care and detention of the feeble-minded ;
but nothing has yet been done to carry their recom-
mendations into effect. Every year of delay in
meeting this urgent evil means a new crop of victims
falling inevitably and irretrievably into the worst forms
of degradation, and an ever-growing number of defec-
tive offspring, brought into the world to be a burden
and a shame to the rest of the nation.

It must always be remembered that the existence of
this class of people is directly due to that interference
with natural selection which is the outcome of the un-
regulated humanitarianism of Western society. While
failing to give them the protection which is necessary
to their enfeebled mental powers, the State has never-
theless created conditions which make possible their
continued and successful reproduction. As we have
said before, in a primitive community, types much
below the average of the tribe either in mental or
physical capacity can neither maintain their footing,
nor earn the means of subsistence. Consequently
their defect dies with them, and the purification of the
race is assured. Nations of a somewhat more advanced

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 31

social organization have thought it right to take steps
to prevent any persistent degradation of the racial type.
It is said that the inhabitants of China and Japan are,
at present, free from the burden of maintaining any
sort of lunatic or idiot asylum, and that the existence
of families in their midst handing on from generation
to generation a definite form of mental defect is
unknown among them, and would be considered a
degradation too great to be contemplated. If these
statements be confirmed, it will be interesting to see
whether their immunity can be preserved in the face of
the introduction of Western ideals.

CHAPTER III

NATURAL SELECTION

IN the animal kingdom, and in primitive races of men,
want of strength, agility or fleetness is often fatal.
These qualities consequently have selective value in
the struggle for survival of the fittest. But among
the civilized nations of mankind, especially among
urban populations, it is probable that the most effective
agent in the process of natural selection is disease. A
host of infantile disorders sweeps off a hecatomb of
victims every year. Those of specially weakly con-
stitution, and those specially susceptible to the specific
diseases which are rife, succumb more easily and more
rapidly. Fewer of them live to maturity, and fewer of
them live to hand on their hereditary qualities to off-
spring. Thus the race is gradually purified from the
taint of general weakness of constitution, and from
special liability to the attacks of specific diseases.

It is impossible to doubt that comparative suscepti-
bility to and immunity from definite diseases have
played a great part in the history of mankind. Before
the world was made one by facility of communication,
different races dwelt in comparative isolation. Each
race had its own maladies, and nature took every pains

32

NATURAL SELECTION 33

to render it immune against those particular diseases.
When, by exploration or conquest, two races, hitherto
separate, came into close contact, each infected the
other with new diseases, against which the infected had
none of the protection given by centuries of stringent
selection.

The classical instance is the conquest of the New
World by the diseases of those who followed Columbus.
The East was full of teeming cities, in which centuries
of infection had selected the most resistant stocks. In
the West men lived a nomad life where there was no
need for selective protection against the microbic diseases
of crowded communities. As Dr Archdall Reid says :
" On the one side of the Atlantic were peoples who
for thousands or tens of thousands of years had been
slowly evolving resisting power against a multitude of
maladies ... on the other side of the Atlantic were
peoples who had undergone no evolution against any
zymotic disease except malaria. ... At once . . .
diseases began to sweep in great waves of pestilence
over the whole vast regions of the West. The entire
population was susceptible ; and therefore almost- every
individual was stricken down. . . . Whole tribes and
nations were exterminated. . . . The white colonization
of Australasia is having similar results. In Polynesia,
as soon as the trader brings his clothes and the
missionary insists on his converts wearing them and
attending crowded churches and schools, the work of
extermination begins."

A process, similar to that which is slowly rendering
the nations of the world more and more immune to
specific diseases, has been going on with regard to

3

34 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

alcoholic excess. Those specially susceptible to the
charms of alcohol tend to die younger than those able
to resist. In natural conditions, therefore, they tend to
leave fewer children, and the race gradually contains
fewer and fewer individuals liable to alcoholism. In
classical times, the Mediterranean races were compara-
tively drunken. Now, after centuries of easy access to
alcohol, they are very sober. Were they denied access
to alcohol, they would tend to revert once more to a
renewed liability to drink. The same process of the
slow elimination of alcoholic strains has been at work
in Northern races. Selection, aided doubtless by the
efforts of the advocates of temperance, is making them
more sober. But, as in so many other cases, it is
possible that the process of selection has now been
affected by the voluntary limitation of the birth-rate of
the last forty years. The sober and cautious may now
have fewer children than the reckless and drunken,
and the race may tend to revert to a greater love for
alcohol.

Even with diseases that are commonly accepted as
infectious, such as tuberculosis, these considerations
should not be overlooked. Of late years so much
stress has been laid on the prevention of tubercular
infection that we are apt to forget that, while the
disease is definitely microbic and infective, the tendency
to the disease is as definitely hereditary. For instance,
there is evidence to show that there is less transmission
between husbands and wives than between parents and
children or brothers and sisters, where contiguity is
complicated with consanguinity.

But, since a tuberculous tendency is hereditary, and

NATURAL SELECTION 35

since those specially liable to the disease tend to die
young and leave fewer offspring, natural selection is
increasing the immunity of our race to this scourge.
By cutting off those strains of blood particularly prone
to its attacks, nature is purifying the race from
susceptibility.

It follows that, in considering the advisability of
extending the "crusade against consumption," in
building endless sanatoria for the patients, and expend-
ing vast sums of public money on curative measures
generally, we must carefully scan the proposed course
of action to discover whether we are or are not sacri-
ficing the welfare of numberless generations of the
future to secure the prolongation of the lives of some
of the sufferers in the present, and indulging our own
feelings of compassion at the expense of the future
well-being of our descendants.

It seems that, broadly speaking, tuberculous patients
may be divided into two groups, one of which consists
of those who easily throw off the disease in favourable
circumstances, and one where the susceptibility is so
great that treatment can only be ameliorative. Dr A. F.
Tredgold says :

" It is calculated that in the United Kingdom no
less than 90,000 people die annually from some form
of tuberculosis. This number is enormous, and yet
clinical experience and post-mortem examinations give
reason for thinking that probably another 90,000
become infected with the disease but make a complete
recovery. What is the explanation ? No doubt our
methods of treatment have enormously improved, but
the result, kill or cure, really depends to a very great

36 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

extent upon the vital resistance of the individual. The
majority of persons of sound constitution will, under
proper treatment, recover from consumption with very
little impairment. The majority of those of enfeebled
constitution will die in spite of any treatment. In
some cases the inability to throw off tuberculosis may
be special and not part of any general unfitness ; but
in most instances it is part and parcel of a general
constitutional want of vigour. As showing this we
may refer to the correlation between consumption and
mental degeneracy. Of all the deaths in a most
excellently managed institution for the feeble-minded,
no less than two-fifths were from tuberculosis, whilst
the mortality from this cause amongst the insane in
asylums is at least nine times as great as amongst the
general population. And yet the attendants upon
these persons very rarely develop the disease."

Now it is clear that, when the best curative treat-
ment is placed within reach of persons of sound
constitution who have accidentally acquired tuber-
culosis, and their complete and permanent recovery
is thereby hastened, unmixed good is done. To help
the fit to return sooner to remunerative and happy
employment is a form of social endeavour which,
however out of fashion, is worthy of all encourage-
ment. But, if our efforts are mainly directed towards
patching up the enfeebled constitution of tuberculous
degenerates with the result that they are able more
easily to hand on their defective qualities to another
generation, the prospective evil must be weighed
carefully against the immediate good.

It is possible that the great liability to tubercle may

NATURAL SELECTION 37

be a special and isolated weakness in an otherwise
sound individual. In that case, it may well be that
he may possess other qualities of such value that,
from the point of view of the nation, it may be worth
while to encourage his reproduction in the hope that
among his offspring may be found some who possess
the good characters freed from the taint of suscepti-
bility to this one disease. Restrictive measures may
be deferred till we come to deal with those others
among his children who are tuberculous with no
redeeming features. In such a case, then, the original
tuberculous patient with other brilliant qualities may
be worth preserving from the racial point of view.

But, as Dr Tredgold says, tuberculosis is too often
but an outward and visible sign of an inward weakness
which affects the whole constitution, and appears in
other members of the same family, if not in the same
individual, as general debility, alcoholism, or mental
defect. With such a patient, curative treatment may
be putting in his power the possibility of perpetuat-
ing manifold infirmities, any one of which prevents
its possessor from being self-supporting, and dooms
him to be a perpetual burden on his more efficient
compatriots.

Our modern sense of responsibility and compassion
requires that even such a one should be succoured.
Nevertheless, it should be made impossible, in clear
cases, for those in whom tuberculosis is but a symptom
of complete degeneracy, to reproduce their infirmities.
Society, which decides to prolong the sufferer's life,
must at least protect itself against the imminent danger
that that life produces if allowed to perpetuate itself

38 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

in defective offspring ; or, to put it in another form, we
have no right, for the sake of relieving our own present
feelings, to make it possible for one man to do such
an infinity of harm and sow the seeds of so much
unnecessary suffering in the future.

Among the factors in the process of natural selection
in civilized nations must be put the pressure of eco-
nomic causes. Statistics show that in old days in
England the number of marriages decreased in years
of bad harvests, which used to affect the general
economic condition of the whole nation much more
than they do now when the industrial population is
chiefly fed on foreign food. The decrease in the
marriage-rate would affect first the least efficient, and
the prudential motive would therefore have a selective
value in the right direction. As long as the relative
incomes of different families in the same social class is
roughly proportional to their industrial efficiency, and
as long as people marry and have children as they can
afford to do so, the prudential motive tends in selection
to breed a more efficient race. But, as we shall see
later, the modern habit of restricting the birth-rate
modifies profoundly this conclusion ; moreover, the
recent growth of taxation on the more efficient in
order to support in increased comfort the inefficient,
and to provide free education and maintenance for their
offspring, gives an artificial selective action to modern
economic pressure which tends to reproduce the least
efficient strains at the expense of the more efficient.
To these points we shall return later.

Thus it will be seen that some of the most effective

NATURAL SELECTION 39

selective agencies which have been at work among
civilized mankind are being weakened in their action
by that very improvement in the environment for
which the past century has been noted. The criminal
is no longer hanged out of hand, to perish with his
abnormal physical condition and with his hereditary
criminal propensities. The unsuccessful are relieved
and the hungry children of unemployed or inefficient
work-people are fed. Disease is slackening its hold
on our more sanitary towns, and the death-rate is
falling in all ranks of life, and especially in those classes
where once it was highest. But all these agencies,
brutal though they appear to be to us, had selective
value, and tended to fit the race more nearly to its
environment.

Mr Arthur Balfour has forcibly pointed out the
resulting antithesis between the theory of selection,
and those humanitarian feelings on which the past fifty
years in particular have specially plumed themselves.
Ought we then to stop all efforts at hygienic im-
provement in the interests of the future of the race ?
Assuredly not ; though more knowledge and discrimi-
nation would be desirable. A little further analysis
shows that the difficulty is more apparent than real.
While it is true that disease tends to cut off those with
weakly general constitutions who are not satisfactory
parents for the next generation, it is no less true that
it weakens also those of sound constitution whom it
attacks. In this way it may do much harm indirectly,
even though its evil effects, being acquired, are not
directly hereditary. Moreover, part of its selective
effect is exercised against those who, quite sound

40 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

otherwise, have, as their one weakness, a special pre-
disposition to that particular disease. Now, useful as
immunity from a microbic disease may be in our
present imperfect world, it is not the highest ideal for
mankind. If we can banish the infection, the heavy
cost in life at which nature is protecting the race
against that particular malady may be unnecessary.
The energy thus saved may more usefully be expended
otherwise in other selective processes, and our race
may advance in ability, strength or beauty, instead of
in immunity to tuberculosis or measles. Doubtless,
some suffer from those complaints as a sign of a
general unsoundness ; but many who succumb may
possess valuable properties in other directions — pro-
perties which the world can ill afford to lose. As our
knowledge grows we may discover how to separate the
good qualities from the bad ones, to winnow the chaff
from the wheat without losing both. The believer in
selection may help forward efforts for the amelioration
of the lot of mankind with a clear conscience, provided
that it is fully realized that such efforts lessen the
pressure of natural selection, and make necessary an
artificial selection to take its place. We have been
given a growing knowledge of heredity at the same
time as an increased skill in improving the environment.
There is therefore no excuse for falling into the new
dangers blindfold ; and to act on one aspect of the
knowledge while ignoring the other is as culpable as it
is unwise. Any training for social service such as is
now becoming frequent is of little or no use unless
the principles of heredity are taught and taken into
account.

NATURAL SELECTION 4i

Finally, we must never forget that the process of
natural selection is a process of fitting the race to its
environment. Evolution does not necessarily imply
advance in qualities noble in themselves. The char-
acters which tend to survive in the struggle for life
are the characters which are of use to their possessors
in the existing circumstances. Change the conditions,
and other characters may become of dominant selective
value, and gradually permeate the race. This is the
most important principle to be borne in mind when,
by legislation or alteration in social customs, we are
modifying the environment. We must always re-
member that, besides the immediate and more obvious
effects of the changes we are introducing with the object
of benefiting an existing section of the population, any
adjustment in the environment will necessarily react on
the racial changes produced by natural selection. It will
affect in some way the relative rates at which different
sections of our people reproduce themselves and the
chances of the survival of their offspring, and thus
will modify slowly but surely the average character of
the nation. To take only one instance, if, by mis-
directed charity or unwise relaxation in the poor law,
we make life too easy for the wastrel, the loafer or the
unemployable, and at the same time do nothing to
check his superabundant fertility, we may be sure that
the qualities for which he is conspicuous will multiply
rapidly in our midst. It will pay to be lazy, incom-
petent and unemployed. If, at the same time, we
increase the burdens of taxation and administration on
hard-working and industrious families near the margin
of means natural to their class, whatever it be, we are

42 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

adjusting the environment unfavourably as regards
industry, efficiency and hard work, and those qualities
will be relatively less useful to their possessors. They
will lose some or most of their selective value, and they
will tend to be bred out of the race.

The great danger of democracy is that, more even
than other forms of government, it may consider re-
forms too exclusively from the point of view of the
immediate comfort of the individual, and may ignore
their slow but irrevocable effect on the inborn character
of future generations. All the more necessary is it
that those who venture to assume the heavy responsi-
bility of attempting to legislate for a democracy should
understand the nature of the fundamental problems of
race on which the future welfare of the nation depends.
In the office of the Registrar-General, we have the
foundation of an institution which should become
gradually a depository of sociological knowledge, which
would be at the disposal of the statesman who was
willing to consider the ultimate racial good of the
nation when framing legislation or drafting administra-
tive orders.

CHAPTER IV

THE BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION

No chapter in the history of the religious experiences
of mankind, when that book comes to be written, will
be of greater importance than the one which deals with
their biological significance and endeavours to assess the
true selective value of the religious systems that have
held sway in the imaginations of the human race.

However, the work is not yet written, nor is the
material for it collected in any accessible form. But
since the subject cannot be left out of our present
survey, we are compelled to make some sort of effort
— necessarily most halting and imperfect — to indicate
the class of results that might be forthcoming from
such an inquiry.

The essence of religion seems to be a recognition of
the mystery that surrounds man's relationship to the
Universe, an acceptance of the impossibility of obtain-
ing a satisfactory explanation on any materialistic basis.
The instinct of awe, which such an attitude involves,
is the natural outcome of a sentient being surrounded
by the forces of Nature, and so the religion of the
homestead and the forest has always been of a simpler,
stronger, more enduring character than any ritual of

43

44 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

the city state. No building, however majestical, no
music, however soul-stirring, no ceremonial, however
elaborate, although serving a similar purpose, has im-
pressed the human mind with a sense of its subordina-
tion as do the rivers and mountains, the waterspouts
and thunderbolts that surround the earlier populations.
It seems part of the inevitable order that religions
should be conceived and born in solitary places, and
should droop and decay in crowded thoroughfares,
where Nature is hard to seek and far to find, and a
paternal government too often takes the responsibility
for the relations between man and man and man and
Nature out of the hands, often out of the cognizance,
of the individual wayfarer.

Let us accept as our definition of religion " the effec-
tive desire to be in right relation to the Power manifest-
ing itself in the Universe," and regard it from one side
as an attempt to determine the true place on this earth
of man the individual, and man the species. We find
that in all stages of social evolution the interests of the
individual tend to clash with those of the species. For
the race it is necessary that selection should be rigorous
and effective. Many must be called into life that few
may be chosen as the parents of the next generation.
For the individual, a stringent natural selection may
mean disappointment, privation or death.

Hence conies the need of a supernatural sanction for
unselfish conduct of no immediate advantage to the
individual. No merely rational system of ethics has
yet been found sufficient to influence the mass of man-
kind ; it is doubtful whether such a system ever will be
sufficient even when all men realize the racial import-

BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 45

ance of conditions which bear hardly on themselves.
It needs the tremendous force of supernatural sanction,
it needs the sharp antithesis between fleeting temporal
advantage and eternal spiritual gain, to bring the indi-
vidual to acquiesce in conditions which his reason tells
him are opposed to his interests on this earth.

Anthropology shows us how in primitive peoples
religious sanctions are invoked to enforce obedience to
all the complicated laws and customs of savage life —
laws and customs, often grotesque in themselves, yet,
taken as a whole, necessary for social survival in the
existing conditions of savage life. Down through the
ages we see the promise of some ultimate religious
reward or punishment invoked to send the warrior
inspirited to battle, to bind the members of a tribe or
nation into an effective whole, and to hold together the
units of a family, while, at all events, the young need
parental support for their proper development. Races
which know how to use these means of strength have
inevitably supplanted those without them ; thus the
religious instinct, in helping those in whom it is her-
editary, itself spreads through mankind.

There are various ways in which this influence makes
itself felt. In certain civilizations, we have the frame
of mind, or possibly the intuitive scientific insight, that
seeks to sustain the family by the doctrine of the re-
incarnation of spirits or by emphasizing the continuity
of ties with the departed ancestors, whose spirits will
become angry or perish of neglect, should their stock
fail. They believe that the departed will be keenly
conscious of and will be able to assist in the efforts of
their posterity. In the late Russian-Japanese war, one

46 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

read how the Japanese attributed their successes to the
" spirits of their ancestors " and " the merits of their
Emperor," the latter as an incarnation of the present
racial aspirations.

Alone among the ancient religions, that of the Jews
has survived in the Western world to the present time.
Apart, therefore, from other considerations of its great
interest and importance to us, we are led to inquire
into the probable reasons of its remarkable persistence
and vitality.

Now the Jews laid great stress on the continuity of
the family. They gave the family a national and patri-
otic aspect. Moreover, there was always the hope for
the Hebrew parent to become the progenitor of the
promised child, the Messiah. The tendency to look
back to a common ancestry in the great legendary fore-
fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was accompanied
by the effort to look forward and consider the interests
of their children's children to the third and fourth
generations. They set aside one tribe to supply the
priesthood, they classified their men as keepers of flocks
or tillers of the soil. Even when they became town-
dwellers, such solemnities as the feast of tabernacles
recalled their pastoral origin and emphasized the depend-
ence of the city on the country, of man on Nature.
They disliked the alien populations with whom they
were surrounded and discouraged association and inter-
marriage with them. In the light of modern science
there is reason to believe that this restriction embodies
a very sound biological principle. In such points as
these, the Jews appear to have had a very strong racial
instinct, a profound sense of the importance of heredity.

BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 47

It has been said that " an unmixed race of a first-rate
organization are the aristocracy of Nature." Such a
line of development has been attributed to the Jews
through the " segregating genius of their great Law-
giver," and the code attributed to him, embodying the
national experience, seems to enshrine many profound
biological truths.

The Hebrew nation were keenly conscious of an
Eternal purpose working amid them, and they also
realized the transient nature of each fleeting genera-
tion. Apparently without any definite belief in the
immortality of the individual soul, they could look
forward to and work for a national ideal which should
be accomplished long after they themselves had been
gathered to their forefathers. As befits dwellers in
open spaces, they were originally a highly imaginative
people, free from the necessity of embodying their
religious conceptions in concrete form, a process which
at once renders them liable to arrested growth and to
petrifaction. There is probably some intimate connec-
tion between a camping pastoral life and a monotheistic
form of religion, such as we find among the Jews and
the Arabs ; it is clear that idols and fixed shrines would
be singularly inconvenient things for a people who are
engaged in a wandering tribal existence.

Even after the Jews became town-dwellers, their
isolation from and inherited sense of antagonism to
the surrounding peoples must have had a most
beneficial effect in preserving the racial atmosphere
and causing them to hand on unimpaired the national
traditions.

Their history shows the survival value of a religion

48 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

which preserves in a series of ordinances the best results
of racial experiences on matters of health and morality,
and can endow them with the force of superhuman
counsel. No one who is acquainted with Eastern life
can read the passages dealing with the social organisa-
tion of the Israelites without being struck by the sanity
of outlook, the minute attention to detail, the empirical
knowledge of obscure facts, and above all, the insight
into character — certainly into Jewish character — shown
by the successive legislators who codified the customary
observances of the nation.

A modern lawgiver too often rests content if his
enactments are sound and plausible in themselves and
have a super ficial air of justice and beneficence. It
would be fortunate for the nation he serves if he would
take a lesson from his illustrious predecessors, study
first the customs and characters of the persons for
whom he is legislating, and note the after effect of his
ordinances on the composition and destinies of the
people before he sits down and writes that all is well.

There is another point in connection with the Jewish
nation that at once strikes an outside observer. In
their sacred books as in their national tradition, there
is no reference to education apart from the implanting
in successive generations of a sound knowledge of
religious ideals and racial experiences. To the Jews as
to the mediaeval churchman, that alone was education.
The technical training, be it in craftsmanship or in the
literary arts, that merely enables a man to earn a living
and exercise a trade, they were ready to receive from
any race with whom they came in contact. It was
not education in the sense that it would directly help

BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 49

forward a man in his desire to understand and enter
upon " right relations to the Power manifesting itself in
the Universe." It is not education in the sense that it
will assist a race in the formation of ideals and incline
its members either to understand, or to obey without
understanding, those customs and restrictions which
are necessary for the wellbeing of the community to
which they belong.

Cosmopolitan and most receptive in matters per-
taining to training, the persistence of the unity of their
religion and education is one of the striking features
in the history of the Jewish people. No system less
organically sound from the biological point of view
could have made it possible for a nation, insignificant
in numbers, bereft of a fixed habitation, to survive so
many of its oppressors. Truly there is always a future
for a nation that can adjust itself to the eternal purpose
which governs the Universe.

Even the harshness of treatment so often meted out
to the Jews, by ensuring the survival of the hardiest and
most tenacious only, increased in the long run their
chances of continued corporate existence. It will be
very curious if the Jewish nation ceases to maintain its
individuality in the face of an equality of treatment,
such as it now receives in many countries — killed, in fact,
by kindness — when centuries of oppression have failed
to destroy it.

It is more difficult to analyse the causes of the failure
of the Greek and Roman religions than to justify the
success of that of the Jews, from whom we learn that
a people need not survive politically in order to obtain

4

50 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

a great influence in the future. Indeed the persistence
of Greek philosophy, as distinct from their official
religion, is further evidence on this point.

Both in Greece and Rome, religion occupied a
prominent place. It was recognized to be a necessary
force to keep the State together, but the ceremonies of
the State religion and their connection with the life
and thought of the community were less convincingly
related than was the case with the Jews. There was
also far less appeal to personal experience and individual
need, two of the most permanent elements in a religious
system. The form of religion which depended largely
on an instinct for personification, had been created by
a people in contact with natural" phenomena ; it was
translated into a multitude of ceremonies which gradu-
ally lost their meaning, and indeed were inappropriate,
to a city population, who, in their later stages, developed
a strongly commercial bent.

If, as is now thought, in spite of apparent fusion,
there were profound differences of race and consequently
of traditional religion and morality among the in-
habitants of the cities of Greece and Rome and the
country districts surrounding them, it would account
for the absence of any one accepted code of customary
observance, such as was possessed by the Jews. Hence
neither the current religion nor the prevalent system
of morals carried sufficient conviction to preserve the
nations through the time of their wealth and prosperity.

A fusion of races and religions, such as occurred
during the extension of the Greek and Roman empires,
leads, not to the strengthening, but to the actual
destruction of the qualities that are most characteristic

BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 51

of each of them. Later on, we shall point out that
the intermingling of races is often a dangerous experi-
ment involving biological effects which may ultimately
destroy the community. The solvent effect on morals
and religion of the contact of Western and Eastern
civilizations in Egypt, India and Japan forms an
interesting study in connection with this part of our
subject.

Perhaps it would not be out of place to recall that
many of the holy places of the Hellenic and Latin
peoples, such as Delphi, Olympia, Nemi and countless
others, long remained dissociated from the great centres
of population. As a consequence we may surmise that
pilgrimages for religious purposes to places associated
with scenes of great natural beauty and wonder (as,
for instance, nowadays to Lourdes, to Braga, or to
St Winifred Holywell) have a psychological effect not
unlike that which we try to obtain by our system
of country holidays. Unfortunately the opportunity
of developing the educational aspect for purposes of
natural religion, is not consciously borne in mind and
made use of either by the promoters or by the
recipients.

We cannot yet make any just estimate of the
influence of Christianity from the biological point of
view. It is scarcely possible to separate the essential
features of the religion from the excrescences with which
the various nations and sects have associated it, in
deference to their own needs and in conformity with
their previous traditions. Owing to the spread of
Christianity throughout neighbouring and antagonistic

52 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

nations, it has been difficult for it to become associated
with any strong racial instinct. It has certainly acted
frequently as a solvent force on conflicting ideals, but
how far it has been successful in replacing what it has
destroyed by a permanent and acceptable system of its
own in many cases remains yet to be seen. Its very
aspiration after universality has prevented the formula-
tion of a code dealing with the minutiae of custom and
morality, which, if biologically sound, would un-
doubtedly possess great survival value. But a socio-
logical system suited to one race or climate cannot
effectively be applied to different circumstances. To
take an instance : where Christianity has laid down the
law on social observances, its insistence on monogamy
is a definite stumbling-block to its spread among
many communities whose social organisation requires
a polygamous basis.

It is probable that Christianity suffered much in its
second stages from the fact that it developed and
crystallized out among towns of hybrid population,
where its dogmas were subject to the influence of pre-
existing sects and were laid down in accordance with views
prevalent in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean.
Thus it became associated with statements which were
in no way inherent to it, and have always prevented the
easy absorption of new knowledge. Time after time, a
mass of experience and sound learning has accumulated
outside the officially received body of orthodox tradi-
tion, and the ensuing uneasy process of digestion has
resulted in a series of breaches, which have sapped
the strength both of the defence and the attack.
Thus we see the great difficulties that lie before a

BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 53

religion which aspires to command universal acceptance
or infallible knowledge.

It is largely on account of these difficulties and of
the ill-feeling and want of comprehension engendered
by them, that, in Christian countries, we have to watch
a growing tendency to separate training as part of the
process of upbringing from religious education, which
is the true agent formative of character likely to have
some biological significance. One has only to note the
contents of the halfpenny papers and penny novelettes
devoured as their principal intellectual food, by the
majority of the population, to see how far a knowledge
of reading may lead a man from that communion with
the great minds of all times, the possibility of which
was the original justification for a literary training.

Unless the upbringing of each generation be
associated actively in some effective way with the pre-
valent religion and morality, it is difficult to see how
either can have any real biological significance or true
selective value. As we said before, at all stages of
social evolution, the interests of the individual tend
to clash with those of the race ; and it is only a
supernatural sanction for unselfish conduct, such as will
not be obtained in any technical institute, that has been
found strong enough to influence the mass of mankind
against the pursuit of mere temporal advantage.

That the Christian religion in some of its mani-
festations has a definite survival value, we see from the
maintenance of the birth-rate among the devout Roman
Catholic peasantry of Brittany and the industrial Irish
Catholic populations of our large towns. The fact too
that the birth-rate has fallen less among the Protestant

54 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

clergy than among the laity by whom they are sur-
rounded gives further evidence of the racial value of
a strong religious instinct. It is greatly to be desired
that the Protestant churches could find some effective
way of preaching the dignity and sanctity of national
ideals and of that family life and those domestic duties
which their ministers have done so much to uphold.

If we are right in believing that the religious instinct
is the only force strong enough to influence mankind,
consciously or unconsciously, to consider the race as
distinct from the individual, it is clear that the character
of the national religion, the correctness of the biological
principles its teaching embodies, the devotion, fidelity
and number of its adherents, will be the real criterion
of success or failure. The wave of materialism and
unbelief which is said to spread over a nation at the
time of its greatest prosperity, usually first affecting
the families of the abler and more intelligent classes,
and finding one form of expression in a diminished
birth-rate, is at once a symptom and a cause of its sub-
sequent decay. The intellectual qualities, the powers
of initiative and organization, which enable a people
to succeed, are segregated out under forms of religious
belief and social organization which, disguise it as we
may, encourage and acquiesce in the survival of the
most efficient and energetic, allotting them the oppor-
tunities belonging to their superior racial value.

But a period seems to come in the religious develop-
ment of nearly every civilized community when the
moral conscience is awakened to its responsibility for
the weaker and less competent stocks, who, inheritors
of the racial faults and failings, are true scapegoats by

BIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 55

which the progress of the race is assured to others. If,
however, the effect of this altruistic movement in
directing the attention of society to the condition of
the unsuccessful and unhealthy be to discourage and
hamper the families of the able and robust, no further
racial progress is possible, and degeneration will set in.
The duty of self-elimination is not a doctrine that can
be preached indifferently to all sections of a community.
There arises at times a certain type of religion con-
sciously aspiring to influence and direct social effort
towards the alleviation of social inequalities rather than
ministering to each individual according to his needs.
If such a religion has no mission of encouragement for
the successful members of the community in all classes,
and fixes its attention exclusively on the failures of
humanity, devoting its strength to mitigating their lot
so as to increase the probability of their racial survival,
it is necessarily a source of weakness to the people
who have adopted it. Moreover, it can never hope
to maintain its hold on the able classes in whom the
intellectual and administrative capacity of the nation
is chiefly to be found, and by whom the nation is
principally maintained and directed. Not only is its
teaching clearly unsuited to their requirements, but
its method of procedure is directly at variance with
the continued successful existence of the people which
permits the propaganda. Thus the wave of antagonism
to this particular type of religious endeavour may
be a sound biological reaction against an insidious
form of threatened annihilation. At any rate the
possibility of a connection between the two is worth
investigating.

56 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

It is certain that very much might be learned from
a careful study of religious tendencies and social condi-
tions at various epochs in the history of past nations.
The cause of the prevalence of different types of
religious thought among different strata of the popula-
tion, the reason of the persistence of one type rather
than another, the relation between religious aspirations
and economic conditions, the connection between want
of belief and lack of appropriate teaching, all these
points of view are deeply interesting, and have not yet
been considered among the influences which are shaping
society. We have only been able to indicate in a
disjointed manner the direction in which enlightenment
may be sought.

CHAPTER V

THE BIRTH-RATE

IT is now clear that we must regard a nation or race
subject to natural selection not as fixed and unchange-
able in its hereditary qualities, but as subject to continual
modification and adjustment. Its innate qualities are
constantly altering and tending to fit themselves to the
existing environment. It is constantly in a state of
flux. By changes in the environment, we alter the
goal at which natural selection is aiming, and thus
alter the direction in which it moves.

But, broadly, certain qualities will, in any probable
contingencies, always possess selective value, and tend
to spread in the race. Strength of general constitution
will tend to survival in almost all circumstances.
Ability of mind must, one dare say, almost always be
an advantage. It would be a poor-spirited race in
which beauty of person and mind did not exercise a
strong attraction in the choice of mates. As long as
natural selection works unhampered, these qualities
will tend to come to the front.

But all this assumes as a universal postulate that
natural selection has full play ; that each section of the
people reproduce themselves at a rate natural in their

57

58 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

circumstances. If this underlying assumption be not
justified, if an artificial selection be introduced by a
voluntary restriction of the birth-rate, and if this cause
affect some sections of the race more than others, and
not in proportion to the results of natural selection,
our whole outlook is modified, and further consideration
is necessary. A study of the birth-rate, then, is of
fundamental importance in our inquiry, and must
precede any further treatment of the subject.

Therefore it will be necessary once more to review
in short abstract some results and reflexions which are
set out in greater fulness in our book on The Family
and the Nation.

If one element of the people reproduce itself faster
than the rest, it will dominate the average character
of the nation at an ever-increasing rate. A little
calculation will make this plain. We shall see later
that certain classes of the people now produce an
average of only three children to the fertile marriage.
In order that a population should maintain its numbers
unaltered it is necessary that four children should be
born to couples that have children at all. On the
average of large numbers, two of the four will die
early or have no offspring themselves, and the other
two are left to replace the parents. Thus a nation,
or section of a nation, that only produces three children
to the fertile marriage has a birth-rate only three-
quarters of that necessary to maintain its numbers
unchanged. If the death-rate be taken at 15 in 1000
per annum, the birth-rate will be f x 1 5, or about 1 1 ;
that is, about 4 less than the 15 needed to replace
the dead. At the end of a year the 1000 will have

THE BIRTH-RATE 59

become 996, while at the end of a century 687, and
in two centuries 472, of their descendants will alone
be left.

The birth-rate of other sections of our people is
still about 33, or 13 more than their higher death-rate
of about 20. In a year each 1000 will become 1013,
in a century, 3600, and in two centuries, about 13,000.

The less prolific stock, if originally equal in number
to the other, would be but one in six at the end of a
hundred years, and in two hundred years it would be
but one in thirty of the population. It would be lost
in the descendants of the stocks of predominant fertility.
Hence the importance of encouraging early marriages
and large families in those sections of the people where
the hereditary qualities are good. Early marriages
tell in two ways. When the birth-rate is unrestricted,
they mean large families ; and they shorten the interval
between two generations, and thus lead once again to
a more rapid growth of population.

Till about the year 1875 no artificial selection seems
to have arisen. Heron has shown that in 1851 the
rather higher age of marriage in the well-to-do parts
of London as compared with the poorer parts was
enough to explain the rather lower birth-rate. All
sections of the community were reproducing themselves
very nearly at their natural rates, save for the small
disturbing factor due to the rather higher average age
at marriage in the more wealthy classes. But since
1875 a serious change has arisen.

In 1876 the average birth-rate in Great Britain was
some 36 per thousand of the population. From that
time it has steadily diminished, and in 1910 sank to

60 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

25 per thousand. Clearly some new cause is here
at work.

When we examine the question in detail, and investi-
gate the decline in the birth-rate, not in the nation as
a whole, but in selected classes, we arrive at even
more striking results.

Mr Sidney Webb has dealt with the returns of
certain of the Friendly Societies which provide " lying-
in" benefits. In the "Hearts of Oak" Society, the
claims to this benefit rose from 2176 in the year 1866
to 2472 in 1880 per 10,000 members. In the year
1904 they had fallen to 1165 per 10,000 — a drop to
less than half the number of claims made twenty-four
years previously. This is a fall three times as great
as the fall for the whole of England and Wales for
the same period. A smaller Friendly Society gave
a decline of 56 per cent, in the same time. Now the
members of these Friendly Societies are a specially
selected class. They are in receipt of good wages,
and their membership of such a Society shows them
to be thrifty and far-seeing. They are for the most
part of the skilled artisan type and, to some extent,
constitute an aristocracy of labour. The loss to the
State of some thirty-eight thousand additional children,
which would have been born to the members of these
two Friendly Societies alone had their old rate of re-
production continued, cannot but be regarded as a
serious matter. The hereditary qualities of these child-
ren might be expected to be good, and there was
every prospect of their becoming useful citizens.

Another section of the community may be studied
in the pages of Who's Who, an annual publication

THE BIRTH-RATE 61

which gives an account of everyone in the country
who has attained a certain modest position of promi-
nence. It may be taken as typical chiefly of the higher
ranks of the professional and official classes. Among
the details furnished the date of marriage and the
number of children frequently occur. Thus it is
possible to investigate the number of children born
on the average to marriages which produce children
at all at different periods.

Excluding for the moment clerical and military
families, it was found for the remainder that 143 fertile
marriages solemnized before 1870 gave a total of 743
children, an average of 5*2 to each marriage. For
marriages entered on after 1870, the number was 1264
children to 410 couples, an average of 3*08. Since
some of the marriages before 1870 were affected by
the causes which came into operation about 1875,
these numbers probably or certainly underestimate
the difference in the average number of children. It
should be noted too that the numbers refer to children
alive at the date of entry, not to the total number of
children born.

In the families of the clergy, we find that the corre-
sponding average numbers are 4*99 and 4*2. Thus
clerical families are less affected than others of their
own social class.

On the other hand, the corresponding numbers for
the children of those who have served in the regular
army are 4*98 for the first period, and 2-07 for the
second. While the average number of children in
military families forty years ago was the same as the
number in clerical, it has now sunk to less than half,

62 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

and there are signs of further decline. The prospect
is not bright for an empire that depends so largely on
military ability. The classes who have hitherto lived
in the security and plenty won by the blood of those
who have earned little gratitude in return, may even
have to learn to fight themselves, if they wish their
prosperity to continue. Whether they will show the
necessary hereditary qualities of courage, self-sacrifice
and military ability, remains to be seen.

A more complete study may be made of the stable
landed class, to whose great services England has owed
and still owes so much in unpaid and unselfish work for
national and local administration. Taking any book of
reference such as Burke s Peerage, and considering only
those families which have held a hereditary title for at
least three generations, we exclude the more modern
middle-class commercial element in the present peerage,
and get more homogeneous material. Marriages which
took place during the ten years ending in 1840 gave
an average of yi births to each fertile couple. For the
next ten years the average sank to 6*1, at which figure
it remained constant till after 1860. From 1871 to
1880 the average was 4*36, while from 1881 to 1890
the corresponding number was 3*13. Here again we
find a drop in the birth-rate of more than one-half in
the last forty years. These numbers are all higher
than those obtained from Whos Who, partly or wholly
from the fact that nearly all births are recorded, instead
of only those of children alive at the time of entry.
But while the absolute numbers are higher, the relative
decline is about the same.

In the course of the investigation, it became clear

THE BIRTH-RATE 63

that Roman Catholic families were less affected by this
decline than others. A special inquiry showed that
30 marriages recorded in Whos Who and the Landed
Gentry^ between families known to be of the Roman
Catholic faith, gave an average of 6' 6 children to
a marriage even in the period from 1871 to 1890.
The significance of this result lies in the fact that the
Roman Church is known to discountenance any artificial
restriction in the number of children in a family.
Together with the similar result for the children of the
Protestant clergy, it shows that the decline in the birth-
rate is not due to any lessened natural fertility, but is
due to voluntary restriction. At all periods small
families and childless couples occur from natural causes.
It is the abnormal number of both which constitutes
the new and sinister fact, and shows that a voluntary
restriction of the birth-rate is going on.

We have now passed in review several representative
samples of what may be described as the successful
classes in all ranks of life. The thrifty skilled artisan,
the prominent professional man, the landowner of
good family, have all halved their output of children
in the course of the last forty years. The few excep-
tions to the rule serve but to emphasize the lesson to
be drawn, that the decline is voluntary ; that the
stocks we have passed in review are not increasing, or
are even diminishing, in number because they do not
wish to have the normal number of children, and know
how to prevent it.

We must now turn to the other side of the picture.
The decline we have traced in the successful classes is

64 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

much greater than that which has affected the popula-
tion as a whole. We may conclude at once that certain
other classes are still reproducing themselves, if not at
their old rate, at a rate which has declined less. Since
we have taken samples from all ranks of the foremost
sections of the people, it will be probable that the
natural rate of reproduction is more nearly maintained
by the less successful strains in the population. We
must not necessarily pass to the conclusion that all
these other classes are of little comparative value.
We require men of every sort of physical and mental
ability to make up a nation, and no class of persons
who are contributing to the general welfare can be put
on one side as of little importance. Further con-
sideration is necessary.

In examining the birth-rates for different parts of
the country, we are met at once by the fact that the
figures remain high in mining districts, and are speci-
ally low where the employment of women in factories
is common. As a rule miners are a sturdy race of
men, earning high wages, and contributing at least
their full share to the wealth of the country. The
controlling factor here seems to be the fact that women
are not employed in mines, and there is no occupation
for them outside the homes. Thus the economic
motive is less adverse to many children than it is in
those factory districts where a considerable part of the
family earnings is contributed by the women.

But, when we pass on and examine other sources of
population, we find less reassuring results. On the
whole, the casual labourer is probably a less efficient
man than the skilled artisan, and his higher relative

THE BIRTH-RATE 65

birth-rate is not altogether satisfactory. But there is
undoubtedly much fine material among casual labourers,
and a better organization of the labour market may de-
casualize their labour, enabling them to acquire a more
assured social status, and with it an increased economic
and social value. The worst signs of the results of the
selective birth-rate are to be seen elsewhere.

We have already said that the feeble-minded are
prolific. This fact is well shown by some figures
given by Dr Tredgold, who pointed out that, while
the average number of children in the families that
use the ordinary elementary schools is about four,
the average number in those families which have one
member at least in the special schools for the mentally
defective is 7*3. Other evidence pointing in the same
direction might be adduced, and it is certain that, in
present conditions, the mentally defective families are
reproducing themselves relatively faster than sounder
stocks.

The general opinion, and even the views of econo-
mists, on the subject of population and the means
of subsistence have varied greatly from time to time.
In the stress of a great war, the cry is for more men ;
and, during the Seven Years' War in particular, the
small population of Britain as compared with that of
France was recognized as a danger. Pitt, whose genius
and courage saved England, wished ardently for more
people, and reckoned rightly as a benefactor to his
country the man who brought up well a large family.
But in 1798 Malthus, misled by a partial knowledge
of the economic problem, proclaimed that human

5

66 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

population always tended to outrun its means of sub-
sistence, and could only be kept in check by famine,
pestilence or war. Now, while it is true, as Malthus
thought, that the produce of the earth, as won by
savage man, increases slowly, the produce of civilized
industry may grow much faster — faster indeed than
the increase in the number of men. In modern
industry a comparatively dense population is more
efficient than one more scattered. There is less waste
in communication, transport and the distribution of
power. More improvements in industry are made,
owing to the closer contact of mind with mind. Hence
with two populations of the same quality, a dense
one is more efficient than a more scattered one, and
the means of subsistence grow faster, sometimes
much faster, than the population. The population of
England has increased largely in the last century,
but the growth in wealth has much more than kept
pace with it. By natural energy and ability, English-
men have been able to develop the resources of the
country, and so to organize industry that, besides
supporting a much larger population, they have in-
vested an enormous and constantly growing capital
at home and abroad.

The real heart of the problem lies in the quality
of the population. Were the whole population of
England suddenly to become feeble-minded, or even
were there a distinct drop in the average intelligence,
the nation would cease to use effectively the present
organization of industry, and would be unable to
improve it to keep pace with " the times." The
population would then be too great for the means of

THE BIRTH-RATE 67

subsistence, and would quickly be reduced, at the cost
of fearful suffering, to the number which could live on
the wreck of our civilization. If, on the other hand,
the average strength and ability of the nation increased,
the wealth of the country would grow far faster than
the population, and, if properly distributed, would
lighten the lot of all.

We are coming to understand that an able man
creates wealth and supports others by making work
for them. The essence of the matter was well put
by William Farr, in the Census Report of 1851, though
his views failed to obtain recognition :

"The character of every race of men is the real
limit to its numbers in the world, if allowance be
made for accidents of position and time.

"Population is often out of place where it is
wanted, or could be most productive ; but the popula-
tion of the world is not, as Malthus assumes, re-
dundant ; and not only is there a paucity of men
of transcendent genius in all countries, but few persons
who have occasion to undertake, or who accomplish,
great industrial, political, warlike, or other operations,
ever find that the men of skill, industry, and entire
trustworthiness — of whom they can dispose, either
in the highest or the lowest departments — are super-
abundant. Every master knows that good men — and
every man that good masters — are scarce.

"The idle who will not work, the unskilful who
cannot work, and the criminal classes who cannot
be trusted, are, however, it may be admitted, whether
numerous or few, always redundant."

The years that have passed since these words were

68 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

written have served but to emphasize their wisdom.
It is the quality of the population that matters. A
hardy, efficient and energetic race will live and create
surplus wealth in conditions where a less effective race
would starve. A weak, ineffective and indolent people
will make nothing of the most lavish natural resources.

It seems clear that a selective birth-rate is one of the
most powerful agencies that can exist for modifying the
character of a race. But until recently the possibility
of variation had not occurred even to students of social
development, and without thought it was assumed by
historians, politicians and sociologists that whatever else
changed, the inward constitution of a people remained
unaltered throughout the centuries, so that the explana-
tion of any rise or fall in achievement had been sought
in external causes. In the light of modern knowledge,
the one assured fact is the constant variation in the
composition of a nation, and it is by a study of the
birth-rates of the component parts that we get some
clue to the progress of the internal movements. In
matters affecting population, as with the weather, it
should be possible for the Registrar-General to issue
some sort of reasoned forecast, even to hoist a storm-
warning. The quality and number of the births taking
place in one year will not produce the full effect for
another twenty or thirty, just as variations in baro-
metric pressure take twenty or thirty hours to bring
about the conditions they foretell. There is therefore
plenty of time to study the gathering of the clouds
and to prepare, if necessary, for the coming of the
whirlwind.

THE BIRTH-RATE 69

What, it may be asked, do we mean by this idea of
race ? Why is it necessary to attach so much import-
ance to the effects of a selective birth-rate ?

It is essential to remember that, as an isolated indi-
vidual, man cannot fulfil his highest destiny. It is as
a portion of an organic whole, as the member of a
specific race, that he is able to express himself most
fully. All we can learn from the structure of society
shows us that the relative position of each individual
in regard to others is not arbitrary, but is probably
determined by some factor depending on the values
to be attached to character, power or intelligence. It
is therefore of supreme importance to each individual
that the composition of the people among whom his
lot is cast should be ascending in the scale of values,
lest he find himself bound up in a society of which
the weight will surely drag him down. No man lives
to himself alone ; and it is this fact that justifies a
nation in taking thought how to surround those who
will shortly be called upon to express its aspirations
and embody its traditions with the best possible con-
ditions as regards companionship in the future.

A great deal has been written on the subject of race.
A book recently translated from the German into
English, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century^ has
put a conception into the arena of thought, with which
the sociologist will have to take account. The great
things of the world are accomplished by individuals
who have a strong personality, and by races which
have a strong race-personality. Within a nation itself,
the best work is done by groups or sections of the
people that are easily recognized and have strongly

70 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

marked characteristics. We have shown reason to
believe that this differentiation of type into so-called
classes, which is found in all successful national evolu-
tion, is essential to the maintenance of progress. There
is a personality of race, of type and of individual,
separate from but interdependent on each other, and
taken together constituting a foremost factor in racial
evolution.

But, when we come to consider the birth-rate as at
present affecting our social structure, we find that it
is highest in those sections of the community which,
like the feeble-minded and insane, are devoid of indi-
vidual personality, or, like many of the unemployed
and casual labourers, seem to be either without ideals
or without any method of expressing them. In all
the social groups which have hitherto been distinguished
for coherence, for industry, for good mental and
physical capacity, for power of organization and ad-
ministration, the birth-rate has fallen below the figures
necessary to maintain the national store of these
qualities. Great men are scarce ; the group personality
is becoming indistinct and the personality of the race,
by which success was attained in the past, is therefore
on the wane, while the forces of chaos are once more
being manufactured in our midst, ready to break loose
and destroy the civilization when the higher types are
no longer sufficient in numbers and effectiveness to
guide, control or subdue them.

It is a curious and suggestive coincidence, that while
certain of the great nations of the world are losing
their cohesion and individuality, and are deliberately
attempting to eliminate the distinctive barriers of

THE BIRTH-RATE 71

occupation, type and social status, there is nevertheless
a pronounced movement in the opposite direction.
The smaller nationalities are disentangling themselves,
and rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely, are en-
deavouring to recreate their own peculiar social
atmosphere. From Austria, eastwards and southwards,
a host of small countries are expressing their national
ambitions in different ways. Norway and Sweden have
agreed amicably to develop on divergent lines. Finland
and Poland show no desire to forget or forgive their
oppressed and submerged condition. Even Iceland
looks askance at her predominant partner, Denmark ;
while nearer at home we hear cries of " Wales for the
Welsh," and discover to our surprise and dismay that
the Irish nation is willing, even painfully, to recapture
its own discarded language, if by so doing it can
emphasize the distinctions of race and creed. On all
sides of us, those who have eyes to see can witness
the reconstruction of racial personality, and can specu-
late in which direction the process of evolution will
ultimately be the most successful.

CHAPTER VI

THE POSITION OF WOMEN A SURVEY

THE position of women is a very sure index of the
inward prosperity and outward organization of the
community to which they belong. To read the signs
aright would probably give a clearer insight into the
destinies of a nation than many years spent in the
study of blue-books and Foreign Office despatches. For
while the work of men is almost invariably directed to
the improvement or maintenance of the conditions of
present-day environment, the natural duties of woman
infallibly lead her to look into and provide for the
future of the nation. Many a man may hope to see
the result of his daily labours in the course of a few
months or of a few years : much of the best work done
by women in giving birth to and bringing up children
will not bear fruit until thirty, forty or fifty years have
elapsed, and the effects of a well-spent life may be
most striking many years after the owner thereof
has passed unmarked to her rest. It is possible for a
man to receive from his fellows a just recognition of
his efforts on their behalf. A woman's work can
rarely be appreciated fully during her lifetime. Social
conventions have unconsciously recognized this funda-

72

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 73

mental difference between the natural outlook of the
two sexes. Honours and distinctions are abundantly
provided by which services of varying value and
importance rendered by men can be recognized and
rewarded. There is little such provision for women ;
and, when we hear of their bestowal, the announcement
frequently rings false even in the ears of the unthink-
ing. Instinctively, every right-minded person knows
that the one essential service a woman renders to the
State can neither be judged accurately nor rewarded
adequately.

If we set ourselves to examine the causes which
influence the position of women in a society, we find
that they fall into two groups. The first may be
classified as a biological and numerical factor, and the
information to be gained from a study of the influences
involved is still very slight and obscure. Nor are we
on much surer ground in our second division, in which
we set out to determine the influence of occupation— of
the national or local industries — on the status of women.

Yet since the chief burden of maintaining a sound
hereditary stock of the national assets of good health,
good ability and good character falls on the women,
any study of heredity and society will fail infallibly of
its purpose unless it take account of the number and
character of the women employed at any time in this
most fundamental of all occupations, and note the
tendencies to diminish or to increase the quality and
quantity of the workers therein.

As regards the numerical factor — the actual pro-
portion of men and women born in the world — there

74 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

are at present two slight indications of the existence of
some biological adjusting factor in determining the
numerical proportions of the sexes in a community
where the birth-rate is not affected by artificial restric-
tion. In the first place, there is evidence to show that
the proportion of females born is somewhat increased
during years of plenty or among people and classes
who are habitually in possession of sufficient supplies
of food. In the second place, it appears that there is
a tendency for females to be born in the earlier years
of married life and for males to appear in the later
periods.

If we accept the probability of the existence of these
two factors, which are said to have been observed in a
more marked form in primitive communities, it follows
that a nation may look to have a somewhat larger
number of women than men in its upper and more
prosperous classes. Whether, as has been suggested,
this superfluity of women indicates the possibility of
the population overtaking the supplies by means of
some form of polygamy — such as is practised in simpler
forms of social organization — it is not pertinent to
inquire, since we are dealing with civilization of a
different type. The second tendency — for the female
births to precede the male births, — in these days of
limited families, will also work in a similar direction,
and again tend to upset the numerical balance between
the two sexes. Adding to these two indications the
fact that the elder children of a family are somewhat
more liable to inherit the racial weakness — a tendency
to crime, tubercular disease or feeble-mindedness —
than the younger children, we have indications that our

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 75

present ideals with regard to the position and duties of
women in particular and of the married state in general
are not wholly in accord with a sound and even
biological development of the race.

The mere fact of the existence of some biological
adjusting factor is of very great interest, since at once
we are compelled to consider how far modern social
conditions are opposing or are availing themselves of
what is probably some fundamental factor in the well-
being of a race. Thus, if it be proved that families
limited to two or three children are inevitably slightly
below the average quality to be expected from the
parents, and lead to a superfluity of females, and that
a superfluity of females produces an unstable and un-
satisfactory element in the national life, it is mere folly
to bewail the effect in the aggregate and to contribute
to the cause in particular. If an excess of women
means a greater opportunity of selecting those of the
ablest and most desirable type to be mothers of the
future generation, while those who inherit the racial
weaknesses find openings in other less exacting occupa-
tions, the numerical excess would give a great advantage
in offering opportunities for natural selection to work
upon, as far as the female element was concerned.
But, if the superfluity of women leads society to rely
increasingly on the services of the most competent to
perform duties and undertake responsibilities usually
allotted to men, and even to displace men in work they
are better fitted to undertake, and furthermore en-
courages the majority of women to be trained in a
method adverse to the prosecution of their natural
occupation, so that the less able alone are found will-

76 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

ing to carry on the race — an excess of women must be
regarded as a symptom of coming decadence.

The second factor we have alluded to in determin-
ing the status of women is also extremely difficult of
analysis. The influence of occupation on race, which
often resolves itself into a question of geographical
distribution, has not yet been investigated either by
our sociologists or our economists. To students of
anthropology alone, the subject is known to be of
great importance.

It is not easy to give examples in the space of a few
pages, which is all we can devote to the subject. Thus,
a seafaring life for men — either in voyages of discovery
or long absences connected with the fishing industry
— leaves the women entirely to themselves for long
periods. The management of the home and home-
stead falls inevitably into their hands — and the necessity
for qualities such as self-reliance and independence in
the occupation pursued by the men is equally great in
the case of the women. Whenever the local industry
brings about the absence of the men throughout long
periods, we may look to find the women in a position
of influence and responsibility. There too we notice
the frequent development of the finer feminine crafts,
such as lace-making and embroidery, which have
flourished among the women of Venice, Genoa,
Flanders, Devon and the Baltic. Our Norse and
Danish ancestors bequeathed to us a tradition of the
above type.

Quite other, for instance, are the conditions among a
settled mining population ; the perpetual presence of the

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 77

men in the homes does not leave the women scope for
independent action, while the brute force required in the
prosecution of the normal local occupation, the arduous
and exacting conditions of the employment, often cut-
ting off its followers from the influences of nature and
human society in their more delicate forms, are unsuited
to female labour, and do not lead to the development
of any by-products of human skill and ingenuity. No
one, even now, tries to start lace-making classes among
the wives and daughters of colliers. A mining district
or a congeries of foundries and smelting works usually
gives us a strong, somewhat turbulent population, a
high birth-rate — since there is nothing to occupy the
women outside the homes, — a high death-rate, and a
want of what — for lack of a better term — we may call
the refinement of manner and outlook, the natural in-
bred courtesy and philosophy, the deep religious instinct
that are so often associated with a sea-coast population
or one settled on the land.

A purely agricultural life, carried on in regions such
as those of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, in con-
ditions of great hardship and constant insecurity, seems
to lead to a marked degradation of type. The women
especially are often little better than beasts of burden,
and all social conditions tend to depress humanity both
through the influence of environment and heredity.
Petty warfare leads to the perpetual extermination of the
more hardy and independent men ; crushing physical
labour debases the vitality of the women and children.
The introduction of a considerable pastoral element
relieves the situation, for the women are at once
employed in the lighter occupations of spinning and

78 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

weaving, milking and butter-making, while the labour
they were previously driven to perform is undertaken
by four-footed beasts of burden. A farming popula-
tion not too widely dispersed, where crops and stock
are intermingled, probably affords one of the best
grounds for raising a healthy population.

An unregulated industrial life, such as was to be
found in England from the rise of industrialism to
the passing of the Factory Acts, seems to vie with an
agricultural community of a low type in depressing
the prospects of humanity. Too often, mere numbers
are all that is required ; there is neither time nor
opportunity in which to develop the finer qualities of
body and mind. The women are absorbed into the
factories as readily as, or more readily than, the men,
since their labour is cheaper. The birth-rate is low,
the death-rate is high ; the race is obviously on a
downward grade both as regards physique and mental
calibre.

The type of society which has evolved the speculator,
the financier, or indulges in the pursuits of ill-regulated
gold-mining and all forms of economic gambling, has
always proved highly unsatisfactory. There is no
more demoralising element in any station of human
life than perpetual uncertainty as to the means of
subsistence, with alternate periods of poverty and
wealth. Great luxury vies with depths of misery,
till both become familiar objects. The sense of re-
sponsibility is naturally little developed. The women,
who have no economic raison d'etre in such a com-
munity, are the objects of irresponsible indulgence, one
of the means by which the men make visible the

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 79

success or failure of their courses. No good has ever
come of any society founded on such a basis.

The ordinary life of commerce, with its basis of a
seafaring and agricultural population, where the occupa-
tions outside the homes are in the hands of the men, has
usually led to a satisfactory type of social development.
The women have found occupation and independent
interests in domestic duties, and sufficient leisure and
strength have remained to allow for the development
of arts and crafts. It is in such communities, inter-
mingled with the full life of the countryside — the two
being mutually interdependent, — that civilization has
reached its highest developments of literature, art, and
science. The Greek and Italian cities were all origin-
ally settlements of this kind.

Such, then, is a brief survey of the effect of occupa-
tion on the organization of societies of a simple
nature, and many of the special characteristics remain
among sections of the population even when the
various types are blended to form one of our complex
modern states.

Let us now examine our subject from the historic
point of view, and see if we can assign any part in the
making and unmaking of nations to an adjustment of
the position of women, on whom, as we have already
said, falls the chief burden of regulating the destinies
of a nation. Clearly no community that uses its
women as beasts of burden, either in the fields or the
factories, has reached or can ever hope to reach to any
satisfactory standard of development. History gives
us no instance of any country that has devoured its

80 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

inheritance in this respect and has advanced to a high
civilization under the process.

But the failure of such civilized states as Athens
and Rome, Spain and Venice, to withstand the insidious
process of racial decay is more difficult to account for.
One point in common that preceded the fall of these
civilizations was the decline in the sanctity of family
life and the restriction of the birth-rate among the able
and more competent classes, who were the trustees of
the most valuable racial qualities.

As long as Rome remained under the control of a
definite homogeneous race, the family was treated as
the social unit, and patriotism and self-sacrifice, based
on devotion to the family and the home, burned with a
steady flame — a model to all time. But Rome became
a cosmopolitan capital, drawing in from all nations
men who demanded the privileges of citizenship
without being able to bear its burdens or willing
to submit to its limitations. Eventually the purity
of the race was lost, and with it vanished the definite
character of the people and the social structure of
the nation.

Both in Athens and in Rome, during the period of
splendour which ushered in their decay, the dearth of
children in the patrician and upper classes, and others
who successively came to the front to fill the empty
places, was regarded with alarm by the responsible
statesmen of the day, and the tendency for the best
women to remain if not unmarried at least childless,
or to find occupation and interest in the political and
literary spheres of life, was recognized to be a source
of national danger.

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 81

In Imperial Rome, laws were passed giving special
privileges to patrician fathers of more than three
children, and it is a pathetic comment on the futility
of such enactments that we find the younger Pliny,
childless after two marriages, congratulating himself
on receiving these privileges, as a mark of the
Emperor's good-will. At one time the mothers of
several children were to be allowed control of some
part of their dowry — at which the fathers became re-
calcitrant ; young patrician widows were to be com-
pelled to remarry within a limited space of time ; again,
bachelors above a certain age were forbidden entrance
to the public games — a restriction which, until re-
moved, led to the contraction of a number of formal
marriages with women of the courtesan class, but to
no increase in the birth-rate. At another time, public
complaint was made of the scarcity of children among
the families of the knights, the military class of the
Roman Empire, who retaliated by pointing out that
during their prolonged absences on foreign service, the
privileges accorded to their families had been abrogated
and their patrimony had been taxed to such an extent
that they were no longer able to maintain even their
one or two children in circumstances suitable to their
social standing. The symptoms connected with the
decline of the birth-rate were freely discussed and
deplored ; the causes of the decline were never examined
into, with a view to reconstituting the environment of
seclusion, security and comfort — possibly of privilege
— in which the elements recognized to be of the
greatest value to the State could be persuaded to breed

freely. To re-establish a distinct race and a natural

6

82 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

aristocracy on the basis of the segregation of ability
and character into stable classes possessing definite
privileges and responsibilities was certainly as much
outside the intention of the Roman democratic legis-
lator as it was probably beyond his power. The
long centuries of barbarism and the squalor and tur-
moil of the Dark Ages were part of the price which
humanity had to pay for a notable failure to solve
the problem.

Sparta also has an instructive tale to tell, a variant
on the problem as it appeared in Imperial Rome ; but
in many ways a smaller state gives a more satisfactory
example to those who are impatient to connect cause
and effect. The Lacedaemonian republic was a primi-
tively organized state, of matriarchal form, even at a
late period, in which property descended through the
women. Consequently it was easier for the female
element to obtain control than it was in Rome, where
the power of the father was supreme. In the prime
of her national life, the constant absence of large bodies
of fighting men left the government of Sparta largely
in the ineffective hands of old men and boys. So at
a certain period of her history, the women, being pro-
bably greatly in numerical excess, secured the right to
assist at the public meals, which was equivalent to a
participation on equal terms in the political life of the
country. There is no complaint as to their methods
of administration ; no doubt they were most efficient
and self-sacrificing governors. But the net result
seems to have been that the cradles were left empty
and the firesides were deserted, until in a hundred
years the Spartan nation had virtually ceased to exist,

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 83

and its admirable qualities of vigour and simplicity,
which under other auspices might have regenerated
the Hellenic world, had been wiped out. Such was the
result of a determined effort to improve environment
at the cost of sacrificing the heredity of the future
generations.

Venice provides us with another solution of the
problem, equally unsatisfactory to all concerned. The
whole story is contained in a few sentences in the
Cambridge Modern History : l

" Yet much private wealth remained in Venice, and
no signs of exhaustion or poverty appeared in its life
of luxury and display, its feasts and carnivals, its
theatres, concerts and balls. . . . Still, strangers from
every part flocked to share the gaieties of Venice, its
life of amenity and licence, where everyone might
enjoy himself to the utmost, sure of excellent police and
sanitation. . . . Interbreeding, limitation of families,
strict entails, and the custom of younger sons taking
Orders, had so diminished the nobility, that during
this century the members of the Grand Council de-
creased from fourteen to seven hundred. An attempt
to infuse new blood by ennobling good provincial
families failed, since few would pay the sum demanded
for the honour. . . . All through the century the
physical and the political and moral decadence of
Venice continued ; yet the changes which accompanied
her decay were so gradual that they can only be
estimated by their ultimate results. Venice really
existed on her past reputation and on the mutual
jealousies which withheld her powerful neighbours

1 Vol. vi., The Eighteenth Century, pp. 606-7.

84 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

from attacking her ; but the whole artificial fabric of
her structure, since it had no innate strength to sup-
port it from within, collapsed before the first sharp
blow from without."

The passage is most instructive. Woe betide a
people that pins its faith in social regeneration solely to
a policy of excellent police and admirable sanitation.

There is another point which may be gleaned from
a study of the Roman and Venetian empires during their
time of expansion, a point which is not without its
application in any criticism of the constitution of
society at the present time.

A period of great material prosperity seems in-
evitably to lead to an extension of the social element
thriving on the opportunities afforded for rapid gain
and irresponsible wealth. This of itself is an unmixed
evil, especially in its secondary effect of setting a bad
example and putting a false standard before the nation.
From the point of view of heredity, it can at first do
little ; but its most insidious effect must be sought in
the undermining of sound customs and frugal habits
among the natural aristocracy of a land, with whom their
ill-gotten gains too often enable the speculative element
to purchase the right of association. The distrust of
the nouveau riche, of the unproved family of mush-
room growth, is probably a sound racial instinct ;
and there is more to be said in support of the deep-
rooted prejudice which exists in certain circles against
the parvenu than has ever come to the ears of the
egalitarian philosophers.

It is essential to remember that we, in England,

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 85

have another special point in common with the great
empires, such as Rome and Spain, which have passed
away. There is a constant drain of men of high spirit,
good character, and administrative ability to the out-
lying provinces of the Empire. In England, this drain
has been going on for nearly two hundred years. Too
often these men are not permanent settlers or colonists
in the distant countries, but are deputed to spend the
best years of their lives in what are frequently unhealthy
tropical dependencies, where white life is often cut off
prematurely. There are many difficulties in the way
of taking out a wife and rearing a family in suitable
conditions. Again, in other colonies — South Africa for
instance — the presence of a large semi-barbarian native
population and the sparse European settlement create
conditions of some danger and considerable hardship
and anxiety for the English settlers. Many parents
are willing that their sons should face privations which
are deemed impossible for women of equal social
standing. Hence we lose, year by year, to our colonies
and tropical dependencies, as Rome and Spain did
before us, an appreciable fraction of our most valuable
young men. Hence we are left, year by year, from
another source besides the two we have enumerated,
with an increasing number of superfluous women, who
are debarred by the logic of mere force of numbers
from taking up their natural avocation.

Nor does the evil end at home. The direct out-
come of our scruples is seen in the large half-caste
populations, that exist in many of our dependencies,
and form the chief part of the inhabitants of some of
the South American republics, the least satisfactory of

86 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

modern states. The conventions of a social class that
will not expose its daughters to hardship, cheerfully
acquiesce in conditions that condemn white men either
to enforced celibacy, to marriage with women of a lower
social standing or to association with native women.
Meanwhile from many of the women who have re-
mained at home in circumstances of ease and security
we hear preached the comforting doctrine of the equality
of the sexes.

The problem of the half-caste population may yet
become the most serious obstacle to progress that
humanity has to face. Both in India and in the
United States of America, it is growing within measur-
able distance of being an urgent political question. In
matters of religion, of education, of social standing, of
intermarriage affecting them, we have to take action in
the dark ; not knowing what conditions are appropriate
for the best development of an organism to which
probably neither of the parental environments are
applicable. All the knowledge we possess, all our
innermost instincts and prejudices, counsel us against
the creation of the half-breed and the mongrel, and
yet many of our present social conventions lead in-
evitably to the increase of the type whose existence
we deplore.

It matters nothing in the end, when the men of an
imperial and colonizing nation go out into strange
lands and are unaccompanied by their women-folk,
whether, as in Spain, the women stay behind and go
into convents, or whether, as in England, they remain
at home to swell the ranks of the celibate teachers,
inspectors, and agitators. The result, as far as the

THE POSITION OF WOMEN 87

destinies of the old or the new nations are concerned,
is identical. The sociologist of the future will have
to consider the position of the superfluous woman in
the mother country and the proper treatment of the
colonial half-breeds across the seas as part and parcel
of the same problem.

CHAPTER VII

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN

IN our last chapter we passed in brief survey through
some of the principal causes — biological and social —
which affect the position of women in a civilized com-
munity. The extreme complication of the influences
at work is perhaps the most noteworthy feature, while,
from the historic point of view, the recrudescence of
the problems, the recurrence of the critical periods at
widely separated ages and under varying conditions,
form a subject well worthy of careful study and
investigation.

It seems clear that a slight natural excess of women
will be a feature of almost any civilized community,
but that the present greater excess is largely due to
artificial causes, partly connected with the restriction of
the birth-rate, partly with the drain of men to foreign or
colonial lands. The importance of this fact deserves
attention. The practical question before us is how
this surplus female population can be best trained and
utilized without injury to the future prospects of the
race. The danger of the position seems always to lie
in the fact that it is the anomalies of life, the individuals
who are out of place, which attract attention rather than

88

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 89

the persons and things who are fulfilling their natural
functions. Not only where women are concerned, but
in many other cases, we may see the tendency to
consider and legislate for the exception develop and
grow until to many people the interests, nay even the
existence, of the normal type are almost forgotten, and
are certainly overshadowed by the scrupulous care with
which any abnormality is given more than its due share
of public attention.

Therefore, in calling attention to problems which
originate in the excess female population, it must be
remembered throughout that we are dealing with
questions which only affect a numerically small propor-
tion of the sex, and might be ignored, were it not for
the fact that human nature is ever prone to regard
the exception as though it were the principal object
requiring solicitude and favourable treatment.

Let us first consider how present social conditions
are affecting the prospects of the married woman, the
normal type of adult womanhood.

Now here it is clear that the prevailing fashion of
small families, of the only child, or the son and daughter
— long the desiderata of the typical French parents — is
producing a marked effect on our social customs. Apart
from the fact that four children to each fertile marriage
is the least that will maintain the number and quality of
the race unaltered, a woman who has given birth to only
two children is very obviously a person of insufficient
occupation, who has not fulfilled her legitimate functions.
These two children may be educated in our public
elementary schools, or may be consigned to the care

90 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

of schoolmasters and governesses ; in either case it
is sufficiently plain that the mother has usually become
one of the unemployed and unremunerative members
of society. Whether she salves her conscience by
taking up politics and philanthropy or is driven by
economic pressure into some industrial occupation,
whether she deadens her natural instincts on the
racecourse, at the bridge table or on the golf links,
the fact remains that her capacity for engaging in
other occupations depends on the thoroughness with
which she has neglected her natural avocation. The
normal woman who, between the ages of twenty and
forty-five, regulates well her household, gives birth
and nourishment to a large family of children, super-
intends their education, health and upbringing, has
little time or inclination for outside distractions. She
requires all the help and strength that emanate from
a quiet home life and undisturbed surroundings to
enable her to accomplish her task satisfactorily, and it
is a suicidal policy from the wider point of view to
endeavour to thrust further responsibilities upon her.

There is another way in which our customs are
affecting the position of the married woman. To any-
one advancing into middle age, who has been conversant
with each generation of young people during the past
ten, twenty or thirty years, there is an extraordinary
alteration in the outlook, in the intuitive knowledge
with which the majority of young women of the upper
and professional classes can look forward to-day to the
duties and responsibilities of married life.

Among the priceless advantages of the normal
family is the fact that each home of this type supplies

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 91

a continuity of tradition on all household problems.
Whether the elder members of such a family imbibe
the necessary knowledge from watching and early
taking a share in the general management, and the
supervision of the younger members, or whether the
younger members, as they grow up, are found
useful occupation in the new homes of their elder
brothers and sisters, which are beginning to take shape
around them, we have a type of family life in which
domestic interests and all questions involving the wel-
fare of the future generations are never lost to sight.
We have, in fact, not the artificial conditions of the
laboratory of domestic science with which we are
laboriously trying to replace lost opportunities, but the
natural living, growing workshop in which every woman
learns by precept, experience and practice a knowledge
of the duties which in all natural societies would fall
to her share in after-life.

Thirty years ago, the large majority of women could
enter upon their married life with the confidence of
experience, gained as part of the usual equipment of
their normal home surroundings. To-day, it is lament-
ably, almost ludicrously, frequent to find girls of twenty-
one who have never washed an infant, cut out a night-
gown or passed disturbed nights with a teething
youngster. There is a natural reluctance to perform
duties with which we are unfamiliar ; and the feeling
of dislike, the sense of almost impotent despair with
which many of them regard the possibility of having
to undertake such offices, is a speaking comment on
our present system of higher education for women.
Experientia docet. There is more of applied science and

92 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

human nature to be learned from having assisted in the
nursing of children suffering from a long series of
infantile diseases and ailments than can be extracted
from all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
But no doubt these subjects will be dealt with more
fully in any ensuing edition. Thus does one genera-
tion wilfully neglect the education and upbringing of
the next !

There is unfortunately, owing to economic causes, a
large section of our industrial population in which the
married women are forced to become wage-earners.
This is a state of affairs which should never be regarded
with equanimity in a civilized community ; it is difficult
to find any compensating advantages in a social con-
dition which creates such dire consequences from the
point of view of the race.

As soon as the married woman becomes a wage-
earner, the birth-rate drops disastrously or the infant
mortality runs up. Milk depots for babies deprived of
their natural nourishment are started, creches where the
hapless children can be deposited for the day are sub-
sidized by philanthropic persons, the infant classes of
the schools are crowded with tiny mites who are
deprived of their parents' care for the best part of
their waking hours. While the mothers are working
in the factories in order to earn what are often
insufficient wages, regiments of officials and other
devoted persons are paid voluntarily or perforce by
the community to render all sorts of services to the
unfortunate offspring, thus bereft of their natural pro-
tector. The wages earned by the parent probably

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 93

hardly suffice to pay her share of the salaries of her sub-
stitutes. Looked at in the light of reason, the situation
would be ludicrous were it not so melancholy.

We are inclined to classify for biological purposes,
as we have done elsewhere, women and men as respec-
tively the capital and income of the State, the one to
provide for the future and the other to maintain and
uphold the affairs of the present. Tacitly the national
system of economy has always accepted the existence
of a vital difference in the functions of men and women
as the basis of its scale of payment of their services.
Normally, a man's wages are calculated to represent,
not only his own keep, but also a sum sufficient to
maintain a wife and family. This means that it is
recognized that a man can perform two duties to the
State. He can do his day's work and be the father of
a family. A woman's wage represents her keep only,
or sometimes merely pocket-money, while she remains
under her parents' roof, for she can only undertake one
of the two essential functions of an adult person ; she
can either earn her living, or give birth to and bring
up an adequate number of children, in which case her
payment is included in the father's wage. When, in
industrial communities, we find that a large proportion
of married women are forced into remunerative em-
ployment, to the detriment of the number and health
of their children, the result virtually is that, while the
women attempt to perform two duties which are
mutually inconsistent, the husbands cease to undertake
their full responsibilities ; for too often they are no
longer to be counted as fathers of families.

The same effect of the disregard of natural limita-

94 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

tions may be traced in the higher phases of employment,
where, from the point of view of the inheritance of
desirable mental and moral qualities, the results, though
on a smaller scale, are quite as disastrous.

In France, as in England, there has been an increas-
ing tendency of late years to employ women in various
functions of the State, especially in affairs pertaining to
education. There has also been a considerable reaction
against the limitation of opportunities which was en-
forced in the celibate teaching orders. It has been
made possible for the women teachers to marry, and
they are granted brief absences from duty during the
periods of childbirth — without forfeiture of salary — a
step which is being followed in England, by some of the
more progressive education authorities. But what is
the consequence of this step, undertaken largely with a
view of counterbalancing the arrest in reproduction of the
abler classes, engaged in these important duties ? As far
as we can learn, marriages among the women teachers do
occur, to a slightly increased extent, since their earnings
facilitate the creation of new homes. Births also occur,
but to an extent which is far below even the low average
of the social stratum to which these persons belong.
If the men who have married these teachers had instead
become the husbands of women without fixed outside
occupation, we cannot doubt that the birth-rate would
have been considerably in excess of the numbers actually
recorded. Once again, in the conditions we have
created, it is the men who are induced to fail in the
fulfilment of their legitimate functions.

Thus the effect of encouraging the marriage of these
women has probably been a distinct reduction in the

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 95

number of children produced in the class to which
they belong ; and we cannot doubt that the result which
has been noticed in France will occur in any other com-
munity which bases its efficiency on the possibility of
obtaining a large supply of female labour.

Apparently, for a time, we can shift a great part of
the industrial and administrative burdens of the country
on to women, who can undersell their husbands and
brothers. We probably effect thereby a real improve-
ment of environment, since a woman of better training
and aptitudes can always — for reasons we have given
above — be secured at a lower rate of pay. But we are
consuming our one essential form of life-capital, female
humanity ; and for us, as for all nations, the process
must end in disaster.

It is in France, where in certain years the number of
deaths has equalled the births, that the most systematic
attempts of the modern world are being made to
counteract the biological effect of modern tendencies.
A few of the enactments may be here quoted.
Throughout the whole country, absence from work on
the part of a woman for eight weeks consecutively
before and after childbirth does not allow her employer
to break his contract with her for her services, except
under payment of damages with interest, and no private
agreement to the contrary will be upheld in law.
Absence for two months with full salary is allowed by
the State to school-mistresses, half to be taken before
and half after the birth of a child. The Credit
Lyonnais, a great banking concern, and the Grands
Magasins du Louvre allow respectively thirty days' and

96 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

six weeks' absence on full pay to their female employees,
in the event of childbirth.

On the general problem of encouraging the produc-
tion of children, the State allots ,£20,000 annually to
maternity assistance. The Ministry of Labour provides
a marriage gift of 100 francs (^4) for each workman
in its service, and an additional 100 francs for the
birth of each child. The Ministry of War gives
premiums to mothers in its employ suckling their
own children. The City of Paris and the Departement
du Seine bestow an additional 50 francs a year
(£2) on all employees not receiving more than £16
a year who are fathers of at least four children,
for each child in excess of that number ; whereas the
Credit Lyonnais, besides the maternal leave of absence
already mentioned, give an increase of salary equivalent
to about 10 francs a month (8s.) to each of their
workmen, on the birth of every succeeding child after
the first.

The Municipal Council of Paris, when reorganizing
the relief of the poor, laid down the following guiding
principles. " What is needed is in the first instance
to assist mothers, young children and adults who may
be rescued from disease, and especially large families.
The insane and old people, who are the caput
mortuum (lit. ' death's head ') of Society, are a secondary
consideration. A nation's first duty is to protect the
productive element of the population."

It is interesting to compare these modern enactments
of republican France, some of them directed towards
the encouragement of the more necessitous classes, with
the legislation of similar character, already detailed in

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 97

brief, which was designed to coerce in fecundity the
classes believed to be of the greatest value to the State,
inaugurated by the Roman Empire. The divergent
methods are at least as instructive as the opposition of
the aims, and much might be written about both. It
is too early yet to say whether the modern legislation
will fail of its purpose as completely as did that of
Imperial Rome. During the first half of 1911, in
spite of this legislation, the deaths in France were some
eighteen thousand in excess of the births ; whereas,
twelve months previously, the numerical positions were
reversed, the births being then about twenty thousand
in excess of the deaths. This is not an encouraging
beginning. Like their illustrious forebears, the French
are making no attempt so far to grapple with the
industrial, economic, and moral causes which lie at
the root of the evil ; they are content to palliate the
effects only. But the result of their legislation should
be watched carefully, for it is certain that, as need arises,
other nations will desire to follow in their footsteps.

We have now to consider the position of women as
it is affected by the existence of two classes of persons,
both of whom, though of frequent occurrence in our
midst, nevertheless constitute an abnormal type.
There will always be a certain number of married women
who are unfortunately childless, or whose families
will be limited naturally to one or two offspring ; and
we must also look to have with us a proportion of
women, who from force of circumstances will remain
unmarried, unless they are prepared — like labour which
is out of place in one district — to migrate to the
colonies and other regions where their services are in

7

98 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

urgent request. We might almost paraphrase the
sentences of Farr, written on the subject of population
in the Census Report of 1851, and say of the great
majority of unmarried women that, though they are
often out of place where they are not wanted or
cannot be productive, they are not therefore, as many
people assume, redundant. A wise scheme of redistri-
bution is their most urgent need.

But this particular and most pressing scheme of
redistribution is not yet with us, and meanwhile we •
find ourselves with a considerable number of women
who are genuinely unoccupied, and forced to find
occupations in which they can earn a living. The
majority of these women belong to what we may term
the upper and professional classes, precisely those
sections of the nation whose sons are employed most
freely for the administrative work of the Empire in the
dominions beyond the seas, and have formed a large
proportion of the most successful colonists. Except
for women employed in domestic service, it is rare to
find an unmarried woman of the industrial and labour-
ing classes. Unfortunately, in the professional classes,
it is the ablest women who are the most efficient wage-
earners, either in conjunction or in actual competition
with men, and are the first to be withdrawn from their
normal sphere of action as wives and mothers. Then,
as the process continues, there arises a strong pressure
to make the training of all women subservient to the
ultimate necessity of the few : to consider the possible
interests of any single one, as an individual, who may
have to become a wage-earner, rather than the certain
advantage of the majority, who should be encouraged

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 99

to enter upon the normal sphere of wifehood and mother-
hood. Thus we see a wrong ideal of the true vocation
of women set before the rising generation, and a vicious
circle of misdirected training enthroned in our midst.

But, at present, it seems likely that a good deal of
the unemployment of women is due precisely to this
error in training. The problem is probably somewhat
analogous to the general problems of unemployment.
At one end of the scale there is a certain and increasing
percentage of real unemployables, whose growth is due
largely to unsound philanthropic enterprise and ineffec-
tive natural selection. We do not, be it remembered,
absorb the feeble-minded and incompetent into industrial
and educational occupations where celibacy is a sine
qua non. We leave them to propagate their species at
will, providing maternity wards and skilled attendance
for the purpose. At the other end of our social scale
we have a want of mobility and a wrongly directed
training, or absence of training, which has rendered
many competent women unfit and consequently un-
willing to take up life and work on the ordinary
domestic lines ; there is apparently no limit to the
number of suitable women who could be profitably
absorbed in several of our colonies. Unfortunately,
the employment of women in the various offices which
are created to ensure an improvement of environment
amongst us is often directly beneficial to the community
at the moment. Since a woman has usually only herself
to maintain, an individual of higher education and char-
acter can be secured at a lower rate of pay than a man
of corresponding ability and training. If we raise the
wages, the unmarried or childless woman will always

ioo HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

have the advantage of additional comfort and luxury
or freedom, which will probably have the ill effect of
disinclining her yet further from the more arduous,
more exacting duties of marriage and child-bearing.
Moreover, there is little doubt that the present genera-
tion often benefits directly, and not only from the
financial point of view of the taxpayer, by the sub-
stitution of women for men in the various branches
of the public services. The standard of efficiency and
probity often undergoes a marked improvement, owing
to the employment of women of a superior type of
mind and character. But apart from the fact that
some man is displaced, and is less likely to be able to
support a wife and family, thus throwing some other
woman out of her normal employment, we are
securing our improvement in environment in the
present at the cost of destroying for future generations
the very heritable aptitudes which make these picked
women efficient and responsible public servants. Once
again, we are sacrificing the present to the future ; we
are exalting the individual and injuring the race.

It is to the married women whose natural home duties
have unavoidably failed them that society may rightly
look for such services to the community as are best
rendered by women. Much of the pioneer work in
social experiments, much of the necessary supervision of
the women and children who, from one cause or another,
have become burdens on the general public, should fall
to the share of people who need not look for remunera-
tive employment and are living in conditions enabling
them to deal with such problems, with knowledge and
sympathy. The childless married woman and the un-

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 101

married woman with private means are both individuals
on whom we may rightly count to pay their debt to
society in public service and private enterprise. It is
difficult to estimate the immense amount of valuable
work, the ceaseless stream of good example and inspir-
ing influence that we, in England, owe to these two
classes of women. But let us never forget the far
greater, far deeper, far more permanent impress that
we have received from those members of society in
whose homes our men and women of thought, character
and action were bred and brought up.

We cannot believe that it is a mere coincidence that
the women whose names are best known and most
distinguished for social, artistic or literary services
were for the most part unmarried or childless, so that
the special gifts by which they became famous have
died with them. Angelica Kaufmann, Jane Austen,
Christina Rossetti, Florence Nightingale, Harriet Mar-
tineau, Charlotte Bronte", Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte
Yonge, George Eliot leave no descendants. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Mary Somerville, Mrs Gaskell had
children, but not many, and there does not appear to
be a third generation.

We shall probably always have unmarried and child-
less women of a high standard of character and ability
in our midst, but the danger of calling attention to
their services lies in the fact that people are thereby
inclined to regard them as our normal standard of
womanhood. To argue that because such people have
themselves leisure and energy for outside occupations,
it is therefore right and expedient to force the additional
duties of public life and political responsibility on the

102 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

majority of women who are already amply fulfilling
a far more essential and exacting function, seems an
extraordinary perversion of human judgment. On all
grounds, physical, moral and mental, it is difficult to
conceive a course of action more damaging to the
future prospects of the race than to compel women,
who between the ages of twenty and forty-five are fully
engaged in the duties of the family, to enter the
turmoil of industrial and political life. Certainly no
sane person would follow the corresponding course
when dealing with the animal economy of the country-
side and the farmstead. At the same time, it is im-
possible to single out the exceptional cases for special
treatment and to put premiums involving additional
weight in the counsels of the nation on the unmarried
and childless woman which would increase the " spin-
ster influence " in the country and be to the detriment
of those fulfilling their normal functions.

It is impossible not to see, at any rate in the upper
classes of English society, that there is at present a
real connection between the decline in the birth-rate
and the movement to equalize the political and in-
dustrial status of men and women. We can study
this influence at work among any group of women
who are prominent in political agitation and social and
philanthropic enterprise. Many of these women are
unmarried, and very few appear to have the necessary
minimum family of four children and upwards.

It would be extremely interesting if the secretaries
of the respective Woman's Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage
societies would furnish us with authentic figures as to
the average number of children born per member of

THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN 103

each society. If such figures could be obtained, we do
not doubt that they would throw great light on the
psychology of the whole movement, of which the rate
of progress, in modern Europe, as in Greece and Rome,
is probably a very fair measure of the rate of decadence
of the nation produced by the decline of the birth-rate
among the abler sections of the community. It is a note-
worthy fact that in some of the Australasian colonies,
where women enjoy the suffrage, and in France, where
women are actively engaged in business and commerce,
the birth-rate is almost the lowest in the civilized world.

In the industrial sections of the community, and in
the classes to whose hands much of the educational
work is entrusted, the direct result of the habitual
employment of women outside their normal sphere
is to affect injuriously the prospects of the race and
to undermine the position of men in their capacity
as the natural providers for the maintenance of the
coming generation. Moreover, if there be no appreci-
able coming generation to maintain, any stimulus to
exertion beyond what has a purely selfish origin must
cease to be effective in moulding the destinies of the
human race.

Throughout the history of nations, the demand for
the equalization of the status of men and women seems
to come invariably from the classes — usually the more
intellectual classes — when and where, for various eco-
nomic and social causes outlined above, the marriage-
rate and birth-rate have become abnormally and danger-
ously low. The connection between the two phenomena
is one which all sociologists should study and watch
with great care.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION

THE problem of education, like many others we
have touched upon in the preceding chapters, is
incapable of final solution. There is now no general
consensus of opinion as to what is meant by the term,
no accepted road on which we may confidently travel
to attain the object in view, no agreement as to where,
when and by whom the goal has been attained. The
wisest man is most willing to admit that he has misused
his opportunities and is but imperfectly educated.

If religion be understood in its literal sense of a
"binding together," of a search for the true relation
that should unite a man to the forces governing the
universe, then we would suggest that the theory of
education, or the "leading out," should be taken to
mean a knowledge of the possibilities of development
inherent in the human race, and a recognition of the
limitations within which each individual must work.
To any man, potentially, there is the chance of rising
to the highest rank of human development ; all men,
actually, are subject to the limitations of their inborn
qualities, and are compassed about by a network of
obligations and restrictions without which the society

104

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 105

wherein they have developed could not be kept together.
We have on the one hand to consider the inborn
qualities of the individual, on the other to take heed
that the State suffers no harm at his hands. It is the
conflict of these two obligations, the reconciliation of
these two opposing interests, that constitute the problem
of education.

But to limit ourselves to the consideration of what
we believe to be the true function of education would
be to deal with less than half the question as it is at
present usually laid before the general public. Far
more attention is bestowed nowadays on the subject
of training than on that of education ; and, as we have
said before, there is no necessary connection between
training, that merely enables a man to earn a living
and exercise a trade, and education, that helps him
to understand and adjust his duty to himself, his
neighbour, his nation and his race. Yet training as a
substitute for education, and training, especially literary
training, as a preliminary step towards education, are
both well-recognized facts among us, and we cannot
leave that branch of the subject entirely out of our
survey.

It may perhaps be asked why the problem of educa-
tion, at first sight essentially an affair of environment,
should be discussed at all in a volume which professes
to deal with heredity. But the answer is plain. Even
as we believe that religion is the only force strong
enough to incline a normal man, of his own free will,
to subordinate his individual interests to those of the
race, so some authentic scheme of education alone will

106 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

enable him with the least harm, or with the greatest
good, to effect the sacrifice and to lead the life which
his religious instincts have prompted him to undertake
as a necessary act in his recognition of the divine
element vitalizing the Universe. Whether this sub-
ordination of self to the wider interests of society be
the result of terrorized obedience to the laws and
customs of a primitive community, or of acquiescence
in the social conditions by which free play is given to
various forms of natural selection in this world, and
for the rigours of which rewards and penalties are
allotted in the next, or a reasoned acceptance of irksome
restrictions on account of their racial value, some form
of religion, some method of education, are essential to
obtain the ultimate intelligent triumph of the altruistic
principle.

Now there are two classes of persons who seem
fitted by natural circumstances to give education in the
sense in which we have defined it. In the first place
there are those whose experience of life has been of the
simpler, more primitive type, and who, having accepted
many things originally on authority, have seen no
reason, as life has lengthened and experience has
ripened, to question the accuracy of the empirical
knowledge they received. It is to such people that
we must go to find the accumulation of traditional
wisdom, the strength of intuitive morality in their
simplest and most impressive form. This class of
mind is unfortunately not on the increase among us.
Its destruction without any effort at a compensating
replacement is probably largely due to the errors in
training of the last forty years. Nevertheless, accept-

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 107

ing its limitations, there was no more important element
of stability in the country, and, especially in contact
with the very young, its influence was most valuable.
The simplicity, the straightforwardness, the frank accept-
ance of authority which are concomitant to this type of
mind appeal especially to the undeveloped faculties
of the child, and can impress without confusing or
fatiguing them. Hence we are all ready to acknow-
ledge the immense advantage to be obtained by the
association of children and young people of all ranks
with the steadfast, right-living members of the cottar
or fisher class, where this more direct, more intuitive
sense of natural order has often found its resting-place.
Many of us whose chief sources of knowledge have
been from academic and literary spheres have little to
show compared with the stores of experience, personal
and racial, treasured up in the minds of these people
of steadfast faith and undisturbed wisdom. Yet one
of the results of modern tendencies in education has
been to slight the value of this fund of human lore,
partly on account of its inability to express itself in
terms of the current superficial philosophy, and partly
on account of the intuitive as against the argumentative
form of support with which it upheld the substance of
its faith. Not only have the children, owing to the
hours allotted to compulsory schooling, been withdrawn
for long hours from the homes where this most valu-
able influence would have found its normal sphere of
action, but many of the ideas imbibed during school-
hours have served directly to create an attitude of
contempt and inattention for any knowledge not to
be acquired in a school primer or text-book. Much

io8 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

has been lost and nothing gained by the change in
attitude and opportunity. It is to these genuine
exponents of the simple life that our musicians and
folklorists now eagerly go to collect the last echoes of
our countryside dances and songs, of our legendary
heroes and magical rites. We believe that the young
people of the present generation have lost much by lack
of contact and want of respect for the proverbial
philosophy of their forefathers. It is a general rule
in the upbringing of the young that the personality
of the teacher, and the manner in which a subject is
presented, are of far greater importance than the actual
substance of the information imparted.

The second class of persons to whom we would
readily entrust the functions of education are those
who have grown wise in the experience of human affairs,
men of penetration, intellect and wide outlook, whose
judgment has matured with observation and mellowed
with age. This is the class of mind best fitted to
influence youth in its adolescent stage, best able to
appreciate the doubts and turmoil which beset a man
or woman on entering upon the stage of adult life.
But since it is rare that we can have the personal
services of this highest type of educationalist, it is
to books that we must turn to acquire a knowledge
of their ways of thought, and to possess ourselves
of their solutions of the difficulties that beset us.
Herein is the true justification of the literary training
in vogue amongst us ; and herein, moreover, lies the
original though forgotten motive which led to its
adoption. But, admitting, as we do, the rarity of
this type of mind, it is satisfactory to know how often

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 109

its final conclusions on problems of life and death,
reached through years of laborious study and painful
experience, are identical with those expressed in the
simpler, mere direct philosophy of the countryside.

When, however, we find the coming generations
not only alienated from any form of religious observ-
ance, but also separated from both of the two sources
of educational influence we have outlined above, it
is time to ask ourselves how these great forces, which
have hitherto moulded human destiny, are to be re-
placed, and what is the probable outlook for a nation
that will not submit itself to their guidance.

Unfortunately, it seems to be a necessary part of
the scheme for obtaining the current ideal of educa-
tional efficiency, both in Western Europe and America,
that, especially as concerns the elementary schools, the
teaching profession should be chiefly in the hands
of unmarried and inexperienced women. This result
is perhaps due partly to motives of economy ; but
also there is no doubt that the teaching profession,
given the modern system of training, is a more at-
tractive opening to women, who have to choose a
career out of a limited number, than to men, who
have wider fields of activity naturally laid before
them. At any rate, it is certainly more difficult
to attract suitable men to take up teaching as a
profession.

Now the effect of the celibacy of the Roman
Catholic monastic teaching orders has often been
commented on adversely, and has been said to produce
a restriction of outlook, a want of comprehension and

no HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

balance, a bias against the larger interests and emotions
of life. Yet the monastic orders and those who
directed them were sensible of the danger incurred,
and strove to guard against it in many ways. There
was always a fund of tradition, of experience, of re-
ligious purpose at the disposal of its disciples. The
fact that so many of our modern teachers, although
compelled by the exigencies of circumstances to lead
celibate lives, have not taken any binding vows to
that effect, does not do away with the objection to
placing educational influence in the hands of persons
whose outlook on existence is necessarily limited and
one-sided, and is especially curtailed in the direction
of family life and the domestic circle, subjects on
which right thinking and personal experience are of
supreme importance to the national welfare. Nor
does the encouragement of marriage among the women
teachers, as we have already pointed out in the
previous chapter, resulting as it does in a very limited
number of births, lead to conditions which can rightly
be termed " natural." The safeguards of definite
religious and educational training, and the creation
of a special atmosphere appropriate to the nature of
the work undertaken, conditions which have been
found to be necessary in the course of the vast ex-
perience of the Roman Catholic Church, do not exist
in the case of the lay teacher, who is nevertheless
rapidly acquiring many of the disabilities attached to
her conventual forebears. Even the old " dame " of
the village school was at least free from this defect
of her modern supplanter.

The tendency which is growing among us to make

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION in

the institutions where our teachers learn their trade
as far as possible " training " colleges — as their
name indicates — and not centres of education — places
for the acquirement of book-learning rather than for
the development of character and the deepening of
spiritual insight — emphasises the trend of national
development. Many of the students who issue
thence are only fitted to give the training in mental
gymnastics which they themselves have received ; they
are not capable, either by nature or by upbringing,
especially at the immature age when they have to
undertake these important functions, of exercising any
true educational influence on the children who pass
under their care. Nor does the life of arduous labour,
both as regards wearing physical stress and incessant
mental exertion, in a cramped atmosphere of super-
regulated discipline and official supervision, tend to
foster their subsequent mental growth, or make it
easy for them to appreciate and overcome the limita-
tions of their situation.

It is the fault of the system far more than of the
teachers that so much of our English education fails to
accomplish its purpose ; and, until some radical alteration
can be effected in the aims and methods of instruction,
any increase of the time spent in school is likely to
accentuate the state of affairs we deplore. Be that as
it may, to students of sociology, the spinster influence,
divorced from the fuller knowledge, the riper ex-
perience that comes from personal contact with the
deepest mysteries and emotions of life, is a disquieting
feature of Western civilization, and seems j at present

ii2 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

to be inseparable from the methods in vogue to obtain
educational efficiency.

Surely people may be forgiven for asking themselves
whether any degree of training, given within the con-
ditions we have outlined above, can be accepted as the
true equivalent of a small amount of education, acquired
under the old circumstances of mutual helpfulness and
natural discipline inside the family circle, where habits
of obedience and initiative were acquired side by side
with those of independence and respect.

It is an interesting and suggestive coincidence that
the passing of the Education Act in 1870 was followed
immediately by the drop in the birth-rate of the abler
and more intellectual classes of the community on
whom the chief burden, financial and administrative,
of this as of most other pieces of social legislation falls.
Twenty-five years later, when education was made
practically free for all the industrial and wage-earning
sections of the community, the decrease in the birth-
rate was affecting these classes also, in spite of the fact
that increased sums must have been available for the
maintenance of their offspring. It is now certain that
at least half the children who would be likely to prove
the most valuable citizens, and best worth educating,
are annually withheld from the community ; while one
of the principal features to be noticed in elementary
education, is the need for the establishment in
increasing numbers of special schools for the feeble-
minded and degenerate members of society. In these
schools, the cost of education is many times that spent
on the normal child, and, until powers of subsequent
detention are granted, probably represents a waste or

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 113

misuse of time and money, as far as the future
prospects of the nation are concerned. These steps
in our educational policy, taken in connection with the
alterations in the quality and number of the children
who are affected by it, are worth more consideration
than they have yet received.

We hear a good deal nowadays about the advantages
of co-education as opposed to the seminary type of
upbringing. If we accept the views expressed above
as to the methods and aims of education, there is every
reason why the two sexes should share equally and at
the same time and place in the acquisition of the
necessary knowledge, as they would naturally do in
the ordinary intercourse of family life. As men and
women they must work together, and as boys and girls
they may well drink at the same sources of wisdom.
It is when we come to the problems of training for the
purpose of gaining a livelihood — which has become the
predominant feature of our English educational system
— that a separation of the two sexes seems essential.

It is often said that the great fault of our educational
system is that it does not take sufficient account of the
probable future occupations of the scholars, and that
it fails to prepare them to exercise any definite craft or
profession. The truth seems to be that, from 1870
to within a few years of the present time, the
whole population were trained as if clerkships or
some sort of clerical situation were the only open-
ings to which a boy or girl could look forward.
To read, to write, to add, to have an inaccurate recol-
lection of some of the principal historical episodes and

8

n4 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

of geographical nomenclature was too often the sole
result of the expensive training undergone by the
children of the nation. For the most part it was
neither education nor training, in any reasonable sense
of the word. Though the influence of the system on
the children was assuredly considerably better than that
of the worst and most degraded homes, it is certain
that, in the normal type of school, the atmosphere was
far less fitted to form useful, intelligent, self-reliant
citizens than the home surroundings of the average
family from which the children were withdrawn during
the most impressionable years of their lives. And its
worst error lay in the dissemination of the idea that the
responsibility for the right upbringing of children does
not lie with the parents. In a recent address on
educational matters, the speaker inferred that it denoted
moral obliquity to doubt the wisdom of the Education
Act of 1870, and almost in the same breath bewailed
the lack of the sense of parental responsibility in
matters of the upbringing of children. We believe
that his lamentations were largely addressed to the
inevitableness which connects cause and effect.

If the parental desire was that any given child should
be trained for a clerkship or other opening in which
some degree of literary achievement was essential, and
if the child appeared suited for that profession, then
the opportunities offered in the public elementary
schools might reasonably be taken advantage of. But
if a wider choice of occupation lay open to view, if
the inborn qualities and aptitudes of the child did not
lie in the direction of clerkly habits of life, then the
compulsion exercised to make all families submit them-

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 115

selves to the type of training inaugurated by the
educational authorities in 1870 was an ill-judged,
mischievous and tyrannical exercise of power.

It is often said that the elementary schools of the
country teach the children of the nation the value of
discipline and the habit of order. Certainly a superficial
acquaintance with the appearance in class of the masses
of children therein collected would give this impression.
The marching, the drilling, the prompt movement to
the word of command all confirm the casual observer
in this assurance. But it may be doubted how far
this attitude of attention and obedience is the outcome
of any intelligent acceptance of the principles underlying
the relations between authority and subordination, and
how far it is due to a lulling to sleep — from force of
habit and acquiescence in surroundings — of the youth-
ful intelligences and growing characters that are subject
to its influence. If it be a purely mechanical acceptance
of familiar and inevitable conditions, following the line
of least resistance, its value as a training in character
is probably less than nothing for anybody who is
hereafter to take charge of his own destiny and to
exercise in his turn the responsibility of exerting
authority or of withstanding it. An examination of the
ethical basis of discipline in schools and some inquiry
into the psychological or possibly the physiological
effects on the vast numbers of growing children that
are placed within its sphere of influence would be most
valuable.

Moreover, if we believe that there is great advantage
to be obtained from the association of the immature

n6 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

with the adult mind, the inexperience of many of the
teachers, the superficiality of their training, the relative
proportions of teachers and taught, the impossibility of
intimate contact between them in the time and space
allotted, the artificiality of the discipline, and the in-
evitable destruction of much of the natural intimacy
between parents and children, master and apprentice,
as a result of enforced absence during school-hours
from the home, the field and the workshop, do not
give us any assurance that our methods of training
will stand the strain of a careful inquiry into their
effects on the national character.

There is, to put it mildly, a strong probability that
the environment normally provided by the parents and
the immediate family will be fairly well suited to
children who inherit the same inborn qualities, that the
same occupations will attract their capacity, the same
interests absorb their leisure hours. Again, a closer
acquaintance with the parental aptitudes and failings
and with the communal life of a district or of a class
of workers would often enable us to suggest and plan
out a course of training more in accordance with the
probable qualities of the children than the present
uniform system of education, given the liberty and
encouragement to make the attempt.

Even the recognition of the well-ascertained fact
that town life and country life are responsible for
entirely different modes of thought and development,
and make quite other demands on the character and
capacities of men and women, would be a first step
towards supplying education and training of the type
fitted to the intelligences of the children who have to

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 117

undergo the process outside their homes. In each
case, the skilled observer notes constantly recurring
gaps in the experience and impressions of the child ;
he perceives utterly different powers at work — the
stupefying yet disturbing crowd-influence of the city, the
peace-making and soul-enlarging nature-influence of the
countryside. Each of these inherent attitudes of mind
requires attention, explanation, amplification ; each
demands the introduction of some compensating but
entirely opposite principle into the system of education.
We must try to make some estimate of the specific
influences at work on the children of each district and
of each social grade before we can think ourselves in
a position to lay down the law as to the right methods
of training and education to be followed out in regard
to them. It is this crying need for differentiation and
for specialization which is the chief obstacle to any really
satisfactory scheme of centralized national education.

The great error which misled the framers of the
Act of 1 870 was one which has misled many generations
of statesmen — the belief in and desire for uniformity —
and a limitation of outlook to their own personal ex-
perience. Instead of recognizing the segregation of
characteristics in different sections of the nation, instead
of realizing and providing for the development of the
specialized qualities, aptitudes and occupations dis-
tributed, often geographically, in our midst, they
endeavoured to establish one uniform system of train-
ing throughout the country, founded on a literary basis,
and directed chiefly to further the advancement of the
type of mind with which they were best acquainted.

ii8 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

We are just beginning to emerge from the desolation
of pothooks and blackboards into which their mistaken
zeal led us. Our education authorities occasionally re-
cognize a school outside the normal run — trade schools,
schools for home-making — and serious efforts are made
to form centres of technical instruction, appropriate to
the industries and specialized character of the popula-
tion of each district. But further differentiation is the
most crying need, together with a recognition of the
fact that the various sections of the community differ
inherently among themselves, and, to make the most
of their possibilities, require methods of training
differing profoundly among each other in scope, aim
and duration.

Far more use might be made of the natural develop-
ment of childhood in a well-ordered home of almost
any class, and much help could be obtained from a
wise encouragement of individual and local enterprise.
Unfortunately, it is almost inherent in any form of
centralized official control to press for uniformity and
to minimize the opportunities for private and local
endeavour. If the home environment be so cor-
rupting that the removal of the children from parental
influence becomes a necessity in the interests of society,
the laws of heredity would lead us to believe that a clear
case has been established for preventing the creation
of further decadent citizens by the rigid segregation of
the parents.

Whatever be the methods of training in vogue in a
country — in contradistinction to the principles of educa-
tion— whether we agree with them or regard them

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 119

as a source of not a little of the social disorders we see
around us, it seems clear that the training of boys
cannot be put on the same footing as that of girls,
although the educational problems are apparently the
same for both sexes. It is a fundamental condition of
much of the work of this world, that duties must be
performed by men, in spite of any disturbance of the
family life, by illness, sorrow or death. The railway
signalman must leave a sick child to go on duty, a
mariner must take his ship out of port and desert a
bed-ridden wife, a doctor must go on his rounds and
forget the burden of domestic trials and anxieties.
The profession of men is often necessarily apart from
and outside their home life. But in the case of women
the accepted outlook is quite other. No call from the
outside world is recognized to be sufficient to separate
a mother from a sick child, or to withdraw a woman
from a home where her presence is urgently required.

The importance of this well-recognized difference of
obligation has not been sufficiently grasped. It is a
variation of psychological attitude of profound meaning
to the welfare of the race, and depends largely on the
proposition stated in a previous chapter, namely, that
the natural duties of a man are directed to the mainten-
ance of present-day conditions, while those of a woman
infallibly lead her to take heed for the future welfare
of the nation, which lies largely within the circle of
domestic occupations, and includes much of that
environmental influence which we wish to classify
under the name of education.

Therefore, whatever training be imposed outside the
home circle, it is desirable that from the beginning the

120 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

two sexes should view its importance in different lights.
It may be right to impress on boys that their first duty
is to perform the tasks which have been placed upon
them from exterior sources, that school must be attended,
that lessons must be prepared, in spite of urgent calls
from parents and near relatives. It is an attitude
which will probably be essential to their success and
utility in after life. But the same obligations do not
apply in the case of girls ; and, if we accept the fact that,
for instance, one of the principal duties of womenkind
is to mind babies, then it is useless to expect an intelli-
gent girl of twelve to believe in the truth of our
doctrine, if she knows that the baby goes unminded at
home while she is committing to memory a list of the
capes of China, or is experimenting in the incorrect
use of the split infinitive.

One of the most serious drawbacks to almost any
form of school training for girls — even accepting the
possibility that they learn more in many directions
there than they would do in a well-regulated home
— is the fact that it is essential to the discipline and
efficiency of a school that English grammar and physical
geography should be considered before spring cleaning
and jam-making, while it is even more essential to the
welfare of the homes of the nation that spring cleaning
and jam-making should, when the processes or their
equivalents become necessary, be given the position of
pre-eminence.

A few years ago, one of our northern borough
education authorities solemnly passed two instructions
on the same day and at the same meeting. In the
first it forbade the parents to keep elder girls at home

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 121

and away from school in attendance on their mothers
for the two or three weeks following childbirth, threaten-
ing defaulters with the heaviest penalties of the law.
In the second, it recommended the purchase of full-sized
dolls and complete layettes as part of the school equip-
ment, in order to accustom the elder scholars to the
care and protection of infant life. Comment is super-
fluous. Nothing that a girl can learn at school can be
compared in importance to a thorough grasp of the
fact that her first and most urgent duties must always
be within the family circle, and that the welfare of
the future citizens of the race is the province of social
endeavour which falls naturally to her share.

As we have already said, the problem of education
and the problem of training are in many aspects two
entirely separate affairs ; that of training is a matter of
expediency for the individual, of efficiency for the
nation. As training affects the chances of survival of
one man rather than another, of one generation in a
nation instead of its rival overseas, so it exercises an
indirect effect in determining racial or individual pre-
ponderance. But the history of the Jewish nation
shows us that, given an educational and religious up-
bringing of a satisfactory type and of sufficient strength,
any form of training may be safely superadded.

The outlook upon life as a whole, the question of
the right development of the inborn qualities of each
man or woman — duly considering the necessary sub-
ordination of the individual to the race — the teaching
of traditional wisdom and racial experience, the true
relation of the able and competent to the weakly and
feckless, the amount of sacrifice to be exacted from the

122 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

present for the benefit of future citizens, or the weight
of the burden to be cast on future generations in order
that certain existing persons may live unchecked and
die unharassed, all these problems should be included
within the scope of education, in so far as such sub-
jects can be separated from the sphere of influence of
religion. They are matters which are unrecognized by
the education authorities and are often ignored or
slurred over by the Churches. Yet all students of
heredity are deeply concerned with the solution thereof,
for in a correct adjustment lies the turn of the scale
which in the long run has decided the fate of nations.

CHAPTER IX

HEREDITY AND POLITICS

A DISTINGUISHED bishop and penetrating scholar of the
last generation, to whom one of us was presented for
the first time many years ago, opened the conversation
by saying : " What is your opinion of the theory of
politics ? " At that time we had no answer ready ; and,
in spite of all the attention paid to political questions,
it is clear that most men, especially those engaged in
active political life, have still no idea that a general
theory of politics is necessary or even possible.

What is the ultimate aim of government, administra-
tive and legislative ? Is there indeed any ultimate aim,
when we pierce beneath the shallow puerilities of such
modern phrases as " that the will of the people should
prevail " ? " What's for their good, not what pleases
them, that's the question," was Cromwell's statement
of the problem ; and, in their characteristic frank
brutality, his words have a truer ring than most of the
question-begging phrases with which politicians pay
their way at the present day.

But even if we accept " what's for their good " as a
step in advance, we have still to inquire into the
meaning of good. If by good we mean the comfort

123

i24 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

and pleasure of the present fleeting generation, we may
but revert to the usual position by another road.

The older statesmen had a larger outlook than some
of those of to-day. The theory of power, which was
replaced first by the principle of protection and then
by the economic and social theories of free trade and
laissez-faire , contemplated a strong and sound, self-
reliant nation both from the economic and military
points of view as the object to be kept steadily before
the eyes. The methods by which this goal was sought
were frequently defective, especially from the economic
side ; but the consciousness that aggregate economic
wealth was not the only or even the highest object
of government was a better foundation for political
thought than the greedy protectionism or the doctrinaire
Manchesterismus which successively replaced it.

Now a " theory of power " which takes account of
modern biological knowledge in a strenuous effort to
improve the physical, mental and moral state of the
race both by environment and heredity, and by their
interaction one on the other, seems to us a good basis
for political endeavour. We do not claim for it finality
or even completeness. But it gives a point of view
which has been almost entirely overlooked in modern
times, and one which is more likely to lead in the
future to many of the conditions which politicians wish
to secure than the seemingly more direct roads, some
of which, when followed, drop into intervening chasms
and quagmires.

For, if we can raise the innate qualities of our race,
so that it becomes abler, stronger and more efficient,
not only will it be in a state to take better advantage

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 125

of any improvement in the environment, but it will
naturally improve its own environment. Improvements
in environment are made possible by the genius of our
ablest men and carried out by the ability and industry
of competent administrators. So, if the average ability
of the nation be raised, improvements in environment
will assuredly follow. If, on the other hand, the
racial efficiency fall, it requires more and more expendi-
ture of effort to keep up the rate of environmental
advance, and thus to maintain the position already won.
Finally, the race would become unable to maintain its
existing environment, and a decline in civilization
must follow.

Let us then accept the racial point of view, and
regard as the ultimate aim of politics the improvement
of the racial qualities of the nation. Let us consider
both legislation and administration from this aspect.
Let us ask of each proposal, not how it will affect
the comfort or convenience of the existing generation,
but how it will affect the inborn qualities of future
generations.

On these lines we shall find a new clue to politics.
It will not necessarily follow that in practice this clue
ought exclusively to be followed. Future gain may
sometimes be purchased at too heavy a present price,
or, at all events, at a price which it is impossible to get
the present generation to pay. But, in existing con-
ditions, the racial point of view is almost entirely
ignored, and more good may be done in emphasizing
a forgotten lesson, than in attempting a complete
analysis of the whole political problem.

126 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

Although no broad principle underlies the distinction,
it may be convenient to classify the possible effects of
legislation on race into the direct and indirect. We
should get direct effects if we determined to segregate
the feeble-minded, or, on the other hand, paid govern-
mental subsidies based on a principle the reverse of
that of the graduated income tax to the competent
parents of healthy and numerous children. We get
indirect effects when, by the results of humanitarian
laws, we make things too comfortable for the wastrel,
incidentally encourage his reproduction, or, by the
pressure of the concomitant taxation, lead efficient
families on the border-line of their natural social
standard of comfort to restrict the number of their
children from motives of economy.

Till the present day, no direct racial legislation has
been attempted, though the time is over ripe for
dealing with the problem of the feeble-minded. We
may leave, therefore, direct effects till we consider the
possibilities of the future.

But the indirect effects of legislation on race are
an old story. If we are correct in believing that
the variations of type among us, as indicated by the
different social strata, show the existence of variations of
innate physical and mental characteristics as real though
infinitely more elusive than the differences between, for
example, the Highland cattle and the Guernsey cow,
then we must recollect that conditions suitable to one
type are not necessarily applicable to another. Uni-
formity of environment is only possible for an
undifferentiated race, not yet emerged from the most
primitive conditions of social organization. Almost

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 127

any change of law in states of complicated social
structure favours economically some class at the expense
of another, and thus makes it easier for members of
the one to marry early, and rear successfully a large
number of offspring. Hence all legislative action is
necessarily exercising a selective effect from the bio-
logical point of view, and the danger lies in the fact
that this selective pressure is applied not only ignorantly
but actually inadvertently. Hence arises the import-
ance of politics from the racial point of view. If we
establish a preponderating rate of reproduction in any
one section of the community, in a few generations it
increases relatively so rapidly in geometrical progression
that it tends to swamp the rest. Its peculiarities
become the characteristics of the race, its distinctive
features the general qualities of the nation. On the
other hand, if we make the environment harder for
any one class, we tend to depress its rate of reproduction,
and it may be reduced rapidly in number relatively
to the stocks which have received more favourable
treatment. Its qualities and characters disappear from
the race.

It is essential to fix in one's mind this great truth
of the fluctuating racial character of a nation. The
race is not of constant quality, immutable through the
ages. It is an organism, sensitive to every influence,
and moulded to one form or another as a careless touch
is laid on it here or there.

This result holds good in all ages. Even when
the race was reproducing itself at a natural rate, the
number of marriages depended on the pressure of
external causes, economic or political, and rose and fell

128 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

with changes in the price of corn or with the declaration
of peace or war. But, since 1875, the people have
learnt to restrict voluntarily the number of births in
married life, and the rate of reproduction has become
almost indefinitely more sensitive to outside influences,
such as those exercised by social conventions and habits
and legislative, especially financial, burdens.

In all ranks of life children are a heavy expense —
an expense which rises roughly in proportion to the
position of the family, and falls heavily on all save on
the very rich in all classes (that is, on those who have
more than enough to support themselves in their
natural position), and on the thriftless pauper, who can
now look with confidence to the State for the mainten-
ance of himself and an unlimited number of equally
casual offspring. In almost every household, an
increasing number of children means a diminution
in comfort and economic freedom, while, where the
income is small, each new child may mean actually less
food and clothing for the existing members of the
family.

This being so, economic causes, added to other
motives, lead at once to restriction of the birth-rate
among the thrifty and far-seeing, as soon as the burden
of children is felt to be too severe.

On the other hand, among the reckless and incom-
petent, especially when they suffer from mental defect,
no such restraining motives are operative, and no
restriction of births checks the propagation of their
undesirable qualities. They reproduce themselves at a
natural rate, and are only checked by natural causes.
In old days, the pressure of life was more severe.

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 129

Fewer of the unsound lived to reach maturity, and
the very high infant mortality among their offspring
tended to weed the tainted stock out of the race.
Out of a family of ten or twelve, only the one or two,
whom the law of averages tells us may be as good
or better in development than their parents, could be
expected to survive.

These considerations open up the broadest question
we have to investigate. We have already dealt with one
aspect of this question when considering the selective
action of disease. Improvements in medicine, surgery,
sanitation and hygiene weaken the selective action of
disease, and check the purification of the race from the
predisposition to disease. But we have seen reason to
hope that the compensating advantages, even from the
racial point of view, may be greater than the loss.

But the amelioration in the environment due to
improvements in medicine and hygiene is only one
side of a general tendency. Misfortune and lack of
success of all kinds are now met with help both from
charity and the State in a way unknown before. We
hear little about the principle of least eligibility in the
distribution of relief. Hungry school-children are
fed ; unemployed labourers are supported by relief
works ; the sick are tended gratuitously in well-
appointed hospitals ; the old have pensions freely
given to them regardless of their previous record. As
Dr Tredgold has well put it : " It is impossible to
look round without seeing that the entire country,
from John o' Groats to Land's End, is flooded with
institutions, societies and agencies, not for the better-

9

1 30 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

ment of the fit, but for the care of the unfit : agencies
whose chief mission is to provide shelter, food,
clothing, comforts, medical treatment and other forms
of assistance for those of proved mental, physical and
social incapacity ; and even for those who, having the
capacity, will not exert it. ... I have no hesitation in
saying, from personal experience, that nowadays the
degenerate offspring of the feeble-minded and chronic
pauper is treated with more solicitude, has better food,
clothing and medical attention, and has greater
advantages, than the child of the respectable and inde-
pendent working man. So much is this the case that
the people are beginning to realize that thrift, honesty
and self-denial do not pay."

From such a competent observer as Dr Tredgold
this is a terrible indictment of the result of indis-
criminate and uninformed humanitarian legislation and
charity. But when we pass from the consideration of
the direct effects of such action to the more wide-spread
indirect consequences, we come to see that even more
harm is done than appears at first sight.

All these methods of relief cost money. Whether
given voluntarily in charity, or compulsorily in rates and
taxes, that money goes in unremunerative expenditure.
Helping a competent man to establish himself in a
secure position may benefit immensely the resources of
the nation. Assisting a " feeble-minded and chronic
pauper " to bring into existence and rear to maturity an
indefinite number of feeble-minded children, increases
incalculably both the present and future drain on the
wealth of the community, besides increasing the stock
of preventible misery in the world. Even giving those

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 131

feeble-minded children an education in special schools,
which cost three times the relative amount that do
normal schools, is in large measure a waste of public
resources. They will never be more than just able to
keep themselves under competent direction, and the
money lavished on them might have trained double the
number of competent workmen to a higher degree of
useful skill. Moreover, unless the control and super-
vision last through life, the training may even do
permanent harm in making the unsound less unattract-
ive, and hence more likely to marry and give birth
to and rear children to perpetuate their infirmities.

In this and other ways the money and energy spent
indiscriminately may be much worse than unremunera-
tive. It may actually tend to multiply the unsound,
and increase the average degeneracy of the nation.

Forcibly to take a share of the earnings of those who
are not competent to spend their wages wisely, and to
lay it out on their behalf on education, clothing and
food, may result in an advantage sufficient to com-
pensate for the destruction of personal responsibility.
To abstract more than is strictly necessary for national
purposes from able and competent people, who can
make good use of their resources, is a step on the
downward path of discouragement, too often meted
out to our best citizens. The parable of the Talents
contains teaching which is at least as authentic as the
lesson in that of the Good Samaritan.

And now let us turn to the other side of the shield.
As these agencies are established with the avowed
intention of favouring the unfit both directly and
indirectly, and as they tend to encourage the more rapid

1 32 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

reproduction of the unsound, so they bear hardly on the
fit, and not only check the efficient members of society
who might desire to bring up a natural number of
children, but impair the conditions of environment in
which these children might otherwise have been reared.
The supplies which go to the unsound in all ranks of
life, either through inheritance, charity, or through
rates and taxes, will always be a direct and unprofitable
drain on the national resources. As much as is spent
in these ways, so much the less is there for other
purposes. Less is spent directly in the wages of
competent men, less capital can be accumulated to
stimulate further enterprise.

Now a demand for the services of competent men
brings more of them into employment, and tends to
raise their rate of wages. Hence more competent men
are in a position to buy goods, and they are all able to
buy more. Therefore industry, and with it the wealth
of the country, is increased. Moreover, more competent
men are able to support wives and families, and that
most essential part of the future wealth of nations, a
supply of competent children, is increased.

If, on the other hand, we trace that part of the with-
drawn money which would have gone to swell the
stores of accumulated capital, we are perhaps on more
debatable, or at all events more debated, ground.
Still, most economists are agreed that the accumulation
of capital, by increasing its supply and by cheapening
it, stimulates industry, and again brings into employ-
ment the services of competent men, with the beneficial
results we have seen above.

Both these processes are checked by the worse than

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 133

unremunerative expenditure which goes to favour the
unfit at the expense of the fit. Hence by it the
number of competent men able to earn a living is
diminished, while the average wage of those in employ-
ment is lowered.

Much of the unrest in the labour world at present is
due to the failure of wages to rise from 1900 onwards
in proportion to the increased cost of living, an increase
which will probably continue and may accelerate. For
part at all events of this failure we may look to the
vastly increased unremunerative expenditure which has
gone to maintaining and superintending the unfit.
Directly, they take from the nation money which would
go, one way or another, in increased wages. Indirectly,
generation by generation the result is to swell the
number of the incompetent, and decrease the average
inborn efficiency of the race.

At one point questions of practical politics touch an
even wider problem of race than those which deal with
the differences of inborn qualities of various sections
of one nation. The effect of the interbreeding between
different races is one of the most difficult subjects
which the future has to face. Much more knowledge
must be acquired before we can deal confidently with
it. Yet some tentative conclusions may already be
formulated.1

Both by experiments with animals and by observa-
tions on mankind, new races are found to arise by a
lucky cross, and subsequent isolation and inbreeding.

1 See The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, by H. S. Chamberlain,
voL i. p. 269.

134 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

The thoroughbred horse has arisen by the union in
the past of Arab stallions with good English mares,
and the careful preservation of their progeny from
other strains of blood for many generations. The
nations of ancient Greece and Rome and modern
England and Japan arose from definite crosses at one
period or a few periods in time, and subsequent
isolation for longer or shorter periods of years, secured
to them by their geographical position on peninsulas
or islands.

It is not easy to predict what elements will give a
successful cross. Firstly, it is clear that the parent races
themselves must be virile and sound. Secondly, if they
are too divergent, we get a mongrel race with the best
qualities of both ancestors blurred. The cross-breeds
of South America nowadays, and the mixture of races
which followed the expansion of Rome and heralded
its decay, point the dangers. Thirdly, the new race
must have a time of isolation and inbreeding to estab-
lish itself, show its worth and fix its characters ; and
this is the r61e played by the separation and political
crystallization of distinct nationalities. Fourthly, the
main theme of this book, a constant selection of the
best elements must be maintained within the nation.
Fifthly, occasional re-crossing with other, not too dis-
similar, strains may add to the vigour of the race,
provided once more that re-crossing be limited in time,
and that the new stock be appropriate and well-bred.

Little attention has been given yet to the effect on
the average national character which is likely to be
produced by the continued immigration into England
of large masses of people from Eastern Europe.

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 135

They are for the most part already of mixed race —
typical slum-dwellers who have settled in the slum
districts of our large towns, and have taken possession
of large areas of London. From the fact that the
governments of their own countries show no concern
at their departure, it is fair to assume that they repre-
sent a class of the population who have no great value
from the social and economic point of view. It is
clear that they belong to a different type of organization
from the people they displace, for they are able to
flourish in conditions which are deemed degrading for
the native English population.

It would be most desirable to have some definite
information as to the attributes and previous social
history of this class of immigrants before they are ad-
mitted to our shores. What are their racial character-
istics, their physical infirmities, their mental capacities,
their moral proclivities ? It is certain that they find
themselves in a more favourable environment than the
one they have left behind, but from our point of view
the question is whether they represent a more desirable
class of citizens than, let us say, the two hundred
thousand emigrants who annually leave our shores for
the colonies — for whom, in fact, we exchange them.

Moreover, if they are to be absorbed in the mass of
the population, it becomes necessary to inquire into
the results of intermarriage. Does the cross between
our own race and these Slavs produce good results ? If
the results of a first cross are good, are the racial
qualities of the half-breeds improved or deteriorated
by further admixture of alien blood ? All these are
questions of fundamental importance. Yet, when the

136 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

Aliens Bill was under discussion, we heard much of
unfair industrial competition and much of the sacred
principle of the right of asylum for political and
religious refugees, past, present and to come, and little
of the welfare of the English race and of the biological
problems which are the real heart of the matter.

To improve environment is a favourite occupation
of all good people, and it is generally accepted as a
beneficent action towards the community, in whatever
circumstances it takes place. Now let us take an
illustration from the gardening or farming world. To
trench, stir, fertilize and drain a tract of ground is a
praiseworthy effort of the husbandman ; but it is not
complete in itself. The second step, even more im-
portant than the first, is to replant that ground with
good seed. To leave the newly stirred area to be
overrun with chickweed and groundsel of however
robust a growth is not a beneficent action — better the
old, ill-grown plants of greater utility, the shabby
pasture-land, the short-strawed wheat. But one thing
is certain, the ground will not remain unoccupied.

So in the world of human beings. To improve
environment does not necessarily lead to the production
of a finer race, though it is worth accomplishing for
other reasons, and, as we have seen above, brings
about a separation of the sounder stocks from the
worthless — a separation of great biological value. But
if the district which has been cleared of its insanitary
dwellings, and has had large sums of money spent on
the provision of a better water-supply and an efficient
scheme of drainage, be immediately taken possession

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 137

of by a type of inhabitant accustomed to a lower
standard of cleanliness and hygiene, the result may
be a marked increase in the less desirable elements
of the population, while the better type of man will
move off, and if he does' not leave the country he will
be squeezed again on to the border-line of subsistence
by pressure from below. If the improved environment
be due to the exertions and foresight of the people who
will profit by it, it will probably have the desired effect.
If it be the result of action from above, and lead to
some species of migration of an inferior type, the
biological results of the improvement require to be
most carefully scanned. Herein lies the danger of all
environmental improvement without adequate con-
sideration of racial effects. Without due forethought,
it is as easy to sow tares as corn, and where the human
race is concerned there is no annual harvest or stock-
taking, at which the one can be separated from the
other. Nor, indeed, is there any sharp line of de-
marcation between the two. All we can say is that
there are tares and there is corn, with every degree of
human imperfection intervening ; and we may safely
assert that the tares are usually the most prolific and least
exacting organisms of the two. With human beings,
as in the animal and vegetable worlds, it is the higher
types who require the greater care and consideration.

" The Eugenics of Migrants " is the title of a
suggestive paper which was recently published in the
Eugenics Review.1 Nearly every species is limited to a
restricted environment, in which its specially developed

1 By Major Charles E. Woodruff, M.D. Eugenics Review, January 1911.

138 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

qualities are beneficial and have a survival value. Each
type that migrates will, in time, either die out or ex-
hibit the inborn characters which fit it for residence in
its new place of abode. The original prehistoric migra-
tory movements over the surface of the earth were
extremely slow, and the type had time to alter and evolve
new combinations of characters during its journeyings.
But with our rapid means of transport and, in England,
with the unrestricted right of entry to our shores, any
alteration of environment by legislative action or social
endeavour leads to an immediate movement of popula-
tion. We make the conditions of life easier. Does a
good class of citizen take advantage of the betterment
to spread itself out, or do poorer specimens of humanity
crowd in and seize upon the opportunity to multiply
up to their lower level of subsistence ? We stiffen the
standard required for successful survival. Do we
squeeze out some deserving members of the com-
munity, or do we discover and set free the families in
which energy and endurance lie concealed ?

It is a fundamental mistake to think that any type
can dwell anywhere. The migrant himself may not
perish prematurely, but the permanent survival of the
stock he represents depends on the power of adjusting
the environment and the possibilities of adaptation
inherent in the individual. Tall men will survive in
one set of circumstances, short men are essential to
another ; there is a relation to be observed between
the intensity of light of a region and the depth of
pigmentation of the skin ; nostrils are narrow in cold
climates and broad in damp, warm atmospheric condi-
tions. The size of the brain and the general level of

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 139

intelligence vary with the demands made on a population
for forethought, ingenuity and craftsmanship. Where
climatic conditions or philanthropic assistance do away
with the necessity for obtaining shelter and clothing
by personal exertion, and where the resources of Nature
and the good humour of society provide all that is
required in the way of sustenance, there is no survival
value in the possession of such qualities as industry
or skill, sobriety and frugality, and, given a sufficient
number of generations, these qualities will assuredly
show signs of decay.

Here then we have the reason why a study of
anthropology is of such supreme importance to those
who take upon themselves the responsible work of
directing a nation. One type will survive and multi-
ply in conditions that are fatal to another. An
alteration of the conditions will affect at once the
relative chances of survival of two interacting species ;
and every piece of legislation, every effort of social
enterprise, is practically a weighting of the scales for
or against one variety as compared with another.

The tall blond Teutonic race tend to disappear as
soon as they reach the enervating shores of the Medi-
terranean Sea, although they persist a little longer in
the cool uplands, which more nearly resemble their
northern place of origin. City life is also found to be
destructive to the fair-skinned stocks, who are among
the most successful colonists of the open spaces of
Canada and the United States. The negro and the
Indian die of consumption in northern climates ; the
white man suffers increasingly from disease as he goes
south, and has to be hurried off to hill stations and

1 40 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

alpine sanatoria. We may take it for a fact that,
should migration cease, each local population would
in time become adjusted to its climate and environ-
ment ; while a constant movement of population must
lead to the perpetual destruction of types that are
unfitted to the new surroundings.

A very great deal of human energy is certainly wasted
in trying to alter environment to suit capacity, instead
of distributing individuals in existing conditions which
are favourable to their development, or in segregating
and so putting an end to types which cannot under any
circumstances be profitable servants to the nation as
a whole. Endless instances will occur to people who
are accustomed to deal in different capacities with men
throughout the world, as to the importance of consider-
ing the inborn or hereditary qualities of human beings.
The Italian labourers, for instance, can work with far
less discomfort in the great transalpine railway enter-
prises than workmen from Germany or Switzerland.
The darker race, for some reason unknown to us, suffer
to a less extent from the painful " caisson " disease
consequent on the high-pressure tunnelling operations.
Thirty years ago, when all the corn coming to England
was discharged at the ports in sacks carried on men's
backs, it was well known that short dark-skinned
labourers, although on an average they took a smaller
load in the course of the day, would nevertheless hardly
suffer from an agonizing form of " sore back " due to
the friction of the canvas sacks, which would soon
disable the tall, fair-haired, light-skinned type of man.
Again, in Portugal, where the labourers of the southern
districts, a heterogeneous race of mixed origin, are said

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 141

to be of an indolent, unintelligent character, a large
employer of labour declared that it was possible to get
workmen of energy and capacity far above the average
of the Lisbon district by drawing supplies of labour
from the villages around the lines of Torres Vedras,
where, more than a hundred years ago, the English
soldiers left behind them a large number of illegiti-
mate offspring. Here then we have an entirely over-
looked effect of our Peninsular campaign.

We have seen reason to believe that the evolutionary
meaning of the class divisions, which appear among all
civilized and semi-civilized nations, is to be sought in
the greater efficiency those divisions give in the per-
formance of the many and varied functions of a civilized
state. In a blind, rudimentary and imperfect way,
successful nations have bred different qualities into
different sections of their people, just as they have,
to a clearer extent, into the different species of their
domestic animals ; and, since children tend inevitably on
the average to inherit their parents' aptitudes, since sons
frequently follow their fathers' professions and avail
themselves of the advantages of the family environment,
this segregation of qualities makes for efficiency, by
adjusting the inborn characters of each man to the work
which will lie ready to his hand. Once the process has
started either in man or beast, we are in a fair way
to build up the class distinctions which seem to some
people, where man is concerned, the height of stupidity,
prejudice and injustice, and, in the animal world, a
triumph of foresight and human intelligence.

Thus the labouring classes gradually appropriate a

i42 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

large share of physical strength and endurance, and the
instinctive skill in manual work which so often excites
our admiration. Thus the clerk inherits assiduity and
accuracy, and the honesty without which other clerkly
qualities are as nought. Thus the manufacturer's son
is born with the power of managing the complicated
system of his mill, and of foreseeing the combinations
and other factors which control the markets for his
goods. Thus the soldier possesses the instinct of self-
sacrifice, the power of commanding men, with that
quick insight and decision in a dark situation which
are necessary for success in the " fog of war." Thus
the old governing classes of England, as of other
similar nations, incorporate an instinctive sense of
public duty and acquire a large share of the natural
aptitude for administration.

It has been said by a competent observer that the
collective stupidity even of the most intelligent and
civilized societies is stupendous. " A society will pro-
fess to believe in human equality and yet maintain
enormous differences of social position. It will destroy
distinctions of rank and thereby leave the field open
for the most insidious and irresponsible form of power,
that of plutocracy. Its democratic jealousy will debar
the upper classes from all access to honourable and
useful careers of social service, and it will thereupon
complain of the idle rich. It will try to cure poverty
by alms-giving, and to restrain animalism by preaching
celibacy." What are we to take as the real mind of
society on these points — the doctrine it preaches or
the conditions it establishes ? Who is to interpret this
oft-quoted, much-vaunted " will of the people " ?

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 143

This irrationality and childishness of modern society
is extremely striking, and suggests nothing so much as
the attitude of a community which is being pushed
aimlessly from below, not led intelligently from above.
The probable result of a determined and successful
effort to keep down class distinctions would be a
return to the condition of an undifferentiated chaos of
humanity. The only logical result of a real belief
in human equality would be to bestow the suffrage
equally on the feeble-minded and the inhabitants of
prisons and lunatic asylums. An attempt to destroy
the governing classes is as little rational as an attempt
to abolish the labouring classes. Both are highly
skilled, highly specialized varieties of humanity ; both
are absolutely essential in the modern state. Even
the advocate of universal suffrage sees it necessary to
limit the distribution of power somewhere. To de-
nounce class distinctions and to preach human equality
is to misunderstand the conditions under which civiliza-
tion has emerged from chaos.

Now as regards the governing classes there is a very
interesting tendency at work. In response to the
popular mandate, fortified by a belief in human equality,
both in national and local affairs power has been taken
from what we may term the old hereditary governing
class, built up by a thousand years of social evolution.
It has been placed apparently in the hands of those
who win the suffrages of the mass of the people,
and in reality has passed largely into the grip of such
persons as can frustrate certain intellectual obstacles
placed in their way by the examination of the Civil

144 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

Service Commissioners. But neither of these methods
of selection gives us any assurance that we have secured
the services of a competent legislator or an administrator.
A man serves his country either from a sense of duty
or for the prospect of material gain and personal
advantage ; and we are now at the beginning of the
evolution of two other species of governing classes, so
that only time, a long time, will show what this new
segregation of qualities portends. The arts of the
demagogue, who possesses the power of influencing the
masses, are also highly specialized qualities, and will
be inherited directly from father to son. In America,
where there are no classes, no differences of rank and
all men are born equal — hypothetically at least, — the
" boss " is already a well-recognized variety, with special
characteristics of his own. These characteristics are said
to consist of enormous powers of physical endurance,
vast supplies of nervous energy, great organizing
capacity and a> phenomenal "jaw" development. The
power of passing examinations, which has been humor-
ously described as a low form of cunning, has also been
shown to descend from father to son. We have there-
fore some indications of the qualities which will adorn
our new governing classes. The one will fill our
elective bodies and our public services, in virtue of their
power of controlling or of ingratiating themselves with
the electors ; and the other, the real masters, will form
a bureaucratic class, with special capacities, first of all,
for outwitting examiners, and afterwards for rigid
adhesion to official precedent, and power of managing
the first-named class, to whom they are nominally
subordinate. On considering this prospect, it is cold

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 145

comfort to think that each nation probably gets the
governing class it deserves.

But we can follow our investigation further. An
increasing number of young men of the upper classes
in England, finding fewer careers in the government
of the country open to them, and certain of far better
remuneration elsewhere, are participating in the trade
of the country, where singleness of aim and assured
standards of personal honour and corporate honesty
are found to have a substantial commercial value.
Now the same process has been at work for a long
time across the Atlantic. For many years past, the
great majority of the ablest, best bred, best educated
men of the United States of America have found their
natural sphere of activity in the business world, where
their innate capacity for government has once more
come to the front ; until it is extremely doubtful whether
the Senate of the United States and the political boss,
representing the people, or the manipulators of the
great Railroad and Trust companies, representing what-
ever exists of a hereditary governing class, are the
true rulers of that land of freedom. We are apparently
at the beginning of the same process in England.

On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly difficult
to find suitable men who are willing to serve on the
numerous bodies elected to deal with our national and
local affairs. We have to face in the first place the
real deficiency of men of ability caused by the decline
in the birth-rate of the abler sections of the community ;
and then, owing partly to the increased burdens of
taxation on these same classes, we must realize that
a far larger proportion of their members have entered

10

146 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

on remunerative employment, and that we can no longer
command their unpaid services. There is a further
difficulty that is not often alluded to in public, but one
which is undoubtedly a deterrent to many people who
might be willing to undertake public work. In nothing
are the various sections of the community more greatly
differentiated than in their standards of honesty, good
behaviour and fair dealing. A man from one class would
feel it degrading to take advantage of an opportunity
which another type of man thinks it criminal folly to
let slip. Accusations of bad faith and ill-conduct are
made almost with impunity amongst some people and
are forgotten in a week, whereas in other circles they
form a barrier to any future mutual co-operation. In-
herent differences like these probably constitute the
greatest obstacles to any successful government by a
group of associated persons coming from widely con-
trasted social spheres. The most sensitive and the
most honourable are the first to retire from associations
which are distasteful to them, and we have yet another
reason for expecting to find that as time goes on the
standard especially of the smaller local elected bodies
will suffer a slight but progressive lowering of quality
and singleness of aim.

Some of the signs of the times in this respect are
not altogether reassuring. One may note constantly
the differences of opinion that arise between the elected
local administrative bodies and the Government offices
in London. It is constantly necessary, in the interests
of educational efficiency, decent sanitation, or even of
straightforward finance, for the decisions of the local
" representatives of the people " to be overruled by

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 147

the appropriate Government office, sometimes on the
motion of a small minority of ratepayers who represent
the traditions of the old "governing class." In such
cases, at least, a better result would have been reached
at an expenditure of one-tenth the time and money
by the direct action of the older system of local
government by the county magistrates, in spite of
popular witticisms at the expense of the " Great
Unpaid." Doubtless, as F. W. Maitland said, to be
great and yet unpaid is, to some ways of thinking, a
piece of aristocratic insolence.

When the local bodies are satisfactory, the divergence
of aim between them and the Government departments
still continues. Even the county councils are subject to
constant interference and harassing restriction emanat-
ing from the central authorities, until the heart is taken
out of all individual local effort and initiative, and
the government of the county passes increasingly into
the hands of paid officials, local and imperial, who soon
learn how to manipulate the strings of the dejected
elected bodies.

The late Professor Maitland, one of the most
sound as well as the most brilliant of English his-
torians, called attention to the certain appearance
of this especial difficulty when, in 1888, proposals
were laid before the country for replacing the ad-
ministration of county affairs through the justices by
a scheme of local' government through representatives
of the people, elected on to county, district and
parish councils.

"The average justice of the peace,"1 he wrote, "is

1 "The Shallows and Silences of Real Life," Collected Papers, vol. i.

148 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

a far more capable man than the average alderman, or
the average guardian of the poor. As a governor he
is doomed, but there has been no accusation. He is
cheap, he is pure, he is capable, but he is doomed ;
he is to be sacrificed to a theory, on the altar of the
spirit of the age."

Maitland foresaw clearly that the smaller elected
bodies would be far from satisfactory, that it was
almost impossible that they should attract into their
service men of the same calibre as had formerly taken
charge of local affairs. He regarded them chiefly as
a means of accustoming an uninitiated electorate to
more important duties of national control. "There
will be jobbery and corruption, incompetence and
extravagance, very possibly there will be gross in-
justice. Then will come the cry for ever fresh inter-
ferences on the part of the central Government, for
more State-appointed inspectors, accountants, auditors ;
but if the lesson of the past fifty years has really been
of any good to us, the cry should be resolutely resisted.
The local bodies should be left to flounder and blunder
towards better things. A local board under the pre-
sent pressure of central government is a sorry thing :
a body which, if it is unwise, is futile ; which, if it is
wise, is governed by its clerk. That pressure should
be lightened ; there is no good in half trusting men ;
they should be trusted fully or not at all. The fullest
trust, however, does not necessarily imply that the
person trusted is wise ; it may well mean only that he
ought to have an opportunity of showing himself how
unwise he is. Give the local c authorities ' a large room
in which, if they can do no better, they can at least

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 149

make fools of themselves upon a very considerable and
striking scale."

This analysis and forecast of twenty-three years'
standing, by the foremost historian of English law and
local government, is very interesting in its completeness,
and shows a profound knowledge of social conditions
and of human nature. But his advice has been dis-
regarded ; the cry for more inspectors, accountants and
auditors is heard on all sides, and the nation may be in
the hands of a bureaucracy before it has been allowed
to learn what democratic government really means.

Maitland was one of the few Englishmen who had
at once a real grasp of political theory and an unrivalled
sight, based on historic knowledge, into the character of
his fellow-citizens.

In these days when our Constitution is under re-
vision, it may be useful to discuss the question of the
forms of government best suited to secure full con-
sideration for problems of race, and proper weight to
the welfare of the future when its interests clash with
those of the present.

Accepting an elective House as a necessary part of
a modern state, it only remains to add a word or two
of caution. The lowering of the franchise to the
point at which it now stands, the successive work of
both political parties, may have been necessary and
even desirable. It has probably resulted in a consider-
able fall both in experience and ability in the average
type of member who is elected to the House of
Commons ; but that result may have been an un-
avoidable concomitant of a necessary change, and would

1 50 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

indeed tend to make the House more "representative"
in the strict sense of the word. The only question
that remains is how far the " representative " principle
should descend on these lines — how large a proportion
of the nation should be governed by persons who are
probably physically, mentally and morally of an inferior
type to themselves.

But in dealing with the proposals for further ex-
tension of the franchise, a new question is involved.
Hitherto, although we may know that the intelligence
of the bulk of the electorate, in the main, is far less
than that of a selected few, the electors have been men
of recognized position, and some fixity of abode and
occupation, and hence probably of some ability or
competence. Their knowledge and experience have
been valuable additions to the common store. But
any considerable further lowering of the franchise will
bring into action a different section of the community.
Some of them might be desirable acquisitions : men
of necessarily roving trade or profession, or men of
intelligence who had fallen through no fault of their
own. But on the average and in the bulk they would
consist of the social failures, the undesirable element of
the population, men of far less ability and competence
than the present average electorate. Some of them
would be men who most need restraint on their
liberties, a spur to their activities, and a check on their
reproductiveness. Nearly all would be in a position
and of a physical type of mind and body where long-
sighted views are impossible ; where a promised, if
illusory, chance of the amelioration of present conditions
at the expense of other people, would outweigh a

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 151

thousandfold a certain injury to unborn generations.
Such a class of electors would fall an easy prey to the
alluring genius of the typical political "boss." To
create such an electorate is to create a suitable environ-
ment in which political corruption may take root and
flourish. Its establishment would lead to a further
degradation of the citizenship of the working man, a
degradation which is often attributed to the influence of
party caucuses, themselves brought into being by the
necessity of manipulating a large body of voters who
have neither the instinct, the tradition nor the educa-
tion to fit them for their responsibilities.

From the point of view of racial welfare, therefore,
it seems as though, in an elected chamber, democratic
representation of any section of the community, who,
in the interests of the majority and especially of
the future of the State, cannot be trusted with the
management of their own affairs and the direction
of their own problems of education, hygiene and sub-
sistence, is a serious error of political philosophy. It
may even be said to constitute a distinct dereliction of
duty and throwing up of responsibility on the part of the
citizens whose abilities have created the modern state
and marked them out to be the conscious directors of
national policy. The position of the negro and half-
caste voter in the United States of America, and of
the unenfranchised native population of South Africa,
affords an instructive commentary on this portion of
our subject. We believe that the " colour " line masks
and conceals differences of more fundamental im-
portance, and that these instances of political inequality
illustrate a principle of far more extended application.

1 52 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

The history of the extension of the Roman franchise
and its ultimate effects must not be forgotten. Rome,
it has been said, was not made but unmade by its
politicians. One can hardly overestimate the capacity
for wrong-doing which lies in the hands of purely
political heroes, who thrive on popular enthusiasms,
and neither understand nor sympathize with the genius
of development, inherent in the stocks wherein lies
the true driving force of a nation. " For exactly a
thousand years, the citizens of Rome (with whom
those of the other cities of Italy and of other specially
deserving states had gradually been put on an equal
footing) had enjoyed certain privileges, but they had
gained them by burdensome responsibility as well as
by restless, incomparably successful hard work." l

As Rome became more cosmopolitan, the franchise
was lowered by successive steps, until, in the third
century after Christ, an emperor, not of the dominant
race, the degraded Caracalla, extended the privileges of
citizenship to all inhabitants of the Empire. Whereat
Rome ceased to be Rome and gave way rapidly before
the equality of absolute lawlessness. The influence of
the stocks who had built up the State was finally
destroyed under cover of such well-sounding phrases
as universal franchise and the religion of mankind.

In considering the composition of a second chamber
two main principles seem proper to be borne in mind.
Firstly, we should aim at securing a hearing for experts
in some of the main branches of human knowledge
which bear on the science of government. Many of

1 The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, H. S. Chamberlain, vol. i. p. 124.

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 153

our greatest men are as little likely to be appreciated
by as to appreciate the average electorate. Great
soldiers and sailors, able administrators from home and
colonial life, eminent economists and sociologists with
knowledge of practical affairs, men of science capable
of applying their stores of learning, should all prepon-
deratingly and directly be represented in the govern-
ment of a country.

Secondly, to obtain consideration for the claims of
the future, it is difficult to see how some application of
the hereditary principle can be foregone. Judging
from history, the representatives of distinguished
families are probably our most valuable national
asset. The inheritance of responsibility, combined
with the inheritance of privilege, was the earliest as
well as one of the most effective methods evolved by
the human race for obtaining a continuity of tradition
and securing to the community the advantages of the
instinctive habit of considering the family, especially in
its future development, as apart from the individual
in his relation to the present.

It is unwise to make constitutions on theoretical
considerations, but if we were asked to determine the
function of any two coexistent chambers in a modern
state, we should say that, broadly speaking, one should
represent and deal with the present population and its
needs, the other should have in its charge the main-
tenance of the best racial traditions and the duty of
exercising by legislative function a wise foresight over
the future destinies of the nation. Which of these
two should have the last word is, clearly, a matter of
individual opinion.

154 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

We must now turn to the consideration of possible
future administrative and legislative action, and we
can best deal first with measures designed to check
directly the growth of undesirable elements in the
population.

Our knowledge of the laws of heredity is not yet
complete enough to warrant drastic measures save in
the clearest cases. But two such cases, often indeed
merging into one, are ready for treatment.

The first is the case of those suffering from mental
defects of known hereditary character. At present,
feeble-minded children are sent to special schools,
where they are trained at great expense on lines of
education practically the same as those of the ordinary
elementary schools. Save in a very few cases, they are
incapable of profiting by such training. Then, at the
critical age of sixteen, they are discharged from school.
They are unfit to protect themselves ; and the natural
result follows in early and constant visits to the work-
house, the prison, and the maternity wards of the
hospitals and infirmaries. They become a misery to
themselves, and a source of new generations of mentally
defective citizens.

A Royal Commission has taken voluminous evidence
and issued a report in favour of compulsory care and
detention. Nothing stands in the way of reform save
the apathy of our legislators on a question where all
competent opinion is agreed, but which does not appeal
to the votes of the multitude, and the perversity of
some of our educationalists, who persist in thinking
that they can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Nearly allied to this case is that of the habitual

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 155

offender of clearly criminal type. We have already
given a short account of the more sensational Conti-
nental methods of studying the subject. In England
criminology has not yet become a recognized branch
either of penal jurisprudence or of biological science.
But the report of the Prison Commissioners for 1911
emphasizes the important fact, well known already
to students of the question, that a large proportion
of habitual criminals suffer from mental defect. This
conclusion might have been foretold from a study of
the pedigrees of unsound families. In such families
we find continually that the unsoundness takes different
forms in different individuals. Some will be feeble-
minded, some tuberculous, some alcoholic, some habitu-
ally criminal, while some show a combination of these
qualities. It is the unsound stock that is the root of
the mischief ; the criminality is but a symptom.

In these cases it is clear that hopes of reformation
are vain. Short sentences of hard labour interspersed
with periods of ill-used freedom are merely senseless
in themselves, cruel to the criminal and a danger to
society. The only cure is permanent detention — not
necessarily under penal conditions — so that the un-
soundness may not reappear in yet another generation.

Indirect methods of checking the reproduction of
undesirable sections of the people must also be con-
sidered. The present facilities for habitual paupers to
enter and leave the workhouse at will lead to evils
which perpetuate the hereditary qualities of these
parasites of society. Enlarged powers of detention
should be given to guardians in cases where abuse of
liberty is probable or certain. It should be recognized

156 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

as a principle of poor-law administration that those
who, without adequate cause, repeatedly fail to support
themselves, while we may allow them individual sus-
tenance from the community, have no claim to per-
petuate their weaknesses in future generations. The
burden of their support must carry with it the right
of preventing them from permanently contaminating
the race.

The only direct means which has yet appeared of
encouraging by legislation the reproduction of desirable
elements of the nation is to lighten the burden of
taxation on parents of families.

Now a bachelor living in rooms or chambers pays
a far smaller contribution to the national exchequer
in the shape of rates and house-duty, than does a
man who has to provide house-room for a large family.
Not only is the unmarried man contributing nothing
individually to the future resources of the nation,
since he is neither maintaining nor educating children
of his own, but he also bears a share of the general
expenses of rearing the present generation which is not
in just proportion to his ability to pay. Bachelors, as
a leading English humourist remarked, are luxuries.
We may perhaps be allowed to add that in many
respects their class, from the wider point of view,
is a mischievous one ; and in any circumstances it is
part of sound finance to tax the luxuries rather than
the necessities of the nation.

A second injustice is found in the legislation which
allows a brother and sister or two sisters keeping house
together to pay income tax on their incomes calculated

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 157

separately, whereas a husband and wife are assessed
jointly, and frequently have to pay on a higher scale
in consequence ; though, if one inherits from the
other, the State, with Gilbertian inconsistency, charges
death-dues as though the victims were in reality
separate entities. Here again, we have an increased
share of the burdens of the nation placed on those
who have already undertaken the heavier responsi-
bilities. The effect of this obvious miscarriage of
justice has been pointed out again and again in the
annual Parliamentary discussions on the Budget, and
the reply invariably is that the amount of income
derived from the perpetuation of this acknowledged
unfairness is so considerable that it cannot easily be
relinquished. The humour of this justification, with
which the representatives of the British nation are (
apparently perfectly satisfied, does not appear to strike
many people. At what exact figure, we may well ask,
do the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his financial
advisers think that honesty will become the best
policy ? Where is the lower limit of the value of
the national conscience in such matters ?

Irrespectively of all racial considerations, a good
case can be made out for the principle of lightening
taxation on the parents of families on the old theory
that taxation should be levied in proportion to a
man's ability to pay. In the classes that pay income
tax, a man's ability to pay easily the charges of the
Exchequer decreases very rapidly as the number of
his children grows. Yet, owing to his increasing
need of more house-room, his rates go up, and,
owing to the rapid rise in the amount of taxable

1 58 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

commodities consumed by his household, the burdens
of indirect taxation fall more heavily upon him.

An attempt to deal with this injustice was inserted
in the Finance Act of 1909. An allowance was made
to fathers of families equal to the tax on ten pounds
of income for each child, provided that the total
income was not in excess of ^500 per annum.

Though the amount of the allowance is too small
to do much good, the fundamental idea of this
enactment is sound. Burdens on parents should be
lightened. But two criticisms of the form taken by
the idea must be made if it be considered from the
point of view of its influence on race.

Firstly, there seems no reason to limit the encourage-
ment to those whose income does not exceed £500.
In fact, where earned income is concerned, it is fair
to assume that a man's value to the 'community and
to the race, on the average of large numbers, bears
some sort of rough proportionality to the income
he earns. The value is probably based in some way
on the character of the services and on. the scarcity
of the type of man who is qualified to render them
efficiently. The seeming disparity in remuneration is
probably due to the fact that the scarcity of the type
exercises greater influence than the character of the

D

services. Before we decide that a man is overpaid,
we require to know how many persons there are able
and willing to replace him. Doubtless, this opinion
will be disputed, and the large gains of, let us say,
a stockbroker vcompared with the miserable pittance
which rewards the labours of an immortal poet. Yet
the general public is apt to grudge any sort of extension

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 159

of copyright, by which the poet might receive a more
adequate remuneration, and suggestions have been
made, emanating, we believe, from a labour party, that
some authority should have power to declare any
transcendent piece of literature at once to be public
property, without more ado. Then again every man is
obliged to pay his stockbroker, whereas a great number
of people pride themselves on borrowing all the books
they require from a lending library for the sum of one
guinea a year, showing clearly the relative values they
themselves attach to the two types of service. How-
ever, exceptional cases affect average results to but a
small extent. Broadly speaking, a successful man is
of use in the world and earns a better income than
a failure who can barely pay his way. We conclude
then, firstly, that the present limit of income beyond
which no relief of tax is given to a father of children
should either be abrogated altogether or else raised
very materially.

Secondly, if we accept this conclusion another follows.
If, as at present, a fixed sum is allowed for each child,
irrespective of the income of the father, it may be a
considerable relief to the man of small income, whose
natural standard of expense is lower, while being incon-
siderable when the income is larger. Indeed, we may
go further, and say that since the relief given to the
man of small income must be provided by raising the
general scale of the tax, the more competent man of
larger income will be made to pay for the advantage
of the less competent man of smaller income, and the
racial effect may actually be bad.

We see, then, that the only sound principle would be

160 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

to make for each child an allowance which rose in pro-
portion to the income of the parents till a limit was
reached depending on the amount reasonably to be
spent on the maintenance and education of children in
the upper classes.

A precedent already exists in the allowance now
given for money spent on life insurance. On this
money the tax is remitted up to an amount not exceed-
ing one-sixth of the total income. So in the other case
— money spent in the maintenance and education of
children should be exempted altogether from income
tax, provided it does not exceed, let us say, one-half of
the parent's income, or exceed the natural maximum
we have indicated above.

Moreover, in schemes of graduation, such as are
now in force both at the upper and lower ends of the
scale of incomes, it should not be forgotten that when
a man has to support a wife and family the total
income is really divided among many individuals. The
higher scales of payment should be applicable only
when the income per individual exceeds the limit, and
should not be determined by the total income as it
rightly is in the case of a single man or woman.

In a previous chapter we have given some account
of the legislative action taken in ancient Rome and
modern France to deal with the evils of the declining
population. Coercion certainly proved useless, and
would as inevitably fail, should it again be attempted.
The principle which seems to define the sphere of
legislation in matters affecting morals, is that a man can
frequently be prevented from doing wrong, but he can-

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 161

not be compelled to do right. Right thinking, right
living and right doing spring from an inborn sense of
duty and rectitude of conscience. Wrong doing is far
easier to check since, in its more usual forms, it is
as often the consequence of want of will, bad habit and
unfortunate environment as of intentional, deliberate
evil action. It is perhaps correct to say that well-doing
is the result of a conscious direction of action, and that
much ill-doing is caused merely by lack of any intention,
either good or bad ; it is, in fact, too often only the
result of following the course of least resistance. As
the phrase goes, it is possible to cease to do evil, but it
is necessary to learn to do good. Where then, as in
France, efforts are made to encourage a population to
resume a line of conduct which is beneficial to the State,
it would be natural to lay more stress on religious and
educational influences than on any scheme of payment
by results.

It is extremely desirable that no economic pressure
should be exerted against parents who are bringing up
families likely to be of racial value, and it is well to
relieve such persons of all possible financial burdens
in accordance with the requirements of their station
in life. But it is doubtful whether any monetary
advantages, to the extent that are likely to be given
either in France or England, will alter appreciably the
state of affairs, though a sympathetic attitude of the
national conscience on such a point is likely to have
great effect. The result of the French legislation will
be watched with deep interest ; but far more hope-
ful is the general attention to the subject aroused

throughout the country. Unfortunately it is one of

ii

1 62 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

the most lamentable results of the internal political
condition of France that the State and the Church can
no longer work together openly in their efforts to deal
with the problem, and that the educational world is torn
asunder by the religious and anti-religious forces of
action and reaction.

However that may be, the decline in the birth-rate
has now become general throughout Western Europe
and North America, and it is perhaps not likely that
nations whose chief aim appears to be progressively
to increase the material comforts of life will return
easily to conditions which denote simpler surroundings
and a sterner sense of duty to the future. It must
be noted, however, that in Japan, in spite of much
material prosperity, during the past twenty years the
birth-rate has shown a considerable increase, rising
from about 27 to 33 per thousand ; so that the
shrinkage of population among the European races
may be compensated for ultimately by sustained in-
crease of the Asiatic peoples. As we said before, in
dealing with the question of migration, for the more
advanced classes of a nation to exert themselves to
raise the general conditions of environment, without
taking advantage of the fact to fill up the improved
spaces so created, will lead inevitably to an increase in
the number of inferior citizens, for whom the conditions
of existence have, through no merit or exertion of their
own, become easier. In the same way, if the Eastern
nations, while retaining their simple, less exacting
standards of life and different sense of racial morality,
can profit by our improvements in hygiene, take
advantage of our increasing medical knowledge, and

HEREDITY AND POLITICS 163

utilize the inventions which represent the life-work of
our men of science, our inventors and our captains of
industry, they must of necessity supplant the European
populations, wherever the two races come into contact
with each other.

CHAPTER X

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

IN the preceding chapters of this book we have dealt
with some of the most tremendous problems that are
now exercising the powers of contemporary thought.
We have desired, not to attempt to solve these problems,
but to draw attention to their existence, and, while in-
dicating the many and varied aspects from which they
may be considered, to show that one principle — that of
heredity — is to be found affecting them all.

It would be presumptuous to suggest that any person
or any group of persons could hope, at this present
time, to find a solution to questions that involve the
most fundamental facts of existence. The evolution
of thought is as painful and as searching a process as
the evolution of race, and both of them will last till
the world's end. Constructive thought is seldom
exclusively the action of a single mind, but the result
of many minds, working in many directions, accumula-
ting, comparing and creating as best they may, until
some genius arises who is able to discard the unessential,
who can divine order beneath the chaos, penetrate to the
core of the mystery, and register on behalf of humanity
yet another well-marked step in advance.

164

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 165

Heredity, as a subject of study, is still in its infantine
stages of development ; even in the laboratory, it is
hardly yet started on its way. Indeed, if we are to
accept Bacon's dictum, it is only just beginning to be
a science, since it is within the working lifetime of
men of middle age that it has yielded itself to the
experimental methods of investigation. As regards
its influence on society as a whole, the subject has
scarcely advanced out of an embryonic state. We
can only observe, inquire, surmise and draw tentative
deductions, according to our several abilities and
opportunities.

The influence of heredity is seen to be at work on
all sides of us throughout the animate world ; the races
of men offer no exception to the field of its activity.
The power of variation, of developing good or evil
qualities, of advancing or falling back in inborn value,
appears to be an inherent possession of the organic
world ; and on these variations heredity plays, as a
blind musician chooses his notes to make a tune, trying
one and trying another, but always stumbling on under
the uncontrollable impulse of creation, till apparently
chance sounds fall together, and harmony emerges out
of discord. As subtle, as unexplained, as fundamental as
gravity seems to be the influence of heredity, wherever
we turn and survey the races of men.

When, during the last century, Lamarck, Darwin
and other workers brought to light the facts which led
to a renewal of the old idea of the evolution of species,
and Darwin and Wallace enunciated the principle which
suggested a modus operandi of evolution and revolution-
ized modern thought, they could supply no ultimate

1 66 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

reason for this process of continuous creation, no
underlying meaning in this painful and never-ceasing
evolution. Natural selection gave an explanation of
the means by which modifications of species might be
brought about, but a knowledge of the means does not
banish the need of some more fundamental principle
as an underlying cause. When once the field of
inquiry is extended to the human race, we cannot be
content to survey the movement from a distance, or
merely to enrol its multitude of curious manifestations
in our note-books. We require to know what impulse
there is behind this constant creation and readjustment
of life, or possibly, what life is to be found behind this
constant impulse to create and renew. Why, indeed,
are we any of us any more than comfortable cockle
shells, eminently adapted to their environment and
safely ensconced in a nook of the ocean's bed ?

The older writers on these subjects began at the
other end of the story. Every mythology, every
religion, tried to suggest a reason for the development
of ever higher and higher types of living forms, and
postulated a life and a consciousness behind the act of
creation. But they were unable to suggest the methods
of the action in any convincing form, except to express
an intuitive belief that it was very good and that the
morning stars sang together at the sight thereof.

Now at every stage of knowledge this intuitive
induction is needed if we are to make any attempt to
touch ultimate verities. The poet, the prophet and
the philosopher can always find somewhere an appro-
priate field of action. When they are absent, we are
conscious that life and thought are moving on a lower

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 167

plane. But, if our sphere of knowledge is to grow,
we need men of science also to ask not why, but how,
things are what they seem. For a time, it is best to
cease from troubling about ultimate causes, and concen-
trate all our efforts on the problem of relations, of how
one phenomenon is connected with another, of how one
type of life is connected with a higher : we pass, that
is to say, into a scientific age.

In such a period the intellectual stress is laid on the
process ; attention is concentrated on the mechanism ;
admiration is excited by the wonderful inter-relations
of the wheels ; we cannot see the wood for the trees,
the God for the machine.

But when we get used to our new gains of know-
ledge, when we have sorted and arranged the fresh
store of relations, we find that the old problems still
remain very little changed. We know more about
methods, and are therefore in a better position to
guess at causes, but our intellectual need of such
guesses is no less than before. Poet, prophet and
philosopher again come to their own, and, on a wider
stage, and with somewhat more chance of attaining a
lasting solution, once more awake the religious instincts
of mankind. They may even proclaim that their far-
off predecessors drew very near to what is now re-
cognized as probable truth — if, at all events, they take
as examples those predecessors who confined them-
selves to their proper sphere of intuitive insight into
Why, and avoided the ever-yawning pitfall of an
intuitive inquiry into How.

It seems as though philosophy were once more find-
ing its feet after being swept forward on an advancing

1 68 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

wave of science. Darwin and Mendel have shown the
true methods of inquiry into the problems of life ; a
host of followers have entered into their labours, and
are now sounding the limits of the seas of the new
knowledge they opened up. Meanwhile, others are
making the old discovery that no grasp of the details
of methods and relations lays bare the hidden ground
of causes, or does away with the soul's need of asking
Why?

It is probable that the new inquiry into the Un-
knowable will repeat the faults of its predecessors.
Some will put forward intuitive guesses into ultimate
causes dressed up in the misleading garments of scien-
tific induction. Others will misapply the intuitive
method proper to poets and seers, and use it in the
alien territory of natural science to build new dogmatic
temples of How founded on shifting sand. It is all
an old story. But, as organic evolution proceeds by
choosing the fittest out of many types, so the evolution
of knowledge needs the birth of many hypotheses, that
a few may be called to become the sponsors of the
science and religion of the future.

Let us then with the courage of rashness, but not
of entire ignorance, attempt to follow some lines of
thought suggested by our present insight into the
problems of life.

In any branch of human knowledge the first step in
advance can only be made if we assume that the subject
is intelligible to our minds. Without such an assump-
tion it would be useless to attempt to connect the
phenomena in the definite, orderly scheme which con-

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 169

stitutes knowledge. We assume that the subject is
intelligible, though it may well be that we shall not
reach to a full understanding in any finite time.

So with the greatest inquiry of all, the tremendous
problem of the significance and destiny of life. If we
are to make any headway, if we are to scratch the sur-
face of the mountain of our ignorance, we must assume
that there is some intelligible meaning in it all.

We see creative impulse at work all around. Follow-
ing their natural processes, plants and animals reproduce
themselves up to the limit of their means of subsistence.
The impression conveyed is that of a thronging,
tumultuous, ever-present life, struggling into existence
wherever it can find a point of attack on the inanimate
matter which constitutes its vehicle and means of being.
The power of reproduction and the power of variation
seem infinite. External conditions alone set a limit to
the expression of the creative impulse with which all
Nature is instinct. Individuals are poured out in a
never-flagging stream. Some, unsuited to the environ-
ment, fail to hand on their qualities ; but Nature turns
undaunted to those that succeed, and through them
works her will of a continually increasing and always
varying store of life impregnating dead matter.

What is the meaning of it all ? What hypothesis
can we frame to suit the facts, and to guide our future
inquiries ? Is life itself the object — life anywhere, life of
any kind, life in distinction to a dead world of inanimate
matter ? Or can we trace a preference for any one kind
of life, and, if so, what are its characteristics ?

Now, as M. Bergson has pointed out, evolution
seems to have proceeded on three divergent tracks,

i yo HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

ending in the higher plants in the vegetable world, and
in the animal kingdom reaching on the one hand the
highly developed instinct of ants and bees, and on the
other the transcendent intelligence of mankind.

It seems fair to infer that of these three courses the
highest development is that on the intellectual side
which culminates in man : not necessarily because of
our feelings of superiority — they might well be shared
by ants and bees had they conscious powers of com-
parison— but for two definite reasons. Firstly, man
keeps bees for his own use, allowing them to multiply
at his discretion, and staying their reproduction when
it seems to him good. We have not yet heard of a
man-farm kept by bees. Secondly, wonderful as is the
economy of the bees' commonwealth, it does not show
that power of growth and development given to man
by his intellectual power over tools, machinery and
economic organization. All individual initiative seems
lost in the rigid socialism of the hive. Moreover, once
their instincts had developed the effective organization
in which they now live, it is probable that the numbers
of wild bees which the world would support became
strictly limited by external conditions, just like those of
any other species of plant or animal. The number of
mankind is not so limited. Any intellectual advance,
when applied to economics, increases the means of sub-
sistence, and the possible number of human beings.

It might be replied that mankind is only now in
the preliminary stage passed through by bees long ages
ago, when they were developing in instinct and con-
sequently increasing in number. Our limit, like theirs,
will be reached when our commercial state reaches a

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 171

hive-like, changeless perfection. Doubtless it would.
But it will never become changeless while we rule
ourselves by reason instead of instinct.

History shows us a gradual though intermittent
advance in man's mastery over the lower animals. In
civilized countries, no animal or plant of any size can
exist save at his pleasure. The lion, which used to
chase primaeval man for sport or food, is now confined
in menageries to assuage the curiosity of his children.
Even the minute bacterium is being destroyed in its
lair by antiseptics, or used in antitoxic serums as an
antidote to the activity of its kith and kin. It seems,
then, that, without undue self-appreciation, we may
regard ourselves as Nature's highest and most favoured
work of creation on this planet at least. All her efforts
for ages past appear, on a dispassionate survey, to have
been directed towards increasing the power of subsist-
ence, and with it the number of human beings, of
the different races and constitutions adapted to the
different climates and circumstances of different parts
of the globe.

Side by side with this increase in number we find
on the whole a rise in type. It is true that certain
races, such as those of the best of the ancient Greeks,
seem to have died out, though they were perhaps higher
in the scale both of intellectual and physical perfection
than other races which survived. But we do not despair
of finding definite causes for such catastrophes ; and
it is clear that Nature, undismayed by her temporary
failures, sets to work at once to build up and consoli-
date new types capable of advancement. On the
whole and on a broad survey, it is impossible to deny

172 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

that the average man has improved since the days of
his palaeolithic forebears.

As the result of our inquiry, therefore, we conclude
from direct observation that, if the process of creative
evolution be intelligible at all (and such an intelligibility
is a necessary assumption underlying any inquiry), it
has been tending for some tens or hundreds of
thousands of years towards the production of the
largest numbers of mankind of the highest physical
and mental types.

Now such a tendency may exist without any further
significance. It may represent a necessity in the nature
of things as they are, with no further meaning or aim
behind it. In the structure of matter and in the forms
of energy with which the Universe is replete we find
inherent this tendency towards evolution along different
lines, one of which culminates in man. And it may be
possible that we can carry our investigation no further
back ; that we have arrived at what, for our minds,
must be an ultimate explanation.

But ultimate explanations are not recognized by
science. No sooner do we succeed in reducing our
conceptions of one train of phenomena to simpler terms
— succeed, let us say, in connecting those phenomena
with others which we can represent to our minds in
terms of the relations of such physical concepts as
length, mass and time — than we strive to go further,
and attempt to analyse these fundamental physical con-
cepts into others — mass into electric charge, electric
charge into a strain knot in the aether.

But let us suppose the process of evolution ex-
plained in terms of mass, length and time and their

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 173

known physical relations. One fact might still stand
outside our scheme — the momentous fact of con-
sciousness. But let us even suppose the existence of
consciousness reduced to physical terms and shown
to follow certain collocations of matter and energy.
The whole internal relations of the Universe might
conceivably thus be reduced to order. Yet we should
still be driven to ask what was the meaning, origin
and end of the matter and energy which contain within
themselves such tremendous possibilities of develop-
ment, part of whose inherent necessities lead inevitably
to the evolution through long and divergent series
of organic forms to roses, to bees and to men. Why
should time and space be such as they are, or why
should such ideas be necessary to bring order into our
mental picture of phenomena ? Why should there
be matter and motion ? Why should there be forces
between molecules or within the aether ? Why should
a Universe exist at all, or come into being out of
nothingness ? Especially, why is there a Universe
which tends, if one may judge of it from that part we
know best, to the greatest possible development of
consciousness in the largest possible number of con-
scious beings ?

Nothing is certain in science ; it can only be a
question of probability. But the probabilities in
favour of the solar system as we know it coming to
an end in time are very great. Consciousness in con-
junction with matter would then be wiped out, and
the whole process of organic evolution become vain.

It might be answered that organic evolution might
go on in other systems though it ceased here. But

174 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

that possibility only postpones the end. Those other
systems, like that of our sun, will have their day and
cease to be, and the consciousness associated with
organic matter would cease with them. Not only
have we to face the problem of the existence of the
Universe with its evolution of organic consciousness,
but the further problem of its possible future dis-
appearance. If there be nothing behind it and nothing
after it, the thing becomes meaningless.

Of course if we like we can leave the problem there,
and say it is meaningless, or, at any rate, must remain
meaningless to us. But that is not a scientific attitude
of mind, and, moreover, that is an attitude of mind
which the human intelligence, for some reason or other,
has always declined permanently to accept. We must
assume that the scheme of the Universe, like the sub-
ject-matter of the humblest science, is intelligible.

It does not follow that we are yet, or ever shall be, in
a position to investigate the problem satisfactorily. But
the problem is there, clamouring for solution, even on the
ultra-mechanical hypothesis we have hitherto followed.
Even if " the mind secretes thought " and consciousness
" as the liver secretes bile," we have got to find some
intelligible meaning for a mechanical Universe which
includes consciousness in its mechanism.

We may with M. Bergson give a rudimentary con-
sciousness even to unicellular organisms if they be
mobile. We may go further, and, with certain other
philosophers, assign a still more rudimentary conscious-
ness to molecules, atoms or perhaps electrons. We
do not get rid of the problem, or alter its essential
character. The evolution of consciousness, the seem-

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 175

ing tendency of creation, fails to be intelligible if there
be nothing behind it, and if it lead to nothing more
than is evident on the surface.

We have traced the consequences of the most
mechanical hypothesis first in order to show that,
even on its basis, we have to look further if we are to
frame an intelligible account of the Universe. But
the mechanical theory of life is not now in as much
favour with biologists or philosophers as it was twenty
or thirty or forty years ago. We can therefore pro-
bably reach a problem similar to that outlined above
by a shorter road than that required by the somewhat
extravagant supposition that consciousness can be ex-
plained fully in terms of physical conceptions.

If, as seems possible, biologists return to more
vitalistic conceptions of life, we shall have to give up
the easiest theory of monism, the theory which refers
life and mind to matter. We shall have, at first at
all events, to accept a dualistic hypothesis, leaving open
for the time the possibility of some deeper concordance
either in terms of the idealism which expresses matter
in terms of mind, or in the light of some other
philosophy.

For the time being we shall have to picture to our-
selves mind as distinct from matter, and life as some
foreign influence using matter as its vehicle. The
apparent determinism in which we see life immeshed
we must refer to the hampering effect of the medium
in which life has to work, an effect from which it
struggles to be free in the long effort of evolution,
and succeeds to a greater degree than elsewhere in the
comparative freedom of the human will.

1 76 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

So, from this point of view, we have to explain
immediately the use of matter by life to evolve itself
into higher and higher forms, to make ever more
and more complete the incarnation of distinct person-
alities. Behind all this remain the deeper problems
of the existence of life and of matter — possibly two
problems, possibly, as on our first line of thought,
in reality only one.

But whatever be the nature of matter and of life,
we have to face the more immediate problem of
evolution. The tendency of life and mind working
in conjunction is to mould and develop a stream of
germ-plasm of constantly increasing complexity, which
is able to throw off at different stages of its course
personalities of constantly increasing definiteness, power
of choice and intensity of consciousness.

The development of conscious personalities, then,
seems to be the tendency of all organic evolution.
Has this tendency any meaning ? Can we frame any
tentative hypothesis which is consistent with what we
know, and may form a basis for future investigation
and thought ?

Two possibilities seem open. We may suppose
that a blind, inchoate stream of rudimentary conscious-
ness runs through the structure of the Universe, and
struggles to express itself, develop itself and realize
its higher potentialities, by association with matter.
It may be that only by using matter as a medium
can this vague consciousness use its creative power
and make itself into definite personalities, as a man may
use a machine to do work impossible to him without
it, or — perhaps a better simile — may use gymnastic

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 177

apparatus to develop his body in ways beyond his
power without such aid.

The theory of a vague diffused consciousness, strug-
gling into definite being by the aid of matter, suits well
the facts of evolution, which show that many lines of
advance have been tried without success, while one
alone — that culminating in mankind — has set conscious-
ness nearly free from the trammels of its necessitarian
environment.

But this theory, well as it may explain some of the
phenomena, may perhaps be deemed insufficient on a
whole survey of the field. It has nothing to say on
the deeper problems of the existence of the Universe
of mind and matter, which problems underlie the view
of life we are now following no less than the purely
mechanical theory with which we began.

Such problems may perhaps be pushed one step
further back if we assume the existence of a more
definite consciousness, pervading and yet transcending
all things, the origin of all mind, and, in some perhaps
less direct way, of all matter too. This consciousness,
universal and infinite, if it sought to develop parts of
itself into finite and distinct personalities, might find
it impossible to effect the separation (to speak in crude
metaphors), and allow the subsidiary personalities the
time, space and conditions of independent growth,
without using some such contrivance as organic evolu-
tion through matter.

On either view, the development of human person-
alities becomes of transcendent importance ; on either
view it is the method of creating conscious minds,

which, if the evolutionary drama is to have any

12

178 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

permanent value, must persist in some way, either in
their consciousness or in their effects, when the organic
life of our globe has passed away, or must possess
some significance independent of time and space. The
question of the existence of human personality outside
bodily limitations here becomes a crucial factor, and
very deep interest attaches to the scientific labours of
those pioneers who are now trying to bring forward
acceptable evidence bearing on this problem.

All through the long aeons of geological time, while
evolution has led to higher and yet higher types along
many lines of development, this creative impulse has
been at work. Down the long centuries of the exist-
ence of prehistoric man, race after race has been used
in turn to advance the great purpose. Race after race
has played its part, and given place to others more
capable of going further along the road. Now, when
civilization is becoming common to all mankind, the
dangers of one race are the peril of all. It is possible
that the creative power has got as far as it can by the
use of unconscious agents. Further advance may only
be possible by conscious selection, and our growing
knowledge of heredity, and our ever-strengthening
inward impulse to apply it to the betterment of our
own race, may be but the manifestation of the great
hidden creative Power of the Universe as it takes a
new path to turn the obstacles which threaten to block
all its old roads of advance.

What is this impulse towards racial improvement
that has been at work among us ; why is it checked
at certain stages of its development ; what are these

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 179

arrests of progress in one direction when the stream
of life appears to turn into other channels and to
forsake the territories that previously it had favoured so
liberally ? How far are these variations, these lost
opportunities, due to the action of men themselves,
who, acting individually, yet with corporate effect, refuse
to undertake further responsibilities, and decline, on
behalf of their posterity, to accept greater risks and
undergo more strenuous conditions, with the chance
of reaching vaster heights and acquiring a higher
development of mind and body ? Is it the material
on which the impulse has to work that becomes recal-
citrant and unwilling, when pressed beyond a certain
stage ? Is it the impulse that suffers from some sort
of secular decay or tidal ebb or flow ? Are we, in
fact, masters or at least participators in the moulding
of our fate, or tools in the hand of some force which,
careless of mankind, is acting without regard to the
interests we believe ourselves to have at stake ? All
these questions, like many of the problems suggested
in the body of the book, must be left unsolved, if not
undefined, for the present. Yet to those persons who
are following the trend of contemporary thought it is
clear that a new method of attack is being devised, and
that a generation has arisen whose members will not
be satisfied until they have made the facts of life more
intelligible.

Of all the hard facts of life, the one that we find
most difficult to reconcile with our modern outlook is
the amount of suffering and misery that natural selec-
tion, while bringing the action of heredity to a successful

i8o HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

issue, inflicts on those who seem least able to bear
the burden. If there is any meaning behind such
phrases as the " brotherhood of man," the " spirit of
humanity," it seems impossible to stand by and watch
another human being fall and sink under his load
without at least trying to lend a helping hand. The
less he is responsible for his own failure, the more, on
the surface, does it appear necessary to relieve him of
the consequences thereof. Yet much of the help given
can be shown to produce greater failure and to lead to
lower depths of misery. Are we to deny expression
to our better instincts ; or are we deliberately to
increase the amount of degradation in the world
by allowing those better instincts unregulated to have
their way ? What is the way out of our dilemma ?

A very great part of the problem turns on the value
we attach to suffering as an essential factor in human
development, or as a necessary stimulus to human
activity; and this again involves the question of what
we mean by human development, and whether we
consider that human development is an affair of the
individual only during a transient lifetime, for which
all responsibility ceases when life comes to an end.
Here we are led further back, and, to answer our first
question, we are obliged to find a reply to the eternal
queries, Is the visible life we see really isolated in time
and space ? is it not in reality but a transient manifesta-
tion of a greater and permanent whole ? Does life,
even individual life, ever come to an end ? May not
suffering in the body during an earthly existence
receive its interpretation in some spiritual state, for
which indeed it is a form of preparation and purifica-

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 181

tion ? What place does the ancient conception of
purgatory, either present or to come, occupy in a
modern version of the Divina Commedia ?

To many people the answer seems clear. The
Christian religion, side by side with its insistence on
charity and mutual helpfulness, has always maintained
that suffering might bestow as great benefits and lead
to greater advantage than happiness and prosperity.
All the great teachers of religion have dwelt on the
essential position of suffering in the scheme of human
progress, and there are very few people who have
studied reverently themselves and their neighbours
who can deny that suffering and disappointment have
often led the way to a higher and more spiritual outlook
upon life. Now it is of the essence of the Christian
religion, though not invariably the practice of those
who profess it, to regard apparent success or even
happiness in this world as no criterion of the attainment
of the real object of life, so that much of what we
strive for — wealth, for instance — is an entirely illusory
gain, and suffering undergone for its sake is certainly
suffering in vain. Yet there is no doubt that the most
ardent Christians, those who believe most firmly in
the sanctity and divine origin of suffering and in the
prolongation of existence beyond the threshold of this
life, are nowadays among the most insistent to relieve
distress and to equalize, as far as possible, the natural
possessions of humanity. The old teaching that all
these apparent inequalities and injustices have a mean-
ing and a purpose, will be put right, and in some way
compensated for, in another state, does not convince
them of the desirability of leaving things alone here.

1 82 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

They are impatient to see the reign of justice begun
rather than the work of purification continued. The
cry to make things fair is heard on all sides.

If each one of us were asked whether on behalf of
ourselves we wished all power of feeling pain, physical
or moral, to cease, there is little doubt that a universal
negative would greet the proposal. As a teacher, a
purifier, a stimulus, a danger signal, we know too well
its value to acquiesce in its withdrawal from ourselves,
though it would frequently relieve our feelings to see
the possibility of the sensation of pain removed from
those who are near and dear to us. There indeed we
too often watch the suffering without being permitted
to apprehend the consequent gain.

Here are two old conceptions which may possibly
help us to see some light in the darkness. The one is
the fact that we are necessarily blind to the movements
of our neighbours' inward life and cannot judge fairly
of the value of the discipline. Our own feelings may
be too deeply involved to give a just verdict. The case
must be removed to another jurisdiction and judged
on general principles. The other is the idea involved
in the statement that the value we attach to suffering
is derived from its beneficial effect on ourselves. But
what of its value to an organism that has not capacity
to learn, cannot undergo purification by such means,
makes no answer to the stimulus, is incapable of appre-
hending the danger signal ? Here we have suffering
as a blind, insensate, stupefying, paralysing force. Its
reason for existence ceases. It cannot be the means of
attaining to a higher sphere ; it is degrading, brutalizing.
Then, by all means, let us deal with the problem of

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 183

suffering as best we may, bearing in mind the traditional
practice of the founder of the Christian religion, which
was, not to mitigate, but to cure.

Herein lies the justification of many of our social
customs and enactments ; herein may be found the
germ of other developments yet to come. As long
as we believe that a man may be improved by social
pressure or deterred by individual punishment, it is
right to allow these agencies to proceed, provided that
pressure does not lead to suffocation nor punishment
to disablement. Where there is neither chance of
improvement nor hope of correction, we must devise
other methods of treatment. The segregation of the
feeble-minded in farm colonies, the detention, not
necessarily under penal conditions, of the hopeless
criminal, the lunatic and the unemployable, are among
the obvious ways in which we can prevent the further
degradation of the race, and arrest the increase in the
volume of suffering without cruelty to any individual,
restricting only in directions where the moral sense
has fallen below the level of humanity and is akin to
that of the brute beasts, who have no understanding.

It is among the tragic accompaniments of existence ,
that so many people should be called into life who
are unfitted to play any worthy part therein. It is
perhaps even more tragic that the best endeavours
of the best intentioned people should so often serve
only to increase the number thereof. It is only when
we come to have a nearer acquaintance with the con-
stitution and working of Nature, when we begin to
realize the possibility of the infinity of variations and
combinations which she holds within, that we under-

1 84 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

stand why it is necessary to create with such a lavish
hand and to select with such stern rigour. Multitudes
must come into existence in order that, among them,
the few that are worth preserving should have a
chance of seeing the light. It is the same in human
affairs. Hundreds of poets pour out their little
volumes of song, and out of them all one man may
show kinship with the immortals. He leaves many
thousands of lines in which he has incorporated the
substance of his mission ; society seizes on a tenth
part of the fabric and feels that only this small pro-
portion of his labour was truly inspired. So, out of
a large community, a few families will come to stand
out above the others, for qualities of head and heart,
and out of those few families, a handful of men will
be born who will single themselves out above the
average of their kin, one of whom possibly will tower
up to become a leader of men. Socially valuable
qualities, combined in balanced proportion in one
individual, are the greatest of gifts to society, and
society must be prepared to pay heavily for the chance
of welcoming such a person. A maker of thought,
a leader of men, a wise ruler, have a monopoly value
which must be paid, not so much to themselves, as
to their forebears and to their descendants.

The danger in front of society is twofold. In the
first place, modern nations, born and bred among the
rush for gold, with the cry for the increase of comfort
and luxury ringing in their ears perpetually, may
deliberately adopt a materialistic basis for life, cast
aside their humanity, and sacrifice the soul to the

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 185

body ; returning in fact to the ranks of the animal
world whence they have emerged, to find themselves
at last, in their pleasures and pains, a little lower, a
little less self-respecting than the beasts. In the
second place, there is always the possibility of a con-
spiracy, more or less intentional, on behalf of societies
which have advanced to a certain level, to arrest the
movement of progress, to destroy the abler and more
progressive stocks, to eliminate all individuality that
makes the majority of mankind realize its own in-
feriority and the necessity of a further struggle to
justify their continued existence. Every individual,
dimly comprehending that he himself may be among
the less favoured members of the community, may
enter into this conspiracy, and secure his own im-
munity by a decree of universal toleration and absolute
equality of opportunity and treatment. The citizen
who wished to banish Aristides because he was tired
of hearing him called " the just " was probably not sure
that he himself was a just man. He is frequently to
be met with in our modern social organization. It is
invidious to specify nations or professions, where so
many countries and types of character are gravely
involved ; but it is almost impossible to watch French
politics without fearing that for any man to succeed
above his fellows is a sure sign for some combination
to be set in motion which will secure his downfall.
Modern states are highly complex organisms, needing
a wide range of specialized faculties, distributed in
different sections of the population, to enable them to
survive. It is perhaps doubtful — judging from present
tendencies — whether any democracy will be able to pre-

1 86 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

serve or re-create the conditions in which the various
functions of government and social organization are
entrusted to the persons best fitted by nature to dis-
charge them. When a nation begins to be jealous of
its best families and to deal spitefully with its great
men, we know that a condition favouring social dis-
integration is at work.

Over-production is the first step towards progress ;
selection is its necessary corollary. It seems likely
that in the future selection will be largely conscious,
exercised by society at large. Any abrogation of
selection will increase the classes of persons who
should be on their way to social extinction, the classes
who at present furnish the largest number of social
parasites and show infinite capabilities in that direc-
tion. Selection exercised against the abler families
and more healthy and virile stocks will result in the
extermination of those persons who alone can guide the
steps of human progress. Selection exercised in their
favour will ultimately benefit the whole community.
It is true that the discrimination of good from bad is a
slow and uncertain process, and that it is easier for
society to withdraw a restraining hand than to take the
responsibility of decision ; but it is not necessary to
pronounce on what is best in order to know good
from bad. It is even possible to make mistakes
and to recover from them, as long as the intention to
follow on the right course remains the predominating
determination.

Let us return to a point we left unanswered in an
earlier paragraph and allow ourselves to turn from the

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 187

practical to the theoretical side of our subject. The
rise and fall of nations, the growth and decline of
societies, is an assured fact. Yet the impulse towards
human perfectioning works on, changing the field of
its labours as imperceptibly and as surely as a river
works its way from side to side of a valley. The
suggestion there thrown out, that the material —
humanity — on which the creating impulse has to work,
becomes recalcitrant when pressed too far, deserves
further consideration.

" Now understand me well," says the American
poet-philosopher — "it is provided in the essence of
things that from any fruition of success, no matter
what, shall come forth something to make a greater
struggle necessary."

Let us ask ourselves seriously whether it may not
be this greater struggle, this more searching purifica-
tion, that human society, once it has reached a certain
level of progress and comfort, declines to enter upon.
And on that refusal hangs its downfall. Instincts of
social responsibility, feelings of pity and compassion,
quite as much as desire for luxury and comfort, have
necessarily developed to carry it thus far along the
upward path.

But, blinded by the success of its mission, ceasing to
perceive a paternal chastening, and feeling only punish-
ment, shrinking from the strain of a further effort,
losing sight of the eternal verities and cumbered with
much serving, it stands still, hesitates and falls, pushed
beyond the limit of human endurance. It is then that
we need the help of religions and philosophies that
postulate the divine nature of man. Where man has

1 88 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

failed, God working through man can accomplish his
purpose. Flesh may shrink from the further conflict,
but the Spirit will enter in, re-vivify it and carry it along.

But to achieve this end, man can no longer be left
an unconscious tool in the hands of Fate. He must
understand his destiny, take part in the shaping of his
inheritance and enter upon it not as an unconscious
tool, but as an intelligent helper in the divine scheme
of continuous creation. Herein has come the need
for revelation — for poets, and prophets, and preachers.
Some part of the curtain must be withdrawn, some
knowledge of the path to be trodden must be vouch-
safed, in order that the traveller may at least see as
through a glass darkly. No one who is entirely with-
out knowledge of the object in view can consciously
co-operate in its attainment. The whole of the modern
development of science may represent the latest phase
of the creative impulse, taking man into a more intimate
partnership. We do not require another religion to
express the further gain ; the new will transfuse itself
into the old, which in its turn will discard the elements
in it that have become unessential. Religion will
remain what it always has been, the force binding
together the human and the divine.

But, the anxious inquirer will ask, what of those who
have fallen by the way, the weak, the unfortunate, the
unhappy ? What place have they in this triumphant
march towards progress ? If we were to assign them
the place of the soldier who has fallen in the battle,
still there would be a sense of failure, of injustice, in the
minds of many. The soldier fell by chance, he might
have joined in the final triumph ; but these others were,

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 189

according to the theories of heredity and selection,
doomed to destruction. Moreover, there is the legend
of the dead soldier who could not sleep in peace, not
knowing and all impotent to ask, which way the fight
had gone. Can we be truly participators in a success of
which we are unaware ?

There is no answer to questions like these, except
that we are dimly conscious of surer ways of attaining
personal destruction than that of owning our weakness,
and, having made a good fight, to be anxious at least
not to cumber our fellow-soldiers, who are better
equipped than we are. If the object of all existence be
the gradual development by the use of the natural
resources of the Universe of some spiritual prototype,
then nothing which has had life can have lived in vain.
Having once existed, may we not think that, however
lowly, in some form, conscious or unconscious, it con-
tinues to exist — having been created, it forms part of
the great life-giving impulse, and continues to create,
contributing a small share to the spiritual equipment
of the higher types, in some way analogous to the
methods by which the animal and vegetable worlds
contribute to their bodily sustenance.

If any such theory were acceptable, it would follow
that — in another state where soul values are judged by
the standard we have permitted ourselves to imagine —
there would be far less lamentation over those human
beings who fall apparently prematurely and wantonly
by the way, than over the hundreds of thousands of
unborn babes with sound parental inheritance, from
whom our human volition, denying expression to its
highest attribute — the power of creation — deliberately

190 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY

withholds the gift of life. And Herod's part in this
renewed massacre of the innocents is played by a
modern representative whose name indeed is Legion.
Who can fix the real responsibility ? Or again, if we
attribute the ebb-tide in human affairs not to the
stiffness of the material but to the failure of the
creative impulse, may not it be our own attitude of
mind that has neglected to contribute the spiritual
reinforcements necessary to keep that impulse working
at the fulness of its strength ?

The temerity is great which dares to deal with
problems like the ones set forth in the preceding
chapters of this book ; even greater is the risk that
besets anyone who ventures to draw conclusions or to
suggest some possible interpretation of the greatest
mysteries of life. Yet it is impossible to ponder on
these subjects without trying to frame some sort of
tentative hypothesis. To accept the view that the world
around us is uncomprehensible, chaotic, purposeless, is
to deny the possibility of any rational thought and the
utility of any human progress.

The end is not yet in sight ; it may never be attained,
in spite of all the religions and philosophies which have
held sway among the races of mankind. But thus much
more may be said. There have been many religions,
there have been many philosophies. Yet science is one.
It may be that the conjunction of the three will give us
some day the necessary clue, and that the seer will yet
arise who can write for a future generation the authentic
history of the origin and destiny of man.

FRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH,