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THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

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3 1822 02675 0844

The

Family and the Nation

A Study in Natural Inheritance
and Social Responsibility

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

1909

A II rights reserved

c

PREFACE

To the writers of this book the train of ideas out-
lined therein has given unity to a host of previously
unconnected observations. Personal, social, historical
episodes have fallen into place, and one great force,
ebbing and flowing throughout the ages, is seen
moulding the fate of nations.

In the hope that the idea of this underlying unity,
which has been so helpful to the writers, may prove
useful to others, this book has been written.

To emphasize the importance of inheritance in
determining the character and value of each individual,
some account is given of recent scientific investigation ;
while the pages of history, the composition of contem-
porary society, and the returns of the Registrar-General
have been drawn upon to trace the eff*ects of heredity
on the social organism.

Cambridge, September 1909.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Introduction ...... i

CHAPTER n

The Scientific Study of Variation and Heredity . 14.

CHAPTER HI

Inheritance and Variation in Mankind . . -35

CHAPTER IV

The Inheritance of Mental Defect . . .61

CHAPTER V

The Inheritance of Ability . . . -73

CHAPTER VI

The Rise of Families . . . . ,92

CHAPTER VII

The Decline of Families . . . . .109

vii

viii THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

CHAPTER VIII

PAGE

The Birth -Rate . . . . . .122

CHAPTER IX

The Selective Birth -Rate — its Effects . . .146

CHAPTER X

The Decline in the Birth -Rate — its Causes . .179

CHAPTER XI

Conclusion . . . . . . 207

Index ....... 231

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Man's body and mind are framed and moulded by two
influences — heredity and environment. Through his
parents he inherits certain physical and mental powers
which are developed or stunted by the circumstances of
his life, by the education given to him by others or won
by himself, and by the discipline which his own will,
aided or unaided, enables him to extract from the changes
and chances of this mortal life. '

Great is the power of environment. " There, but
for the Grace of God, goes John Bradford," is a
thought that has occurred to us all when watching
misfortunes we have escaped. The efforts of men of
science, philanthropists, and statesmen have been directed
for centuries towards improving the general environ-
ment of the race, and of late years with conspicuous
success. Two centuries ago the annual death-rate of
London was some eighty in a thousand ; to-day it has
sunk to fifteen. And a lowered death-rate means more
than lives prolonged. It means improved conditions,
which give greater health and strength to those who,
even in old circumstances, would have survived.

B

2 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

But, in our wise and beneficent search for better
conditions of life, we must not forget the other influence
which, even more than environment, goes to make
personality. To improve the conditions in which life
is passed, and by which it is moulded, is but part, prob-
ably by far the smaller part, of the problem. The
deeper question, the conscious solution of which is
opening out to all civilized nations, is how to maintain,
and if possible to improve, the innate quality and
character of the life itself.

The power of heredity is an old story. " Family
likeness," " family characteristics," " family temper "
are expressions which convey ideas well known to all
men. Yet with amazing inconsistency we have taken
little if any account of such knowledge in our conduct,
little if any in our theories of social and political life.
We have talked and acted as though it were of no
account how men were bred, or what classes of the
community were reproducing themselves fastest and
what declining in number, as long as each individual
was enabled by improved conditions to pass his brief
lifetime in increased comfort and security.

The average quality of a race is but the average
quality of the individuals composing it. By changes
in environment, by modification of economic factors,
we may alter the average qualities of the people, not
only indirectly by improving the conditions of life, but
directly also, by varying the rate at which different
classes or sections of our folk bring children into the
world. It becomes more and more clear that the
groups and associations formed by men are not artificial,
not mere matters of chance, but correspond to real

INTRODUCTION 3

differences of innate qualities, of mental and physical
characters. Already, to some extent, the qualities
embedded in the different classes are beginning to be
understood, and can be subjected to statistical analysis.
Already we see that, by legislation or by the pressure of
enlightened public opinion, it may become possible here
and there to direct or restrain the growth of population,
and thus modify the future history of the race. If, by
increased medical and hygienic knowledge, the feeble-
minded and weak-bodied stocks be allowed to survive,
and if, as seems to be the case at present, they repro-
duce themselves faster than do the better stocks, the
relative numbers of such persons in the country must
increase, and the average quality of the race deteriorate.
If, by economic and social conditions, children be made
too heavy a burden on the more desirable elements of
the population, there is danger that the thrifty and
far-seeing members of the community will postpone
marriage, and, when married, restrict the number of
their offspring. Thus, while the weak and careless
elements grow at an increasing rate, the good stocks of
the people check their rate of growth or even diminish
in number, and the selective deterioration of the race
is hastened in two ways.

How far are such tendencies apparent or immanent ?
How can we guard against them or minimize their
effects ? How can we maintain or improve the innate
qualities of our race without trenching on moral freedom
and personal responsibility, on ethical standards and
religious convictions .?

It has been thought by some men that our growing

4 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

knowledge of the power of heredity might weaken or
destroy the sense of moral responsibility and personal
freedom on which so much of our religious and ethical
standards of conduct depends. Such a view, we pro-
foundly believe, rests on a misconception of the basis of
that sense of freedom and responsibility with which we
are endowed. To this point we shall return ; but it
may be well at once to remind the reader that effective
freedom is increased and not diminished by a knowledge
of the natural laws in accordance with which, whether
we like it or not, life is organized. Civilized man, who
understands the limitations of mechanical powers, is in
effect much freer than is the savage, to whose credulous
mind nothing is impossible. Moreover, personal free-
dom, unchecked by a strong ethical sense or religious
conviction, may too readily degenerate into licence, and
lose what should be its accompanying feeling of personal
responsibility.

Although as yet in the problems of heredity we see
but as in a glass darkly, nothing is gained by shutting
our eyes. The proper study of man is mankind, and
sooner or later the questions at issue must be faced.
There is light enough to show that the problems dis-
closed are of vital importance. The scientific investiga-
tion of inheritance is now beginning to lead to definite
knowledge — still fragmentary, it is true, but enough
to point the way for future inquiry, and here and there
to give certain principles which should be borne in
mind when we are considering proposals for legislative
or social action.

Till recently, the effect of individual conduct or of
social legislation on the innate qualities of the people

INTRODUCTION 5

has been ignored, perhaps not even suspected. Yet the
results of selective breeding on domestic plants and
animals have been well known for a century or more.
The marvellous success which has attended the efforts
of breeders in obtaining strains of horses, cattle, and
other animals fitted for special uses is only equalled by
the results of the work of horticulturists in raising
new varieties of fruit and flowers.

Before man's place in nature was understood and
acknowledged, the idea that similar though unconscious
selection was at work on himself seems but dimly to
have crossed his mind. When Lyell and Darwin had
placed man in his proper position in the sequence of
biological forms, it was seen that principles found to
hold generally in the animal and vegetable kingdoms
were likely to be worth looking for in the case of the
human race. The struggle for life, incessantly at work
in the lower world, affects man also. It will tend to
modify the character of a nation as it modifies the flora
and fauna of a country. Then, as artificial means will
change a homogeneous breed of wild animals into the
several specialized forms of our domestic flocks and
herds, so we must look for a modification of our folk
for good or evil by the artificial conditions of modern
civilization. There is no finality ; a nation must either
be losing or gaining ground, either improving or
degenerating. Hence the scientific study of the effect
of the existing conditions of any time on the rates of
reproduction of different stocks of the nation should be
the chief work of the sociologist, and the control of
those conditions the supreme duty of the statesman.

At present the study of environment holds the field.

6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

The results of improvement are there more visible and
more immediate. They are of incalculable value, and to
them the progress of the past century is largely due. But
the changes in the innate qualities of the race, though
slower in action, are of even more profound importance
than alterations of the external conditions of human
existence. Man does not live by bread alone. His
inborn qualities of body, mind, and soul are of more
worth than physical comfort and convenience. Those
qualities depend on heredity, and the form they take in
any nation can be modified only by the slow process of
selective parenthood. But, " though the mills of God
grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small," and a
wrongly directed selection destroys a race more utterly
and irrevocably than any failure to take advantage of
improved physical conditions of life.

A knowledge of the importance of heredity, instead
of weakening the sense of responsibility, shows how
much wider and deeper our responsibility is than had
been suspected. We come to understand that on our
personal and collective action depend not only the
present environment of the people, but also the innate
qualities of future generations. Blind acquiescence in
evil, ignorance of the issues at stake, may result in
irremediable injury to unborn millions. Not only
are we our brother's keeper, but the guardian of the
physical, mental, and moral character of his remotest
descendants.

These ideas, once grasped, change profoundly the
outlook on sociological and political problems. If once
we come to look on all questions of investigation,
legislation, and administration from this point of view,

INTRODUCTION 7

we shall find, whatever may have been our previous
political or social creed, our preconceived ideas suffering
startling changes. The first care must always be to ask
with regard to each proposal, " Will it tend to favour
the growth of those elements of the population which
already are known to be of national worth? " "Will
it tend to check the reproduction of those whom the
present fragmentary knowledge already points out as
detrimental to the community ? " " Will it help to
increase our knowledge of mankind, so that we shall
be able more certainly to separate the sheep from the
goats, and to discover what elements among the people
are best and most worthy of encouragement ? "

For at every stage of our inquiry the cry for more
knowledge becomes insistent. We are still in compara-
tive darkness, and must walk warily in consequence.
Direct action at present can be applied safely only at
points clear even in the twilight. Our greatest need is
for more light.

In all stages of natural development, living beings
are subject to a competitive struggle in which the
fitter for that struggle gain an advantage. The
race is to the swift and the battle to the strong and
skilful.

Whether or no this fight for life has led to the pro-
duction and separation of distinct species in the exact
manner suggested by Darwin, without doubt it has
modified and is modifying the character of existing
types. But the essence of natural selection consists in
the conjunction of success in the struggle for life and
its fruits with a preponderating rate of reproduction.

8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Unless the fittest to survive hand on their qualities to
a larger number of descendants than are left by the
failures, natural selection cannot act. It is of no use for
an organism individually to survive unless it transmits
the character which enabled it to do so to a preponder-
ating number in succeeding generations. Until recent
years, success in life's race among men has in general
meant an increased number of offspring and a better
chance for their survival. But now the growing restric-
tion of the birth-rate in the successful classes in all ranks
of society has separated the two essential concomitants
of progress, and even of stability. A struggle for life
and the survival of the fittest are meaningless alone ;
the qualities of the fittest must survive superabundantly
his own fleeting existence, if the struggle and the
survival are to produce any good effect on the race.

In older, more natural, ages, when success in life
and a dominant rate of reproduction went hand in
hand, two kinds of struggle are to be distinguished.
There is the individual rivalry between man and man
for the fruits of the earth and the beauty of woman.
There is the combined clash of family with family,
tribe with tribe, nation with nation. In both the fittest
tend to survive ; but the fittest in the individual fight
do not always go to make the more efficient social
organism.

To conquer in the duel and in love a man needs
courage, strength, skill, virility, and good looks. And
it is necessary that the society which surrounds him
should regard his success as natural and justifiable.
The social conditions must be too simple and too
healthy for it to be possible that

INTRODUCTION 9

... a laggard in love and a dastard in war
Was to wed the fair Ellen of young Lochinvar.

It is essential also that a man should have a sense of the
justness of his cause. It is essential that society should
not refuse him the fruits of his success out of mis-
directed sympathy with the loser.

But, for one tribe to exist against the pressure of
surrounding peoples, a new group of qualities are
needed. The power of combination and organization,
the social instinct, readiness for self-sacrifice to the
common good, love of home, country, and race — in a
word, patriotism — all are needed to bring to birth and
to develop a nation fit to hold its own in the fiery trial
of war, and in the slow, grinding stress of economic
competition.

Thus, out of the very agony and weariness of the
strife, is born that social and moral sense which gives
to man his highest attribute and noblest reason for
existence. The individual struggle favours physical
vigour and mental ability ; but those races of men
endowed with fellow-feeHng and a spirit of far-seeing
self-sacrifice alone are capable of forming a strong and
homogeneous people. Both kinds of struggle have
played their part in the growth and decay of the races
of mankind, and in the rise and fall of successive
civilizations. Both have been necessary in the past,
; while man has been pressing onwards, blind and deaf
to the meaning and tendency of the ceaseless strife
around him.

There is an obvious though superficial antagonism
between some manifestations of the moral qualities when
developed and the full action of the purifying pains in

lo THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

which they were brought forth. Individual and national
destruction and replacement still form a potent factor in
the physical and mental evolution of the race. Yet
our modern tenderness shrinks more and more from
the sight of individual suffering. It urges forward all
agencies for the amelioration of the lot of the weak
who have failed in the struggle, whether individual or
national, and would fain uphold those that in more
callous ages would have gone under.

Of late years, the means of keeping alive the falling
and fallen have grown with ever-increasing speed. Each
advance in medical skill, in knowledge of pathology or
hygiene, each new moral effort to cope with external
evil, results in prolonged life for the members of weak
and unsound stock, and still more significant, a lessened
mortality among their children. It is not that the
pressure of life gets less, but that the consequences of
that pressure are prevented from producing effects that
are of selection value.

There is often an inclination to deprecate the struggle
for life, an endeavour to minimize its effects, to mourn
with the loser rather than to rejoice with the winner.
But, against the severity and hardship of the life-
struggle, must be set the excitement of the battle, the
energy and resource it calls forth, the triumph of success,
and, through these inducements to exertion, the perpetual
selection and survival of the finer varieties of the race.

It is well to mark that the danger of lessened
natural selection is, in our stage of civilization,
accompanied by a new-won appreciation of the issues
at stake. The social organism has grown conscious
of its own existence and of the agencies which are

INTRODUCTION 1 1

moulding it for better or for worse. We have become
like gods, knowing good and evil. Shall we have the
patience and insight to study the problem with a single-
minded desire for truth .? If we find a solution, shall
we have the courage and steadfastness to apply it firmly
and temperately to the social organism ? It may be
that the necessary means will run counter to some forms
of prevailing sentimentalism, that by-product of the
growth in our moral conscience. But moral con-
science itself must not be identified with a half-
hysterical haste to stop pain or inconvenience at all
costs. A sane moral conscience looks beyond, and
determines that the best elements both in man and in
mankind shall be free to grow and the worst elements
shall be repressed whatever stands in the way.

It is possible that the modern desire to alleviate
distress and to prolong life in all circumstances is to be
traced, in part at all events, to a decay in the old con-
ception of life as a probationary training ground, and
the failure to find any worthy ideal to take its place.
To those who have no belief in a future existence, this
life too often tends to become a banquet in which some
feast and others fight for the crumbs. To such minds,
pending the revival of a deeper faith, the thought
of the future welfare and improvement of the nation
or the race may supply the ideal necessary for a worthy
life. Those, on the other hand, who regard each man's
frame as the dwelling-place of an immortal soul, will
feel more the awful responsibility that it is ours to
determine, by our individual and corporate action,
whether or no the bodies and minds of succeeding
generations shall be fit temples for such sparks of

12 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

the divine, fit habitations in which they can expand
and develop till they are worthy of a sublimer sphere.
We cannot fix exactly the bodily or mental character
of any future individual, but we can (and do whether
we will or no) control the average future qualities
of the race, both in mind and body. Individually we
can deal only with probabilities ; statistically we are
responsible for certainties.

Let us pass then to inquire how far selection,
natural or artificial, has been the means of developing
the race, how far it is still acting and in what direc-
tions, what will be the effect of that action, and
whether it can be controlled in any way to favour the
preponderance of all the best physical, mental, and
moral qualities.

For selection to play its part in any community,
three conditions are necessary. Firstly, the individuals
which compose the race must vary one from the other.
Secondly, those variations must tend to be inherited, so
that the individuals possessing them tend to transmit
them to their offspring. Thirdly, the individuals with
certain kinds of variation must reproduce themselves
faster than the rest of the community.

Unless individuals vary, selection has nothing to
work upon. Unless the variations be such that they
are transmitted to descendants, its work produces no
effect. Hence our first inquiry is directed to the laws
of variation in mankind, in regard both to physical and
to mental qualities ; our second to the transmission of
variations from parent to offspring — the central problem
of heredity.

INTRODUCTION 13

As we have said, the character of a nation is but the
average character of the individuals composing it. If
one section of the community reproduce itself faster than
others, its essential qualities hasten with ever-increasing
speed to permeate the whole. The qualities of that
section become the dominating qualities of the race, its
peculiarities become the normal characteristics of the
nation. Therefore our third condition leads to a study
of the relative birth-rate in different classes and among
different types of the people.

Finally, we must turn to a consideration of the
causes and effects of a selective birth-rate, and inquire
how far the present social conditions are favouring or
impeding the more rapid reproduction of all good and
noble qualities.

CHAPTER II

THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF VARIATION AND HEREDITY

Before we pass to the problems of variation and
heredity in man, it is necessary to trace the progress of
our knowledge of those problems in the lower animals,
and in the vegetable kingdom. Here experiment is
possible, and consequently more definite results have
been reached. With these results in mind, it is easier
and more instructive to examine the purely observa-
tional information that is available about mankind than
it would be without such guides.

In the subject as left by Darwin, the greatest need
was further light on the variations and mutations
necessary for natural selection to have something
to work upon. Two possibilities were recognised.
Selection might act on the small variations found
among the individuals of a species otherwise homo-
geneous— on the greater speed of an antelope with
legs an inch longer than the average of his kind ; or
large, discontinuous variations might arise, and the
*' sports" or individuals possessing them might make
large steps towards forming new species at once, if
the variations were favourable to survival.

Although Darwin recognised that " sports " had

14

VARIATION AND HEREDITY

15

been the origin of many new varieties of domestic
animals and plants, he favoured the view that to small
or continuous variations we must look for the chief
cause of evolution. But difficulties in that theory
soon appeared. A fully developed organ may prove
most useful, when in a rudimentary stage it would have
no effect on survival. Unless it arose per saltum^
natural selection would never cause it to develop.
Again, a small variation would be bred out of the race,
unless the individuals possessing it became sterile when
mated with the older type, or refused so to mate.

Such difficulties, together with a careful study of
sudden mutations by de Vries, Bateson, and others,
have led to a revision of the purely selectionist view.
Many biologists hold nowadays that discontinuous
variations, or " sports," have contributed extensively to
the separation of species. Such " sports " tend to
transmit their properties to their offspring ; they
certainly arise in some cases ; natural selection would
undoubtedly act on them in one way or the other as
they were useful or deleterious to their possessors ;
they can hardly help being a true cause of evolution.
Whether the small or continuous variations are also
effective remains an open question.

Small variations may be divided into two kinds :
those which are innate ; those which are acquired.
Innate variations tend to be inherited according to
laws we shall study below. But much discussion has
arisen about the possibility of the inheritance of
acquired characters.

The inheritance of such characters was generally
assumed, until Weismann called attention to the fact

1 6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

that no definite and satisfactory evidence was forth-
coming to support that assumption.

Moreover, it was pointed out by Weismann that the
germ cells of organisms seem to be independent of the
rest of the body. They descend from the germ cells
of the parents, and are not affected directly by changes
going on in the individual to whom they belong. But
such a conclusion seems difficult to extend to indirect
action, and other biologists hold that indirect action
may occur, and the germ cells undergo slight changes
in consequence of acquired modifications — enough at
any rate to affect the properties of the race when the
action is prolonged over many generations. Still, it
seems that, if acquired characters are transmitted at all,
it can be only to a small fractional extent. They can
have much less influence in modifying the race than
was heretofore supposed. More could be done in a
£qw generations by selecting and favouring the repro-
duction of innate qualities, which certainly are trans-
mitted, than could be effected in long ages by trying
to modify the stock through the direct action of use
and environment — even if these influences produce any
effect at all.

Moreover, the large discontinuous variations, which
are found in " sports " and tend to be transmitted by
heredity, are never acquired characters. No man by
taking thought can add a cubit to his stature, though
by physical culture he may possibly add a fraction of
an inch. Still less can he produce by exercise one of
the definite structural changes which occasionally appear
as sports. Whatever view about the occasional and
partial transmission of acquired characters may ulti-

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 17

mately prevail, it seems certain that such transmissions
must play a part in evolution small compared with that
due to the selection of those innate variations which are
readily hereditable. Inborn qualities are immeasurably
more useful to the race than those induced or developed
by environment, though to the individual, who has
received his allotted share of qualities, the favourable
opportunity for developing them is still of the utmost
importance. But the power of handing them on, used
or unused by the individual, is the true safeguard of
the moral and spiritual grandeur of a nation —

All I could never be
All men ignored in me
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

While Darwin was developing his theory of the
method of evolution, Gregor Mendel, Abbot of BrUnn,
was making experiments on the hereditary transmission
of definite qualities in peas, and had invented a means
of quantitative research which, rediscovered in later
days, has modified our conceptions of inheritance.

It was recognized, as for example by Galton, that
two modes of inheritance were known. The offspring
might acquire from its two parents a certain quality in
blended amount, as Mulattos are intermediate in com-
plexion between their Negro and European forebears ;
or, on the other hand, the offspring might resemble
one or other parent exclusively, as the children of a
man and a woman are either boys or girls but no
intermediate variety.

The latter mode of inheritance was found by Mendel

c

1 8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

to hold for certain qualities in peas, and to follow
definite laws of inheritance. His results have been
extended to other species of plants and animals by
recent observers.

As an example of Mendelian principles let us take
the case of the Andalusian fowl, studied by Bateson
and Punnett. Black and splashed white Andalusians
each breed true when mated together ; we possess then
a definite splashed white breed and a definite black
breed. If we cross a white bird with a black, the
resulting chicks are all blue. So far the result seems
simple, and we are inclined to regard blue in these
fowls as an intermediate hybrid colour between black
and white. But, if we breed further generations exclu-
sively from these blue birds, we find that they do not
breed true to type — no definite blue race can be estab-
lished. Of a large number of birds with two blue
parents, on the average, half will be blue, one quarter
will be white, and one quarter black. Now, these white
and black birds, though derived from blue ancestors,
will once more breed true, just as did the white and
black of the first generation. By mating together two
white birds, we can re-establish a pure splashed-white
strain, which shows no sign of its blue ancestry ; and
similarly we can recover a pure black strain, uncon-
taminated by blue to any number of generations.

If we think what these phenomena must mean in the
hereditary process, we are led to conclude that the germ
cells of the blue birds are not hybrids like the birds
themselves. Half the germ cells of a blue bird must
be pure " white " in character, half pure " black."
Then, when two blue birds pair, it is an even chance

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 19

whether two unlike cells meet and develop into a blue
chick, or two like cells join to form either a pure black
or a pure white bird. We may perhaps regard the
mixture of strains, which we find in the germ cells of
the hybrid blue fowl, as analogous to the mixture of
black and white threads which make up certain grey
cloths. To the eye the cloth looks grey, but in reality
there has been no true mingling. The threads may be
picked out again into a heap of white ones and a heap
of black. In the Andalusian fowl, black and white are
definite Mendelian properties, which are segregated
from each other in the germ cells and never mix. Not
all properties show these phenomena. In some cases
the hybridization seems to extend to the germ cells
themselves, and Mendel's principles do not apply. But
the possibility of such simple relations should never be
lost sight of, when examining data of inheritance. More-
over, some cases of mixed heredity may be explained by
the simultaneous action of several pairs of qualities, each
alone definitely Mendelian, which, acting together, are
difficult to disentangle.

The Andalusian fowl illustrates the simplest form of
Mendelian principles. In other cases the hybrid, which
corresponds with the blue bird in the fowls, resembles
outwardly one or other of the parents, and only betrays
its hybrid nature in the appearance of its descendants.

For instance, among the characters of green peas
studied by Mendel himself was the height of the plant.
Crossing a tall with a dwarf pea, he found that all the
resulting seeds gave rise to tall hybrid plants. In these
hybrids the tall character is said to be dominant, and
the dwarf character recessive. But the hybrid tall

20 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

plants when self- fertilized do not breed true. Out of
about a thousand plants of the third generation, almost
exactly three-quarters were tall, but one quarter were
short. Next year the seeds of this generation were
sown, and it was found that the dwarf type bred true
and remained fixed in future generations. But the
plants of the tall kind differed among themselves. One-
third yielded only tall offspring, while two-thirds gave
plants divided into " tails " and dwarfs in the old ratio
of three to one. The one -third are pure dominants,
breeding true to any number of generations, while the
two- thirds are impure, giving seeds divided in the
same ratio as those of the first generation of hybrids.

Representing the germ cells in each case as of two
varieties, we may write as DD the pure-bred original
tall parent, in which both varieties of cell carried the
dominant character. Similarly, RR will suggest the
germinal nature of the original pure-bred dwarf parent
in which both factors are recessive. The fertilization of
one of these parents by the other can be represented as
DD = RR. Since each hybrid so formed must derive
one factor from each parent, each hybrid must have the
composition DR, and contain both kinds of germ cells.
But, since one of them carries the dominant factor, it
alone will control the outer appearance of the plant,
which is externally indistinguishable from the original
pure-bred dominant DD. The hybrids, when self-
fertilized, can give DD, DR, RD, and RR, and each
of these arrangements is equally probable. DR and
RD are indistinguishable, and together make up half
the number of the offspring. These results may be
tabulated in a pedigree.

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 21

It will be seen that the recessive character — the
character which is concealed in the first hybrid genera-
tion— breeds true for any number of generations as soon
as it appears at all. On the other hand, individuals
which show the dominant character, which marks all the
first hybrids, may be either pure or mixed — some of
them, except in the first generation, will breed true, but

!
®

T

DD) @ (DR) ^RR,

^ T

@ @ (dr)

T

@

T

®

T

®

(k)

®.
T

the majority will have mixed descendants. These
phenomena are of great importance to the cattle-
breeder and horticulturist. Careful segregation of
the seeds of individual plants may establish a true
variety in a few generations, where the old plan of
mixing the seeds of all individuals which looked the
same could, at best, lead to success only after a long
and tedious process of selection.

One of the most interesting questions raised by our
Mendelian knowledge is the problem of the transmission
of sex. Sex is a sharply segregated quality ; an indi-
vidual is either male or female. The fact that in the
higher animals, at any rate, the numbers of the sexes
born are very nearly equal suggests that the germ cells of

22 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

one parent are all of the same kind, while those of the
other are of two species. There is some evidence to
indicate that the germ cells of the female are of two
kinds, while those of the male are all similar. If so, a
female carries both male and female characters, while
a male is exclusively male. The sex of any one
offspring is determined solely by the chance whether one
of the germ cells of the male meets a male or female
germ cell of the female.

So far, we have dealt only with a single pair of
contrasted characters — whiteness and blackness, tallness
and shortness. When the simultaneous inheritance of
two or more pairs of characters is examined, the
phenomena naturally become more complicated.

Sometimes the two pairs of characters are transmitted
quite independently of each other. Grains of maize
may be either yellow or white, either smooth or
wrinkled. If a smooth yellow type of maize be crossed
with a wrinkled white variety, all the resulting grains
are smooth and yellow. Thus smoothness and yellow-
ness are dominant characters, and wrinkledness and
whiteness recessive. To investigate the nature of these
apparently similar plants, they are crossed with the
wrinkled white variety. As these characters are reces-
sive, they only appear when the germ cells of the
dominant hybrid possess them also. Hence the result
of this experiment gives the nature of all the germ
cells of the hybrid. It was found that some eleven
thousand grains were divided almost exactly equally
between grains which were smooth and yellow, grains
smooth and white, grains wrinkled and yellow, and

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 23

grains wrinkled and white, each combination appearing
in twenty-five per cent of the whole.

It follows that a nearly equal number of the germ
cells of the double hybrid first obtained bear each of
the four possible combinations of characters. The dis-
tribution of one character does not depend on the
presence or absence of the other characters. If a germ
cell is yellow, it is an even chance whether it is smooth
or wrinkled. The inheritance of the two pairs of
characters goes on independently.

But this independence is not found universally. In
some cases two characters are present together if present
at all ; they are coupled. In other cases it is found
that one character, if present, prevents the acquirement
of the other ; something in the characters must be
inconsistent, so that they cannot exist together, or can
so exist only with difficulty.

Again, some characters can only manifest themselves
in presence of certain other characters, without the
existence of which they remain latent. On these lines,
the well-known phenomenon in domestic species of
reversion to ancestral wild types has been explained by
Bateson, in terms of Mendelian conceptions.

On the other hand, some qualities seem to be in-
compatible with others, so that if one is present the
other is either absent or is converted from a dominant
into a recessive character. The possession of horns in
sheep is connected with the sex-factor. In the Dorset
horned breed both sexes have horns, in the Suffolks
neither. If a Dorset be crossed with a Suffolk, th^
resulting rams are horned and the ewes hornless, while
in the next generation all varieties appear. Thus the

24 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

factor for horns is dominant in rams and recessive in
ewes ; it has difficulty in manifesting itself in presence of
the factor which makes a sheep a female.

The practical application of this new-won knowledge
to the arts of the breeder of new varieties of domestic
plants and animals has only now begun.

Perhaps the most striking success already obtained
is the production of new varieties of wheat by R. H.
Biffen. English wheat bears large crops, but is deficient
in a certain baking property known as "strength,"
which yields the kind of puffy white bread now in
fashion. Canadian wheats are " strong," but those of
them which maintain their " strength " in English soils
yield small crops. Biffen found that " strength " and
its absence were definite Mendelian properties in wheat,
" strength " being the dominant. By crossing a
" strong " Canadian wheat with a " weak," high-
cropping English variety, he got a first generation of
hybrids, all of which were " strong." In the second
generation the proportion of " strong " to " weak " was
three to one, and of the "strong" some bred true in future
generations, and contained also, as a fixed character, the
high-cropping qualities of the other original progenitor.

Another pair of qualities in wheat shows Mendelian
phenomena : liability to the attacks of the fungoid
disease known as rust, and immunity from those
attacks, Biffen has used the new methods of experi-
ment to obtain varieties in which immunity to rust is
combined with other desirable properties.

The experiments we have described make it clear

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 25

that the laws of heredity can, in general, only be applied
to foretell the average results in large numbers of cases.
We cannot predict whether any one chick with two
blue Andalusian parents will be black, white, or blue.
All that we know is that, of large numbers of such
chicks, half will be blue and one quarter each black and
white. In general, heredity cannot deal with indi-
viduals, but only with large groups of individuals,
statistically and in the aggregate.

Statistical methods indeed were applied to biological
problem.s by Quetelet in 1845, before Darwin published
The Origin of Species, before Mendel's work was done,
and long before its importance was recognized. Quetelet
pointed out, in a series of letters to the Grand Duke of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, that the mathematical theory
of chance and probability might be applied to many
biometrical problems, and thus throw light on some
departments of sociology.

A typical example of the action of chance is the
falling of a number of coins with " head " or " tail "
upwards when the coins are tossed. If we have two
coins, the possibilities are that we may get (i) head,
head ; (2) head, tail ; (3) tail, head ; (4) tail, tail.
But of these cases (2) and (3) are essentially identical.
Each combination is as probable as any of the others,
and thus the chances of obtaining two heads, one head
and one tail, or two tails, are as i : 2 : i. If we had
ten coins, and made 1024 trials, tossing all the coins
each time, calculation shows that the probable relative
frequency would be in accordance with the following
numbers : —

26 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Heads.

Tails.

Relative Frequency

10

O

I

9

I

lO

8

2

45

7

3

I20

6

4

2IO

5

5

252

4

6

210

3

7

120

2

8

45

1

9

10

O

lO

I

If we plot these results on a diagram, measuring the
number of tails from left to right horizontally, and the
number expressing the relative frequency in each case
vertically, we get Fig. i , where a smooth curve is
drawn through the points as plotted.

This curve gives the theoretical distribution of
frequency for ten coins. In any actual series of

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 27

experiments, we get results more or less resembling those
indicated by theory, and the concordance improves as
the number of throws of the coins is increased.

Curves of a similar type are obtained when inde-
pendent measurements are made of any physical
quantity, such as the height of a mountain. The
individual measurements are subject to many sources
of error. Usually some errors tell one way and some
the other, and we get the majority of the results near
the average value. But occasionally, all or nearly all
the errors chance to fall on the same side, and we get
a solitary result differing much from the mean, just
as about once in 1000 throws all our ten coins fell head
upwards.

While the general type of curve is maintained in
all such measurements, its exact shape depends on
the accuracy of the observations. In those physical
measurements where great exactitude is possible, nearly
all the results would closely approach the mean. The
curve, therefore, is high in the middle, and falls
rapidly on each side. If large errors are unavoidable,
the number of observations which differ widely from
the mean increases, and the curve flattens and broadens.

Similar phenomena also appear when measurements
are made of biological quantities. Fig. 2 shows the
variation in measurement of the chests of a large
number of Scottish soldiers. It illustrates clearly the
concentration in the number of men near the mean
value of about 40 inches, and should be compared
with the theoretical curve of frequency given in Fig. i.

Again, Fig. 3 represents the variation in length of
the fruits of three varieties of Evening Primrose

28 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

J3 3^ J5 36 57 38/ 39 W 91 fi" ^5 '^ f5 96 ^7 ^S

J/^CHEs Of Chest M£ASu/?£ME^r.

Fig. 2.

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 29

measured by de Vries. The lengths are measured
horizontally, and the numbers of individuals showing
particular lengths of fruit are plotted vertically.

The species A and C have a characteristic mean size
of fruit, and their corresponding curves closely resemble
the theoretical curve given above. On the other hand,
the third species, represented by the curve B, shows
sign of subdivision into two separate groups at least.
Had the seeds of all three varieties been classed
together, the three curves would have coalesced into
one, which would have approached in form the normal
curve of simple variation.

This result not only shows the agreement with the
normal type of curve, given by measurement of the
individuals of a homogeneous species such as A or C,
but also illustrates one of the dangers which accom-
pany the use of statistical methods in biological
problems. It is often impossible to tell from the
data whether a single group or a number of groups
are involved. Caution is necessary in the application
of a method which is liable to such a fundamental
uncertainty. But the need for care does not destrov
the usefulness of the theory of variation. Where the
individuals concerned are known to be of homogene-
ous type, the normal curve will express the variations
from the type, and where many different types are
present the normal curve will still be found to represent
the result, though for somewhat different reasons.

Where we are dealing with the small, continuous
variations, shown by the different individuals of a homo-
geneous species, the normal curve will express their
distribution. Where discontinuous variations or sports

30 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

are appearing, our material ceases to be homogeneous,
and the normal curve gives no indication of the actual
distribution.

Light is thrown on the distinction between the two
kinds of variation by the recent work of Johannsen on
what he calls " pure lines." The weights of the seeds
of a single variety of bean differ from each other.
Most seeds have weights near the mean value, but a
few diverge more or less from it, in accordance with
the usual normal curve. Plants, raised from the
heavier seed and self- fertilized, themselves produce
seed the average weight of which is in general high,
while the light seed produces usually light -seeded
offspring.

But, if a single seed be taken and made the starting-
point of a family of self-fertilized descendants, no agree-
ment, even of the general kind noted above, is found
between the weight of a seed in the family and the
seeds of the individuals which grow from it. The
variations in weight of the seeds have no hereditary
value — they are not transmitted.

Such a family, derived from a single original ances-
tral seed, is called by Johannsen a " pure line." All
individuals within the family have the same ancestry,
and are therefore genetically similar. The variations
which they show are then accidental, and are not trans-
mitted in heredity. To variations of this type the
name " fluctuation " has been given.

It seems, then, that individuals with an identical
ancestry of this particular kind form a stable type.
The individuals may vary more or less, but they cannot
transmit their variations to their offspring. The offspring

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 31

revert to the type ; they show variations, but the varia-
tions bear no relation to those of their respective parents.

If this result be substantiated, it will follow that
variations which are inherited must be derived from
ancestral differences. A true division of variations
into two classes essentially distinct would thus be made.
The real contrast is not between small variations and
large. It is probably true that large or discontinu-
ous variations can only be produced by ancestral
differences, but small ones may be either of ancestral
origin or of the fluctuational type which arises in pure
lines. The real distinction is between variations due to
ancestral differences, or mutations, and the accidental
variations or fluctuations which would appear, even were
we dealing with a " pure line." The ancestral varia-
tions, modified or unmodified, are transmitted to future
generations, the accidental variations are not.

Whether or no these ideas be supported by further
research, the study of the transmission of the variations
actually found in a more or less homogeneous race is of
fundamental importance. If a parent differ from the
normal type of the race by a certain amount in a certain
direction, will his offspring also differ in that direction,
and to what amount .^^

A long series of statistical investigations by Karl
Pearson and others enables us to answer this question
with certainty. In a race, whether of men or of animals,
mating at random, on the average of large numbers,
the offspring will diverge from the mean in the same
direction as the diverging parent, and to approximately
half the amount. If the average stature of the men
of a race be 5 feet 8 inches, a man of 6 feet will exceed

32 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

the mean height by 4 Inches. If we measured the sons
of a large number of 6-feet fathers, we should find that,
while some were taller than their fathers and some
shorter, their average height was very nearly 5 feet 10
inches, that they exceeded the mean stature by 2 inches,
by half as much as their fathers.

This result is expressed by saying that the coefficient
of correlation is about one-half, or 0.5. Had the sons
been just as tall as their fathers, the coefficient would
have been unity, and had the sons' average height
reverted to that of the race in general, there would
have been no relation between the variation of parent
and offspring, and the coefficient would have been zero.
In this way we can express conveniently the statistical
intensity of inheritance of any character.

Closely similar values for the coefficients of correla-
tion have been obtained by investigating many other
common characters in men and in animals and plants.
The intensity of inheritance in all cases seems to be
represented by a coefficient lying between 0.4 and 0.6.

It follows, then, that the ordinary variations found
in the usual races of mixed ancestry, whether of man or
other beings, are inherited. They are not wholly mere
fluctuations or chance differences of the individual, such
as Johannsen found with pure lines of bean plants.
They have a definite meaning in heredity, a real
selection value.

If, instead of allowing the race to mate at random,
we selected both parents for some one quality, we could
raise the intensity of inheritance, and establish gradually
by continued selection a strain in which the quality
reached a value much higher than its average in the

VARIATION AND HEREDITY 22

original mixed race. This is one of the methods of the
horse-breeder and the horticulturist, and their success
is a standing proof of the inheritance of the variations
found in a race, originally made more or less homo-
geneous by random breeding, but derived from a mixed
ancestry and containing a large number of germinal
differences.

To a certain extent selective mating in mankind
does occur even without conscious choice. Families
with similar occupations, ideals, and characters tend to
associate, and this tendency increases the opportunities
for individuals with similar qualities to realize their
innate preference for each other. Instances will be
given later to show how this process results in the
segregation of distinct types of ability in various
sections of the community. Were this tendency to
selective mating not in action, the coefficients of cor-
relation between one parent and the offspring would be
less than they are, though it is difficult to estimate
what would be the decrease in their value.

Another method of studying the correlation of
characters between parents and their descendants was
followed by Galton. He measured the average frac-
tional contribution of each ancestor to the total heritage
of the offspring in a mixed race. From an examination
of the records relating to the basset hounds of the
late Sir John Millais, he found that the contribution of
the parents was about one-half, that of the grand-
parents one-quarter, that of the great-grandparents
one-eighth, and so on.

Now, if this law of ancestral inheritance be under-
stood to mean that the character of each individual is a

34 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

vague mixture of those of all his ancestors, it is clearly
inconsistent with Mendelian principles. According to
those principles, a personality is made up by the chance
conjunction of different unit factors, derived from cer-
tain individuals only among the ancestry. The law of
ancestral inheritance, whereby every ancestor contri-
butes his share in proportion to his nearness in descent,
is inapplicable.

Much discussion of this point has taken place. It
seems possible if, instead of one individual, we con-
sider large numbers, Mendelian principles would lead
to results not far different from those suggested by
Galton's law. The frequency of Mendelian dominance
would produce, on the average of large numbers,
greater resemblances of children to their parents than
to their grandparents, and to more distant ancestors.
Even on Mendelian principles, something like the law
of ancestral inheritance may on the average hold good.

CHAPTER III

INHERITANCE AND VARIATION IN MANKIND

The inheritance by children of some share of their
parents' qualities is a matter of common observation.
The transmission seems at first sight to be capricious,
but the very attention which is drawn to any marked
departure from family type shows that the power of
heredity is recognised by general consent.

A moment's reflection suggests that the capricious-
ness is a question of the individual, and that, on taking
a large number of cases, we should expect to find
definite laws holding good, as we do in other forms of
life.

The qualities we desire in plants and animals are
comparatively simple ; those which^'give to man his
dignity and value are extremely complex. The problem
of tracing the descent of hereditary characters in man-
kind is much more difficult. Nevertheless, that problem
was attacked systematically by Sir Francis Galton as
early as 1869, and his great works on Hereditary
Genius and Natural Inheritance stand as landmarks in
the subject.

Since that date the study of inheritance in plants
and animals has been revolutionized by the rediscovery

35

36 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

of the work of Mendel, and the application of his
methods by other naturalists.

It will be well, then, to begin our consideration of
inheritance in mankind by tracing the progress which
has been made in the discovery of Mendelian factors in
the human race. Afterwards we will pass to more
general cases, where Mendel's principles either do not
hold, or are too difficult to follow through the maze of
phenomena for us yet to have established their presence.

Although we take this course, it must not be sup-
posed that the sociological conclusions we draw from
our general study of heredity in man depend on the
new knowledge associated with the name of Mendel.
Mendel's theories give us a working hypothesis which
tells us what to look for in examining new data. Hence
it is well to put those theories in the forefront. But,
however we interpret them, the facts of heredity remain,
and must be reckoned with by the sociologist and the
statesman.

The success of Mendelian methods depends on our
ability to isolate certain characters and treat the inherit-
ance of each character as a separate problem. Now,
many of the qualities in mankind which we are
accustomed to think of as definite simple characters are
in reality extremely complex. It needs the conjunction
of many different factors to make an able man, a
charming woman, an effective politician, or an accom-
plished swindler.

We must begin, then, with some simpler and more
definite character, in the hope that it will depend on
one Mendelian factor alone.

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 37

Such a character has been found by Hurst hi the
brown pigment m front of the iris of the eye. When
present in large amount, this pigment gives to the eye
the appearance known as brown or black, while, if there
be little or no pigment, the eye is described as blue or
grey.

Hurst found that the type of eye possessing the
brown pigment was dominant to that without it ; that
the factor giving brown pigment, if present at all,
always showed in the eye. We may say then that
brown eyes are dominant and blue eyes recessive ;
though casual description may lead to error, as it is
the presence of the pigment which is the Mendelian
factor, while the general appearance of the eye depends
on the amount of the pigment.

If we represent the dominant character by D and
the recessive by R, the mating of two individuals, one
pure- bred with regard to brown eyes and the other
pure- bred with regard to grey, may be denoted by
DD = RR. Since the children must obtain one factor
from each parent, they v/ill all be represented by DR,
and in appearance all will resemble the dominant parent
— that is, all will possess brown pigment in their eyes.

If one of these offspring marry a pure-bred grey-
eyed person, an RR, we have the union DR = RR.
On the average, half the children of such marriages will
be DR and half RR. The former class will be brown-
eyed, but not pure-bred, while the latter class will be
pure recessives who have lost altogether the factor on
which brown eyes depend. As long as they mate with
grey-eyed people their descendants will never have
brown eyes.

38 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

We therefore get the following theoretical pedi-
gree : —

00

®

OR) =^ (RR)

I

®=f=®

®

(RR)

r

1

®

1
(rr)

If we wish to trace a dominant character, we may-
make its descent more visible in the diagram by repre-
senting it as ^ if pure bred, and as ^ if half-bred.
Although these two classes are identical in outward
appearance, their innate differences show at once in
their offspring. We then get the scheme

o

o^

o

o

o^=o

o

o

Here we have traced the descent of a dominant
character in a recessive population : the inheritance of
a brown-eyed strain in a grey-eyed people.

Whenever we find a character transmitted in such a

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 39

way that some of the children of the marriage of a
person showing the character with a person without it
manifest the character clearly and some not at all, we
may suspect Mendelian dominance. If, in a long pedi-
gree, these two types of children be on the average
nearly equal in number, and if the character be trans-
mitted only through those persons who show it openly,
our suspicion may become a certainty. A recessive
character may appear in the offspring of a person not
showing it, but a dominant character, if present at all,
must be apparent. If a person have it not, he cannot
transmit it.

Let us compare these theoretical results with those
actually found by Hurst in the population of a Leices-
tershire village.^ Parents with no brown pigment in
their eyes produced exclusively children without it.
Brown-eyed parents, on the other hand, might be either
pure-bred or half-bred with respect to that character,
and the relative numbers of their brown-eyed and grey-
eyed children were very nearly those of the theoretical
Mendelian results.

As we cannot tell by inspection if an individual be
pure or half-bred with regard to a dominant character,
we will represent all brown-eyed persons by the symbol
9, whether they be of the type DD or DR.

^ For details of this and other investigations on Mendelian phenomena reference
is made to Prof. Bateson's recent boolc on Mendelism. Other instances of inherit-
ance in this chapter are taicen from The Treasury of Human Inheritance, edited by
Prof, Karl Pearson.

40 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

■

-(J*-

_c

o

o

-b •

-•^

-a

3
O

^ .

-o

uL,

-•f

-•^

-•^-

-o

ler the ii
n the iri

a

-o

% i

(5^

-%

-#f

: eye, w
1 pigmc

g

■5 S

o

t in the iris of i
ual with no bro

^

^

-•*-

e 1

-'•

-b

'5-, -5

i «

2 II

-•^■

V—-''

i

o

■-•*

re

3

^^

'^

-V)

|>

w

•T3

1

-O

re

H

■1

H

a

11

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 41

Here the second pair in generation I. probably consist
of a pure - bred dominant brown and a pure - bred
recessive grey. Their offspring are all of the type
DR, and, when mated with recessives, produce together
eight brown-eyed children and six with grey eyes —
a good approach to the Mendelian equality. Other
similar pedigrees might be given, or may be traced.
In all cases care must be taken to consider a sufficient
number of individuals before drawing general con-
clusions about the problems of inheritance.

Many diseases and malformations seem to depend
on a definite pathological condition, and to descend as
Mendelian dominants. The affection known as brachy-
dactyly, in which the fingers are shortened and possess
only one joint instead of two, is a dominant character,
the normal condition of the fingers being recessive.

Two pedigrees of brachydactylous families have been
described. One, published by Farabee, is illustrated
below. In each case the affected parents married
normal persons, and, to simplify the diagram, the
marriages are not indicated. Moreover, the children
of unaffected parents were none of them affected, so, to
save space, they, too, are omitted from the figure. As
before, the signs to look for are the transmission of the
character through those alone who possess it, and the
equality in number of the affected and non- affected
among the children of affected and normal parents.

The following table gives the results of Farabee's
inquiries : —

42 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

55

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 43

The peculiarity descends only through the affected.
No unaffected person had brachydactylous children.
The affected parents, all of whose known offspring
are entered in the pedigree, married normal unaffected
recessive husbands or wives. Their unions are therefore
of the type DR = RR, when on Mendelian principles
the chances are that half the children will be DR,
and therefore will show the peculiarity, since it is a
dominant, and half will be RR, pure recessives in whom
it has been clean bred out. To bring the figure within
compass, the marriages of the unaffected members of
the family are not tabulated, but, as mentioned above,
in no instance did their descendants prove to be
brachydactylous. Of the known children of the
affected, it will be seen that thirty-six are brachy-
dactylous and thirty-three are normal — a close approach
to the Mendelian probability. Another family in-
vestigated by Drinkwater showed similar phenomena,
with numbers of thirty-nine to thirty-two affected and
unaffected children of DR = RR marriages. There is
little doubt that brachydactyly and its absence are in
man a pair of simple Mendelian factors, the malforma-
tion being a dominant character which appears whether
the Individual is a pure-bred DD or a cross-bred DR
— whether he gets the peculiarity from both parents or
from one only.

Some other diseases, such as certain forms of cataract,
show signs of similar relations ; they appear to be simple
Mendelian dominants. No clear case of a pathological
condition inherited as a recessive seems yet to have been
traced. As such characters would not always be trans-
mitted directly from parent to child, evidence is much

44 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

more difficult to collect. The theoretical descent of a
recessive character should be in accordance with the
scheme,

DD

m

m

m

r

®

DD)

DD)

DO)

OR

(RD)

In the other notation, in which the peculiarity when
it exists openly is represented by a dark circle, this
becomes

O^

0=1=0

0^0

— ^

o

o

o o

The descent is made clearer if we write the symbol ©
for a person who possesses the character not visibly but
in some of his germ cells. We then get

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 45

I 1

©Y© o

! — \ ] [

o © © •

— a scheme which shows at once the effect of marriage
between two persons, each of whom, though not
openly affected, has the peculiarity as a germinal
character.

As long as an individual contains only a single dose
of the factor, the peculiarity, being recessive, does not
become manifest. But, as soon as two persons who
possess the concealed character marry, one-quarter of
their offspring may be expected to be impregnated with
a double dose, and to be pure recessives with the
peculiarity apparent. If such persons intermarried, all
their offspring would be affected, and a definite breed,
showing the peculiarity, might be established.

It is clear that a recessive character is much more
difficult to trace through a pedigree than is a dominant
character. As a clue for research it may be pointed
out that peculiarities which are prevalent among the
offspring of consanguineous marriages, especially those
between first cousins, are likely to prove recessive
factors. If the pecuHarity be concealed in the blood
of a family, when cousins marry, it is probable that
some of their children will get the recessive character

46 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

from both sides, and, being pure-bred with regard to
that character, will show it openly.

The more complicated phenomena which have been
traced in plants and animals when two characters are
coupled, or are incompatible, have also appeared in the
study of mankind, and, when more is known, will
probably explain cases of inheritance which are now too
involved for elucidation.

Night-blindness, an inability to see in a faint light,
affects men more often than women. It is transmitted
by affected men, but not by unaffected men. It is, how-
ever, often transmitted by unaffected women. Apparently
normal women, sisters of affected men, may transmit the
peculiarity to some of their sons, but only if they marry
a night-blind husband can they give it to their daughters.

This sex-limited descent is to be compared with the
inheritance of horns in sheep, which we have described
above. In sheep, horns are dominant in rams and
recessive in ewes. If the rams contain the factor at all
they exhibit it ; hence they can transmit the character
if they themselves show it, but not otherwise. In the
ewes, some other factor opposes the development of
horns, and horns only appear if the tendency to form
them is born in the ewe from both its parents. Some
ewes who do not themselves show horns may never-
theless transmit them to their male lambs. Similarly,
night-blindness must be regarded as a dominant char-
acter in men, but a recessive character in women.

The characters hitherto considered have been definite
and simple — a man is or is not brachydactylous or night-

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 47

blind. But the majority of the normal characters which
make up a man are too complex for statement in these
terms. His stature is controlled by the total length of
many bones, each of which may be separately variable ;
his strength is determined by the co-ordination of many
factors, associated with different members of his body ;
his ability depends on the proper conjunction of a still
larger number of attributes : intellect, application, will-
power, sense of duty, each of which itself may be highly
complex.

In the present state of our knowledge, it is premature
to attempt to trace definite Mendelian inheritance in
such complicated characters. Our new familiarity with
the rules of simple inheritance, it is true, enables us to
catch suggestive glimpses of order from time to time ;
but, for the most part, we are driven back at present to
vaguer statistical methods. Able parents continue to
produce more than their numerical share of able children,
whether or no ability ultimately be resolvable into a very
large number of dominant Mendelian factors. Occasion-
ally we shall find that some " sport " arises, apparently
spontaneously, whether we regard it as indicating some
process of conjunction of recessive characters not visible
in the parents, or prefer to leave it unexplained.

Even in the inheritance of many diseases we cannot
yet prove that exact Mendelian principles hold. Often
it is the predisposition to the disease, and not the
disease itself, that is inherited ; the disease must then
be induced by external conditions. In other cases,
the disease may be produced by several causes, only
one of which is hereditary. Thus deafness is to some
extent hereditary, but doubtless it is also producible by

48 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

injury in infancy, by such diseases as scarlet fever, and
by other causes.

As an example, let us take a case studied by Moos,

A deaf-mute man, represented by the symbol ^,

married a normal healthy woman, represented by Q-

They had a deaf-mute son and a normal daughter.
The daughter married a normal man, and had two
deaf-mute daughters and one normal son. One
daughter married a deaf-mute man, and had a deaf-
mute son, while the normal son married a normal
woman, but his one son was a deaf-mute.

We can exhibit these relations in tabular form, the
character to be traced, in this case deaf-mutism, being
indicated by blackening the circle representing the
individual possessing it.

I

n /
in

IV

f?

9=r^

'•=ff 'f 'Of 9
/4 ^4

This pedigree shows not only direct inheritance
from parent to child, but the reappearance of deaf-
mutism in a grandchild (III. 2) born of two normal
parents, and in a great-grandchild (IV. 2) where both
parents and grandparents were free from the affliction.

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 49

When the condition is brought into the pedigree from
several sides, it usually becomes more persistent, and we
get such terrible results as those shown below.

•6=rV 'h'f

R

I

I 1 — — I 1

^^ ^^ f^ Sd^

1 r

ni /A ^A -^A "A ^m

Here every member of the second and third
generations is a deaf-mute.

Even with diseases which are infectious, a predis-
position to the disease is often or always an hereditary
character. Let us take as an example tuberculosis,
which still kills about one in ten of our population.
Of late years, stress has been laid on the infectious
nature of this scourge, and there has been a tendency
to overlook the effect of heredity in transmitting a
nature prone to its attacks. Yet a glance at such a
pedigree as that given below must recall us to the
study of ancestral influences.

The individuals i, 2, and 3 of generation V., and
I of generation VI., have not yet arrived at the age
when tuberculosis usually begins. Excluding these
cases ; and the doubtful cases I. i and V. 7, we have
17 individuals descended from our first pair. Of
these descendants 15 are certainly tuberculous, and
only 2 are classed as free from the disease.

Such pedigrees as we have considered are sufficient
to suggest the preponderating effect of heredity in

E

50 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

-Q

^

o

P^

^

^.O

•o

Ih

*9

.o

1.

■o
-o

iilH
3|IH

o

'II — o

■o

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 51

special cases ; but to measure quantitatively the heredi-
tary influence, it is necessary to deal statistically with
large numbers of such pedigrees. Moreover, it is not
enough to study diseased stocks only. They must
be taken as parts of the general population, and our
statistical studies must deal with fair samples of the
population at large.

The possible pitfalls ot too restricted a view are
better illustrated by the more difficult case of tuber-
culosis, which we have dealt with last, than by the
more rare condition of deaf-mutism, where no question
of infection can arise.

Tuberculosis is very prevalent. It affects fatally
some ten in a hundred of the population. Hence in a
sample of the people taken at random one or two in
seventeen might be expected to suffer from the disease.

Although these numbers would be exceeded in
chance cases, the probability of as many as fifteen out
of seventeen in a group suffering would be exceedingly
small. Nevertheless, such a conjunction would be
possible, and a few such cases taken alone could not
settle the question.

Again, since tuberculosis is infectious, it could be
argued that members of the same family might more
readily infect each other than those outside. It should,
however, be noted that, as tuberculosis is, in general, a
disease which develops in early mature life, and affects
comparatively few children or old people, it is less likely
to run through a family by infection than some other
complaints. It would be much more likely to be passed
by infection between husbands and wives. Some in-
fection in these cases probably does occur, but a

52 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

statistical investigation by Pope and Pearson has shown
that such transmission is comparatively rare — too rare
to affect appreciably statistical results. The disease is
so prevalent that no one can escape coming within its
influence. In crowded urban populations, at any rate,
we may safely assign escape or infection in a large
measure to immunity or predisposition.

To reach definite conclusions on the intensity of
hereditary transmission, a careful statistical inquiry,
based on processes the same as those used to investigate
the inheritance of physical qualities such as stature, etc.,
must be undertaken. Professor Pearson has found by
such methods that the coefficient of correlation for
the hereditary transmission of tuberculosis lies between
0.4 and 0.6, and has a most probable value of about
0.5 — identical with the coefficient for the transmission
of physical dimensions.

Other points of interest also appear. Among them
may be mentioned the fact that tuberculosis is more
prevalent among the older children of a tuberculous
parent than among the younger children. Similar
results are found in other pathological inquiries ; the
elder children are more liable to inherit the weak points
of their parents. The bearing of this tendency on the
effect of the decrease in the average size of modern
families is obvious, and full of sinister import to the
future of the race.

One of the fundamental problems in sociology is the
determination of the comparative influence of heredity
and environment in the production of any given char-
acter. In most cases data for the examination of the
problem are wholly wanting. No figures, for instance,

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 53

are yet available to determine how many of our paupers
are made so by circumstances and how many are un-
employable by nature. In some cases, such, for instance,
as the number who suffer from a zymotic disease like
enteric fever, the main influence must probably be
assigned to environment. On the other hand, we
should expect the incidence of deaf- mutism to be
almost entirely hereditary. But often there are no
reasons for looking for an overwhelming effect of
one of these influences rather than of the other, and
we have no evidence available for comparing their
results.

The only quantitative study yet published of the
comparative influence of heredity and environment
seems to be the work of Barrington and Pearson on
keenness of vision and defects of eyesight. Here we
have a character which we might expect to be influenced
profoundly both by inheritance and by surroundings.
We should expect visual powers to be innate to some
extent, but to be affected largely by the surroundings
and occupations of childhood and youth.

The Edinburgh Charity Organization Society has
published a report on the physical condition of fourteen
hundred school children in the city, together with an
account of their homes and surroundings. From this
report it is possible to examine the correlation of the
children's eyesight with the condition of their homes.
From an elaborate statistical investigation, it appears
that no measurable relation exists between powers of
vision and environment — overcrowding, extreme
poverty, immoral surroundings, were equally without
effect.

54 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

On the other hand, the influence of heredity is well
marked. The statistics show that the coefficient of
correlation lies between 0.4 and 0.6, thus agreeing
with the intensity of inheritance of other physical
characters, such as stature. The preponderating in-
fluence of heredity again becomes evident, even where
we might expect that environment would play a
conspicuous part.

The study of variation in mankind has been post-
poned till now in order that the facts of inheritance
given above should be held in mind. For, leaving
aside for the moment acquired characters, it is impossible
rightly to understand variations in innate quaHties till
we have some knowledge of heredity, by which those
qualities are determined.

The work of Johannsen on pure lines, described
on page 30, suggests that, for variations to be trans-
mitted by heredity, they must themselves be derived
from chance germinal associations of different qualities
obtained from various individuals in a heterogeneous
ancestry, or, at all events, that such ancestral varia-
tions are of far more hereditary importance than
others. Sports arise from the chance combination
of different factors, producing an unexpected result.
Drawn from different individuals in an ancestral
tree, the factors form a particular conjunction, which
perhaps has never before happened, and the result is a
dwarf, a giant, or a transcendent genius. If some of
the factors happen to have an affinity for each other,
they become linked in the manner traced in recent

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND

5S

Mendelian research, and the sport may transmit his
qualities to his descendants, estabhshing perhaps a
definite breed, perhaps a transient strain.

In a mixed race like our own, the different types

o

JS J^ 35 36 ^57 38 39 W 91 ^2 ^^3 f^ f5 96 '97 -a?

INCHES OF Chest Measureme/^t

Fig. 4.

pass by such insensible gradations into each other,
that the population for some purposes may be treated
as a homogeneous strain showing wide variations.
Almost any character of a large section of the
people, when its variations are plotted, gives a curve
approximating to a normal curve of error. The
chest measurement of Scottish soldiers (Fig. 4), already
considered on page 28, or the marks gained by

S6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

candidates in a University examination (Fig. 5), equally
show this result. In the latter case, the curve is cut
short at each end by the difficulty of expressing
adequately in percentage marks the ignorance of the
worst and the superiority of the best candidates, as
compared with the mediocre attainments of the majority.
But, allowing for this difficulty, the concordance is
usually so good that any marked deviation from the
standard curve of frequency suggests some fault in the
examiner or in the conduct of the examination.

70

■

SO

-•- - ^

li^ SO

1

: /•■■\

/ \

^JO

/ \
1

1 m

?:

/ V

^ ^^

/

1

^ /o

^ \

— 1 1 -J 1 1 i 1 1 'i

/o bo jo ^o so 60 to 80 90 'oo
Fig. 5.

But it should never be forgotten that, when the
theory of variation is applied generally to the people
as a whole, this simplicity is apparent and not real.
The population is made up of many different strains —
of so many in fact that they shade off into each other

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 57

completely, and appear to be but the chance variations
of a homogeneous stock.

The normal curve must be applied with great
caution, but its usual accordance with observation
shows that its general features are common to many
kinds of statistics. With a fairly homogeneous section
of the community, we shall probably not err in looking
for many men about the average, and few diverging far
from it, whether we examine physical, mental, or moral
qualities.

Galton has applied the theory of variation to the
statistical study of ability in man. By a careful analysis,
he estimates the number of men of what he defines to
be eminent ability as about 250 in each million of our
population. He then divides the people into eight
classes above mediocrity and eight below it, and takes
the three highest classes for the eminent men. Assuming
that the normal curve of error applies, the number of
men in each class can be calculated. More than half-
of each million are placed in the two mediocre classes,
one on each side of the line of average ability. As we
pass away from the average, the number in a class
rapidly diminishes, till the last three classes on each
side contain together only about 250 in a million. On
one side this number represents the men of eminence ;
on the other it is about enough to include the more
hopeless idiots and imbeciles. An eminent man departs
from mediocrity on one side as far as an idiot does on
the other.

The application of the normal curve to the study
of special ability seems justified by the results obtained
with examinations. Nevertheless, the candidates in

58 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

such examinations are more or less selected. It is
doubtful how far the normal curve would represent
the facts of the actual distribution of general ability in
such a heterogeneous nation as our own, with so many
different types in the population. We might find,
could we make actual measurements, that the experi-
mental curve was much distorted. Still, broadly con-
sidered, the results would be of the kind indicated by
Galton ; the different types of the people mingling
to some extent with each other. In dealing with
specialized ability, particularly in selected samples of
the population, a near approach to the theoretical
normal curve would be expected, and is found where
measurement is practicable.

Galton's method enables us roughly to classify the
differences in ability of the nation. He also showed
that another estimate of differences in ability of one
special kind may be obtained from the results of com-
petitive examinations, and especially from the old Cam-
bridge Mathematical Tripos, in which the names of
successful candidates were arranged in order of merit.
All these candidates are good enough mathematicians
to obtain mathematical honours, and even the worst of
them must be considered as of moderate ability. Yet
the Senior Wrangler usually got more than thirty times
as many marks as the lowest man on the list, and,
owing to the limited time allotted to the examination,
it is allowed that the results under-estimated the differ-
ences. The candidates were trained in similar con-
ditions, at all events for the last three, the most
important, years. Hence it follows that we must
regard the ability of an average Senior Wrangler as

INHERITANCE IN MANKIND 59

more than thirty times as great as the average mathe-
matical ability of the candidates, while an exception-
ally brilliant Senior Wrangler would far exceed that
estimate.

There is no reason to suppose that different results
would appear, could we estimate ability of other kinds
in an equally exact way. The ability of a Marlborough
or a Napoleon must exceed that of the average soldier
by at least as much. In fact, so many different kinds
of ability are needed in a successfiil general, that the
greatest commanders must be regarded as amongst the
most eminent of mankind.

Such considerations show at once the absurdity of
the old fallacy that all men are born equal, and that
success depends only on opportunity and environment.
Men are not born equal, and in nothing do such
great differences exist as in their mental capacities.
We must estimate the ability of an eminent man as
at least a hundred times that of the average of the race.

We now see that, even with qualities which show an
insensible gradation from man to man, selection has
enough variation on which to work. In the characters
that follow definite Mendelian principles, we get a sharp
division and segregation, A man either has brown
pigment in his eyes or he has not ; he is either brachy-
dactylous or possesses normal fingers. But, in the
qualities we are now considering, no such line of
division is possible. We could find men whose height
lay within each tenth of an inch from five feet to six,
and others who possessed every shade of general ability
from that of a genius to that of a fool.

General ability is too complicated a thing to show

6o THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

simple Mendelian principles, in the present state of our
powers of analysis ; though certain special forms, such
as musical skill, may be simpler to bring to order. In
ability, and characters of an equally complex type,
we cannot at present trace simple rules. But the
inheritance of ability is a subject of such importance
that it must be treated alone at a later stage of our
inquiry.

CHAPTER IV

THE INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT

The problems connected with the inheritance of mental
defect have sprung into importance in recent years.
It is only within the last century that the mentally
defective have had much chance of survival for them-
selves, or any prospect of handing down their diseased
condition into another and yet another generation.
Before that period, the wardship of idiots and lunatics
had regard chiefly to the control of their lands and
estates in the interests of the Crown and the next of
kin, and was only gradually elaborated into some
attempt to control their persons also ; while those
lunatics who had no possessions were left to the tender
mercies of their relations or to the care of charitable
persons and the parish. Even in criminal law the plea
of insanity was unavailing except in extreme cases.
In fact, the general feeling in the society of the period
seems to have been that insanity itself was a crime, or
at the very least the punishment of a crime. The
repressive measures founded on such a beHef were
severe and effective ; there was little opportunity of
discovering whether mental defect was or was not
transmissible by heredity.

6i

62 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, public
attention was drawn to the pitiable condition of the
insane, either when incarcerated in prisons and asylums,
or when wandering at large. A scientific study of
insanity began to correlate the phenomena observed
with other forms of mental and physical disease, while
popular novelists, such as Charles Dickens in Barnaby
Rudge, drove home to the public mind the inhumanity
of the then methods of treatment and non-treatment.
A long series of lunacy laws has followed on the
awakening of the national consciousness in this matter.

But a recognition of the evil did not at once produce
a knowledge of the issues at stake. As is usual in all
legislative interference, the individual at first is dealt
with per se ; the surroundings in which he was bred,
their effect on him and his on them were ignored.
According to the mid-Victorian concept, a man was
either sane or insane — quite mad or completely cured.
How he became mad, how completely he was cured,
were not taken into consideration. When he was once
discharged from the asylum or refused admission to it
on the grounds of insufficient mental defect, like the
man in the old song.

Whither he went and how he fared,
Nobody knew and nobody cared.

Such a method of treatment has had its natural
effect in the extension by inheritance of mental in-
firmity. In the beginning of the twentieth century it
became necessary to appoint a Royal Commission to
inquire, not into the crowded state of the lunatic and
idiot asylums, but into the provision for guardianship

INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT 63

and control of a whole new class of citizens, the feeble-
minded.

The investigation was conducted on expert lines ;
medical investigators were appointed, and particulars
were obtained of the manner in which foreign countries
and the colonies were dealing with the question, pressing
alike wherever our Western civilization has taken hold.
The Commissioners divided their " material " into nine
classes.

Firstly, persons of unsound mind, a term equivalent
to the word lunatic, indicating disorder of mind rather
than any obvious congenital defect or malformation.
These are the persons for whom the asylums were
originally planned, and the Commissioners state that
they are still the only class of mentally defective people
adequately provided for by the State on account of their
mental defect. The other eight classes contain all
degrees of mental infirmity, from idiots who are in-
capable of shielding themselves from common physical
dangers, to the feeble-minded, who can earn a living
in favourable and carefully guarded circumstances ; from
moral imbeciles, on whom training and punishment has
little or no deterrent effect, to the more hopeless
inebriates, who drink, not from deliberate choice, but
from lack of self-control, and power of will.

The Commissioners estimated that the number of
those persons who, while not certifiably insane, are
suffering from mental defect, is about 150,000, to
which must be added the population of our lunatic
asylums, public and private, of our idiot asylums,
and from the point of view of the sociologist, of
those persons also who, having passed through the

64 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

asylums, have been discharged as cured or incurable,
and are now in uncontrolled liberty amongst us.

From all sides evidence was offered to show that
the feeble-minded, though not recognized as such by
the State, were nevertheless frequently being treated
and maintained by the nation in ways that were
not only expensive but were entirely unsuited to the
nature of the case. Thus it is noted that many
mentally defective children have immoral tendencies,
partly owing to their deficiency of self-control, and
partly because such children are peculiarly open to the
power of suggestion, so as to place them at the mercy
of bad companions. They begin their career of crime
at an early age ; for a long time they profit, to their
extreme detriment, by First Offenders and Probation
Officers Acts ; then come utterly useless short sentences,
and a life spent alternately in prison and workhouse —
unamenable to the discipline of either, and outcast from
both. At present the commission of a serious crime
and the imposition of a long sentence is perhaps the
best hope for these unfortunate individuals and the
society on whom they prey. A medical officer of one
of the large prisons, where juvenile boy offenders are
admitted, considers that forty per cent of the boys
are feeble-minded.

The same class of information comes from those
people who are concerned with the working of the
inebriate asylums. It is, moreover, notorious that, while
prisons and lunatic asylums are provided in sufficient
numbers to contain all those individuals who are
consigned to their sheltering care, the inebriate refor-
matories are wholly inadequate in number, and are

INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT 65

reserved for the most part, by the especial providence
that watches over our social legislation, for those who
can afford to pay for a long and expensive course of
treatment. No really destitute person need apply ;
habitual cases of this sort are still treated by short
terms of imprisonment. But, in spite of these restric-
tions, which probably have the effect of raising the
social status of the inhabitants of Homes of Retreat,
it is estimated by the authorities concerned that
seventy per cent of these unfortunate people are
mentally defective, probably irreformable. They are
not drunkards in the sense of suffering from the drink
craze ; they are primarily feeble-minded, and probably
would never have acquired the vice had they been
earlier placed and kept under control.

It is interesting to note that the general opinion of
these specially competent witnesses is that *' alcoholism
in one or both parents exerts its influence mainly by
impairing the vitality of the children. ... It has not
any special tendency to beget a proclivity to drunken-
ness in the offspring, but, in the manner indicated, has
a distinct influence in the production of feeble-minded-
ness and epilepsy. . . ."

Another section of the report of the Commission
deals with the prevalence of sexual immorality among
the feeble - minded ; and here the evidence comes
chiefly from those who are acquainted with the subject
through the work of the Rescue Societies and the
workhouse maternity wards. The lack of self-control
which is noticeable among feeble-minded boys, and
drives them ultimately into the prisons, sends the girls
on to the streets, to become the prey of the first

66 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

evil-minded person they meet. There is also often
a definitely immoral tendency, which shows itself at a
very early age, and is borne witness to by parents and
school-teachers. The existing provisions for dealing with
girls of this class are hopelessly inadequate ; they are
"ins-and-outs" of the workhouse maternity wards.
Some thirty per cent of them are considered too bad
to keep even in Penitentiaries ; they lower the standard
of discipline and work, and, by reason of their wander-
ing, vacant minds, they cannot be persuaded without
compulsion to carry on remunerative employment. So
they go back to the streets to increase and perpetuate
the race of the feeble-minded.

The Commissioners did not consider that they were
empowered to conduct a scientific inquiry into the
causation of mental defect ; but, in the course of their
investigations, a mass of evidence on this point ac-
cumulated. Twenty-five out of thirty-five witnesses
attached supreme importance to a history of mental
defect in the parents or near ancestors, and the general
opinion was that there is no such thing as manufactured
feeble - mindedness, apart from very rare accidental
injuries. In fact, as we should suspect, mental defect
dating from birth or observed in the early years of
childhood, is declared to be spontaneous originally, by
which is meant " not induced by external conditions,"
and afterwards truly hereditary. The various forms
of mental defect, whether imbecility, drunkenness,
crime, immorality, are not primarily separate subjects
for investigation and treatment, but merely accidental
concomitants of a diseased pathological condition.

INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT 67

It is possible that mental defect, like hereditary
ability at the other end of the scale, is no simple
quality ; but, although complex in its character, it is
probably a simpler aggregation of factors than tran-
scendent genius. Mental defect is easier to define,
easier to recognise, and therefore easier to trace. In
many cases the physical malformations are manifest
to every one ; the want of mind of the imbecile is
as obvious as the aberration of mind of the lunatic.
Border-line cases there must be ; but these, too, will
often slip into their correct classification in periods
of mental strain, of excitement, of ill-regulated life.
Whether we shall ever be able to separate out the
various strains and deal with each of them as a definite
Mendelian unit remains to be seen ; at present, at any
rate, the many pedigrees of degenerate stocks that have
accumulated help us to realize the interchangeableness of
some of the various manifestations and the direct influence
of heredity on their transmission from parent to offspring.

Two such pedigrees are given below, to illustrate the

descent of mental defect in its various forms through

four generations.

CASE I

Father, = Mother,

eccentric.

insane.

daughter,
mentally defective — unmarried.

daughter, daughter,

mentally defective. almost imbecile —

I at present detained under

I twins. I Industrial Schools Act.
daughter, daughter,
died at ! month. died at 6 months.

68 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

CASE II

Father, = Mother,

unknown.

mentally defective.

husband = daughter,

unknown.

mentally defective.

daughter, daughter, daughter, son,

prostitute mentally defective, mentally defective, normal,

before 15 years not married. in special school,

old. I

son,
mentally defective,
in special school.

These family histories have been supplied through
the kindness of a member of a special school authority.
It may be as well to point out that such authorities
have no power at present to detain the children in the
special school, or to commit them to any other custodial
care after the age of sixteen. It must be remembered
also that such pedigrees are highly incomplete ; the
very fact of the mental defect of the persons involved
increases the difficulty of any efforts to get accurate and
full family histories, and there is at present no general
central office of sociology where the history of such
families can be followed, as the persons composing them
pass from special school to refuge and workhouse, and
from the reformatory to the police courts, the prisons,
and the asylums.

It is an evident fact, yet one often overlooked, that
those who, through mental or physical defect, are unable

INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT 69

to support themselves, become a charge on the com-
munity. Whether they are supported by public funds
in workhouses, asylums, or prisons, or whether they
form an even heavier, because more localised, burden
on their relatives, they involve a tax on others, and
necessitate the expenditure of unproductive labour.

A large proportion of the petty crime of the country
is due to feeble-mindedness ; much of the pauperism is
caused by mental or physical infirmity. Such qualities
are hereditary, and the direct cost to the normal
members of the community of the descendants of a
single criminal or feeble-minded pair is often appalling.
One such case has been investigated fully, that of the
notorious " Jukes " family in the United States of
America. The pedigree contains some 830 known
individuals, all descended from five sisters born about
1760. A large proportion of these individuals have
been in prison, some of them for serious crimes.
Frequently the women have consorted with criminals.
Many of the race have been paupers, partially or wholly
supported by the country. The total direct loss to the
state caused by this one family has been calculated as
about ^260,000, while the indirect loss cannot be
estimated.^

Those familiar with our country villages recognise
that feeble-mindedness is specially rife in certain localities.
The cross- marriages between a few neighbouring
families, in which mental defects are hereditary, pro-
duce gradually a feeble-minded population. The present
tendency for the abler youth of the country to drift
into the towns, leaves the inferior stocks behind in the

1 The Jukes, by R. L. Dugclale : New York, 1884.

70 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

villages. Thus it comes to pass in some districts that
the country, which supplies the most natural and healthy
environment, becomes populated with a lower kind of
humanity. By the continued removal of the best
elements, the remaining inhabitants are left to breed to
the worst type of the people.

In dealing with the various aspects of the problem
of the mentally defective, we have left to the last the
all-important question of the rate of their reproduction.
There is undoubtedly a very high mortality among their
offspring. We should expect this mortality, both on
account of the constitutional weakness which seems to
accompany many forms of mental defect, and also from
the fact that feeble-minded parents cannot and do not
bring up their children with even the average sense and
care belonging to their station. Drink, crime, vice are
rife in their homes ; unemployment is the normal
occupation of the breadwinner ; neglect and ill-
treatment increase the incidence of physical infirmity.
Yet with all these checks, the unrestricted fertility of
the mentally defective is sufficient to constitute a
serious menace to the race ; serious at any time, but
more so at a period when the decline in the birth-rate
among the better-educated and more self-respecting
classes is so unmistakable as to cause alarm even to
statesmen. It is not surprising that the ratio of the
number of insane persons under the control of the
Commissioners in Lunacy to the number of the popu-
lation at large has increased by ninety-two per cent in
the last fifty years.

On the two points of the fertility of the feeble-

INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT 71

minded and the probable degeneracy of their offspring
the evidence from institutions and the opinion of
medical men is in substantial agreement. Dr. Tred-
gold, an especially experienced witness, pointed out
that the average number of children in the families
which now use the public elementary schools is about
four ; whereas in the degenerate families whose children
are passed over to the special schools, there is an aver-
age of 7.3 children, not including those still-born.
The following table was prepared to show the con-
dition of 150 mentally defective children with their
brothers and sisters. In the 150 families there were
1269 children born.

Unsatisfactory.

Satisfactory.

A. Born dead .

. 170

B. Since died —

Under i year .

138]

„ 3 years .

„ 10 „ •

„ 20 „ .

Over 20 ,, .

107

37
8

25J

-315

Said by parents to
be mentally and
bodily healthy . 456

C. Mentally affected

• 2+5

D. Diseased, paupers

, or

criminals

• 83

Total .

• 813

Total . 456

Total,

1269

The high rate of mortality is noticeable, and also the
fact that only one-third of the offspring were accounted,

72 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

even at the parents' valuation, to be normal members
of society, while 328 persons, the descendants of 150
pairs of parents — not necessarily both feeble-minded —
showed definite mental disease in some form or other, a
considerable increase in one generation. Again, it was
noted by the Commissioners that in one workhouse
alone, sixteen feeble-minded women had produced 116
children, and out of one such family of fourteen, only
four had been able to do remunerative work. ^

The lack of moral responsibility in the individuals
who create such offspring, and in the society which
tolerates or encourages such a proceeding, is appalling.
Verily, if it needs must be that such offences come into
this world, woe unto that man or woman by whom the
offence cometh !

CHAPTER V

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY

Ability is among the most valuable possessions of a
race. Efficiency in government, profession, business,
or trade depends largely on the innate ability of the
different classes of the community. Success in the
struggle of nation with nation in war or in economic
competition attends the most able and best-organized
people.

But other qualities may be of equal or greater
importance than ability. Moral character, good health,
physical strength and grace, beauty, and the supreme
charm which often accompanies long lineage and gentle
nurture, all are to be desired, and should be cherished
and encouraged no less than ability.

But, at present, records of ability are more accessible
than those scattered allusions which alone would enable
us to trace the inheritance of other good and noble
qualities. Moreover, from the point of view of
heredity, we might expect them to follow somewhat
similar laws of descent.

We may, then, take ability as an example of those
qualities we desire to encourage, always remembering
that it is but an example, and that health and beauty of

73

74 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

person and of character are equally necessary for the
perfection of mankind. We may hope in future that
such qualities will appear in pedigrees alongside the
more showy honours which come to him who possesses
and knows how to use ability of intellect.

All these desirable qualities are, from the point of
view of heredity, essentially different from some of the
bad qualities hitherto considered, in that they depend
on the conjunction of a great many factors. Such a
conjunction must be very hard to trace in the hereditary
process, where possibly each character may descend
independently, or different characters may be linked
together, or be incompatible, in far more complicated
ways than we have traced in the qualities of plants and
animals. Our present knowledge is quite insufficient
to enable us to predict how a complex combination of
factors making up the personality of an able or charm-
ing man or woman will reappear in their offspring.
We can but follow empirical lines of inquiry, and reach
certain general conclusions to be discussed later.

Many undesirable qualities — tendencies to disease,
insanity, feeble -mindedness, deformitv — depend on
the inheritance of some one definite pathological
condition, which can be traced, as we have seen, from
generation to generation, sometimes in accord with
regular Mendelian principles. Here our knowledge is
surer, and a much safer guide. We know that a certain
proportion of the children of unsound parents will
possess the unsoundness. We can calculate the effect
on the race of allowing numbers of such parents to
marry.

But, notwithstanding the complication of the pro-

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 75

cess, it is certain that ability, and the other desirable
qualities which depend, like it, on the conjunction of
many factors, are inherited also.

Thus, although we cannot analyse completely ability
or beauty into a number of definite Mendelian factors,
we are safe in supposing that we shall tend to improve
the average ability and beauty of the race by encour-
aging the growth of families in which those qualities
are manifest, and discouraging those in which they are
deficient. Whether our knowledge eventually becomes
more exact, or whether we find the complete analysis of
the problem for ever too difficult for solution, the
general facts of inheritance remain. We may never be
able to predict more than roughly the probable ability
of the children of any one union ; but we know already
that, in a large number of unions, we may look for a
general resemblance between parents and children both
in body and mind. We can predict the effects on the
nation, perhaps on the family, though not with certainty
on the individual.

The first to point out the overwhelming effect of
heredity in the history of ability was Sir Francis Galton.
His great work Hereditary Gmz/J, published in 1869,
marks an epoch in the evolution of sociology, though
the prevailing individualist philosophy of life pre-
vented it from receiving adequate recognition till
recent years.

Galton pointed out that the results of examinations,
such as the old Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, showed
that, instead of men being born equal, as was believed in
the nineteenth century, one man had natural abilities

76 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

which, measured against those of some other men with
similar training and opportunities, must be reckoned to
be at least as thirty is to one.

In attempting to trace the inheritance of ability, we
are met at once by the difficulty of detecting it, and of
measuring it accurately, save in the extremely limited
and specialized sphere of competitive examinations.
How can we decide whether a man whose time is passed
in the usual occupations of life is to be classed as of
average intelligence, as able, as eminent, or as illustrious .?

While the difficulty in distinguishing between the
average and the able men by an inspection of ordinary
records is probably insuperable, it seems likely that
men fairly described as eminent or illustrious may be
marked out from their fellows with some approach to
completeness.

As Galton points out, such men possess abilities which
can hardly be concealed by any disadvantage of birth or
position. The small number of men in each generation
who reach eminence are drawn from all ranks of the
community, and overcome with comparative ease all
obstacles in their path. The few in each century who
are acknowledged to be illustrious, the Shakespeares, the
Napoleons, the Newtons, take, even in early manhood,
their predestined place. But to be fairly certain that
the men whom we have called eminent have come to
the front, it is wise to restrict our investigations to
men of mature age. Galton decides that, by the age
of fifty, such men nearly always will have made their
mark.

The next question that arises is what test of
eminence in ability to apply. High official position is

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 77

sometimes reached by devious ways. Reputation in the
world at large is sometimes but ill adjusted to merit.
Nevertheless, a high reputation among those of acknow-
ledged position in the man's own special sphere is a
very good test of his real worth. Few competent men
who have studied a subject, and few among the abler
members of a profession, could fail to point out the
five or ten acknowledged masters in their special line
who appear in a decade. Much greater difficulty
would be found in naming all the many individuals who
must be described as able rather than average. But the
few of real eminence are usually known to all who
understand their special subject.

It is in this sense that Galton defined eminence.
He excluded notoriety obtained by a single act, and
restricted his list to those men " who have distinguished
themselves pretty frequently either by purely original
work, or as leaders of opinion."

He passed on to estimate the number of such men.
He studied the columns of the book of reference then
known as Men of the Time^ which, with enlarged
boundaries, is now represented by Who's Who. He
decided that in the British Isles about five hundred
men over fifty might fairly be described as eminent. At
that time (1869) there were about two millions of men
over fifty years of age in the British Isles. It followed
that the proportion of eminent men was about two
hundred and fifty to a million. Two other means
of calculation were adopted : one from the obituary
notices for the past year published in the Times on ist
January 1869, and one from obituaries of many years
back, when the population was smaller. In each case

78 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

an estimate of about two hundred and fifty in a million
was obtained. We may accept this number, then,
as the proportion of men of eminent ability in the
population as a whole, at all events for the periods
considered by Galton.

An independent value has been obtained by the
editors of the Dictionary of National Biography. They
estimate that, in the British Isles throughout the
historic ages, one person in every five thousand who
have reached adult life, that is two hundred to each
million, have been of sufficient eminence to secure
admission to the Dictionary.

Galton's next task was to trace the inheritance of
ability which might fairly be reckoned as eminent. By
examining the records of all the Judges of England
between 1660 and 1865, the Statesmen of the reign of
George III., and the Premiers of the last century,
Galton proved that they had many more relatives
who themselves showed eminent powers of mind than
the total number of their relatives would lead one to
expect, if ability were not hereditary.

Not only have eminent men like the Judges a larger
number of eminent relatives than chance would suggest,
but the number increases rapidly with the nearness of
relationship to the Judge. Of the fathers of the Judges
a proportion of 9.1 in 100 were found by Galton to be
eminent men, while of 100 sons 12.6 were of the same
class. The percentages of more distant kinsmen who
could be reckoned as eminent are shown in the follow-
ing table : —

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 79

Percentage of Eminent Men in each Degree of Kinship to the
286 Judges of England between 1660 and 1865.

0.2 Great-grandfathers.

I
2.6 Grandfathers.

9.1 Fathers. 1.6 uncles.

I i I

The judges. 8.2 brothers. 0.5 first cousins.

"I I

12.6 Sons. 1.7 nephews.

I I

3.7 Grandsons. 0.7 great-nephews.

I
0.5 Great-grandsons.

The percentage of eminent relatives in still more
distant degrees of kinship was found to be inappreciable,
at all events below o.i.

These results are very remarkable. When it is
remembered that, on Galton's scale, the proportion
of eminent men in the population is only about two
hundred and fifty in a million, or 0.025 in a hundred,
we see how much more likely eminent abilities are to
be found in the fathers, sons, and brothers of eminent
men than in the mass of the population. The chance
of the son of a Judge showing great ability is five
hundred times as great as that for a man taken at
random.

From the point of view of heredity, these results
would be strengthened immensely if particulars and
estimates of ability were available and forthcoming in
the cases of the wives of the men considered. The
ability of women, naturally destined to be used in work
even more honourable and important than that of men,

8o THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

makes less noise in the world, and very seldom gets
noticed in public records. Hence it is impossible to
solve the problem of the relative average ability of the
children of Judges who married able women as com-
pared with that of the children of Judges who married
stupid or dull women. The only light we can throw
on the subject comes from the significant fact that a
considerable number of the Judges whom Galton classes
as the fathers of eminent sons married wives with well-
known or distinguished relatives.

To examine the all-important problem of the effect
of both parents on the inheritance of ability, it is
necessary to study recent pedigrees, filled in with more
scientific detail than is found in older family histories.
A fairly large collection of such pedigrees is now avail-
able. The following tables illustrate the phenomena
observed, and show clearly the essential part played by
the choice of mates in family inheritance.

Since we are obliged to deal with persons now living,
in order to get pedigrees sufficiently detailed, it is
seemly in some cases to omit names, and to make a few
immaterial changes, such as varying the order of the
children in the different families, in order to prevent
a too-ready identification.

In Pedigree I. we see the effect of the marriages of
four able brothers, having an able ancestry behind them,
with women who show no marked ability. These
brothers are indicated by the symbols placed 2nd, 4th,
6th, and 9th from the left in Generation III. None
of the progeny of the first three, who married undis-
tinguished wives, has come to the front in any way.

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 8

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82 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

The fourth brother, by far the ablest, married a woman
of unsound stock with ability in one of her grand-
parents. The result was a family of two sound normal
members, one unsound, and three with ability, two
sound and one unsound. Two of the able members
of this family married ability, and the results appear
in the family of three able persons shown in V. 14, 15,
and 16, and in the remarkable family V. 3 to 10, two
members of which showed ability of a very high order ;
one of them was a most influential person of the time ;
three others were able much beyond the average, while
the ancestral strain of unsoundness came out in the
remaining two.

This pedigree is also interesting in that it illustrates
the fallacy which lies in the common idea that great
ability is often associated with unsoundness of mind
or body. The truth is that ability and unsoundness
usually enter a family from different sources, and are
transmitted independently of each other. Sometimes
they chance to coincide in the same person, but more
often they become separated in different individuals.

Pedigree II. shows the ancestry of the same family
on the paternal side, and its alliances with two other
distinguished families, many of whose members are
recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography. Here
the same definite inheritance of ability is shown, and
the same phenomenon of a strain of unsoundness
running through one line of descent. From our
immediate point of view, it is well to call attention
to the two able members in Generation III. of the
well-known family represented on the right of the
diagram. The man married a " normal " woman, and

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY

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84 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

had two undistinguished and one able child, while the
woman married a very able man and had one very able
son, one able daughter, and one whose characteristics
are unknown. Thus once more the quality of the
alliance shows clearly in the average quality of the
offspring. The individuals indicated in the last line,
or Generation V. of this pedigree, are believed to be
under forty-five years of age, and therefore have not
yet completed their careers. It is possible that some
of them will still show powers entitling them to the
distinction of being reckoned as '* very able."

A study of pedigrees and biographies in such books

of reference as the Dictionary of National Biography

leads irresistibly to the conclusion that continued ability

and eminence in a family depend solely on sound

marriages. That some families remain in a prominent

position for many generations is a historical fact. The

Scropes, for instance, in the course of the three centuries

comprised between the reigns of Edward II. and Charles

I. produced, in the male line only, " two earls and

twenty barons, one Chancellor, four Treasurers, two

Chief Justices of England, one Archbishop and two

Bishops, five Knights of the Garter, and numerous

Bannerets." ^ The permanence of the ability maintained

by the intermarriages of the Montagues, the Norths,

and the Sidneys has been pointed out by Galton.

The family descended from Roger Boyle, a Here-
fordshire gentleman of good birth, and Joan Naylor
his wife, a couple living in the time of Queen Elizabeth,
provides one of the most striking instances in modern

1 Times, 17th June 1909, obituary notice of Mr. Simon Conyers Scrope of
Danby.

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 85

English history of the descent of ability and its recog-
nition by the grant of hereditary titles. Among the
children of Roger and Joan Boyle two are specially
noteworthy. One, Michael, had many distinguished
descendants ; among his sons were a Bishop of Waterford
and an Archbishop of Tuam. The other, Richard,
was the great Earl of Cork, whose descendants in the
male line received between them some ten or twelve
titles. In a single generation four members of the
family were elevated to the House of Lords, while one
of the most illustrious, Robert Boyle, the great philo-
sopher and man of science — a seventh son and four-
teenth child — repeatedly refused a peerage. After two
marriages with co-heiresses, the senior branch of the
house was extinguished in the male line. It has been
represented for the last four or five generations by the
Dukes of Devonshire, who, through a female descent,
have become possessed of the Earldom of Burlington,
one of the many Boyle titles.

As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion
of able offspring is a certainty, and ability is a more
valuable heirloom in a family than mere material wealth,
which, moreover, will follow ability sooner or later.

It is impossible to foresee the mode of development
of our social organism. It may be that the lineal
inheritance of material wealth by successive generations
will cease to be compatible with the institutions of a
future stage of civilization. But, whatever be the
political or social constitution, ability must always make
its mark, and remain as a very real form of capital to
the individual and the family who possess it. In the
distant future, capital, in the ordinary sense of the

86 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

word, may possibly be ov/ned chiefly by the State ; but
health, character, and ability are assets which cannot be
divorced from the individual. They must yield an
annual return of interest on which he and his family
may flourish and multiply. Such qualities are an
inherent possession of the individual. They are his to
use and to hand on as he will, for the advantage of the
nation. No collectivist state can deprive him of their
possession, and any environment which makes him dis-
inclined to use or to transmit this innate capital is an
irremediable misfortune to the community. The inborn
qualities of mankind, whether good or bad, may be
established, maintained, and extended in a family by,
and only by, appropriate marriages. In past ages long
and honourable lines of descent were based jointly on
ability and on inherited wealth. If, at some future
time, the latter condition be set aside, the former
can yet remain ; and we may look with confidence to
the continuance in high position, from generation to
generation, of those families whose members choose
their mates for all good qualities of mind and body.

To the student who wishes to grain a clear idea of
the influence of heredity, nothing is so illuminating as
to select some marked feature in himself or his acquaint-
ance, and search for its introduction into the family. It
is surprising hov/ often the track of ability or lack of
intelligence, of strength or weakness of mind or body,
can be traced back in a definite line of ascent for several
generations. The construction of pedigrees like those
given above is fascinating in the light it throws on
such problems.

The inheritance ot various kinds ot special ability

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 87

may be traced no less clearly than can the general
ability hitherto considered.

Galton gives a remarkable pedigree of the Bach
family extending to eight generations, all showing great
musical talent, which gradually increased in intensity
for four generations, culminated in John Sebastian
Bach (1685 -1750), and diminished again in his
descendants. To investigate the causes of the rise and
fall, further knowledge of the women than Galton gives
is necessary ; but it is known that at that date young
musicians frequently sought their wives in families
belonging to the Guild of Musicians.

A family showing the descent of qualities of a very
specialized nature — religious fervour, combined with a
musical and emotional character — is that of the Wesleys,
of whom the best-known members are John, the founder
of Methodism, and his brother Charles, the hymn-
writer, fifteenth and eighteenth children respectively.
Their grandfather and his brother were among the
non-juring ministers ejected in 1662 ; while the sons
of Charles, Charles and Samuel, were well-known
organists and composers ; and a grandson, Samuel
Sebastian Wesley, who died in 1876, was also an
organist and composer.

Galton notices that some apparent exceptions to
the general law of inheritance of special characteristics
are explicable if we regard instability of disposition as
a heritable factor.

For example, certain types of excitable religious
feeling flourish best in minds liable to want of balance,
and subject to alternative periods of great depression
and of high exaltation. Here we have probably two

88 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

separate characters at least — religious feeling and
instability. These characters may be transmitted inde-
pendently. If once more they chance to coincide in a
child, the complete parental type is reproduced ; but
if they be separated, one son may possess religious feel-
ing of a steady normal type, while another, inheriting
instability unchecked by religion, and finding of neces-
sity the home environment uncongenial, may go to
support the common idea that the sons of extremely
religious parents are apt to run to excess in riotous
living.

As the nations of modern Europe crystallized out
of the mediaeval chaos, the inheritance of military and
political ability in certain families originated and main-
tained aristocracies of the sword and of statecraft. In
our own early history who can overlook the ability
manifested from generation to generation by the families
of Alfred, of Godwin, of Warenne, of Clare, of de
Montfort .?

In later times arose an aristocracy of the law, in
which Lord Keepers and Lord Chancellors are found
as the descendants or the ancestors of lesser legal
luminaries. As each special type of ability became of
paramount importance to the nation or the race, repre-
sentatives of that ability, rising from all ranks, forced
their way to the front, and left offspring to maintain or
expand the benefit of their qualities to mankind. Cases
illustrating this point will be treated in the next
chapter.

In our own times, superposed on the ever- living
need to defend our homes and interpret our laws, came

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 89

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90 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

the vast extension of commerce, industry, literature,
and education, and the birth and development of
modern scientific discovery. Hence, side by side with
families who rise into prominence by the old means of
arms and the law-courts, we have coming to the front
Rothschilds and Barings, Wedgwoods and Arkwrights,
Murrays and Longmans, Arnolds and Butlers, Darwins
and Listers, showing long-continued hereditary aptitude
for finance, manufacture, education, or science.

As an illustration of the growth of one of these new
kinds of aristocracy, the aristocracy of science, let us
take the remarkable family of Darwin.

Beginning with Erasmus Darwin (i 731-1802), poet,
philosopher, and physician, we have two lines of descent,
leading on the one side to Sir Francis Galtonj^nd on
the other to Dr. Robert Darwin, and his son Charles
Darwin, the great naturalist, of whose sons four show
scientific abiHty. In five generations, the family of
Darwin, and the allied families of Wedgwood and
Galton, have produced no less than sixteen men of
scientific attainments, of whom nine were Fellows of
the Royal Society, and ten were lineal descendants of
Erasmus Darwin. Who can estimate the value to the
nation and to mankind of such strains of blood, and
the importance of sustaining or increasing the number
of individuals to whom such qualities may be trans-
mitted .''

In studying the inheritance of scientific ability, let
us emphasize the untold injury done to mankind by
the condition of celibacy formerly imposed on the
Fellows of the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, as
a relic of their old monastic tradition. Had Erasmus

THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 91

Darwin when at Cambridge chanced to obtain a
Fellowship and to live on in academic life, his special
qualities would have died with him, and the world
would never have known Francis Galton or Charles
Darwin and his sons. But though Erasmus Darwin
escaped, countless other men of science and letters
did not marry at all, or, marrying when at an
advanced age they were independent of their Fellow-
ships, were too late to leave descendants to transmit
their priceless qualities. What England, nay, what
mankind, has lost is beyond all power of calculation,
and is gone for ever. The pious founders of our
colleges may have done more harm than good to the
nation they sought to serve, to the race to which they
belonged.

The restriction of celibacy was removed in 1882,
and already the inheritance of academic ability has
become clear in the annual elections to scholarships and
fellowships at Cambridge, and in the other distinctions
of the University. Sons of Fellows and past Fellows
are now rapidly coming to the front in numbers far
beyond those which any possible chance distribution of
ability would involve. The pity is that, with the pre-
vailing fashion of small families, such sons are so few in
number.

CHAPTER VI

THE RISE OF FAMILIES

The rise and fall of families is an ancient theme.
Poets, ballad-mongers, writers of romance, heralds,
historians, have made it their own. The Percys,
Bohuns, Mowbrays, Plantagenets have passed away
in the direct male line ; the star of the Veres, the
bend or of the Scropes, the chevron of the Clares,
can no longer be carried in the first quarter of any
shield in the Peerage. Families get used up, we are
told, and go to seed. Or they are pursued by ill-luck,
and fight in vain against the stars in their courses.
Last in the field among the chroniclers of family history
have come the men of science, to pick up and arrange
the crumbs left by the earlier gleaners.

Now science does not accept ill-luck as an a priori
argument, and the plea of being " used up " is met by
the inquiry as to what steps were taken to replenish
the soil and improve the seed. Here the chroniclers
are silent, or at best unwittingly give information in
roundabout ways. Still, if a record has been kept
with any substantial amount of accuracy, there is a
great deal to be extracted from the perusal of it. It
does not require a very profound study of the Peerage

92

THE RISE OF FAMILIES

93

to deduce the results attending marriages with heiresses,
and possibly, could we examine contemporary records,
and draw upon the personal knowledge of one or two
generations of contemporaries, we should gain a clearer
insight into the nature of the ill-luck that pursued or
led astray the great families of ancient days.

Family history, as far as it is given in any printed
and published work which can be bought in the open
market or consulted in general reading-rooms, is public
property. There is no breach of confidence involved
in any further use of it. Unfortunately, it consists for
the most part of lists of names and dates ; the details
of history, character, and occupation are few, and much
of the utility of such records is lost for scientific pur-
poses. The accurate observation and careful entry of
the characteristics of each individual unit of a family
group is a modern conception, carried out only by a
few persons. Since many of the subjects may be still
alive or live in the memory of others, such studies do
not admit as yet of full publication, either with names
or with details that might lead to identification.

So, for the purpose we have in hand, which is the
elucidation of the causes of the rise and fall of families,
we have two classes of evidence available. The first
consists of the published records, with names, dates,
and scanty details ; the second is a series of pedigrees
which have been privately collected, and set forth, to
the best ability of the recorders, the virtues and vices of
various representative families.

One of the most marked of the general features in
the rise of families, who remain in a position of stable
equilibrium, is their slow and gradual ascent. The

94 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

members have time to get acclimatized to their new
position and fresh responsibilities before the next onward
move. It also becomes evident that the same class of
ability is usually manifested through several centuries,
whether that ability be military, diplomatic, or com-
mercial, giving a very definite impression of the varieties
of talent that exist in the world, and are not by any
means always interchangeable.

In considering families that have risen into promi-
nence from time to time, it should be remembered
that in England we have three great periods of national
and economic expansion — that of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, corresponding with the crusades
and the English occupation of France, the remark-
able Elizabethan outgrowth of the sixteenth century,
and the great movements of the nineteenth century,
the effects of which we vv^ill treat separately. It
will be noticed that these epochs occur, roughly
speaking, at intervals of three hundred years, the
span of ten generations. Each of the periods gave
an opportunity for the latent ability of the nation
to come to the front — that ability which by marriages
and intermarriages had accumulated in certain families
and individuals during the preceding centuries. The
aristocracy of race and intellect was waiting ready to
declare itself as soon as the opportunity was given.
In any such time of expansion, the abler families rose
first, the less able followed as the road was made easier,
and the way to success was paved in front of them. So
it is that all good people, looking back over such a
period, are apt to lament the falling off of ability, and
to tell tales of the " giants " of those early days. Truly

THE RISE OF FAMILIES 95

the giants arose first, proved themselves, and, if their
rise were due to commercial enterprise, as often as
not withdrew from the competitive struggle for wealth,
devoting themselves to other less remunerative but more
honourable and important kinds of work.

To illustrate the rise of families, five consecutive
titles have been taken at hazard from the Peerage and
their history analysed, in some cases with the help of
the Dictionary of National Biography. The letter chosen,
" G," was taken entirely at random, and a general
acquaintance with the history of the families of our
titled aristocracy gives the impression that the bio-
graphies here noted are fairly typical ones.

Gage. — In 1234 William de Gauge was constable o^
Carmarthen Castle and received grants of land. Two
consecutive marriages of his heirs in the fifteenth
century with daughters of members of Parliament prob-
ably indicate the introduction of fresh blood of good
stock. The son of the second of these marriages. Sir
John Gage, was captain of the castle of Calais, constable
of the Tower, and captain-general of the bands of
horsemen. He was made a Knight of the Garter by
Henry VIII. , and, marrying the daughter of a brother
Knight of the Garter, had for a great-grandson the
gallant Sir Henry Gage, governor of Oxford under
Charles I. Sir John's eldest son, Sir Edward, K.B., a
man of distinction, had nine sons, whose history we
cannot trace. The eldest became a member of Parlia-
ment, and, dying apparently unmarried, was succeeded
by a nephew. Sir John, created a baronet in 1622.
Thence through marriages with the well-known families

96 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

of D'Arcy and Penruddock, we reach the eighteenth
century, and find in the records a Knight of the Bath, a
Commander-in-Chief, and an Admiral of the Fleet. A
Viscounty of Ireland and a Barony of the United
Kingdom were conferred in 1720 and 1780 respectively.
The Dictionary of National Biography has records of
eight members of this family.

Gainsborough. — A Robert, son of Noel, founded a
priory in the reign of Henry II. ; one of his sons served
as sheriiF of Staffordshire for seven years. In the early
days of Henry VIII., James Noel was a justice of the
peace. His third son, receiving grants of the lands of
the dissolved monasteries, served several times as sheriff,
and his grandson, Sir Andrew, was a personage of great
note in the time of Queen Elizabeth, being chosen as
knight of the shire in several parliaments. His heir,
Edward, who distinguished himself in the Irish wars,
was created a Baronet in 161 1 and a Baron in 161 6.
Several members of the family sacrificed their lives and
estates to the cause of Charles I. The dignity of Earl
of Gainsborough was conferred in 1682. There are
nine entries of members of this family in the Dictionary
of National Biography, chiefly of men living in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Galloway. — This branch of the family of Stewart
has an early and long record of military service in
Scotland. One chieftain fell at Flodden, and of
him it is recorded that he left, with one son, sixteen
daughters, each of whom became the wife of a laird
of distinction. Another Sir Alexander Stewart, his
great-grandson, married a Douglas of Drumlanrig,
and their son, also a Sir Alexander, " a man of great

THE RISE OF FAMILIES 97

talent, loyalty, and integrity," received the Earldom of
Galloway in 1623. Several members of the family dis-
tinguished themselves in the army, and one, the fifth
Earl, was a statesman of ability in the reign of Queen
Anne. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, this family produced three admirals, one rear-
admiral, one lieutenant-general with the G.C.B., and one
major-general with a K.C.B.

Galway. — The family of Monckton was settled in
Yorkshire in the fifteenth century, and filled many
offices of importance in that county. One member did
service against the Scots in i 545 ; two of his descendants
served in the armies of Charles I., while the head ot
the family, Sir Philip Monckton, sat for some time
in Parliament as member for Scarborough, and
distinguished himself in actions against the Parlia-
mentary commanders. His son, Robert, assisted in the
Revolution of 1688, served in Parliament, and was
Commissioner of Trade and Plantations. His son,
John, was created a peer of Ireland in 1727, and occu-
pied several responsible posts. During the eighteenth
century this family produced one governor and com-
mander-in-chief and two generals, while a daughter of
the stock was the mother of the first Lord Houghton,
and ancestress of the present Earl of Crewe.

Garvagh. — One Robert Canning, reputed to be of
an ancient Wiltshire family, was an eminent merchant
of Bristol in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
His son and grandson were both Mayor several times,
and represented the city in Parliament. A great-grand-
son, William, undertook the complete restoration of
St. Mary RedclifF, and of him it is said that the

H

98 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

" Mayoralty had become a sort of heirloom in his
family." He lent large sums of money to Edward IV.,
and, by way of acknowledgment, was offered, but refused,
the King's natural daughter for a second wife. The
elder brother, Sir Thomas, was Lord Mayor of London
in 1456, and other direct descendants, one a "Turkey
Merchant," occupied various honourable posts, such as
ambassador to the Great Mogul, master of the Iron-
mongers' Company, etc., showing the Intimate connec-
tion in those days between the trade of the country and
its distant foreign affairs. George Canning married in
1697 a woman who came of able stock, the daughter of
one Robert Stratford, and aunt of John, first Earl of
Aldborough. Their grandson was George Canning,
the Prime Minister in 1827 ; and his third son,
Governor-General and afterwards Viceroy of India, was
created Earl Canning. Unfortunately for the country,
this distinguished statesman married a co-heiress and
left no descendants. His cousin, Stratford, son of a
London merchant, was a distinguished diplomatist, and
was created Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe ; while yet
another cousin, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society
and of the Society of Antiquaries, was raised to the
Peerage in 1 8 1 8 as Baron Garvagh.

These five families, taken by chance, are remarkably
good instances of the persistence of certain kinds of
ability. The Gages and Stewarts represent a military
type, continuing at a high level throughout several
centuries. The Noels and Moncktons have performed
their chief service to the country in the work of local
administration and parliamentary office. The Cannings

THE RISE OF FAMILIES 99

are an interesting example of long-continued eminence
in commerce and local municipal service. The charac-
teristics required for the skilful carrying through of
negotiations in regard to trade, and especially foreign
trade, can be turned to advantage in the^ higher
spheres of international diplomacy. This conjunction
of qualities is illustrated also by the recent history of
the Baring family. The records of the five families
described above throw little light on the nature of
the marriages, but whenever any information is con-
veyed as to the part probably played by the mothers,
it is in accordance with what we might have anticipated
from the achievements of the next generations.

The five families we have taken by chance for
detailed study are but a sample of the specialized
ability of different kinds to be found, latent or manifest,
in the classes of our people whose ancestors in recent
generations have distinguished themselves by honour-
able service. The list could be extended almost
indefinitely, and the same phenomenon of slow, steady
rise, as a characteristic of stability, traced through count-
less other names in the titled and untitled aristocracy.

It should be noted that for centuries a large pro-
portion of those men who attain great eminence have
been given Peerages. The state is accustomed to
reward conspicuous merit by an honour which involves
the duty of serving the country in Parliament. The
consequent concentration of ability, administrative, legal,
military, or scientific, in many of the families whose
heads at one time or another have been ennobled should
not be overlooked. It is certain that the House of
Lords itself contains a very high percentage of men

loo THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

of great ability ; in fact, a specialist in knowledge and
experience of almost any kind could be found on its
benches.

It is unfortunate for the purposes of this book that
records of specific ability, continuing in a family
throughout many centuries, are extant for one sub-
division of the nation only, since the inheritance of
specialized ability of other kinds is found in all classes
of the community. To those familiar with the manage-
ment of estates or the control of manufacturing enter-
prises, in which a special sort of skill is required,
many instances will occur where clear evidence can be
obtained that father and son have succeeded each
other in one particular department for several genera-
tions. There is on record in Devon a family whose
members are said to have served one particular village
as blacksmiths since the reign of Elizabeth. The
office of shepherd is often found to be hereditary ; the
post of woodman descends occasionally in a family
almost as of right. It is in just such work, involving
an instinctive capacity for handling animals and divining
their needs, or an intimate acquaintance with forest lore
and a sensitiveness to conditions of climate and soil,
that this kind of hereditary ability is most likely to
become manifest. In such cases it is fortified by
knowledge which has become traditional, and by
environment which has provided an ideal surround-
ing for the development of latent aptitudes and the
increase of the store of woodman's or shepherd's
craft. For any one to whom the chance occurs, the
piecing together of such family pedigrees would be most
illuminating, and would probably throw new light on

THE RISE OF FAMILIES loi

the co-ordination and persistence of a fresh set of
characteristics.

The seafaring population of Devon and the adjoin-
ing counties, and especially the families of the great
west-country admirals and explorers, would also well
repay careful study, and might give very suggestive
facts on the respective parts played by inheritance,
environment, and opportunity. The Royal Navy still
draws a large proportion of its men from the south-
west of England.

Turning now to the third period in which the rise of
families is a marked phenomenon, we may say that the
opening years of the eighteenth century found England
in the full swing of the period of drinking, gambling,
and hard living which is usually associated with the
Restoration. Not only do the local records of the time
make the prevalence of this kind of life very clear, but
,. the number of societies founded by the upper classes for
the " Reformation of Manners " in the lower orders
furnish strong evidence of the extent of the movement
and the alarm it caused. In plain English, the labour-
ing classes, as well as those in higher positions, had a
rollicking good time, just as they had had in the days
of Queen Elizabeth, when the newly won sea-power •
was developing and expanding the resources of the
country. The incompetent and incapable went under
in the general merry-making; a vigorous, healthy
animal stock remained to grow up, and attributed any
success in life that they achieved to good fortune and
their own merits, leaving Providence with credit only
for the periods of pestilence and the lean years of a

I02 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

short food supply — a most promising state of mind,
we may observe, by the way, for the ministrations of
the great evangelical reformers of the period, who
were genuinely concerned with the state of souls in
*' this carnival of bestial drunkenness." The local and
ephemeral movements towards improvement became
national under the influence of earnest men like Wilber-
force, at that time member of Parliament for one of the
divisions of Yorkshire, where the rapid growth of a new
manufacturing population had brought about an obvious
break-down of the primitive organization. Gradually
large numbers of the people were driven by economic
pressure into the newly established factories, which, as
mechanical inventions multiplied, required immense
supplies of labour, while the rapid enclosure of common
lands disorganized the life of the country-side. The
old relations between masters and workmen came to an
end, and the country was brought face to face with the
misery of uncertain labour, divorced from the land and
its natural leaders, and constantly thrown out of place
by improving machinery. The Parish authorities in
the large towns used the factory districts as dumping-
grounds for the children growing up under their care.
They were permitted to include a small percentage of
idiots or feeble-minded children in their quota of normal
human supplies. Such, briefly, were some of the con-
ditions associated with the early years of the industrial
expansion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ;
such were the circumstances that, later on, led to the
long series of enactments afl^ecting child labour and life
in the factories. Two and a half centuries earlier,
somewhat similar circumstances, bringing about a like

THE RISE OF FAMILIES 103

break-down of local organization, had led to the placing
of the Elizabethan Poor Law on the Statute Book of
England.

In the conditions of life that we have described
above, certain characteristics, such as stability and
sobriety of conduct, power of organization, knowledge
of local conditions, combined with the possession of a
moderate amount of capital, were sure to come to the
front, and precisely such characteristics were supplied
by the yeomen and farmers of the bleak and unsettled
country of East Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Of
good stock, many of them bearing honourable names,
and some descended from families of distinction, they
had established their homesteads and booths along
the streams and up the mountain - sides. Managing
their parish affairs as churchwardens and overseers,
serving as " high constables " of the bare forests which
were their summer pasturing ground, they had ample
scope for developing their powers of organization, and
the virtues of self-confidence and independent foresight.
With these aptitudes, they became the natural leaders
of the new trade movement. The water power was at
hand running through their farm buildings ; the sheep
were grazing in the forest to provide the necessary
material ; the population was increasing on all hands
to both supply labour and justify production ; it was,
in fact, the precise moment when we should expect
to see a fresh sorting-out of the accumulated stock of
ability, and the recognition of a new type of aristocracy.
Let us trace from wills and other records the actual
rise of one or two typical families.

Two brothers, Richard and John, living in hamlets

104 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

or booths where we find others of their name in the
Hearth Tax rolls of Charles II., died in 1720 and
1724, both having served their time as "overseers."
Each of them left to their numerous offspring several
copyhold messuages and lands. They are described as
yeomen, and divided sums of money varying from _^io
to ^40 apiece among their children. John apparently
had four sons ; the eldest and the third, another John,
are described in their wills as yeomen, the other two as
woollen weavers. John, the younger, dies while some
of his children are still under age, and leaves his lands
in trust ; but from the will of his wife Alice, dying in
1 77 1, we get an idea of the household possessions, for
she disposes of a silver cup, silver teaspoons, china
service, two chairs, a chest of drawers, and a best black
gown. The eldest son, James, receives six messuages of
land ; a younger son, Peter, receives the " new sashed
house " in the little village then beginning to develop
into a manufacturing town. Peter, by marrying the
able daughter of an able family somewhat above him in
position, assures the future of his descendants. He
starts or continues a successful woollen mill. This
business in course of time passes into the hands of his
widow and four sons, all competent people. A genera-
tion later the children of the eldest son leave the
district, become absentee landlords, and go into the
church and the army. One of the younger sons,
probably the ablest of the family, opens branches of
the business in the neighbouring city and establishes
agencies on the Continent and across the Atlantic. He
becomes intimate with the leaders of the principal
political movements of the day, joins the Manchester

THE RISE OF FAMILIES 105

School of Economists, enters Parliament, and dies at
a good age, leaving a considerable fortune and an
honourable record of commercial enterprise and public
service. We have travelled far from the days of -his
great-grandfather, the first John, who counted his
flocks in the forest of Rossendale.

Another family in a somewhat different locality may
be considered profitably. One John, whose forebears
were farmers in the district at the close of the seven-
teenth century, is described as a " barber," and marries
Ann, the daughter of a weaver. Their son, described
indifferently as barber, chirurgeon, and linen-draper,
married the capable daughter of the prosperous post-
master, thus taking the first essential step to family
prosperity. He leased a farm of 700 acres, and early
in the nineteenth century left a fortune of over
;^ 1 0,000. Again we find that the whole family were
warmly attached to the then radical movement, and
threw themselves vigorously into the stirring political
life of the day. Three of the sons migrated to the
neighbouring city and built up a large and successful
business. Two of them became members of Parlia-
ment, one was knighted, grandsons occupied responsible
positions in Parliament, in municipal affairs, at the
head of large economic enterprises ; and many of the
descendants of John, the barber, and Ann, the weaver's
daughter, are well-known people at this present day.

From a fairly extensive acquaintance with family
records in various parts of England, these two brief
abstracts appear to be representative of the rise of
families in industrial circles during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. The sons of yeomen of good

io6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

stock are drawn into the stirring life of the period.
They set up small mills along their native water-
courses, the next generation puts in machinery and
extends the business in all directions. The most
capable section of a whole class rise slowly together,
continuing to live and mate among themselves and
their likes, a process which has none of the objection-
able and destructive elements associated with the sudden
withdrawal of an immature individual into another
sphere of life. Gradually the abler families and abler
individuals separate out, for a while holding up the
less competent members of the stock. To the winners,
generous and warm-blooded men, their success, as they
reach the position held by other families of long
standing, suggests that all men are born equal, and
only require opportunity to demonstrate the truth of
the proposition. Thus naturally they become indi-
vidualists ; but in reality it is the process of the sorting-
out of an aristocracy of latent commercial ability,
integrity, and organizing power that has brought them
to the front. They attribute their success to superior
education, and found schools, churches, and mechanics'
institutes, hoping, by equalizing opportunity, to equalize
achievement. They overlook the innate qualities re-
quired to take advantage of each favourable opportunity
of life as it presents itself, and to seek out and profit by
education in the days when it was not at hand in every
village school.

Then the foremen-workmen rise in their turn — men
of the same blood, of slightly less ability and somewhat
humbler birth ; and the foundling apprentice follows
suit, for other foundHngs besides Tom Jones had good

THE RISE OF FAMILIES 107

stuff in them, and, less fortunate than Tom, found their
way into the workhouses, where they were systematically
drafted off to the factories. In those days there was a
high rate of illegitimacy, to which every section of
the community contributed. Heredity laughs at the
marriage ceremony, and manifests itself freely without
benefit of clergy. Nowadays an able foundling is
rare; the change in quality, as well as in quantity, is
well marked to all who are familiar with the internal
history of workhouses.

In looking back over such a period, and in con-
sidering the rise of families in the light of tradition and
records, it is easy to see how the pronounced concep-
tions of individualism arose. After the movement was
once fairly started, their enterprise, their sense of
power, their need for a larger sphere of action caused
the abler men to drift away from the familiar sur-
roundings. The recollection of the old quiet home-
stead faded, and the tradition of it was lost in a couple
of generations. It is easier for an individual or for
the branch of a family to effect an alteration in their
sphere of activity after a change of locality ; for the
presence of and habitual contact with relatives of
another position and different type of mind prevents
complete fusion with a new circle in the same neigh-
bourhood. The interests and sympathies of two
divergent branches of a family will soon become dis-
cordant ; feelings of irritation and disappointment are
engendered, and are best and most thoroughly allayed
by the action of time and distance.

Conditions of the early days of the nineteenth century
made travelling difficult ; a visit to the old home once in

io8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

ten or twenty years seems to have been felt sufficient ; the
previous rugged circumstances of life had not permitted
the accumulation of such family treasures as portraits
and plate. Family affection among the present and the
living was strong, as it is sure to be in a vigorous,
healthy stock. ; but family pride in ancestry disappeared
with the knowledge of the ancestors. The greater
wealth, increased luxury, larger responsibilities, wider
outlook, seemed to justify the belief that the individual
had achieved a success, for which, if foolish, he thanked
himself, if wise, he thanked God ; but, in any case,
usually forgot the sturdy yeoman ancestors who had
lived and laboured and intermarried for generations
before him.

CHAPTER VII

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES

The decline and fall of families is a study which
follows naturally on the examination of their rise and
establishment in positions of stability. Often, but by
no means always, the two branches of family history
can be traced together. The reasons for the one
phenomenon are soon found to be as clear and distinct
as the reasons for the other. First and foremost, we
may say that there is more truth in that distinguished
Irishman Sir Harry Boyle's description of the family of
Godfrey O'Malley as one in which it was hereditary to
have no children, than the Englishman hitherto has
given him credit for. Sterility and comparative infer-
tility are as definitely hereditary as other qualities, and
seem in some cases to be associated v/ith a lack of
vitality and an absence of the joie de vivre. As an
extreme instance of this state of affairs, after study-
ing more general cases, we will follow Galton and
consider at some length the effect of marriages with
heiresses. Several points of interest arise in connection
with marriages with unsound stock, and we may prob-
ably take as one manifestation of unsoundness extrava-
gance and riotous living. Such marriages, it may be

109

no THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

pointed out, more often destroy the quality than the
quantity of the offspring, causing a decline in the status
of the family ; whereas marriages with infertile stock
will often bring the strain to an abrupt if honourable
conclusion.

In studying pedigrees illustrating in a general way
the extinction of families by the first cause mentioned
above, we notice at once three apparently correlated
manifestations of infertility, which are often found
together in the same lines of descent. The first is the
prevalence of small families, in cases where there are
offspring at all ; the second is the prevalence of com-
pletely sterile marriages ; the third is the number of
offspring who do not even marry. As an illustration
of these three characteristics, three pedigrees are given
below. It should be noted that all the marriages
involved, except perhaps those of the last generations
in each case, took place before the prevailing fashion of
small families set in, and are consequently unaffected
by it.

In Pedigree I. it is possible that the full history
of generations I. and II. is not completely known,
but it will be seen that in generation II. the three
recorded marriages produced but eight children, while
in generation III. five marriages resulted in four
children, of whom only one married. The individual
A in generation III. came of a strong, able, and fertile
race, and had a large family by a late second marriage,
thus emphasizing the infertiHty of the stock with
which we are dealing as the cause of previous want
of offspring.

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES in

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112 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

With the one marriage in generation IV. we reach
the turn of the tide. The future of the two families
depended on one individual B, Had that individual
married into another infertile stock, it is probable that
both families would have become extinct. But the
stock chosen happened to be a very fertile one, and
two children resulted. One of these children again
married into a strong and fertile stock and had a large

Pedigree II. — Infertility

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family. Thus two alliances with fertile blood re-estab-
lished the families we are considering when they were
well-nigh gone.

A second family, totally unconnected in blood and
locality with the previous example, shows the same
phenomenon of infertility.

Here a large family of marked ability has dwindled
away in two generations in precisely the same manner ;
we see the same evidence of correlated forms of infer-
tility in the sterile marriages, the two small families of
one and two children respectively, who in their turn did
not marry, and in the three unmarried members of the
original large family. There is no symptom of any

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES

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114 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

unsoundness of body or mind in either of the two
pedigrees given above.

Two pedigrees will now be given to illustrate
another feature of the problem before us, namely,
the partial extinction and lowering of the vitality
and ability of families by the introduction of an
unsound strain, whether the unsoundness be of body
or mind.

In considering Pedigree III. it must be said that the
four individuals marked * each came of able, sound,
and fertile stock. But the value of these three factors
was almost entirely destroyed by marriage into the
unfortunate family whose characteristics are under
examination, in which unsoundness of body and mind
are both manifested freely, the first quality taking, as
one form, a high rate of infant mortality.

Another short pedigree may be studied profitably
as illustrating the effect of marriages of different
varieties on a fairly homogeneous, sound, able stock.
Here we find that the specially marked ability of
the eldest and youngest members was in one case
rendered sterile, and in the other case crossed with un-
soundness that seriously diminished its effective value.
The interest of this pedigree would be greatly increased
if either the first or fourth member had chosen as a
mate a fertile individual of marked ability. It seems
probable that a family of unusually high ability would
have resulted from such a union. As it is, the first
group lost solidarity and position owing to various
peculiarities of mind and body, the second group
distinctly moved downward in the social scale, while

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES

115

the third group alone were able to maintain and
extend their position and their influence.

For any one who is really anxious to understand the
issues at stake in these problems, there is no more
certain way of accomplishing that object than by care-
fully plotting in the symbolic form the descent of
special characteristics, either in their own constituent

Pedigree IV. — Fariation of Ability

•T

'O

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6

T

o

r

O

^ = marked ability.
(^ = unsoundness.

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SO

^ = ability above the average.
Q = average ability.

families or in other families with whom they are inti-
mately connected. The impressiveness of such pedigrees
as those given above turns largely on a personal know-
ledge of the factors involved, of their effect on family
and social life, of the intensity of their manifestation in
the various cases ; and one such record conscientiously
compiled from notes and observation is far more
instructive than the study of half a dozen records put
together by other people.

ii6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

One thing becomes very clear : that we are dealing
with a large number of separate factors — various
types of ability, various degrees of unsoundness of
body and mind, various qualities of temper and
character. Longevity, proneness to certain diseases,
height, colour of hair and eyes, all may be tabulated
as separate entities, and their combinations, separations,
and re -combinations watched throughout succeeding
generations.

As we said in the beginning of this chapter, a study
of the effects of marriages with heiresses is a study of
a speciahzed form of infertility, interesting chiefly on
account of its social and economic bearings, important
because of the frequency with which such marriages
occur, disastrous because the type of man who marries
an heiress is usually one who has something to offer,
ability or good breeding, in exchange for the fortune
which sometimes accompanies the heiress and causes
her to be considered a desirable wife.

The whole subject has been admirably set out and
treated by Galton in his book on Hereditary Genius
under the title of " English Peerages, their Influence
upon Race." To this work the reader who desires
further details or wishes fully to grasp the bearings
of the problem is referred.

We have already produced evidence to show that
infertility in its various manifestations is hereditary in
the same way as other mental and physical attributes.
We should therefore expect that a woman who is
either the sole issue of a marriage or one of two or
three children would prove infertile herself or produce

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES 117

a limited number of offspring, who in their turn would
be likely to prove infertile.

Galton brought evidence to show that the judges, as
a whole, were a prolific stock. He then made a study
of the judges who received peerages and who last sat
on the Bench previous to the close of the reign of
George IV. Thirty - one peerages were conferred,
nineteen remain unto this present, and twelve are
extinct. On analysing the marriages of these Law
Lords and their descendants, the following results were
obtained : —

(i) Out of thirty-one peerages, in seventeen cases
marriage with an heiress or co-heiress was followed by
sterility, sometimes in several instances in the same family.

(2) The direct male line of eight peerages, viz.
Colpepper, Harcourt, Northington, Clarendon, Jeffreys,
Raymond, Trevor, and Rosslyn, was extinguished after
alliances with heiresses, and six others had very narrow
escapes.

Of the four extinct law peerages that are unac-
counted for, two peers — Somers and Thurlow — died
unmarried, and two only remain whose failure cannot
be accounted for by marriage with heiresses.

The same class of result is obtained if the statesmen
of George III. and the premiers since 1760 down to
recent times be made the subject of a similar inquiry.
Twenty - two such men were considered. Fourteen
have left no male descendants, and in seven of these
cases the original peers or their sons married heiresses,
viz. Canning, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Grenville, George
Grenville, Lord Holland, Lord Stowell, and Walpole
(first Earl of Orford).

ii8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Among 200 wives of peers, Galton found that 100
heiresses produced 208 sons and 206 daughters, or
414 children in all, while 100 who were not heiresses
had 23^ sons and 284 daughters, a total of 620.
One-fifth of the heiresses had no male children, show-
ing how precarious must be a line of descent through
heiresses. From such results as these it seems clear
that the extinction of many aristocratic families, and the
failure of many eminent men to leave offspring behind
them, are due, not to infertility in themselves, but to the
overwhelming temptation to marry heiresses in order
to endow with worldly goods the position and dignity
in life to which the families have attained by sheer
ability. Obviously, then, from the point of view of the
continued efficiency of the nation, the only sound way
of rewarding great services is the old plan of combining
a hereditary title, if such be the acceptable and custom-
ary offering, with a grant of " lands of inheritance" or
a substantial sum of money, that will do away with the
temptation of marrying heiresses for the sake of their
worldly substance.

For the most part, families who have risen in the
world have been negligent in the matter of keeping
together their family history. In families who have
declined, though bare pedigrees are more often avail-
able, there is usually on record but little information
about the characters of the individuals who contributed
to the fall. The volumes of Burke's Vicissitudes of
Families are tantalizing, both in their suggestiveness
and lack of detail. The characters and even the
names of the mothers are usually lacking. Never-
theless, it is possible in several cases to piece together

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES 119

sufficient evidence to throw some light on the problem
before us.

The account given of the family of Elwes is one of
the fullest and also one of the most interesting, since a
singular combination of qualities, those of miser and
spendthrift, ran side by side in it. The story begins
with Sir Gervase Elwes, spendthrift and roysterer,
created a baronet by Charles II. Of his children and
their marriages there is no account. The title and the
scanty remains of an encumbered entailed estate passed
to a grandson Hervey, who, consumptive in youth,
remained unmarried, lived a solitary life, accumulated a
vast fortune, and was known as Elwes the miser. His
money passed to his sister's child, who took the name
of Elwes, the barren title going elsewhere. The sister,
obviously a miser by inheritance, was married to a
prosperous brewer, son of Sir George Meggott, M.P.
At her husband's death,which occurred when her son John
was four, she received one hundred thousand pounds,
in spite of which, says Burke, " true to the failing ot
her race," she literally starved herself to death. This
son John is the most interesting character in the family
history. Although dissipated, he was economical in
small matters, two characteristics inherited from his
mother's family. In later life he became as apt a miser
as his uncle, living with one or two servants in which-
ever of his numerous large houses happened to be short
of a tenant. He was a good and upright magistrate,
an able man of business, thrice member of Parliament,
and, in times when elections were expensive luxuries,
could boast of having got his seat at an outlay of
eighteenpence— in certain of these matters inheriting

I20 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

from his father's side. He left half a million of money
between two illegitimate sons, with whom our history
of this branch of the Elwes ends.

The title meanwhile had gone to a great-grandson
of the first Sir Gervase. There were successively two
families of sons, who, brought up in scant comfort,
served in the army. The eldest of the second genera-
tion, Sir William, was the typical dissipated spend-
thrift. He married a lady of good family whom he
deserted. She died in a lunatic asylum, while he
himself spent much of his later life in debtors' gaols.
Their son, an honest fellow who accepted his position,
was at one time boots and head waiter at a country
inn ; he married a respectable woman in his own rank
of life and had a large family of children. In the
middle of the nineteenth century, these children held
positions as clerks, drapers' apprentices, etc. The title
appears to have fallen into abeyance or disuse.

When one first considers such records as those given
in this chapter and the preceding one, a feeling of
despair is apt to arise at the inevitableness of the
succession of good or evil. It seems of little use to
fight against fate. But in reality, for most people,
there is no cause for such despondence. As usual, a
knowledge of the natural laws governing a subject leads
to greater freedom, if also to increased responsibility.
We learn the exact limits of our liberty, the precise
nature of our fetters. We know partially the extent to
which we are masters of fate when we realize the prob-
able character of the abilities that are latent within us.
Certainly, in problems connected with the education

THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES 121

and choice of professions for children, nothing can be
more helpful than to have some idea of the directions
in which they are likely to succeed, the duties and
responsibilities that probably may be best undertaken
by them. Similarly the time-honoured petition " lead
us not into temptation " gains new force and meaning
if we understand the nature of the temptations which
are likely most to affect us. It becomes also much
more possible to remove danger from each person, or
to warn and fortify him against forms of evil which
have already proved fatal to others of the same stock.
By the study of heredity, we may gain an insight into
the qualities that are entrusted to each individual to
develop for the advantage of himself, his family, and
the community, and learn to recognize the various
failings specially to be watched and guarded against.
The whole subject is fraught at once with the greatest
spiritual dignity and the utmost social importance.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BIRTH-RATE

The general result of the investigations followed in
this book cannot be mistaken. All the evidence we
have considered emphasizes the supreme importance of
heredity in determining the character of a race, and the
direction and rate in which that character changes.

Our population is made up of elements of very
different nature. As we have seen, the ability of some
men must be reckoned as a hundred times the average.
Physical powers probably vary less ; but other mental
and moral characters show divergences as great as those
found in estimating ability.

All characters, mental or physical, tend to be in-
herited ; and, if one element of the people reproduces
itself faster than the rest, it will soon exert a dominant
influence on the average character of the whole. Its
peculiarities become the normal characteristics of the
nation.

The speed with which any specially fertile stock
increases proportionally to the rest of the community
does not seem to be generally understood. A few
figures may serve to make it plain.

In order that a population should maintain its

122

THE BIRTH-RATE 123

numbers unaltered, about four children must be born
to each marriage that produces children at all. Of
these four, on the average of large numbers, two will
either die early or have no children, and the other two
will be left to continue the race in place of their
parents. Such is the result of the Registrar-General's
returns.

We shall see later that certain large classes of the
people now produce an average of only three children
to each fertile marriage ; that is, only three-quarters of
the births necessary to maintain their numbers un-
altered. If their death-rate be taken at 15 in 1000,
their birth-rate must be about | of 15, or rather more
than 1 1 ; that is, about 4 less than the 1 5 needed to
replace the deaths. At the end of a year, there will be
about 996 instead of each 1000 persons alive at the
beginning of the year. At the end of a century — three
short human generations — each 1000 persons will be
represented by only 687, and in two hundred years by
472.

The birth-rate of other sections of our people is still
some 23 P^J* 1000, or 13 more than are needed to
balance their higher death-rate of about 20. At the
end of one year, each 1000 will have become 1013 ;
at the end of a century, about 3600 ; and in two
hundred years, about 13,000.

The less prolific stock, if originally equal in number
to the other, would be but about i in 6 at the end of
a century, while in two hundred years it would form
but about I in 30 of the population. It would be
lost in the descendants of the stocks of predominant
fertility.

124 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Such figures are given only as examples of the kind
of results to be expected. Nevertheless they enable us
to appreciate the rapid effect of natural selection on
the average character of the race. Let one section of
the community establish a faster rate of reproduction
than others, and quickly, with ever-increasing speed, it
grows relatively, and eventually dominates the whole.

In past ages, in general, selection has probably
worked well. The stronger, abler stocks had more
offspring, and a better chance of rearing them. The
weaker, unsound strains were kept down, and their
bad qualities tended to be bred out of the race. The
rapidity and efficiency of such a process is shown by
the calculation just given. As long as all sections
of the community bred at their normal rate, nature,
unaided, looked after the quality of the stock by the
severity of her treatment.

But the same figures, which show the speed of dis-
appearance by natural selection of bad qualities, make
clear the disastrous consequences which must attend
any artificial selection favouring the reproduction of the
undesirable elements of our people, relatively to that
of the good elements. If we find the birth-rate of the
better and more successful families in all sections of
the community falling seriously below that of the worse
and less successful families, our calculation shows that
bad hereditary qualities will rapidly spread through-
out the country. A study of the general birth-rate is
useless from this point of view ; the all -important
questions to ask are, " From what sections of the people
are we recruiting the nation .^ " " Who are the parents
of the next generation .? " It is desirable, no doubt, to

THE BIRTH-RATE 125

fit able men into positions of influence and responsi-
bility, in government, profession, or business. But it
is of far more importance in the long run to secure
able, trustworthy, healthy men and women as the pro-
genitors of the generations to come. Their qualities
will be inherited, and permeate the nation the more
rapidly the higher is their relative rate of reproduction.
Till about the year 1875 ^^ artificial selection seems
to have arisen. Heron has shown that, in 1851 in the
well-to-do parts of London, the rather higher average
age at marriage was enough to explain the slightly
smaller birth-rate. Early marriages swell the birth-rate
in two ways. They increase the average number of
children born to each couple, and they diminish the
average interval between succeeding generations. But,
till recently, the much higher death-rate in the poorer
districts more than compensated for the slightly higher
birth-rate. Large families were the rule in all sections
of the community, and natural as well as economic
causes tended to favour the better stocks. Since 1875
a serious change has arisen. In the generation now
growing up, large families are rare in the upper classes
of the community and among the higher ranks of the
skilled artisans ; but they are still usual in the thrift-
less ranks of unskilled labour and among the feeble-
minded men and women still at large in our midst.
Only one generation has yet sufi^ered, and the results
are only now appearing. Perhaps there is still time
for repentance and safety. But the calculation of the
numerical effect of a selective birth-rate, with which we
began this chapter, shows that no time is to be lost.
If present tendencies are unchecked, the quality of the

126 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

race must deteriorate with ever-increasing rapidity, till
it approaches that of the lowest types among us. Let
us investigate the facts with no panic alarm, but with
no self-complacent blindness to sinister indications.

All the subjects that we have hitherto investigated
lead naturally to a consideration of the actual birth-
rate. The inheritance of ability or of feeble-minded-
ness, the circumstances bringing about a rise or fall
in the social scale of certain families, are subjects
which some people may think right to put aside, as
matters either of purely scientific interest or of recon-
dite genealogical research. But the number and kind
of people born into a nation, whether they are likely
to be a help or a hindrance to the community, to need
fewer schools or more lunatic asylums, to require
supporting or to support others, to be able to defend
themselves or to offer themselves and others an easy
prey to any attack, — all these are points of vital im-
portance to every sane person, and are brought home
to him in a practical manner every time the rate collector
calls at the door, the Income Tax Commissioners deliver
their demand, or the cook gives notice and cannot be
replaced.

Now a study of the birth-rate of all Western civilized
nations has one immediate effect — the compulsory real-
ization of dwindling values throughout. Corrected for
whatever other causes the statistician can bring to bear,
increased longevity in especial, the one fact remains
perfectly clear. In proportion to the population, whether
we consider France, Belgium, England, Germany, rural
districts alike with urban areas, the number of children

THE BIRTH-RATE 127

born to each thousand of the population is steadily
decreasing, and, in France, at any rate, in one year
actually has been less than the number of deaths —
*' more coffins than cradles," as a German observer
aptly remarked. For the first three nations, the turn
of the tide occurred uniformly between 1873 and
1876 ; in Germany the ebb set in about fifteen to
twenty years later. In Ireland alone of the con-
stituent nations of the United Kingdom, the drop
was checked about 1890. For the rest of the United
Kingdom the number of births per annum has fallen
fi-om 36 in 1000 in 1876 to 27 in 1000 in 1907.^

We could, perhaps, afford to regard such a state
of affairs with equanimity could we remain under the
delusion that the population of the British Isles was
homogeneous throughout ; that the previous thousand
years of stress and strain had produced no sorting-out
of ability, no " survival of the fittest," and that ability
was a matter of chance or the creation of the school-
master and drill-sergeant. If the condition of affairs
had remained the same in 1901 as in 1871, the
Registrar -General would have had to record about
200,000 more births in 1901 than he did ; and, by the
curious perversion of desire that often accompanies
human affairs, whereas in 1 871 we were inclined to be
dissatisfied with the large size of his returns, in 1901,
and ever since, we have become alarmed at their
decrease.

The general opinion on the subject of population
and subsistence has varied greatly from time to time.

' Public Health and Social Conditions, Blue-book published by the Local Govern-
ment Board, 1909.

128 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

In the days of national stress during the Seven Years'
War, Pitt desired an increase of the people, and
reckoned as a benefactor to his country a man who
brought up a large family. In 1798 Malthus, misled
by a partial knowledge of the problem, proclaimed that
human population always tended to outrun its means
of subsistence. It could only be kept within bounds
by famine, pestilence, and war, whereby the redundant
individuals were eliminated. In later editions of his
book, it is true, Malthus recognised the importance of
the prudential check of postponement of marriage,
and the extension of knowledge which followed the
institution of the census in 1801 soon showed how
effective this check was in adjusting population to the
existing economic demand.

But Malthus made a more serious mistake in believ-
ing that, while population tended to increase in a
geometrical progression in the ratio of the numbers
I, 2, 4, 8 . . ., subsistence could only grow in the
arithmetical series i, 2, 3, 4 . . . It is certain that
during the past century, wealth and the means of
existence have increased in England faster even than
the population, which itself has grown to an extent
that would have seemed impossible to Malthus.
While the natural produce of the earth, which could
be used by savage men, increases slowly, a second
term is involved in the total amount of subsistence —
the produce of civilized industry, which grows, other
things being equal, in proportion to the number of
competent, civilized men. But other things are not
equal. A comparatively dense population is more
effective in modern industry than one more scattered ;

THE BIRTH-RATE 129

less waste occurs in communication, transport, and the
distribution of power ; more improvements in industry
are made, owing to the closer contact of minds work-
ing at the same problem. Hence, with two populations
of the same quality, a dense one is more efficient than
a scattered one, and the second term in the total
means of subsistence grows faster, sometimes much
faster, than the population.

But the real heart of the problem is to be sought in
the quality of the population. Were the whole people
of England suddenly to become feeble-minded, or even
to be changed into unintelligent, casual labourers, the
existing means of subsistence would rapidly become
useless or be destroyed, and famine and pestilence
would quickly reduce the population to the few who
could snatch a living from the wreck of our civilization.

So, on the other hand, could the average strength
and ability of the nation be increased, the wealth of
the country would grow far quicker than any popula-
tion possible at present could outrun. As William
Farr, one of the ablest of our statisticians, wrote in the
Census Report of 1 8 5 1 : — ^

"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 the place where it is
wanted, or could be most productive ; but the popula-
tion of the world is not, as Malthus assumes, redun-
dant ; and not only is there a paucity of men of tran-
scendent genius in all countries, but few persons who
have occasion to undertake, or who accomplish great

1 Vital Stathtks, London, 1885, p. 15.

K

130 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

industrial, political, warlike, or other operations, ever
find that the men of skill, industry, and entire trust-
worthiness— of whom they can dispose, either in the
highest or the lowest departments — are superabundant.
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."

When, from time to time, the trade of the country
does not show the elasticity to which we have become
accustomed, and the national wealth does not grow fast
enough to satisfy those in a hurry to be rich ; when
from one side politicians proclaim that the lesser income
of the incompetent should be raised at the expense
of those by whose superior ability they are virtually
supported, and from the other that wealth can be
increased by erecting tariff walls to check its free
circulation, it would be well for the leaders who are
responsible for manipulating public opinion to study the
innate composition of the people, and the relative rate
of reproduction in all ranks of life of the able classes,
who alone are of much economic value in the com-
munity.

Doubtless, the incidence of taxation can hamper to
a greater or less extent the growth of wealth and affect
its distribution. But the essential factor in the rise
and fall of nations is the quality of their people. If
politicians and economists be dissatisfied with the
relative growth of British trade, or with the relative
position of the country among the nations of the world,

THE BIRTH-RATE 131

let them turn first to the sociologist and ask, How
quickly have the different strains which make up our
people been reproducing themselves relatively to each
other ? What is the average character of the generation
on whom the work of the country now rests ? What of
the future generations now in childhood or yet unborn ?

Nowadays, the opinion is freely and often expressed
that German trade is growing at a rate which threatens
the predominant position so long held by British com-
merce. The idea that increasing wealth in a nation
with which we interchange many commodities is other
than an advantage to the business of this country need
not be answered here. Nor need we stop to point out
the familiar arithmetical fact that, on comparatively
small totals, a moderate absolute increase bulks large
when expressed as a percentage.

But, while it is clear that much ignorant or interested
exaggeration is prevalent about the trade returns, the
fact remains that Germany has shown a power of
development, industrial and military, a faculty for
organization and a sense of national confidence, which
must awake admiration in all beholders.

That she has been able to take advantage of the
opportunities of the past twenty years is, we believe,
ultimately owing to the fact that her birth-rate did not
begin to fall systematically till twenty years later than
that of Great Britain, and even now has only sunk
to the comparatively high figure of 33 per thousand,
as against our 26 per thousand. Thus in Germany
restriction of parentage has not yet affected appreciably
the composition of adult life, and even if, as in our
case, it is found chiefly among the better stocks, it has

132 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

not yet destroyed the old predominance of the stronger
and more intellectual sections of the nation.

It seems as if the real meaning of the drama of
civilization, for which the world constitutes the stage,
is the slow development of increasing numbers of the
highest types of mankind. Not only in the pages of
history, but also in the study of existing tribes and
races, we can trace the process in the gradual evolution
of finer and finer physical, intellectual, and moral
qualities. In the familiar words, there comes " first
that which is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual."
For the full benefit of the action of mind upon mind,
as we have seen, density of population is an important
feature ; and density of population only becomes a
danger when its necessary safeguards are ignored by
the unintelligent, the inactive, the unwilling. In the
long unconscious ages of human development, natural
selection takes charge of the process. But now, having
eaten of the tree of knowledge, mankind, willingly or
unwillingly, must assume the tremendous responsibility
of moulding its own destiny. If we allow selection to
cease, or, still worse, to move us in the wrong direc-
tion, if the worst strains establish a preponderant fer-
tility and the race breeds to its lowest types, though
the previous accumulation of knowledge and material
wealth for a time may support the nation, degeneration
is inevitable. The population will cease to be able to
support its own numbers, de-civilization will set in, and
nothing but a new process of selection, stern and
unbending, can stop the decay or arrest the downfall.

It is perhaps arguable that a demand for certain
forms of socialism, for the organization of all industry

THE BIRTH-RATE 133

by the State, and the assumption of public responsibihty
for the support of all workers, is a sign of a decadent
population. If the competent have become too few
and the incompetent too many, the incompetent cease
to be able to obtain a living, and the resulting
misery and distress make it necessary to provide for
them. Heredity shows that they cannot help being
less able, but, at the same time, points out to us the
danger of giving them the privileges and responsibilities
of ability. Society may be morally obliged to support
them, but equally surely it has a duty to posterity to
see that they do not reproduce unlimited numbers of
incompetent offspring to be an increasing burden
on the better part of the community, and eventually
to destroy the civilization to a mistake of which they
owe their existence.

Let us now return to the consideration of the growth
of population in the British Isles. Pitt, one of our
greatest statesmen, called for an increase in the people.
He got it. During the ensuing fifty years, Malthus
and his school of economists cried out for some power
to arrest " this devastating torrent of children." The
flood has been stayed. And still we are not satisfied.
We are coming to understand that it is the quality
rather than the quantity of population that is important.
Let us see how far it is possible to conduct any inquiry
into the sort of citizens that are not being born.

As stated above, in order that a nation should main-
tain its numbers unaltered, an average of about four
children must be born to each marriage which produces
children at all. If we subtract those who will not

134 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

reach maturity, those who will not marry, and those
who, although married, will have no children, on the
average, out of a number of such families, two children
in each, equal to the number of the parents, will be
left to continue the race.

What is true of the nation as a whole is true of any
section of it. Four children to each fertile marriage is
the least that will enable any particular stock to main-
tain itself relatively to its surroundings, provided they
also remain at a constant level. Less than four children
means the slow and certain breeding out of existence of
that particular strain, with its potentialities of good and
evil ; families of more than four are responsible for a
gradual increase of their especial characteristics. The
average character of the race is but the average char-
acter of the individuals which compose it. By an
analysis of the birth-rate for different sections of the
community, we can discover whether the nation be
recruiting itself from its better or from its worse stocks.

Here it is necessary to make an assumption. In
order to have some guide in our investigations, some
touchstone wherewith to test our material, we shall
consider that success in life indicates ability, and that
ability is a desirable possession for a race. Either of
these two propositions may be controverted. We may
say with every truth that success in life depends also
on character, health, power of personality (whatever
that means), and that ability may show itself in the
shape of a keen understanding of the weaknesses and
vices of the human race, and success result from playing
on the one and pandering to the other. But good
health and character count with ability among the

THE BIRTH-RATE 135

honourable assets of a nation, while the ability which
encourages a low standard of life and thought, though
it does untold harm through the workings of environ-
ment, is usually too rare, too selfish, and too self-seeking
to do great harm nowadays through the action of
heredity.

We have said already that the decrease in the
birth-rate shows itself equally in urban and rural dis-
tricts.^ It is true that between 1881 and 1901 the
corrected birth-rate of the towns of Northampton,
Burnley, and Halifax fell off by 32 per cent, but
the birth-rates of the agricultural counties of Cornwall
and Rutland dropped by 29 and 28 per cent respect-
ively. As there is much less decline in Liverpool and
Manchester, Salford and Glasgow — cities, be it noted, with
a large Roman Catholic population — than in Brighton,
Westmoreland, or Devonshire, we cannot attribute the
falling off to " urbanization." But it is very significant
that the decline is greatest in those towns where the
married women are habitually employed in the factories,
and where their earnings are an important element in
the weekly income of the family. On the other hand,
says the Local Government Board, " the majority of
mining districts form a striking contrast with other
industrial districts, the birth-rate in the former being fre-
quently considerably in excess of that obtaining in either
ordinary towns or rural districts." In the Rhondda
district, a centre of the Welsh mining industry, the
birth-rate in 1909 still stands at 40.9 per thousand ;
at Middlesborough and Tynemouth its value is 35.5,

^ Some of the figures in this and the succeeding paragraphs are taken from the
Decline of the Birth-Rate, by Sidney Webb, Fabian Tract, No. 131, London, 1907

136 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

while in the town of Hastings and the county of Sussex,
two essentially " residential " neighbourhoods, the birth-
rate is 15.9 and 20.5 respectively. In the mining
areas the men are well paid, and there is usually no
industrial work to tempt the women from their home
duties. At the same time, it must be noted that there
is a very high rate of infant mortality.

As an indication of relative wealth and prosperity,
let us take the percentage of domestic servants in the
population,^ The corrected birth-rate of Bethnal Green
— the district of London where fewest servants are to
be found — fell off by 12 per cent between 188 1 and
1901 ; that of Hampstead, where many domestic
servants are kept, fell off by 36 per cent, exactly
three times the amount. Clearly neither poverty nor
employment of women in factories can be called in
here to account for the alteration.

For purposes of comparison, the birth-rates of the
districts of London were tabulated in grades of average
poverty. The three " rich " boroughs of Hampstead,
Kensington, and Paddington have a birth-rate of about
20 per thousand, the nineteen intermediate boroughs,
of about 24 per thousand, while the poorest group of
seven boroughs gives 30 per thousand. Truly the
lean kine are eating up the fat kine ! When it is
remembered that many of the poorer classes live even
in Hampstead, Kensington, and Paddington, it will be
seen that the average difference between the birth-rate
of the richer and poorer classes is probably much
greater than the figures indicate. It must be observed

1 Heron, "On the Relation of Fertility in Men to Social Status," Draper i
Memoirs, London, 1906.

THE BIRTH-RATE 137

that the " poor " boroughs contain not only the highest
number of Irish Roman Catholics, but also the largest
proportion of foreigners and Jews. In Whitechapel and
Mile End Old Town half the marriages are solemnized
according to the Jewish rite.

With reference to this division of London into dis-
tricts, the Poor Law Commissioners of 1909, in dealing
with the question of workhouse children, have a very
interesting footnote. They say : " Even illegitimacy
is no proof of inferiority of stock. In visiting Poor
Law institutions it has been noted that, whilst in some
districts the illegitimates seemed mostly the backward
and badly formed children, those in Hampstead, Ken-
sington, and Chelsea were often the most refined, well-
built, and promising." This gives us much evidence as
to the class of persons who are contributing to this
particular source of the population in these areas,
and leaves us to infer the grave loss to the community
in the substitution of an occasional chance birth, with
ability probably on one side only, for the family that
might be expected to result from normal married life.

We will now leave the general corrected birth-rate
returns, and follow Mr. Sidney Webb in an examination
of the evidence supplied with regard to a special sample
of the population, selected solely on the desirable
characteristics of permanent employment, thrift, and
foresight. The Hearts of Oak Friendly Society has a
membership of over a quarter of a million persons of
the artisan and skilled mechanic classes, forming an
upper class of skilled labour, in receipt of twenty-four
shillings a week apiece or over. It provides a " lying-in

138 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

benefit " of thirty shillings for each birth of a child to
its members. From 1866 to 1880 the claims under
this head rose from 2176 to 2472 per 10,000; from
1 88 1 to 1904 they fell from 2472 to 11 65 — a decline
of more than half, or three times as great a fall as that
shown by the total returns for England and Wales in
the same period. A smaller Friendly Society gave a
decline of 56 per cent. If the prosperous artisan
members of these two Societies alone had maintained
their rate of reproduction in 1904 as in 1880, nearly
70,000 children would have been born to them instead
of 32,000. Thus in one small section of the people
there is a loss in one year of nearly 38,000 children,
who in all human probability would have been useful
and active citizens. Other Friendly Societies show the
same phenomenon.

It is possible to make a detailed study of the decline
of the birth-rate of the community in various sections,
which, by reason of ability of various sorts, have attained
to positions of distinction and responsibility, and are
included in the various biographical handbooks and
works of reference. Such families possess a large pro-
portion of the selected and inherited capacity of the
country, and the environment provided by their home
traditions should be of great value in making their
latent ability available for national and social purposes.

Let us first consider the class of persons represented
by the stable landed and aristocratic families described
in any complete Peerage and Baronetage. A hundred
fertile marriages for each decade from 1831 to 1890
have been taken consecutively from those families who

THE BIRTH-RATE 139

have held their title to nobility for at least two preceding
generations, thus excluding the more modern commercial
middle-class element in the present Peerage, which can
be better dealt with elsewhere. We then get the full
effect of hereditary stability and a secure position, and
do away with any disturbing influence that might occur
from a sudden rise to prosperity. The results obtained
are probably representative also of the families of the
landed aristocracy to whom a title has not fallen.
For the first ten years, marriages taking place between
1 83 1 and 1840 gave an average of 7.1 births to each
fertile couple ; from 1841 to i860 the average for each
decade remained constant at about 6.1 ; from 1871 to

1880 there were 4.36 births to each marriage; from

1 88 1 to 1 8 90, 3.13 births are recorded; and it seems
probable that the next decade would show another
decrease, but it is impossible at present to obtain
figures of much value, as one cannot be sure that the
births have really ceased. Thus during the past fifty
years, our stable upper classes in this section of the
community have reduced their birth-rate by more than
one-half, and have passed well below the point at which
the number of births compensates for the number of
deaths. Their virtual extinction on these lines is
clearly only a matter of a few generations.

Another more varied section of the community can
be studied in Who s Who^ a book of reference which
contains biographical details of some 20,000 men
and women, who have reached a certain degree of
prominence, and may be taken as representative of
the upper ofiicial, professional, and commercial classes.
Among the details furnished, the date of marriage and

I40 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

the number of children frequently occur ; but, as it is
impossible to be sure, in cases where no children are
mentioned, whether no children have been born or
whether the entry has not been made, it is necessary
once more to restrict the results to fertile marriages
only.

The marriages of inhabitants of the British Isles
were classified in two groups, those solemnized before
1870 and those after, with the omission in each case of
individuals of the class already considered above. Two
subdivisions were also made, for it became apparent
after a short study that clerical and military families
could be more profitably considered separately.

Taking the available entries consecutively, it was
found that 143 fertile marriages of laymen before 1870
had resulted in 743 children, an average of 5.2 to each
couple. After 1870 the average is 3.08, or 1264
children to 410 couples. It will be noticed that these
figures are appreciably lower than those deduced from
a study of the Peerage, but it must be remembered
that, in the first case, we have a record of all, or nearly
all, the births that occur ; while in Whos Who the
entries probably refer to such children only as are alive
at the time the entry is made, and the death of at least
one child in a family in the additional period of twenty
years between 1870 and 1890 is to be expected.

In clerical families we find that, before 1870, there
were 463 births to 93 marriages, an average of 4.99
children to each marriage, and after 1870, 437 children
to 104 marriages, an average of 4.2. From the dates
of marriage and preferment supplied, it is clear that the
children were born chieflv before their fathers attained

THE BIRTH-RATE 141

distinction ; h6nce it is fair to assume that these figures
are representative of the clergy as a whole.

Taking marriages of men who have served in the
regular army and have attained to the rank of captain
at least, we find for the first period that 40 marriages
produced 107 sons and 92 daughters, a total of 199
children, giving an average of 4.98, the same as that
obtained for clerical families, and probably equivalent to
the 6 actually born given by a study of the Peerage.
For the second period, 100 marriages resulted in 103
sons and 104 daughters, a total of 207 children, giving
an average of 2.07. After such figures as these, there
is little cause for wonder that the Army finds difficulty
in keeping up its establishment of officers.

It has been possible also to include in our present
survey that group of men of specialized ability who are
to be found occupying the permanent posts in the Uni-
versity of Cambridge. The professors, tutors, deans,
bursars, and such-like men in the University and Colleges
are selected for what may be termed their academic dis-
tinction, almost more than for their power as teachers,
and are drawn from all sections of the community. As a
class they possess intellectual ability of much more than
the average amount. In 1909 there were 67 men
apparently in a position to maintain a family who
remained unmarried ; there were 40 childless couples,
who had been married for periods of five years or
longer, while 70 married couples, whose youngest child
was over ten years of age, had produced 199 children.
This gives a total of 287 adults to 199 children, a
decrease in one generation of about a third ; and, in
accordance with the usual estimate, only about half

142 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

these children will become parents in their turn.
Doubtless, the number of unmarried men is still
affected by the rule of celibacy aforetime imposed on
Fellows of Colleges. The large proportion of child-
less couples may indicate that men and women of
academic distinction and mode of life are often not
fertile and are inclined to late marriages ; while the
average number (2.84) of children to a marriage which
produces any offspring is closely concordant with that
in other sections of the educated classes, and is
probably determined by the same causes. Nor do
recent marriages show any signs of improved results,
since 67 marriages, where the youngest child is under
ten years, and consequently may not be the last of the
family, have resulted in only 164 children, an average
of about 2.45. It is impossible as yet to calculate the
precise rate of decline of this later group, since no
estimate can be made either of recent infertile marriages
or of confirmed celibates. It must be admitted that
the domestic arrangements of the Colleges are openly
and curiously symbolic of their deadly effect on the
constituent population, since, although funerals in
College chapels are of frequent occurrence, none of
these buildings is licensed for marriages, nor do any
of them possess a baptismal font.

In the course of the investigations of which the
results are given in the previous paragraphs, it was
observed that no diminution in the birth-rate appeared
to occur in families where distinct evidence — either
from the places of education or profession — could be
obtained that the persons in question belonged to the
Roman Catholic religion. It was not easy to get clear

THE BIRTH-RATE 143

evidence in many cases, but 30 undoubted instances
of marriages between members of Roman Catholic
families from 1871 to 1890 were tabulated, chiefly from
Who's Who and the Landed Gentry^ and resulted in
a total of 197 children, or ^.^ children to each fertile
marriage.

Another small section of the population was also
brought within the scope of this inquiry. It differed
from the previous sections in that women, not men
were the subject of the investigation. The Women's
Colleges have now been established at Oxford and
Cambridge for over thirty years. They attract women
who possess a very definite form of ability, correspond-
ing in many respects to that present in the men who,
having come to either University, often with entrance
scholarships, become masters in schools or remain in the
University as lecturers and professors, and, as such, have
been dealt with in the previous investigations. From the
reports issued by two of the Women's Colleges, we have
lists of all the students who have been in residence
for one year and upwards, the degrees they have taken,
and the names of those who have afterwards married.
Excluding those who have left college within three
years or less, we find that out of some three thousand
women who took advantage of a University education,
only about 22 per cent have subsequently married.
There is unfortunately no record of the number of
children born to each marriage, but it is undoubtedly
very small. It is interesting to observe that the pro-
portion of marriages is distinctly higher among those
students who do not take the final examinations, or,
taking the examination, fail to obtain honours. If the

144 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

marriages be tabulated according to the subjects studied,
mathematics gives a markedly lower average than any
other.

From the point of view of the sociologist, the
importance of this branch of our inquiry lies in the
question of which is the cause and which the effect. If
these figures indicate that certain women, early realising
their unfitness for the primary duties of motherhood
and family life, decide to take up and devote themselves
to another career, usually the teaching profession in
secondary schools, in which they are more likely to
succeed, the result need not give rise to surprise or
anxiety. But if these figures mean that exceptionally
capable women, attracted by the intellectual life of the
Universities, are thereby rendered unfit or unwilling
to discharge their natural functions, the whole matter
requires very serious reconsideration. From what has
been said in the chapters on the inheritance of ability
and the rise of families, it is evident that, for the sake
of future generations, the ability of the mothers is
at least of as much importance as that of the fathers.
It must be remembered that the movement in favour
of the higher education of women on the same lines as
that of men, and their utilization in many spheres of
employment, is a recent movement, and is growing
rapidly in all Western communities. The problem of
" cause or effect " is therefore of the gravest import. It
is a well-known fact that the decline of the birth-rate
among married women teaching in the elementary
schools is very great, though no statistics can be given.
We have now clear evidence that the marriage-rate
among those who are capable of teaching in secondary

THE BIRTH-RATE 145

schools, or of undertaking original research work in
history, literature, or science, is very far below the
average rate for the classes to which they belong ;
and it is practically certain that the birth-rate is
correspondingly low also.

CHAPTER IX

THE SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE ITS EFFECTS

The general results of our inquiry cannot be mistaken.
In the British Isles certainly, and probably in Western
Europe generally, the best elements of the population
are increasing, if they increase at all, at a much slower
rate than the less worthy stocks, and, in some cases at
any rate, the better classes are actually diminishing in
number.

Let us proceed to ask what must be the inevitable
effect of this wrongly -directed selective birth-rate.
Natural selection, in mankind no less than in the rest
of organic nature, improves the breed by eliminating
the unfit and leaving the better-equipped individuals
to become the parents of the next generation. If,
contrary to nature, we reverse this process, deterioration
is certain and immediate, and the race must eventually
give way before a more naturally selected or wisely
bred nation. Pestilence and famine have taken their
toll in former ages, but while they have slain their
thousands preponderatingly among the lower, weaker
stocks, the falling birth-rate is preventing tens of
thousands among the best and most worthy elements
of the people from coming into existence. We have

146

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 147

reversed the action of selection, and are breeding to the
lower types among us.

If the same decrease in reproduction had reached
all classes of the community, its effects would have
arrested more general attention. It would have changed
to such a degree the Registrar-General's returns that the
birth-rate of the country as a whole would have sunk
below the death-rate, and a rapidly shrinking popula-
tion would have become the most obvious problem of
the age. Yet the actual position is more serious than
one which immediately would have been recognized
as a manifest danger. While the birth-rate of the
best elements of all classes — of the skilled artisan no
less than the landed family of ancient lineage and the
professional man of eminent ability — is falling fast, that
of the casual labourer of thriftless stock and of the
feeble-minded class, still at large in our midst, remains
at its old high level. Increased hygienic knowledge
and growing medical skill keep alive an ever larger
fraction of defective offspring to perpetuate the evils
of which they bear the seeds.

The Jews and other foreign races in the East End
of London maintain their natural birth-rate, and, to
some extent, conceal the fall in that among Londoners
generally. Whatever good qualities these aliens may
possess, they are not those typical of the Anglo-Saxon ;
and these immigrants cannot be regarded as a satis-
factory equivalent to the native population.

Although this suppression of the best blood of the
country is a new disease in modern Europe, it is an
old story in the history of nations, and has been the

148 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

prelude to the ruin of States and the decline and fall
of Empires.

Many causes, political and economic, have been
assigned to explain the decadence of nations — slavery,
lust of gold, foreign conquests, bloated armaments,
loss of martial spirit, decay of religion, the power of
a priesthood, a moral fatigue correlated in some
unknown way with every civilization of long stand-
ing,— all in turn have been summoned to account
for their fall. But the more insidious and far
more deadly cause of a wrongly - directed selective
birth-rate, which in a few generations must eliminate
the best innate qualities of a people, is enough alone
to explain the downfall.

How far other causes have contributed to the suc-
cessive decadence of nations it is impossible to say ; but
a study of history in the light of our present knowledge
certainly suggests more and more that, in the survival
and reproduction of the unfittest, we have discovered the
most important clue to the true theory of the subject.

Indeed, as one looks back through the volume of
ancient history most familiar to the average English-
man, one cannot help wondering whether Pharaoh's
celebrated decree ordering the extermination of the
male children of the Hebrews was not an effort to right
the effects of what he deemed a misdirected selective
birth-rate. He may have found it easier to destroy
the children of the prolific alien population than to
persuade the better classes of his native-born Egyptians
to keep the balance even. Again, the feast of Bel-
shazzar and his princes is undoubtedly suggestive.
It needed some power outside the ordinary scope of

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 149

their ideas to impress on them the truth that they had
been " numbered and found wanting."

In Greece and Rome the acknowledged dearth of
children in the patrician families, and in other families
as successively they came to the front, gradually
drained the races of all their finest innate qualities. In
vain did Greek philosophers construct in imagination
ideal states where only the best members should have
offspring, to be supported and reared by the public
wisdom and at the public cost. In vain did Roman
Emperors bestow special privileges on fathers of three
or more children. The duties and responsibilities
of family life fell into disfavour among many of the
best men and the ablest and most attractive women.
The stock deteriorated, and the fruits of centuries of
magnificent civilization were cast away. Mankind
relapsed into barbarism, where the beneficent if stern
effects of natural selection could again come into play.

Once more, the decline of Spain as a world-wide
Empire was preceded by a drain of her best and most
adventurous blood to the countries of the New World,
a prolonged suppression of the finer and gentler
qualities of mind and soul in the monastery and the
convent, and a fierce destruction of all elements of
free thought and independent inquiry by the dungeons
and stakes of the Inquisition. Those alone who
escaped these three-fold dangers survived to become
the parents of each succeeding generation, and the
average quality of the nation suffered rapid deteriora-
tion. The character of the modern Spaniard, attractive
though it remains, has just those defects which would
be found in the remnant of a magnificent race when

150 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

the more intense elements of adventurous energy,
both In action and thought, had been eliminated.

If Greece, Rome, and Spain give us the best
examples of the catastrophic downfall of mighty States,
equally instructive instances of the action of unnatural
selection may be traced among almost all nations.

The historical course of events seems to have run
so clearly in recurring cycles, that a general impression
of some common underlying cause is forced on the
mind. In the light of our present knowledge, the
process may be described in general terms.

Left to itself, in quiet times a nation is subject to
the operation of natural selection. The better classes
establish a dominant fertility, and the unsound stocks
tend to be bred out of the race. By marriages and
intermarriages among the more capable sections of the
community, ability of various sorts and other effective
quahties become collected in certain definite families
throughout the people. An opportunity arises for
national development — political, military, economic, or
intellectual — and the families or individuals of appro-
priate ability rise to the occasion from all ranks.
Hitherto, in the history of nations, stagnation has
followed energy, a period of dulness has succeeded
brilliant intellectual output. How far is this ebb of
the tide historically explicable by our present line of
thought .'' Doubtless the material for rapid advance gets
used up, and some slackening of speed is necessary ;
but, in the actual historical cases, cannot we trace another
cause, more subtle, more potent, and more secret ?

The three great periods of economic and intellec-

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 151

tual activity in Europe are represented in England
by the revival of arts and learning in the thirteenth
century, and with the achievements of the reigns of
Elizabeth and Victoria.

The two latter times of development are well shown
by the increases in the numbers of men of sufficient
eminence to be included in the Dictionary of National
Biography. While the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies show the nearly equal numbers of 678 and
659 respectively, the sixteenth leaps up with 2138.
The seventeenth and eighteenth are again nearly on
a level with 5674 and 5789 names, although in
the eighteenth the population begins to rise, but the
nineteenth gives a total of 12,608. This last
number is probably swollen both by the great in-
crease in the number of the people and by the
tendency to exaggerate contemporary achievement, as
well as by the multiplicity of new callings which have
given scope for fresh varieties of specialized ability,
but it seems too large to be attributed entirely to these
causes.

However we explain the facts before us, facts they
certainly are, and are borne witness to by the unbiased
record of the great English Biographical Dictionary,
Something has been at work to produce definite fluctu-
ations of ability throughout the ages of our history.
The simplest and most direct cause, a variation in the
number of able people actually born, may well be con-
sidered before other agents are called in to account for
the phenomenon.

In the thirteenth century, we see the settlement of
Europe into its constituent kingdoms after the turmoil

152 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

and conflict of the earlier anarchy. On this settlement
followed the stimulus of the Crusades, the contact at
Constantinople, in Spain, and in the East with civiliza-
tions which still preserved the traditions of Hellenic
culture and philosophy. All went well, and the result
was perhaps the greatest development in the intellec-
tual history of Europe.

Now let us turn to the domestic annals of England
for the sequel. The first Dominican friars landed in
England in 1220 ; the Franciscans followed in 1224.
" Within five years," we read, " they had established
themselves in every important city in England " ; and
in little more than thirty years the Franciscans alone
" had settled in forty-nine different localities, and had
covered the country with a network of organization,
directed to the furtherance of their founder's prin-
ciples." ^ And what were those principles .? " To
teach men that religion was as compatible with a life
of activity as with one of contemplation." Excellent
principles indeed, and therefore to be bred out of
the race as quickly as possible. The earlier monastic
orders withdrew from parenthood those who were
inclined to a life of study and contemplation ; the
friars set to work to prevent the transmission of
the qualities of all who wished to combine active
life and social ardour — in fact, the philanthropists,
the reformers, the philosophers of the day. We
read with dismay that with few exceptions every
really great man of learning, who belonged to the
Franciscan order, came from the British Isles ; and
repeated applications were made from Denmark,

^ Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, by F. S. Stevenson.

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 153

France, and Germany for English friars, as superior
to all others. " Nowhere," continues the enthusiastic
chronicler, "has the order furnished so long a
list of distinguished names." Roger Bacon, philo-
sopher and man of science ; Adam Marsh, mathe-
matician and trusted adviser of statesmen ; Robert
Grosseteste, the great administrator, Bishop of Lincoln
and first Chancellor of Oxford ; Duns Scotus, and
Occham — " schoolmen of most original and profound
genius " — and a host of others, not all absolutely of
first rank, are passed in review ; while the number of
intellects in the second rank that were reduced to a
life-interest only is left to the bewildered imagination.
And then, after about a hundred years, " the rest is
silence," or comparatively so, and England has to begin
again slowly to create a fresh crop of great scholars and
original thinkers.

A point of secondary interest as illustrating racial
peculiarities (to be compared with the seafaring pro-
clivities of the men of Devon and the West Country),
is to be drawn from the history of the friars, namely,
the preponderance of the East Anglian element among
the pioneers of the movement, which spread rapidly
and took firm hold in that district. Canon Jessopp
notes that of the first eighteen masters of the Franciscan
school at Cambridge, at least ten were Norfolk men,
while four of the first five Divinity readers at Oxford
were East Anglians. Now three times in her history
East Anglia has been greatly affected by religious move-
ments. There the revival of the fourteenth century
was most intense, and there lay the stronghold of
Puritanism in the sixteenth. At an earlier period, too.

154 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

we cannot overlook the ardour which led to the
establishment and maintenance of the great monas-
teries of Peterborough, Ely, Croyland, and Bury St.
Edmunds, or the remarkable family of royal warrior-
saints that culminated with St. Etheldreda. The East
Anglian churches also are celebrated for their size and
splendour, and the beauty of their internal decoration,
wherever it remains.

The early manifestation of religion was suppressed
by the massacres of the Danish invasions. The prob-
able effect of the friars in breeding religious fervour
out of the race has already been considered. Milman
has called the Franciscan movement the " democracy
of Christianity " ; and doubtless there was something
in its attitude of mind which appealed to the East
Anglian temperament, in the same way as did the earlier
and later developments of religious fervour. How-
ever, the close settlement and enthusiastic reception
of the friars in that region must have led for a
time to an effective elimination of this type of
religious thought. Again, the very large emigration
to America at a later period must have produced
a severe weeding- out of the stronger and dourer
elements of Puritanism. It will be interesting to
see whether, at any future period, the characteristic
East Anglian religious temperament rises again into
national prominence, when it has had time to re-create
itself by new genetic permutations and combinations
among the people.

Let us now turn to a consideration of the Eliza-
bethan age on the same lines as those suggested by
our present train of thought. The causes producing

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 155

the stimulus to expansion are well known — the capture
of Constantinople by the Turks with the dissemina-
tion of its traditional civilization, and the discovery of
America, chief among them. But, looking within, we
know that throughout Europe the monastic orders
had fallen into disfavour. In England, the actual
force of the change must have been increased enor-
mously by the wanton destruction of the monasteries
by Henry VIII., and the loss to the nation of their
accumulated stores of literature, art, and philosophy.
But let us mark the compensating effect. The very
completeness of the ruin forced the country to start
afresh, to seek out new lines of development ; and if, on
the one hand, the destruction of the monasteries led to
great misery among the poor and their other dependants,
and made necessary the Elizabethan Poor Law, on the
other it set free much of the intellect of the country,
and compelled it to start out anew to discover the
road to learning and the path to intellectual eminence,
unfettered by traditions of the past ; while, more im-
portant than all, it prevented the continual drain of the
best intellectual ability of the country into the celibate
life of the cloister. And so we were vouchsafed the
crowning glories of the great Elizabethan age as the
first outcrop, while a period of scientific and literary
activity set in, which carried England on through the
seventeenth century.

On the Continent, the movement fared otherwise.
No Henry VIII. came so effectively to its rescue, or
unwittingly set it so firmly on the right path. The
existing powers grew alarmed as the great wave of
thought passed beyond their control ; and nations, with

156 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

as fine or finer intellectual heritage than England,
found themselves enveloped in the clutches of the
Inquisition. Giordano Bruno was burnt in 1600, and
a host of mighty men preceded or followed him to
the stake, while others kept spiritual company with
Galileo in the prisons of the Inquisition. In Spain,
says Galton, from 147 1 to 178 1, by martyrdom and
imprisonment, the country was drained of freethinkers
at the rate of a thousand persons annually, while the
monastic orders still flourished to catch any one whose
intellectual ardour could adjust itself to the orthodox
religion. In France, during the sixteenth century,
between three and four hundred thousand Protestants
perished in prison, at the galleys, or on the scaffold,
while many escaped to England, to the lasting benefit
of our race. Italy also was frightfully persecuted, and
the episode of the world's history which began with
such brilliant promise at the Renaissance was satisfac-
torily put a stop to on the Continent of Europe.

Once again the nations of Western Europe have
recovered themselves ; once again in England we boast
of the national glories, in literature, art, science, and
administration, of the Victorian period ; once again a
host of great names crowd upon our memories. But
already some have seen signs of decadence. However
that may be, we still have great men with us. But
we cannot shut our eyes to the perils that lie
ahead. And to what must we attribute the danger
of a new period of decline and failure ? Not to
the magnificent if ill -directed religious fervour of
the thirteenth century, nor to the honest if cruel
and narrow outlook of Catholic orthodoxy in the

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 157

sixteenth century, but to the utterly wanton, selfish,
and senseless restriction of the birth-rate among the
intellectual and able classes of the community. Surely
the gods themselves must weep over the perverse
stupidity of the human race, who three times in a
thousand years have held such possibilities of glorious
development in their hands, and three times have com-
passed their own destruction.

The history of European colonies, beginning with the
discovery of America, and the early settlement of that
continent by Spain, England, and France, has afforded
a most interesting example in the development of
population under the influence of different races, con-
ditions, and environment. We can still trace clearly
in the present populations and their international
relations the effect of the various types of settlement.

The Spanish occupation of Central and Southern
America was characterized by the spirit of adventure,
the lust of gold, and the intolerance of the Jesuit
missionary ideals. Men of courage and enterprise left
the old country to carve out their fortunes across the
Atlantic, and even to the last days of the occupation of
Cuba, the Spanish colonies were too often treated merely
as a source of income to the mother country, bound
to provide careers and fortunes for her officials and
money-seeking adventurers. But no persistent attempt
was made to establish a permanent form of settlement,
and few Spanish women accompanied their men-folk
to the new continent. As a consequence, the proud
and well-bred Spaniard mated with the native Mexican
and Peruvian women, and some of his best qualities

158 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

were lost. Thus there grew up a half-caste breed,
with characteristics and aspirations of their own, who
in a few generations came to know little of their
paternal ancestry. They easily broke with the traditions
of Spanish civilization, and took an early opportunity
of throwing off the Spanish domination.

The history of the English colonies in North
America ran a different course. The country was
explored by men of the same type as the Spanish
adventurers, but the actual settlement was made chiefly
by people who for various causes, political and reli-
gious, were discontented with the course of events
in England. They took their wives and families with
them, and represented a certain type of sturdy, self-
contained, independent, somewhat uncompromising
men and women, admirably suited to carve out their
fortunes and establish themselves firmly under new
and untried conditions. But the very qualities that
took them out of England militated against the forma-
tion of a cohesive and adaptable nation ; and, the cause
of their departure being largely discontent, prevented
any warm feelings of attachment to the mother country.
The ties between the two were chiefly those of mutual
advantage — protection on the one side and commercial
interests on the other. When, after the conquest of
French Canada by British troops and fleets, the need
for military protection ceased, when commercial in-
terests clashed, the inevitable repudiation of the
mother country, foreseen by at least one English
statesman of the eighteenth century, took place. A
small body of loyalists, whose heredity and reasons for
emigration would well repay special study, moved off

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 159

into more congenial surroundings ; while the re-
mainder, united for a time by their common desire to
be quit of outside interference, were left to settle their
own inherent differences at leisure.

When we consider how large a proportion of the
early emigration to the eastern portion of the United
States was due to divergence of religious opinion,
chiefly in the direction of a pronounced democratic
and individualist type, we understand at once the
reason for the various outbursts of religious fanaticism
in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts throughout the
eighteenth century. We see also the nature of the
material on which recent religious extravagances are
able to work with so much ease and effect. Possibly
also we have an explanation of the state of mind that
hopes to do so much by vast educational expenditure,
and is inclined, in spite of its own history, to attribute
so little to the influence of heredity.

The history of the French settlements in Lower
Canada is the history of the one reasoned attempt to
found colonies which should reproduce the approved
type of civilization of the mother country, and should
form an additional source of imperial power and pros-
perity. The genius of Richelieu created the Company
of New France in 1627. There were 120 associates;
the twelve largest shareholders were to be ennobled, to
fulfil the feudal and paternal duties of the ancienne
noblesse in the new territory. Two or three hundred
artificers were included in the first batch of four
thousand setders ; all the emigrants were to be French
Catholics, and three ecclesiastics were allotted to each
habitation. But the movement was not sufficiently

i6o THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

supported from the military point of view ; Quebec
surrendered to the English, and was only returned to
France at the peace of 1632.

At this period, the missionary aspect of the enter-
prise probably offered the greatest attraction to the
French people ; but before long Talon and Colbert
resumed the policy of deliberate colonization, and
between 1664 and 1674 the population of French
Canada trebled under their careful guidance. Men of
bad character were not allowed to stay in the settle-
ments ; early marriage and large families were en-
couraged by every device and decree, such as bonuses
on marriage and on large families, fines on celibacy,
etc., while shiploads of young women as wives for the
settlers were sent to stimulate the increase of popula-
tion. The home government desired to establish joint
schools for natives and settlers alike, hoping to create
thereby a half-caste race, devoted to their interests.
But the French Jesuits, with considerable scientific
insight and wisdom, probably gained in practical ex-
perience, successfully opposed the carrying out of
this scheme. They prevented or discouraged inter-
marriage with Indians, arguing that the Indian mind
was incapable of a high development, and favoured
for them a system of perpetual parental tutelage.

Here we have the nucleus of a steady, hardworking,
sober, Roman Catholic nation, deliberately created and
planted in suitable surroundings. The experiment in
inheritance has answered admirably. We see the
results after two hundred and fifty years in the
loyal, industrious, prolific population of French
Canada.

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE i6i

Two causes are responsible for the failure of the
experiment as a source of imperial strength to the
French mother country. The military aspect was
neglected until circumstances connected with European
politics had made Canada a point of strategic weakness
in the French empire. In the second place, while the
French settlers in Canada and the English settlers in
New England were equally prolific, the English colonies
soon had a great advantage in numbers of population,
owing to twenty years of Puritan exodus from Eng-
land ; while the French Huguenots, who were not
allowed to land in Canada, filled up the vacant places
at home. Only in the West Indies and the settlements
round the Spanish Main were the French Huguenots
and Jews permitted to establish themselves. The home
government saw there no chance of forming colonies
on the homogeneous type deliberately adopted in the
North.

In spite of their larger numbers, however, the
perverseness and want of unity of the British colonies
gave a great military advantage to the loyal and united
French, who, under capable and enlightened leadership,
more than held their own, till Pitt, owing to the
success of his containing operations in conjunction
with Frederick the Great, and the establishment of sea
supremacy, was able to pour overwhelming forces into
America.

Here, then, we have three experiments in population
and selective breeding on a large scale, which have
been carried on over some three centuries. The
results are well known to all observers ; the nature of
the experiments, and the conditions under which they

M

1 62 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

have prospered or failed, can be studied in the historical
records of the nations involved.

Every nation requires a constant succession of men
of ability of every description to carry on the work of
government, the industrial and economic life, the
literary, artistic, and scientific development, in a
manner appropriate to its special form of civilization,
to its traditions in the past, and to its aspirations for
the future. Moreover, such men are required in
increasing and not in decreasing numbers, as the
responsibilities and complications of government,
whether imperial or local, develop. Undoubtedly in
England there is ability of some sort latent in almost
every class of the community, except in the very lowest
and among the mentally defective ; but equally surely
the various forms of ability have been sorted out during
the past centuries by the action of natural selection, of
like -to -like mating, of direct inheritance, and exist
ready in certain strains in an intensified form. By the
cultivation of a due sense of moral responsibility, by
an appeal to the patriotism and foresight of the nation,
by a proper adjustment of economic burdens, by a
well-considered scheme of deterrent legislation, a
nation can control its future composition and history
to a much larger extent than has been suspected, and,
whether it will or no, is always rising or falling as
regards its inherent qualities. Good fortune and pros-
perity will attend on those communities who are the
first to take advantage of and to apply the new know-
ledge. Natural selection, natural inheritance, and the
conscious action of men, have divided the equine breed

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 163

into animals of such different types as the Clydesdale
cart-horse, the thoroughbred racer, and the Shetland
pony. The same natural forces, joined to the stress
and strain of economic and international conflicts and to
the unconscious action of the human race, have differ-
entiated families of mankind in a similar way, if out-
wardly to a less marked extent. It is impossible to
compare the history given on page 97, of a family
which produced six generals and admirals in a few
generations, the pedigree on page 89, where nine
members were received into the Royal Society, and
the account of the Bach family on page 87, with
the notorious " Jukes " family, and with the family
described on page 68, who provided four inmates
for the special schools for the mentally defective,
without realizing the force of the old saying that
" by their fruits ye shall know them." " Do men
gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles .'' " Is it
likely that we shall find statesmen, generals, inventors,
and administrators in the ranks of the thriftless casual
labourer and the feeble-minded ? or that our leaders
and governors will be as successful if we draw them
from the untried and lower sections of the people
rather than from the higher and proved fount of
national ability and character ? Evidently it requires
several generations to ascertain, test, and fix the nature
of the capacity latent in any one stock. A nation,
having once fallen into arrears, cannot remake itself
immediately on demand. There is no doubt that the
phenomenon of restricted birth-rate in the successful
and talented classes during the past forty years has
appreciably, and to a certain extent irretrievably.

1 64 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

damaged the national credit and composition. Having
realized this, it behoves the nation, individually and
corporately, to take any and every step to prevent
further deterioration, and as far as possible to recover
the ground that has been lost.

The marked decrease in the average size of the
family in the successful classes began, as we have seen,
about 1875. One generation of those classes, the
generation now in early manhood, consists of about
half the number of individuals that should be found.

What are the probable and realized effects of this
shortage of men and women of our best stocks com-
pared with the growth of the people as a whole ^ How
is it manifest in contemporary life ? What will be its
results on the character and future history of the race }

To discover the effects of the absence of these
suppressed personalities, it is well to begin our inquiry
by investigating what the corresponding people did in
old days when they were brought into existence. Of
one section of the classes affected, the stable families
of the landed gentry, details may be obtained from
Peerages and other similar books of reference.

Two series, each of about one hundred cases, were
taken from the Peerage, as in our investigation into
the average number of children born to a fertile couple.
Those families only were considered who had held
their title for at least two preceding generations. But,
the object of the present inquiry being to discover
what became of large families of younger sons, the
hundred cases were made up from those marriages
which had produced three sons or more.

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 165

The periods selected were the last half of the
eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century.
For the first period, between 1750 and 1800, 97
consecutive marriages, in which the succession to the
title was involved, were considered. This represented
a study of about a quarter of that part of the volume
devoted to family histories, and resulted in the truly
surprising total of 468 sons, or nearly five sons to a
marriage. Of these sons, 34 died before reaching
maturity, and in 131 cases the details given are not
sufficient to permit classification, though it is quite
clear from several indications that want of detail does
not indicate lack of occupation. It is especially in the
case of the eldest sons that particulars of the careers
are lacking, owing to a faulty arrangement of the
material involved. Of the 303 sons remaining, 119
went into the Army, of whom 2 1 died in the service
and 34 became Generals ; 57 went into the Navy, 12
lost their lives, and 20 became Admirals ; 66 took
Holy Orders, 14 becoming Bishops or Deans ; 35
served the country in permanent posts, or entered
the Diplomatic and Colonial Services ; 14 went to the
Bar, of whom 2 became Judges ; 2 took up Medicine
for a profession, and some few are mentioned simply
as Members of Parliament.

The second period of marriages, between 1800 and
1850, gives very similar figures, though the slowness
of promotion compared with that in the time of
the Napoleonic wars leads to a smaller number of
Generals and Admirals. From 1 1 1 marriages we have
511 sons. Of these sons, 48 died while immature,
and 95 are unclassified; 169 went into the Army, of

1 66 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

whom 17 lost their lives, and 9 attained the rank of
General ; 42 entered the Navy, of whom 5 died on
service and 9 became Admirals. The Church accounts
for ^6 J and 3 attained the dignity of Bishop or Dean ;
38 entered the Government Services, 16 went into the
Law, I into Medicine, 2 into Banking or Commerce,
and 26 became Members of Parliament.

The most noticeable difference in the two groups is
in the number of those unclassified, and in the higher
proportion in the earlier period of those who, having
entered the Army or Navy, attained distinction or fell
in the service of the country. The second difference
shows the effect of the Napoleonic wars. It seems
likely that the first difference is due, partially at any
rate, to the insufficiency of family records in the earlier
time, and that many of those, who in that period are
unclassified, served in the Army or Navy, at any
rate for a short while ; those sons being especially
remembered whom family pride rejoiced in as having
distinguished themselves above the average of their
fellows, or family piety commemorated as amongst
those who had fallen by the way on the path to
glory.

In considering these figures as a whole, the first
deduction we draw is that in past generations men
who found themselves placed by birth in a position
above their fellows, did not enter into the com-
petition for increased wealth, but paid their debt to
the country in actual personal service. The professions
they chose are notoriously underpaid. They did not
follow the advice of the Eastern sage to " take the cash
and let the credit go," but steadily kept to the narrow

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 167

limits of national duty, and accepted at once the
opportunities and limitations of their station in life.

It appears, then, that till recent years the majority
of the younger sons of the class we are now considering
joined the Army or the Navy or took Holy Orders.
Of these three professions, the Army attracted by far
the largest number. We should expect that the first
signs of a proportionate decrease in the supply of
children in the landed class would be found in a fall
in the number of candidates for entrance into these
professions.

Now it Is a matter of common notoriety that while
the would-be sailors are still many, the Army and
the Church are suffering from a dearth of proper
candidates. Doubtless many other causes may be
assigned, and have been assigned freely, for this
phenomenon. But surely one preponderant cause is
not far to seek. One of our writers, on a certain
mock-tragic occasion, tells us " No birds were flying
overhead. There were no birds to fly." We may
extract the essence of his wisdom and say that no
younger sons are going into the Church and the Army
for the simple reason that there are no younger sons

to go.

In the Church and the Army, the average pay is
too small for the standard of life of the classes it Is
necessary to attract. Hence these professions have
relied In the past on filling their ranks from those
who, from a sense of duty or from hereditary disposi-
tion, were ready to serve God in Church or State for
an Insufficient remuneration. From the beginning of
the eighteenth century till recent years, there has been

1 68 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

a healthy reluctance in landed and military families to
engage in commercial or industrial pursuits. More-
over, the country landowners as a class have shown
exceptional public spirit in the history of local govern-
ment throughout the last two centuries. The value of
their unpaid work to the community has been borne
witness to by competent and independent investigators.^
The figures we have given to express the activities of
their sons show that the same sense of duty to the
community extended to national as well as to local
affairs. It is clearly not a coincidence that a time
when exceptional financial burdens, arising from both
economic and political causes, have fallen on the
shoulders of the country landowners, is marked also
by a decrease in the number of their offspring.
Simultaneously there has set in a want of elasticity
in the supply of candidates for two underpaid pro-
fessions, essential to the welfare of the community,
which unconsciously had relied to fill their ranks
largely on the patriotism and unselfish devotion to
duty of a class which, from a certain section of its
fellow-countrymen, has received little but misunder-
standing in return.

In other professions, the dearth of duly qualified
candidates is not yet as pronounced as it is in the
Church and the Army. Other professions are better
paid, and hence can draw for a time on different classes,
as the supply of men, who would formerly have filled
them, contracts.

The first-class Civil Service examinations show a fall

1 See the Hittcry of Local Government — T^e County, by Sidney and Beatrice

Webb.

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 169

in the numbers of candidates from a maximum of about
250 to about 180 in recent years, but this decrease is
assigned at present by the Commissioners to a better
knowledge of the standard likely to succeed. Candidates
whose chances are hopeless now very seldom compete.
But every year, as scholarships increase and our
educational ladder becomes easier of access, the net of
the well-paid Civil Service is cast wider. Hence we
should expect this particular career, served pre-eminently
as it is by our fast-developing system of competitive
examination, to be the last to show a decrease in the
number or examinational quality of its candidates for
admission. Whether promise, as tested at entrance by
examination, corresponds with performance, as tested
by the results of public service in after life, would
be an interesting and not an impossible subject of
study.

But while the Civil Service still attracts sufficient
numbers who can pass its examinational doors with
credit, there are signs in the higher ranks of employ-
ment generally that the demand for competent men is
greater than the supply. It is impossible to watch the
passage from the University into the world of each
year's crop of graduates, without seeing more and more
that men of character, ability, and good manners find
posts waiting for them almost before their necessary
period of training is completed. A family in which
these qualities are hereditary need fear no difficulty in
securino: careers for their children.

Not only do the entries into certain professions
show signs of a decreasing supply of competent
men, but certain phenomena noticed in the public

lyo THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

schools are assigned by qualified observers to the
same cause. The numbers of boys at the few schools
acknowledged by all to stand first in public estimation
have increased much and rapidly. But many of the
smaller schools, which used to depend largely on local
families for their support, are suffering severely from
diminished entries. Some with good records have had
to close their doors.

Now these two apparently different effects are
probably due to the same cause. In old days, the
smaller gentry of the neighbourhood, from motives of
economy no less than local patriotism, sent their many
sons to the well-known school, not expensive and near
at hand, which they themselves had attended. Now
the same local families have but one or two sons each,
and, less affected in consequence by questions of cost,
endeavour to send them to one of the most fashionable
schools, perhaps in a distant part of the country.

We must now turn to the consideration of the
effects of the selective birth-rate on other classes of the
community.

The recent Old Age Pension Act affords material
for reflection in connection with this part of our
subject. In accordance with the impulsive habits of
the British nation, to whom a reasoned train of
investigation and inquiry, followed by slow and
tentative remedial measures, appears to be difficult,
something was felt to be wrong, and, without
going to the root of the question, something was
done to put matters right. The forlorn condition
of the respectable poor was indeed a grievous

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 171

problem ; there was especial emphasis on the word
" respectable."

Forty or fifty years ago, the thrifty and far-seeing
workman desired and often produced many children,
who were legally bound to maintain him and his wife
in their old age ; and the burden, spread over a large
family, was often not very serious. At any rate there
was neither a demand nor a need for old age pensions
in normal cases. But, as we have seen from the
Friendly Societies' returns, it is precisely the respectable
workman who, for the last twenty or thirty years, has
restricted his family most severely. And now, as he
grows old and past work, his maintenance becomes a
well-nigh intolerable burden on the one or two children,
who, possibly with families of their own to rear, suffer
acutely, largely owing to the suppression of the brothers
and sisters, who would have shared the responsibility
with them at this juncture. So the pressing need and
outcry for old age pensions has arisen ; exactly at the
psychological moment to fit in with results and dates
which might have been deduced from the statistics
previously given.

Now, with the fundamental proposition of the Old
Age Pensions Act we have nothing to do at this
present moment. It may be, and possibly is, perfectly
right and desirable that the community should step in,
and that the maintenance of those respectable members
of society who are past work should become a general
rather than an individual charge. But, if the com-
munity undertakes the duties of the children, it might
not be unwise on its part to make some inquiry as to
the actual existence and number of those children

172 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

whose responsibilities it assumes ; for it runs the
danger of removing yet another motive for calling into
being the individuals whose place it has cheerfully
occupied. From whatever source the necessary money
be raised, it is clear that those members of the working
classes who have abnormally small families, or have
produced worthless and undutiful offspring, will now
be supported in their old age by funds taken from the
strong and capable members of the community. The
competent ones can therefore afford, without regard
for the future, to restrict still further the number of
their children ; while the incompetent, heedless of
consequences, can produce a larger number of useless
members of society, from whom neither they nor the
State expect or receive any return.

That the strong should support and assist the weak
is an excellent maxim, one with which most people can
agree cordially in theory ; but, if in practice it should
happen to lead to each vigorous and thrifty family in
the country reducing its offspring by yet another one,
and every pair of weak and casual parents creating
two more unsatisfactory children to be supported and
assisted in their turn, there is obviously a very dark
lining to the silver cloud of altruism. In the ideal
state, as we all know, great pains were taken to make
the punishment fit the crime ; here, in England, we
have lost an excellent opportunity of adjusting the
reward to the services rendered to the community.

The recent report issued by the majority of the
Commissioners on the Poor Laws does not at any
point deal directly with the problems raised by heredity,

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 173

although the Commissioners admit that they are at a
loss to account for the phenomena they were em-
powered to inquire into, by any economic, moral, or
political causes. We will quote their conclusion :

" It is very unpleasant to record that, notwith-
standing our assumed moral and material progress,
and notwithstanding the enormous annual expenditure,
amounting to nearly sixty millions a year, upon poor
relief, education, and public health, we still have a vast
army of persons quartered upon us unable to support
themselves, and an army which in numbers has
recently shown signs of increase rather than decrease.
To what is the retrogression due ? It cannot be
attributed to lack of expenditure. Is this costly and
elaborate machinery we have established defective, and
if so where does it fail to accomplish its end .'' Is the
material upon which this machinery operates becoming
less amenable to the remedies applied ? . . . The
statistical review of the expenditure incurred and of
the results attained by it prove that something in our
social organisation is seriously wrong, and that, what-
ever may be the evils, they are not of such a nature as
to be improved or removed by the mere signing of
cheques or the outpouring of public funds."

Two other statements incorporated in the general
survey of the Poor Law Commission are also of
interest. The first suggests that general education,
the remedy from which so much was looked for in
1870, has failed in one of its objects. We read :
" A generation has elapsed since elementary education
became universal, and the benefits to be derived from
the system should now be accruing to the nation.

174 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Persons now above fifty years of age have not, it is
true, participated in the advantages conferred in 1870,
but of persons below that age we have shown that
there is no diminution in the number coming upon the
Poor Laws."

Again, in a statistical comparison between able-
bodied pauperism in urban and rural districts, the
Commissioners point out :

" The consideration of these statistics leads to the
conclusion that it is in regard to the able-bodied that
least progress has been made. Indeed it would appear
that there has recently been a considerable retrogression
in this branch of the Poor Law. Either the urban
population is becoming less fitted for maintaining their
independence, or the facility with which relief may
be obtained and the immunity from labour which it
confers are enticing a larger number of persons to avail
themselves of Poor Law relief."

The Commissioners also state that, in a recent year,
between 30,000 and 40,000 able-bodied men in health
received outdoor relief without any task or work. In
large towns the number of cases receiving such treat-
ment is apparently increasing.

Out of their own conclusions in another section, it
seems possible to suggest an explanation for the failure
of the Poor Law Administration to diminish the evil
with which it has had to contend. In the section on
Bastardy, after pointing out that, in one workhouse,
out of 229 births in five years, 77.2 per cent were
illegitimate, they say that nearly all the mothers in
the latter section were mentally weak, in most cases
approaching the state of imbeciles. Another Royal

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 175

Commlsslonj appointed to report on the care and
control of the feeble-minded, had previously shown
that mental defect was hereditary, and recommended
that persons suffering in such ways should be detained
compulsorily in labour colonies, as the only way of
eliminating mental defects from the people. The Poor
Law Commissioners adopt this recommendation :

" If, as we hope, the recommendations of that Com-
mission are carried into effect, a system of control over
the feeble-minded will be initiated, which will put an
end to one of the most prolific sources of pauperism,
and free the Poor Law Administrator from one of his
greatest difficulties. Meanwhile, we think that, as a
provisional rrieasure, the Poor Law authorities should
be given power to detain feeble-minded mothers of
illegitimate children who come under their care."
Again, dealing with the same subject :
" For depraved women we recommend that the
Local Authorities should have power to arrange for
their detention in suitable institutions. Should these
recommendations be carried into effect, we confidently
anticipate a great diminution in the numbers of the
latter class, and also in the numbers of illegitimate
and degenerate children who are born only for an
early death, or to become a lasting burden upon the
Community."

Here we have a distinct recognition of the influence
of heredity on this section of pauperism. Indeed, the
question is too clear to admit of any doubt. But
the same train of reasoning might have suggested the
same influence at work in other departments of the
inquiry. It is surely as undesirable to increase the

176 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

number of vagrants and work-shy paupers as of the
feeble-minded. The only difference of treatment
should be that the one class are now known and
recognized as incurable, and a source of national weak-
ness, and should be dealt with as such forthwith ;
while the other class might be afforded, under suitable
control, the opportunity for demonstrating to the
satisfaction of the community whether, as a result of
training and opportunity, a capacity for steady work
and honourable existence is or is not latent in them.

It is stated that about 1 5,000 births take place
annually in the workhouse wards, of which 30 per cent
are legitimate. It is unfortunate that there are no
details as to the occupations, character, and record of
citizenship of the parents, who are not in a position
to fulfil the economic duties of parenthood, but are
responsible for giving birth to this annual crop of 5000
legitimate pauper children. A history of the subse-
quent careers of these children would also be extremely
desirable.

There is a danger of focusing public opinion on
a question of the magnitude disclosed by the Poor
Law Commission, involving an appreciable fraction of
the population. At once we are aware of a tendency
to lose the sense of proportion, and to assume that
our future social legislation must regard the people
who have made shipwreck of their lives, and shown
themselves incapable of directing their own affairs
to any advantage, as the normal inhabitants of the
country. There is consequently a great temptation to
provide such an army of officials and institutions for
their oversight, reception, and relief, that it is difficult

SELECTIVE BIRTH-RATE 177

for any one on the margin to remain outside the
infected area.

Nevertheless, the problem of pauperism is one of
pressing importance, and depends far more on the in-
heritance of human faculty than has been recognized.
Doubtless much unemployment and some consequent
pauperism are due to our want of organization of the
labour market. There is no month of the year when
some trade is not at its busiest, and a network of
labour exchanges could do much to suppress seasonal
unemployment. But when this is remedied, and when
allowance is made for dislocation caused by cycles of
good and bad trade, the evidence available goes to
show that some of the unemployed are in reality
unemployable. They have neither the will nor the
capacity to undertake steady work. As long as the
feeble-minded and the habitual criminal are allowed
to multiply at will, so long will a section of the com-
munity remain parasitic on the rest ; an expense to,
and a drag upon, their more efficient fellows. As we
have quoted above : " The character of every race of
men is the real limit to its numbers." Men of higher
ability will make more of the natural resources of a
country, will produce more sustenance. Moreover, it
is clear that, other things remaining unchanged, a rise
in the average ability of the race would mean increased
ease for every one in their allotted task, both indi-
vidually and in the saving of labour now expended
in supporting the incompetent. Again, as more and
more of the unskilled labour of the world is done by
machinery, there will be less and less demand for
unintelligent workers. Ability in mind and technical

N

178 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

skill in manual craft will increase yet more in relative
importance, and in the future the need for these qualities
will grow faster than the population.

Besides applying the immediate remedies required
to meet the superficial symptoms of present unemploy-
ment, we must learn to go to the root of the matter by
securing once more a rightly-directed selective birth-
rate, or be prepared for Nature to resume her own
ways of eliminating the unfit, after some form of social
cataclysm.

The truth is that a generation which has set great
and unwarranted stress on success in examinations as
a test of individual ability, has rebelled against the far
truer and more profound view of continual utility and
prosperity in life as the test of the worth of a family.
While acquiescing in and encouraging the sorting-out
of able individuals by a purely academic method, we
have discountenanced or disowned the results of the
far severer and more searching discrimination of
natural selection and inheritance. From the point of
view of the nation, the individual is too small a unit
to deal with or to judge from. Even when apparently
sound, he may bear in him the hereditary seeds
of disease, crime, or mental defect. The family is
obviously the true scientific unit of the sociologist, the
only safe guide in forming any estimate of the possi-
bilities of the nation as a whole.

CHAPTER X

THE DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE ITS CAUSES

We are now in a position to take stock of the whole
subject of the recent fall in the birth-rate, and to try
to find some tentative explanation of the causes at
work.

It is perfectly clear that there is no appreciable
diminution of the natural fertility of the nation, since
the Clergy, the Roman Catholics of all classes, and the
Jews, as well as the miners, the casual labourers, and
the feeble-minded, are unaffected, or affected to but a
slight extent, by the decline in the size of the family
prevalent among the majority of the well-to-do laity and
the thrifty skilled artisans. It is possible that some small
part of the decline might be traced to the natural and
direct effects of luxury, restlessness, or overfeeding ;
but by far the greater part of the fall is only indirectly
connected with those faults of modern life. In the
mass of the community, the able, competent, and
successful stocks, who until recent years probably
produced relatively nearly as many children as the
lower-grade stocks, and certainly reared a far larger pro-
portion, have come to the conclusion that they do not
wish for large families, and are voluntarily restricting

179

i8o THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

the number of their offspring. This conclusion has
also been reached by the Registrar-General as the result
of his returns.^

Burke has well said that you cannot draw up an
indictment against a nation. Nearly the whole of the
successful classes of the British Isles are pursuing
steadily a certain course of action, quite oblivious or
regardless of its ultimate effects on the community.
Clearly they must have some grounds, however mis-
taken, for thinking that they are acting wisely and
rightly, or, at all events, some excuse which reconciles
their conscience to conduct followed for what they
regard as their own advantage.

A full discussion of the subject is impossible. In
this place we propose to consider only the main
point — Why the classes in question wish to limit so
closely the number of their offspring. But, after all,
this is the essential problem. If the preference for small
families were not existent, if people did not wish to
have few children, the birth-rate would not have shown
such a tremendous diminution in any circumstances.
To realize the possibility of a course of action would
not lead to its adoption, unless the desire to follow
it were already existent, or ready to be called into
being. Thus, to limit our inquiry to the reasons
which lead people to wish for few children is merely
to concentrate attention on the real cause of the decline
in the birth-rate.

It is evident that no one cause can be sufficient
in itself to explain a phenomenon which affects so

^ See Blue-book on Public Health and Social Conditions, 1909, p. 5.

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE i8i

many different classes, so many persons of divergent
aims, ideals, and circumstances. Various causes must
be at work to produce so widespread a result, such a
general tacit agreement at once to restrict the number

of offspring.

We must, then, look for many contributory
tendencies. An economic pressure, though doubtless
important in some cases, cannot be universally para-
mount, when the results to be explained are apparent
among eminent professional men as well as artisans,
among financial magnates as well as impoverished
country landowners. No one ideal of life can cover
all cases, when we have to look among high-principled
men and women of marked public spirit, as well as
among those who waste their lives in a perpetual round
of selfish and idle amusements.

Let us begin by analysing a cause to which reference
has been made in the last chapter ; a cause which, we
believe, has been very potent among some of the
best of our population. The feeling of overwhelming
responsibility towards possible children is a product
of our developing moral sense, and in itself is a right
and desirable feeling. When directed towards securing
the best parents for the succeeding generation, it is
perhaps the most important of the agencies to which
we must look to preserve and improve our race. But
when the feeling of individual responsibility takes
the form of restricting the number of children, even
in a healthy and able family, to those for whom it is
possible to make a perfectly secure pecuniary provi-
sion, it degenerates into mistaken kindness, and, m

1 82 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

view of the importance of continued selection to the
nation and to mankind, it becomes an imminent danger
to the country, and high treason to the human race.

It is also a short-sighted policy towards the "family,"
since it does not look beyond one fleeting generation.
The eye of faith sees possibilities in grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, who may rise up and bring fresh
credit to the stock.

As His Eminence Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of
Mechlin, well says in his Lenten Pastoral address for
1909 on the duties of married life : " Ne croyez done
pas faire oeuvre de sagesse en conviant vos fils a s'asseoir
au degre de I'echelle sociale, ou votre energie et votre
esprit d'epargne vous ont fait monter. Apprenez-leur
que le point de depart importe peu, que ce qui importera,
pour eux, ce sera leur point d'arrivee."

The motive we are considering probably takes
somewhat different forms among the upper classes and
among the skilled artisans. The upper and profes-
sional classes have found difficulty during the last forty
years in placing all their sons in suitable positions
with sufficient salaries. This difficulty, as we have
said, is now becoming less, owing to the increase in
the number of appointments to be filled, and the
lessening supply of competent men to fill them. But
doubtless it has been acute at times during the last
half- century. Its causes are interesting, and repay
historical study.

Till the end of the seventeenth century, till a stand-
ing Royal Army and a permanent Navy were firmly
established, it was impossible to bring up to a definite
professional career those younger sons of good houses

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 183

whose talents did not lie in the direction of the Church
or the Law. Hence, with no feeUng of degradation,
they became yeomen or farmers, or passed into the
trade of some near or distant town. In this way, good
county names became common among the farmers,
the country labourers, the craftsmen of the town, and
their apprentices. As the population of the country
seems to have remained almost stationary for several
hundred years, while the average number of children
born to a family was much greater than at present,
natural selection must have been very severe. Only
about one-quarter of the children born survived and be-
came parents. Any hereditary weakness tended rapidly
to be bred out of the people, and the overflow from
the stronger stocks easily made room for themselves
below. All classes were permeated with good blood,
and the country was filled with sound stock to supply
the wastage of the weaker strains brought about by
hardship, pestilence, or famine.

During the eighteenth century, the figures we have
given in the last chapter show that the majority of the
younger sons of the landed aristocracy passed as a
matter of course into the Church, the Army, or the
Navy. Considerable prizes fell to a successful general
or admiral, and the whole of the Services, if not
adequately paid, gave a fine adventurous career to a
man of high courage and public spirit. With such
openings before them, younger sons of good birth
ceased to adopt agriculture or trade, which conse-
quently dropped in public estimation.

In any nation it is well that members of those
families, who by character, good abilities, honourable

i84 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

ancestry, and their probable accompaniment of some
accumulation of material wealth, have attained a posi-
tion above that of the majority of their fellow-men,
should serve their country in unpaid local government
or ill-paid public services. In the first place, such a
custom helps to emphasize the dignity of work for
work's sake ; it establishes an excellent principle that
public service is a privilege which should entail some
personal sacrifice — a service in which additional material
comfort is less to be regarded than the consciousness
of well-rendered public duty. Moreover, it safeguards
the purity of public life, since it is the spirit in which
the work is performed, and not the remuneration by
which the post is paid, that is the criterion of success
or failure. Thus it sets before the nation a higher
ideal than that of the market or the counting-house,
and shows that, even among the majority of the
people, where a livelihood must be the first con-
sideration, the manner and spirit in which a profession
is followed should be of more importance than the
actual material profit to be realized. This is a point
of view especially to be emphasized in a country
like Great Britain, where men have always been
tempted to set too much store on commercial interests
and supremacy. It sets a good example both to the
" idle rich," who fail to appreciate their moral obliga-
tion to repay in voluntary service to the community
the means with which they are endowed as a trust,
and to that large section of the labouring class who
never put their heart into work for which they are
paid. Probably the work neglected or but half done
by wage-earners, and the material injured or destroyed

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 185

by them, involve as large an economic loss to the
community as the money wasted by those who have
means to live without a profession.

The consideration and honourable regard shown to
the men who have so worthily occupied the unpaid and
underpaid posts of the country, have led many people
to assume that these attributes belong to the posts
themselves, rather than to the holders of them and
their personal qualifications. They have reasoned either
that the posts in question should be sufficiently highly
paid to enable any one to fill them and to live in the
same style, or they have felt that no one should be in
possession of wealth which enables him to do work
without accepting pay. Their attitude of mind recalls
the childish tale of Rosamund and her Purple Jar ; it
was not the jar but the substance with which it was
filled that produced the attractive glamour, as the poor
child found to her cost. In either train of argument,
they ignore entirely the immense moral gain to the
nation in the example of admirable public service,
seeking nothing for itself, and the inestimable advan-
tage of a body of tried and talented men who can
afford to choose or alter their sphere of service accord-
ing to the needs of the day. Throughout our history,
England has always had this great reserve of local
public servants, on whom she could draw in normal
times and in emergencies. For the most part they
have worthily and proudly adopted as their motto that
of the first subject of the Crown, " Ich dien."

The overcrowding of certain professions and careers,
which without doubt has occurred in recent years, may

1 86 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

be due partially to certain faults in our recent methods
of education. Both our public and elementary schools
have been much to blame, the one in that they
failed to modify the type of education to suit the
altering conditions of national life, the other that they
tended to depreciate manual activity and craftsmanship,
and over-supplied the ranks of the clerks and penmen.
The great public schools go on training their boys chiefly
in classics and ancient literature, when the demand has
been for men of general education, for men of science,
for economists, engineers, and scientific agriculturists,
of the same class and breeding as the men supplied by
the public schools. The classically trained men have
difficulty in finding openings in after life, owing to their
type of education. The men educated scientifically in
schools of other types are often rejected because their
heredity and training leave them unfit to deal with
men, especially with workmen, foreigners and natives.
Moreover, from the employer's point of view they
often lack the guarantees of character and the intuitive
sense of masterfulness that are the usual concomitants
of the man of good family.

In any scheme of primary education, the object
should have been to provide for a general awaken-
ing of the intelligence, by observation, reasoning,
and practical knowledge, with special attention to
manual training and the elements of domestic life.
Here the framers of the code of 1870, assuming that
many homes would continue to supply these qualifica-
tions, devised a curriculum — excellent as an alternative
— to give every one the education suitable for a clerk-
ship or the teaching profession. But withdrawing

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 187

the children from the homes, the fields, and the work-
shops, prevented their receiving the home and industrial
training previously given, and probably unconsciously
relied on by the framers of the new code. The
growing reluctance to pay school pence, and the con-
sequent enactment of free education, seem to indicate
that the type of training given in the schools was not
found satisfactory by the parents ; while the general
loosening of parental control and responsibility has
done much to destroy all habits of discipline and
attachment to home among the children.

Now the art of reading and writing one's own
language, an accomplishment which is useful in all
spheres of activity, is by no means proof of educa-
tion, or of any preparation for the practical duties
of life. It is true that a purely literary training, such
as the elementary schools have attempted to give, pre-
pares men who are in possession of it to enter upon
the heritage of thought, knowledge, and sentiment,
which men of all ages have bequeathed to mankind.
But if neither time nor inclination exists, or is likely to
exist, to follow or advance learning for its own sake, it
is of no use laboriously to acquire the means of doing
so, while sacrificing the satisfaction to be got out of
manual labour, craftsmanship, and a knowledge and
command over outdoor life and nature. It is probable
that the framers of the code did not realize the intense
pleasure to be obtained by the creation of anything,
by manual labour and craftsmanship no less than by
literature or art. This pleasure is much more within
reach of most people than is the creation of something
depending on a literary education or the philosophic

1 88 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

bent of mind. We have forced nearly the whole of a
community, particularly ill adapted to abstract thought,
into a purely receptive and imitative mood, and
debarred them from the satisfaction of original and
creative action. This mistake has produced a listless-
ness of mind, a want of confidence and of interest in
the occupations of daily life. It has taken away the
desire to attempt where there is no opportunity of
excelling.

As Sir Joseph Thomson has said : " It is possible
to read books, to pass examinations, without the higher
qualities of mind being called into play. Indeed, I
doubt if there is any process in which the mind is
more quiescent than in reading without interest. I
might appeal to the widespread habit of reading in
bed as a prevention of insomnia as a proof of this.
But it is not possible for a boy to make a boat or
for a girl to cook a dinner without using their brains.
With practical things the difficulties have to be sur-
mounted, the boat must be made watertight, the dinner
must be cooked."

In so far as the present type of education picks
out the children whose class of mind is more suited
to their new surroundings, it has had a good aspect.
But it fails to provide for and encourage those who
are better left in their old sphere, with the result that
many unfitted for the change have been moved away.

The British nation as a whole owes a great, and for
the most part unpaid, debt of gratitude to Ruskin,
William Morris, and other teachers, who, at a period
when little encouragement was bestowed on their ideas,
consistently endeavoured to raise the value of good

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 189

workmanship in the public estimation. By example
and precept, by an appeal to the past history of nations,
they sought to enforce the doctrine of the dignity of
manual labour, to illustrate the beauty and interest of
craftsmanship, and to emphasize the moral lessons to
be obtained from the performance of accurate and
artistic handiwork. Had their views of life and labour
been more generally accepted, we should have escaped
from the conception of manual labour as something in
itself degrading — a conception which has proved such a
stumbling-block in the way of those who, unfitted for
the sphere of intellectual development in which they
find themselves placed, have disdained to exchange it
for the honourable and natural surroundings of good
manual work. As long as such an exchange is
associated with the sense of social catastrophe and
personal disgrace, so long will many of those born into
the more prominent intellectual classes, a sphere for
which they personally are unfitted, have to be kept
up artificially by the exertions of others. Much
unproductive labour is thus expended, and a great loss
to the community ensues in waste of wealth, time, and
happiness. Moreover, this interchange of spheres of
occupation is an integral part of any scheme by which
those suited to intellectual activity are brought into
positions where their abilities are best employed.
Indeed the idea of a social ladder is a false analogy,
productive of much ill-feeling ; we require to build
bridges^ with free passage from either side, where the
spirit in which work, whether manual or not, is per-
formed, and the moral effects of his occupation on the
workman, are the true criterions of success or failure.

190 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

From our immediate point of view, the worst result
of our educational mistakes consists in overcrowding
with unsuitable men those careers which the present
type of education is especially designed to serve. The
economic balance is upset, and a vast amount of ill-
performed, and therefore partially unproductive, labour
injures the efficiency of the nation and diminishes its
means of subsistence. Such are some of the causes
which have given rise to the past want of suitable
openings for the children of all classes, and to the
consequent striking absence of those children them-
selves.

Another aspect of the same mistaken idea of education
is seen in the stress laid on competitive examinations
as a means of filling administrative posts, and as a test
of fitness for after life.

Competitive examinations have two obvious effects.
They favour the candidates who are best able to afford,
and do not realize the harm, of a long and intensive
form of early specialized instruction, and they put a
heavy premium on those whose mental powers either
develop precociously or are forced into a premature
awakening. Neither of these results can be welcomed
by any one who understands the problems involved in
the education and well-ordered development of mind
and body. It is probable that the policy of competi-
tive examination, when driven to excess, has resulted in
closing partially the doors of various honourable pro-
fessions to those who, in due course of time, would
have been best fitted to excel in them. During the
last two centuries, the landed and official classes could

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 191

be certain of obtaining for many of their sons posts
in which, at all events, a living wage was secure.
Now the posts are filled by competitive examination
from a much larger field. Hence, one of the difficulties
in past years of finding suitable occupations for large
families of normal sons ; hence, possibly, a motive for
the present almost entire absence of the said large
families of normal sons. But the process has now
gone so far that, even with the enlargement of the
area of selection, suitable men cannot always be found
to fill rhe posts available.

As a means of re-sorting the elements of our
population into more efficient combinations, the system
of competitive examinations has dangers not always
recognized. Examinations may be used to pick out
an individual in early life, and transplant him into
a sphere for which his ancestral history, his boyhood,
and his home surroundings have not prepared him.

A man who rises too young and too fast is apt to
marry late or not at all. He has often considerable
difficulty at first in finding a wife who will assure his
position in the class to which he has attained. A
study of such data as are available indicates that,
if he does marry above his original station, he
carries to an extreme the present fashion, and has
very few children. Hence it follows that an efficient
system of catching ability from all classes, and making
it too easy for its possessor to rise, means an
efficient method of sterilizing ability, and of slowly or
quickly breeding it out of the nation. Better that an
able carpenter should develop slowly into a small
builder, leaving six tall sons to play their part manfully,

192 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

and, perchance, rise one step more, than that he should
be converted by a County Council scholarship into a
primary schoolmaster, or second-grade Civil Service
clerk, and that there the usefulness to the race of the
innate abilities of which he is the temporary trustee
should cease for ever. His services are bought at far
too high a price. Verily they were good sociologists
as well as good divines who taught every man to
determine in his youth " to learn and labour truly
to get mine own living, and to do my duty in
that state of life unto which it shall please God to
call me."

Hitherto we have been dealing with the economic
aspect of the question from the point of view of the
future careers of potential children. Here the motive
for restricting the size of the family is the sense of
responsibility for the children's future.

But the economic motive often takes other and
more selfish forms. In every rank of life children are
an expense — an expense which falls heavily on all
save the very rich and the thriftless pauper. It is
unsafe to generalize from cases where Scotch moors or
6o-horse-power motor cars are found to be a cheaper
form of extravagance than children. In almost every
household, luxuries must be foregone, in some even
comfort sacrificed, if the number of children to be
housed, clothed, and educated becomes large. The life
of the unmarried man or woman of means, or of the
childless married couple, is one of greater freedom and
immeasurably less financial responsibility. In some
families each new child may mean actually less food

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 193

and other necessaries for the existing members of the
household.

What can we oppose to such strong pressure ?
How can one encourage children of sound and able
parents ?

Besides the absorbing interest of bringing into
existence and guiding the development of those who
may be expected to play honourable and useful parts
in the history of the nation, there is the wholesome
instinct of family, which leads us to take special care
for the future of our own name and race. To secure
the continued existence of a family a considerable
number of children are a necessity. With the changes
and chances of this mortal life, there is great probability
that the names will soon be clean put out of those
who, in homely phrase, put all their eggs into one
basket, or even into two or three.

For the welfare, happiness, and training of the
children themselves a fairly large family without doubt
is best. Moreover, a time frequently comes when
positions are reversed, when the parents, and other
members of the older generation who have less claim,
may be a source of anxiety to the children. Then
arises the duty of sharing exhausting care, or even
financial responsibility, instead of merely dividing
possessions. In such cases, the many again have
advantages over the few, and happy are the parents
who need not look to strangers for care and sustenance
in their old age.

Perhaps in time to come we may devise arrange-
ments which may reinforce these arguments by lighten-
ing the immediate economic burden on parents. It is

o

194 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

an axiom of sound finance to let the incidence of
taxation fall on the luxuries rather than on the neces-
saries of the nation. Alcohol, tobacco, spectacular
and all-absorbing games, constant travel, are luxu-
ries, and probably, in many aspects, very mis-
chievous ones. The rearing and education of children,
in a fashion appropriate to the positions they are
capable of occupying, is a matter of primary import-
ance to the State at all times, and particularly at the
present day. The cost rises rapidly with the import-
ance and responsibilities of the careers for which
the children are fitted. Neither a well-earned nor a
well-spent income is a source of taxation on which a
Chancellor of the Exchequer should look with a greedy
eye. As far as expense is responsible for the declining
birth-rate of the best stocks, it is certain that exemp-
tion from income tax of all moneys spent in any rank
of life on the maintenance and education of children
would in the end greatly benefit the one real source of
national credit, the composition and character of the
life of the people. It would be well, too, that the
graduation of death-duties should be transferred to
the taxes on legacies. It is the amount a man
receives, not the sum his father leaves, that should
be taken as the basis. A fortune divided among ten
children should be taxed less than one that goes to
an only son or daughter.

Scholarships have their dangers when used to raise
those who win them too suddenly and completely out
of their natural class. But, when used to educate in a
suitable manner the abler children in all stations of
life, they can produce nothing but good, both to the

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 195

children themselves and In lightening the burden of
offspring on their parents. The probability that the
children of competent parents will be able to win
scholarships will be a motive of the right kind. More-
over, we may come to see that the most expensive
type of education is not a necessity. Even in matters
of education, there is a tendency to attribute far too
much effect to outside and expensive environment,
and to lay too little stress on heredity and the tradi-
tions of the family.

Each age has accused itself of increasing luxury,
probably with a considerable amount of truth, since
there is a natural growth of comfort as the arts and
sciences improve the conditions of life. But the
special forms that the rising outlay of the present
generation has assum^ed of late years have helped to
intensify the restlessness and desire for change and
excitement, the gratification of which is made possible
by improved means of locomotion and communication.
The great hotels, caravanserais, and restaurants, both
at home and abroad, stand out as landmarks of the
gradual disintegration of family life. They represent a
state of mind absolutely incompatible with the quiet
privacy appropriate to the upbringing of a growing
family ; and seem to emphasize the desire for variety,
for luxury, for society, without any attendant duties
and responsibilities.

The entrance into the upper ranks of our people
of increasing numbers of persons, of various nation-
alities as well as our own, whose newly acquired
wealth is not associated with definite territorial or
local associations, has doubtless affected, and to some

196 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

extent demoralized, the habits of those sections of the
community who have had the misfortune to come in
contact with them. One is tempted to think that the
simplicity of a home life which would fit any child for
any career is exchanged for the more elaborate para-
phernalia of luxury and display, quite as much on
account of the preference of the parents for an extrava-
gant style of living as for the real advantage of the
children to whose welfare it is sometimes charged.

The cult of games, too, for which the present age
is conspicuous, has probably done much harm. Games
are excellent for young people ; the moral and physical
training they give cannot be obtained otherwise.
Even in mature age, they provide healthful exercise,
and, taken in moderation, give a much-needed mental
relaxation. But of late years there has set in an
organization of professionalism, with its attendant evils
of a publicity developing into notoriety for successful
players, and the establishment of an endless number
of championships of every imaginable kind. Thus
games have become exalted till they have become the
serious object of life and the subject of incessant
thought and conversation, not only to those who
spend too much time in play, but also to others for
whom they are but spectacular indulgences. Had
this excessive interest in games and sport been con-
fined to men, from our present point of view it might
have been less disastrous. But with the growing
tendency to assimilate the lives of men and women,
wives and mothers too often place their desire to par-
ticipate in the pastimes of their husbands and brothers
before the welfare or existence of their actual or possible

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 197

children. The care of a young family, even if expense
be no consideration, is incompatible with unceasing
social activity, with perpetual motion, or with untiring
devotion to games or sports in either parent, and
especially in the mother.

It is perhaps significant that, as we have shown
above, the decrease in the birth-rate is very great in
military families, where, partly from the requirements
of their profession, and partly from the character of
the society that frequently gathers round them, the
restlessness and uncertainty of modern life are empha-
sized ; while there is far less sign of decreasing birth-
rate among the families of the clergy, who, from the
nature of their office, are debarred from constant
journeyings, and find, both for themselves and their
wives, a sufficient sphere of influence and activity in
the domestic concerns of their parish life. The high
moral sense and devotion to duty characteristic of the
clergy not only result in the presence of a larger
number of children in clerical homes than is now
usual among laymen, but give those children when
born an excellent average character. De Candolle
has shown by a statistical inquiry that the Protestant
clergy of all countries produce a very high proportion of
eminent sons. Doubtless, besides the sound heredity,
the cultured frugality of the normal clerical household
makes a good environment for a growing intelligence.
The maintenance of the birth-rate among the clergy
should be a source of national satisfaction.

While, among certain sections of the upper classes,
women have been impeded in their true duties by the
desire to share the amusements to which their husbands

198 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

and brothers have become too much addicted, among
another section they have suffered as much, or perhaps
even more, from the wish to take an equal part in man's
work instead of his play.

The intellectual and political development of the
last half- century has been accompanied by an un-
fortunate tendency to belittle the home duties for
which women, by their essential nature, are specially
responsible. For this tendency men are to blame at
least to the same extent as women. Both sexes have
failed to appreciate the high honour which should
attach to the successful performance of the true
womanly duties. To bring forth, nourish, and educate
children is, for the future of the race, more important
work than any that falls to the lot of man. To regu-
late well a household, to keep in order, cleanliness,
and health the home, on the comfort of which the
welfare of the whole family depends, is highly skilled
work, and at least as essential a function in life as
man's external profession or political activities.

The recent demands of certain women for a share
in social, political, philanthropic, and educational work
are hard to resist, since they are often greatly to the
immediate benefit of the community. But it cannot
be doubted that the quiet home life necessary for
the right birth and management of a large family
is incompatible with many external activities, and with
the gratification of a desire to seek an apparently larger
sphere of immediate work and influence in social,
industrial, and political life.

For young married women, such external activities
are a direct menace to the future welfare of the race.

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE

199

Even for unmarried women, the indirect danger is
great, especially in setting a false ideal of life before
the rising generation. Indications are not wanting
that a position of industrial independence, or the
wider, if more superficial, interests of active public
life, with the demoralizing accompaniment of publicity
and notoriety, exert such a fascination on the minds
of some women that they become unwilling to accept
the necessary and wholesome restrictions and responsi-
bilities of normal marriage and motherhood. Woe to
the nation whose best women refuse their natural and
most glorious burden !

In considering the physiology and psychology of
the race, it seems clear that the stock of human life,
our most valuable national asset, must, as in every
sound economic system, be divided into two parts
representing capital and income. Men represent the
income, to be used and spent freely by each succeeding
generation as need arises. Women must be con-
sidered as capital, to be spent sparingly in the present,
to be husbanded carefully for the future.

If such thoughts are suggested by the desire for
economic or political activity in women of the upper
classes, they are strengthened and confirmed by a
study of the effects in the industrial sections of the
people.

In towns and other areas where many women are
employed in manual labour, such as places where
textile industries are carried on, the birth-rate is
abnormally low. Northampton, Halifax, Burnley,
Blackburn, Derby, Leicester, Bradford, Oldham,
Huddersfield, and Bolton — all places in which an

c^

200 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

exceptionally large proportion of married women
are engaged in factory work — are the ten towns in
all England in which the relative fall in the birth-rate
between 1881 and 1901 is most startling. On the
other hand, in mining districts, where the employment
'^ of women is rare, the birth-rate remains high.

We see, then, that a direct correlation can be traced
between the freedom of women from industrial occu-
j" pations and the number of children they produce.
Moreover, other things being equal, the increased
maternal care and supervision, secured by the presence
of the mother in the home, causes, as one would
naturally expect, a decreasing infant mortality. This
result was illustrated in a striking manner during the
Lancashire cotton famine of 1862. The effect of
unemployment, in spite of the fact that the payments
made by the relief committees were much below the
V'^ normal rate of wages, was a distinct fall in the death-
rate, especially among infants. The fall was explained
by the local registrars as due, partially at any rate, to
^ the presence of the mothers in the homes instead of in
the factories.

For the benefit of the children, the absence of the
mother from the home is to be deplored. Employ-
ment that takes her away should be discouraged by
every means in our power. At present, when a
respectable, hard-working woman with several children
loses her husband by accident or disease, the Poor
Law Guardians usually give relief which is quite in-
adequate for support. The widow is forced to neglect
her children in order to earn their bread. For the
good of the community, even to prevent economic

X,

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 201

waste, v/e should in this respect adopt the recom-
mendation of the Report of the Minority of the Poor
Law Commission and give adequate support, when the
conditions of the family and home are good, on the
agreement that the mother gives her whole time to her
children. The knowledge that such action would be
taken in worthy cases would remove one motive which
tends to favour restriction of family among the best
and most provident of the labouring class. The direct
effect of the action would be an ultimate gain to the
community, for, as economists have come to realize,
'* the most valuable of the year's crops, as it is the
most costly, is not the wheat harvest or the lambing,
but the year's quota of adolescent young men and
women enlisted in the productive service of the
community ; . . . the due production and best
possible care of this particular product is of far
greater consequence to the nation than any other of its
occupations."

For the welfare of the race, then, it is important to
watch jealously the employment of women, and to
foster those industries where men of skill and com-
petence are employed at wages sufficient to maintain
a family in comfort and respectability.

But care and knowledge are required in framing
regulations with the object in view. The good of the
child, no less than of the mother, requires a consider-
able period of absence from work before and after each
birth. Yet the economic motive is so strong in the
industrial classes that the enforcement of even the
short absence now required is probably one of the
potent causes of the restriction of the birth-rate.

202 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

and any increase In the time would, at present, almost
certainly mean still fewer children born.

Such a result would be welcome where the stock is
unsound or incompetent, and could some means be
devised at the same time of compensating women for
their loss of wages in cases where both they and their
husbands are worthy citizens, a double economic pressure
in the right direction might be established. In past days
men founded almshouses and hospitals for the old, the
infirm and the weak. May we not hope in the future
for endowments for young, healthy, and strong wives
and mothers, to be chosen by trustees who should look
solely to the probable quality of the offspring ? Till
we have slowly felt our way through the pitfalls and
dangers of State action, some such tentative experiments
would be invaluable. Eventually they may lead to a
satisfactory system of selective public endowment of
parenthood, whereby the State honours and rewards
those in all ranks of life who produce strong, healthy,
and able offspring, instead of penalizing, as at present,
the reproduction of the best elements of the people,
and assuming the burdens of those alone who are least
likely to give birth to useful members of society.

A sociological experiment is being made in several
of our Colonies ; without, of course, the slightest
knowledge on their part either of the probable effects
or the certain dangers of the result. The birth-rate
in most of the British Colonies, especially among
the capable classes, is as small as or smaller than it
is in the mother country. In some colonies legis-
lation has tended to make it difficult or impossible

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 203

for households to obtain domestic servants, either
from the population at hand or by immigration from
older countries. The motive at work among that
section of the community which forms the numerical
majority and controls the legislation, seems to be the
economic fallacy of trying to raise wages by restricting
the immigration even of good workers, and a mistaken
idea of independence, which regards domestic service
as a dishonourable and degrading form of occupation.
This state of mind throws a curious light on the
attitude towards a home prevalent in such colonies.
It is a matter of common experience in older countries,
with both those who employ domestic servants and
those who undertake the office, that service in a well-
regulated household is the best possible preparation for
the duties of married life in after years. Indeed, it
would be strange if domestic service were the only
department of labour where adequate preparation
rendered a person less fit to undertake or organize
similar work in their turn.

Owing, then, to the impossibility of obtaining
suitable assistance in the homes, in such colonies,
parents of talent and ability, other than of a manual
kind, find themselves in social conditions which com-
pel them to restrict their children to that number for
which the wife herself can perform the household
duties of cooking and cleaning.

But, from the point of view of the community, a
woman of ability is far better employed in giving birth
to and educating able children, than in cooking dinners
and washing clothes — work which, in the main, is
suitable to a different type of mind and body. Hitherto,

204 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

in every known successful civilization, the labour of
brains in one section of the people has guided and
been exchanged for the labour of hands in another
section, to the great advantage of both sides.

We have therefore the novel attempt to confuse, or
to decline to recognize, the two departments of human
activity. In view of the teachings of heredity, it is
difficult to see how the attempt can fail to result in a
marked restriction in the output of brains on the part
of the more talented members of the community. A
process of de-civilization apparently must ensue, con-
sequent upon the failure to understand that different
conditions are necessary for the development of different
types of ability, and the refusal to recognize that both
brain power and manual labour are essential to the
stability of a State.

When a country adopts a course of social legisla-
tion which aims at destroying the domestic amenities
hitherto associated with the creation and development
of intellectual eminence, it must maintain a strict watch
over the effects of its action, or it may find itself ere
long with an insufficient supply of those talents which
constitute intellectual power and bring in their train
material welfare and national greatness.

The idea that a community should be self-contained
and self-supporting is one of which we have heard
much in recent years. The truth of this proposition
is, to say the least, extremely doubtful ; interchange and
interdependence bring many benefits to all concerned.
But the desire for economic independence has clearly
to be reckoned with, not least in those communities
whose legislative peculiarities we are now considering.

DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 205

But those who feel this desire should not forget
that man does not live by bread alone ; that religion,
philosophy, art, literature, science — in short, all things
and more that are implied in that fine old term " the
humanities " — are what really distinguish man from
the lower animals, and make the difference between
civilization and barbarism.

It is of little use for a community that seeks to be
self-supporting to supply itself with bread and boots, if
it has to take its philosophy of life from the outside
world, and deliberately to forego the glories of a
national art and literature. It is thus more truly
parasitic on other States than any imports of corn or
wine or oil can make it.

Again, Canada, unlike some of the other British
Dominions, is a country which seeks to attract colonists
to fill up its vacant spaces. The newly settled districts
have a very low birth-rate, and the difficulty of obtaining
domestic servants is great ; though in this case it is
not to be ascribed to legislative interference against
any form of so-called "white labour." But apparently
the Canadian farmer can absorb an unlimited quantity
of the slum population of Great Britain, when once
that population has got through those years of infancy
and childhood that require constant parental care.
There is a great demand for partially trained boys and
girls, old enough to help in the households and home-
steads and young enough to adapt themselves easily to
the new surroundings of life and labour. We can only
suppose that the difficulties connected with the rearing
of children in the present circumstances are so great
that other people's children, already reared and trained.

2o6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

even if of a lower type and probably derived from
thriftless and casual stock, are to be preferred to the
children of the colonists themselves — children who will
require the accustomed nurture and upbringing for ten
or twelve years, before they can be of economic value.
This is surely a very unnatural and dangerous state of
affairs. There is evidence to show that the objections
to this form of colonization are beginning to attract
the attention of Canadian statesmen.

To some people the failure of the United States to
produce a proportionate number of great men is a
disquieting feature of their civilization. Two hundred
years have elapsed since the settlement began to take a
permanent shape. The population is now immense,
the opportunities for education and development are
unprecedented. Yet the native-born men of real
eminence, of world-wide fame, are very few in number.
It is possible that here we have the consequences
of conditions of life somewhat similar to those our
Colonies are tending to establish.

CHAPTER XI

CONCLUSION

We have now arrived at the end of our survey of the
influence of heredity on the character of the family,
and through it on the nation. Let us endeavour to
summarize the results of our inquiry and to take stock
of our present position.

Modern biological and statistical investigations have
emphasized the importance of heredity in determining
individual character, ability, and constitution. All
men, and not poets only, are born, not made. The
influence of environment — home surroundings, educa-
tion, the accidents of life — do but modify the innate
qualities handed down to a man from his ancestors.

It is impossible to predict the particular combination
of ancestral factors which will chance to fall Into
conjunction to fashion any one individual. But the
average quality of a fairly large family may be fore-
seen more or less clearly from a knowledge of the
parents and their ancestry, both lineal and collateral,
while, in dealing with numbers, as in the nation in
general, the statistical results are exact and predeter-
mined.

From the national point of view, then, it becomes

207

2o8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

of paramount importance to inquire what classes of the
community are reproducing themselves fastest. Natural
selection eliminates the unfit, and thus secures that
the parents most suited to the existing environment,
on the whole, shall rear most offspring. But we find
that civilization of the modern European type intro-
duces an artificial selection, whereby the best stocks
restrict voluntarily the number of their offspring ;
while, owing to improved conditions of life and direct
subsidies from the community, the least successful
sections of the population are able to escape the
severity of nature and to multiply rapidly.

Arithmetical calculation shows that, if one section of
a people reproduce itself faster, even to a slight degree,
than the rest, it will rapidly surpass all other sections
in numbers, and, after a few generations, dominate the
whole of the nation.

A study of the birth-rate of different classes of the
British people brings out the fact that the average
number of children, in the family that produces children
at all, has now, in the great mass of the more successful
part of the nation, fallen below one-half its value forty
or fifty years ago. The titled and untitled landed
aristocracy, the more eminent of the official, professional,
and commercial classes, show the same result, while it
extends equally to the thrifty and provident skilled
artisans. The only sections of these classes which
maintain their birth-rate at its old high level are the
clergy, the Roman Catholics, and the Jews. Two
hundred thousand births fewer each year than should
be expected now take place in the British Isles — one-
fifth of the annual total. And this fifth that is wanting

CONCLUSION 209

is the most valuable fifth of the whole, the younger
children of large families in the best stocks of the
nation. Galton calculates the proportion of eminent
men as about one in four thousand of the population
in general. We shall not be over-estimating if we
suppose that at least one in two thousand of this
selected fifth v/ould possess eminent ability. Hence,
every year, among the two hundred thousand, the
country is losing one hundred babies, who, if they
had existed and lived to grow up, would have become
eminent. Who can calculate the injury to the nation
inflicted by the suppression of this lost legion ?

On the other hand, there is little or no fall as yet in
the ranks of the casual labourers and of the feeble-
minded men and women still at large amongst us.
Thus the stocks which are least successful or definitely
unsound are increasing: fastest.

At present this phenomenon has affected only one
generation, of whom the oldest are now in early man-
hood. But even so, its effects are beginning to be felt.
The supply of competent candidates for entry into
certain professions is already falling, while it becomes
more and more difficult to find men of sufficient
character, ability, and good manners to fill the higher
administrative posts as those posts increase in number.

But the amelioration in the average life of mankind,
the increased wealth of the nation, the paraphernalia
of the Poor Law and the universality of elementary
education, have completely failed to abolish the pre-
valence of pauperism, which, in late years, with lunacy
and feeble-mindedness, even tends to increase. Thus,
in spite of all our efforts, the number of those who are

p

2IO THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

parasitic on the rest of the community shows signs of
growth. An increasing share of each competent man's
labour goes to support — even to create — those who
cannot support themselves.

It is impossible to resist the conclusion that, as the
dearth of competent men to fill the higher professional
posts is the result of the restricted birth-rate of the
better sections of the people, so the threatened growth
of lunacy and pauperism is the result of unchecked
reproduction and diminished mortality among unsound
and incompetent families.

In considering the causes which have impelled the
successful classes to wish to restrict the number of
their offspring, we were impressed at once by the
complication of the problem. A mistaken sense of
individual responsibility, which tends to prevent the
birth of children for whom lavish pecuniary provision
cannot be made by their parents, seems to be the
worthiest of the motives at work. The economic
factor in all its aspects is probably the most widespread
of the causes. The expense of rearing, educating, and
starting children in life is heavy in all classes, save
among the very wealthy, and in that section of the
very poor who are ready to allow the community to
support their offspring. Unwillingness to face the
discomfort and discipline of life which a large family
entails on the parents, and especially on the mother, is
a potent factor among those people who take advantage
of modern facilities for a restless life, unceasing social
activity, and an excessive devotion to sport and games.
The extension of the activities of women in spheres
social, political, and economic, has probably much to

CONCLUSION 211

answer for. The failure to pay due honour and respect
to the natural duties of women — more important in
their way than those of men — has been one reason why
some women have desired to assume responsibilities
for which they are less fitted. In industrial life, the
welfare of the children has been shown to be incom-
patible with the general employment of married women
in factories and workshops.

The long immunity of England from wars in which
her national existence has been at stake has tended to
reduce the healthy sense of the duty of personal service
to the community, and to obliterate the feeling of
social responsibility. Countries in which universal
military training has been enforced seem to have
suffered less from this weakening of the moral fibre.
Universal military training is doubdess good for the
moral and physical welfare no less than for the security
of a nation. But some of those who advocate such
training for other people's sons might do more to
provide sons of their own to share its benefits.

One generation of the successful classes has been
halved in number, while the unsuccessful have con-
tinued to increase. The relative burden of incom-
petence carried by the nation is heavier, and, judged
by the returns of pauperism and insanity, tends to
increase yet more. Incalculable harm has been done
to the race. For years the returns of the Registrar-
General have contained results which ought to have
warned the nation. Yet our politicians, even our
statesmen, occupied with questions of party interest,
have failed to proclaim, perhaps to notice, the
significance of the position.

212 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Nevertheless, the reserve of health, strength, and
ability in the British people is very great. Could they
be awakened to their danger, there is yet room for
repentance, recovery, and perhaps for advance to levels
higher than any hitherto reached.

Certain possibilities of action seem open to us when
we realize the importance of the issues at stake. By
legislative reform we may segregate the worst types of
the feeble-minded, the habitual criminal, and the hope-
less pauper, and thus weed out of our race the con-
taminating strains of worthless blood. Beyond that
point in this direction it would be unsafe to go, till
we understand much more fully the principles of the
science of inheritance.

As far as legislation is concerned, two problems
are ready to be attacked : those of the feeble-minded
and of the "able-bodied" pauper. On these subjects
two independent Royal Commissions have reported,
and we are but waiting till political exigencies allow
the Government to propose legislation. Let us
hope that questions of such fundamental importance
may, by mutual consent, be treated as unfit ground for
party strife.

The Commission on the Care and Control of the
Feeble- Minded recommend that the powers of the
present Lunacy Commission should be enlarged and
strengthened, so as to enable them to deal with all
types of mental defect. At present the control over
those unhappy children who are feeble-minded ceases
at sixteen years of age — exactly when it is beginning
most to be needed. If the recommendations of the

CONCLUSION 213

Commission be carried out, those who are clearly unfit
to manage themselves, and have no responsible guard-
ians, would be placed permanently in homes or farm
colonies. Experience shows that only under proper
care can the mentally defective live reasonably happy,
useful lives, and only thus can they be prevented from
falling into vice and reproducing a constantly increasing
number of children similarly afflicted. The annual
additional cost of the scheme is carefully estimated at
half a million pounds, which would be saved many
times over in relief of charges for workhouses, prisons,
and lunatic asylums, while the indirect economic gain
to the community in increased average efficiency cannot
be calculated.

The Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of
Distress have presented two separate reports embody-
ing alternative schemes. But on some points the
Commissioners are unanimous. Both reports con-
demn the present mixed workhouse and the present
system of treatment, whereby hardship is inflicted on
the deserving and unfortunate poor ; while the habitu-
ally idle and dissolute vagabond finds every conven-
ience for entering and leaving the workhouse at will,
and for continuing indefinitely his or her useless and
harmful mode of life. Periods of support at public
expense alternate with periods of freedom and licence,
and the reproduction of a degraded and degrading type
of humanity goes on unchecked. Hence both reports
advise the formation and development of labour ex-
changes to bring employers and workmen into com-
munication, and to provide a test of a man's willingness
to work — the " beneficial and natural test " of the

214 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

offer of a situation. If such an offer be refused, both
majority and minority recommend that the offender
should be sent to a detention colony, where, under
proper supervision, he should be given the opportunity
of recovering his right to freedom, or, in hopeless
cases, be deprived permanently of the power of further
injuring society and degrading the future quality of
the human race.

Here, then, we have two proposals, supported by
the unanimous authority of two separate Royal Com-
missions. About these proposals there should be no
difference of opinion among all right-thinking men.
Consideration has been long and deliberate ; the time has
come for action. The next Session of Parliament should
see the closing of the flood-gates through which has
poured this devastating torrent of degraded humanity.

Much of the petty crime of the country may be laid
to the door of the feeble-minded, and will cease when
they are brought under control and gradually dimin-
ished in number. But besides these cases, there exist
families of incurably vicious tendencies, producing a
definite low type of habitual criminal. In dealing with
men and women of this character, where we cannot
hope to accomplish individual and radical cure, we
must, as with the feeble-minded, organize extinction
of the tribe. In old days, the law attempted this ex-
tinction by hanging, a preventative of the sternest and
most efficient nature. In so-called barbaric countries,
where even nowadays self-protection of the community
proceeds on still more drastic lines, not infrequently
the immediate family of the offender perishes with
him. The purification of the State is the first concern

CONCLUSION 215

of its governors. For us, with our different ethical
standards, the old methods are impossible. We must
attain the same result by the longer, gentler system of
perpetual segregation in detention colonies, with all the
mitigations that are practicable.

If any doubt should arise how far it is justifiable
thus to safeguard the future of the race, let us remember
that the higher stai^dards of the better classes in matters
of hygiene, education, etc. have already been enforced
sternly on all, where the good of the community is
involved. If compulsion of this sort be right in small
things, immeasurably more so is it in great. The
inborn physical, mental, and moral welfare of the people
is better worth securing than a superficial cleanliness.
The old saying that prevention is better than cure
takes a new and vivid meaning in the light of our
knowledge of heredity.

So far we are ready to go, in preventing by legisla-
tion the growth of undesirable elements in the com-
munity. To favour the increase of good stocks is a
more difficult problem.

At present the possibilities of legislative action are
small, and seem to be confined to an attempt to lighten
some of the burdens that fall specially on fathers of
families. In this present year, 1909, the Treasury has
made a beginning, and discriminated in the incidence
of income tax on small incomes in favour of parents.
This action might safely go much farther, and some
such scheme as that suggested in the last chapter might
exempt from income tax all money spent in maintain-
ing and educating a family — a proceeding which, at the

2i6 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

same time, would throw some of the additional financial
burden on those who escaped this form of national
service. Pious founders might establish endowments
for satisfactory parents, and, with the experience thus
gained as a guide, the State might slowly feel its way
to granting honours and rewards, suitable to all ranks
of life, to those who produced and brought up strong,
healthy, and able offspring.

Of late years, the duty of the State to support the
falling and fallen has been so much emphasized that its
still more important duty to the able and competent
has been obscured. Yet it is they who are the real
national asset of worth, and it is essential to secure that
their action should not be hampered, and their value
sterilized, by the jealousy and obstruction of the social
failures, and of others whom pity for the failures has
blinded. Mankind has been shrewdly divided into
those who do things and those who must get out of the
way while things are being done, and if the latter class
do not recognize their true function in life, they them-
selves will suffer the most. The incompetent have to
be supported partially or wholly by the competent, and,
even for their own good, it would be worth while for
the incompetent to encourage the freedom of action
and the preponderant reproduction of the abler and
more successful stocks. It is only where such stocks
abound that the nation is able to support and carry
along the heavy load of incompetence kept alive by
modern civilization.

Meanwhile and always, our duty is to investigate the
problems of heredity, and to apply new-won conceptions

CONCLUSION 217

to questions of sociology. As from time to time
definite conclusions are reached, we shall be ready to
formulate our social policy in the light of reasoned
beliefs and scientific knowledge of the existing con-
ditions and tendencies of the life of the nation. " The
proper study of mankind is man," and in that study the
scientific and humanist schools find common ground.

The examination of all influences tending to favour
the growth of the more suitable races and better
strains of blood, has been called by Sir Francis Galton
the science of Eugenics. Alone of our universities,
the University of London possesses definite provision
for the systematic investigation of the subject. In the
Galton Eugenics Laboratory at University College,
Professor Karl Pearson and his assistants have made
a beginning of the study of mankind from this point
of view.

It is much to be deplored that in neither Oxford
nor Cambridge, where a great part of our governing
classes are educated, is systematic provision made either
for advancing the knowledge of inheritance as regards
its bearing on sociology, or teaching the conclusions
already reached to those who in the future will have
the direction of national affairs. Cambridge has, it is
true, a professorship of Biology, which Professor Bate-
son holds to the great advantage of genetic science.
The scientific study of heredity is provided for.
Moreover, in the practical application of Mendelian
principles to agricultural science, the work of Pro-
fessors Biffen and Wood at the Cambridge University
Experimental Farm has marked the opening of a new
epoch in agriculture.

21 8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

But no means exist for the advancement and
teaching of genetics from the point of view of the
economist, the sociologist, and the statesman. Few
opportunities open to the public-spirited man or woman
of wealth would yield a better return in benefit to the
community than the foundation of a school in the
older universities to extend the new knowledge of
heredity to the problems of the nation and mankind.

Much material for investigation is supplied by the
Census returns and the Annual Reports of the Registrar-
General. Here we have the basis for a national socio-
logical department, which, in the future, should possess
a preponderant weight in the legislative counsels of
the Government.

Public opinion must be educated not only by
academic study in the universities and elsewhere, but
by more popular methods. To develop a healthy tone
of mind about the future of the race is worthy of all
our efforts.

It is necessary first to convince that small section of
the community that really judges and decides questions
according to the light of reason, and then to create
such ingrained feelings and associations in ourselves
and others with regard to the subject, that instinctively
all men will come to decide questions rightly, as now
too often they decide wrongly. We are beginning to
understand better the psychology of a nation, and to
know that a few simple ideas are all that it is possible
to impress at once on the minds of the people.

If we had to state the essence of our subject in a
brief form, we should say : Encourage in all ways

CONCLUSION 219

early marriages and large families for men and women
of health, strength, and ability ; discourage both
marriage and offspring where either parental stock is
unsound in body or mind. This is emphatically an
attitude which should guide private individuals in their
charitable efforts. The State must provide somehow
for all persons, whether worthy or unworthy. But
private assistance and personal interest may well be
bestowed chiefly on those honourable citizens, who,
having given evidence of good character and ability,
require temporary help to tide them over some period
of ill-health or adversity.

More can be done by quiet influence and example
than is realized. Much of the present mistaken action
is due to the tone of public opinion. It is no mis-
statement to say that it has become " fashionable " to
have a small family, or none at all. But already signs
are not wanting that we are near a change for the
better. The tide appears to have turned in the United
States, where it seems that flourishing families of three,
four, or five are beginning to replace the ones and
twos of the last decades. We believe that a similar
change may be brought about in England, and that
very soon excessively small famihes will be regarded
as an out-of-date fashion of a few years ago. Such a
psychological attitude, though apparently due to a not
very exalted motive, would of itself do much to right
the evil. The feeling to be produced in a certain
class of mind may be illustrated by the playful sugges-
tion that social precedence should be determined, other
things being equal, by the number of healthy children.
If honest Mrs. Quiverful, the curate's wife, were led

220 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

into dinner by Lord Oldcastle before Mrs. Gadsby of
Slocum Manor, it would be safe to predict that, in a
few years, less of the income of her husband, himself
the only son of his father (Gadsby of the Stock Ex-
change and later of Slocum), would find its way to
Newmarket or Monte Carlo, and more to Eton or
Harrow.

But, seriously, our increasing knowledge of psycho-
logy makes it clear that, to move the mass of mankind,
academic argument and appeals to reason will of them-
selves produce little effect. They are needed to start
a movement ; but to make it a living force in the
world, those who are convinced intellectually must
get themselves and others into the right psychological
attitude by continued suggestion and association of
ideas. Fashion has a real and essential psychological
meaning. Owing to the nature of mankind, action is
controlled far more by habits of mind than by slow
and deliberate reason. " All we like sheep have gone
astray," and like sheep, with a dog to bark and a
bell-wether to lead, we must be brought back into
the right path. We must learn instinctively to pay
honour to those who, sound in mind and body, bring
up well a large family, and not less to those who
avoid marriage or have no children in fear of per-
petuating their own infirmities. On the other hand,
they who neglect their duty to the nation and the race
in either respect must be made to feel the unfavour-
able verdict of society. A man who will not earn his
living or learn to defend his country, a woman who
neglects her household and refuses to perform her
maternal duties, and a nation which will take no

CONCLUSION 22 1

thought for the morrow, must all be classed among
the failures of civilization.

Whether or no the importance of the issues at
stake comes to be recognized fully by the nation
at large, individuals and families have it in their
power to act on the knowledge they have acquired.
In old days, more attention was paid to family history
than has been usual during the last hundred years.
From the beginning of the sixteenth till the end of
the seventeenth century, periodic visitations to the
different counties in England were made by the
Heralds, and the arms and pedigrees of gentle families
were recorded systematically. It is true that for scien-
tific purposes the pedigrees were very deficient, and
consisted chiefly of lists of names and places. But
the principle was sound, for it recognized the family
and not the individual as the true social unit, and it
needed but little development to have given a com-
plete genealogical and sociological register of the upper
ranks of the population, thus supplying information of
incalculable theoretical and practical value.

It was then a matter of pride among the upper
classes to marry only into families entitled to bear
arms. With the English fashion of quartering only the
arms of heiresses in the shields of their descendants, it
was not possible to represent on a coat the ancestry with
any completeness. The foreign plan of quartering
all the arms of lineal ancestors gave a more systematic
and scientific method. The possession of the coveted
seize quartiers then in fact proved descent from sixteen
strains of blood, all of families of known and recorded

222 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

position. When once more the importance of good
birth comes to be recognised in a new sense, when the
innate physical and mental qualities of different families
are recorded in a central sociological department or
scientifically reformed College of Arms, the pedigrees
of all will be known to be of supreme interest. It
will be understood to be more important to marry into
a family with a good hereditary record of physical,
mental, and moral qualities than it ever has been con-
sidered to be allied to one with sixteen quarterings.

In many directions during the nineteenth century
in England the prevailing habit of mind thought little
of old traditions, the true meaning of which our
imperfect knowledge did not then suffice to explain.
Often the tradition embalmed the accumulated ex-
perience of the ages, and involved truer wisdom than
could be deduced by a priori reasoning from faulty
or insufficient premises. This shallow intellectualism
is characteristic of the period in all realms of thought.
It overshadowed for a time, or in some cases perhaps
destroyed for ever, survivals of scientific and practical
value in politics, sociology, philosophy, and religion.
In no department of knowledge was the self-satisfied
individualism of 1850 more positive or more at fault
than in matters of genealogy and heredity. The
aristocratic theory of the family, which even those who
believed in and acted on hardly then ventured to
support openly, contains the root of the matter, and
only wants restating in modern terms to take its place
as a great scientific truth. Families in which good and
noble qualities of mind and body have become hereditary
form a natural aristocracy, and, if such families take pride

CONCLUSION 223

in recording their pedigrees, marry among themselves,
and establish a predominant fertility, they can assure
success and position to the majority of their descend-
ants in any political future. They can become the
guardians and trustees of a sound inborn heritage,
which, incorruptible and undefiled, they can preserve
in purity and vigour throughout whatever period of
ignorance and decay may be in store for the nation
at large. Neglect to hand on undimmed the priceless
germinal qualities which such families possess, can be
regarded only as the betrayal of a sacred trust, given
them for the good of the nation and mankind.

We look then for a day in the near future, when,
in some circles at any rate, a comparison of scientific
pedigrees will replace, or at all events precede, the
discussion of settlements in the preliminaries to a
marriage ; when birth and good-breeding (in its wide
sense), character and ability will be the qualities most
prized in the choice of mates ; when a bad ancestral strain
likely to reappear in succeeding generations will suppress
an incipient passion as effectually as it is now cured by
a deficiency of education or a superfluity of accent.

Moreover, since the assumption of the responsibility
of offspring falls on those of the younger generation,
whose financial position, even in the upper classes, is
usually not yet secure, it should become an increasing
habit for the older generation, where they have it, to
distribute a substantial part of their property during
their lifetime. Such a distribution should not excite
the animosity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Security or affluence often comes too late to make
easy the heavy burdens of early maturity, and, when

2 24 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

it comes, provides but bitter reflection over lost oppor-
tunities. Those in the prime of life can make the best
use of wealth in the service of the nation ; may each
generation, as they grow older, learn to relinquish it
in time to watch their successors meet fully their
responsibilities.

Not only should public opinion favour the free
production of the best elements of the population, and
the restriction of the worst, in the upper and middle
classes, but similar principles should guide the conduct
of all who have to deal with workpeople or servants.
For instance, the present habit of advertising for coach-
men, gardeners, and gamekeepers " without encum-
brances " should meet with the universal reprobation it
deserves. Such announcements ought not to be allowed
to disfigure the columns of otherwise respectable
newspapers. These men, usually of good stock, with
regular, well-paid work, should be a steady source of
valuable addition to the population, and pride should
be taken in providing for their occupation cottages
with accommodation suitable for a large family. In
fact, those responsible for the management of estates
might make sure, as a general policy, that the
limited number and inadequate size of cottages cannot
be made the excuse by satisfactory parents for the
limited production of children. Country landowners
have many and great responsibilities, which for the
most part they have met well. When they come to
realize the importance to the nation at large, and even
to their own neighbourhood, of a constant supply of
healthy children of good stock, they will find there are

CONCLUSION 225

many ways besides example in which they can exert
an influence for good.

Of late years the Christian Church has organized
much of its social work on a revived sense of the
old conception of the brotherhood of man. We must
now look to it to lead a movement in another direc-
tion, even more deeply fraught with spiritual meaning,
where parenthood and responsibility to those who will
follow after us will be the uniting principles of new
religious life.

It is not enough to preach with horror and indigna-
tion against normal parents who restrict their families.
Equal reprobation should be the lot of those who, with
inherited insanity, feeble-mindedness, or disease, bring
children into the world to perpetuate their infirmities.

It should not be overlooked that the realization
of the power of limiting the birth-rate, while it has
produced untold harm, when applied blindly and in
accordance with individual caprice, may become an
instrument for good if it extends to the worst stocks
of our people, while the better stocks once more under-
take their natural duties. Those who, sound in body
and mind, possess a high moral tone and a clear appre-
ciation of their social responsibilities, who realize the
sanctity of the gifts of inheritance of which they are
at once the owners and the temporary trustees, will
produce many offspring. Those with lower ideals will
continue to restrict their families, and, with the weaker
and unsound stocks, will weed themselves out of the
race. Thus once again a selection — this time a con-
scious selection — may be established to favour the

Q

226 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

growth of aU noble qualities ; thus the nation may
start anew on its road to improvement.

Our new scientific knowledge of heredity does but
emphasize the age-long warning of the Church, that
marriage and the procreation of children are not to be
" taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, but
reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, in the fear of
God," and knowledge of His laws. But, while warn-
ing from parenthood those not fit for its responsibilities,
let us give a new and deeper meaning to the old
Bidding Prayer, and ask with all our hearts " that
there may never be wanting a supply of persons duly
qualified to serve God in Church and State."

In the course of these pages, we have had to draw
a gloomy picture of the tendencies which have shown
themselves in the nation during the last forty years.
But we must not be understood to think badly of the
future. Twice at least in her history, England has re-
covered from the effects of a period of wrongly-directed
selective birth-rate. The recognition of the causes at
work is but the first step towards better things. We
believe in the moral soundness of the nation, and feel
convinced that, with their eyes open, the best elements
of the people will not persevere in their present course
of race deterioration. There is plenty of good stock
in England, and an appreciation of its value and of its
necessity to the nation will force us to find ways of
encouraging its reproduction and checking that of the
evil strains.

Then our race once more will improve. What are
the limits to that improvement none can say. Though

CONCLUSION 227

some evidence points to the idea that change in a
strictly homogeneous people could not be continued
indefinitely, that they would tend to return to the
mean or average type, the divergences of origin, the
differences of strength, character, and ability, are so
marked among us, that it is clear that our nation is not
homogeneous, that there are many types in our race.
It is certain that we can favour the growth of our best
existing types, and thus raise almost indefinitely the
average value of the whole nation, even if we cannot
with confidence look to the development of types
higher than any yet known.

But, on any view, the average strength, character,
and ability of the nation can be raised to such a degree
that many things now impossible will become easy for
all. Galton estimates that the ability of the ancient
Greeks was two of his degrees higher than that
of modern Englishmen. Could we only regain a
level already reached by one race of men, how much
the lot of all would be lightened ! Every man could
produce more with the same expenditure of energy, or
produce the same amount and gain new leisure and
ease. The health, comfort, and happiness of our nation
would increase enormously, and the character and
abiUty would be there, ready and capable of using well
the new possessions of leisure and ease. Leisure and
ease, useless or harmful to those who cannot fill them
worthily, are a priceless gift to whosoever can employ
them to advance civilization or can appreciate the
treasures of literature, science, and art.

The certainty that the present selective fall in the

22 8 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

birth-rate is wholly, or in greatest part, voluntary is
full of hope. Had it been due to a lessened natural
fertility of the better elements of the nation, it would
have been of overwhelming sinister import to the
future of the human race. That is not so. All
our evidence goes to show that able and eminent men
and women are full of vitality and are naturally fertile.
Artificial modes of life — hurry, restlessness, luxury,
overfeeding — may have diminished temporarily the
power of bearing and rearing children among some
women. But such influences are small compared with
those under our direct and immediate control, and can
be destroyed by a determined and sustained effort.

We have destroyed natural selection of the old
sort, " red in tooth and claw." The race is ceasing
to improve, is beginning to deteriorate. But almost
simultaneously, while there is yet time, by the blessing
of Providence, our eyes have been opened, and we are
become like gods, knowing good and evil. The future
of our race is placed in our hands to mould as we will.

We cannot escape our responsibility, even if we
would. Occasionally one is met by the idea that all
control of agencies for the conscious bettering of the
race is immoral and irreligious. As well let us accept
the degraded but essentially identical view that the
attempt to understand and control pestilence and famine
is contrary to the will of God ! Such arguments have
been used in old time, are stiU used in the more
superstitious and backward nations of the world. We
have outgrown them. In all things we have come to
know that God helps those who help themselves.

Again, it is sometimes thought that general recog-

CONCLUSION 229

nition of the influence of heredity and natural selection
may check the beneficent efforts of mankind for the
improvement of the material and intellectual environ-
ment of the race. But it is to able, competent men
that we look for each successive step in the science
and art of practical life, and for the steady application
of new principles to the everyday surroundings of
the people. On the other hand, retrogression would
be inevitable if, through a failure to appreciate the
position, the stock of inborn ability ran down, and
the nation became on the average incompetent. At
present, it is only possible to attempt to prevent
deterioration, and it is difficult enough to find an
effective conscious selection to replace nature's rougher
ways. But, however the standard of man may be
advanced in the future, there will remain sufficient
comparative evil to satisfy the pugnacity of the most
ardent champion of good. The improvement of the
environment is always worthy of effort, not only for
its immediate effect, but also for its influence on
coming generations. Acquired characters may not be
transmitted by animals or plants, but, in the social
organism, a character impressed by the action of one
generation will, without doubt, modify profoundly
the qualities of the next. Improvement of the
environment will always be the more popular cause ;
it produces more immediate results, and results that
may affect individually those who are asked to expend
money or personal effort, or to submit themselves
to the necessary limitations. But, ultimately and
essentially, the inborn character of a race is the
higher consideration. If we seek that first, all the

230 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

blessings of a good environment will be added
unto us.

Hitherto the development of our race has been un-
conscious, and we have been allowed no responsibility
for its right course. Now, in the fulness of time, and
for some good reason, we are treated as children na'
more, and the conscious fashioning of the human race is-
given into our hands. Let us put away childish things,
stand up with open eyes, and face our responsibilities.

How shallow now sounds the argument that a'
knowledge of the power of heredity will loosen the
sense of moral responsibility ! It may strengthen the
case of the philosophic determinist, but in practice the
revelation of the effect of our present conduct on
the physical, moral, and spiritual welfare of millions
yet unborn, must give a new motive which, on any
philosophic theory, ought to and will tend towards-
righteousness.

o

Whatever be the meaning of the great mystery of
life, whatever part in the scheme of creation be filled
by the human race, the quality of that life is of
supreme importance. The Universe cannot be mean-
ingless ; it must have a spiritual significance. A spiritual
evolution must be accompanying the natural evolution,
and in that spiritual evolution some useful part we do
not understand is played by the growing total of
human life, which brings into being new spiritual
manifestations. To doubt the high destiny and the
spiritual significance of the human race is to doubt
the intelligibility of the Universe, the goodness of God.

INDEX

Ability in man, 57 ; inheritance of, 73 ;

pedigrees of, 81, 83 ; various types of,

88, 100
Acquired characters, inheritance of, 1 5
America, domestic service, 206
Ancestral inheritance, law of, 33
Andalusian fowls, 18
Army families, birth-rate in, 141 ;

officers, supply of, 166

Bach family, 87

Baring family, 99

Harrington and Pearson, eyesight, 53

Basset hounds, correlation of characters,

33

Bateson, Prof. William, mutations, 15 ;
Andalusian fowls, 18 ; reversion, 23 ;
biology, 217

Bean seeds, pure lines, 30

Biften, R. H., wheat, 24

Biological measurements, 27

Birth-rate, general, 122; European,
126; Irish, 127 ; German, 127, 131 ;
English, 127, 133 ; French, 127;
urban and rural, 135; in residential
districts, 135; in mining districts,
135; and domestic servants, 136;
and Jews, 137, 147 5 '" Friendly
Societies, 137; in landed families,
138; from Who's Who, 139; in
clerical families, 140 ; in military
families, 141 ; in University of Cam-
bridge, 141 ; in Roman Catholic
families, 142 ; selective, 148 ; in
Canada, 160 ; and Old Age Pensions,
170; causes of the decline, 177;
parental responsibility, 181 ; economic
aspect, 192; taxation, 194J in suc-
cessful classes, 208

Boyle family, 84
Boyle, Hon. Robert, 85
Brachydactyly, 41 ; table of inheritance,
42

Burke, Vicissitudes of Families, ii8
Burlington, Earls of, 85

Cambridge, University of, 91 ; birth-
rate in, 141 ; study of heredity in,
217 ; experimental farm, 217
Canada, colonization of, 159; domestic

service, 20<; ; pauper colonists, 205
Canning, Earl, 98, 117
Canning family, 97
Celibacy, restriction of, 90
Chance, action of, 25
Civil Service, supply of candidates, 168
Clergy, supply of candidates, 167 ; home

environment, 197
Clerical families, birth-rate in, 140
Coefficient of correlation, 30, 52
College of Arms, reformed, 222
Colonies, American, 157 j British,

domestic service, 202
Commissions, Royal, on Feeble-Minded,
62 J recommendations, 212 : on Poor
Law, 172 ; recommendations, 213
Cork, Earl of, 85
Correlation, coefficient of, 30, 52
Cotton famine and infant mortality, 200
Cousins, marriages of, 45
Craftsmanship, 187, 188
Crewe, Earl of, 97
Crime and mental defect, 64, 69
Curves, for "heads and tails," 26 ; chest
measurements, 27 ; evening primroses,

27

Darwin, Charles, origin of species, 7,

14
Darwin family, 89, 90
Deaf-mutism, 48
Deafness, 47

Decadence, 124, 132, 148
De CandoUe, Protestant clergy, 197
Decline of Empires, 148
Devon, seafaring families, 10 1

231

232 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

Devonshire, Dukes of, 85

De Vries, study of mutations, 15 ; even-
ing primrose, 29

Domestic service and birth-rate, 1365
in colonies, 203

Dominants, 20

Drinkwater, brachydactyly, 43

East Anglia and religious movements,

153

Education, faults of, 186

Elwes family, 119

Eminence in men, 77 ; in judges and
statesmen, 78

England, periods of expansion, 150 ;
settlement of friars, 152; destruction
of monasteries, 155 ; American colo-
nies, 158

Environment, effect on eyesight, 53 ;
improvement of, 229

Eugenics, science of, 217

Evening primroses, fruits, 27

Eye colour, 37, 39 ; table of inheritance,

40
Eyesight, influence on, by heredity, 53
Examinations, curve of results, 56 ;

competitive, 190
Expansion in England, periods of, 94 ;

in eighteenth century, 101

Families of. Bach, 87 ; Baring, 99 ;

Boyle, 84 ; Canning, 97 ; Darwin,

89; Elwes, 119; Gadsby, 220;

Gage, 95; Galton, 89; Jukes, 69;

Monckton, 97 ; Noel, 96 ; Scrope,

84 ; Stewart, 96 ; Wedgwood, 89 ;

Wesley, 87
Farabee, brachydactyly, 41
Farr, William, population, 129
Fashion, psychological effect of, 219
Feeble-Minded, Commission, 62
Feeble - mindedness, 63. See Mental

defect
Fertility among the mentally defective,

70
Fertility and Social Status, Heron, 136
Fluctuation, 30
France, American colonies, 159 ; decline

of birth-rate, 127
Friars, settlement in England, 152
Friendly Societies and birth-rate, 137

Gadsby family, 220
Gage family, 95
Gainsborough, Earls of, 96
Galloway, Earls of, 96

Galton family, 89

Galton, Sir Francis, modes of inherit-
ance, 17 ; correlation of characters,
33 ; Hereditary Genius, 35, 75 ;
Natural Inheritance, 35 ; variation of
ability in man, 57 ; English judges,
78, 117 ; statesmen, 78, 117 ;
premiers, 78 ; table of kinship, 79 ;
instability of disposition, 87 ; mar-
riages with heiresses, 116; the In-
quisition in Spain, 156; eugenics,
217 ; ability of Hellenic race, 227

Galway, Viscount, 97

Games, 196

Garvagh, Barons, 97

Germany, birth-rate in, 127, 131

Greece, selective birth-rate, 149

Hearts of Oak friendly society and birth-
rate, 137

Heiresses, marriages with, 1 16

Henry VIII., suppression of the monas-
teries, 155

Heralds' visitations, 221

Heron, David, birth-rate in London,
125 ; Fertility and Social Status, 136

Horns in sheep, 23, 46

Houghton, Lord, 97

Housing policy, 224

Hurst, eye colour, 37, 39

Illegitimacy, 107, 137
Immorality and mental defect, 65
Individualism, 107, 222
Inebriacy and mental defect, 65
Infertility, 109, iii, 112, 116
Instability of disposition, 87
Ireland, birth-rate, 127

Jews and birth-rate, 137
Johannsen, " pure lines " in beans, 30
Judges, records of, 78, 117
"Jukes " family, 69

Legislation, possibilities, 212
London, birth-rate, 125, 136; Univer-
sity of, and eugenics, 218
Lunacy,' 61, 70
Luxury, 195

Maize, 22

Malthus, population, 128
Mathematical Tripos, 58, 75
Mendel, Gregor, peas, 17, 19
Mendelism, principles of, Andalusian

fowls, 18; peas, 19; maize, 22;

wheat, 24

INDEX

'2-Z?>

Mental defect, 63 ; pedigrees, 67, 68 j
in villages, 69 ; rate of reproduction,
70 J numbers in families, 71

Mercier, Cardinal, on parental responsi-
bility, 182

Military training, 211

Millais, Sir J. E., basset hounds, 33

Mining districts, birth-rate, 135

Monckton family, 97

Moos, deaf-mutism, 48

Morris, William, craftsmanship, 188

Mutations, 15

Night-blindness, 46
Noel family, 96

Old Age Pensions, 170
Origin of species, 7, 14

Pauperism and inheritance, 177

Pearson, Prof. Karl, coefficient of corre-
lation, 32, 52 ; eugenics, 217

Pearson and Barrington, eyesight, 53

Peas, Mendel's experiments, 19

Pensions, Old Age, 170

Pitt on population, 128

Poor Law Commission, 172 ; and
Bastardy, 174

Population and subsistence, 128 ; and
trade, 130

Professions, overcrowding of, 182, 185

Public schools, 186

Punnett, Andalusian fowls, 18

" Pure lines," 30

Quetelet, statistical methods, 25

Recessives, 20

Religious fervour, 87

Renaissance, 156

Reversion, 23

Rhondda district, birth-rate, 135

Richelieu, Cardinal, French Canada, 159

Roman Catholics, 135, 143 ; in French

Canada, 160
Rome, selective birth-rate, 149
Ruskin, John, craftsmanship, 188
Rust in wheat, 24

Scholarship, 194

Scientific ability, inheritance of, 88

Scottish soldiers, chest measurement of,

Scrope family, 84

Selective mating, 33

Sex, transmission of, 21

Sheep, horns in, 23, 46

Social Status and Fertility, Heron, 136

Socialism and decadence, 132

Sons, occupations of, 165 ; professions
for, 182

Spain, American colonies, 157 j selective
birth-rate, 149

Specific ability, 86, 88, 100 ; musical,
87 ; religious, 87 ; scientific, 90 5
military, 98 ; commercial and indus-
trial, 103

" Sports," 14-16

Statistical methods, 25

Sterility, 109. See Infertility

Stewart family, 96

Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, 98

Taxation and birth-rate, 194, 215, 223
Thomson, Sir J. J., on education, 188
Transmission of sex, 21
Tredgold, Dr., mental defect, 71
Tuberculosis, 49, 50

Unsoundness, effect of, 113

Villages and feeble-mindedness, 69
Visitations of Heralds, 221

Webb, Sidney, Decline of the Birth-Rate,

135, 137

Wedgwood family, 89

Weismann, inheritance of acquired char-
acters, I 5

Wesley family, 87

Wheat, 24

Women's colleges, 143

Women's occupations, 197, 198, 199

Women and outdoor relief, 201

Younger sons, occupations of, 165

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHORS

THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF
PHYSICAL SCIENCE

AN ACCOUNT FOR THE GENERAL READER OF
THE PRESENT POSITION OF PHYSICS

John Murray, 1904. Fourth Edition 1909. 5s. net.

Contents.— Introduction ; The Philosophical Basis of Physical
Science ; The Liquefaction of Gases ; Fusion and Solidifi-
cation; The Problems of Solution; The Conduction of
Electricity through Gases; Radio-activity; Atoms and
Aether; Astro-physics.

" Mr. Whetham ... has performed a difficult task with conspicuous success.
His exposition is as clear and simple as the nature of the subject permits, and
his language is felicitous." — Times.

" It is a welcome sign that Mr. Dampier Whetham should produce a work
which can make a direct appeal to the educated public by its lucid style and
the unmistakable grasp of an original investigator."-— 5^a«^arfl'.

" We cannot imagine a more helpful treatise for those educated men who find
a difficulty in keeping up with advances along lines in which they are anxious
to maintain an intellectual interest."— W?5/»««.5/er Gazette.

"Couched in the lucid and flowing phrase that sometimes appears to the
literary critic the enviable possession of almost every scientific writer of
eminence. ... He has dealt with his subject from the philosophical as well as
from the experimental point of view. His conviction of the dignity of his
theme is evident everywhere ; and some of his descriptive passages are worthily
eloquent." — Globe.

" It is a pity that in English education science is so much neglected that the
author feels it necessary to make his interesting themes acceptable by artificial
literary ^■3.so\xx\r\^.''''— Melbourne Age.

" Enough has been said to show that this is a mind- widening book, as Mr.
Whetham not only has the precise knowledge of the scientific man, but he
takes the broad view of the philosopher."— Z)a?/y Chronicle.

" Mr. Whetham is a grave man, but he likes a joke."— C//m//aM World.

A HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF
COLONEL NATHANIEL WHETHAM

A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER OF THE CIVIL WARS

Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907. 8s. 6d. net.

"The immediate purpose of this book is to record the career of a typical
soldier of high class, who, either in the field or in administration, served con-
tinuously throughout the Civil War and up to the day of the Restoration. But
in pursuit of that purpose the authors have established far wider claims to
attention. They have made a real contribution lo a clear understanding of the
conditions of the conflict, from the first blow to the final stage, when, under
Monck's consummate guidance, the civil power triumphed over the rule of the
sword ; and their work should secure permanent recognition, not merely as a
fine result of patient and discriminating research, but also as a valuable
addition to the general literature of the subject. . . . Colonel Whetham did
nothing heroic or dashing on the great scale ; he did not even take part in any
of the more grandiose actions of the war. He was not a Rupert or a Cromwell,
a Hampden or a Falkland. He was not a Monck, but ' a man of the type of
Monck — a soldier and administrator loyal to his commission, and not med-
dling in politics or religion more than he could help.' Of few words, but
capable, vigilant, and prompt of action, he was always sought after to fill
positions of trust, made no mistakes, took his own line with great effect at
critical moments, and left a life of incessant activity as unobtrusively as he had
entered it. To present such a figure attractively and, we may say, educatively,
from the meagre materials available, has been no light task ; and we are
sincerely grateful to those who have performed it. . . .

" Rich in illustration, drawn in great measure from original sources, this book
is refreshingly free from superfluous matter ; and its style presents the directness,
and restraint regarding the intrusion of personal sentiments, which belong to
true scholarship. We scarcely think of its authorship as we read, and the
knowledge is so unobtrusively displayed that we are apt to forget the industry
by which alone it could have been acquired." — AthcncEum.

" Colonel Nathaniel Whetham was a Roundhead soldier who played a con-
siderable part in the Civil Wars, and was perhaps an even more prominent
figure in the days of the Commonwealth and the Restoration. His name,
however, has passed out of history, and the present authors, who are of his race,
originally began to collect the material for his life only for the purposes of family
history, and with no idea of publication. So interesting, however, were the facts
that they discovered, that they determined to give them to the world, and in so
doing they have made a valuable contribution to the history of the seventeenth
century." — Saturday Review.

"This was originally begun as a contribution to family history only ; but
the authors seem to have been well advised in making use of their researches
among contemporary documents to serve a wider purpose. The book is well
written, and the picture of one of the less prominent soldiers of the Common-
wealth certainly illumines the social and political life of the time." — Times.

" ' Renowned Whetham,' as a ballad of the Restoration period called him,
is as worthy as any of the lesser heroes of the Civil War to have his biography
written, and the task has fallen into the hands of two who are admirably
qualified to undertake it." — Guardian.

STUDIES IN NATURE AND
COUNTRY LIFE

A BOOK FOR CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS
Macmillan and Bowes, Cambridge, 1903. 2s. 6d. net.

Contents.— Part I. Chapter I. Nature and Observations ;
II. Earth; III. Air; IV. Water; V. Heat; VI. Sound;
VII. Light and Colour ; VIII. The Weather. Part II.
Chapter IX. The Country and its Names; X. Roads;
XI. Springs and Streams; XII. Soil; XIII. Fields and
Hedgerows ; XIV. Trees and Woods ; XV. Villages.

" We wrote this book to help our children in days to come to look
on the world around them with observing eyes and understanding
minds. We publish it in the hope that it may help other people's
children, and bring profit to our own." ^Authors' Preface.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

"This is a small but very admirable book, to be used by the intelligent
parent or teacher, directly or indirectly, or to be left accessible to the inquiring
mind ... any properly constituted child will take an interest m the contents
of the book. It teaches him that he is an observer and tells him what to look
at and it vAW prove a most welcome refuge to many a child from the stupidity
of the male and the unscientific attitude of the female parent. Here, at least,
is some one who knows where the weather comes from and what we may
expect in normal seasons, what the ' Times' map means, and why the dots are
so often put in circles on it, and the like points on which 'grown-ups evade
the eager questioner. The first part deals with earth, air, water, heat, sound,
light colour, and weather ; the second with names, roads, sprnigs, streams,
soil 'fields, hedgerows, trees and woods, and villages. Any child who can
take its knowledge and its story separately will be charmed with the volume.
— Spectator.

"A useful little book, not quite like any other. It is to teach children to
look on nature with observation and understanding ; touching not so much on
fauna and flora, but giving chapters on 'Earth,' 'Heat,' 'The Weather,'
' Roads,' ' Light and Colour,' ' Villages,' etc."— Tzw^j.

" It is not a primer, but ranges over a number of subjects in a suggestive
way, and it shows how to look at things and why. There is hardly a child
whose interest might not be stimulated in one or more of the directions indi-
cated in this book." — Manchester Guardian.

THE THEORY OF EXPERIMENTAL
ELECTRICITY

A TEXT-BOOK FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Cambridge University Press, 1905. 8s. net.

"We strongly recommend this book to those University students who
require an introduction to modern scientific electricity. The research atmo-
sphere of Cambridge is here brought before us, and the student is guided into
the paths along which great progress has been made in recent years." —
Guardiatt.

" Mr. Whetham's unique knowledge, not only of the most advanced theory
but also of all matter of experimental methods, as well as his gift of clear
exposition, admirably qualify him for the task." — Eledi-ical Review.

■' Mr. Whetham has written exactly the kind of book to inspire a student
with appreciation of what has been achieved by physicists, and to suggest
paths of research which might be followed with reasonable probability of
further discoveries." — Times.

"Mr. Whetham's book is an admirable exposition of all that the theorists
have discovered so far. ' To some extent,' he writes in the preface, ' even a
scientific text-book must be a piece of literature and a work of art.' ' Experi-
mental Electricity ' can certainly claim to be both ... we cannot conceive
any earnest student laying down the book without a desire to help, to the best
of his ability, in solving the riddle with which it closes." — Nature.

A TREATISE
ON THE THEORY OF SOLUTION

INCLUDING THE PHENOMENA OF ELECTROLYSIS

Cambridge University Press, 1902. los. net.

"This important work is a most noteworthy contribution to the literature
of physical chemistry, and is bound to rank as a classical treatise on the
subject. Both on account of its thorough and exhaustive treatment of the
subject, and its remarkably clear and cautious exposition of it, the book is one
of unsurpassed excellence." — Philosophical Alagazine.

" Mr. Whetham's book is probably the most complete and satisfactory
treatise on the subject in any language." — Athenattm.

\

CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

University of California, San Diego

DATE DUE

OE't'0'3- 1981

'

CI 39

UCSD Libr.