How to Live Part 30

But feeble-mindedness is a recessive quality, so that if the feeble-minded marry only with normal individuals, the feeble-mindedness does not blight the next generation, and if these apparently normal children of such marriages take pains to marry only really normal individuals, avoiding not only the feeble-minded but even those like themselves who have feeble-mindedness on one side of their family tree, there will be no feeble-mindedness cropping out in future generations.

[Sidenote: Instances of Eugenic Improvement]

But not all human abnormalities are recessive. Thus Huntington's ch.o.r.ea is dominant, so that every child of the unfortunate victim of this malady will contract it when it reaches the right age. Marriages of such people should, therefore, never be allowed, even with normal individuals.

But when we propose to restrict marriages or mating of those unfit to marry, people are apt to say, "That is a dream. It can't be done." But it can be done and it has been done. Every one has heard of the cretins in Switzerland. They are a kind of idiot who are short in stature and afflicted in all cases with goitre in the neck. Of course, many people have goitre who are not cretins, but there is no cretin who has not goitre. These cretins are peculiarly a feeble-minded people. They are common still in many towns of Switzerland; they are loathsome objects, helpless as children, with silly smiles, unable to take care of themselves in even the simplest toilet ways, and have to be looked after like domestic animals, or even more closely.

A gentleman very much interested in Eugenics visited Aosta, in Italy, just outside of Switzerland, once in 1900 and again in 1910. In 1900 he found many of these creatures among the beggars in the streets, in the asylums, in the home, in the orphan asylum--everywhere he ran across these awful apologies for human beings. But in 1910 he found only one!

What had happened? Simply that a few resolute intelligent reformers had changed the entire situation. An isolation inst.i.tution, or rather two inst.i.tutions, one for the men and the other for the women, were established. In these the best care of the inmates was taken as long as they lived, and they do not live long. But pains were taken to see that by no possibility could marriage or mating of those people take place.

They forfeited any such rights in return for the care that they received from the State.

Thus is it possible to apply the laws of heredity as laid down by Mendel in a thoroughly practical way and to get results _immediately_ in one short generation. It seems, and it is, a colossal task to change average human nature one iota. Yet in the light of modern eugenics we could make a new human race in a hundred years if only people in positions of power and influence would wake up to the paramount importance of what eugenics means. And this could be done quietly and simply without violence to existing ideas of what is right and proper. It could be done by segregation of the s.e.xes for defectives, feeble-minded, idiots, epileptics, insane, etc. By this kind of isolation we can save the blood-stream of our race from a tremendous amount of needless contamination.

And it is being done. The growing tendency to put defectives in inst.i.tutions, though originally with no such object, will reduce the transmission of defects, especially when it is recognized that the s.e.xes must be separated and that the inmates should be kept at the inst.i.tution through the reproductive period of life.

[Sidenote: Educational Influence]

It is inconceivable that the average individual will deliberately and consciously make his calculations regarding the character of possible offspring before he allows himself to fall in love to the point of desiring marriage. Yet unconsciously an educational influence on love and on marriage selection has been operating through centuries. The sick, the feeble-minded, the immoral, and members of their families, have at all times been socially handicapped, and have always been the first to be eliminated in marriage selection. And it is conceivable that this already developed wisdom in mate-choosing can easily be augmented by a further knowledge of heredity which is now available. It unconsciously favorably modifies the individual taste.

Certain races of men, without consciousness of their action, have varied in the character of their choices (s.e.x selection) in such a way as to bring about varied conditions in their races, with respect to resistance to disease, of mental capacity and to moral quality. The Mongolian differs from the Hebrew, the Anglo-Saxon differs from the African.

It depends largely upon the action of those now upon the earth, who are now making their choices of marriage, as to whether the races of the future shall be physical, mental or moral weaklings, or whether they shall be physically brave and hardy, mentally broad and profound, and morally sterling.

[Sidenote: Summary]

To summarize: There are three main lines along which eugenic improvement of the race may be attained:

(1) Education of all people on the inheritability of traits; (2) segregation of defectives so that they may not mingle their family traits with those on sound lines; (3) sterilization of certain gross and hopeless defectives, to preclude the propagation of their type.

There would seem to be great need of State Eugenic Boards, to correlate and to promote these activities, in the interests of the future population, and to give expert advice as to how to legislate wisely, and individual advice as to how to mate wisely. The latter function now falls entirely upon the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, where the work is being carried on with great efficiency with the funds at command.

_REFERENCES_

[57] Darbis.h.i.+re, A. D.: _Breeding and the Mendelian Discovery_, Ca.s.sell & Company, Ltd., London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne, 1911.

[58] Davenport, Chas. B.: _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics_, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1911.

[59] Dugdale, Robert L.: _The Jukes_, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1910.

[60] Galton, Francis: _Hereditary Genius_, D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1870.

[61] G.o.ddard, Henry H.: _The Kallikak Family_, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1912.

[62] Kellicott, William E.: _The Social Direction of Human Evolution_, D. Appleton & Company, New York and London, 1911.

[63] Huth, Alfred Henry: _Marriage of Near Kin_, Longmans, Green & Company, London, 1887.

[64] Darwin, Charles: _The Descent of Man_, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, 1874.

For further bibliographic lists, see bulletins ent.i.tled "Books and Journals," and "Publications" issued by the Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y.