Darwinism and Race Progress

This table demonstrates, therefore, in a most marked manner, the action of modern civilisation and of preventive medicine, which, by removing the microbe and diminishing the dangers of child-rearing, has diminished the rate of mortality to a very notable extent in the early years of life. The increase in the number of deaths from constitutional diseases, occurring as they do in middle or advanced age, are probably due to the survival of an increased number of individuals into the period of maturity. From this table it is difficult to say whether or no these individuals are below the mean average type. We have to die at one period of life or at another, and if men and women are preserved from the dangers of childhood and youth, there will be more to fall victims to the lung and chest complaints of more advanced life.

But it is possible by other sets of figures, obtainable from the Registrar General’s reports, to arrive at some sort of decision as to the healthiness of the middle-aged and elderly people living to-day, and to compare these results with similar ones drawn from the statistics of twenty or thirty years ago.

Death-rate for Advanced Years on the Increase.

In table 13 (Report of the Registrar General for 1891) the death-rates per 1,000 are given for different age periods, and these results date from 1841 to 1890, and are arranged in groups of ten years.

The table was prepared in the following way. At each period given, say from 1841–50, the number of persons living at a certain age was calculated from the census returns. The numbers dying at that age being known, these are given in the table per 1,000 persons of that age. In order to reduce the number of figures, I have shown the death-rates of two groups only, the first group of persons (males) younger, and the second group of persons older than 35 years.

Death-rate of Males per 1000 living.

	GROUP I. 0–35 years.	GROUP II. 35 and upwards.
1841–50	112·0	591·0
1851–60	111·2	581·9
1861–70	110·8	595·1
1871–80	101·0	616·7
1881–90	87·8	589·3

Group I. shows the very steady diminution in the death-rate of the earlier years of life, and similar results are also brought out by a corresponding table showing the death-rates among females.

Group II. showing the death-rates of individuals above 35 years of age, at first sight seems to give no very satisfactory predications of either increase or decrease of mortality, indeed the last period indicates a very decided fall in the mortality. We have, however, to remember that climatic influences are variable, and that certain groups of years are especially healthy and others inimical to well-being. That the last period is a very healthy one is indicated by the excessive fall seen in Group I., and by a corresponding fall in the number of deaths of females. These climatic variations may be assumed to influence the numbers of Group II. more than those of Group I.; indeed, on reference to the details given in the full report, I see that the fall in that period is in large measure due to the decreased mortality of those over 75, a time of life very susceptible to climatic influences.

On the whole, Group II. indicates that the death-rate above 35 is increasing, for if we add together any two consecutive periods, say 1841–50 and 1851–60, we shall find that the mortality of the last twenty years is greater than that of the first. By taking in this way longer periods of time, we can eliminate factors other than the time factor, and we can, at any rate, feel strongly suspicious that the mortality of middle and advanced life is on the increase.

The same results can, perhaps, even more conclusively be demonstrated by a study of tables showing the expectancy of life.

Life Tables compared.

The late Dr. Farr constructed tables showing the expectancy of life calculated upon the death-rates of the years 1838–54, and similar tables have more recently been constructed by Dr. Ogle, from the death-rates of the years 1871–80. In the case of male children newly-born, a child born in the first period could expect to live 39·91 years if he lived to an average age; a child born in the second period had a longer expectancy of life, namely, 41·35 years. While, however, the expectancy at birth during childhood and youth has been increased, the following table (extracted from their tables) will show that the expectancy during manhood has diminished; that is to say, men are either not so strong, or their surrounding conditions are less favourable than they were, and they cannot expect to live for so long a period. The details of this table are as follows:—

Mean After-Expectation of Life.

Ages.	GROUP I. 1838–1854.	GROUP II. 1871–1880.
0	39·91	41·35
5	49·71	50·87
10	47·05	47·60
15	43·18	43·41
20	39·48	39·40
25	36·12	35·68
30	32·76	32·10
35	29·40	28·64
40	26·06	25·30
45	22·76	22·07
50	19·54	18·93
55	16·45	15·95
60	13·53	13·14
65	10·82	10·55
70	8·45	8·27
75	6·49	6·34
80	4·93	4·79
85	3·73	3·56
90	2·84	2·06
95	2·17	2·01
100	1·68	1·61

Physical Degeneration of the Race already indicated.

It seems improbable that the short expectancy of middle age can be due to modern overstrain, for external conditions are on the whole improving, and the same fact may be observed in the expectancy of women, who certainly have not been placed under more unfavourable external conditions. Calculations from other periods of years would be here of great value, in order further to eliminate the effects of climatic changes, etc., and it must be remembered that the figures which are the basis of all statistics are only approximate to, and never exactly represent, the true condition of things. For these reasons, it seems important to pursue statistical investigations still further, and to examine the returns of other nations in order to determine whether or no their facts are similar to ours.

In the meantime, we may view, and not without inquietude, the probability that our statistics, as far as they go, indicate that racial deterioration has already begun as a sequence to that care for the individual which has characterised the efforts of modern society. The biologist, from quite another group of facts, has independently arrived at conclusions which render this view in the highest degree probable.

FOOTNOTES

[12] Billing’s “Text-book of the Theory and Practice of Medicine,” p. 8.

[13] Report of Leprosy Commission in India, 1890–1.

[14] “Bacteria and other Products,” p. 230.

[15] “Introduction to Modern Therapeutics” (1892), p. 15.

[16] “Natural Inheritance,” p. 182.

CHAPTER IV.
INSANITY AND ALCOHOLISM.

Nerve Derangements—Insanity.

We saw in the preceding chapter that during quite recent years the dangers of early life have been greatly lessened because of our increased knowledge of infantile hygiene, and from the fact that the infective diseases, which are always most dangerous to the young, have been greatly abated. We saw, however, at the same time, that the constitutional weaknesses of humanity are by no means lessened, and that there are strong grounds for believing that during the last thirty years the race has observably degenerated, a result to be anticipated from the withdrawal of selective influences during childhood and early life. Amongst these constitutional weaknesses we may specially notice defects in the respiratory, circulatory, nervous and other systems, as being of interest and importance, and their observation worthy of our close attention. In this little treatise it is impossible however to do more than shortly to allude to hereditary defects in the nervous system associated with incapacity, a tendency to insanity, or to excesses in the use of alcohol. The subject is not only one of popular interest, but it can be understood by those who are not technically instructed.

Just as no two men agree in the possession of equally sound mucous membranes or lung tissues, so we may have decided variations in the brain tissues. Together with unsound brain tissue we have symptoms which we call mental derangement, and of these we have an infinite variety, starting from the mentally too excitable, or too inert, and passing on to those who are more obviously diseased and useless, and finally to those who are dangerous to society at large. Now, these brain affections are markedly hereditary—proverbially so indeed. It is true that an overplus of work, or anxiety, or depressing surroundings, may produce insanity or other nervous conditions in one who under better surroundings would undoubtedly escape. These are, no doubt, true exciting factors, but they act with alarming ease in the case of certain types, while in others their action is relatively inoperative. This type, an organic variation, is transmitted, it is not destroyed. As Dr. Bastian says: “It is now a well-established fact that persons who are endowed with a neurotic habit of body very frequently transmit a similar tendency to their children. It is not a tendency to any particular nervous disease, but a vulnerability of the nervous system as a whole, which is transmitted, so that under the influence of even a comparatively slight strain the weakness may manifest itself in one or other of several ways.” Speaking of the suicidal tendency, Dr. Maudsley remarks: “It is, indeed, striking and startling to observe how strong the suicidal bent is apt to be in those who have inherited it, and how seemingly trivial a cause will stir it into action. Persons affected by it will sometimes put an end to themselves on the occasion of a petty contrariety, or when they are a little out of sorts, and with almost as little concern as if they were taking only a slight journey.” In half his cases Dr. Maudsley traced an inherited fault of organisation. And again, speaking of the many ways in which a neurotic taint may manifest itself, he says: “In families where there is a strong predisposition to insanity, one member will sometimes suffer from one form of nervous disease, and another from another form: one perhaps has epilepsy, another is afflicted with a severe neuralgia, or with hysteria, a third may commit suicide, a fourth become maniacal or melancholic, and it might even happen sometimes that a fifth evinced remarkable artistic talents.”

It is generally supposed by the members of the medical profession that insanity is on the increase, and this is in accordance with the fact that deaths from several diseases of the nervous system are on the increase too. This supposition has, however, been hotly disputed, and may be left in other hands for final settlement, for it must be remembered that our statistics date back but a few years, a day as it were in history, and we must not presume to be able to settle offhand every problem that arises.

The Importance of preventing its Transmission.

For our present purpose the hereditary nature of the neurotic temperament is the important point that we have to consider, for its hereditary nature places it in the category of affections, which ought to be eliminated by selective means, instead of being provided for merely by the personal treatment of those who suffer from it. It is true that by the selection suggested the world might lose the occasional genius which is found here and there in families with a strong taint of insanity, but on the other hand it must be remembered that by far the greater number of distinguished men and women have been derived from vigorous and mentally sound parentage; for the association which we make between genius and insanity is due not so much to its common occurrence as to the possibility of the co-existence at all in the same family circle of these two things that at first sight must appear so strangely opposed to each other.

With a certain amount of sacrifice, humanity by selection might free itself from those types who are a drag upon the resources of the community, and who suffer themselves, certainly in the melancholic cases, to a degree which it is impossible for an ordinary individual to experience.

Marriages of Insane Persons.

While there has so far been no organised effort to bring about this selection, for we have not yet turned our attention with sufficient interest to the race as a whole, yet there is a popular and widespread feeling against the marriage of those with a distinct family history of insanity. This feeling has had in the past an undoubtedly selective influence, and has in some measure diminished the number of marriages with neurotic families; and the strengthening of this feeling in the future is the only thing we have to look to, as matters stand, as a means whereby the race may free itself from an inherent weakness of a most distressing kind.

Alcoholism a Habit, and Alcoholism a Sign of Mental Instability.

Not unfrequently we hear of the hereditary tendency to alcoholism, and it is generally understood that a specific tendency to drink alcohol is transmitted. To me it appears that the facts at our disposal seem rather to warrant the conclusion that most of those cases which are supposed to be examples of transmission, are really due to the permanence of intemperate habits in the same family or district perhaps for generations, and that in these cases the children drink from the force of imitation. In other cases I would rather infer that unbalanced vicious temperaments are transmitted, but that as to the way in which these will manifest themselves it depends much upon the circumstances and surroundings of the individual, who may become a drinker, an opium eater, or a profligate, or perhaps a combination of all three.

Drink is a Selective Agency.

Among the lower classes at the present day there are, no doubt, whole families who generation after generation have had a bad name for drunkenness; but it would appear that in these cases the drunkenness is but one manifestation of the same careless or vicious temperament, which shows itself also in idleness and crime. Among the middle and upper classes a generation or two ago families of hard drinkers were often known. In these cases, as one may learn nowhere better than from Barrington’s “Sketches of Irish Life,” the drinking was a part of a general devil-may-care temperament, or was even in many cases associated with a pride in the accomplishment itself. At the present day, when drunkenness is looked down upon as disgraceful by the better and more educated classes, excessive drinking has vastly diminished. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that, while what we may term unbalanced temperaments and instincts of self-indulgence are inherited, the actual way in which these instincts will manifest themselves depends upon the surrounding conditions which may happen to prevail. Such unbalanced persons would under certain surroundings of training and education fall a prey to drink, as when they are associated with drunken parents or friends; under other surroundings they may be guilty of crime or debauchery and tend in any case to avoid the quiet, orderly routine of citizenship. While, therefore, we can hardly say that the tendency to drink is hereditary, yet we may affirm that certain type variations, running, no doubt, in families, are especially liable to drink and other forms of vice. It follows, too, that drink may be looked upon as a selective agency—one constantly thinning the ranks of those who are weak enough by nature to give way to it, and leaving unharmed those with healthy tastes and sound moral constitutions.

Parents who drink from Habit may have Debilitated Offspring.

In a former chapter we have suggested that the alcohol circulating in the parental veins may affect the germinal cells, not in such a manner as to make those cells develop into individuals with a tendency to drink, but rather with the result that debilitated offspring are often thereby produced. It is quite conceivable that this latter effect may be brought about, although our study of the infective diseases has indicated to what lengths the whole system may be affected without the production of any permanent change in the germ cells; but it is, I think, greatly over-stating the case to adduce examples such as one brought forward by Galton, in which we are told of a man who had begotten children of the ordinary type becoming a drunkard, and afterwards having imbecile children. This seems to me to be very questionable evidence indeed. We can seldom ground any general rule on the basis of a few isolated cases, and just as one may support almost any argument by means of a text of Scripture, so one might bring forward isolated cases to support almost any view of heredity. Amongst the some forty million instances of transmission to be seen at the present day in the British Islands and the many thousands of imbeciles and drunken parents, one hardly wonders at what may after all be only a coincidence. That this is a coincidence, and that the production of the imbecile children had no necessary connection with the drunken habits of the parent will seem to us very probable when we reflect that in the Scottish Lowlands, large English towns, and in parts of Germany, habitual heavy drinking is exceedingly common; therefore, did such startling cases of transmission occur, they would occur frequently, and be matter of common observation and comment. While refusing to accept this case in evidence, it is still probable on general grounds that the offspring of habitual drunkards suffer hereditarily, but definite evidence on this score appears still to be wanting.

Preventive Measures.

This leads us to the question as to whether or not legislation with a view to prevent the sale of alcohol would further or retard race progress. Experiments of this kind have been, and are being tried—notably in Scandinavia and the United States; and there are those who strongly advocate preventive legislation in our own country.

But has this enforced diminution of one particular form of vice given us any guarantee as to immunity from the other forms into which the habitual drunkard may develop? That preventive measures have diminished drunkenness cannot for a moment be denied, but this diminution is certainly not more notable than the corresponding change in the habits of the English upper classes brought about entirely by the force of conscience and habit. Granted that preventive measures will improve the individual, we have to ask ourselves the question, how will they improve the race?

Drink among Australian Convicts.

Dilke informs us[19] that the convict element may now be disregarded in Australian society. In the case of some their crime was an accident, and criminal tendencies would not be transmitted to the children they left behind them. On the other hand, the genuine criminal and also the drunken ne’er-do-well left no children. Drink and vice among the “assigned servants” class of convicts, and an absence of all facilities for marriage worked them off the face of the earth, and those who had not been killed before the gold discovery generally drank themselves to death upon the diggings.

We have here a very clear case in which alcohol acted as a most beneficial selecting influence. Had there been prohibiting laws, preventing the sale of alcohol, the innately depraved would have left behind them descendants imbued with the paternal instincts.

Drink and Prevention in America.

In the United States there is and has been a strong feeling against the liquor traffic, not only on the part of those who hold that drinking is in itself wrong, and leads to crime and misery, but on political grounds as well. The Americans drink, not at meals as we do, but at the drinking-saloons and bars, and the habit of “treating” to liquor is universal. These drinking-saloons are, too, the cause of much of the political corruption deplored by the better class of Americans; there are many reasons, therefore, for the introduction of local option, or even prohibition, and in many of the states stringent anti-liquor laws are consequently enforced. Inasmuch as these laws have been in operation for some years, we can study their effect on those who have been subjected to them.

We are told[20] that in Maine a Prohibitionary Law was enforced in 1851, lapsed for two years (1856 and 1857), but has continued since that time up to the present date. We have, therefore, an experiment in liquor prohibition lasting for forty years. In Maine, the manufacture and sale of alcohol in any form is illegal, and punished by imprisonment and fine. The law is enforced, and we are told[21] regarding its operation that, “by tending to drive the traffic into by-ways and disreputable ‘dives,’ by removing the visible temptation offered by open bars and saloons, by making it relatively if not absolutely difficult to obtain drink, and by throwing a general atmosphere of subterfuge and disrepute about the trade, it has been a material agent in suppressing a demand which is not only regarded by many as morally wrong and physically ruinous, but is rendered by the operation of the law disreputable. These tendencies, receiving support from the general voice and sentiment of the women, have so influenced manners that, whatever share in the result ought to be assigned to the effect of prohibition, it is a fact that the demand for liquor, or the desire for it, either in large quantities or small, proceeds only from a limited section of the population.” If now we turn to the statistics of crime, pauperism, and insanity, we shall find a result which may appear a startling one to many. The statistics of the Insane Hospital show a great and progressive increase of patients, from 75 in 1850–51 to 685 in 1891–92. In regard to in-door paupers, the ratio is slightly lower than that of the neighbouring states:—

	1880.	1890.
Maine—ratio of paupers per million of population	2319	1756
Other states, non-prohibitive	2339	1790

In regard to out-door paupers, the census attaches to Maine a number very considerably in excess of the average. As regards prison population, Maine has a low but decidedly increasing ratio, which comes out especially clearly in the case of the juvenile offenders in reform schools:—

	1880.	1890.
Maine—ratio per million of population in reform schools	176	256
Average in other nine North-Eastern states	469	425

In Kansas, another state in which prohibition prevails, dating from 1881, the United States census tells us that there were more prisoners in its penitentiary and county gaols in proportion to its population in 1890 than there were in 1880, and that of all the neighbouring states Kansas had in 1890 absolutely the largest ratio of prisoners to population. In Iowa, the third state in which prohibition has been most effectually carried out, we are told[22] that “in one small town prohibition was so effectually enforced that, when the bishop of the diocese visited it, an intended celebration of the Sacrament had to be abandoned because no wine could be obtained. In this town we are also told that opium dens are formed as the alleged result of prohibition, and my informant, whose testimony was unimpeachable, was told by a physician practising there that the use of opium in the place was a positive curse; he had twenty or thirty cases on his hands of persons suffering from the habit, both men and women.”

Public Habit and Conscience the best Preventive.

One may often draw false deductions from statistical evidence through ignorance of facts, which qualify and give quite another colour to the figures quoted, but the above data suggest that any lasting prohibition, other than the dictates of a man’s own conscience and sense of self-respect, may do more harm than good; for when not upheld as a fashion, excessive drinking can only be looked upon as a symptom of a debilitated or depraved nature, which, without access to drink, would show itself depraved in other ways, and which, if artificially kept sober and assisted thereby to live, will tend to perpetuate itself and widen the circle of its depravity.

May it not be said that a clear case is to be made out for the introduction of preventive measures in districts where drunkenness has become a matter of universal habit or fashion, where, therefore, the selective action of alcohol—from the fact that almost all take it—is reduced to a minimum, and where, from its general consumption in injurious quantity, the debility possibly transmitted may be considered as reaching towards a maximum? In this case preventive measures, introduced perhaps for a few years only, would be instrumental in getting the people into more reasonable habits of living, and might enable those who possessed the necessary tastes to cultivate such pastimes and recreations as mould keep them free from falling victims to a vice, to which they had previously given way rather from force of imitation than from any strong personal predilection. On the other hand, from our point of view, that of racial progress, the case for preventive interference is not so clear when introduced into a district where the population have in the mass learnt to lead sober lives, where drunkenness is looked upon as a vice, and where only those naturally without self-respect and proper self-control fall victims to drink; the artificial interference prevents the operation of a selective influence which eliminates from society many of its most undesirable elements. Under these conditions excessive drinking is but the symptom of something which lies deeper, namely, an organic defect, a poor and vicious type, and its prevention cures the symptom, while the disease remains and perpetuates itself to the hapless children of the future.

The Power of the Community over the Individual.

It might appear to the superficial reader that I am advancing arguments which would give a moral sanction to the broadcast scattering of the germs of phthisis and enteric fever, and to the leaving of unlimited whisky as a stumbling block at the doorsteps of one’s weaker neighbours. This is far from being the case. While it is undoubtedly true that the germs of phthisis have from time immemorial been freeing humanity from an unhealthy variation to which we are subject, and while alcohol has on the whole been ridding us of the vicious and uproarious since our forefathers first drank mead from the teats of the she-goat Heidhrun, yet it does not follow that any individual or set of individuals have a right to take upon themselves the responsibility of retaining and meting out such selective treatment.

Were there, indeed, no other means of improving the race and eliminating its at present inherent faults, it might be different, and, perhaps, one could hardly say that society might not take upon itself the responsibility of the actual outrooting of these faults by drastic measures; but other ways are open to it. At present society claims the right to exterminate the murderer, and a few decades back the life of the thief was also taken. But while these lives were taken by a custom which is the survival of retribution, and in which the State takes the place of the injured person or family, there is a growing feeling that such a motive is not of the best or highest, and that the only excuse for the disposal of the life or person of the individual is that of the seeking of the general well-being of the State. When we consider the enormous sacrifice in modern times of what were at one period thought to be personal rights (such as the right of every man to ill-treat and neglect his wife or children, or to live in whatever insanitary house or room he pleases, or to work as long as he wishes, etc. etc.), we can hardly draw, even in imagination, a line beyond which the State may not, at some future time, see its way to make claim upon the individual. It is, however, very improbable that the advanced politicians of any century will ever call for a general battue upon the inveterate drunkards or consumptives, nor is there any likelihood of the work of preventive medicine abating for one single instant, even for the sake of the race. The love of the individual is antecedent, both in the history of humanity and in the life history of each individual, to any regard for the race, and the latter is but an extension of the former feeling. While, therefore, there are certain and sure means of improving the race by simple and unheroic measures, no one would for a moment dream of depriving the individual of all that modern medicine and civilisation can do for him.

The Necessity for replacing One Selective Agency by Another.

The microbes and other selective agencies have been improving the race, or at any rate have in the past been preventing its deterioration, but it by no means follows that this action is to be permitted to them in the future. We have studied them and have followed out their life histories; we know on what they thrive, and also that which is injurious to them; we can exterminate them; and human affection, that emotion beyond all others that we have to trust to for race perfection, demands complete control over “their reckless inroads.” But if the selecting microbe is to disappear, we have to replace it by something else. If the individuals of to-day are to have the advantage of better surface drainage, and an absence of their microscopic foes, the children of the future must not be the sufferers; and we must replace the selective influence of the microbe by the selective action of man’s forethought, which shall provide that these children shall alone be produced by healthy parents. We need have no fear of the removal of the selective influences that at present surround us, provided a selection is still carried on; but if we remove selective influences without replacing them by others, then racial decay is certainly and inevitably upon us. At the present time people with strong strains of insanity or phthisis marry freely. The dangers are to a certain extent realised, but these are generally overcome by the power either of personal attraction or dowry. A man may be summoned for neglecting to send his son to school, but at present there is no strong public feeling against the knowingly begetting a son who all his life may suffer from weak lungs or brain, and hence obvious disease is no bar in the marriage market.

How it is that the Production of Children by Diseased Parents is tolerated.

We cannot wonder at this state of things when we recall the fact that in less advanced times than the present a rapidly recruited population was often the determining cause of a nation’s continued existence. The depopulation produced by war and zymotic disease was often so dreadful that nations with great fertility alone survived; and thus it came about that all minor questions were sunk in the one great necessity, namely, that of keeping the population large enough to resist extinction or to effect foreign conquest.

Added to this, most of the sickly diseased offspring died in infancy as a result of improper feeding or want of care, and there was no such thing as the existence of a large section of the community evincing an increase of hereditary weakness. Under these conditions the parents of large families added so much the more to the strength and power of the community, and the production of children came to be regarded as a virtue. This view of the question very naturally survives, and is probably the reason why at the present day marriage with a diseased person is not viewed as a sin against the children that are to be produced, and against the community at large.

The Necessity for producing Posterity out of our Best Types.

But the end towards which we have to aim is the production in each generation of children from the best and healthiest of the population alone, for it is surely only reasonable that we should as a community pay the same care and attention to our own race propagation that a gardener does to his roses or chrysanthemums, or a dog-fancier to his hounds or terriers, or a cattledealer to his southdowns or shorthorns. That there is no means of improving our race so efficaciously as by selection we may be certain, and that there is no other way is highly probable; our interest in the subject, and the value we place upon changes the effects of which we shall never live to see, will determine whether we are prepared to adapt our ideas and modes of action to the lines that reason and the knowledge of the times have clearly pointed out as the only ones which it is expedient to follow.

I have so far only indicated in most general terms the aim which in my opinion we should have in view. We have in the two succeeding chapters to consider several problems somewhat similar to those which we have already discussed, and then it will be more easy to obtain a general view of the whole question. We may then consider what steps it may be advisable to take with a view to bringing about satisfactory selection of the population, remembering always that in such a matter nothing can be accomplished which has not the sanction and approval of the mass of the community. The education and conviction of the masses must precede legislation, so that we shall have to consider what is expedient, from a practical point of view, for us to do at the present time, and we shall leave speculation as to possible future action to those who have greater gifts of foresight, and who believe in the possibility of predicting the future action of such a complex machine as an empire of men and women.

FOOTNOTES

[19] “Problems of Greater Britain,” vol. i., chap. ii.

[20] “Liquor Legislation in the United States and Canada.” Rathbone and Fanshawe.

[21] Op. cit., p. 104.

[22] Op. cit., p. 170.

CHAPTER V.
THE CRIMINALS, INCAPABLES, AND THOSE IN DISTRESS.

We have seen in the last two chapters that there is every reason to believe that, on account of improved external conditions, and notably of the sanitary advances which result from the efforts of preventive medicine, the race is deteriorating in general constitutional robustness. Those selective agencies which in more primitive times destroyed the sickly, especially during their early years of life, have in part been removed or modified, with the result that the sickly are preserved and in larger numbers live through and into the child-bearing period, raising the mean duration of life, but notably increasing the rate of mortality after middle age. These sickly ones leave children behind, who, as a matter of course, transmit their constitution to the race. In our study of disease we included intemperance, for in cases where there is a distinct liability to give way to drunken habits, and apart from those cases where it is merely a habit acquired in bad company, we may look upon it as a symptom of some innate variation from the normal, and it is therefore the physician’s duty to treat it like any other constitutional disease. In the same light we are bound to view the cases of many criminals and persons who from some inborn defect are incapable of doing their share in the work of the community.

Crime is often an Acquired Habit.

It is probable that a large proportion of criminals are the creatures of accident or of vicious training. Children are very imitative, and are apt to acquire the habits and even modes of thought of those who surround them; and bad example in their homes, or the neglect of parents who, perhaps, in their turn had also suffered from bad example and neglect, has often stamped a child’s character for life. At school again, the child is surrounded by influences which often affect him throughout life for good or for evil, and later on he is still susceptible to many evil temptations which may in his case be exceedingly strong. We are therefore all of us a compound of our innate inborn qualities, and those that have been stamped, as it were, upon us by contact with the external world; and we have no right to judge in an off-hand manner of the innate qualities of a criminal without a very extensive knowledge of his upbringing, and of the temptations and influences which have surrounded him. Theft by a person in necessity need by no means imply so vicious a temperament as that of a man who spends his life in getting the better of his less clever neighbours, and enriches himself by the loss of others, as is done in many so-called legitimate ways; and the killing of a man in passion may be done by one who would be incapable of settling an old grudge by taking a mean advantage of an enemy. Again, many criminals are incapables driven to crime through their incapacity; therefore with the incapables let us study them.

The Innate Criminal.

Over and above those we have just mentioned, however, are a band of innate criminals whose feet take by nature the crooked rather than the straight path, whose lives alternate between abuse of public law and the punishment thereby entailed. These beget children, and the suffering they inflict and have to endure is continued from parent to offspring. In every locality these inveterate criminals are well-known to the administrators of justice. Time after time they come up for punishment, and wantonly and wilfully all chances of improvement are thrown away; they seem wanting in those feelings of individual responsibility, and in the wish to be held in esteem, that are among the necessary first principles of life in an organised community.

The Jukes Family.

The histories of many of these criminal families have been written, and perhaps the best known and most striking is that of the Jukes family, written by R. L. Dugdale. This family was traced by Dugdale for seven generations, and during that time it contributed to the welfare of the State an unparalleled history of pauperism and crime. It is seldom, indeed, that the history of crime can be traced so far as it can be in the case of the Jukes, and the reason is that most families disperse by intermarriage, and the taint becomes diluted and no longer stands out in prominence. The distinguished French novelist, Emile Zola, who, in a series of novels, traces out the history of a criminal family, falls into the error of supposing that such a thing as a long family history of crime is possible without isolation from the rest of the community. The family of the Jukes lived in a district by themselves in America, and they formed a family clan, and intermarried amongst themselves, thus complying with this isolation which is a necessity for the long continuation of any family characteristic.

Intermarriage does not stamp out Criminal Tendencies.

It might, perhaps, then be said that intermarriage and dispersion of the criminal taint is, indeed, the most ready way of getting rid of it. But this cannot be so, for it is more reasonable to suppose that although by intermarriage the intensity of the criminal tendency may be diminished, yet for the same reason individuals with this innate tendency will be all the more increased, and that the further intermarriage of these individuals with others having similar taints of character, may at any time tend to again reproduce the inveterate criminal in perpetual recurrence. We may dilute ink with water so that we can no longer see that it is black, but we dare not draw the inference that the ink has been destroyed. It is equally as impossible to believe that the criminal taint can disappear unless the criminals are prevented altogether from adding their progeny to those of the rest of society.

It might be urged that in the case of the family of the Jukes their crime was due to imitations of bad habits kept up in the isolated district in which they lived. It must be at once granted that much of their crime and pauperism was no doubt due to bad upbringing, and the polluted moral atmosphere in which they lived; nevertheless, we are justified in believing in the existence of such a thing as innate want of moral backbone, of which they were a probable example. We have not to go far to find in our everyday experience of life that out of a family whose members are most of them docile, yielding to discipline, and capable of affection and self-sacrifice, one or two, perhaps, seem by nature to be wanting in these qualities. Such sporadic cases are only to be explained on the ground that imperfections in their ancestry have cropped up in the new generation, for the criminal taint is a fact to be observed and accounted for like any so-called physical peculiarity of form or feature. It follows, too, that we are bound to look with the greatest pity and commiseration upon the inveterate criminal as upon a person diseased, and that we should use our best endeavour to prevent the recurrence or continued permanence of such a type.

Segregation of the Criminal an Ultimate and Effectual Resort.

We, therefore, come face to face with the necessity for practical action on our own part if we would fulfil our obligations to those who will come after us. As Pike remarks,[23] “Perpetual imprisonment of the irreclaimable—imprisonment not only nominally but really for life—would be among many causes of that change in the general tone of society which is shown by history to be the greatest preventive of crime as now understood. Like persons affected with scarlet fever or other infectious maladies, the propagandist criminal should be confined in his proper hospital—a prison—and if incurable should be detained until his death. Like phthisis or other hereditary disease, the criminal disposition would in the end cease to be inherited, if all who were tainted with it were compelled to live and die childless. The remedy may be painful, and even cruel, but perhaps greater cruelty and greater pain may be inflicted by the neglect which leaves physical and social ills to spread themselves unchecked.”

Many of the innate criminals, and those who have committed crime rather from the effect of want, or bad example, than from any inherent tendency, sooner or later fall upon the parish. Within the same wards of the poorhouse, or receiving the same out-door relief, we find this criminal class together with the incapables and deserving poor. This is, indeed, a most unfortunate state of things, for we are bound to draw a strong line of demarcation between those, on the one hand, who are in want through acquired habits of idleness, those who are innately incapable, and those, on the other hand, who are afflicted during their lifetime by sickness, adversity, or old age. We habitually speak of these classes as “the poor,” and the unfortunate use of this term as a common description of totally distinct conditions has led to most undesirable consequences.

Our Unfortunate Use of the Word “Poor.”

With us everyone who has not sufficient means of subsistence we term “poor,” we assist them out of the public purse, and we consider that in so doing we obey Christian teaching. This theory and its practice are due to a slovenly habit of mind, and perhaps also to an incomplete acquaintance with Scriptural teaching. The “poor” of Bible language means obviously the deserving and unfortunate, probably the incapable, but certainly not the habitually idle and vicious. We are not led simply to infer this, for there are positive statements to this effect. St. Paul said: “If any man will not work neither shall he eat,”[24] and again: “He that doth not provide for his own house is worse than an infidel.”[25]

The Unfortunate, the Aged, the Incapables, and the Vicious, are treated alike.

Our forefathers were more discriminating in this respect than we are, and even in the reign of Henry VIII. the line was drawn between “poor, impotent, sick, and diseased folk, the sick in very deed and not able to work, who may be provided for, holpen and relieved, and such as be strong and lusty, who, having their limbs strong enough to labour, may be daily kept in continual labour whereby everyone of them may get their living with their own hands.” If, however, we look a little closer into the matter we shall be able to recognise at least three quite distinct classes of persons grouped together under the term “poor,” and all of whom are treated by the community very much on an equality. As we shall presently see, the rough and ready way in which we view these three groups has led to gross cruelty and injustice on the one hand, and to ill-advised assistance and help on the other.

Within the same rooms and wards of the poorhouse, or receiving assistance under the same system of out-door relief, we find those who, from innate or acquired vice, form the criminal class, undistinguished from worthy and respectable men and women and their children, whose only fault was, perhaps, that their small savings over and above the necessities of their life had been spent too carelessly, or even had, perhaps, been invested in a society administered by dishonest men; we find widows and orphans of men who have died from accident or disease while in the course of regular and honourable employment. With these will be mixed the class we have especially to study—the incapables; a poor type, with physical and mental defects, such as insanity, epilepsy, and idiocy, and with these many vagrants must be included. Where laws or regulations are framed to deal with these three classes, as if they formed one natural class, the greatest injustice of necessity follows. The law-makers have to deal with the idle and vicious as well as with the deserving and distressed, and by grouping these classes together and framing regulations to apply to all, some are of necessity treated more kindly than they deserve, while others become the victims of unmerited brutality.

This fact was first brought forcibly home to me by a case in a north country poorhouse—a case which quite represents the present disgraceful method of treating those without means of subsistence. A woman, a soldier’s widow, whose husband and three sons (all soldiers) had been killed in active service, was left without relatives. She supported herself and lived soberly until old age, when feebleness and commencing gangrene of the foot compelled her to seek the poorhouse, where she died alone and unvisited by any friend. I saw her in the next bed to a drunken prostitute. The one woman had given of her body to the country’s defence, the other had given of her body to its ruin, and yet the country treated them both alike because they were alike in want of bread.

Lawyers and law-makers have tried, with limited success, to cope with these questions ever since the first Poor-law in 1601; they have failed, perhaps, because of their point of view and of approach. The physician, accustomed as he is to study his cases, each with their peculiar symptoms, and each with their appropriate methods of treatment, would, perhaps, have done better than his legal brother. We must look deeper than the mere surface, we must not be content to give bread and pass away, and feel that our duty is done.

Our Poor-law Regulations are at Fault.

In reference to the first class, those who are lazy and vicious, and will not work although capable of it, we have to remember that the community is itself to some extent to blame for the present state of things.

Before 1834, the Poor-law in country districts habitually supplied the unemployed with what was considered a sufficiency, and those who maintained themselves by independent industry and capacity often fared worse than those in receipt of regular Poor-law aid. “Poor is the diet of the pauper, poorer is the diet of the small ratepayer, and poorest is the diet of the independent labourer,” remarked a witness in the Poor-law Commissioners’ Report of 1834. It cannot be denied, therefore, that there is a certain want of independence (especially perhaps in rural districts) engendered by methods of relief administered in past times. As a result of this, those without physical and mental disqualification for work fall back on the Poor-law for relief in time of distress, and, counting on the certainty of this relief, are less strenuous in their efforts to provide against the evil hour. Vice, too, is increased in those who know that during the incapacity which may follow its exercise the workhouse door is open to them, and that food and shelter are to be had between the intervals of each debauch.

It was for the benefit of the sickly, the aged and other really deserving poor, that organised charity came into existence, but it too often has been the lazy and vicious who have profited thereby.

The Idle and Vicious are Subjects for the Criminal Law.

But though society has made so great a mistake in the past, it is no reason that this system should continue. And that it should do so is inadvisable, both in the interests of the ratepayers and in the interests of those upon whom the rates are spent.

The poor-rates are generally paid with extreme reluctance, whereas were it felt that they were to be props to the aged and needy, this reluctance would largely vanish. People are generous enough—witness the cordial support universally given to supplementary charities—but few pay their poor-rates willingly, for they know that in most cases these rates go to the support of the drunken, vicious and lazy. As to the paupers themselves, not only would increased funds be at the disposal of the deserving poor, but the moral atmosphere of the poorhouse and relieving office would be altogether purged by the exclusion of the sturdy beggars, of those who are able-bodied, but idle and vicious, who should be placed apart and treated under separate regulations. They are subjects for the police and for the criminal law; as outcasts from humanity, we may endeavour to reclaim them, but whilst unreclaimed, let them feel the full effects of their misconduct. The prison cell is warmer than the rock cranny or pit in which the primitive Briton sheltered himself, and the prison fare is better than was his food. Why, then, should the idle and reprobate vagabond receive the advantages of a civilisation built up by the busy toil of those around him, a toil in which he will take no part?

To this class we may, if we will, offer work, but in offering bread, we undertake a greater responsibility than we perhaps are aware of. Food and clothing means the power to live and marry, and as there are limits to everyone’s resources, when we give anything, even a penny to a passing beggar, we are giving some of this power, we are taking upon ourselves the responsibility of “selecting,” and are influencing this selection, let it be in never so small a degree. We are playing with humanity the part of the gardener with his flowers, or the farmer with his stock.

This is a very high function, and a difficult one to perform judiciously, yet we all of us presume to exercise it without thought or training. There can be no doubt that the lawgivers responsible for the present condition of public charity, and private individuals who assist cases whose thorough investigation they have been too lazy to take up, are in part responsible for the perpetuation of the criminal classes in the community.

The Poor in very Deed.

If we place the vicious and idle, though capable, pauper on one side, in a class by himself—a criminal class—we can deal fairly and reasonably with the other two classes.

Under the varying conditions of life some people are hardly pressed upon, and the burden is light upon other persons’ shoulders. Our conditions of life, although perhaps selective in the main, are by no means uniformly so, and thus it happens that the amount of money in a man’s pocket is no certain criterion of even his capacity to make it. Especially in a community such as ours, where men pass in a lifetime from poverty to riches or the reverse, and often as a result of surrounding conditions over which they have no control, we may have stupidity and vice reposing sumptuously on inlaid Florentine, while intelligence and virtue are seated on rush-bottom. As I hope to bring out shortly, there is too little selective influence in a civilised state. Some of our old aristocratic families were headed no doubt by men of great capacity at their commencement, but it was the organisation of Romish civilisation that gave them the conquest over their worse organised fellow-kinsmen settled in England. Blood for blood, innate quality for innate quality, there was little to choose between them, yet circumstances made one the villein and the other the lord. Selective influences that might have operated in a savage community have been kept in abeyance to a great measure by inherited property and class distinction; and though, fortunately, good men are continually rising, and vicious, idle men are falling, yet this is to a great extent kept in check. Thus we find in the lower class many men and women of excellent physique and mental capacity doing in their lives as much as can be expected from anybody. From the biological point of view—that of blood, bone, muscle and brain, a view which we, in our biological study, are bound to take—the lower labouring class is little inferior in quality, whilst they exceed in numbers the upper and middle classes. From the changing conditions of life (conditions that are not uniform in any class) they especially suffer, for they are nearer the limit which, if passed, means deprivation of that which is necessary.

Our Misguided Attitude to these.

We have, therefore, no right to assume that when we find destitution around us the destitute are of necessity more to blame in their lives than we are in ours. They may have been hardworking and provident, and yet have fallen victims to want. Any note of condescension in our attitude towards this class is an impertinence of the grossest nature, and it is our duty, if we help at all, to do so as one brother to another, simply and naturally. The recipients of help should be allowed to feel that they are receiving only what they would themselves be prepared to give; that they should receive it, not as a dole to be eaten in bitterness, but as a friend’s gift to be enjoyed.

In these cases we are far too apt to stand aloof and do nothing, or to interfere only when it is too late, so that while the very scum of the criminal classes are being supported, worthy members of society are allowed to pass through circumstances of the utmost distress without a helping hand. The numberless stories, many of them undoubtedly true, of the large sums yearly made by well got-up begging swindlers, show how little our emotions are guided by our reasoning faculties. We are too prone to give when our feelings get a shock, and we are too often incapable of acting in anticipation of a catastrophe which is not already before our eyes. How many there are around us in difficulty, who, with some judicious help, might themselves regain prosperity. Too often we wait till it is too late, till all is practically lost—till, in fact, our “feelings” have been sufficiently acted upon.

The Incapables.

While the first of the classes into which we have divided the “poor” are destitute as the result of vicious training, and the second from the hardships of their special surroundings, the third class are destitute from innate incapacity. To the idiots, insane, epileptics and others suffering from severe constitutional defects, there must be added the vagrants who will not, because they cannot, do regular work. I say “cannot,” for I believe the vagrant class forms an interesting and ill-understood body by themselves. They fill our workhouses, to which they crowd in inclement weather, leaving the towns for the country in spring, and returning to them in autumn. They sleep in barns, under ricks or hedges, and live on what they can find or beg or steal. They marry and have children, who are often a source of profit from the increased charity they bring. Give them a spade to dig, a hammer with which to break stones, or a garden to weed, and they tire of the constantly repeated action, be it ever so simple; complex manipulations, or tasks requiring forethought or attention, are for them quite out of the question. They will keep rooks out of the fields, tramp after bulrushes, or trap a rabbit, but an unexciting occupation with a result not immediately attainable is to them unendurable. We can hardly fail to see in this class, in many cases, the direct descendants of our more savage ancestors, who most probably never mingled in the streams of civilisation that have flowed by their side. They have continued to exist by the primitive and precarious means adopted by early men to gain their livelihood. Charity, firstly of the monastery, and secondly of the Poor-law, has kept them alive, and we have them by our side to-day.