Social process

SURVIVAL

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT—THEIR DISTINCTIVE FUNCTIONS—THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF HUMAN HEREDITY—INTERACTION OF THE TWO PROCESSES—POSSIBLE ANTAGONISM—THE MORAL ASPECT—PRACTICAL DIFFICULTY OF DISTINGUISHING THE TWO—FUTILITY OF THE USUAL CONTROVERSY

In a large view, heredity and environment are not opposing influences, as is commonly imagined, but complementary and co-operating organs of life, each having its appropriate part to play in the great whole. They are like man and woman, in that the question regarding them is not which is greater or more indispensable, but just what are their respective functions, and how do they or should they work together. Those men of science who, lacking comprehensive views, have stated the problem as one of “nature versus nurture” have merely fallen in with the popular misapprehension. It is quite as if they had stated the problem of the family as one of man versus woman.

Heredity gives some men an ambitious spirit, and this is neither more nor less important than the direction their ambition takes, which is a matter of environment; they are different kinds of things and cannot well be weighed against each other. No more was the military talent, let us say, of General Grant more or less important to his life than the outbreak of the Civil War, which gave it a chance to develop.

We have to do with two processes, or two branches of a common process, going on side by side, and each contributing in its way to the total movement of organic life. In the case of the biological process or branch the material vehicle of life is the germ-plasm, a special kind of cells set apart for the transmission of hereditary types. In this there is a complex mingling and development of tendencies in accordance with laws of heredity which are as yet obscure. The social phase of the process takes place through the medium of psychical communication, the vehicle being language, in the widest sense of the word, including writing, printing, and every means for the transmission of thought. Through this, social types are propagated somewhat as biological types are believed to be in the germ-plasm. In each of these mediums there is a kind of growth, of selection, of adaptation of types to one another, and of survival of some at the expense of others. It should be our aim to see the two as organs of a common whole and to explain how they are related to each other.

The best way to get this larger view, probably, is to consider the evolution of the matter and note how heredity and environment, as we see them working in man, have developed from lower forms of life. Among animals and plants the actions that enable a living being to cope with its surroundings and thus survive are secured mainly by heredity, and come into the world ready-made, as it were, with little or no need to be fashioned by a supplementary social process. Animal conduct, as broadly contrasted with human, is a system of fixed hereditary responses to fixed stimuli; the instinct is like a hand-organ which will play certain tunes whenever you turn the crank, and will play no others no matter what you do. If this predetermined reaction meets the needs of life, if the tune is in harmony with events, the life of the organism is furthered. But this can scarcely be unless the conditions of life have been nearly uniform through many generations, so that the instinctive mechanism has had time to become adjusted to them by a series of survivals and eliminations, such as is required for “natural selection.” If a newly hatched chick has come to have the instinct to pick up and swallow small objects of a certain appearance, this implies that such objects, for ages past, have on the whole proved to be digestible and supported life; if they ceased to do so the race of chickens, I suppose, would die out.

The distinctive thing in human evolution, on the other hand, is the development of a process which is not fixed but plastic, which adapts itself directly to each particular situation, and is capable of an indefinite number of appropriate and successful modes of action. This happy result involves a change in the hereditary process, as well as the rise of a new process to supplement it. The hereditary tendencies, instead of remaining definite and fixed, have to become vague and plastic in order that they may be moulded into the infinitely various forms of human conduct. The hand-organ has to become a piano, which will yield no tune at all except under the touch of a trained player, but under such a touch is capable of infinite melody.

The player, to carry out the analogy, is the human intelligence trained by working with the social environment. This is the agent through which situations are understood and hereditary tendencies organized to meet them. The instinctive life is no longer a mere mechanism as—comparatively at least—it was before, but a plastic thing with a mind to guide it. And this new, distinctively human process implies a complex social life, with a system of communication, tradition, and education; because it is through these that intelligence is enabled to develop and to organize its control.

The human process, then, involves a plastic heredity prepared to submit itself to the guidance of environment as interpreted by intelligence. The distinctively human heredity is not an inborn tendency to do definite things, but an inborn aptitude to learn to do whatever things the situation may call for.

Just what is it, then, that we owe to heredity? In general it is capacity, or, more exactly, lines of teachability. We must depend upon the environment to stimulate and define this capacity, to supply teaching along these lines. When we say that a child is a born musician we mean, not that he can play or compose by nature alone, but that if he has the right kind of teaching he can rapidly develop power in this direction. In this sense, and in no other, a man may be a born lawyer, or teacher, or poet, or, if you please, a born counterfeiter or burglar.

Suppose that twin children are born with precisely the same hereditary tendencies, and that one of these is carried off and brought up in a French family, while the other remains with its parents in America: how would they be alike, and how different? Presumably their temperaments, as energetic or sluggish, and their general lines of ability, so far as these found any encouragement, would remain similar. But all definite development would depend upon the environment. The former child would speak French and not English; if he developed ambition the objects of it would be suggested by the life around him, his whole system of ideas would be French, he would enter body and soul into the social process of France. And so it would be if he were taken to Germany, or China.

A good heredity is something very different from hereditary goodness, in the sense of good conduct. The latter does not exist, while the former is simply an inheritance of lines of capacity corresponding to the chief lines of human function; a good raw material for social influence to work up, just as sound timber is good for houses, ships, or what-not. And this sort of heredity is a condition of biological survival because it alone makes possible the education of individuals and their organization into those plastic social wholes, with innumerable special functions, upon which the life and power of man is based.

Along with this plastic heredity and inseparable from it we have the social process, which does not antagonize the biological process, or supplant it, but utilizes the change in its character to add a new world of psychical interaction and growth. Like the older process it is continuous through the ages, and builds up vast organic wholes, of which the individual may seem only an insignificant detail. As we have biological types, on the one hand, so, on the other, we now have types of culture and institutions.

Thus the life of humanity comes to be a single vital process having two parallel and interdependent subprocesses, the hereditary and the social. Each of these has a sphere of its own, that of heredity being, in general, the production of physical and mental aptitude, and that of society the creation, by the aid of this aptitude, of a progressing social order.

Each system acts selectively upon the other, determining what will work and what will not. Hereditary types must in some way fit into the social conditions or they cannot propagate themselves and must disappear. If a man cannot, by hook or crook, manage to raise a family, that part of the hereditary stream which flows in him is lost, and the type he represents declines. In like manner, if a race, or a national stock, does not succeed in developing such forms of personality and social organization as to enable it to keep a footing and multiply its kind in the actual conditions of life, it must diminish. The social organization sets standards of fitness which the biological process must meet.

It is equally true, on the other hand, that the biological type acts selectively in determining what social ideas and institutions will work, and how. You may give the same lecture to a hundred students, but what each one makes of it will depend, in part, on his natural gifts. Or you may plant the same ideas of free government among the Americans, the Swiss, the French, the people of the Argentine, and the Liberian Negroes; but their growth will be very different, partly, again, because of a difference in hereditary capacity.

If we wish for analogies to illustrate this relation we must look for them among other cases of distinct but complementary organisms living together in interaction and mutual adaptation, such as man and wife in the family, the nervous and alimentary systems in the body, the state and the church in the social system of mediæval Europe, or the national and State governments in the American commonwealth—organisms which may be regarded either as two or as one, according to the purpose in hand.

There may be a kind of conflict between the biological and the social currents of life, just as there may between almost any two factors in a co-operative whole. Men of genius, for example, rarely leave a normal number of descendants; they develop themselves socially at the expense of reproduction, though, if there is anything in Mr. Galton’s views, reproduction is, in their case, peculiarly desirable.^[51] The same is perhaps true in general of the more intellectual and ambitious types of men: it might be better for the race stock if they put more of their energy into raising families and less into social achievement. At least, this would be the immediate result: in the long run perhaps the social achievement will indirectly contribute to improve the stock.

A rather striking example of opposition is found in the monastic system. There is little doubt that this sprang from profound needs of the human spirit and, at its best, played a great part in the higher life. But if its social working was good its effect upon the race is believed to have been detrimental, since for centuries it selected the most intellectual and aspiring men and prevented their leaving offspring. Just as hereditary stocks may flourish although bad for society, so social movements may prosper that are bad for heredity.

The practical truth of the matter, from a moral standpoint, may largely be contained in the statement that we get capacity from heredity, conduct from society. The critical thing in the latter is the use that is made of hereditary powers, whether they are to work upward or downward, as judged by social standards. While it is true that no amount or kind of education will take the place of initial capacity, it is true also that there is no source of right development and function except social teaching; the best heredity is powerless in this regard.

The question of crime offers good illustrations. There are kinds of crime which depend upon defective heredity, because they involve incapacity to acquire normal social functions. It is easier to discriminate these in theory than in practice, but it is well known that a considerable portion of our criminals are feeble-minded or ill balanced. But if a criminal has normal capacity, as the majority have, we must attribute his degeneracy to the fact that he has come under worse social influences rather than better. And the more ability he has, the more pernicious a criminal he makes. The same division may be made in any line of human function; we can never dispense with capacity, but there is no capacity of which we may not make a bad use.

While the theory of the matter is not difficult, when one approaches it in this way, the applications are obscure, simply because it is hard to get at the facts. That is, we ordinarily cannot tell with any precision what the original hereditary outfit was, and just how it was developed by social influences. Even if we could study every child at birth it would not help us much, because, although the heredity is there, we have no art to know what it is until it works out in life, and it works out only in social development. Practically the two factors are always found in co-operation, and our knowledge that they are separable is largely derived from the lower forms of life where the social process is absent.

It is often possible, however, to reach useful conclusions from indirect evidence. If, for example, hereditary stocks which are not remarkable for crime and vice in one environment rapidly become so in another, we may believe that the environment is the factor most in need of correction. This is the case with the immigrant population in our badly governed cities. On the other hand, if we find that individuals of a certain stock generally turn out ill, no matter in what conditions they may be placed, the argument for bad heredity is strong. This applies to many studies of degenerate lines, for which Dugdale’s work on The Jukes set the example.

Where the matter is in doubt, as it must be in most cases, our line of action would seem to be somewhat as follows: If we are trying to better the conduct of living men and women, whose heredity, for better or worse, is already determined, we must proceed on the theory that environment is to blame, and try to better that. But if we are dealing with conditions that affect propagation, we should lean the other way. I mean that, if we find people living in a degeneracy which cannot clearly be ascribed to anything exceptional in the environment, we ought to hold the stock suspect, and prevent its propagation if we can. The cause that we have power over is always the one to emphasize.

The popular discussions of this matter proceed, for the most part, from a misapprehension of its nature. Heredity and environment are usually conceived as rival claimants to the control of life, and argument consists in urging the importance of one or the other, very much as boys’ debating societies sometimes discuss the question whether Washington or Lincoln was the greater man.

The views of even scientific men on this point have been for the most part crude and one-sided, owing chiefly to the fact that they have approached it from the standpoint of a specialty and without sound general conceptions. Biologists are apt to regard the stream of heredity as the great thing, and the social process as quite a secondary matter, important mainly as the means of a eugenic propaganda.^[52] Sociologists, on the other hand, naturally exalt the process with which they are familiar, and seldom admit that the other is of equal moment. Both sides often seem to share the popular view that heredity and environment, society and the germ-plasm, are in some way opposites, so that whatever is granted to the one must be taken from the other.

Most of the writers on eugenics have been biologists or physicians who have never acquired that point of view which sees in society a psychological organism with a life process of its own. They have thought of human heredity as a tendency to definite modes of conduct, and of environment as something that may aid or hinder, not remembering, what they might have learned even from Darwin, that heredity takes on a distinctively human character only by renouncing, as it were, the function of predetermined adaptation and becoming plastic to the environment. In this state of mind they are capable of expressions like the following, from reputable authors: “Our experience is that nature dominates nurture, and that inheritance is more vital than environment.” “Education is to the man what manure is to the pea.”

Writers of this school are apt to think they have proved their case when they have shown that environment cannot overcome heredity; but this is as if one should argue that because a wife retains a personality of her own she must have conquered her husband. No doubt, what we get in the germ-cell is ours for life, and environment can only control, or perhaps suppress, its development. But it is equally true that heredity cannot overcome environment. If a man grows up in England no heredity will enable him to speak Chinese; and in general he must build up his life out of the arts, customs, and ideas supplied him by society.

Equally extravagant statements may be found on the other side; to the effect, for example, that heredity has nothing to do with crime. Socialists are apt to scoff at heredity because they wish to fix attention upon capitalism and other economic factors. Evidently what is needed is a larger view on both parts.

I might say that this topic affords a kind of pons asinorum for one phase of sociology, a test problem to determine whether an applicant is capable of thinking clearly in this field. If so, then no one has crossed the bridge who is capable of asserting, as a general proposition, that heredity is more important or more powerful than environment, or vice versa.

Such views are examples of the particularism that is so rife in social discussion, and is the opposite of the organic conception, the latter recognizing that the phenomena form an interdependent whole, every part of which is a cause of all the other parts. The particularist follows the line of causation from one point and in one direction from that point; the organic thinker sees the necessity of following it from many points and in all directions.

The lack of a good nomenclature is a serious bar to clear thinking upon these matters. How can we differentiate the biological and social processes when nearly all the words in general use may mean either? Although “heredity” is coming to be understood chiefly in a biological sense, there is a far older usage in the sense of social heirship, which is established in law, and not likely to be abandoned. And the noun “inheritance,” the verb “to inherit,” the adjectives “hereditary” and “inheritable” are used indiscriminately and smother the distinction. It would seem that the biologists, as the later comers, may fairly be called upon to give us new terms for the process they are bringing to light.

ACTION OF THE SOCIAL ORDER ON SURVIVAL—SIZE OF A NORMAL FAMILY—SOCIAL CHECKS ON THE IMPULSE TO PROPAGATION—THE FAMILY LINE AS AN IDEAL—FACTORS IN MARRIAGE SELECTION—INFLUENCE OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT—UNSETTLED CONDITIONS

All the hereditary types or strains in a given society may be said to be competing for survival, with the social system as the arbiter of success. That is, a type can hold its own only as its individuals can make themselves at home in the social environment and bring to maturity at least an average number of offspring to continue it. Thus, as regards merely physical needs, social conditions may involve either ample nutrition and protection or starvation and exposure to destructive climates and diseases. The wide-spread devastation of savage races in recent times is explained in part by the social events which have brought them in contact with European diseases and intoxicants, and there is an analogous condition in the destructive influences acting upon the very poor in all societies.

This, however, is only the more obvious part of the truth. More subtly the social condition determines how any hereditary type develops and whether it has a sort of life that is favorable to propagation. The whole process of survival is, from one point of view, a matter of social psychology. Psychological influences direct the development of the instincts, guiding the selection of one sex by the other, and of both by the social group.

The question just how a hereditary type must be related to the social system in order to survive cannot be answered in any simple way. It is not safe to say that the most successful types, in a social sense, have the best chance of survival; such types often tend to sterility. This may take place through the absorption of their energies in social activities at the expense of propagation; also through overfeeding or lack of incentive, leading to moral decay. Nor do the types that fail socially necessarily fail to propagate, since traits like lack of foresight, which diminish success, may increase the number of offspring.

In order that a hereditary type may survive equally with others the individuals belonging to it must bring to maturity at least as many children, in proportion to their number, as those of other types. It is not sufficient that those having children should rear enough of them to replace the parents; they must also compensate for several sources of loss. A considerable proportion of persons, from lack of vitality or other reasons, do not marry, or, being married, have no children, or lose those they have by early death. And, beyond this, there must be enough surplus of children to give the type they represent its share in the general increase of population.

The failure of a part of the individuals of good stock to leave children is not necessarily a fault: in some degree it is an elimination of the weak that is essential to the welfare of the stock, whose vigor is not the same in all. Many of the celibate or sterile are such because they lack normal vitality. I think we can all find in our own circle of acquaintance people of excellent descent who are healthy enough, perhaps, but seem to lack that surplus of life which would make us feel that they are born to be fathers or mothers. At any rate, others must do what, for no matter what reason, they fail to do.

Just how many offspring the average family must have to meet these requirements is not easy to calculate precisely, as the number varies with the death-rate, the proportion of celibates and barren marriages, the rate of general increase and other factors. I have consulted several statistical experts, but found none of them willing to make a definite estimate for the United States. I should say, roughly, that a stock cannot hold its own in numbers with an average of less than four children to a fertile marriage, and considering the large general rate of increase in this country, five would probably be nearer the mark. A family of three children or less, where the parents are of good descent and, physically and as regards income, capable of having more, must be reckoned a “race-suicide” family, not doing its share in keeping up the stock.

It was formerly assumed that the impulse to propagation, in human as in animal types, was to be taken for granted, the only question being how far the economic conditions would allow this impulse to become effective. A closer study shows that the control of society begins further back, and can easily modify the development of the instincts themselves in such a way that they cease to impel natural increase. Gratification of the sexual impulses may be separated from reproduction, and it may well come to pass that the classes in which they have the fullest sway are the least prolific. The maternal instinct, though less apt to lapse into sensuality, is not much more certain in its operation. It may expend itself on one or two children, or even be directed to other objects.

Modern conditions tend strongly to what is called birth-control, that is, to making the number of children a matter of intention, and not of mere physiology. This is in accord with the general increase of choice, and we may hope that it will work out well in the long run, but it calls for a new conscience and a new intelligence in this connection. The old process did not require that people should know anything about eugenics, or feel the duty of raising a good-sized family; that was left to unconscious forces; but now that they are coming to have no more children than they want, it is evident that, unless those who represent the better strains want the requisite number, such strains must decline. And as birth-control prevails most in the intelligent classes, the possibility of deterioration is manifest. Only eugenic ideals and conduct can save from depletion those stocks which share most fully in the currents of progress.

The fact that intelligence saves on the death-rate and enables the type to be maintained by a smaller number of births is of some moment, but we must not imagine that any saving of this sort will enable families of two or three children to keep up a thriving stock.

There seems to be some disposition to blink the quantitative side of this problem, especially, perhaps, among women, upon whom the hardships and anxieties of rearing children mainly fall. They are apt to be more interested in taking better care of children than in having more of them. And yet, from the standpoint of race welfare, and having regard to the actual state of things in the well-to-do classes, the number is pretty clearly the more urgent matter of the two. If the maternal instinct expends itself upon solicitude for one or two or even three children, refusing a larger number, it becomes accessory to the decline of the type. It is mere confusion of thought to suppose that, in this matter, quality can make up for lack of quantity.

And, so far as quality is concerned, there is good reason to think that where the parents are not in actual poverty a family of four children or more, large enough to create a vigorous group life, is better for the development of a child than one of two or three.

It seems that what we mainly need in this connection is some resuscitation, in a changed form, of the old ideal of the family line. We have, from this point of view, gone too far in differentiating the individual from his kin, having almost ceased to identify ourselves with our ancestors or descendants, and to find self-expression in the size and importance of the family group. People hardly comprehend any longer the sentiment, quite general until within a century or two, that a man’s position and repute were one with that of a continuing stock whose traits were imputed to him as a matter of course. We no longer introduce ourselves, as in Homer, by naming our descent, or rely upon our posterity for credit. We cannot lose the sense of race without impairing the fact of race.

I know that precisely this sense has been one of the main obstacles to democracy, equality of opportunity, and the whole modern movement, so that public opinion has come to identify it with reaction. Nor do I think that the danger from it is altogether past. Nevertheless, progress is to be had not by abandoning old ideals altogether, but by their control and adaptation; and the race sentiment still has essential functions. Where it flourishes success and fecundity tend to go together: the stocks that gain social power and resource express these, in part, by leaving a numerous offspring. And in so far as the successful stocks are the better stocks, this means race-improvement.

If we assume, notwithstanding the foregoing, that marriage is, on the whole, a step toward propagation, we arrive at the question of selection in marriage. Any type of man or woman that is to hold its own in heredity must be qualified to secure the co-operation of the other sex in this relation.

The choice of the sexes in marriage is in great part an expression of the values prevalent in the social group at large. It is impracticable to separate the individual judgment from that of society. This is evidently true where, as is so widely the case, marriages are based on wealth, social position, or success in any of the forms admired by the group. The valuation of a suitor, in the mind of a girl’s family, and even in the mind of the girl herself, is largely a function of his valuation by other people, and the same is true for the woman, whose reputation, wealth, and capacity as a housewife are important factors in her desirability. Even in the matter of sexual attraction there is a large conventional element. We know how women are dazzled by prestige and position on the part of men, while “style” and the like are almost equally effective in their own case. The sexual emotions function in connection with the mind as a whole, and that is moulded by the general mind of the group. It is certain, however, that although sexual value is largely an institutional value there is also a factor of immediate human nature in it. I mean that there are, on both sides, vague but powerful elements of sex attraction that spring from instinct and are little subject to convention. It is hard to say just what these are, but we all feel them in the other sex, and no one doubts that they come from an immemorial evolution.

The tendency of the modern movement toward individuality and personal choice has been to give freer play to preference in the man and woman who are to marry, increasing the influence of the human-nature values and rendering marriage, on the whole, more intimate and congenial. This ought to make for the propagation of manly types of men and womanly types of women, types strongly vital and sexual after their several kinds. It really seems to work in this way, though the vagaries of personal choice may often be inscrutable.

It is still true, however, that the outcome must depend much upon the state of the public mind. If marriage is generally felt to be a social institution, with grave public functions, so that everything connected with it is judged by its bearing on the welfare of the next generation, if heredity is regarded and the need of economic support given due weight, without excluding those intuitions which the young may be trusted not to neglect, then the better types ought to be chosen. But if marriage is hasty and frivolous, if the prevalent opinion regards it as a mere matter of personal gratification, if a child is looked upon as a nuisance or a pet, then the biological outlook, as well as the social, is bad. Which of these descriptions more nearly applies to our society I leave the reader to judge; it is certain that we need to do all we can to make the former true.

As to the effect of a larger participation by women in forming our ideas regarding marriage selection, the number of children and the like, all depends upon their developing, as a class, an organized wisdom in these matters. Already they have more power in this sphere than they ever had before, and the hope of their making a good use of it lies in their ideals and organization. If the results of their enlargement are, so far, not altogether reassuring, if there is much that seems anarchical and reckless of race welfare in feminist tendencies, this may be because we are in a transition state. Women have acquired power while still somewhat unprepared to use it, and what they need is probably more responsibility along with the training requisite to meet it. It is not clear that there is any more extravagance in their movement than in those for which men are responsible.

The hopeful theory is that women, as the bearers of maternal instinct and functions, are the natural curators of the welfare of the race, and that, if they are trained and trusted, they will prove adequate to this function. We must at least admit that it is hard to see any other way out. They have already so much freedom that it is hardly possible to deny them more, in this direction where they have so strong a claim upon it. Eugenics cannot now be forced upon them; if they do not bring it in, or take a leading part in the work, no other agency can.

Another encouraging reflection is that there is no reason to believe that women will, in the long run, reject any real wisdom that the male mind may be able to contribute.

I am inclined to believe that much of the frivolity that seems to prevail in marriage selection may be ascribed to a disorganization of standards, such as we see in other phases of life. A confused time naturally lacks settled habits of choice that reflect the underlying social requirements. Where mores are unformed, caprice flourishes. In a society or class that has long been face to face with rather severe conditions of life, such, for example, as the peasantry of all old countries, we find customs and habits of thought that are suited to survival in the face of such conditions. The personal traits that the situation demands have come to be required in marriage—strength, energy, and steadfastness in men, and maternal and domestic capacity in women. These traits become typical of the class, and traits that conflict with them are weeded out. But with us unsettled conditions and laxity of standards have given course to mere impulse or meaningless currents of fashion. There is such a thing as biological discipline, in which we are perhaps as lacking as in social.

INCOME AND PROPAGATION IN THE WELL-TO-DO CLASS—CIVILIZATION AND RACE EXHAUSTION—DOES SUCCESS INDICATE EUGENIC VALUE?—THE INTERMEDIATE CLASS OR “PLAIN PEOPLE”

In order to discuss the economic factors affecting the propagation of different types of men it may be well to divide the population roughly into three classes: the well-to-do at one extreme, those in actual want at the other, and the vast intermediate class who come under neither description. Such a division is arbitrary, but may serve to indicate certain influences bearing upon our question. Let us include in the first, families whose income is $2,000 or more, in the second, those whose income is less than $600, and in the third, families whose income is between these amounts.^[54]

The first class is the successful class, judged by pecuniary standards, and includes not only prosperous business men, but the better paid of the professional class, and of men living on salaries. The prevailing tendency in this part of society, subject of course to many exceptions and modifications, appears to be to sacrifice the size of the family to other interests. This is the class which easily forms habits of luxury, and develops costly and exacting ideals regarding the nurture and education of its children. For the money spent upon them no pecuniary return is expected, and the hardship and responsibility inseparable from the rearing of a family appear greater by contrast with habits of ease. It is also in this class that personal choice is most cultivated, and the sophistication that applies this to limiting the number of children, so that, although the death-rate is low, the birth-rate is scarcely sufficient to offset it. Relatively to other and more prolific parts of the population the stocks represented in this class may be regarded as tending to decline.^[55]

The biological significance of this depends upon the value of these stocks, upon what distinctive biological traits, if any, are to be found in well-to-do families as a group. The prevalent view among eugenic writers, led by Galton, has been that the successful class, on the whole, represents the ablest stocks, and that eugenic progress depends mainly upon securing a high rate of increase among them. Galton himself held that all other eugenic aims were of secondary importance. It should be noted, however, that he did not propose to measure success merely by income, but rather by established reputation among the group best able to judge of a particular kind of merit. His eugenic aristocracy would consist, for example, of those lawyers, artists, men of letters, men of science, and even of those skilled artisans, who are regarded by their colleagues as able men of their kind. The business group would no doubt be included but would not be allowed an importance at all corresponding to its wealth. At the apex of this aristocracy would be men of genius, the test of genius being great and enduring reputation.^[56]

This view of the eugenic superiority of the successful class, in conjunction with the smallness of the families in this class, has led to pessimistic views regarding the future of the race. Some writers hold that civilization necessarily exhausts a stock, that such exhaustion has been the main cause of the decay of great nations in the past, and that the process was never so rapid as in our own time. Others think that, although the decline is real, it has not yet gone very far, and that we may be saved from it by a rational eugenics.

The argument that civilization, especially modern civilization, tends to race deterioration is simple and, to say the least, plausible. Civilization selects the best stocks and uses them up. The ablest types of men, incited by ambition, achieve success and carry on the more intellectual and exhausting functions of the social order. At the same time their success subjects them to the upper-class conditions of luxury and exacting ideals. The result is infecundity of the successful class, and of the superior stocks which it represents. The best grain is eaten and the next crop raised from inferior seed.

This process may be peculiarly rapid in a democracy like ours, because it is our tendency, and indeed our ideal, to make the rise of natural ability as free and rapid as possible. When life in general was traditional, functions inherited or customary, and opportunity confined to a few, the process by which natural ability rose to the top and evaporated was slow and uncertain. But now, with our universal spurring of ambition, our racial resources are rapidly spent, and, short of a change in the ideals and way of life of the successful class, it is not apparent how they can be saved.^[57]

The opinion upon which all this depends, that the successful class represents the best stocks, is, however, open to question. One criticism of it is that opportunity and success are still mainly a matter of privilege rather than of natural ability; and many assert that in spite of our ideal of equal opportunity the ascendancy of privilege is increasing, and that nothing short of a revolution can overthrow it. If this view is at all correct it undermines the whole idea that the present successful class represents an aristocracy of natural ability, or has especial eugenic significance of any kind.

It is worth noting, however, that one may allow much present dominance of privilege, but hold that, in spite of it, there is a continuous flow of able stocks toward the top, so that the upper strata probably have a considerable eugenic superiority. And if we believe that improvements in education are increasing opportunity as against privilege, this superiority should be growing. In that case it would be a great object to insure fecundity in these strata.

Another line of criticism would question whether the hereditary traits that make for success, as we now understand it, are after all the ones we need to increase. Many feel a lively dissatisfaction with the people who rule our economic and political institutions; they are criticised as selfish, unsocial, predatory. “The successful man, it is alleged, is not a success.” Indeed, as a matter of theory, it is by no means clear that those who gain the economic prizes are those who are doing most for the welfare of the race. The question might be put in this way: Is not the desirable type the Christian type, using the term to designate those who are swayed by a large fellow-feeling? And is the successful type conspicuously Christian? The affirmative of this does not seem very evident. “Many that are first shall be last.”

Besides selfish ambition, there are other traits that might push a man upward but not be desirable to increase. Is not the successful class deficient in domestic impulses? They appear to be unprolific, and this may indicate that the instincts are weak, causing the sacrifice of family life to ambition. Perhaps the infecundity of this class is only the wholesome elimination of an unsocial type. The best type of man may be too broadly human for economic success.

On the other hand, there is good sense in the view that success is usually attained by qualities of general value, such as energy, initiative, tenacity, and intelligence; and that, so far as it is accompanied by selfishness, lack of domesticity, and the like, we may ascribe this rather to environment than to any defect in the hereditary type. There is much in success to make a man selfish.

The eugenic superiority of the upper economic class may also be questioned on the ground that the conditions for maintaining a superior stock are not so good in this class as in a less prosperous part of society. The tests are not so rigid; people who are supported by inherited wealth may raise families whether they have shown any natural ability or not. Their position is somewhat like that of the chronic paupers at the other economic extreme, who raise degenerate families by the aid of charity. Certainly there are many marriages of the sons and daughters of the rich which do not seem based on personal merit, either biologic or social.

I suppose the reader will feel, as I do, that it is hardly possible, in view of these conflicting considerations, to form any precise idea of the relative eugenic value of the upper economic class. My own impression, derived mainly from general observation, is that it does, after all, contain a large number of exceptionally able families, many of which are becoming unprolific under the influences of prosperity. If we can increase the fecundity of such families by diffusing a higher sense of race obligation we shall be doing excellent work for the next generation.

If we embrace in the intermediate class those who maintain themselves in tolerable comfort, but only by steady work and close economy, never being able to accumulate much surplus, it is by far the largest class of the three, and one in which the conditions of survival seem favorable to the increase of good types. The excess of births over deaths is greater than among the upper class, on the one hand, or among the misery class on the other.

The measure of success attained requires solid qualities, such as intelligence and tenacity, in as great measure, often, as a more brilliant career; and as there is no inherited “independence,” these must be kept in constant operation. Helpmates and “good providers” are appreciated in marriage, though sexual intuitions also play a large part. Domestic sentiment is strong and seldom overshadowed by extravagant ambition.

It seems that the selection of types and the maintenance of a sound eugenic standard—so far as it is maintained—is chiefly accomplished here. Writers on eugenics have given most of their attention to extremes, as Galton in his work on Hereditary Genius, and Dugdale and later writers in monographs on degenerate families; but while conditions in these extremes are important they probably count less than those in the far more numerous intermediate class. Galton’s argument that the paramount eugenic object is to increase the fecundity of the highly successful types rests entirely upon his premise that these types have an all-around superiority proportionate to their success. If we reject this and deny that it is possible to locate the source of future supermen in a small class, then the “plain people” deserve our chief attention. The type of man that can and will raise a family under medium conditions is the type that must prevail in numbers, and there is little reason to doubt that this is, on the whole, a good type, or rather a variety of good types. The mass of men we wish to be, first of all, well-proportioned in mind and body, with health, sound nerves, intelligence, perseverance, adaptability, and strong social impulses. All these are qualities favorable to normal success and fecundity.

The higher evolution of the hereditary type is also, in my judgment, to be looked for mainly through the slow working of the requirements for mediocre success. If the conditions of life are changing in such a manner as to require greater intelligence, initiative, stability, and force of character, as it seems to me likely that they are, it would seem that these traits, so far as they are hereditary, should be increased by the process of selection actually going on. In this way we may hope that the human stock will improve in the future as it probably has in the past. A higher type of society develops a higher type of man to work it, biological as well as social. This view is somewhat speculative, as I am aware that there is no proof that the breed of men has changed at all during historic time,^[58] but it seems to me the most probable speculation.

And, as regards practical eugenics, I should say that one of our main aims should be to uphold the comparatively healthy influences dominant in the great intermediate class, as against the demoralizing ideals prevalent among the rich.