“The business of life is the transmission of the sacred torch of heredity undimmed to future generations. This is the most precious of all worths and values in the world.”

—G. Stanley Hall.

“The young people of the next and all succeeding generations must be taught the supreme sanctity of parenthood—that the highest profession and privilege they can aspire to is responsible fatherhood and motherhood.”

—C. W. Saleeby.

Solicitude for the Child as a Factor in Social Progress. The eugenic education of children is the real beginning. Parents can give to the little children in the home true ideals of parenthood, wholesome respect for maternity and paternity, training in the control of desires and appetites, a controlling sense of their personal and social responsibility, and true instruction regarding the origin and creation of life.

So to live that their children shall be strong and happy is a motive that a child can appreciate, and it can become the most powerful incentive for hygienic living, for industry, education, for social purity that is positive—noble in thought as well as restrictive in action. Trained thus through childhood, boys and girls will be prepared to meet with high-mindedness and moral stamina the storm and stress of adolescence; their ideals of sweetheart and lover will have a wholesome eugenic prejudice, and they will be prepared to discuss with dignity, scientific spirit, and reverence this significant phase of their future home life.

There is no essential contradiction between romantic love and eugenics. Indeed, sincere, deep and enduring love of parents for each other and for their children is an essential in a eugenic ideal. A young woman knows a hundred young men, but is in love with only one (or possibly none) because the others do not embody the ideal that she has fashioned. Every young man and woman has such an ideal, perhaps only vaguely defined but certainly felt, with which they are in love, for which they search, and with which they sometimes invest an acquaintance only to discover later their illusion. This ideal is composed of the most alluring qualities and personalities they have known.

What young man would be likely to fall in love with a girl, however pretty, even charming, whom he knew could be the mother only of sickly, peevish, stupid children to inherit his name and perpetuate his family, or who would refuse to assume the burden of motherhood? What normal young woman would be attracted by any “fairy prince”, however romantic, wealthy, handsome, if she were aware that his children, should he have any, would be doomed to early death, weakness, or imbecility, and that she herself would be made a sufferer for life? The widespread tendency of young men and women of to-day to include beauty, vitality, and ability in their romantic ideal is itself sufficient evidence. Young men and women are generally too well balanced to marry simply from eugenic consideration without romantic love, although this is less reprehensible than marriage simply for title or livelihood, for social distinction, or personal creature comfort without consideration for either eugenics or romantic love. The prayer of Hector, as he lifted his little child in his arms in the tower of Troy, while the battle raged without the walls, is the prayer of the parent heart everywhere, that the child shall be nobler and greater than the father.

The normal biological life for every man and woman is parenthood. The normal social relation between parents is mutual, abiding love. Only through the development of such a love has humanity evolved from the materialistic, individualistic stage of the animal to even the present stage of spiritual life and social relationships.

It is mutual solicitude for the child that places the biological relations of men and women on a wholesome, ethical, and spiritual plane. Historically, marriage and monogamy are the result of children. The social stigma upon illegitimacy is not artificial or unreasonable. It is the deep appreciation by the social experience of humanity that parental responsibility and solicitude is at the very foundation of society; that the selfish, reckless use of this creative power, or a cuckoo-like disregard for the child’s life, is undermining to society as well as to the character of the man, the woman, and their child. The far-sighted perceive, too, that the undermining influence of physical relations without spiritual purpose, of individualism that ignores social responsibilities, of blind, unreasoning following of any impulse, in this, as in any phase of life, is quite as destructive to the man, the woman, and society, even without the penalty of the unwelcome child; that usually the man is more blameworthy than the woman; that both are often the victims of ignorance, lack of ideals, and of early training in responsibility and self-control; and that similar selfish lack of solicitude for their child is equally reprehensible within and without marriage.

The child is the equal creation, responsibility, and satisfaction of both father and mother. The parent who willingly shirks the responsibility for the care of his or her own child is a coward, if not a knave or a defective. The father who would voluntarily forego his share in the care and companionship of his child, or the mother who would demand this, are equally lacking in parental instinct.

Celibacy, marriage without love, parenthood without marriage, are equally undesirable. But if circumstances require a choice, celibacy is less miserable for the individual and less detrimental to society. It is part of the great social responsibility of parents and social administrators to remove the causes of celibacy by:

1. Providing academic, social, and moral education that prepares young men and women for congenial companionship and for home-making;

2. Making provision for wholesome recreational opportunities and acquaintance, for young men and women of similar intellectual and social interests;

3. Affording the economic opportunity for a family income for young men by their early twenties, through vocational training, regulation of the cost of commodities, direction of labor conditions;

4. Abolishing war, that fiendish Minotaur that not only interferes with Nature’s provision of an equal number of men and women in any generation, but that, more serious still, devours the ablest and strongest of the young men, depriving millions of women of their husbands and their children.

The Meaning and Significance of Eugenics. Eugenics, as defined by Sir Francis Galton, is “the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race and that develop these to their utmost advantage.” Wise men in former ages have perceived something of its possibilities.

Positive eugenics is concerned with whatever will enhance the inborn qualities of a new generation, therefore with social conditions that promote the mating of the physically, mentally, and morally able; with conditions that improve the quality of the germ cells in the individual; with ideals that develop self-control and the spiritualizing of the instinct of race preservation.

Negative eugenics is concerned with the elimination of hereditary diseases and defects; with the prevention or correction of diseases, defects, poisons, and practices in the parent that have a harmful effect upon the germ cells and the unborn child; with the elimination of social and moral conditions that endanger the life or handicap the progress of unborn generations.

Genetics, the study of the laws of heredity, is the biological foundation of the science of eugenics; ethics and religion are the basis of practical eugenics.

In the past century great impetus was given to eugenic research and ideals by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton, indeed, coined the word “eugenics” from two Greek words meaning “well-born.” To quote from Galton’s own writings:

“Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I can conceive it to be within his power to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective. This is precisely the aim of eugenics. Its first object is to check the birthrate of the unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the most fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; eugenics on bringing into the world no more individuals than can be properly cared for and those only the best stock.”

Galton devoted his time and his fortune to the investigation of these principles and the propaganda of eugenic ideals. He made extensive studies of family histories, especially to ascertain what evidence they gave of the inheritance of physical, mental, and moral traits. He organized the Eugenics Education Society, whose leaders include eminent scientists, sociologists, physicians, educators, and under whose auspices the First International Eugenics Congress was held in London in 1912.

Present Knowledge of Heredity. More has been learned about heredity in the past quarter century than in all previous history. Through the inspiration of Galton, extensive studies have been made of family histories in many countries, and not only has the certainty of inheritance been established, but some of the laws of heredity have been formulated. Through the laboratory studies made possible by the improvements in the compound microscope, important discoveries have been made of the physiological processes and the mechanism by which characteristics are inherited. This is the summary of our present knowledge:

Physical and mental characteristics are inherited.

Inheritance is of definite traits, such as eye color, height, musical genius, high or low resistance to a germ disease, for example, tuberculosis. Research work in genetics is at the present time especially concerned with discovering what are the unit characters and how each is transmitted.

Special cells, called germ cells, are the carriers of heredity; these contain the determining factors for physical and mental characteristics. These, like all the other cells of the body, are microscopic in size. The body of the individual is the temple in which the sacred cells of the race are protected.

Inheritance is not directly from the parent but from the germ cells, which may carry characteristics not found in the parent but in some of the other ancestors. An individual does not inherit what his parents are but what is in the two germ cells, one from the mother, one from the father, that unite to form that individual.

With the union of the two germ cells the inborn characteristics of the individual are determined, “the gate of gifts is closed.” Environment and training may increase the strength, or minimize the force of inborn characteristics, or even suppress some of them, but it cannot add to them, or increase their force beyond their inherent limitations.

Some few characteristics are inherited only through the mother, or only through the father, or are transmitted only to the sons or only to the daughters; most characteristics are not thus limited, but may be transmitted by either parent to either son or daughter.

Acquired characteristics are not inherited. If a man loses his hand in an accident, his descendants cannot inherit one-handedness; if he masters a foreign tongue, his descendants cannot inherit his knowledge of that language.

No disease germ is inherited, in the genetic sense of being conveyed in the special germ cells. A child may be infected with a disease before its birth; this is not, strictly speaking, heredity but congenital (or prenatal) infection. Tuberculosis is sometimes thus conveyed from the mother, and syphilis very frequently when either the mother or the father has this disease even in latent form. What may be inherited is a tendency toward a disease, a weakness of specific organs or tissues, a lack of resistance to a specific disease.

Variations sometimes appear apparently spontaneously, as the result of some accident to the germ plasm, or an unusual combination in the two germ cells; such variations may be inherited.

Some characteristics are apparently persistent, and in the process of inheritance tend to predominate over their complementary characteristics. The former are called dominant, the latter recessive characteristics. The law by which dominant and recessive traits are inherited was first formulated by Mendel, an Austrian monk, less than half a century ago. Biological research is being devoted at present to discovering what traits of human significance are subject to this Mendelian law, as it is called.

A characteristic found in both parents, or in both families, has a double possibility of appearing in their descendants, and some mental defects and abilities tend to appear with greater force and at an earlier age, in the descendants.

Every individual is born with all the germ cells he will ever possess.

These germ cells are highly susceptible to poisons in the circulation, especially to:

(1) alcohol, even in dilute quantities,

(2) fatigue poisons,

(3) opium, morphine, and similar drugs,

(4) lead and other poisonous metals,

(5) lack of nutrition due to anemic condition of the body.

If a germ cell is thus affected by poison at the time of the uniting of two cells, or during the subsequent development, the child is especially liable to:

(a) serious injury resulting in death before birth;

(b) low vitality resulting in death within a year after birth;

(c) defective development resulting in physical deformity or in mental defect, such as feeble-mindedness or idiocy.

If either parent is infected with syphilis, the germs most frequently attack the developing child and cause death before birth or during the first year; or the germs may attack any tissues, crippling, producing deformities, deafness, blindness, idiocy, manifest either at birth or later in life. If either parent is infected with gonorrhea, the eyes of the child will probably be infected at birth, and blindness prevented only by immediate use of silver nitrate solution; or the mother may be made incapable of having a child.

Fitness for Parenthood. Even the minimum qualifications for parenthood are various. For the fullest welfare of the child the following qualifications are essential:

Spiritual: a sense of the responsibility of parenthood, love of children; love of harmony and mutual agreement between parents; self-control, unselfishness, patience.

Social: legal marriage, good moral character.

Economic: marketable skill, energy, adaptability; ability of father to earn a comfortable living, potential ability of mother to earn a living, ability to use income economically.

Mental: Maturity, experience, judgment to conduct one’s share of the family and household responsibility, ability to learn; for the mother, knowledge of at least the elements of hygiene, child-care and training, some experience in caring for little children.

Physical: physical and mental soundness; sound heredity, especially freedom from neuropathic taint, alcoholism, tuberculosis, venereal disease (syphilis or gonorrhea); freedom from poisons of alcohol, fatigue, worry, overwork; mother not less than twenty or more than forty-five; father not less than twenty, preferably past twenty-four; maximum vitality and physical energy.

Blood tests recently discovered make possible the diagnosis of tuberculosis and venereal disease in the system, even when no symptoms are obvious. It is estimated that about twenty to thirty per cent. of cases of venereal disease are innocently acquired, through public drinking cups, towels, lavatories, toilets, or by infection of the husband or wife after marriage. Infection is usually acquired through sex immorality. The certainty of a cure can never be made absolute; the probability requires years of persistent treatment by a responsible physician, not a quack. The man who has “sown his wild oats” has verily sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and is most liable to have acquired one of these loathsome diseases, habits of drinking, and of self-indulgence. It is dangerous to his wife and children for him to become a father until all of these have been overcome. A woman who contemplates marrying such a man to reform him is inviting disease and destruction upon herself and her children.

Some individuals should never become parents because they carry so serious an hereditary taint which some of their children would probably inherit and carry on. This includes individuals afflicted with the following:

If an individual with a family history that includes one of these taints in hereditary form should marry an individual having a family history with the same taint, some of their children would probably be afflicted with the taint, and others of them would carry it on. Marriage of blood relations, such as cousins, is subject to this law; it is eugenically permissible, provided the same hereditary defect does not appear in both family histories.

The most advantageous years for parenthood, for the welfare of the children, are between twenty or twenty-five and forty years of age for the mother and past twenty-five years for the father. An interval of two or three years should elapse between the children, to give ample opportunity for the mother to gain reserve vitality and to care adequately for each child.

On the average, four children to a family are required merely to maintain a constant population; families in which the average is less than this are in danger of extinction.

As soon as its far-reaching significance to themselves and to their children is generally perceived by parents and young people, men and women who genuinely love each other will voluntarily give and absolutely require a medical certificate before marriage. Before undertaking the responsibility of parenthood, both mother and father should put themselves into the best possible physical and spiritual condition, and if necessary, go through as thorough a course of training as that of any aspirant for an athletic prize or of any priest for a great spiritual work. The Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindoos, contained special prayers for those about to assume this creative work.

Nature has provided one effective, safe, and ethical method of limiting the birth rate in the family, a method that is entirely in the control of parents. This method is abstinence, except for the end to which nature implanted this instinct,—the creation of a new life. It is conducive to the welfare of the children. This is in no wise harmful to the physical, mental, social, or spiritual well-being of men and women, if both are temperamentally adapted to each other, mutually agreed, and thoroughly honest with each other; if they have learned to transmute this instinct and energy to other activities; and if their recreations, personal hygiene, and adjustment of daily living are normal and wholesome, not artificially stimulating.

In conclusion, to quote from two English writers: