OCR Rendition - approximate

68 EUGENICS ; ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS 69 FROM DR. G. ARCHDALL REID, M.B., F.R.S.E. I think it would be impossible to imagine a subject of greater importance or to name one of which the public is more ignorant. At the root of every moral and social question lies the problem of heredity. Until a knowledge of the laws of heredity is more widely diffused, the public will grope in the dark in its endeavours to solve many pressing difficulties. How shall we bring about a "wide dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of heredity so far as they are surely known, and the promotion of their further study?" We shall not be able to reach the public until we are able to influence the education of a body of men whose studies naturally bring them into relation with the subject, and who, when united, are numerous enough and powerful enough to sway public opinion. Only one such body of men exists-the medical profession. When the study of heredity forms as regular a part of the medical curriculum as anatomy and physiology, then, and not till then, will the laws of heredity be brought to bear on the solution of social problems. At present, a specialist like Mr. Galton has a very limited audience. In effect, it is composed of specialists like himself. Until among medical men a systematic knowledge of heredity is substituted for a bundle of prejudices, and close and clear reasoning for wild guess-work, the influence of men of Mr. Galton's type, most unhappily, is not likely to extend much beyond the limits of a few learned societies. The first essential is a clear grasp of the distinction which exists between what are known as inborn traits and what are known as acquired traits. Inborn traits are those with which the individual is "born," which come to him by nature, which form his natural inheritance from his parents. Acquired traits are alterations produced in inborn traits by influences to which they are exposed during the life of the individual. Thus a man's limbs are inborn traits, but the changes produced in his limbs by exercise, injury, and -so forth, are acquired traits. All men know that the individual tends to transmit his inborn traits to his offspring. But it is now almost universally denied by students of heredity that he tends to transmit his acquired traits. The real, the burning question among students of heredity is whether changes in an individual caused by the action of the environment on him tend in any way to affect the offspring subsequently born to him. Thus, for example, does good health in an individual tend to benefit his offspring? Does his ill-health tend to enfeeble them? It is generally assumed that changes in the parents do tend to influence the inborn traits of offspring. Thus we have heard much of the degeneracy which it is alleged is befalling our race owing to the bad hygienic conditions under which it dwells in our great growing cities. The assumption is made that the race is being so injured by the bad conditions that the descendant of a line of slum - dwellers, if removed during infancy to the country, would, on the average, be inferior physically to the descendant of- a line of rustics, whereas, contrariwise, the descendant of a line of rustics, if removed during infancy to the slums would be superior physically to the majority of the children he would meet there. I believe this assumption to be a totally unwarrantable one. It is founded on a confusion between inborn and acquired traits. Of course the influences which act on a slum-bred child tend to injure him personally. But there is no certain evidence that the descendant of a line of slum-dwellers is on the average inferior to the descendant of a line of rustics whose parents migrated to the slums just after his birth. I believe, in fact, that while a life in the slums deteriorates the individual, it does not affect directly the hereditary tendencies of the race in the least. A vast mass of evidence may be adduced in support of this contention. Slums are not a creation of yesterday. They have existed in many countries from very ancient times. Races that have been most exposed to a slum life cannot be shewn to be inferior physically and mentally to those that have been less or not at all exposed. The Chinese, for example, who have been more exposed, and for a longer time, to such influences than any other people, are physically and mentally a very fine race, and certainly not inferior to the Dyacks of Borneo, for example. There is also a mass of collateral evidence. Thus Africans and other races have been literally soaked in the extremely virulent and abundant poison of malaria for thousands of years. We know how greatly malaria damages the individual. But Africans have not deteriorated. Like the Chinese, physically, at any rate, they are a very fine race. Practically speaking, every negro child suffers from malaria, and may perish of it. But while the sufferings of the negroes from malaria have produced no effect on the race, the deaths of negroes from malaria have produced an immense effect. The continual weeding out, during many generations, of the unfittest has rendered the race pre-eminently resistant to malaria; so that negroes can now flourish in countries which we, who have suffered very little from malaria, find it impossible to colonise. Similarly, the inhabitants of Northern Europe have suffered greatly for thousands of years from consumption, especially in places where the population has been dense-where there have been many cities and towns, and therefore slums. They also have not deteriorated; they have merely grown pre-eminently strong against consumption. They are able to live, for example, in English cities, in which consumption is very rife, and which individuals of races which have been less exposed to the disease find as dangerous as Englishmen find the West Coast of Africa. During the last four hundred years, consumption has spread very widely, and now no race is able to dwell in cities and towns, especially in cold and temperate climates, that has not undergone evolution against it. In other words, no race is capable of civilisation that has not undergone evolution against consumption, as well as against other diseases and influences, deteriorating to the individual, which civilisation brings in its train. Many biologists and most medical men believe that influences acting on parents tend directly to alter the hereditary tendencies of offspring. In technical terms, they believe that variations are caused by action of the environment. How they contrive to do CIibPDF - www.fastio.com