OCR Rendition - approximate

74 EUGENICS ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS 75 facile economic conditions. For Rome, the import of grain as tribute from rich soils killed the competition of Italian soil, and slave labour was rather a result than a cause of the elimination of the old peasantry. Perhaps, indeed, Mr. Galton would not dissent from the general proposition that Eugenics involves Politics. But it seems to me that the necessary regression is obscured when it is suggested that Eugenics is mainly a matter of the right adjustment of individual conduct, in a social system politically fixed. If this be meant, I submit that it is a form of the fallacy of prescribing "a new heart" as the sufficient means to social regeneration. Nations can only very gradually change their hearts, and part of the process consists in changing their houses, their clothes, their alimentation, their economic position, and their institutions as a means to the rest. FROM MR. G. BERNARD SHAW. I agree with the paper, and go so far as to say that there is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilisation from the fate that has overtaken all previous civilisations. It is worth pointing out that we never'hesitate to carry out the negative side of eugenics with considerable zest, both on the scaffold and on the battlefield. We have never deliberately called a human being into existence for the sake of civilisation ; but we have wiped out millions. We kill a Thibetan regardless of expense, and in defiance of our religion, to clear the way to Lhasa for the Englishman; but we take no really scientific steps to secure that the Englishman, when he gets there, will be able to live up to our assumption of his superiority. It is quite true, as the lecturer suggests, that the violent personal preferences on which most plays and novels are founded, are practically negligible forces in society. They can be, and are, circumscribed by political and social institutions as successfully as the equally violent antipathies which lead to murder. In spite of all the romancers, men and women are amazingly indiscriminate and promiscuous in their attachments : they select their wives and husbands far less carefully than they select their cashiers and cooks. In the countries where they are not allowed to select at all, but have their marriages arranged for them wholly by their parents, the average result seems to be much the same as that of our own more promiscuous plan of letting people marry according to their fancies. In short, for all sociological purposes, it may safely be assumed that people are not particular as to whom they marry, provided they do not lose caste by the alliance. But we must not infer from this that they will tolerate any interference with their domestic life once they are married. Political marriages are perfectly practicable as far as the church door; but once the register is signed there is an end of all public considerations. If the selection is eugenically erroneous, there is no remedy. If it is so brilliantly successful that it seems a national loss to limit the husband's progenitive capacity to the breeding capacity of one woman, or the wife's to an experiment with one father only, our marriage customs and prejudices will stand as sternly in the way as if no selection had been exercised at all in the first instance. Eugenics under such limitations lose their interest, and relapse into mere Platonic speculation. I am afraid we must make up our minds either to face a considerable shock to vulgar opinion in this matter or to let eugenics alone. Christianity began by attacking marriage; and though the attack utterly failed, the Catholic Church still regards the marriage of a priest as an abomination. Luther would never have dared to marry a nun if his opinions on the question had not gone much further than any Protestant community now dares to hint. But a merely negative attitude towards marriage is foredoomed to failure. Celibacy is so clearly an impossibilist doctrine that even St. Paul could not press it to its logical conclusion. Luther's views are anarchic, and suggest mere profligacy to the ordinary Philistine, Now, marriage is profligate enough in all conscience ; but it is not anarchic. Consequently, marriage holds its own in spite of the revulsions of the higher sexual conscience against the open claim of married people to be exempt from all social obligation and even self-respect in their relations with one another. And as this very licentiousness serves the all-important purpose of keeping the race recruited, it has never been possible to challenge it seriously until the popularisation, about thirty-five years ago, of the sterilisation of marriage. This practice had, for decency's sake, to justify itself as a eugenic one : it was said that when there were fewer children each child would receive more care and nourishment, and have a better chance of surviving to maturity. But a mere reduction in the severity of the struggle for existence is no substitute for positive steps for the improvement of such a deplorable piece of work as man. We may even allow, without countenancing for a moment the crudities of NeoDarwinism, that it may conceivably do more harm than good. What we must fight for is freedom to breed the race without being hampered by the mass of irrelevant conditions implied in the institution of marriage. If our morality is attacked, we can carry the war into the enemy's country by reminding the public that the real objection to breeding by marriage is that marriage places no restraint on debauchery so long as it is monogamic; whereas eugenic breeding would effectually protect the mothers and fathers of the race from any abuse of their relations. As to the domestic and sympathetic function of marriage, or even its selfishly sexual function, we need not interfere with that. What we need is freedom for people who have never seen each other before and never intend to see one another again to produce children under certain definite public conditions, without loss of honour. That freedom once secured, and the conditions defined, we have nothing further to say in the matter until the necessarily distant time when the results of our alternative method of recruiting will be able to take the matter in hand themselves, and invite the world to reconsider its institutions in the light of experiments which must, of course, in the meantime run concurrently with the promiscuity of ordinary marriage. CIibPDF - www.fastio.com