OCR Rendition - approximate

54 EUGENICS the question of hereditary influences as I have done for a long period of my life, one is met with the difficulty which must have occurred to every one here that in any family of which you take cognisance you may find one member, a son, like his mother or father, or like a mixture of the two, or more like his mother, or that he harks back to some distant ancestor ; and then, again, you will find one not in the least like father or mother or any relatives so far as we know. There is a variation, or whatever we may call it, of which in our present knowledge we cannot give the least explanation. Take, as a supreme instance, Shakespeare he was born of parents not distinguished from their neighbours ; he had five brothers living, one of whom came to London and acted with him at Blackfriars Theatre; yet while Shakespeare rose to the extraordinary eminence that he did, none of his brothers distinguished themselves in any way. And so it is in other families. From my long experience as a physician I could give instances in every department of human activity-in science, in literature, in art-in which one member of the family, born of the same parents and brought up in the same surroundings, has risen to extraordinary prominence, almost genius perhaps, and another has suffered from mental disorder. Now, how can we account for these facts on any of the known data on which we have at present to rely ? In' my opinion we shall have to go far deeper down than we have been able to go by any present means of observation-to the germ-composing corpuscles, atoms, electrons, or whatever else there may be ; and we shall find these subjected to subtile and most potent influences of mind and body during their formations and combinations, of which we yet know nothing and hardly realise the importance. I believe that in these potent factors the solution of the problem is to be found why one member of a family rises above others, and others do not rise above the ordinary level, but perhaps sink below it. To me it seems, considering this matter in regard to these difficulties, that in making a comparison with the improvement of breeding of animal stock we may be apt to be misled. We are all organic machines, so to speak; at the same time when we come to the human being there are complexities which arise from the mental state-its moods and passions-which entirely disturb any conclusions which we are able to form from our observation of the comparatively simple machines which animals are. In view of these difficulties of the subject I think that we must not be hasty in coming to conclusions and laying down any rules for the breeding of human beings and the development of a Eugenic conscience. In fact, we must be on our guard against the overzeal which Dr. Galton has very properly cautioned us against. For, after all, there is the passion of love and the forces referred to in his quotation from Bacon, and I.am not sure but that Nature in its own blind impulsive way does not manage things better than we can by any light of reason or by any rules which we can at present lay down. I suspect, indeed, that as in the past, so in the future, it may be as Shakespeare said " You may as well try to kindle snow by fire As quench the fire of love by words." ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS DR. MERCIER SAID: Mr. Galton speaks of the laws of heredity and of the value of a dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of heredity in so far as we know them, and the qualification is very necessary. For, in so far as we know these laws, they are so obscure and complex that to us they work out as chance. We cannot detect any practical difference in the working of the laws of heredity and the way in which dice may be taken out of a lucky bag. It is quite impossible to predict from the constitution of the parents what the constitution of the offspring is going to be, even in the remotest degree. I lay that down as emphatically as I can, and I think that much widely-prevailing erroneous doctrine on this head is due to the writings of Zola. I believe these writings are founded on a totally false conception as to what the laws of heredity are, and as to how they work out in the human race. He supposes that since the parents have certain mental and moral peculiarities the children will reproduce them with variations. It is not so. Look round among your acquaintances, look round among the people that you know, notice the intellectual and moral character of the parents and children; and as my distinguished predecessor, Dr. Maudsley, has said, you will find that in the same family there are antithetic extremes. No doubt, the tendency of a high civilisation is to reduce the fertility of its worthier members. Undoubtedly, in any particular race of organisms, as in organisms in general, the more lowly organised multiplies more freely than the highly organised. Undoubtedly, we see that insects and bacteria increase and muitiply exceedingly, until they become as the sands on the seashore for multitude. But the elephant produces only once in thirty years. Arid so it is with human beings of different grades of organisation. Those more highly-organised are less fertile than those lowly organised. But that is not the whole history of the thing. I think we have to regard a civilised community somewhat in the light of a lamp, which burns away at the top, and is replenished from the bottom. It is true that the highest strata waste, and do not reproduce themselves; and it is of necessity so, because the production of very high types of human nature is always sporadic. Broadly and generally and in practice it is so, that we cannot predict from the parentage what the offspring is going to be, and we cannot go back from the offspring and say what the parentage was. If we follow the custom of the Chinese and ennoble the parents for the achievements of their children, are we to hang the parents when the offspring commit murder? And finally, I would say one word about suitable and unsuitable marriages. Most of what I have to say has been already said by Dr. Maudsley. What are suitable and unsuitable marriages? How are we to decide ? In the light of our knowledge-I had better say ignorance, I think-he would be a very bold man who would undertake the duties that were entrusted to the family council among those wise and virtuous people of whom Dean Swift has given us a description, and who should determine who should be the father and who the mother, and make marriages without consulting the individuals most concerned. I think if that were done, it is doubtful if the result would be any better than it is at present. 55 CIibPDF - www.fastio.com