Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/20

 8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

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 corpuscles, atoms, electrons, or whatever else there may be ; and we shall find these subjected to subtle influences of mind and body during their formations and combinations, of which we hardly realize the importance. I believe that in these potent factors the solution of the problem may 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, when I consider 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 com- plexities which arise from the mental state and its moods and passions which entirely disturb our conclusions, which we should be able to form in regard to the comparatively simple machines which animals are.

In view of these difficulties of the subject, it has always seemed to me that we must not be hasty in coming to conclusions and laying down any rules for the breeding of humans 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 am inclined to think 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."

BY DR. MERCIER.

Mr. Galton speaks of the laws of heredity, and dissemination of a knowl- edge 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 the laws, they are so obscure and com- plex 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 around among your acquaintance : look around among the people that you know ; notice the intellec- tual 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. It is doubtful if moral traits are hereditary.

Then there is the tendency of a high civilization to reduce the fertility of its worthier members. It does seem as if there were some such tendency. Undoubtedly, in any particular race of organisms, as in organisms in general, the lower order multiplies more freely than the highly organized. Undoubtedly, we see that insects and bacteria increase and multiply exceedingly until they become as the sands on the seashore. But the elephant produces only once in thirty years. And so it is with human beings of different grades of organization. Undoubtedly, those more highly organized are less fertile than those lowly organized. But that is not the whole history of the thing. I think we have to regard a civilized community somewhat in the light of a lamp burning away at the top, 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. It never occurs in races ; it always occurs in individual cases.