Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/307

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 291

This has often been accomplished, but, so far as I can apprehend history, reasoning has succeeded only in creating instinct, and thus custom, when the masses sub- jected to its pressure have been able to see the direct personal advantage to be gained by the line taken. This is the practical point that the eugenical philosopher has to keep ever before him. A custom can be created. The questions for the philosopher are what should be created and how it should be created.

All forms of marriage are due fundamentally to considerations of well-being. Exogamy exists where it is thought important abnormally to increase the num- bers of a group. Endogamy exists where it is thought important in a settled com- munity to reserve property and social standing or power for a limited group. Monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, are all attempts to maintain social well-being in a form that has seemed obviously advantageous to different groups of human beings. Religion, taboo, and the prohibited degrees are all methods of enforcing custom by moral force. The Australian marriage system is merely a primitive, and therefore complicated, method of enforcing custom. But the human instinct as to incest is something going very deep down, as there is the same kind of instinct in some of the " higher " animals of the two sexes when stabled together, e. g., horses, elephants. Celibacy seems to be due to different causes in different circumstances, according as to whether it is enforced or voluntary. In the former case it is a method of enforcing marriage customs maintained for the supposed common good. In the latter it is due to asceticism, itself a universal instinct based on a philosophy of personal advantage.

The restrictions enforced by marriage customs have led to hypergamy, a mariage de convenance exchanging position and property, but really an unreason- ing form of eugenics adopted because of the supposed personal advantage ; and this has led, in one disastrous form, to female infanticide in a distinctly harmful degree. All the restrictions of marriage are modified in uncivilized communities by promiscuity before marriage and in civilized communities by hetairism. The greater the restrictions, the more systematic has hetairism become. Illegitimacy has taken on many almost unrecognizable forms in various parts of the world. It really represents the result of rebellion against convention. Every one of these considerations materially affects any proposition for a reform of eugenics. Caste is the outward manifestation of an endogamic marriage system by the " intel- lectuals " of a people for the personal advantage of their own group within the nation, and imitated without reasoning by other groups. This system of endogamic marriage, adopted for the real or supposed advantage of a group, has brought about national disaster, for it has made impossible the instinct of nationality, or the larger group, and has brought the peoples adopting it into perpetual subjection to others possessing the instinct of nationality. Its existence and practical effect are a standing warning to the eugenical philosopher, which should point out to him the extreme care that is necessary in consciously directing eugenics into any given channel.

FROM PROFESSOR TONNIES": I fully agree with the scope and aims of Mr. Galton's " eugenics," and consequently with the essence of the two papers pro- posed. But with respect to details I have certain objections and illustrations which I now try to explain.

1. There can be no doubt but that the three kinds of accomplishments are desirable in mankind : physical, mental, and moral ability. Surely the three or, as Mr. Gallon classifies them, constitution (which I understand to imply moral character) physique, and intellect are not independent variables, but if they to a large extent are correlate, on the other hand they also tend to exclude each other, strong intellect being very often connected with a delicate health as well as with poor moral qualities, and vice versa. Now, the great question, as it appears to me, will be, whether eugenics is to favor one kind of these excellencies at the cost of another one or of both the other, and which should be preferred under any circumstances.

2. Under existing social conditions, it would mean a cruelty to raise the average intellectual capacity of a nation to that of its better moiety of the present

u Profesor of philosophy in the University of Kiel.