Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/309

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 293

FROM PROFESSOR AUGUST WEISMANN : It has given me great pleasure to learn that a sociological society has been formed in England, and to see that so many distinguished names are associated with its inauguration and proceedings.

As for the request that I should send " an expression of my views on the subject " of Mr. Gallon's two papers, I fear I can have nothing to say that will be at all new.

I think there is one question, however, of very great importance which has not yet, so far as I know, been investigated, and to which the statistical method alone can supply an answer. It is this : whether, when an hereditary disease, like tuberculosis, has made its appearance in a family, it is afterward possible for it to be entirely banished from this or that branch of the family ; or whether, on the contrary, the progeny of these members of the family who appear healthy must not sooner or later produce a tuberculous progeny ? I am fully aware that there exists already a great mass of statistical matter on the subject of " tuberculosis," but I cannot say that it seems to me sufficient, thus far, to justify a sure conclu- 1 sion. Talking for myself, I am disposed, both on theoretic grounds and in view of known facts, to opine that a complete purification and re-establishment of such a family is quite possible in the cases of slighter infection. For I believe that hereditary transmission in such cases depends upon an infected condition of the seed germ or generative cell ; that it is conceivable that single generative cells of the parent may remain free from bacilli ; that an entirely healthy child may be developed from one such generative cell, and that from this sound shoot an entirely healthy branch of the family may grow in time. I would almost go so far as to say that, if this were not the case, then there could hardly be a family on earth today unaffected by hereditary disease.

Let me ask you to accept this note as merely an indication of my willingness to mr.ke at least a very small contribution to the list of those sociological problems which you aim at solving.

FROM HON. V. LADY WELBY : It is obvious that in the question of eugenic restrictions in marriage there are two points of view from which we may work : (i) that of making the most of the race, which concentrates interest, not on the parents who are then merely, like the organism itself, the germ-carrier but always on the children (in their turn merely race-bearers) ; and (2) that of mak- ing the most of the individual, and thus raising the standard of the whole by raising that of its parts. May we not say that we must learn to marry these points of view ? Indeed, already they may be said to be married in actual family life ; for, in a certain sense, the mother represents the first, and the father the second.

In my small contribution to the discussion on Mr. Galton's first paper I appealed to women to realize more clearly their true place and gift as representing their original racial motherhood, out of which the masculine and feminine char- acters have arisen. It seems advisable now to take somewhat wider ground.

When, in the interests of an ascending family ideal, we emphasize the need for restrictions on marriage which shall embody all those, as summarized in Mr. Galton's paper, to which human societies have already submitted, we have to con- summate a further marriage one of ideas ; we have to combine what may appear to be incompatible aims. In the first place, in order to foster all that makes for a higher and nobler type of humanity than any that we have yet known how to realize, we must face the fact that some sacrifice of emotion, because relatively unworthy, is imperative. Else we weaken " the earnest desire not to infringe the sanctity and freedom of the social relations of a family group." But the sacrifice is of an emotion which has ceased to make for man and now makes for self or for reversion to the sub-human.

We are' always confronted with a practical paradox. The marriage which makes for the highest welfare of the united man and woman may be actually inimical to the children of that union. The marriage which makes for the highest type of family, and its highest and fullest development, may often, and must always tend to, mean the inhibition of much that makes for individual perfection.

And since the children in their turn will be confronted by the same initial