: Famous European Artists by Bolton Sarah Knowles - Artists Europe

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I Introductory 1

II Heredity, Environment 13

V Possibilities of Race Improvement 55

VI Education, Eugenics 69

Appendices

A. State Endowment of Motherhood 120

INTRODUCTORY

The aim of this little volume is to interest the American public in an important and neglected subject. The writer has her own views on art, politics, religion and other topics which divide mankind, she does not intrude those opinions here, although conscious that "to see life steadily and see it whole" much more is wanted than a single branch of study, however vital. It is not possible, however, to remain silent and, at least passively, acquiescent when the interests of the race are in danger of neglect. Need for apology is not considered when great and influential journals, magazines and volumes dissipate their powers on all the feeble foolings of the hour. There are many honourable exceptions. There are organs of opinion in nearly all directions of intellectual speculation, education and philosophy and there are of course necessary volumes of information on cooking, travel, dress and amusement. Every material interest except the basic material interest of our human existence is represented in our periodical press. An expedition to the pole, a prodigious attempt to attract the attention of Martian observers whose very existence is denied by more than half our scientists, or a commission to inquire into the relative merits of various manurial nitrates, for these time and money, private enterprise and state aid are readily forthcoming. Professorial chairs are easily financed for lectures on every necessary and unnecessary subject other than that of direct race improvement. Churches, universities and other institutions have been endowed for the sake of schisms which have no direct bearing on any human need.

I deny that people do not care what becomes of the race. There never has been a time in the history of the world when parents would not rather have a healthy progeny than an unhealthy. The nation would always prefer to be able to boast of improvement instead of blushing for its deteriorating citizenship. As long as Mothers love their own young and as long as the average man sympathises with undeserved suffering there will be perpetual possibilities for rousing interest in the most promising of all sciences, Eugenics.

Eugenics is a word invented by Francis Galton to cover the philosophy, collection of facts, the science, whatever we can call it, which regards race improvement as a desirable and practicable process. Stirpiculture is an older word for a similar idea. New descriptive or misleading phrases will be invented from time to time, sometimes by friends, sometimes by enemies of the movement. It may be well from the first to clear away some misinterpretations. Accusations against new ideas commonly take the form of attempting to show that the new and possibly good idea is irretrievably committed to some other idea, generally an older and discredited one. It is the universal rule, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, to regard sex-relationships as so sacrosanct that merely to mention them is to outrage modesty and shock morality. Fortunately or otherwise we have had to overcome this silly secretiveness. The horrible white-slave traffic, the loathsome increase of venereal diseases, the frequent revelations such as the Thaw case forced on the public, the necessity for protecting children from outrage--all these and other things have made not only possible but obviously desirable that decency, wisdom and humanity should make their voice heard. The time has come when we will not tolerate the daily scandal of having our newspapers polluted with details of sexual abnormalities while we are refused the opportunity of educating the people in the direction of purity, health, and efficiency in the sexual relation. Eugenics is concerned primarily and materially with the normal sex relationship, which in modern civilised lands means the ordinary legal monogamic marriage. It is perfectly true that there have been pioneer reformers, to whom the world owes much who have linked their ideals of race improvement to an advocacy of freer sex relationships. Modern eugenists have no such divided council. They aim at encouraging the best births and discouraging the worst, and all details of their propaganda must be subordinate to this great aspiration. Seeing then that through monogamic marriage the Anglo-Saxon race must overwhelmingly flow now and in all the sighted future, we resolutely direct our attention to this institution as we find it. On the lines of which the race has approved we shall proceed for our reforms. The United States great in a thousand ways, although often the despair of the reformer, offers the most promising field of the whole world in the direction of Eugenics. Comprising within her catholic embrace many varieties of monogamic marriage she possesses contrasts, comparisons, examples and warnings, which will be of infinite use in the Eugenist's laboratory. Well may we be content to show from these differences how on the present basis of marriage a nobler race may be reared. It is of course only one aspect of marriage that interests Eugenists, but as according to the teaching of most Churches and the theory of most governments the origin, basis and reason of marriage is procreation, it will be seen that race improvement does not look on the least important side of marriage. In other words it is in its public and universal relations that marriage will be regarded by Eugenists. In comparatively socialised States like ours where education and a hundred other concerns of every child are the constant care of representative institutions it would be retrogression if we did not now begin to consider the child as having from its birth a public interest. Seeing the advance being made in our understanding of some of the laws of heredity it must not be considered wonderful that this public interest in the future citizen should begin even before birth. For this purpose it is not at all necessary, I hold it to be eminently undesirable, that the State or any outside authority should attempt the ridiculous task of organising who shall marry and mate, or dictate by law or force the conditions of marriages which satisfy the contracting parties. But this laisser faire doctrine obviously has no applicability to the much more disputable proposition that the State has no right to deal with the source of its future responsibilities, the root by which may arrive human wrecks for which the State must provide in the days to come. This brings me to a further protest. It has been suggested that Eugenists are anarchists, tearing up the roots of government, blindly striking at civilised institutions, putting a bomb to the foundations of Church, State, and Family. Let it be said here and now in such clear phrase as may be that Eugenics is the antithesis of anarchy. It means order. Eugenics opposes chaos in the interests of the race. It is the most profoundly patriotic proposition ever laid before the people of these United States. Its conception is for the national good. American Eugenists will never rest until our race becomes the fittest on earth. Other nations shall teach us if they can, we will better their instruction. Monarchical old world peoples, restrained by traditions, tied down by red tape, drugged by the dread of progress, may justify their own inertia, we cannot sink with them. We are leaders and pioneers. In the United States respect is still accorded to those who have new truths to teach for the benefit of the race. If "national efficiency" has to some extent failed in its appeal, if the answer has been an admission of unaccomplished desires, the reason must be ascribed to the limited scope of the inquiry. The nation has to take itself seriously in hand. We need to get beyond the citizen of to-day, we have to consider the citizen of to-morrow.

As to religion, I appeal both to those who love God and to those who love their fellow-man. It is futile at this time of day to quote against the living race the dictates of a dead age. It is monstrous also to slander the noble men and women who are at present engaged in the secular activities of our Churches by pretending to believe that they are not most keenly anxious to aid in any uplifting work for the regeneration of the world. Every institution which is teaching, feeding or otherwise helping children is a nucleus for Eugenic enterprise. The neglect of Eugenics in the last generation has clogged the wheels of progress in this generation. We cannot and must not forget the victims of our national neglect, but we can do greatest honour to our philanthropists and workers for the general uplift by seriously endeavouring to eliminate from the coming generation the hopelessly unfit and by encouraging the multiplication of the efficient.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

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