STUDIES IN EVOLUTION 
AND EUGENICS 
BY 
S. J. HOLMES, Ph.D. 
PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
NEW YORK 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 
PRINTED IN THE U S. A. BY 
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
RAHWAY N- J. PREFACE 
The present volume makes no claim to unity of treat- 
ment. The topics chosen for discussion represent 
some of the peculiar interests of the writer which 
have grown out of several years of occupation with the 
fields of heredity, evolution, and eugenics. A few of 
the chapters originally appeared as articles in period- 
icals, and I am indebted to the editor of the Scientific 
Monthly for permission to reprint Chapter V, to the 
editor of the Atlantic for the privilege of using in a 
modified form much of Chapters IV and XII, and to 
the manager of the University of California Press for 
permission to include the first chapter of this volume 
which was first published in the University Chronicle 
for July, 1921. Chapter XIV appeared originally in 
The Independent for March, 1923, and Chapter XV 
in Hygeia, July, 1923. CONTENTS 
PAGE 
Preface iii 
CHAPTER 
I. Present Tendencies in Evolutionary Theory . . 3 
II. Beyond Natural Selection 33 
III. Panmixia and Degeneration 49 
IV. Our Deteriorating Inheritance 62 
V. Social Betterment and Eugenic Progress ... 79 
VI. Heredity and the Mind 106 
VII. Is Infant Mortality Selective? 134 
VIII. Has Civilization Diminished the Rigor of Natural 
Selection? 153 
IX. Sexual Selection: Its Present Shortcomings and Fu- 
ture Possibilities 163 
X. Do Early Marriages Produce Inferior Offspring? . 170 
XI. Is Birth Control an Aid or a Menace to Eugenics? 179 
XII. Will Birth Control Reduce Fertility? . . . 189 
XIII. Some Misconceptions of Eugenics . . . .194 
XIV. Immigration and the Future American . . . 207 
XV. The Biological Effects of Race Mixture . . . 216 
XVI. The Biological Fortunes of the Negro . . . 229 
Index . . . 257 
V STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND 
EUGENICS CHAPTER I 
PRESENT TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 1 
Many people nowadays are confused, if not disturbed, 
in regard to the present status of the theory of evolu- 
tion. Along with entire agreement on the part of prac- 
tically all competent scientists concerning the fact of 
evolution, there is a good deal of disagreement over 
the causes of evolution. It is much easier to show that 
a certain event has taken place than to explain just 
why it has taken place. Just now biologists are seek- 
ing for the causes of the transformation of life, and I 
can perhaps best give an idea of the present state of 
the evolution problem by recounting briefly some of 
the stages through which it has passed since the pub- 
lication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. 
In the sixties and seventies interest was mainly cen- 
tered in the establishment of the doctrine of organic 
evolution, in discovering new evidence for its support, 
in working out probable lines of descent among ani- 
mals and plants, and in interpreting the facts of mor- 
phology, palaeontology, geographical distribution, and 
embryonic development from the evolutionary stand- 
point. This was a period of controversy in which the 
principle of evolution was gradually winning its way 
1 Reprinted with a few minor changes from the University of Cali- 
fornia Chronicle, July, 1921. 
3 STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
4 
to general acceptance in the world of scholars. It is 
difficult for us, habituated to looking upon the world 
and its inhabitants as the outcome of a gradual de- 
velopment, to appreciate the profound changes which 
were then being wrought in man’s outlook upon the 
problems of life, mind, and society. A great, new, and 
revolutionary conception of the origin of the existing 
order of the world of life was brought before the minds 
of all thinking human beings, filling some of them with 
apprehension and dismay, but powerfully stimulating 
others by its grandeur and far-reaching import. 
Unlike the evolutionary speculations that preceded 
it, the doctrine set forth in the Origin of Species at- 
tracted at once the attention of all serious thinkers. 
It was soon realized that the struggle between two 
rival world conceptions was on in earnest. Science 
had developed to such a point that the hypothesis of 
evolution could not remain as one among many mere 
guesses at the riddle of existence. It must be tested in 
the light of morphology, palaeontology, distribution, 
and embryology, and rejected if not proven worthy of 
acceptance by critical scholars. Darwin’s great work 
supported the theory with a wealth of facts, drawn 
from a variety of fields and marshaled with an ability 
that made it at once apparent to every scientifically 
trained person that he was face to face with a doctrine 
to be seriously grappled with. And it was not many 
years before the battle in behalf of the theory of evo- 
lution was won. 
The influence of the writings of Darwin in compel- TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
5 
ling the acceptance of the theory of evolution was due 
not merely to the abundant evidence with which this 
doctrine was supported, but also to the fact that they 
set forth a good working hypothesis as to how and why 
evolution might have been brought about. The process 
of natural selection which Darwin regarded as the chief 
though not the sole cause of evolution presented at 
least an intelligible explanation of the development of 
the wonderful adaptations which form one of the most 
noteworthy features of the organic world. It was the 
apparent purposiveness manifested in the structure and 
activities of living beings that afforded the chief argu- 
ment for the theory of special creation. The evidence 
of design and contrivance which organisms exhibit in 
such profusion had long been dwelt upon for the con- 
solation of the faithful and the discomfiture of the 
skeptic. Now comes a theory which would eliminate 
teleological explanations in the realm of organic nature, 
and account for the development of life in terms of the 
survival of fortuitous variations in the struggle for 
existence. 
Undoubtedly the great import of the theory of 
natural selection was that it afforded a means of ex- 
plaining the development of structures exhibiting evi- 
dence of creative design in terms of processes which in 
themselves show no indication of purposive control. 
In other words, it afforded a very simple way of con- 
struing teleology in terms of mechanism. And whether 
or not we hold with Huxley that teleology received its 
death blow at Darwin’s hands, it is evident that the 6 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
theory of natural selection greatly aided the accept- 
ance of the theory of evolution by showing how it was 
at least theoretically possible to explain by natural 
means the features of the organic world which had long 
been held up as incontestable evidences of creative 
design. 
It is not my purpose to dwell upon the controversies 
over the fact of evolution, as this question is almost 
universally regarded as settled by the arguments of 
Darwin and by the vast amount of confirmatory evi- 
dence that has been accumulated in different fields by 
Darwin’s coworkers and successors. I shall also pass 
over the progress that has been made in ascertaining 
the probable lines of descent of the various groups of 
animals and plants. And I shall omit all consideration 
of the light which the theory of evolution throws upon 
the problems, not only of biology, but of psychology, 
social science, ethics, and many other fields of human 
thought. My discussion will be limited to the method 
of evolution, not only because this problem is one of 
fundamental importance, but because there seems to 
be prevalent a remarkable amount of misunderstanding 
concerning the bearing of recent biological investigation 
on Darwin’s theory. 
The doctrine of natural selection early won and has 
always maintained a wide acceptance among biologists. 
I believe I am safe in saying that no other theory of 
the cause of evolution has ever been so widely accepted 
as the theory of natural selection. Darwin believed 
that the transmission of acquired characteristics, whose TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
7 
importance in evolution had been emphasized by 
Lamarck, was a potent subsidiary factor, and he not 
infrequently appealed to it in order to help himself 
out of tight places. But since Weismann made his 
attack upon this doctrine during the eighties, belief in 
the transmission of acquired characteristics has steadily 
lost ground. The so-called neo-Darwinians, with their 
belief in the “all sufficiency of natural selection” (the 
phrase is Weismann’s) form a flourishing school. Dur- 
ing the two decades between 1880 and 1900 Professor 
Weismann, who was then perhaps the most influential 
figure in the field of evolutionary speculation, carried 
on a destructive criticism of the Lamarckian doctrine 
and, at the same time, built up an elaborate theory of 
heredity and embryonic development, and manfully 
struggled to show how the principle of selection, re- 
inforced by his subsidiary hypotheses of panmixia and 
germinal selection, affords a sufficient explanation for 
all the evolutionary changes in the world of life. What 
Romanes has called Weismannism has been a strong 
stimulus in directing thought and research into what 
have proved to be very fruitful fields. Weismann rep- 
resented an extreme type of selectionist—but there are 
other biologists to whom Darwin’s theory made little 
appeal. A few practically reject it entirely. Some 
orthogenesists and neo-Lamarckians ascribe to it a 
minor and merely negative role in killing off the 
weaker members of a species that fall below the 
average of fitness to their environment. Others, like 
Spencer, look upon it as an important factor in evolu- 8 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
tion but deem it obviously insufficient as a general 
explanation of either progressive or retrogressive de- 
velopment. And Alfred Russel Wallace, otherwise an 
orthodox neo-Darwinian, balks at admitting that it is 
capable of accounting for the development of the 
mental and moral faculties of man. 
There have been few theories which have furnished 
a target for so much adverse criticism. It has been 
objected that natural selection cannot create but only 
destroy; that it cannot account for the beginnings of 
useful structures; that it cannot explain the develop- 
ment of organs of extreme complexity; that it does not 
explain how new variations are produced, and hence 
compels us to seek elsewhere for the real causes of evo- 
lution in those agencies, whatever they may be, that 
give rise to variation. Much has been made of the 
difficulty that natural selection cannot cause the evolu- 
tion of organs that involve simultaneous and appro- 
priate modifications in a number of cooperating parts 
in order that each increment of improvement be of 
selective value. It has been urged that evolution has 
proceeded along definitely directed paths, and hence 
we must seek in some form of orthogenesis for the 
main cause of evolutionary progress. And then it has 
been claimed that natural selection is merely an un- 
verified hypothesis,—that, as Lord Salisbury has said, 
“No man has ever seen it at work.” 
These and other objections have afforded material 
for endless discussions. Accessory hypotheses such as 
panmixia, germinal selection, physiological selection, TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
9 
the intra-selection of Roux, and the theory of organic 
selection, have been advanced to meet various diffi- 
culties that confronted the theory of natural selection 
as formulated by Darwin, and these again have con- 
tributed further to swell the volume of controversial 
literature. It is not surprising, therefore, that symp- 
toms of weariness developed in many quarters over the 
purely dialectical character of much of the writing on 
evolutionary theory. After the initial enthusiasm over 
a great conception had passed, and students of bio- 
logical science endeavored to penetrate more deeply 
into the workings of the forces which brought about 
the present order of the organic world, it was found 
that the problem of the method of evolution was one 
with which little real headway had been made. The 
problem seemed more amenable to the ingenuity of 
speculative thought than to actual investigation by 
observation or experiment. 
One difficulty lay in bringing rival theories to the 
test of verification. We may study the method of 
evolution by observing the actual course of evolution 
in the organic world and then test our theories of the 
causes of the phenomena in the light of their con- 
formity with the facts, or we may study the causes 
actually at work in modifying the characteristics of 
existing species. The first method involves the study 
of those fields of inquiry which reveal the actual course 
of evolutionary changes. But even if we had an ex- 
haustive knowledge of these fields we should still be 
ignorant of the causes which lay back of the unfolding 10 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
of life. Knowledge of the way in which evolution has 
proceeded would be of great service in the search for 
causes; but however well our theories might account 
for the course of evolutionary history, we could never 
be quite sure of their truth until in some way we had 
brought them to the test of verification. 
While the progress of evolutionary theory between 
1859 and 1900 failed to realize the possibly over- 
sanguine hopes of many biologists, it must not be in- 
ferred that no important advances had been made. 
The influence of geographical isolation in the forma- 
tion of species had been brought out by A. R. Wal- 
lace, M. Wagner, L. Gulick, G. J. Romanes, and more 
recently by D. S. Jordan, C. H. Merriam, J. A. Allen, 
J. Grinnell, and other American workers on different 
groups of vertebrate animals. The isolationists had an 
adequate answer to the objection based on the swamp- 
ing effects of intercrossing, which Fleeming Jenkin was 
the first to urge against Darwin’s theory of the origin 
of species. No new variation, according to Jenkin, 
could establish itself, because it would breed with the 
parental type and produce an intermediate progeny 
which would gradually lose itself in the general average 
of the species. Moritz Wagner, in his well-known 
essay on The Darwinian Theory and the Law of Mi- 
gration, urged that the only way in which a variation 
may escape the swamping effect of intercrossing is to 
become isolated, by migration or otherwise, whereby it 
may develop in its own way, unchecked by interbreed- 
ing with the parent species. The large amount of TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
11 
careful work on geographical distribution which was 
stimulated by the problem of the origin of species has 
yielded abundant and conclusive evidence of the im- 
portance of isolation in the formation of distinct 
types. D. S. Jordan has formulated the principle that, 
“Given any species in any region, the nearest related 
species is not likely to be found in the same region 
nor in a remote region, but in a neighboring district 
separated from the first by a barrier of some sort.” 
There is no doubt that this generalization, which J. A. 
Allen has designated as Jordan’s Law, is quite generally 
exemplified in the distribution of vertebrate animals 
and in many species of invertebrates. It is fairly well 
borne out in the distribution of the races of man and 
in many species of higher plants. But it is no less evi- 
dent that it meets with striking exceptions. In many 
cases closely allied forms inhabiting the same area do 
not interbreed. They may have breeding periods at 
different times, or live in different local habitats, or be 
in other ways sexually instead of geographically iso- 
lated, so that the broader principle of Moritz Wagner, 
“Ohne Isolierung keine Arten,” may still be claimed to 
apply to them. 
Just how isolation works to promote diversity has 
been variously interpreted. The controversy as to 
whether isolation per se is able to occasion divergence, 
independently of natural selection or the influence of 
environment, as maintained by Gulick in opposition to 
Wallace, we can now decide in favor of the former in- 
vestigator. It is coming to be recognized more and 12 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
more that the various marks which naturalists employ 
to distinguish species and varieties have no particular 
value to their possessors. Much has been made of this 
fact by Eimer and others in attacks upon the theory 
of natural selection as an explanation of the origin of 
species. Still under the influence of teleological con- 
ceptions, Darwin and most of his contemporaries were 
prone to look upon everything in an organism as of 
some use, and, armed with a principle by which the 
origin of structures might be explained because of their 
use, they regarded specific characters as quite generally 
of some service to the organism. The selectionist had 
to recognize, however, a certain element of unfitness 
in every species. Darwin, who attempted to explain 
the origin of species by means of natural selection, be- 
lieved that species were formed by the preservation of 
relatively minute favorable variations, and that there- 
fore the characteristics by which one species differs 
from another represent the summation of a large num- 
ber of successive improvements in the inherited endow- 
ments of the stock. He had read Paley’s Natural 
Theology with great admiration and was strongly im- 
pressed with the wonderful adaptations of organic 
structure which are so clearly set forth in that able 
and celebrated work. Darwin was persuaded that he 
had to account for a condition of extreme perfection 
and nicety of adjustment in every organism. While 
abundantly conversant with the occurrence of sudden 
and well marked variations, he believed that such 
variations were of minor significance for evolution, TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
13 
because he deemed that, except in rare instances, they 
would be ill adapted and would tend to die out. As 
one is not likely to fit a peg neatly into a hole by going 
at it with an ax, so an organism is not apt to secure 
a close adaptation to its environment by a series of 
great and sudden mutations. Of course an organism 
must possess a considerable adaptiveness to its environ- 
ment in order to survive. But if, as most biologists 
now hold, the margin of inutility in organic structures 
is wider than it was supposed to be by Darwin, it 
leaves a more open field for other theories of the for- 
mation of species besides the one formulated in Dar- 
win’s celebrated work. 
Since species-forming has been so frequently asso- 
ciated with isolation, it might be contended that it has 
taken place because of isolation. And undoubtedly 
much can be said for this viewpoint. Recent work in 
genetics has shown how a species containing a large 
amount of hereditary diversity may be broken up, 
through isolation, and quite independently of any 
selective elimination, into a number of different types. 
Such a segregation of types is simply an incidental 
product of inbreeding. Isolated groups tend to become 
homozygous or racially pure for different characters. 
And where any strongly heterozygous species is scat- 
tered into a number of restricted localities, it becomes 
inevitably broken up by inbreeding into distinct sub- 
divisions. 
The problem of the closeness of fit between the 
species and its environment has an important relation 14 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
also to the theory of mutation. If specific characters 
are frequently of little or no biological importance, 
they may have come about full-fledged by a single 
variation. Whether species have been made by small 
steps or relatively large ones is, however, of subordi- 
nate importance for the larger problems of progressive 
evolution and the development of adaptations. Dar- 
win attempted to explain the origin of species—which 
is essentially divergence—and progressive adaptive 
development by the same method of survival of the 
fittest, with occasional aid from the transmission of 
acquired characters. Recent developments of evolu- 
tionary theory have tended to treat the formation of 
species as more or less independent of the progressive 
transformation of the world of life; and many who, like 
de Vries, oppose the view that species have arisen by 
means of natural selection, still hold that natural selec- 
tion affords an adequate explanation of progressive 
adaptive development. 
It must be admitted that the theory of natural selec- 
tion is the only hypothesis that has been offered by 
which the development of adaptations may be inter- 
preted in terms of the known processes of life. La- 
marckism, which at best can account only for certain 
classes of adaptations, has to postulate an organism 
already provided with the power of meeting its condi- 
tions of life by appropriate structural and functional 
changes. Many who reject the doctrine of natural 
selection attempt to cut the Gordian knot by espousing 
some form of vitalism or by appealing to some kind TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
15 
of supernatural guidance or directive agency in devel- 
opment. For the school represented by Hans Driesch, 
life is primarily purposive, incapable of being explained 
in physical and chemical terms, and bent on realizing 
its own end in the development of the race, as in that 
of the individual. The problem of adaptation is still 
in the foreground of interest. Some would solve it in 
this way and some in that; some avoid it; while others 
apparently do not see it at all. But there is no doubt 
that it will remain one of the central problems of bio- 
logy for many years to come. 
The first two years of the twentieth century were 
made memorable in the history of evolutionary theory 
by the appearance of the first volume of de Vries’ 
Mutationstheorie, and the rediscovery of Mendel’s law 
of heredity. Mutation and Mendelism have been 
closely associated in recent literature on genetics. The 
two bulky volumes of Die Mutationstheorie contained 
a great wealth of observational and experimental data 
that served to impress the fact that the method of 
evolution is a subject for investigation by the breeder 
of plants and animals. The doctrine of mutation, 
which claimed that species had a sudden instead of a 
slow origin, removed some of the obstacles which 
Darwin’s own theory had to cope with, and it gained 
acceptance, especially in America, with a rapidity 
which was quite unjustified, I believe, even by the 
wealth of evidence which de Vries adduced in its sup- 
port. It was widely accepted by morphologists and 
experimentalists, although regarded with extreme sus- 16 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
picion by most students of taxonomy and distribution. 
The search for mutations soon made it apparent, how- 
ever, that stable hereditary variations were not, as a 
rule, of large extent. As de Vries himself has stated 
in his Plant Breeding, many of them range down to 
the limits of detectability even for the experienced 
eye. Breeding experiments have shown that most of 
the small individual variations to which Darwin attrib- 
uted so much importance are purely somatic and have 
no discernible influence on the next generation. True 
hereditary variations, even small ones, are more rarely 
met with. It is often difficult to distinguish such varia- 
tions amid the large amount of somatic fluctuation by 
which they are obscured, and it may happen that they 
will be found to occur more commonly than is generally 
supposed. The mutationists and the Darwinians may 
therefore be compelled to draw more closely together 
in the future, as in fact they have already done to a 
certain extent. 
The precise relationship of the Darwinian theory to 
the mutation theory as modified by recent observations 
is differently conceived by different writers. For the 
larger problems of evolution Darwin and de Vries stand 
on the same foundation. Many series of breeding ex- 
periments have made it evident that most distinct 
species differ in a number of inherited factors and 
hence must have been produced by a number of suc- 
cessive steps. But this work also shows that they have 
probably not been produced by a continuous accumu- 
lation of ever present variations, as Darwin supposed. TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
17 
Much has been learned about variation since Darwin’s 
time, but to set forth the bearing of this knowledge 
involves a brief discussion of the other important dis- 
covery I have mentioned, namely, Mendel’s law of 
heredity. 
The essential feature of Mendel’s law is that char- 
acteristics behave as units in inheritance and are 
capable of being combined in varied relations and 
assorted in definite numerical ratios. Mendelizing 
characters go in pairs, and, on account of the way in 
which these characters are distributed, Mendel was 
led to assume that the germ cells are pure for one or 
the other member of such pairs. This shrewd surmise, 
although made at a time when nothing whatever was 
known of the cellular mechanism of Mendelian inherit- 
ance, has since been confirmed by a large amount of 
careful and detailed investigation. Various pairs of 
characters may be independently assorted, producing 
Mendelian ratios of various kinds according to the 
number of independent characters dealt with. 
Through a remarkable series of studies on the struc- 
ture and development of the sex cells it has been ren- 
dered exceedingly probable that Mendelian characters 
have their basis in nuclear bodies called chromosomes. 
The work of Morgan and his associates has shown that 
in the fruit fly, Drosophila, characters are inherited 
in groups; that the number of such groups is the same 
as the number of chromosomes in the mature germ 
cells, namely four; that the factors for these characters 
have a linear arrangement in the chromosomes; and  STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
18 
that occasionally they may pass from one chromosome 
to its mate in the period of synaptic union. Hypo- 
thetical maps are made of the distribution of these 
hereditary factors, based on their different degrees of 
linkage and the frequency of what is called “crossing 
over.” 
Over two hundred mutations have been found to 
arise in the fruit fly during the few years it has been 
kept under observation. When a new mutation arises, 
appropriate breeding experiments can be made to ascer- 
tain if it belongs to the sex chromosome or to the 
second, third, or fourth chromosome, and then to de- 
termine how many units it may be removed from other 
factors in the same chromosome. While space forbids 
my presenting the evidence upon which these remark- 
able conclusions are based, I may say that this evidence 
has compelled at least the provisional assent of most 
of the critical students of genetics who have devoted 
serious attention to the problem. 
The penetrating analysis which Morgan and his co- 
workers have made of variation and heredity in Droso- 
phila has thrown much light, and promises to throw 
more, on a number of problems of evolution. For an 
illustration of this one may turn to the recent contro- 
versy concerning what may be accomplished by the 
process of continued selective breeding. As is well 
known, cultivated plants and domestic animals have 
been rapidly modified by the process of artificial selec- 
tion. It was formerly held that such changes could be 
carried on for a practically indefinite period. But ex- TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
perience has shown that in practice, while selection 
may produce results quite rapidly at first, it operates 
afterwards more slowly and finally comes to a point, 
usually in a few generations, at which it seems power- 
less to produce further change. These results are now 
pretty well known to be due to the gradual production 
of a homozygous condition for those factors already 
present in the stock which produce the maximum de- 
velopment of the character in question. It is an affair 
of shuffling and sorting the cards. And when it is com- 
pleted, further progress must wait upon the appearance 
of new mutations, if, happily, they arise. 
Much discussion has centered about the question 
whether or not the basis of unit characters, the genes, 
are capable of being modified by selection. The work 
of Castle on hooded rats seemed to show that, 
through selection, modification might be made in a 
character that behaved as a simple Mendelian unit in 
inheritance. As Castle remarks in his Genetics and 
Eugenics, published in 1916: 
There is apparently no limit to the quantitative change 
which can be produced in the hooded pattern by selection, 
short of its complete extinction in the all white or all black 
condition toward wdiich our minus and plus selections re- 
spectively are steadily tending. Yet there can be no doubt 
that only a single genetic factor is here involved. A ten- 
tatively adopted hypothesis that modifying factors were 
concerned in it has been definitely disproved. Any finite 
number of such modifiers would have been greatly reduced 
or eliminated altogether by seventeen successive selections, 
19 20 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
yet no slowing up is observable in the rate of change of 
the racial character under selection either plus or minus. 
The changes effected by selection show permanency under 
crosses with wild rats. The selected races are changed by 
a wild cross no more than an unselected hooded race is. A 
first cross of the selected races seemed to show a partial 
undoing of the changes produced by selection but a second 
cross made on a still larger scale, involving over one thou- 
sand second generation individuals, showed no further 
change of this sort, but instead a return to about what the 
selected race would have been had no crossing at all 
occurred. 
The conclusion seems unavoidable that the single genetic 
factor involved in this case has undergone quantitative 
change under the influence of selection. 
However, further testing of the hypothesis that the 
hooded character in rats depends upon multiple factors 
led Castle to reverse his previous stand, and to agree 
with Johannsen, Morgan, East, Hagedoorn, Bridges, 
and others that his results may be explained in con- 
formity with the theory of the constancy of the genes, 
which is now the favorite form of the doctrine of non- 
transmutability. In a paper published in 1919 on 
“Piebald Rats and the Theory of Genes,” he concludes 
that results obtained by the new method of testing the 
purity of his stock 
favor the widely accepted view that a single gene is not 
subject to fluctuating variability, but is stable like a chem- 
ical compound and changes only similarly by definite steps 
(mutation in the sense of Morgan, not of de Vries) that 
offer no obstacles to the proposition of Johannsen (ably TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
21 
supported by East) that a gene terminology is adequate to 
explain all known varieties of inheritance phenomena. 
The extent to which characters may be changed 
through selection varies greatly in different forms. In 
some cases selection apparently can do nothing at all. 
In the experiments on corn which have been carried 
out at the University of Illinois, it has been found that 
the protein and oil content has been increased in some 
strains selected for high content and decreased in those 
selected for low content during the twenty years in 
which the investigation has been carried on. In Droso- 
phila it has been possible to demonstrate the existence 
of modifying factors, to determine their location by 
their linkage relations, and to show their effect on the 
character under investigation. Sometimes these modi- 
fied factors may arise as new mutations in the course 
of selective breeding. They may be located here, there, 
or anywhere in the chromosome complex. Occasion- 
ally successive mutations occur in the same locus of a 
given chromosome. This has occurred several times 
in the factor for eosin eye color and a few times in the 
factor for bar eye. 
Selection seems to have not the least effect upon 
either the location or the nature of the new germinal 
variations that make their appearance. A scrutiny of 
the numerous mutations that have arisen in Drosophila 
shows them to be of the most varied character and 
quite without definite relation to utility. Most of 
them are recessive; several are dominant; others par- 22 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
daily dominant. They are just the fortuitous varia- 
tions which Darwin postulated as forming the raw 
material out of which selection might build up per- 
fected structures. Some of these variations show much 
greater viability than others. Several of them are 
lethal, that is, when present in the duplex state they 
cause the death of the organism. From the standpoint 
of utility the majority of these mutations must be 
treated as failures. Occasionally, however, if not in 
Drosophila at least in many other forms, the new varia- 
tions that arise are apparently better adapted than 
their parent stock and tend to supplant it under con- 
ditions of free competition. 
Recent work in genetics has furnished us with a 
much clearer picture than we formerly had of the 
nature and origin of the variations which constitute 
the material for the transformation of species. Par- 
ticular heritable variations are the results of changes 
in localized parts of chromosomes; they behave in 
general as Mendelian unit factors; they occur spo- 
radically in various parts of the different chromosomes; 
and while they may affect predominantly one or at 
least a few features of the body, there is reason to 
believe that they change to a certain extent the entire 
constitution of the organism. A variation in a par- 
ticular locus of a chromosome may produce as its most 
obvious result a change in eye color, but it may also 
influence the development of wing characters or gen- 
eral viability. Particular characters are thus the prod- 
ucts of a number of germinal factors, and in selection TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
23 
experiments characters may be modified, not through 
any change in the factor or factors to which the char- 
acter in question is mainly due, but to changes in other 
modifying factors whose chief influence is upon quite 
different bodily structures. 
The development of any character is dependent upon 
a number of elements in the germ plasm. We can no 
longer speak of a localized determinant of a character 
in Weismann’s sense, as a particle of the germ plasm 
which produces the character much as a seed gives rise 
to a plant. The term, unit character, so frequently 
employed a few years ago, is being replaced by the 
expression, unit factor. And there is reason to believe 
that not only is every character the result of many 
unit factors, but that every unit factor may influence 
to a greater or less extent a multitude of different 
characters. 
What is now known of variation affords little sup- 
port to the doctrine of orthogenesis according to which 
variations are prone to keep on accumulating quite 
independently of selection along definitely directed 
lines. Variation in any one direction apparently has 
not the least effect upon the direction of the next 
variation that makes its appearance. Variations have 
been accumulated along particular lines in the past, as 
has been abundantly demonstrated by series of fossil 
forms, and in some cases the changes in structure have 
been so gradual as to preclude the occurrence of muta- 
tions of any considerable extent. But it is quite pos- 
sible to account for such development by the theory of 24 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
natural selection. The fact of evolution along specific 
lines tells us very little of the causes by which such 
changes have been brought about. Orthogenetic devel- 
opment in the etymological sense of the term may be 
a fact, but that does not prove that living beings pos- 
sess any inherent tendency to evolve along straight 
lines. 
I have already alluded to the divergent views regard- 
ing the potency of natural selection. While one may 
argue indefinitely as to whether natural selection can 
or cannot account for this or that structure, the status 
of the theory has become, I believe, more firmly estab- 
lished than it was in the time of Darwin. Whatever 
one may think of the adequacy of natural selection to 
account for the evolution of organic life, there can no 
longer be any doubt that organisms are preserved or 
eliminated on the basis of differences of hereditary 
constitution. The studies of Weldon on Carcinus and 
Clausilia, of De Cesnola on mantids, of Bumpus on the 
English sparrow, of Davenport on birds, of Tower on 
potato beetles, and of the Morgan school on Droso- 
phila, have shown the actual operation of selective 
elimination, and the studies of Pearson, Ploetz, Mac- 
Donald, and various other investigators of the selective 
death rate in man indicate that, notwithstanding our 
advances in medicine and hygiene, natural selection 
continues to operate with considerable vigor. The re- 
proach of Lord Salisbury in regard to natural selection 
that “No man has ever seen it at work” has now been 
definitely shown to be without foundation. TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
25 
It must be borne in mind, however, that natural 
selection is at best only a proximate category of ex- 
planation. It is a general term for a multitude of 
processes which bring about a differential death rate. 
The old objection so often advanced with an air of 
novelty that natural selection does not account for 
variation may be admitted without reserve. Darwin, 
who was under no illusions in regard to this point, 
never attempted to explain variation by natural selec- 
tion. The occurrence of variation is made one of the 
presuppositions of his theory, and, for aught that 
Darwin could see, and for aught that we can see now, 
variations are pretty much haphazard occurrences. 
They arise no one knows why, and no one can foretell 
when. When they appear they are subjected to the 
action of many forces within and without the organism 
—forces whose action is generally indirect and in many 
cases obscure—and the fittest survive, and we call the 
procedure natural selection. According to the theory 
of natural selection then, the causes of evolution are 
the agencies, whatever they may be, which cause the 
hereditary qualities of organisms to vary, and the 
agencies which favor the elimination of certain varia- 
tions and the preservation of others. When we have 
explained evolution in terms of natural selection, there- 
fore, we have made only a first step, although from 
certain points of view a very important first step, 
toward a final explanation. 
Considering the fundamental importance of the 
problem, it is surprising that very little investigation 26 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
has thus far been devoted to the discovery of the causes 
of variability. We may count on the fingers of one 
hand the researches of any importance bearing on this 
topic. Tower has claimed to have obtained variations 
in the offspring of potato beetles by subjecting the 
parents to different conditions of heat and moisture 
during the maturation of the germ cells. Stockard has 
induced what appeared to be true hereditary variations 
by subjecting guinea pigs to the fumes of alcohol. A 
few other suggestive results have been obtained with 
higher forms, but what has been accomplished scarcely 
represents even a good beginning upon the problem. 
More success has been attained in the induction of 
variability in unicellular organisms, especially the bac- 
teria, but the relation of the variation produced in 
these forms to the congenital variability of higher 
types is a matter of dispute. Much of it, apparently, 
is akin fundamentally to the somatic variability of 
multicellular organisms, and its transmission may be 
due to quite other causes than those by which the in- 
heritance of higher forms is determined. 
Discussion of the nature and causes of variability 
naturally recalls the address delivered by Professor 
Bateson on the occasion of his presidency of the British 
Association in 1914. Professor Bateson, the leading 
English exponent of Mendelism, took as his theme a 
general survey of recent work in genetics. He pointed 
out the fact, now amply demonstrated, that much of 
what had heretofore passed as variability is merely the 
product of crossing and the subsequent segregation of TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
27 
characters in various new combinations. The appear- 
ance of novelty in these variations is, as Professor 
Bateson assures us, quite illusory. Most apparently 
new forms are just the kaleidoscopic combinations of 
old elements in new patterns, adding nothing that is 
really new in substance. Professor Bateson held, how- 
ever, that not all variation was of this kind. This 
extreme view had been developed by the Dutch bota- 
nist, Lotsy, who, being impressed with the multitudi- 
nous variations obtained by crossing distinct types, and 
by the ways in which variations really due to crossing 
many generations back appear to arise de novo, at- 
tempted to account for all variation, and hence the 
whole process of evolution, as the result of varied com- 
binations of germ plasm produced by hybridization. 
But Bateson, alive to the weak points in Lotsy’s posi- 
tion, and perceiving that there is scarcely any reason- 
able way of avoiding the admission that real variation 
occasionally occurs, looks upon variation in a way very 
different from that in which it was regarded by Dar- 
win. He assures us that 
variation from step to step in the series must occur either 
by the addition or by the loss of factors. Now, of the origin 
of new forms by loss there seems to me to be fairly clear 
evidence, but of the contemporary acquisition of any new 
factor I see no satisfactory proof, though I admit there are 
rare examples which may be so interpreted. We are left 
with a picture of variation utterly different from that which 
we saw at first. Variation now stands out as a definite 
physiological event. We have done with the notion that 28 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
Darwin came latterly to favor, that large differences can 
arise by accumulation of small differences. Such small dif- 
ferences are often mere ephemeral effects of conditions of 
life, and as such are not transmissible; but even small 
differences, when truly genetic, are factorial like the larger 
ones, and there is not the slightest reason for supposing 
that they are capable of summation. 
The hypothesis that variation is due to the loss of 
something in the germ plasm is carried out to its logical 
conclusion. In speaking of the colors of sweet peas he 
says, 
There is no question that these have been derived from the 
one wild bicolor form by a process of successive removals. 
When the vast range of form, size, and flavor to be found 
among the cultivated apples is considered, it seems difficult 
to suppose that all this variety is hidden in the wild crab- 
apple. I cannot positively assert that this is so, but I think 
all familiar with Mendelian analysis would agree with me 
that it is probable, and that the wild crab contains pre- 
sumably inhibiting elements which the cultivated kinds 
have lost. 
Thus progressive variation and even dominant char- 
acters represent no real additions to the germinal 
complex; they are due simply to the removal of in- 
hibitory factors. 
The point of view developed by Professor Bateson, 
which some were inclined to believe he did not wish to 
be taken quite seriously, was soon afterward taken up TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
29 
by Dr. C. B. Davenport, director of the Station for 
Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, and 
head of the Eugenics Record Office, who put forward 
the view that our remote protozoan ancestors were 
much more complex in their chemical composition than 
the germ plasm of the higher evolved types of to-day, 
which owe their rise to the successive losses of inhibi- 
tory chemicals. 
Such pronouncements from leading investigators of 
Mendelian heredity, reminding one as they do of the 
extravagances of the preformation theories of Leibnitz, 
Haller, and Bonnet in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, naturally somewhat startled the public, as 
they were doubtless intended to do. Professor Bateson, 
who for many years had been somewhat restive under 
the rather unsatisfactory state of evolutionary specu- 
lation, finding in the recently opened field of Mendelian 
inheritance opportunities more congenial to his powers 
than the laborious compilation of meristic and substan- 
tive variations, had thrown himself into the work of 
Mendelian analysis with signal success. In his position 
as leader of the English Mendelians he doubtless de- 
rived a peculiar satisfaction in wielding his iconoclastic 
club. No one can really understand the address before 
the British Association which has perplexed so many 
people, without reading much between the lines, and 
without making an allowance for the effect of certain 
instinctive proclivities of human nature, which are not 
without considerable influence in shaping the stand- STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
30 
point even of highly trained scientific men. Bateson 
committed, I believe, the very human error of attribut- 
ing to recent discoveries in Mendelian inheritance, in 
which he had taken so prominent a part, an importance 
for evolutionary theory far beyond what they really 
possessed. There is nothing in Mendelian inheritance 
that gives the slightest indication of the nature of those 
factorial changes upon which the appearance of so- 
called unit characters depends. That even recessive 
characters are due to loss is a perfectly unwarrantable 
assumption, and that dominant characters arise as a 
result of losses in the germ plasm is a conclusion for 
which there is not a shred of real evidence.1 It is some- 
what remarkable that Professor Bateson should have 
presented addition and subtraction as the alternative 
methods of factorial changes, and that he should have 
failed even to mention the possibility of factorial modi- 
fication or transformation, which would seem a priori 
to be a very probable occurrence. The dilemma in 
which he represents evolutionary theory as being 
placed through recent discoveries in heredity and 
variation is one which is entirely fanciful and depends 
upon reading into nature a purely artificial and sym- 
bolic interpretation. 
The discoveries in the few years that have elapsed 
since the publication of Bateson’s address have not 
1 This view I have defended at greater length in an article entitled 
Are Recessive Characters Due to Loss? Published in Science. N. S. 
42, 300-303, 1915. TENDENCIES IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 
31 
only failed to strengthen the paradoxical position there 
set forth, but have afforded positive evidence of its 
unsoundness. In the first place, the discovery of what 
Morgan calls multiple allelomorphs has created serious 
difficulties for the “presence-absence theory” upon 
which Bateson relies and has lent strong support to 
the view that Mendelian characters are due to factor 
transformation instead of merely gains or losses. Re- 
cent work has afforded further and critically tested 
evidence of the origin de novo of dominant character- 
istics. It has shown that recessive genes occasionally 
mutate to form dominant factors. In fact there may 
be a whole series of changes in what the evidence indi- 
cates is a single gene. Recent work has also furnished 
additional evidence of the effectiveness of selection in 
gradually accumulating differences as well as in reveal- 
ing more clearly the precise method by which such 
results are brought about. We are by no means “done 
with the notion . . . that large differences can arise 
by accumulation of small differences.” In fact, it has 
been repeatedly demonstrated that relatively large dif- 
ferences have been formed by this very method. It is 
becoming clearer that species in a state of nature differ 
by a multitude of factors for relatively small differ- 
ences, and that, since there is not the slightest observ- 
able tendency toward simultaneous mutation in dif- 
ferent genes, these species must have arisen by a suc- 
cession of small steps. The mutation theory of de 
Vries has had to be seriously modified, and has been 32 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
brought more nearly in accord with the conception of 
the origin of species by the gradual method as outlined 
by Darwin.1 
When we look back upon the progress that has been 
made in genetics during the past twenty years, we can 
scarcely fail to recognize the period as one of substan- 
tial achievement. The method of evolution has come 
to be less a matter of philosophical speculation and 
more a subject for attack by the methods of experi- 
mental inquiry. The present is a period in which 
fruitful researches are being vigorously prosecuted 
along a number of lines bearing on the central prob- 
lem. We may or may not be near the dawn of any 
great and epoch-making discoveries. But a steady 
advance is going on over a wide front, which no doubt 
will lead to the ultimate conquest of positions of capi- 
tal importance. 
1 Dr. T. H. Morgan has stated in a recent article (Scientific Monthly 
16, p. 239, 1923) : “To-day we agree with Darwin that such extreme 
variations as those he called sports would rarely, if ever, have con- 
tributed to the formation of new types in nature. But we also know 
that minute differences also arise as mutants, and that these are in- 
herited in the same way as are the larger mutant changes. It is also 
now clear that these smaller mutant variations must be those small 
heritable variations that Darwin himself appealed to as furnishing 
the materials of organic evolution.” CHAPTER II 
BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
It is with some hesitation that I venture to add to the 
copious literature on natural selection. By this time, 
if ever, one would think, this theory should be well 
understood and all of its implications, presuppositions 
and consequences clearly set forth. But a perusal of 
much writing on the subject in the past, as well as an 
examination of a number of contemporary discussions 
convinces me that such is far from the case. I shall 
not endeavor to set right the various critics who mis- 
construe or somehow fail to understand this theory. 
I give them up in despair. My attempt shall be rather 
one of analysis,—an inquiry into the presuppositions 
of the theory with an endeavor to evaluate it as a 
scientific explanation of evolution. 
As was pointed out in the previous chapter the ade- 
quacy of the theory of natural selection as a means 
of explaining the origin of species and the evolution 
of organic life has been the subject of much contro- 
versy.1 The theory is ingenious and very simple. 
Perhaps its very simplicity served to awaken suspicion 
as to its soundness. Here is a theory which Darwin 
1 At a recent symposium on Darwinism before the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, one member referred to natural 
selection as an “obvious truism,” while another declared that it was 
“as extinct as the Dodo”! 
33 34 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
propounds as to the chief cause of evolution. It is put 
forward as an explanation of the wonderful adaptive- 
ness of the world of life. What had seemed to be in- 
explicable except as the result of intelligent design is 
interpreted as the outcome of the operation of natural 
forces working on the basis of “fortuitous” variations. 
How remarkable and how revolutionary it would be if 
such a theory could be true! 
When we look into the component elements of this 
process of natural selection we perceive for the most 
part simply well known facts. It was long recognized 
that organisms vary in their hereditary endowments, 
and that this circumstance affords the basis for the 
improvements of our domestic varieties of animals and 
plants. That organisms compete with each other and 
struggle with environmental forces is equally obvious. 
The only factor about which there can be any doubt 
is what Spencer has called the survival of the fittest. 
But we should bear in mind that natural selection 
is simply selective survival based on differences in 
heredity, and unless we suppose that all hereditary 
variations are equally apt to survive,—which is very 
unlikely,—natural selection would inevitably occur. 
Moreover, what appears to be the necessary outcome 
of the struggle between different hereditary variations 
has repeatedly been observed as a matter of fact. 
Natural selection is taking place under our eyes. But 
this tells us very little of its importance as a factor in 
evolution. Its role may be subordinate, or even neg- 
ligible. On the other hand, it may have all the potency BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
35 
ascribed to it by Professor Weismann who speaks of the 
“all-sufficiency” of this agency and thinks that it is 
adequate to explain the entire evolution of organic life. 
These are questions for the future to settle. We 
are here concerned rather with the presuppositions of 
natural selection and we may pass on to inquire, grant- 
ing that natural selection is the cause of evolutionary 
changes, or even the all-sufficient cause of evolution, 
in what sense does the theory offer us a real explana- 
tion of this process? The theory of natural selection 
affords a formula in terms of which the explanation of 
any sort of adaptation is simple and easy. If, for 
instance, we wish to explain why animals are often 
colored like their environment, we say that those varia- 
tions happening to render their possessor more nearly 
like the color of its environment were preserved; the 
others perished. By accumulating such variations, gen- 
eration after generation, we finally get such striking 
cases of protective resemblance as are furnished by the 
leaf insect and the Kallima butterfly. The same sort 
of explanation applies to all other adaptations. The 
evolutionist can often strengthen his argument by 
pointing to various degrees in the development of 
structures or activities, as in the evolution of the re- 
markable comb-making instinct of the hive bee, and 
we thus get an idea of the probable, or possible, stages 
by which the final result has been reached. There 
seems to be no clearly-defined limit to the perfec- 
tion or elaborateness of the product which may be 
“explained” by this simple method. For the neo- 36 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
Darwinian, natural selection affords the one key to the 
development of all the manifold adaptiveness of the 
organic world. 
To many it has seemed that such facile explanations 
explain very little. It must be admitted that when we 
have accounted for the origin of anything by the theory 
of natural selection we have made only the first step 
in the direction of a full and adequate causal explana- 
tion. In these days of analysis in biological investi- 
gation, we may be prone to minimize the value of this 
first step. But we should remember that the law of 
gravitation enables us to make only a first step towards 
explaining the motions of the heavenly bodies. The 
theory of natural selection interprets evolution as the 
outcome of known processes of heredity, variation, and 
differential survival. And while even the all-sufficiency 
of natural selection would not necessarily dispose of 
teleology, it brings the phenomenon of organic pur- 
posiveness within the purview of the student of the 
biological activities. Given variation, heredity, and 
struggle, and the natural outcome is adaptation. 
The theoretical bearing even of the kind of explana- 
tion which the theory of natural selection affords is 
very important for our outlook on problems of life, 
mind, and society. As Huxley contended, the old argu- 
ment for design, so forcibly presented by Paley, loses 
much of its force in face of the possible operations of 
this agency. If the theory of natural selection did no 
more than to show the dependence of the development 
of organic adaption upon recognized biological proc- BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
37 
esses, it would be of great significance for both science 
and philosophy. Nevertheless, we must freely grant 
that if natural selection is the “all-sufficient” cause of 
evolution, we have still very much to explain. What 
our interpretation really means is that evolution is the 
outcome of: 1, the causes of hereditary variability; 
2, the various forces within and without the organism 
which determine that some of these variations survive 
while others perish. 
Darwin, like most of his followers, had no explana- 
tion of the causes of variation. He recognized that 
variability might be enhanced by crossing, and he 
thought that it might be produced by changes in nutri- 
tion and the environment of the organism. Since Dar- 
win’s time, much of importance has been learned in 
regard to the variability of plants and animals. Most 
of what appears to be the production of new forms and 
characteristics is now known to be the product of com- 
bining, in different ways, factors already present in the 
germ plasm of the parents. It is a sort of kaleidoscopic 
performance in which the same old elements are made 
to exhibit a great variety of novel combinations. The 
occurrence of these apparently new products is a 
matter of combination and segregation of hereditary 
factors in accordance with Mendel’s law of heredity. 
They are not variations in the old sense at all. They 
result simply from the shuffling of the cards. 
These products of the Mendelian shuffle doubtless 
play some part in the process of evolution. In fact, 
a few evolutionists such as Lotsy have espoused the 38 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
extreme view that practically all variation is the result 
of crossing. Not to dwell on the curious logical con- 
sequences of this standpoint, it may be said that it is 
quite well established now that a variation of a dif- 
ferent kind sometimes arises and is capable of heredi- 
tary transmission. Some have been shown to be con- 
nected with variations in the number of chromosomes 
in the nucleus of the germ cell. Others have been 
shown, by very ingenious methods, to be very prob- 
ably due to changes in small parts of chromosomes. 
The genetics of the fruit fly has been worked out to 
such a point of refinement that it is possible to specify, 
with a good deal of probability, the relative position 
in particular chromosomes of the genes, or factors, for 
a large part of the two hundred or more variations 
which have been observed to arise in this form. Varia- 
tion, in the sense of producing something really new, 
in contrast to variation which is merely the product 
of the Mendelian law of heredity, is mainly the result 
of changes in definitely localized regions of particular 
chromosomes in the nucleus of the germ cell. By a 
combination of carefully planned and controlled breed- 
ing experiments with the study of the history of the 
sex cells by improved microscopic technique, variation, 
at least in the fruit fly, has been hunted down to its 
local habitat. But here the biologist must stop. What 
is the nature of the change upon which variation de- 
pends he does not know. Not improbably it is a 
chemical transformation of a small part of a chromo- 
some representing what the geneticist calls a gene or BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
39 
hereditary factor. We know that there is a great mul- 
titude of these genes in the germ plasm. We have 
learned much of the results of their combination and 
segregation. The geneticist has made great inroads 
into regions that a few years ago seemed to be in im- 
penetrable darkness. His exploration into the compo- 
sition of cell organs is suggestive of the achievements 
of the physicist in exploring the atom. But while he 
has traced true variability to its source, he has learned 
little of its real causes. 
Theoretically, it is possible for the vitalist to main- 
tain that variability is the outcome of a teleological 
process or an Aristotelian entelechy which shapes the 
formative activities of the organism to its own ends. 
Design may lurk unobtrusively in the fountain source 
of change upon which evolution depends.1 This posi- 
tion has not infrequently been taken by those who look 
upon the purposiveness of the world of life as some- 
thing more than the outcome of a purely hit-or-miss 
process. It is not easy to prove that particular varia- 
tions are not the outcome of some agency that gives 
them a purposive direction. Darwin, as is well known, 
spoke of variations as fortuitous. His theory could get 
along with the assumption that they are fortuitous. 
But here is a critical problem for the mechanistic in- 
terpretation of adaptiveness, and it is instructive to 
look at the actual facts which have been brought to 
1 For a defense of this viewpoint see J. Ward, Naturalism and Ag- 
nosticism, and Pauly, Darwinismus und Lamarckismus. There is a 
good critical discussion of the problem in the chapter on Darwinism and 
Design in Schiller’s Humanism. 40 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
light by the searching study of hereditary changes in 
plants and animals. 
So far as what might be called Mendelian variability 
is concerned, we have phenomena which are the out- 
come of very uniform modes of procedure. Mendel’s 
law of heredity is based upon the mathematical laws 
of chance. In this, it is expressive of the same kind 
of uniform results which are obtained by shaking dice 
or throwing coins. The new combinations may be 
good, bad, or indifferent from the standpoint of the 
interests of the organism, and the good combinations 
occur with no greater frequency than any others. They 
happen for reasons that may be considered no more 
nor no less teleological than those which give rise to a 
throw of double sixes in shaking dice. In fact, all the 
phenomena of Mendelian variability may be paralleled 
by dice casting or other devices which give a variety 
of combinations due to chance. 
But Mendelian variability may be said to rest finally 
upon those more fundamental changes occurring in the 
genes or hereditary factors. We are able to distin- 
guish now, as Darwin and his followers were not, this 
kind of variability which adds, as it were, new numbers 
to our dice or new cards to the pack, and gives us, 
therefore, new possibilities in the way of combinations 
of characteristics. What does a scrutiny of this more 
fundamental kind of variability teach us in regard to 
teleology? The little fruit fly that we see attracted to 
the vinegar bottle is the form to which we naturally 
turn for light on this important question. The numer- BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
41 
ous mutations which this creature has brought forth 
are mostly of the type I have just mentioned. These 
mutations affect now the color of the eyes, now the 
number of bristles on the body, now the length or 
venation of the wings,—all sorts of changes in all sorts 
of directions. These occur in no definite order and 
without any detectible relation to variations that have 
happened before. They are associated with genes 
located here, there, or anywhere in the chromosomes. 
Most of them are recessive and seem to be of no spe- 
cial significance in the life of the animal. Many of 
them render their possessors weak and unable to thrive 
alongside of normal flies. A large number result in 
what are called lethal factors which, when represented 
by two members, cause the death of the individual. A 
few variations are of good vitality and are probably 
able to hold their own in competition with typical 
members of the species. So far, then, as these more 
fundamental kinds of variations have been observed, 
they appear to be, like Mendelian combinations, good, 
bad, or indifferent, with perhaps a larger proportion 
that are bad or indifferent. Had Darwin been able 
to contemplate them, he would have noted with satis- 
faction that they apparently exhibit the fortuitous 
character which he had postulated. 
So far as investigation has yet gone, there has been 
revealed no clue as to what causes variations to arise. 
Apparently they just happen. In the search for causes 
one’s first thought turns toward the influence of the 
environment, not merely for a priori reasons, but be- STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
42 
cause a number of investigators have reported that 
hereditary variations have been produced through the 
action of the environment on the germ plasm. Some 
of these investigations should now be regarded with 
suspicion because the variations reported might have 
been the result of Mendelian segregation. It has now 
been shown to be very probable that most of the 
mutations of the evening primrose, Oenothera lam- 
arckiana, which had figured so largely in the celebrated 
mutation theory of evolution are really the remote 
products of hybridization. It requires critical work to 
distinguish the types of variation I have been discus- 
sing, and in many forms it is not possible to be certain 
with which type we are dealing. There are decided 
advantages in working with forms whose genetic be- 
havior is well known and I accordingly suggested to 
one of my graduate students, Miss Margaret Mann, 
that it would be desirable to test the potency of vari- 
ous environmental agencies in causing mutations in 
the common fruit fly. This form has the additional 
advantages that very large numbers can be easily bred 
and the generations succeed each other every three or 
four weeks. Miss Mann worked with a strain long 
inbred to insure the purity of the stock and the progeny 
of the flies experimentally treated were compared with 
the progeny of the flies kept under normal conditions 
as a control. In the experiments, different groups of 
flies were subjected for several successive generations 
to the influence of alcohol, morphine, lead poisoning, 
methylene blue, arsenic, high temperature, and other BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
43 
agencies, and their progeny were carefully examined to 
detect the occurrence of possible variations. In the 
experiments with alcohol, the flies were made intoxi- 
cated by the fumes for six days a week from their first 
emergence until after they had produced progeny. 
This treatment was continued for ten successive gen- 
erations. Out of several thousand flies subjected to 
such treatment, there were no individuals produced 
with any defect or other characteristics indicative of 
any hereditary effect of alcohol. Most of the other 
agencies were equally ineffective. Two mutations ap- 
peared in the 35,000 flies subjected to an abnormal 
environment; but as two mutations (a rather higher 
percentage) occurred in the controls, the efficacy of 
environmental factors in causing hereditary variation 
was not manifest. No other attempt at producing 
variation has dealt with such very large numbers of 
individuals or has been extended over so many genera- 
tions, and the way in which the investigation was 
checked and controlled makes it of peculiar signifi- 
cance in demonstrating that the germ plasma of the 
fruit fly is remarkably resistant to environmental 
influences. What causes the variations that have been 
observed to arise in this form seems more mysterious 
than ever. 
With respect to the hereditary action of alcohol in 
animals, there is the well known series of experiments 
by Stockard and his collaborators which has given 
positive results under conditions of careful control. 
Guinea pigs treated with alcohol were shown to pro- 44 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
duce offspring that were less apt to live and which 
showed a greater percentage of anomalies than the 
progeny of the untreated animals kept as controls. 
The offspring of alcoholized guinea pigs, although 
raised without alcohol, were found to give rise to a 
second generation of relatively defective animals and 
these again to a third. Something was apparently 
passed on from one generation to the next that gave 
rise to less viable or defective offspring. But it is note- 
worthy that the defects, such as abnormal digits and 
eye anomalies, which arose most frequently from alco- 
holized ancestry, were not transmitted as clearly de- 
fined characteristics; what was transmitted seemed 
rather to be an impaired vitality of which increased 
mortality and occasional deformities were the symp- 
toms. The same interpretation not improbably ap- 
plies to the more recent results observed by Mac- 
Dowell in the progeny of alcoholized white rats. We 
are left in doubt as to the real relationship of this 
transmission to the hereditary factor changes inherited 
in accordance with Mendel’s law. 
Of somewhat uncertain interpretation also are the 
recent experiments of Dr. M. F. Guyer on the trans- 
mission of lens defects in rabbits. Guyer made an 
emulsion of the lens of the eye of a rabbit and injected 
the preparation into the blood of a fowl. After several 
such injections some of the serum of the fowl’s blood 
was injected into the circulation of pregnant rabbits. 
In a few cases the young of these rabbits were found to 
have opaque or otherwise abnormal lenses, or other as- BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
45 
sociated defects of the eye. These eye defects were 
observed to be transmitted through several subsequent 
generations, and to behave much like a recessive Men- 
delian trait. It is not entirely certain that the germ 
plasm of the rabbits was altered by the procedure em- 
ployed, and further experiments on the subject, and 
their extension to other organ systems will be awaited 
with interest. That they are indicative of Lamarckian 
inheritance, as has sometimes been claimed, is at 
present a quite unwarranted conclusion. 
So much for one component of the process of natural 
selection. If we know practically nothing of why he- 
reditary variations arise, is our knowledge more com- 
plete as to why some of these variations survive while 
others die without issue? We know more or less about 
the causes of death. Many creatures die simply be- 
cause they are eaten by larger animals; others are 
killed by extremes of climate; multitudes perish 
through disease. Our human mortality statistics class 
causes of death into 189 groups. We die from causes 
which, as a rule, are fairly clearly defined, such as 
tuberculosis, cancer, pneumonia, heart failure, or auto- 
mobile accidents. In all this, amid much mortality 
that is purely fortuitous, we may discern the action of 
natural selection, for whether or not we die of hemo- 
philia, diabetes, Bright’s disease, or tuberculosis de- 
pends, to a considerable extent, upon our inherited 
constitution. Natural selection is in no wise concerned 
with many causes of death. If a vessel at sea goes 
down with all on board, or if a village is buried by the 46 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
eruption of a volcano, there is no selective mortality. 
It is only where death is a respecter of persons, pick- 
ing out the constitutionally weak or non-resistant, or 
eliminating individuals whose inherited stupidity pre- 
vents their making appropriate responses that natural 
selection comes into play. In other words, natural 
selection operates only when an external cause of 
death acts or fails to act on the basis of internal or 
hereditary differences in the organisms exposed to its 
influence. What then decides the issue between life 
and death in a given situation in which natural selec- 
tion occurs is the hereditary difference between organ- 
isms. In such a situation, the cause of survival is the 
cause of the particular variation that is spared by the 
environment which kills off the others. We may know 
a good deal about causes of death, but, in so far as our 
present problem is concerned, it does not do us the 
least good to know that a million animals were killed 
by drying up a lake. It does us little more good to 
know that half a million human beings perished by the 
plague if we do not know why others, who were at- 
tacked by this disease, were spared. Discussions of 
natural selection commonly place much emphasis on 
the differential death rate. But what is of real impor- 
tance is not that some forms die, but that others live 
and reproduce. It is not death that is creative. It is not 
the failures with which the path of evolution is strewn 
that explain its course; it is the integrating and sustain- 
ing factors in the life process that are responsible for all 
advance and all adaptiveness. It may advantage the BEYOND NATURAL SELECTION 
47 
living that some of their fellows die and get out of the 
way. Death may thus be a useful condition of prog- 
ress, but we must look elsewhere for the active causes 
of progressive development. 
We are thus brought in our search for causes to the 
problem of why organisms maintain and perpetuate 
their life. We must know this if we would understand 
why organisms come to have improvements in the ade- 
quacy or completeness of their life-sustaining proc- 
esses. It is in the summation of these improvements 
that progressive evolution consists. If we imagine that 
all organisms that ever lived consisted of the present 
inhabitants of the earth and those in the direct lines 
of their ancestry, making abstraction for the moment 
of all others that have perished,—the dead branches 
of the tree of life,—we should have many series of 
forms, all surviving to maturity, but exhibiting, with- 
out selective elimination, a marvelously diversified de- 
velopment in adaptation to the most varied conditions 
of existence. With our attention focussed on the suc- 
cessive steps in advance or retrogression in the living 
branches of this tree, asking what we know of the 
forces, internal or external, by which each step has 
been taken, we can only look upon the spectacle with 
wonder and confess our ignorance. If, in our picture, 
we have eliminated elimination, we still have the 
struggle for existence,—successful struggle,—but what 
would it mean? It would mean again the action of 
those self-maintaining activities which constitute life. 
Could we ever discover the actual causes of any 48 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
section of this evolutionary history, we might find that 
they were multitudinous. Now one thing might cause 
a variation and now another. The external influences 
in adaptation to which the living world has been 
molded are beyond the possibility of enumeration. 
Whether or not the environment has any power of 
modifying the hereditary constitution into harmony 
with its requirements by any other than the hit-or- 
miss method of chance, we do not know. Natural 
selection explains evolution mainly in terms of un- 
known causes. If there are any other evolutionary 
factors at work besides natural selection, their exist- 
ence has not been revealed, and beyond natural selec- 
tion there is only,—darkness. CHAPTER III 
PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
The word panmixia was first used by Professor Weis- 
mann in his essay On Heredity, published in 1883. It 
was coined to designate a tendency of organs to de- 
generate on account of “the suspension of the preserv- 
ing influence of natural selection.” Nature is full of 
illustrations of the gradual degeneration of structures 
after they have ceased to function. The Lamarckians, 
with their doctrine of the transmission of the effects 
of the use and disuse of parts, had an easy and plausible 
explanation of this degeneration. Weismann, who was 
laboring to show that the Lamarckian doctrine of in- 
heritance was not only improbable, a priori, but rested 
on entirely inadequate evidence, naturally felt called 
upon to explain the phenomena of degeneration in 
some other way. Natural selection might under cer- 
tain conditions favor variations of an organ in the 
direction of reduced size, especially if the organism 
came to live under conditions which made the organ 
positively injurious. The wingless insects of the island 
of Madeira, it has been suggested, may have been de- 
veloped through the circumstance that the best fliers 
would be the ones most apt to be blown out to sea and 
lost. The small legs once possessed by serpents would 
49 50 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
be a positive disadvantage in gliding amid obstacles 
on the ground. Even the eyes of cave animals would 
be more or less harmful, as their delicate surface would 
be liable to frequent injury by collisions with objects 
in the darkness. Natural selection would therefore 
tend to favor the further degeneration of these 
parts. 
But there are many cases in which the organ in 
question seems to be of little consequence one way or 
the other. In such cases an appeal was made to the 
principle of economy. Those forms whose energies 
went into building up and sustaining useless structures 
would be in a measure handicapped in comparison 
with others which made a more economical use of 
their energies. Here degeneration might be explained 
through natural selection on the basis of “economy of 
growth.” 
Weismann, however, considered this interpretation 
inadequate to meet the situation. In his Evolution 
Theory he tells us that this hypothesis “would be far 
from supplying us with a sufficient explanation of the 
phenomenon; the individual variations in the size of 
an organ which is in process of degeneration are even 
in extreme cases far too slight to have any selection 
value.” The slight fluctuations in the size of the small 
rudimentary femur which is buried within the flesh of 
the Greenland whale can hardly be conceived to have 
any selection value in the life of this colossal animal. 
Yet this small organ has gone on degenerating, and in 
some species of whales it has entirely disappeared. PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
51 
As Professor Weismann rejected the Lamarckian 
theory on the one hand and admitted that there were 
many cases of degeneration that could not be explained 
by natural selection on the other, he put forward his 
hypothesis of panmixia in order to account for them. 
Organs, he contends, have to be maintained in their 
present state by selection which is constantly removing 
the minus variations. When selection ceases there is 
nothing to prevent the minus variations from accumu- 
lating. Consequently the organ undergoes a slow 
degeneration. 
The theory of panmixia aroused a good deal of ad- 
verse criticism and Weismann later admitted that it 
could account only for a relatively small amount of 
retrogressive change. Delage attempted to show by 
a mathematical computation that the maximum effect 
of panmixia is to reduce an organ to one-half of its 
original size. G. Wolf denied to panmixia any role 
whatever. Romanes took more kindly to the doctrine, 
—he had previously advanced an idea more or less 
similar to it,—but thought that panmixia could ac- 
count for the reduction of an organ only to “consid- 
erably above one-half its original size,—or probably 
not through so much as one-quarter.” It is a process 
therefore which cannot explain the final disappearance 
of an organ. Panmixia, according to Romanes, is 
more active in the beginning of degeneration than later, 
but the final disappearance of a disused part is at- 
tributed to “the eventual exhaustion of heredity.” 
E. Ray Lankester and Lloyd Morgan would concede 52 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
to panmixia a much slighter role, the latter author 
limiting its maximum effect to a reduction of from 
three to five percent. 
Most of those who have criticized the theory of pan- 
mixia have done so on the basis of certain assumptions 
concerning heredity that are highly questionable in the 
light of modern genetics. It has been assumed that 
selection works with the ordinary fluctuating variations 
which occur for the most part with about equal fre- 
quency on either side of the mean. It has generally 
been assumed that these variations are confined mainly 
to particular organs or parts. And it has generally 
been assumed also that inheritance is typically blend- 
ing instead of alternative. 
Since fluctuations of a plus and minus character are 
about equally numerous, it would apparently follow 
that if such variations form the material of evolution- 
ary changes the cessation of natural selection could 
make little difference to the character concerned. And 
here we encounter another assumption that runs 
through much controversial literature on the method 
of evolution. It is that selection has acted on the basis 
of particular characters, picking out variations in a 
character and improving it quite irrespective of other 
characters which in their turn are supposed to have 
been evolved in the same way. Particular parts have 
commonly been abstracted away from the organism 
entirely, and it is argued whether a spot on a butter- 
fly’s wing can be increased or decreased by natural 
selection. But natural selection does not deal with the PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
spot; it deals with the butterfly. And a butterfly with 
a larger or a smaller spot may be a different kind of 
a butterfly, not with respect to the spot merely, but 
throughout its entire organization. Most of the volu- 
minous controversial writing on the utility of specific 
characters has been carried on by both sides on the 
assumption that it is the characters that nature is con- 
cerned with. The common assumption is that if species 
differ chiefly in certain characters that systematists find 
it convenient to employ for purposes of description and 
discrimination, and if these species have been formed 
through natural selection, therefore selection must have 
acted on the characters by which species are distin- 
guished. This, in my opinion, is a colossal blunder. 
It is due to our very common and vicious scientific 
habit of making an improper use of our artificial 
abstractions. The conclusion commonly drawn by one 
party to the controversy is that since we can neither 
perceive nor easily imagine what role is played by the 
characters by which we discriminate species, natural 
selection can have had nothing to do with the origin 
of species. Butterflies’ wings present many thousands 
of variations in their markings. Closely allied species 
may differ by a few not easily discernible variations 
in pattern or shade. The one party points in triumph 
to the small spot on the wing and defies his adversary 
to explain what value it may have in the struggle for 
existence. And his adversary, if unable to conjecture 
how this mark might be useful, falls back on saying 
that our knowledge of the life history of the butterfly 
53 54 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
is so imperfect that we are not justified in denying 
that the spot might have some value after all. What 
makes the whole controversy ridiculous is the tacit 
assumption of both parties. It is only a peculiar 
obsession with their abstractions that makes them 
imagine that they are saying anything really relevant 
to the importance of natural selection in the formation 
of species. If a Chinaman can thrive in extremes of 
climate that exclude other races is it due to the color 
of his hair and the slant of his eye? Nature is not as 
a rule particularly interested in characters. We might 
have been spared much wordy controversy had it been 
commonly recognized that characters are symptoms of 
general organic differences and are not per se the causes 
of survival or elimination. 
Much evidence points to the conclusion that varia- 
tions are organismal and not confined to particular 
parts, although they may be much more obviously 
manifested in some regions of the body than others. 
The specific color markings of butterflies may be of 
little biological significance in themselves, but they go 
along with different habits, habitats and food of larvae 
and a number of other differences in all stages of the 
life history. What enables one species of butterfly to 
supplant another is not the markings on the wings, but 
one or more of the peculiarities with which the mark- 
ings are associated. It is not whiteness that eliminates 
the albino, but the constitutional, chemical peculiarities 
of which whiteness is the outward and visible sign. 
Not only is there evidence that characters are ex- PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
55 
pressed in a measure throughout the organism, but also 
that they are influenced by many other parts. This 
conclusion, in fact, follows from the organismal nature 
of variation. Variations which have a selective value 
in one part may entail slighter changes in many other 
parts. What is known of the action of so-called modi- 
fying factors is an illustration of this fact. If one 
organ is being changed in any given direction this, 
ipso facto, entails modifications, though they may be 
slight, throughout the organism in general. The ac- 
cumulation of this latter variability, which is a sort of 
accessory or incidental product of selection, may give 
rise to multitudinous characters of little or no value 
which are tolerated so long as they do not become too 
injurious. 
In order to judge whether this accessory variability 
is good or bad let us consider the modern as contrasted 
with the older conception of variation. It is now very 
probable that changes are not wrought in species by 
the selection of the ordinary plus and minus variations 
that are continually met with. These for the most part 
are purely somatic and not hereditary. The variations 
which are effective in the hands of selection are dis- 
crete, stable changes in particular hereditary factors or 
genes. These changes may result in large or small,— 
commonly small,—variations of the organism. They 
occur in many directions. They cannot be adequately 
described as plus or minus. They are inherited accord- 
ing to Mendel’s law, and are usually recessive, although 
a great many dominants have been observed to arise. 56 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
What is particularly significant in relation to panmixia 
is the fact that the majority of them are failures from 
the standpoint of adaptiveness. 
The facts of heredity and variability as revealed by 
recent work in genetics render the older arguments 
against panmixia irrelevant. The assumptions upon 
which various mathematical demonstrations of the in- 
efficiency of this factor were based are largely wrong. 
If purely hit-or-miss variations were allowed to accu- 
mulate without regard to their quality the result would 
be degeneration. And to this degeneration we can 
assign no definite limits. 
When we are dealing with a complex organ whose 
effective functioning depends upon an accurate adjust- 
ment of its parts, it is obvious that a random variation 
would be likely to do harm rather than good. If my 
watch is somewhat out of repair I might possibly 
adjust it by poking a needle about in the works, but 
the chances are that I would only make matters worse. 
A variation among the parts of the eye might improve 
this marvelously adapted but imperfect organ. But 
consider what would probably happen if several thou- 
sand random mutations affecting the eye were to ac- 
cumulate without regard to their utility. Would we 
any longer recognize the structure as an eye? 
Variations in an organism already fairly well ad- 
justed to its environment are not likely to be in the 
direction of improvement. Under the assumption that 
variation is an affair of more or less and that varia- 
tions in one direction are advantageous while those in PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
57 
the other direction are disadvantageous, we might 
legitimately argue for the very limited potency of 
panmixia. But this is not the situation with which 
we are confronted. 
Romanes has spoken of the “eventual exhaustion of 
heredity,” but we know of no such thing. Heredity 
does not become exhausted; it simply becomes changed. 
Heredity left to itself may undergo changes, one after 
the other, at more or less considerable intervals of 
time. Just as Romanes believed that his exhaustion 
of heredity might explain an indefinite amount of de- 
generation, so it might be assumed that random muta- 
tions can do the same thing. 
Any one who scrutinizes the mutations which have 
been observed to arise from time to time in a number 
of organisms will be compelled to admit that from the 
standpoint of adaptiveness the majority of these are 
minus variations. Here is one fact that stands out 
clearly in regard to the kind of variations that are 
really effective in producing evolutionary changes. 
This fact makes it inevitable that any organ left to 
itself, a prey, so to speak, to all kinds of variations that 
may arise in it, will undergo deterioration. As there 
are more minus than plus variations, whenever condi- 
tions are such that the minus variations are on an equal 
footing with any others they will tend to accumulate. 
The consequences of this simple fact are important 
in a number of connections, but one immediate and 
obvious consequence is to place panmixia in a more 
favorable light. Instead of looking askance at it as 58 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
a dubious speculation we must recognize it as an 
inevitable deduction from our present knowledge of 
genetics. 
In the foregoing discussion I have called attention 
to two methods of degeneration which I have perhaps 
not distinguished with sufficient clearness. Degenera- 
tion, and probably progressive development also, may 
occur through the accumulation of what we may call 
the secondary effects of variations selected for their 
value in other connections. Each of these major varia- 
tions may play a useful role in building up other organ 
systems, although more frequently they work the un- 
doing of organs which are no longer of service. The 
degeneration of the latter would therefore be brought 
about by natural selection, but only as a kind of inci- 
dental side issue, since natural selection was not di- 
rectly concerned with them. They suffer degeneration, 
in others words, because of their correlated variability. 
Then there is the degeneration due just to the accu- 
mulation of variations which changed conditions make 
no longer disadvantageous. They accumulate simply 
because selection does not remove them. This is pan- 
mixia in the original sense of the term. It would per- 
haps not be advisable to include the first degenerative 
tendency under the name panmixia. Were I given to 
instituting neologisms as copiously as certain well- 
known writers on evolution I should doubtless desig- 
nate this process by a distinctive name. But I prefer 
to exercise forbearance. 
It is interesting to find that Professor Weismann PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
59 
originally believed that panmixia could lead, quite in- 
dependently of natural selection, to the complete dis- 
appearance of an unused organ, but he later gave up 
this opinion and maintained that panmixia could effect 
only a very moderate amount of degeneration. In his 
Evolution Theory he says that “this factor does cer- 
tainly operate, but the more I thought over it the 
clearer it became to me that there must be some other 
factor at work as well, for while panmixia might ex- 
plain the deterioration of an organ, it could not explain 
its decrease in size, its gradual wearing away and ulti- 
mate total disappearance. Yet this is the path fol- 
lowed, slowly indeed, but quite surely, by all organs 
which have become useless. . . . There must then be 
something else at work which causes the minus-varia- 
tions in a disused organ to preponderate persistently 
and permanently over the plus-variations, and this 
something can lie nowhere else than where the roots 
of all hereditary variations are to be found—in the 
germ-plasm. This train of thought leads us to the dis- 
covery of a process which we must call selection be- 
tween the elements of the germ-plasm, or, as I have 
named it shortly, Germinal Selection” 
After Weismann had developed his theory of ger- 
minal selection, panmixia became less indispensable in 
accounting for degeneration. In germinal selection 
Weismann believed he had found a means of explain- 
ing not only variation, but also why variations keep on 
occurring in a given direction. According to this 
theory the germ plasm is composed of numerous vital 60 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
units such as biophors, determinants, and ids, all of 
which have the property of growth and reproduction 
by division. As these units, like most biological enti- 
ties, are presumably variable, and as they grow and 
divide after the fashion of so many minute organisms, 
they would, according to Weismann, be subject to a 
struggle for existence and a selective survival. The 
result of this internecine struggle would be to intro- 
duce changes in the composition of the germ plasm 
and hence variations in the resulting organisms. 
The theory of germinal selection is a perfectly 
logical and plausible speculation, but the most curious 
thing about it is that it probably is not true. This is 
the more remarkable since modern genetics has ren- 
dered it probable that the germ plasm is composed of 
discrete, self perpetuating units. While the gene as 
commonly conceived is not the precise equivalent of 
any of Weismann’s hypothetical units, nevertheless the 
current conception of the make-up of the germ plasm 
is sufficiently like that of Weismann to make a process 
of competition and selective survival as probable for 
genes as for biophors and determinants. But there is 
no evidence that such a selective process occurs. The 
genes (whatever they may be) are apparently arranged 
in a serial order in the chromosomes, but while they 
reproduce themselves without limit in the regular 
course of cell division, they exhibit no tendency to 
increase at the expense of their neighbors. On the 
contrary, they seem to get along side by side in entire 
peace and harmony, each going about its business in PANMIXIA AND DEGENERATION 
61 
perfect order and propriety. If they grow and mul- 
tiply why does not struggle and selection occur among 
them as among independent organisms that grow and 
multiply? Of course we do not know. It is possible, 
however, that they are not independent units, but are 
bound together by functional relationships that keep 
them in place. In other words, they may constitute 
integral parts of an organism, the germ cell, and are 
kept in a definite relation to each other much as the 
various parts of our bodies are. It is even possible 
that the same regulative mechanisms function in both 
cases and at all stages from the germ to the adult. But 
speculation here is too hazardous to pursue farther at 
present. 
It must be apparent that present-day knowledge of 
the mechanism of heredity and variation is distinctly 
unfavorable to the theory of germinal selection. On 
the other hand it gives strong support to the earlier 
hypothesis of panmixia. Weismann virtually aban- 
doned the last named hypothesis in favor of the first 
which he elaborated with much ingenuity and at great 
length. In the light of the facts then in his posses- 
sion Weismann was probably justified in abandoning 
the earlier child of his brain in favor of his later one. 
New discoveries, however, have put a different face on 
the matter. Germinal selection doubtless must be 
abandoned, and panmixia will rank as a factor of 
greater importance than Weismann, even at first, was 
disposed to ascribe to it. CHAPTER IV 
OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE1 
With many people the idea mat our human heredity 
is possibly deteriorating is apt to evoke opposition if 
not positive resentment. We are so used to the idea 
of progress that we are prone to believe that it is the 
natural and inevitable order of things and must neces- 
sarily continue. Perhaps progress may continue for a 
long time to come. It may continue despite a certain 
amount of hereditary degeneration. But it takes good 
inheritance to support a high civilization. If most of 
humanity comes to consist of what is called the dull 
normal class with an increased percentage of high grade 
morons the stability of civilization will be in peril. 
From what has been said in the chapter on Panmixia 
and Degeneration it is evident that the downward path 
is one especially easy to follow. It has been followed 
times without number in the evolution of life. The 
world of plants and animals is full of forms that have 
descended, in the literal as well as the genealogical 
sense of that term, from more highly evolved ances- 
tors. And if highly evolved plants and animals un- 
dergo biological decadence, why may not man? As to 
that, it is not improbable that some of the lower races 
of man are degenerate scions of more noble stock. 
1 Reprinted with several modifications from the Atlantic Monthly, 
September, 1914. 
62 OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
63 
Whether or not the hereditary endowment of the 
civilized races of man is undergoing a process of de- 
terioration is a problem of the greatest possible mo- 
ment. It is not a simple problem. It is not to be 
solved a priori on the basis of assumptions regarding 
the withdrawal of natural selection. It is a problem 
to be solved only by the accumulation of many data 
and by a knowledge of the factors at work in the 
modification of the hereditary forces among human 
beings. 
To obtain an insight into the factors of human evo- 
lution it is essential to have an accurate knowledge of 
the factors which are responsible for the evolution of 
the lower animals. On this subject biologists are un- 
fortunately by no means agreed. The factor of use- 
inheritance, upon which many biologists formerly laid 
so much stress, has rapidly lost adherents, and I think 
it must be conceded that if it is operative at all it is a 
factor of minor importance. Despite the modern criti- 
cisms of natural selection, with which I confess I have 
small sympathy, the doctrine of selection in one or 
another of its modifications stands to-day as the only 
naturalistic hypothesis which contains any principle of 
explanation of progressive adaptive evolution. 
We have no reason to suppose that man, so far as 
the early stages of his biological evolution are con- 
cerned, is a result of the operation of any factors essen- 
tially different from those which have brought the 
lower animals up from the most primitive forms of 
life. At the present time we have no reasonable re- 64 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
course from the conclusion that man owes his origin 
to selection, and that only by selection in some form 
can his congenital endowments be improved. But the 
forms of selection have changed greatly as the result 
of the development of man’s social environment. 
The evolution of human society and civilization has 
gradually brought mankind under conditions of exist- 
ence which are very different from those prevailing 
during the infancy of the race. To judge from the 
remarkable superiority of the brain-power of man over 
that of the primates, the early periods of human or 
the later stages of pre-human evolution must have 
been exceptionally favorable to the selection of indi- 
viduals of superior mental endowment. So far as our 
vision can penetrate into the darkness of these times, 
mankind occupied itself quite largely in the destruc- 
tive, but eugenically wholesome, occupation of fighting, 
—fighting not only with large beasts of the field, but 
also—and this is probably much more important from 
the standpoint of evolution—with other clans and 
tribes of the human species. 
The advent of man is the expression of the supe- 
riority of brains over brute force in the struggle for 
life. While we may never recover the history of the 
period between the primates and primitive man, what 
we know of the general factors of evolution justifies us 
in the conjecture that it was a period of intense 
struggle, with a lively elimination of the unfit. 
The course of human history as far back as we can 
follow it is one of warfare of tribe with tribe, and OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
65 
nation with nation, the conquerors of one age being 
overcome by new invaders of another lineage in the 
next. Along with this perpetual conflict, and to a con- 
siderable degree because of it, man has not only in- 
creased greatly in intelligence, but has developed those 
attributes of courage, reliability, loyalty, and mutual 
helpfulness which make for social solidarity and cor- 
porate efficiency. Gruesome as the struggle for exist- 
ence may be to contemplate, and fraught as it has been 
with pain and sorrow, it is a process to which the race 
is largely indebted for its congenital improvement. It 
may be that it is an unfortunate method of bringing 
highly endowed creatures into the world, but it is 
Nature’s way. And Nature is quite indifferent as to 
whether we approve it or not. What Nature is inter- 
ested in, to speak figuratively, is success in the struggle 
for existence. There is no evidence that she cares a 
fig for progress; only so far as progress increases the 
chances of survival, is it any of Nature’s concern. 
And at any time she is perfectly ready to undo all her 
work, and to reduce a highly complex organism to the 
most degenerate of creatures, whenever the conditions 
favor simplicity of organization. The possession of a 
complex organization is not the slightest guaranty of 
further improvement, or even of a secure hold on the 
position that has been attained. 
There are many forces in human society which make 
for degeneration, and our safety lies in clearly recog- 
nizing them. Only recently is the civilized world be- 
coming awakened to the deleterious influence of mod- 66 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
ern warfare. Dr. D. S. Jordan, in his books on the 
Blood of the Nation, and the Human Harvest, and 
numerous articles and addresses, has set forth in a clear 
and forcible manner the sad havoc which war has 
played in eliminating the best of the human breed. In 
times of conflict, the men of manly vigor, brains, and 
courage go to the front to die by thousands in the cause 
of national defense. The weak, the cowardly, the mer- 
cenary, the degenerate, remain behind, to multiply. 
The loss to any nation resulting from the continual 
draining away of its best blood can scarcely fail to 
weaken it, until it may eventually fall a prey to the 
encroachments of its neighbors. Jordan, following sev- 
eral historians of note, attributes the downfall of 
Greece and Rome, the gradual decay of Spain and 
other nations, largely to this reversal of selection. 
Whether or not this is the principal cause of decadence 
in the instances cited, it is very probable that the con- 
tinual sapping of strength consequent upon the sacri- 
fice of hundreds of thousands of their best men has 
been an influence in undermining the physical and 
mental heredity of these nations. 
While modern civilized warfare is a force working 
toward the elimination of the best blood and the 
propagation of weaklings, there can be little doubt that 
this influence of war is limited to comparatively recent 
times. It is because warfare has become civilized that, 
eugenically considered, it becomes an influence for 
race-deterioration. Early struggles were wars of ex- 
termination in which the unfit had little chance. The OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
67 
Polynesians commonly massacred all of the conquered 
tribe, including men, women, and children. The same 
practice was common among the primitive Australians, 
the natives of New Guinea and New Zealand. The 
Kaffirs and many other African tribes exterminated 
completely the peoples whom they conquered; and 
among many tribes of North American Indians such 
wars of extermination were frequent. Wars of exter- 
mination among the more civilized Egyptians, Persians, 
and Hebrews were by no means rare. Of the Amo- 
rites, whom Jehovah delivered into the hands of his 
chosen people, it is said in Deuteronomy, “And we 
took all his cities at that time . . . utterly destroying 
the men, women, and children of every city. But all 
the cattle and the spoil of the cities, we took for a 
prey to ourselves.” And in the campaigns of Joshua 
it was the rule that the men, women, and children of 
the conquered cities should all be put to the sword. 
When complete extermination was not practised, the 
vanquished were commonly enslaved, or subjected to 
such conditions that they languished or eventually died 
out, the Hebrew people forming a luminous exception 
to the rule in their persistence through the vicissitudes 
of conquest, practical enslavement, and all kinds of 
subsequent persecution. In the conflict among primi- 
tive societies not only was the best-endowed individual 
most apt to survive in the hand-to-hand encounters 
which were then in vogue, but the groups in which 
strength, intelligence, organization, and mutual service 
were most highly developed, would easily triumph 68 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
over groups with less individual efficiency or social 
coherence. The population was replenished by the 
most efficient members of society instead of the weak- 
lings, so that the influence of primitive conflict stands 
diametrically opposed to the effect of modern civilized 
warfare upon the hereditary endowment of the race. 
But apart from conflict, the weak in barbaric times 
had little chance to perpetuate their defects. In many 
tribes wives were only to be won after a trial of 
strength or skill. Among the Chippewa Indians, says 
Richardson, “any one may challenge another to wrestle, 
and if he overcomes, may carry off his wife as a prize. 
The bereaved husband meets his loss with resignation, 
which custom prescribes in such a case, and seeks his 
revenge by taking the wife of another man weaker than 
himself.” 
Among many primitive peoples it was customary to 
eliminate epileptics, idiots, lunatics, and persons af- 
flicted with incurable ills; and the practice of putting 
to death weak, deformed, and sickly children was ex- 
tremely prevalent. The custom among the Spartans of 
raising only their stronger children will occur to every 
one; even Aristotle advocates the rule that nothing im- 
perfect or maimed shall be brought up. And Plato, who 
elaborated the most rigid eugenic program ever de- 
vised, recommends that the children of the more de- 
praved, and such others as are in any way imperfect, 
be hidden away in some secret and obscure place. 
Eugenics is by no means a modern science. The 
practices of many primitive peoples were more eugenic, OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
69 
whether consciously so or not, than our own. There 
can be no manner of doubt that in civilized society 
the weak, the deformed, the foolish, the insane, and 
degenerate of all kinds, have a much greater oppor- 
tunity to survive and propagate their defects than they 
commonly had among primitive peoples. 
It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the saving of 
life that has been brought about by the advance of 
medicine and surgery and the knowledge of how to 
check and control many epidemics that formerly deci- 
mated the human race. Defects of eyesight, hearing, 
and many other qualities, no longer entail the extinc- 
tion of their possessors. Natural selection still oper- 
ates on the human species, and in some respects pos- 
sibly more stringently than formerly, but our medical 
skill and our fostering of the weak tend to reduce its 
potency. 
When we compare the present influences tending to 
improve the human breed with those operative in past 
times, the prospect seems rather gloomy for the future 
of the human family. We no longer have the elimina- 
tion of the weak through tribal strife, but in its place 
the highly deleterious influence of modern war, which 
has not only worked incalculable injury in recent cen- 
turies, but probably has more evil in store for us. We 
no longer leave the weak and imperfect infants to 
perish, but do everything in our power to rear them, 
and then give them full liberty to perpetuate their 
defects. Except during their period of actual confine- 
ment in asylums, no restriction is generally placed on 70 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
the multiplication of the insane. There are few crea- 
tures so degenerate but that many of the states of our 
enlightened country give them full sanction to per- 
petuate their impure stock, and the conditions in most 
European countries in this respect are considerably 
worse than in the United States. Through ignorance, 
indifference, false ideas concerning “personal liberty,” 
and the absorption of legislators in matters of more 
immediate political expediency, we are permitting the 
perpetuation of a vicious and defective heredity which 
cannot fail to prove a fertile source of many troubles. 
This disappearance of most of the eugenic influences 
operative in the early history of mankind is not the 
worst danger, bad as it is, that besets us. Society, as 
at present organized, tends to withdraw its best blood 
from contributing its share to the heritage of the next 
generation. While it is unjustifiable to estimate the 
eugenic worth of a family in terms of wealth or social 
position, and while what are called the lower ranks 
of society often contain its best blood, the classes that 
have become distinguished through their culture or 
their achievements certainly have a hereditary endow- 
ment considerably above the average. Pearson has 
shown that mental ability is inherited to about the 
same degree as various physical characteristics. This 
fact combined with the important conclusion, also 
established by Pearson, that less than twenty-five per- 
cent of the married couples, or from one-sixth to one- 
eighth of the total population, produce over fifty per- 
cent of the next generation, shows how very important OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
71 
it is that this one-sixth or one-eighth should be drawn 
from the better element of society. If the population 
is recruited even a little more from the less desirable 
individuals in each generation, it will not take many 
generations for the bad stock to replace the good. 
It is a well-known fact that the educated classes, 
represented by such professions as lawyers, clergymen, 
doctors, and professors, as a rule marry late and pro- 
duce few children, whereas the feeble-minded, the 
shiftless, and the imprudent usually have a birth-rate 
far above the average. Graduates from our colleges 
and universities do not have as a general rule enough 
children to perpetuate their families. The average 
number of children of the graduates of Harvard is less 
than two, and the record of Yale is no higher than this. 
The showing of various other colleges and universities 
is but little better. 
Judging from the statistics available on the subject, 
education is proving a formidable obstacle to eugenic 
progress. The one redeeming feature about it is that 
as students are sent to colleges and universities in ever- 
increasing proportions to the population, those who are 
selected for higher education are coming to be less rep- 
resentative of the best brains of the country. It is a 
common opinion that the general quality of our under- 
graduates is deteriorating, but if this be true the rea- 
sons may be found in various influences other than 
eugenic factors. 
Still, the fact that the college communities include 
so many of the offspring of people of exceptional talent 72 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
and achievement is a circumstance that is continually 
depriving the race of its best blood. There can be no 
doubt that under our present regime the more intel- 
lectual families are rapidly disappearing. It is from 
mediocrity and from the levels below mediocrity that 
the population is replenished. The danger of degen- 
eration from this fact is all the greater because the 
evil is insidious and unobtrusive. If society could be 
brought to realize how enormous may be the loss en- 
tailed by the gradual extinction of those families which 
furnish the intellectual leaders of the race, it would 
bestir itself with a great deal more vigor to provide a 
remedy for the situation. 
Society may accomplish much by checking the mul- 
tiplication of the feeble-minded, the criminals, and the 
insane; but how to keep from being swallowed up in 
the fecundity of mediocrity is a much more difficult 
problem. We can get along with a small percentage 
of the mentally and morally defective much better than 
we can afford to lose the priceless blood that gives us 
our great men. 
Most people, I fancy, look upon evolution as an 
exceedingly slow process in which many thousands of 
years witness very little change. And there is doubt- 
less truth in this view. Evolution has taken a very 
long time. Some organisms poke along through whole 
geological epochs with remarkably little modification. 
Even man, who must have made a comparatively rapid 
ascent from his ape-like ancestors during the later 
periods of the earth’s history, has apparently not made OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
73 
any great advances in his physical and niental endow- 
ments during the few thousand years covered by hu- 
man records. 
But although evolution considered in a general and 
comprehensive way has proceeded very slowly, it would 
be an error to regard it as always going on at a uni- 
form snail’s pace. There is strong evidence that at 
times it may speed up quite rapidly, at least within 
small limits, and it may give way at times to a rela- 
tively rapid degeneration. 
Evidence of the possible rapidity of evolution is 
furnished in abundance by the work of the selective 
breeder. Think of the changes that have been made 
in cultivated flowers, fruits, and grains, and in our 
domestic animals; compare the greyhound, the mastiff, 
the pug and the poodle, and you cannot fail to become 
impressed with the great changes which crossing and 
selection have effected in a comparatively short period 
of time. 
Recent work in genetics following the discovery of 
Mendel’s great law of heredity has given us a new 
insight into the development of these diverse types. 
Where species contain a large number of diverse strains 
it is possible, through crossing and artificial selection, 
to make rapid progress in the development of new 
forms. In species which breed true and present little 
hereditary variability changes can be made only with 
extreme slowness. The rapidity and the extent of the 
changes which man is able to bring about by selective 
breeding is determined mainly by the hereditary com- 74 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
position of the forms with which he starts. If he starts 
with an ordinary field of corn he could probably pro- 
duce in a few years varieties yielding only miserable 
nubbins or strains producing fine, well-filled ears. 
Now the human species contains an extraordinarily 
large amount of hereditary diversity. We have the 
wise and the foolish, the strong and the weak, the 
beautiful and the ugly, the bold and the timid. Watch 
the multitudes that file along the streets of a large city. 
How different they are in form and feature, in men- 
tality, in disposition and in character. Here is mate- 
rial for the selective breeder the like of which was 
never presented to any pigeon fancier or stock raiser. 
It is simply wonderful material with which to obtain 
quick and striking results. It would not take more 
than a few generations greatly to augment or deplete 
its vigor, to make it more beautiful or more ugly, to 
improve or to breed out its brains. As in corn or 
cattle, it all depends on the types which are selected 
for parenthood. 
Most people, even most educated people, have not 
awakened to the realization of the marked hereditary 
differences that exist among human beings, the pro- 
found significance of these differences for our social life, 
the rapidity with which some types may increase and 
others disappear, and the great changes which may 
thus come over a people in a comparatively short time. 
Things move rapidly nowadays, not only in political 
and social institutions, but in the biological constitution 
of mankind. Our social heredity and our biological OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
75 
heredity are so closely interwoven that an extensive 
change in the one cannot fail to affect the other. But 
the unfortunate feature of the situation is that, thus 
far, civilization has tended to cause the extinction of 
its best hereditary types. How to counteract the 
dysgenic influence of progress is the great question 
which the Sphinx is propounding to civilized man. 
And the Sphinx will not wait indefinitely for an answer 
to her question. 
I have indicated some of the causes which, so far 
as can be judged, have been and are making for the 
deterioration of the race. It may be asked, how- 
ever: Is it known as a matter of fact that the race is 
deteriorating? Can it be proved by statistics that the 
race is really on the down grade? 
At the present time it must be admitted that the 
actual statistical proof of race-deterioration is very 
incomplete. We simply do not have the statistics to 
show whether our inheritance has improved or dete- 
riorated. But from our knowledge of the evolutionary 
factors at work in human society it is scarcely possible 
to avoid the conclusion that a certain amount of deca- 
dence is inevitable. We know that mental and moral 
defects are inherited; we know that the stocks with 
a record of intellectual achievement are multiplying 
with relative and increasing slowness; we know that 
the physically and mentally unfit reproduce more rap- 
idly than under the conditions of more primitive civi- 
lization, and that their progeny are fostered and al- 
lowed to continue their defects. Amid all the influ- 76 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
ences tending to lessen the fertility of the more de- 
sirable classes of human beings there is scarcely any 
factor except natural selection which is working for 
the perpetuation of the best blood. 
With our present statistics it is difficult to disentangle 
the effects of environment from the effects of a vitiated 
inheritance. In the United States there has been dur- 
ing several decades a general increase in crime. How 
much this is to be attributed to immigration and 
changed environmental conditions it is impossible to 
say, although it is known that the second generation 
of immigrants contribute more than their share to the 
volume of crime in this country. It is the same with 
insanity. During the thirteen years before 1903 the 
insane in institutions in the United States increased 
100 percent, while the population as a whole increased 
30 percent. Since 1859 the insane in England and 
Wales have increased over 230 percent while the gen- 
eral population has increased 77 percent. Of these 
insane, 47,000, over one-third, were married. 
This increase, which may be paralleled by statistics 
from other countries, may be due in part to the fact 
that a relatively larger part of the insane are put into 
asylums; it may be due in part to changed conditions 
of social and economic life; but our rapidly accumu- 
lating knowledge of the heredity of insanity makes it 
probable,—and we can only say probable,—that much 
of it is due to an increase of hereditary defects. 
Whether the hereditary defectives are increasing or 
not, we do not want them; and the duty of society to OUR DETERIORATING INHERITANCE 
77 
check their multiplication by all safe and humane 
means is perfectly plain. 
In order to estimate the probable trend of human 
evolution it may be instructive to represent in tabular 
form the various influences tending to modify our 
racial inheritance at the present time as compared 
with those affecting mankind in the earlier stages of 
its evolution. 
Primitive Man 
Natural Selection, actively operating. 
Sexual Selection, frequently working for race-improvement. 
Elimination of defectives. 
War tending to the multiplication of the best stock. 
Relative fecundity of best endowed. 
Civilized Man 
Natural Selection, reduced in some respects, possibly in- 
creased in others. 
Sexual Selection, of doubtful eugenic value. 
Preservation of defectives. 
War tending to elimination of the best stock. 
Relative sterility of best endowed. 
We are compelled to admit, I believe, that in gen- 
eral the eugenic factors were more potent in primitive 
than in civilized man. Not only are the forces working 
for race-improvement becoming weaker as civilization 
advances, but as a result of civilization there have 
arisen tendencies which operate strongly against the 
weakened forces of eugenic progress. About all we 78 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
have left to counteract these untoward agencies is a 
very uncertain measure of sexual selection, which, on 
the whole, there is reason to think is working badly and 
the factor of natural selection which we have been 
doing our best to get rid of. 
What it is feasible to do to remedy this unfortunate 
situation is one of the most important of the problems 
that confront the human race. My aim at present, 
however, is diagnosis rather than the prescription of 
remedies. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from point- 
ing out that there is one measure, the prevention of 
the multiplication of the defective classes, which is so 
obvious a duty and so feasible a project that the con- 
tinuation of our present laissez-faire policy is nothing 
short of a crime to society. The removal of the pol- 
lution of human inheritance that comes from the worst 
one or two percent of its stock would, in a few gen- 
erations, go a very long way toward reducing the num- 
bers in our insane asylums, poorhouses, and jails. This 
much in the way of eugenic reform can easily be ac- 
complished. It is possible to increase our best inher- 
itance as well as to get rid of our worst, but any sys- 
tematic effort to accomplish this result in a demo- 
cratically ruled country must wait upon the attainment 
of much more enlightenment on the subject than the 
general public now possesses. CHAPTER V 
SOCIAL BETTERMENT AND EUGENIC PROGRESS 1 
The relation between social progress and the improve- 
ment of the inborn qualities of the human race is a 
question upon which we meet with much difference of 
opinion. The progress in ideas and institutions which 
forms so conspicuous a feature of our recent history by 
no means implies a corresponding improvement in the 
characteristics that we owe to heredity, and in fact 
may go along with biological decadence. Civilization, 
biologically considered, is a comparatively recent and 
somewhat anomalous racial experience, and it brings 
in its train a number of agencies which tend to oppose 
the operation of those selective forces which most 
biologists regard as mainly responsible for the evolu- 
tion of organic life. Our modern warfare in leading 
to the elimination of our best stocks; our fostering of 
the weak and defective; the decline of the birth rate 
among those classes of society which have risen into 
the successful ranks,—all tend to recruit the next gen- 
eration from stocks of relatively inferior racial quali- 
ties. There is little doubt that the most potent of 
these forces is the relative sterility of those classes 
whose inheritance of desirable traits of mind and char- 
1 Reprinted from The Scientific Monthly, January, 1919. 
79 STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
80 
acter we have every reason to believe is above the 
average. In the animal world individuals that attain 
supremacy over their fellows generally succeed in leav- 
ing the most numerous progeny. But under modern 
social conditions this natural relationship between'net 
fecundity and the qualities that lead to supremacy has 
undergone a curious reversal. Those who succeed leave 
few offspring, while the failures, the mentally sub- 
normal and the improvident who are restrained by no 
considerations of prudence from perpetuating their 
kind and leaving them to the tender mercies of Provi- 
dence or the poorhouse, continue to multiply with rela- 
tively unabated rapidity. Whatever may be the forces 
working towards the improvement of our hereditary 
endowments, it is evident that so long as preponderat- 
ing fecundity belongs to those who drift instead of to 
those who attain mastery the race stands in very serious 
danger of deterioration. 
It is unnecessary to dwell further upon this situation 
which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. 
Our present aim is to inquire whether or not the future 
improvement of our social institutions, granting that 
they continue to improve, promises to counteract in 
any effective way, the forces that are now working 
toward racial decadence. Most people look forward 
optimistically to an era of accomplished reform when 
education and culture will become much more widely 
spread, when wealth will be more equitably distributed, 
and when people in general will be good and happy. EUGENIC PROGRESS 
81 
Assuming that these sanguine expectations will be in 
the main fulfilled, what will be the probable effect upon 
our racial inheritance? 
Unless one were a Lamarckian and believed that the 
results of individual improvement were bequeathed to 
following generations, the answer to this question 
would not be immediately evident at least. Most 
biologists at the present time are not Lamarckians, 
and their answer to the question would probably de- 
pend upon their estimate of the way in which the 
various selective agencies to which mankind is exposed 
are affected by social progress. There are many fac- 
tors, both social and biological, which must be consid- 
ered in dealing with this problem; and judging from 
the expressed opinions of a number of biologists one 
may be pretty sure that the question would be an- 
swered in several different ways. 
Writers on social evolution often assume a certain 
antagonism between racial welfare and the general 
improvement of the conditions of life. Conditions 
must be bad enough, at least for a goodly number of 
people, so that the “beneficent working of the survival 
of the fittest” is not interfered with. Herbert Spencer 
warns legislators against any artificial interference 
with the competition whereby the ill-endowed are con- 
demned to “abject misery” and early death. “Mani- 
festly,” he says, “an opposite regime, could it be main- 
tained, would, in course of time, be fatal to the 
species.” According to Professor Haeckel, 82 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
The theory of selection teaches us in human life, exactly 
as in animal and plant life, at each place and time only a 
small privileged minority can continue to exist and flourish; 
the great mass must starve and more or less prematurely 
perish in misery. . . . We may deeply mourn this tragic 
fact, but we cannot deny or alter it. “Many are called but 
few are chosen.” This selection, this picking out of the 
chosen, is necessarily combined with the languishing and 
perishing of the remaining majority. 
If the weak must be crushed in order that the best 
types may inherit the earth it is obvious that a con- 
dition of society which greatly improves the living 
conditions of the less highly favored of the human 
breed would be fatal to the evolution of the race. 
It is scarcely necessary to point out that Haeckel’s 
picture of selection in human society is grossly over- 
drawn. But the central idea expressed, i.e., the neces- 
sity for maintaining the struggle for existence in order 
to insure progress, is voiced by a number of post- 
Darwinian writers on social evolution. To quote the 
words of a prominent social Darwinist, Mr. Benjamin 
Kidd: 
We shall perceive, when we understand the nature of the 
forces at work beneath the social phenomena of our time, 
that in whatever direction we may cast our eyes, there is 
no evidence that the rivalry and competition of life, which 
has projected itself into human society, has tended to dis- 
appear in the past, or that it is less severe amongst the most 
advanced peoples of the present, or that the tendency of the 
progress we are making is to extinguish it in the future. EUGENIC PROGRESS 
83 
On the contrary, all the evidence points m the opposite 
direction. . . . The races who maintain their places in the 
van do so on the sternest conditions. We may regulate and 
humanize those conditions, but we have no power to alter 
them; the conflict is severest of all when it is carried on 
under the forms of the highest civilization. The Anglo- 
Saxon looks forward, not without reason, to the days when 
wars will cease; but without war, he is involuntarily exter- 
minating the Maori, the Australian, and the Red Indian, 
and he has within his borders the emancipated but ostra- 
cized Negro, the English Poor Law, and the Social Ques- 
tion; he may beat his swords into plowshares but in his 
hands the implements of industry prove even more effective 
and deadly weapons than the swords. 
These are the first stern facts of human life and progress 
which we have to take into account. They have their origin 
not in any accidental feature of our history, nor in any 
innate depravity existing in man. They result, as we have 
seen, from deep-seated physiological causes, the operation 
of which we must always remain powerless to escape. 
Individual man, as Mr. Kidd conceives him, is but 
a pawn in Nature’s game—a game in which he as an 
individual has no particular interest. Nature, “so 
careful of the type” and “so careless of the single life,” 
is ever ready to sacrifice the individual in the interest 
of the social organism to which he belongs. “The 
teaching of reason to the individual,” says Mr. Kidd, 
“must always be that the present time and his own 
interest therein are all-important to him. Yet the 
forces which are working out our development are pri- 
marily concerned not with these interests of the indi- 
vidual, but with those widely different interests of a 84 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
social organism subject to quite other conditions and 
possessed of an indefinitely longer life.” 
To induce man to sacrifice his interests and to work 
for the welfare of his social group is a problem which 
Nature has solved by endowing him with various social 
instincts and emotions, and particularly with those 
traits which make him a religious animal. As only 
egoism is rational, according to Mr. Kidd, man must 
be bamboozled into altruism in some way if Nature is 
to gain her end of promoting human progress for 
which, it is claimed, there is “no rational sanction.” 
To effect this consummation is the lofty function of 
religion. By furnishing him with non-rational sanc- 
tions for conduct which makes for social as opposed 
to individual welfare, Nature has made man a willing 
dupe, content to tolerate a social 'system in which 
natural selection has free play and in which much 
misery must be endured in order that social evolution 
may continue its course. 
This is, I think, a fair statement of Mr. Kidd’s view, 
though expressed in phraseology less dignified and 
persuasive than that which captivates the readers of 
Social Evolution. It is but natural for Mr. Kidd 
to conclude that the evolution which is now going on 
in the human race, and which has been going on for 
many centuries, is not primarily in the field of intel- 
lect, but of instinct. Nature does not favor the de- 
velopment of intellect beyond the point at which the 
latter becomes unmanageable and refuses to subordi- 
nate itself to Nature’s ends. The great danger that EUGENIC PROGRESS 
85 
comes from the gradual extension of the sphere of in- 
dividual rights, and the emancipation of the intellect 
from the reign of dogma is that the subordination of 
individual to social welfare may become so weakened 
that the life of the group is seriously imperiled. A 
discordant individualism is a decided military disad- 
vantage, whatever may be said for it in other relations. 
Selection would therefore favor those groups in which 
the instincts that secure subordination and effective 
coordination were best developed, and in which the 
intellect was kept in a proper subjection to the instincts 
which afford the basis of social organization. 
From Mr. Kidd’s standpoint the prospect of much 
further advancement of the intellectual endowments of 
the race is not encouraging. Reason, being essentially 
anti-social, must be directed to social ends by instinct, 
or through institutions founded on instinct, which 
afford the necessary non-rational sanctions for social 
behavior. It is assumed that whatever advances we 
may make in the future must be accomplished through 
intense rivalry and the elimination of the unfit. Ri- 
valry within the group leading to the suppression of 
inferior individuals, and rivalry between groups lead- 
ing to the elimination of tribes and nations which have 
less corporate efficiency must continue to exist unless 
degeneration overtake the race. Racial progress, like 
the bloodthirsty gods of the ancient Aztecs, must have 
its human victims. If our social order does not furnish 
them we shall pay the heavier price of insidious racial 
decay. 86 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
For a social philosophy of this sort the hope of a 
future state of society in which there shall be no more 
war and no squalid poverty, and in which individuals 
may live with comparative ease and comfort, freed 
from the hardships of an oppressive struggle for exist- 
ence, is an idle dream. Fate has decreed that such 
things cannot be, or at least, that they cannot last. 
Has Mr. Kidd presented a faithful account of the 
actual operation of selective forces in human society? 
Though less obviously overdrawn than the picture 
given by Professor Haeckel, the presentation of the 
situation in Social Evolution is permeated by the same 
misconceptions and limitation of viewpoint. There 
was a tendency among earlier post-Darwinian writers, 
notwithstanding Darwin’s warning to the contrary, to 
conceive of the struggle for existence in a too literal 
sense as necessarily implying rivalry, a sort of “Hob- 
besian war of each against all” resulting in the elimina- 
tion of the weaker individuals. It was customary to 
look upon Nature as “red with tooth and claw” and 
to picture the struggle for existence as an active en- 
counter of rival organisms in which victory came as 
the reward of strength or cunning. As a matter of fact 
a very large part of the selective elimination that takes 
place in the organic world is accomplished in a very 
peaceful and unobtrusive way. What may properly 
be termed rivalry, or the struggle of one organism with 
another, constitutes but a part, and in many species 
a very minor part, of the selective process. Organisms 
may survive by virtue of increased resistance, freedom EUGENIC PROGRESS 
87 
from organic defect, or the possession of better adapta- 
tions to countless environmental agencies, without in- 
volving anything of struggle, except in a very figura- 
tive sense, of one organism with another. Doubtless 
the kind of struggle in which the success of one indi- 
vidual is based upon the failure of another, as in actual 
conflict or rivalry for food or mates, has played a very 
important role in the evolution of animal life, but, like 
other forms of selection, its incidence changes with cir- 
cumstances. If it has tended to produce higher types 
of life among the animals below man, it does not neces- 
sarily follow that it will work in a similar way among 
civilized mankind. Natural selection may favor pro- 
gressive evolution at one time and degradation of struc- 
ture and function at another. And we should there- 
fore proceed with caution in applying our biological 
formulas from one group to another when we are deal- 
ing with problems of progressive development. How 
any form of natural selection operates under the com- 
plex circumstances of human civilization cannot be 
decided a priori, but only by a careful study of its 
actual operation. It is quite possible, therefore, that 
the biologically novel conditions of civilized life may 
have involved such modifications of the workings 
of competitive struggle that its actual effects are 
very different from what they are in the lower 
animals. 
To conceive of natural selection solely in terms of 
one of its methods of operation, that of competitive 
struggle, and to assume that competitive struggle is 88 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
necessary for the progressive evolution of man, are two 
fundamental errors that are only too commonly found 
in the writings of the social Darwinist school. Upon 
these doctrines as a foundation has been reared more 
than one superstructure of social philosophy which has 
doubtless influenced in no small degree the interna- 
tional relationships of modern states. It is scarcely 
necessary to dwell upon the extreme importance of the 
deductions which might logically be drawn if the bio- 
logical doctrines we have mentioned are of universal 
validity. We are only too familiar in these days with 
the policy and practices which a perverted Darwinism 
has been used to support. 
Competitive struggle may take place between groups, 
or between individuals within a group. In intra-group 
rivalry, physical encounters have been all but entirely 
superseded by economic competition, and the latter 
seems to have increased as civilization has advanced. 
But competitive struggle within a group seldom leads 
directly to elimination, although it may give rise to 
conditions of life which cause an increased death rate. 
Those who are forced by this struggle into the ranks 
of the dependent classes, far from being extinguished, 
respond by an enhanced fecundity which more than 
offsets their increased death rate. As a result of forces 
peculiar to our social regime there has come to be 
established a biologically anomalous correlation be- 
tween failure and fecundity which deprives of much 
of their force the pleas for the value of competitive 
struggle. EUGENIC PROGRESS 
89 
We may be told that the reason for the failure of 
competitive struggle is because we are too humane and 
extend the helping hand to too many who, in the in- 
terest of the race, should be allowed to perish. It is 
questionable, however, if the withdrawal of all organ- 
ized and private charity would produce a much higher 
death rate among the ill-endowed than occurs to-day. 
But whatever some writers might deem more favorable 
conditions for racial evolution, it is evident, I think, 
that the actual workings of competitive struggle are 
quite different from what have been pictured by most 
social Darwinists. 
The deteriorating effect of unmitigated industrial 
competition has been clearly brought out by Professor 
Karl Pearson in his criticisms of those social Darwinists 
who attempt to use the Darwinian theory of natural 
selection as an argument against socialism. While 
Pearson and his co-workers have attempted to demon- 
strate by statistical methods that natural selection is 
a potent factor in man as in lower organisms, the con- 
tention is made that it is not through the struggle of 
man with man for the necessities of life that its racial 
benefits are brought about. Conditions which entail a 
high death rate among the ill-endowed are apt to prove 
unwholesome to many others as well, and would there- 
fore produce a general deterioration of the efficiency 
of the whole social group. A country in which a con- 
siderable proportion of the inhabitants are forced by 
industrial competition into conditions of squalor that 
sap the energies of mind and body, and in which a still 90 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
larger part of the inhabitants suffer more or less injury 
from the severity of the struggle for existence, can 
scarcely compete on equal terms with a nation whose 
population enjoys a higher and more wholesome stand- 
ard of living. A piece of mechanism which uses up a 
great deal of energy in internal friction is not an effec- 
tive product. And a country which permits internal 
rivalries to waste its resources of human life is poorly 
equipped for any contest which may endanger its na- 
tional existence. 
In common with many militaristic writers Pearson 
attributes an important role to group selection whether 
it takes the form of actual war, or competition for 
markets, trade routes and spheres of influence. It is 
undeniable that this factor has been a potent one in 
the progressive evolution of man, but it is dangerous 
to conclude that it will continue to function in the 
same way under the peculiar conditions of our modern 
civilized life. Struggle of group with group has de- 
veloped the instincts that make for mutual support and 
corporate efficiency; in a word, it has molded man into 
a social animal. But our debt to this stern mother of 
altruism should not be taken as incontestable evidence 
that her services will always be indispensable. 
Under modern systems of warfare it is not so much 
blood that tells as organization, training, and equip- 
ment. Which of the warring nations of Europe is 
most favored by inherited endowments is still far from 
being established. Practically all of them are mixtures 
of ethnic stocks to a degree that a racial analysis is EUGENIC PROGRESS 
91 
well nigh impossible. And whatever the issues of 
future wars may be, there is no assurance that the in- 
habitants of the victorious nations will multiply more 
rapidly than those of the vanquished. Among civilized 
peoples war generally leads to the extension not of a 
people, but of power, policies, and financial gain. A 
nation may be vanquished by war, time after time, as 
Austria has been during the nineteenth century, and 
at the same time increase in population, wealth and 
military strength. 
Should wars be carried on to the extermination of 
the vanquished they might be justified on biological 
grounds, provided of course that the victors owed their 
supremacy to their innate superiority instead of to 
organization, equipment, discipline, numbers, or any 
of the other circumstances that commonly decide the 
issue between contending armies. To a certain extent 
it is perhaps allowable to assume that those peoples 
with the best endowment of intellect and character 
will, on the average, develop the most efficient prepa- 
ration for war. Notwithstanding all that has been 
written from DeGobineau to Houston Chamberlain 
and Madison Grant on the innate superiority of this 
or that chosen people, the differences in culture and 
military efficiency among modern civilized nations are 
much more clearly traceable to extrinsic causes than 
to any factors which can be specified by the biologist. 
Russians and Servians retreat before well-drilled and 
equipped German armies for much the same reason 
that the ancient Germans and Gauls were unable to 92 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
stand before the legions of the Romans. Nations 
march forward on the road to civilization at a very 
unequal pace. And history has repeatedly shown that 
the backward and relatively defenseless people of one 
era may prove to be the highly cultured and conquer- 
ing nation of the next. 
It is not to be inferred that civilized peoples have 
an equivalent inheritance. They differ quite evidently 
in temperament and instinctive bent, but, while they 
probably differ also in their intellectual aptitudes, we 
know too little on this score to distinguish the effects 
of hereditary from environmental factors. Any suc- 
cessful attempt to evaluate the innate mental differ- 
ences of peoples would involve a thorough investigation 
by the best modern methods and on an extensive scale. 
As no such investigation has ever been made we have 
no very adequate basis for asserting which of the 
civilized peoples of the earth are the most highly gifted 
with inherited qualities. 
It may seem very plausible to speak of the advan- 
tages accruing from the conflict of nation with nation 
and the consequent survival of the best endowed stocks. 
But even if the victory came to the peoples having 
superior hereditary qualities, it by no means follows 
that the vanquished would be supplanted by the victor. 
Should conflict result in placing a nation in a position 
of economic disadvantage such as would result if it 
were overrun by its conquerors who monopolize the 
positions of power and profit, the probable result would 
be that the conquered would outbreed their conquerors EUGENIC PROGRESS 
93 
and regain through the cradle what was lost on the 
battlefield. 
Under other conditions, however, where conflict leads 
to the expansion of a victorious people who replace the 
primitive inhabitants of the realm, or where industrial 
supremacy yields the material support for an increased 
population group rivalry may effect a racial advance. 
The Anglo-Saxon people have doubtless profited by 
both of these means. Conflicts with inferior races in 
so far as they prove to be directly or indirectly wars 
of extermination may lead to racial improvement, but 
the biological effect of war between civilized states is 
a much more difficult problem. 
In view of the many considerations involved in such 
problems it is evident, I think, that the influence of 
group selection cannot be determined a priori simply 
by the extension of a biological formula to human 
society. Group selection, like intra-group selection, 
may work in very different ways according to circum- 
stances. Social philosophers who seize upon biological 
formulas and apply them uncritically, as they usually 
do, to the evolution of human society are apt to be led 
into very erroneous conclusions on matters of the 
gravest import. Just as competitive struggle between 
individuals may, under our present regime, give rise 
to injurious effects which more than outweigh its ad- 
vantages, so may the struggle between groups lead to 
results quite at variance with what is commonly sup- 
posed to occur. We have become so imbued with the 
idea that the struggle for existence simply means that 94 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
the weak go to the wall while the strongest and most 
highly developed come out ahead, that we lose sight 
of the ulterior consequences of the process, and espe- 
cially the fact that the changes wrought by selective 
forces may be progressive or retrogressive as a multi- 
tude of attendant circumstances determine. It should 
always be borne in mind that the course which it is 
biologically most advantageous to follow is not infre- 
quently the downhill path. Whether warfare, or any 
other form of group struggle, leads nations along the 
path of progress, either biologically or culturally, is a 
question which cannot be solved by abstract and gen- 
eral disquisitions on the survival of the fittest or the 
manifest destiny of superior peoples. It is a question 
which must be solved in each particular case by a 
thorough inductive inquiry. 
Investigations of the biological effects of war have 
been few. It is scarcely to be gainsaid that in modern 
warfare the most vigorous and efficient suffer the 
greatest loss of life at the front, leaving the race to be 
continued by the less desirable parents who remain 
behind. But for the full determination of the bio- 
jogical effects of war we must pass beyond the effects 
of individual selection within the group to the bio- 
logical outcome of the struggle of one group with 
another. One may contend, with Steinmetz and Schall- 
rneyer, who concede that military selection tends to 
destroy the best blood of the nation, but who main- 
tain that the biological advantages of the victory of 
the superior forces more than compensate for this EUGENIC PROGRESS 
evil. Satisfactory proof of this thesis, however, de- 
mands much more critical work than that which has 
been devoted to the task. The studies of Lapouge, 
Ammon, and a few others who have attempted to in- 
vestigate what the effects of group selection actually 
have been, have made little more than a feeble begin- 
ning of an undertaking beset with many difficulties and 
full of unexpected developments beyond the concep- 
tion of most proponents of militarism. It is impor- 
tant to recognize that the imaginary solutions of this 
problem that have so long passed for the real ones and 
have been taken as postulates by such writers as Von 
Moltke, Steinmetz, and Bernhardi in their attempts to 
justify war on the grounds of biological necessity have 
little support from inductive investigation. Whatever 
may be said in favor of war on other grounds, the 
biological argument is one of very dubious value, espe- 
cially as applied to the struggles between modern civi- 
lized states. 
If neither individual competition nor group selection 
has the unequivocal importance for racial progress that 
has been attributed to it, the consequences of social 
amelioration and exclusive devotion to the arts of 
peace may not, after all, be so disastrous, at least bio- 
logically. But if social evolution has so modified the 
operation of these factors that they can no longer be 
regarded as obviously making for race progress, to 
what must we look for further advance? Natural 
selection is doubtless still operating in various ways. 
We know as a matter of fact that some hereditarily 
95 96 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
degenerate types are on the average short-lived, and 
that strains with a diathesis to certain diseases tend 
to die out. Several of the studies on natural selection 
in man, especially those dealing with the racial in- 
fluence of infant mortality, have yielded results about 
which there has been considerable controversy. To 
ascertain just how natural selection is operating among 
human beings is a problem involving many technical 
difficulties that often tax the abilities of the most 
expert biometrician. There can be little doubt that 
the advances of medical science will tend to decrease 
the intensity of natural selection, and that it will con- 
tinue to decrease with the improvement of the condi- 
tions under which people live. In some respects this 
diminished activity will be racially bad, but if social 
amelioration should bring about the abolition of war- 
fare and equalize the birth rate so as to check some of 
the prevalent evils of differential fecundity it is not 
improbable that the net result would be advantageous. 
There is one factor in our problem which we have 
not yet considered and which, despite its very great 
importance, has been almost entirely neglected in con- 
sidering problems of human evolution, and indeed 
problems of evolution in general. This is the question, 
How does the changing complex of environmental 
forces which is brought about by social evolution 
affect the kinds of variations that are produced as 
material for the action of selective forces? It is ob- 
vious that if hereditary variations did not arise from 
time to time, selection would be unable to accomplish EUGENIC PROGRESS 
97 
anything. It is equally obvious that whatever selec- 
tion can accomplish is conditioned upon the kinds of 
variations which are offered for its choice. The selec- 
tive breeder would never be able to create a race of 
six-toed cats unless an occasional kitten with more 
than five digits should happen to present itself. No 
breeder of plants would try to produce a grass with 
divided leaves because no trace of such a variation 
has ever been known to occur in human experience. 
Natural selection must take what has arrived as a basis 
for what it may succeed in building up. It is like a 
builder who employs the stones fashioned for him by 
some one else, and whose choice is limited to using 
or rejecting what is supplied to him. A builder could 
never erect a marble palace if his materials were lim- 
ited to a varied assortment of cobble stones. And 
natural selection could never produce anything not 
already fashioned beforehand by those forces, whatever 
they may be, that determine the nature of hereditary 
variations. 
What causes hereditary variations to arise in organ- 
isms is a subject about which we know almost nothing. 
One can number on the fingers of one hand the inves- 
tigations of any importance that deal with this prob- 
lem. Beyond the fact commented on by Darwin that 
changed conditions of life tend to enhance variability, 
very little is known about the production of variations 
through environmental changes. One would naturally 
be disposed on a priori grounds to the conclusion that 
the kinds of variations which arise in organisms are 98 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
conditioned by the nature of environmental forces. If 
this be true, we are naturally led to enquire how the 
changing environment to which civilization exposes the 
human race affects the trend of variations that arise 
in the germ plasm. With our unnatural indoor life, 
the unwholesome living conditions of a large part of 
our wage-earning population, the increasing drift of 
people into large cities, our alcoholism, and our nu- 
merous diseases, it can hardly be expected that the 
germ plasm of the race will escape being affected in 
some way. But how? Here we are compelled to con- 
fess practically complete ignorance. Were we to judge 
by analogy with what has happened with our domestic 
animals, which are relatively degenerate from the 
standpoint of physical vigor and general intelligence, 
the probable outcome would not be reassuring. We 
might be disposed to infer that germinal variations 
arising in response to agencies which impair the vi- 
tality of the body would probably give rise to inferior 
progeny. The disastrous effects of lead poisoning 
upon the children of workers in lead, even when the 
father alone is affected, may be an indication of the 
kind of influence which might be anticipated from the 
action of an unwholesome environment. We know too 
little, however, of the permanence of the transmitted 
effects of lead poisoning to base anything more than 
a very tentative supposition on these results. 
With regard to the important question of the heredi- 
tary influence of alcohol our knowledge, although still 
very unsatisfactory, affords some ground for more or EUGENIC PROGRESS 
99 
less probable inference. While statistics show that 
epilepsy, insanity, and feeble-mindedness occur with 
much more than average frequency among the off- 
spring of parents addicted to alcohol, this correlation 
may be due to the fact that parental alcoholism is so 
often the result of a neuropathic constitution, and that 
it is the inheritance of this constitution, and not the 
effect of parental intemperance, that disposes the chil- 
dren of alcoholics to various forms of nervous malady 
and mental defect. Statistics may discover correlations 
but they are seldom adequate for establishing causal 
connections. As the method of experiment to which 
recourse must usually be had in the endeavor to ascer- 
tain causes cannot well be applied to human beings, 
the most promising field of inquiry is afforded by 
experiments on animals. If alcohol were found quite 
generally to produce hereditary defects in animals, we 
should have a strong argument in favor of its produc- 
ing similar results also in man. 
Of the investigations that have yielded indications 
of the injurious hereditary effects of alcohol, the recent 
work on guinea pigs by Stockard and his colleagues is 
the most noteworthy. The animals employed were 
bred and shown to be capable of producing normal 
offspring before they were subjected to the influence 
of alcohol. Control experiments with untreated ani- 
mals were also carried on side by side with animals to 
which alcohol was given, and the offspring of the two 
sets carefully compared. Without describing the 
methods of experimentation or giving the details of 100 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
the results, it may suffice to state that the alcoholized 
guinea pigs gave rise to a much larger proportion of 
still-born offspring and offspring which lived but a 
short time than did the controls. It is particularly 
noteworthy that when the male parent alone was 
given alcohol the percentage of defective offspring was 
strikingly large, although the largest proportion was 
obtained from the matings in which both parents were 
alcoholized. It was further shown—and this is par- 
ticularly significant in relation to our problem—that 
when the offspring of alcoholized parents were bred 
without being subjected to alcohol they gave rise to a 
large percentage of defective animals. Deformities 
such as an eyeless guinea pig, animals with a reduced 
number of digits, dwarfs, and many other kinds con- 
stituted 5.23 percent of ordinary alcoholic strains, and 
14.81 percent of inbred alcoholic strains, while no de- 
formities appeared among the animals bred from nor- 
mal parents. 
These experiments, unlike most previous studies, 
were carried out on an extensive scale and with due 
checks and controls, and they seem to afford strong 
evidence for the conclusion that alcohol administered 
to guinea pigs gives rise to degeneracy in the progeny 
which is capable of being transmitted to subsequent 
generations. Recently Pearl has applied Stockard’s 
methods to the domestic fowl, but instead of obtaining 
evidence of inherited injury he found that the progeny 
of the treated birds were slightly above the controls 
in fecundity and apparent vigor. These results are EUGENIC PROGRESS 
101 
not necessarily inconsistent with those obtained by 
Stockard, since the germ plasm of the fowl may be 
much less easily affected by alcohol than that of the 
guinea pig. Further experimental work on this impor- 
tant topic is much to be desired before we can be 
entirely justified in drawing conclusions concerning 
the hereditary influence of alcohol in man. At present, 
all that we are warranted in inferring is that alcoholism 
in man is a more or less probable source of hereditary 
defect. 
The same guarded conclusion should be drawn, I 
believe, in regard to other so-called “racial poisons.” 
The terrible consequences which luetic infection entails 
upon following generations are primarily due to the 
transfer of pathogenic germs from parent to offspring, 
instead of to heredity in the proper sense of this term. 
Nevertheless, it is a distinct possibility that the toxins 
carried in the bodies of the unfortunate victims of this 
common malady may injure the germ plasm in such a 
way as to give rise to strains with a true hereditary 
defect. We may have similar suspicions that the same 
result may be produced by tuberculosis and other dis- 
eases; but unfortunately in regard to most of these 
questions we can only indulge in speculation. Did we 
know what agencies give origin to our strains of im- 
beciles, lunatics, and morons we might be able to nip 
in the bud one of the most serious of our social evils. 
We may have a shrewd suspicion that our modern 
regime with all its institutions which conspire to sap 
the vitality of the race is continually adding new 102 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
strains of such undesirables. When experiments on 
the causes of variability in the lower animals have 
yielded us a large body of well-organized knowledge, 
instead of the meager and scrappy information which 
we now possess, we shall doubtless be in a position to 
draw conclusions of a high degree of probability re- 
garding the trend of variability in man, and possibly 
to bring this variability in a measure under control. 
Any consideration of the influence of social amel- 
ioration upon the evolution of racial qualities has to 
take into consideration the question of how the trend 
of variation in human beings will probably be affected. 
If, as seems not improbable, intemperance, disease, and 
possibly bad living conditions are productive of heredi- 
tary defect, our racial welfare may not be seriously 
menaced by the reduced action of selection which 
would probably follow upon the institution of social 
and economic reforms. On the contrary, the race may 
be freed from sources of continued contamination 
which act as a check upon its progress. A social 
system which presumably favors the “beneficent work- 
ing of the survival of the fittest” by creating conditions 
of life that lead to a high death rate among the less 
successful types, may not only fail to eliminate these 
types, as we have attempted to show, but may be a 
means of actually creating the inferior variations 
which it is supposed to destroy. 
Our aim thus far has been to show that the realiza- 
tion of Utopian dreams of a state of society in which 
the evils of poverty, intemperance, severe individual EUGENIC PROGRESS 
103 
struggle and warfare have been relegated to the past 
does not necessarily entail biological decadence. In 
fact, there are reasons for believing that such a con- 
summation would do away with many of our present 
sources of racial deterioration. Would it also set into 
operation any agencies which would promote racial 
advancement? 
If the cure for democracy is more democracy, it may 
also be true that the cure for the racial evils of civili- 
zation is more civilization. An enlightened society, 
possessing a knowledge of the principles of its own 
evolution, and mindful of the welfare of future gen- 
erations, may accomplish much in the direction of 
eugenic progress. The control of the birth rate which 
mankind is now exercising from prudential considera- 
tions, or the more laudable motive of giving better 
advantages to a few children rather than mere main- 
tenance to many, might, in such a society, be utilized 
more for social and less for individual ends. With 
parenthood placed upon a voluntary basis we might 
reasonably expect that the less desirable stocks would 
show an increased tendency toward elimination and 
that the rearing of children would be undertaken in 
greater measure by the classes more amenable to the 
influence of the sense of racial obligation. 
Alfred Russel Wallace entertained great hopes of 
race improvement through the financial emancipation 
of women. When women are no longer tempted to 
marry for support they will, according to Wallace, be 
more apt to select only superior types of men to be 104 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
the fathers of their children. As a means of race im- 
provement doubtless marriage selection has magnifi- 
cent possibilities. But when we reflect upon the fre- 
quency of marriage among the Jukes and Kallikaks on 
the one hand, and the low marriage rate of women 
graduates of colleges on the other, it must be admitted 
that, as a factor in race progress, marriage selection 
at present is a miserable failure. Mere economic 
reform cannot be relied upon to improve matters 
greatly unless it is accompanied by a general diffusion 
of education; and education will avail little unless it 
includes the inculcation of a sense of responsibility 
for the hereditary qualities of future generations. 
Education is eugenically of value chiefly as affording 
a basis for the development of a “eugenic conscience” 
which is now sadly lacking in most people of culture. 
It is a hopeful sign, however, that here and there 
among people who have inherited a generous measure 
of desirable traits eugenic considerations have led to 
the rearing of larger families. One is therefore en- 
couraged to have sufficient confidence in human nature 
to believe that the spread of eugenic education, so that 
people of superior endowments will have the matter 
of their obligations to the race brought squarely home 
to them, will not fail to have an effect in checking the 
evils of our present differential fecundity. 
Racial improvement has doubtless very intimate re- 
lations to the improvement of the economic conditions 
which now oppress a very large proportion of man- 
kind. A society with well-marked castes will probably EUGENIC PROGRESS 
105 
make little progress if it includes an ignorant and 
poverty-ridden proletariat. Under a regime which 
affords better educational advantages and a higher 
standard of living for the less successful classes, the 
relatively high birth rate of those who multiply through 
sheer lack of restraint would probably be reduced. 
Economic reform is by no means the panacea for 
racial and social ills that it is apparently taken to be 
by many socialistic theorists, but it would afford con- 
ditions under which the operation of eugenic ideals 
would doubtless be more effective than under our 
present social order. Greater equality in the distri- 
bution of wealth would tend to bring about greater 
equality in the birth rate of different classes. With a 
higher general standard of education and a diffusion 
of the sense of obligation to transmit socially valuable 
qualities to future generations, conditions might pos- 
sibly be changed so that a greater relative fecundity 
would come to characterize the more vigorous, intelli- 
gent, and public-spirited members of the community. 
Should society succeed in restoring the correlation 
between fecundity and the possession of superior 
qualities—a correlation which our present civilization 
has pretty effectually subverted—humanity would once 
more be on the highway of racial advance. CHAPTER VI 
HEREDITY AND THE MIND1 
The inheritance of mental traits is a subject upon 
which opinions are commonly influenced by various 
kinds of bias. Those who believe that the mind is a 
separate entity, conjoined for a brief period with its 
physical embodiment, are often averse to admitting 
that mental characteristics obey the same laws of 
heredity that hold true for the body. We should 
hardly expect mental traits to be inherited if each soul 
were separately created at the time of conception as 
was held by St. Jerome. Neither should we expect a 
strict inheritance of mentality if the soul of Cleopatra 
or Madame Blavatsky might find a subsequent incar- 
nation in the person of Mrs. Annie Besant. 
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries prejudices 
of a quite different order swayed the opinions of many 
champions of the rights of man. From Thomas Paine 
down to the present time we frequently meet with a 
great reluctance to admit that human beings differ to 
any considerable degree in their inherited measures of 
intellect. Our attitude toward doctrines is largely 
determined by how they happen to square with our 
cherished convictions, and it is quite natural that 
1 Originally given as a presidential address before the University 
of California Chapter of Sigma Xi, Dec., 1922. 
106 HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
107 
those who contended that all men should share equally 
in the privileges of government, instinctively felt that 
to assert the hereditary inequalities of intellect would 
be prejudicial to their case. 
In the latter half of the nineteenth century a new 
interest in the problem was awakened by the theory 
of evolution. One of the first effects of this theory 
was to predispose students of ethnology and anthro- 
pology greatly to exaggerate the mental differences 
between the races of mankind, and to place the primi- 
tive peoples of the earth on a very low level of mental 
development. Here we have another bias which we 
may call the evolutionary bias. A careful study of 
the mental capacity of peoples with inferior culture 
revealed the fact that their natural aptitudes were 
often of no mean order. The reaction against the 
older evolutionary anthropologists has, I believe, gone 
too far, some authors contending that even the most 
backward races are on about the same level of natural 
ability as our own. But we are endeavoring to study 
human intellectual capacity by new and improved 
scientific methods and it is to be hoped that, difficult 
as the task may be, a just rating of the inborn men- 
tality of various ethnic groups may ultimately be at- 
tained. In fact, a very good beginning in this direc- 
tion has already been made. 
Another influence of evolutionary theory was to 
direct attention to the innate variability in mental 
endowments existing within a given people. This in- 
fluence was exerted for much the same reasons that 108 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
stimulated the study of variability by the systematic 
botanist and zoologist. Variations are the materials 
with which evolution works. Variations in any of the 
products of life are what the evolutionist was naturally 
pleased to find. 
It was largely owing to his interest in the evolu- 
tionary teachings of his cousin, Charles Darwin, that 
Francis Galton was led to devote himself to the studies 
that resulted in his well-known book on Hereditary 
Genius. Galton amassed a large amount of data prov- 
ing quite conclusively that exceptional mental ability 
runs in families. Eminent persons commonly have 
eminent near relatives, and the more eminent the per- 
son the greater the number of eminent relatives on 
the average that will be found in his family. 
Galton had become fascinated by the use of the sta- 
tistical methods which had been applied to anthropo- 
logical and social phenomena by the Belgian astron- 
omer and statistician Quetelet. He was the first sys- 
tematically to employ these methods in the study of 
heredity and he treated his data on the transmission 
of mental ability in an impartial statistical manner, 
carefully avoiding the selection of material for the 
express purpose of proving his case. Taking the list 
of 286 judges in England between 1660 and 1865 
Galton found that 109 of them had eminent relatives. 
The nearer the relationship the greater the percentage 
of eminent persons. Thus out of first degree relatives 
there were 31 eminent sons, 30 eminent brothers, and 
22 eminent fathers. Of second degree relatives there HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
109 
were eminent persons as follows: 7 grandfathers, 9 
uncles, 14 nephews, 11 grandsons. Of third degree 
relatives there were eleven people. As people are 
more distantly related to a distinguished person their 
chance of becoming distinguished becomes rapidly 
reduced. 
Much the same kind of results were found by Galton 
among literary men, commanders, divines, poets, mu- 
sicians, painters, and men of science. A later book on 
English Men of Science (1874) contributed further 
data in support of the same conclusion, and the work 
of Galton and Schuster on Noteworthy Families which 
was based on a study of the family histories of the 
Fellows of the Royal Society afforded much peculiarly 
cogent evidence of the transmission of mental ability. 
The well-known work of F. A. Woods on Mental and 
Moral Heredity in Royalty in which it is shown that 
there is a striking tendency for superior ability to run 
in families follows much the same methods as those 
used by Galton. According to Woods, royalty affords 
an unusually favorable field for such studies since 
environmental differences are not nearly so great as 
are found in the general population. The parent- 
offspring correlation for ability based on 494 pairs was 
.3007, a result very similar to the correlations found 
by Pearson, Schuster, and Elderton and several other 
investigators for mental ability and various other hu- 
man traits. In a later paper Woods pointed out that 
of the 46 men whose names are recorded in the Hall 
of Fame 26 had eminent close relatives. 110 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
The inheritance of mental ability has been studied 
by the workers of the Gal ton Laboratory of the Uni- 
versity of London, who have attacked the problem by 
working out correlations between parents and off- 
spring and between siblings for a number of mental 
and physical traits. The resemblance in scholarship 
between siblings in the lower English schools and 
between fathers and sons in their scholastic records in 
Oxford and Cambridge was roughly from .3 to .5. It 
is a noteworthy fact, strongly emphasized by Pearson, 
that relatives show much the same degree of similarity 
in various mental traits, such as ability, introspection, 
conscientiousness, temper, and vivacity that they show 
in eye color, span, and cephalic index. These correla- 
tions it is held constitute a measure of what may be 
called the strength of heredity, or the degree of heredi- 
tary likeness. Since this degree of hereditary likeness 
is much the same in traits little influenced by environ- 
ment, such as eye color, and traits commonly assumed 
to be strongly influenced by environment such as in- 
telligence, we must conclude, according to Pearson, 
that it is the force of heredity which mainly accounts 
for the correlations observed in all these traits. The 
question of the relative influence of heredity and 
environment has been studied by Pearson and his 
co-workers for a number of traits by comparing the 
parent-offspring and the fraternal correlations with the 
correlations between the traits in question and various 
environmental agencies to which they are exposed, and 
the conclusion is arrived at that the influence of HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
111 
heredity is, on the average, several times as potent as 
the influence of the environment. There have been 
many other studies devoted to the problem, but these 
will perhaps suffice to indicate the methods employed 
and the kind of results commonly obtained. 
The conclusions of the investigators I have men- 
tioned have been attacked by numerous critics. Gal- 
ton, especially, has come in for a large amount of 
criticism on account of his effort to minimize the in- 
fluence of education and opportunity. In this he 
needlessly exposed himself to attack, and a large part 
of the so-called refutations of his conclusions consists 
in adducing evidence of the potency of environment. 
This is the proceeding followed by De Candolle, Odin, 
Jacoby, Constable, Ward, Cooley, and a number of 
other writers. It is pointed out by these writers that 
the number of great men per century has increased 
as civilization has advanced, that great men come more 
frequently from cities where there are educational op- 
portunities, that they come to a preponderating extent 
from the educated and well-to-do classes and rarely 
from the poverty-stricken elements of the community, 
and when they do, in spite of disadvantages, it goes 
only to show, as Ward maintains, that, after all, genius 
occurs about equally in all ranks, and waits but the 
magic touch of opportunity to blossom forth. 
Such views commend themselves very naturally to 
the champions of oppressed humanity; they appeal 
strongly to the socialists most of whom attribute a 
large part of our ills to the iniquities of the capitalistic 112 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
regime and attempt to explain the differences between 
human beings as mainly the result of environment and 
opportunity. Many take a peculiar pleasure in re- 
minding us that the aristocrat is made of no better 
material than the humblest dweller of the slums, if as 
good. There is a certain satisfaction derived from 
destroying other people’s pretensions to superiority 
which, I suspect, has not been entirely devoid of in- 
fluence in shaping opinions on the natural inequality 
of man. 
The logic of these egalitarians is vitiated by a 
serious flaw. Notable men, we are told, come from 
families of education and fair social and financial 
status. Therefore, they argue, the large percentage 
of noteworthy persons from these families is a meas- 
ure of the influence of wealth and education. Odin, 
Constable, De Candolle, and Ward go calmly ahead 
speaking of the influence of economics, urban life, and 
culture on the production of genius without consid- 
ering that parents may have been educated, fairly 
well-to-do and living where there are educational ad- 
vantages because they belong to stocks of more than 
the average heritage of brains. Several studies have 
shown that it is in the professional classes—clergy- 
men, doctors, lawyers, educators, etc.—that we find the 
parentage of a large proportion of our great men. It 
cannot be denied that these classes are recruited from 
people of more than the average mental ability. And 
sons of such parents derive not only opportunity, but HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
113 
intelligence enough to take advantage of opportunity. 
We cannot, therefore, use these sons as an index of the 
influence of environment versus heredity. 
While many of the arguments of the environmental- 
ists are vitiated by failure to take account of the con- 
siderations to which I have alluded, it is perfectly 
evident that, as a rule, distinction for intellectual 
achievement depends to a great extent on education 
and sufficient leisure for scholastic pursuits. Only cer- 
tain types of genius can break through the impedi- 
ments of extreme poverty and unfavorable surround- 
ings. Great men have increased in number as civili- 
zation has advanced and opportunities for education 
have become more widely diffused, and the environ- 
mentalists are right in saying that there has been no 
increase in innate ability commensurate with the in- 
crease of notable names. But after all, the argument 
has little real weight in regard to the problem of 
mental heredity. Most reputations for greatness de- 
pend upon some form of scholarly achievement. 
Where men cannot become scholars they usually can- 
not achieve this reputation, whatever mental powers 
they may happen to possess. 
It should be borne in mind, in considering our 
problem, that in our present civilization, there is a 
strong tendency for good heredity and good environ- 
ment to become associated. People with energy and 
good intelligence are constantly rising from the lower 
classes into the well-to-do and cultured classes, thus 114 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
racially impoverishing the proletariat which is further 
deteriorated by receiving the failures from the classes 
above. 
Children bom of educated parents have an ancestry 
some of whom have succeeded in attaining a fair posi- 
tion in life. If the environmentalists have ground for 
criticizing the Galton school on the ground that what 
is attributed to heredity can be explained by oppor- 
tunity, the Galtonians may retort that differences in 
opportunity are in most cases the results of antecedent 
heredity. 
There are ways out of this apparent deadlock of 
argument, notwithstanding the fact that the effects of 
environment and heredity are very closely interwoven. 
Let us grant that the individual is a function of he- 
redity and environment including, under the latter, 
the influence of education. Both are essential, for 
without either there would be no individual. For this 
reason, some would brush aside the problem of nature 
versus nurture as a fruitless one, and so it is when 
stated in abstract and general terms. Narrowed down 
to a comparison of the effect of specified differences 
in environment and specified differences in heredity, 
the problem becomes not only practical but capable 
of solution. It is fruitless for a farmer to concern him- 
self with which is the more important for growing 
corn—seed or soil. But it might be important to 
know whether the difference in average yield between 
seed A and seed B is greater or less than the differ- 
ences produced by sowing a given kind of seed in HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
115 
field X or field Y. Here is a soluble problem and 
the method of solution is easy to employ. It is also 
possible to compare the average effect of differences 
in heredity met with in a given group with the 
average effect of the differences in the environment in 
which the group lives. As applied to our problem of 
nature versus nurture in mental development, we may 
state the matter as follows: Do the differences in 
mentality between human beings of comparable age 
in a community depend to a greater extent, on the 
average, upon their differences in heredity or upon 
the differences in environment to which they have 
been exposed? This also is an answerable question, 
but much less simple than the preceding. 
It would, of course, be useful to know just how 
greatly intelligence, as distinguished from the posses- 
sion of information, can be developed by the best 
educational methods. Experimental investigations of 
this problem have convinced many psychologists that 
general intelligence can be developed but little in this 
way. Certainly there is no pedagogical recipe for con- 
verting an ordinary dull boy into a Sir Isaac Newton. 
Experience teaches us, especially those of us who are 
teachers, that we cannot expect educational methods 
to do wonders in creating intelligence, however much 
certain special aptitudes may be increased by training. 
The remarkable scholastic progress made by some 
individuals is frequently cited as a measure of the 
potency of environment in the development of the 
mind. But leaving out of account the question as to 116 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
how much real development of the mind there has 
been, it may be said that the capacity for rapid prog- 
ress is a native endowment. Our problem of nature 
and nurture in mental development is complicated by 
the peculiar circumstance that degree of improvability 
in mental reactions depends upon heredity. The 
more generously one is equipped by heredity, the 
more environment can do for him in increasing his 
apparent mental stature. Environment can do little 
for an idiot, just as it does little in developing the be- 
havior of many lower animals whose innate equipment 
of instincts suffices for the needs of their lives. The 
low grade feeble-minded can learn only simple things. 
With increasing degrees of hereditary ability there are 
increasing degrees of profiting by educational oppor- 
tunities. People reach their definitive mental ages 
at very different times. Equalizing opportunity, as 
Thorndike has shown, does not tend to equalize 
achievements. With the same school drill it was found 
that pupils who excelled in early school years were 
relatively more in advance of their fellows in later 
school years than they were at first. Improving op- 
portunity increases instead of decreases the initial 
disparity between individuals. You can level human 
beings down. You cannot level them up. 
To point to the rapid improvement of certain indi- 
viduals under a favorable system of training as an 
index of what environment can do tells only a part of 
the story. It may be said also that this improvement 
is an index of what heredity has already done. With HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
117 
respect to the benefits of nurture, it is eminently true 
that to those that hath shall be given. The failure to 
recognize the fact that degree of improvability depends 
upon heredity has created much confusion in writings 
upon our problem. Improvability is a trait that has 
increased as animals have evolved. It is par excellence 
a characteristic of man and of superior as compared 
with inferior men. If we count so much upon nurture 
to carry civilization to greater heights, we should not 
forget that the primary condition of the greatest of 
efficacy of nurture is afforded by a rich endowment of 
natural gifts. 
Since the advent of mental tests, data on mental in- 
heritance have been rapidly accumulating. As judged 
by these tests, people have been found to differ very 
greatly in their intelligence as was in fact apparent 
before. These tests are found to correlate fairly well 
with other standards of intelligence such as perform- 
ance in school and college, or ratings of general ability 
by competent judges. Tests of students at various 
ages show that, as a rule, low or high ratings com- 
monly persist through several years. With improved 
tests applied at successive ages from youth to maturity 
to large numbers of persons, we may be able to judge 
how far the performances of adults are indicative of 
native endowment as compared with the effects of 
training and outward circumstances. 
Out of the very large amount of measurements now 
being carried on, we are slowly obtaining a clearer 
conception of the intellectual make-up of our popula- 118 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
tion. Humanity is becoming revealed to us as a most 
diverse assemblage of differing mentalities. And the 
recognition of these differences, which was done with 
so much profit by the Army, is bound to become more 
prevalent in business, and some day may have an in- 
fluence even in politics. We shall gradually work out, 
I believe, a general solution of the problem of nature 
and nurture as I have attempted to formulate it, and 
be able to express the results in a quantitative form 
with a fair degree of accuracy. 
But we must pass on to other phases of our subject. 
Some very interesting facts bearing on the inheritance 
of mental traits are furnished by the so-called iden- 
tical twins. This class of twins was first recognized 
by Galton who pointed out that twins are of two 
kinds; in the one, the fraternal twins, the resemblance 
is commonly no greater than it is among ordinary 
members of the same family; in the other, called by 
Galton identical twins, there is a remarkably close 
resemblance in most characteristics. They are always 
of the same sex, and they are frequently almost in- 
distinguishable even by people who may have known 
them for a long time. It is the common opinion that 
identical twins arise from the same fertilized ovum 
and that they are enclosed in the same chorion and are 
supplied by one placenta, whereas ordinary fraternal 
twins result from the fertilization of two ova and have 
two chorions and placentae. In the first case we have 
twins of identically the same inheritance; in the 
second, we should expect hereditary dissimilarity of HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
119 
the same order that we find among ordinary siblings. 
Galton, who amassed a great deal of data with regard 
to twins, had many interesting records of similarities 
and dissimilarities among them which support his 
theory that twins really do fall into the two classes 
he describes. Thorndike, on the other hand, finds no 
evidence for two sharply contrasted classes of twins. 
That there should be all grades of resemblance between 
twins is what we should expect according to the prin- 
ciples of Mendelian inheritance. But Thorndike’s 
results are not what we should expect if his mate- 
rial contained a considerable number of cases of iden- 
tical heredity. The evidence afforded by double mon- 
sters and conjoined twins makes it very probable that 
many separate twins have arisen from the same fer- 
tilized egg. Aside from the peculiar sex ratio among 
twins, we have little evidence as to the frequency of 
twins of the identical variety, but that such twins 
occur is very probable from the evidence of embry- 
ology as well as the many recorded cases of remark- 
ably close similarity of twins in many different char- 
acteristics. 
Cases of insanity in twins show that when both of 
a pair become insane they usually develop the same 
type of insanity. In twins apparently identical the 
onset and course of the disease sometimes presents a 
startling degree of similarity. There are some cases 
of marked similarities among twins both of whom are 
feeble-minded. Occasionally twins, apparently iden- 
tical, may exhibit exceptional ability as shown by the 120 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
Grosvenor brothers. A remarkable case of mental as 
well as physical resemblance was recently reported by 
Dr. Gesell in the Scientific Monthly for April, 1922. 
The ancestry was of superior quality as it is stated 
that “scientific and linguistic ability of high order and 
physical energy are some of the traits which are found 
in the two immediate generations.” Both were pre- 
cocious and had begun to talk and walk at eleven 
months. At three years of age they began French and 
in less than a year they were reading elementary 
English, French, and Esperanto. “Formal arithmetic 
was begun at six and in less than a year they were 
solving mentally problems in fractions and percentage. 
At the age of nine both were doing Junior High School 
work. They speak French fluently, and have made 
progress in Italian, and embarked upon Russian. They 
are much alike in their tastes and dispositions. Their 
mental tests and their vocabulary tests give almost the 
same scores.” 
Their physical measurements are remarkably alike. 
Agglutination blood tests and the reactions to vaccina- 
tion were practically the same. A striking similarity 
was shown in their palm prints and in the prints of the 
soles of the feet, the same formula applying to both. 
At eight years of age the right permanent upper 
incisor was in the same incompleted stage of eruption. 
On the upper lip of both, a little above the outer 
corner of the mouth, is a minute pigmented mole. In 
no physical character was there a pronounced dis- 
similarity between these twins. HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
121 
The twins here described are remarkable not only 
on account of their exceptional prococity and high 
mental development, but on account of their similarity 
or almost identity in many physical traits, some of 
which are of a very special kind. The environment 
was much the same for both, but no more so than for 
ordinary fraternal twins some of which frequently 
exhibit striking differences in physical and mental 
traits. When one compares them with other twins, 
they are probably to be regarded as showing what the 
same heredity plus like environment can do in pro- 
ducing likeness as compared with what like environ- 
ment can do without like heredity. Unfortunately we 
have little information on how identical twins may 
develop when they are separated and placed in quite 
different environments very early in life. 
If mental ability is transmitted through inheritance, 
have we any clue to its particular mode of transmis- 
sion? Since the resurrection of Mendel’s law of he- 
redity in 1900, there have been several endeavors to 
apply this principle to the inheritance of mental traits. 
Most writers who have treated of feeble-mindedness 
in relation to Mendel’s law have concluded that this 
character behaves as a Mendelian recessive. Some 
have assumed that feeble-mindedness is a definite unit 
character transmitted, like eye color, in a sharply 
alternative manner. Were this so, we should expect 
that if both parents were hereditarily feeble-minded, 
all of their children would be feeble-minded also. The 
facts seem to bear out this conclusion. Out of 482 122 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
children recorded by Goddard as arising from such 
unions, 477, or all but six, were feeble-minded. In 
forty-one such matings of the Kallikak family, there 
were 222 feeble-minded children and only two consid- 
ered normal. When we allow for possible illegitimate 
children, which are not infrequent in such stocks, and 
the possibility of mistaking congenital for acquired 
mental defects, this result is perhaps as close to theo- 
retical expectation as we should be likely to find. And 
the conclusion that two congenitally feeble-minded 
parents do not produce intelligent children is con- 
firmed by much additional evidence. 
Insanity, which often rests on a basis of abnormal 
inheritance, has been regarded also as a Mendelian 
recessive. Some forms of insanity such as Hunting- 
ton’s chorea behave quite clearly as a dominant and 
strongly hereditary trait, but the mode of transmission 
of other types of mental alienation is more obscure. 
I am convinced by going over a large number of 
pedigrees that insanity cannot be regarded as a com- 
pletely recessive trait, notwithstanding the fact that it 
may appear in the offspring of normal parents. When 
both parents are insane, or one insane and the other 
epileptic, we commonly have most unfortunate results 
in their progeny. 
Where one parent is feeble-minded and the other 
epileptic, the results are commonly still more disas- 
trous. In 15 matings of this kind studied by Daven- 
port and Weeks 28 of the 55 offspring were epileptic, 
26 were feeble-minded, and 1 was insane. In 27 mat- HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
123 
ings in which both parents were either feeble-minded 
or epileptic all of the children above 14, about whose 
condition anything could be ascertained, were classed 
as mentally abnormal, 43 being epileptic, 58 feeble- 
minded, 1 insane, 2 migrainous and 8 neurotic. 
For several reasons, which I shall not attempt to 
give here, I believe that mental defect in general is 
not a unit character dependent upon a particular unit 
factor in the germ plasm but is rather a symptom of 
fairly widespread damage in the material basis of in- 
heritance. Feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, and insanity 
are not clearly defined entities; they are large and 
heterogeneous classes of defects resting to a great ex- 
tent upon a hereditary basis, but inherited in no 
sharply-defined alternative manner. They are to be 
compared, not with such traits as eye color, but with 
such characters as skin color and stature which obvi- 
ously depend upon a considerable number of factors. 
There are not improbably cases, however, in which a 
single germinal change may produce an inherited 
mental defect if it occurs in some factor of peculiar 
potency in the development of the nervous system. 
But in most such cases, it is probable that there is a 
favorable cooperation of other factors forming the 
basis upon which a particular determiner of defect 
may operate. 
A few writers have attempted to apply simple Men- 
delian formulae to the inheritance of superior mental 
ability. Hurst has maintained that musical ability is 
a recessive trait, basing his argument on the fact that 124 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
musical persons not infrequently are produced from 
parents neither of whom have exhibited noteworthy 
musical talent. Davenport in his Heredity in Rela- 
tion to Eugenics adopts the same theory and adduces 
additional evidence in his support. According to this 
interpretation, if both parents are musical, all of the 
children will be musical or at least have musical 
ability, but I find that this by no means holds true. 
The latter author holds that superior ability in other 
lines is also recessive, artistic ability, literary ability, 
mechanical skill, calculating ability, and memory are 
all “unit characters that may occur in any combina- 
tions.” And Professor Bateson in his British Associa- 
tion address says, “I have confidence that the artistic 
gifts of mankind will prove to be due not to some- 
thing added to the make-up of an ordinary man, but 
to the absence of factors which in the normal person 
inhibit the development of these gifts. They are 
almost beyond doubt to be looked upon as releases of 
power normally suppressed. The instrument is there, 
but it is ‘stopped down.’ ” 
All of these theories which would treat of excep- 
tionally great ability of any kind as a simple, reces- 
sive, Mendelian unit character are, I believe, funda- 
mentally wrong, and based on a faulty and naive 
psychology. I suspect that Bateson’s reference to 
genius may have been suggested by the traditional 
doctrine that has come down to us from Moreau, and 
popularized especially by Lombroso and Nordau, 
namely, that genius is a sort of defect, more or less HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
125 
akin to insanity and frequently leading its unfortu- 
nate possessor to end his days in an asylum. The 
absurdity of supposing that genius develops out of 
mediocrity by a simple process of subtraction is only 
one of the curious logical consequences that follow 
from Bateson’s paradoxical teachings that all varia- 
bility may be due to the loss of factors in the germ 
plasm. 
The theory that genius is a recessive trait and there- 
fore due to the loss of something receives a certain 
degree of plausibility from the apparently sporadic 
appearance of great minds. It has often been re- 
marked in discussions of the inheritance of mental 
ability that great men frequently arise from undis- 
tinguished parents who gave no promise of the genius 
of their sons. It has been suggested that the man of 
genius is a sport or mutation standing sharply apart 
from his ancestors and explainable not in terms of 
heredity but of variation. In the light of our present 
knowledge of Mendelian inheritance it is easy to see 
that it is the lack of such knowledge that has so 
greatly confused people who have studied this prob- 
lem. We recognize now that most of what appears 
to be the de novo origin of variations is merely the 
product of peculiar combinations of Mendelian fac- 
tors. The black sheep in the flock is not a paradoxical 
new appearance that forms an exception to the laws 
of heredity. Its origin is strictly in accordance with 
such laws. We recognize in the diversity of traits 
found in children of the same parents, not a failure of 126 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
heredity, but the expression of heredity. And when 
we find many instances of distinguished fathers with 
undistinguished sons, or of great men produced from 
ancestry only a little above mediocrity, such phe- 
nomena are no longer mysterious. 
To look upon great ability as a unit character is, 
from the standpoint of psychology, absurd. It is a 
complex never twice the same, formed by the coop- 
eration of factors making for a rare combination of 
intellectual powers, emotions, tastes, traits of char- 
acter, and peculiarities of physical development. We 
are not in a position to lay down precise rules which 
would enable us to predict from a given parentage 
the appearance of a great man. There are, however, 
several conclusions which, even with our present 
knowledge, we are justified, I believe, in drawing. 
Some of these I shall venture to set forth in a more 
or less categorical fashion: 
1. Mental development depends upon a great mul- 
titude of hereditary factors in the germ plasm. Per- 
haps it might not be going too far to say that all 
hereditary factors which influence physical organiza- 
tion have some effect, however small, in the determina- 
tion of mentality. 
2. Inherited mental endowment is strictly correlated 
with physical organization, especially of the nervous 
system, but also with the system of endocrine glands 
and less directly with other parts of the body. 
3. Since human beings are of mixed or heterozygous 
heredity to an extent probably not paralleled by any HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
127 
other species, they present almost unlimited possibili- 
ties for the combinations of factors influencing mental 
development. 
4. Some hereditary factors make for the production 
of low mentality; others for high mentality. Other 
factors probably have a preponderative influence on 
instinctive and emotional traits. 
5. Superior mentality that leads to achievement and 
reputation depends upon a fortunate combination of 
hereditary factors. Great intellect, to achieve success, 
must be combined with energy, determination, and 
other traits of character, the lack of any one of which 
might prevent the achievement upon which a reputa- 
tion for greatness depends. 
6. That since hereditary ability of a superior kind 
is due to a complex of qualities, the chance of such a 
complex being repeated exactly in offspring is relatively 
small. 
7. The chance of similar complexes occurring in 
near relatives is much greater than in unrelated indi- 
viduals, and rapidly diminishes with the remoteness of 
the relationship. 
8. Since superior ability is a complex, we should 
expect it to be manifest in individuals neither of whose 
parents possessed superior ability; but we should 
expect to find most of the components of ability rep- 
resented in the parents or their near ancestry. 
9. Ability of a very superior kind being dependent 
upon an unusual number of factors making for high 
mentality, or on the combination of factors of great 128 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
potency, or possibly also upon combinations which 
per se are particularly fortunate, we should expect a 
larger number of distinguished persons among the 
near relatives of such illustrious individuals than 
among the relatives of less distinguished great men; 
and this we actually find. 
10. The factors producing superior ability are not 
uniformly distributed in the general population, as 
Constable and others contend, but they are concen- 
trated much more in certain strains than in others. 
Some lines such as the Jukes and Kallikaks are poor 
in them; others such as the Herschels, Bernouillis, 
Adamses, Lees, Edwards, Darwins, and Balfours are 
unusually rich in them. Occasionally we may have 
genius arising from very mediocre stock, although this, 
as one would expect, is relatively rare. 
11. Most of the factors making for high mental 
development behave as dominants or partial dominants 
in heredity. This is quite consistent with the appear- 
ance of great men in families which have shown no 
marked excellence in intellectual pursuits. It avoids 
the somewhat unnatural doctrine that ordinary ability 
is dominant to defective ability and also to ability of 
a high order, and allows us to subsume all the phe- 
nomena from the transmission of genius to that of 
mental defect under a common standpoint. 
12. That superior mental ability is never found in 
the offspring of parents both of whom are mentally 
below par. We might perhaps consider such an occur- 
rence as a rare possibility from the standpoint of HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
129 
genetics, but I have not been able to find a record of 
a single well authenticated case. Whatever we may 
say of mediocrity, dullness never produces genius. 
Great men do not rise from the valleys; they usually 
come from the high plateaus. 
13. Human beings vary greatly in their hereditary 
endowments of brains, the general distribution of in- 
tellect following much the same distribution as height, 
weight, and various other physical characters. 
14. That on account of their great variability in 
inherited mentality the average mental development 
of a people can readily and rapidly be raised or low- 
ered by selective breeding. 
These conclusions, somewhat dogmatically set forth, 
are, I believe, very probable from the general stand- 
point of our present knowledge of genetics, and from 
the standpoint of the actual distribution of mental 
characteristics in the population. They enable us to 
see some order in the phenomena that formerly ap- 
peared more or less chaotic and to suggest explanations 
of apparently exceptional cases. Balzac once remarked 
that heredity is a maze in which science loses itself, 
but we can thread our way through the maze much 
more successfully since Mendel and his followers have 
afforded so remarkable and unexpected an insight into 
the principles to which the facts of heredity conform. 
In the light of the above fourteen points it is in- 
structive to study the ancestry and the descendants of 
great men. As a rule, biographies do not give suffi- 
cient data concerning the characteristics of the ances- 130 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
tors of great men to enable us to trace out the origin 
of their component qualities. The very things one most 
wants to know are frequently omitted. Nevertheless, 
much light is often thrown on the make-up of a given 
individual by the investigation of his family tree. 
I may mention here, chiefly by way of illustration, a 
study made by Miss Stanton on the inheritance of mu- 
sical talent. Professor Seashore, with whom Miss Stan- 
ton was formerly associated, has attempted an analysis 
of musical talent, specifying a number of component 
factors which make up this complex endowment. Miss 
Stanton chose four component factors of musical tal- 
ent: sense of pitch, sense of intensity, sense of time, 
and tonal memory, these being susceptible to quanti- 
tative measurements and being likewise characters 
little susceptible to training. These special traits ap- 
peared to be quite strongly inherited and apparently 
more as dominants than recessives. They show a con- 
siderable degree of independence in their occurrence 
and in their transmission. In persons of high musical 
ability, these factors are mostly well developed, while 
the reverse is the case with persons of low mental 
ability. 
In a paper which was written before that of Miss 
Stanton appeared, one of my students, Mrs. Weide- 
mann, worked out the pedigrees of twenty-five of the 
most famous musicians and attempted to apply Pro- 
fessor Seashore’s analysis of musical talent in tracing 
the component factors in the ability of these men. I 
may quote, purely as a matter of illustration of method, HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
what is said about the ancestry of the great composer 
Johann Sebastian Bach: “He was the result of the 
union of two great strains, ... his father represent- 
ing those gifted in musical sensitivity and action and 
his mother, a cousin of his father, representing the 
most noted strain of the family which was most noted 
for creative ability, musical intellect, and feeling. 
This is an example of good qualities being magnified 
by intermarriage in a family.” Four of Bach’s sons 
became noted for creative ability in music. 
If we make excursions into the genealogy of great 
men, we can frequently pick up threads of hereditary 
composition which may enable us in a measure to ac- 
count for the appearance of the given individual. But 
probably no geneticist, even with the fullest knowledge 
that could be obtained about ancestry, would be so 
bold as to predict a man of genius in advance. There 
are many cases of genius whose occurrence from the 
standpoint of heredity we must frankly acknowledge 
to be unaccountable. Doubtless many of such cases 
may be laid to the shortcomings of biographers. We 
may point to the educational disadvantages of parents, 
the repressive influence of routine occupation, un- 
favorable health, and many other reasons why the 
parents of great men failed to impress others with 
their powers. It is particularly unfortunate that so 
little knowledge is commonly available concerning the 
female members of distinguished families through 
whom ability seems so frequently to be transmitted 
without its becoming manifest to possibly undiscern- 
131 132 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
ing observers. Perhaps no one, whatever be his equip- 
ment for the task, can ascertain the exact method by 
which mental ability is inherited on the basis of data 
now available. Like many other problems of human 
heredity, it must wait upon the slow accumulation of 
facts, and the accumulation of facts can only occur 
when there is a considerable body of trained observers 
interested in the problem. In some fields of research 
there seems to be little to expect from brilliant illu- 
minating discovery. Progress must be made by slowly 
grubbing along without the alluring prospect of strik- 
ing achievement. The inheritance of mental traits 
presents a field in which we have much to learn, one 
which presents many complex and baffling problems, 
and in which it is not feasible to follow the methods 
of experimental analysis. But it is a field in which 
there is urgent need for more knowledge. One of the 
most important things for us to know in grappling 
with many of our human problems is how to gauge the 
innate intellectual capacity of human beings. Our 
present mental tests give us only an uncertain measure 
of inherited mentality. In attempting to estimate the 
natural ability of races and peoples, we are constantly 
handicapped by the possible effects of environment 
and training. There can be no question that our im- 
migration should be controlled mainly on the basis of 
the hereditary qualities of our various incoming stocks. 
We need a measure of innate mentality in order to 
solve the vexed but very important question of the 
effects of the intermarriage of different races and HEREDITY AND THE MIND 
133 
peoples. We need this measure in carrying out 
schemes for racial improvement. Civilization tends to 
extinguish its best stocks and thus to impoverish its 
racial inheritance. As fast as the hereditary factors 
for superior mentality combine and manifest them- 
selves in individuals of distinction they tend to dis- 
appear. These factors are the most priceless posses- 
sion of the race and they are undergoing a heavy 
drain. All this is brought about by the simple fact 
that intelligence has discovered the means of outwit- 
ting nature by sacrificing posterity to present welfare. 
Intelligence, like time, devours its own offspring. As 
matters now stand, the greatest obstacle to the further 
evolution of mind is the mind itself. And yet it is 
to mind that we must look to get us out of our pre- 
dicament. CHAPTER VII 
IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
Naturally one would expect that, other things equal, 
a hardy and vigorous infant is less apt to die than a 
weak and puny one. It is well known that infants, 
and especially very young infants, are exceedingly 
variable in their hold on life. Some survive all sorts 
of untoward conditions that make one marvel how they 
managed to escape, while others require the most care- 
ful nursing to tide them over their early perils if haply 
all care is not bestowed in vain. The first year is 
by far the most dangerous period of life. Within that 
year the first month is the most dangerous month, and 
the first week is the most dangerous part of the first 
month. Even the first day sees more deaths than any 
subsequent day of the first week. As the days pass, 
the infant’s hold on life becomes more and more se- 
cure. In the second year the average American baby 
is exposed to only one-fifth the risks of death which 
beset its first year of life. Thereafter life becomes 
safer, until about the eleventh year when the curve 
of death begins to rise, going up slowly through the 
period of adolescence, then rising more and more rap- 
idly with advancing years and finally in the ’eighties 
or ’nineties shooting up with a steep ascent. 
A fascinating subject for contemplation, this curve 
134 IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
135 
of life. Its form may vary somewhat from country 
to country and from age to age, but its chief features 
are remarkably uniform for all peoples and in all 
periods of time. In recent years infant mortality has 
been cut down and the average length of life consid- 
erably prolonged, but the initial fall of the curve in 
the first year, the slow fall to the minimum death rate, 
the initial slow rise followed by a more rapid rise in 
later life are constant characteristics of this curve, and 
will probably persist so long as man remains man. 
The particular details of form of this curve are a 
product of the peculiarities of human heredity and the 
environment in which human beings live. Improve- 
ments of the environment may alter the form of the 
curve somewhat, but the general type of the curve is 
determined by heredity. A curve of life among people 
in which conditions were the worst possible under 
which the race could live at all would be much the 
same sort of curve that would be found in the best of 
all possible worlds for the maintenance of life. 
Death may be regarded as a product of internal and 
external causes. The relative potency of these factors 
vary of course in particular cases, but in general it is 
the internal causes that make the first year more dan- 
gerous than the second, and the eightieth more dan- 
gerous than the fifteenth. Dangers from environ- 
mental agencies are not greatly different between the 
fifth and the eighty-fifth year, and whatever differences 
there may be are probably in favor of the latter. It 
is the internal changes, the slow resistless workings of 136 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
the vital energies of the body speeding on toward their 
own dissolution that give the man of eighty-five an 
expectancy of only four or five more years of life. 
It is the internal factors also which are mainly re- 
sponsible for the great hazards of infancy. We are 
like clocks wound up to run our allotted span of three 
score and ten or thereabouts, but easily thrown out 
of gear in the first part of our course, and liable in the 
latter part to be stopped through the slow accumula- 
tion of rust. Our initial frailties make us succumb 
readily to many inimical influences of the environ- 
ment. It is quite natural, therefore, to find the en- 
vironment charged with being the cause of most infant 
mortality. Here is a fertile source of confusion in 
discussions of the possibly selective character of the 
infant death rate. Infants die from poor milk or 
other improper diet; they succumb readily to several 
diseases; they are easily killed by exposure; and they 
often fall victims in various ways to the ignorance and 
stupidity of their parents. Even a naturally healthy 
baby may not survive a severe attack of diphtheria or 
a diet of indigestible food. 
Environment is the apparent cause of most infant 
mortality because the infants are weak, and their 
weakness is an incidental product of the way in which 
the young human animal develops. The same environ- 
ment that would be fatal in the first year of life might 
be quite harmless in the second. The congenital weak- 
ness of the infant makes it an easy prey to outward 
agencies. To attribute the high death rate in infancy IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
to environment is therefore misleading. Like the 
death rate at any period of life, it is the product of a 
set of internal or constitutional factors which are con- 
stantly changing with age. 
All this, it may be said, is very obvious, but what 
does it have to do with natural selection? Even if 
internal causes were the predominant factors of the 
infant death rate, it would not of course prove that 
this death rate was selective. To be selective in the 
Darwinian sense death must act or fail to act on the 
basis of differences in heredity. Can it be shown to 
do this in the mortality of infants? 
On this point there is much disagreement. Infants 
differ greatly in their robustness and resistance to dis- 
ease, but in most cases there is little to indicate that 
these differences are hereditary. Infants prematurely 
born are apt to have a hard time of it. Congenital 
malformations of various kinds are responsible for 
many early deaths, but in most cases these are not 
traceable to ancestry. Death may take a heavy toll 
of weaklings, but if their weakness is not based on 
inherited tendencies there is no true natural selection. 
If there are many non-hereditary variations that are 
apt to cause elimination in the struggle for existence, 
it does not preclude the possibility of some selection 
in the Darwinian sense. Some writers maintain that 
this kind of elimination is relatively unimportant and 
insignificant compared with the indiscriminate and 
non-selective mortality that is constantly going on. 
There is no doubt that sentiment has influenced 
137 138 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
opinions on this subject to no small degree. Many 
are disturbed lest it should be shown that saving 
infant lives will result in a gradual weakening of the 
race. I do not know of any one who has seriously 
proposed that we keep the infant death rate high in 
order to insure the toughness of the survivors. But 
many write upon the subject as if such persons were 
not uncommon and should be refuted. It is not in- 
frequently recognized, however, that the reduction of 
the infant death rate may have its dysgenic effects. 
The same may be said about reducing mortality in the 
subsequent years of life, at least to the end of the 
reproductive period. Whatever may be the effect on 
natural selection, we shall doubtless go on reducing 
the death rate in all periods of life, infancy included, 
so far as our knowledge permits this to be done. There 
is no reason for singling out the period of infancy for 
the ravages of natural selection. 
How far hereditary differences influence the infant 
death rate is a problem presenting serious difficulties. 
One is reasonably safe in assuming that since human 
beings differ hereditarily and that since some heredi- 
tary diatheses certainly enhance the death rate of their 
possessors in later life, it is probable that some of the 
hereditary differences between infants have a similar 
selective effect. But such deductions add little to our 
positive knowledge. One child dies of diphtheria or 
whooping cough under conditions very similar to those 
under which another child recovers. Was the recovery IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
139 
of the second child dependent on its heredity? Pos- 
sibly so, but it is difficult to get at the proof. 
One way in which our problem has been attacked 
is to ascertain whether or not a relatively high death 
rate in the first year is followed by a relatively low 
death rate in the same lot of children in the second 
or some subsequent year. If so, it would indicate that 
the reduced mortality of the second year was caused 
by the removal of an unusually large proportion of the 
weaker children in the year before. Such an investi- 
gation was undertaken by Mr. E. C. Snow who based 
his studies on the records of infant mortality in Eng- 
land and Prussia. The outcome of Mr. Snow’s elabo- 
rate mathematical analysis of the statistics of these 
countries was that when corrections were made for the 
disturbing influences of various factors there was a 
correlation between high death rate in infancy and a 
low death rate in childhood a few years later. In 
other words, mortality in infancy, it was concluded, 
is probably selective and leaves a healthier group of 
survivors in subsequent years. Similar studies made 
by Professor Karl Pearson yielded much the same 
results.1 
1 The method employed by Snow and Pearson in studying the action 
of natural selection by ascertaining the correlation between the mor- 
tality of the first year of life and the mortality of a later period of 
childhood is not free from a source of error on account of the influence 
of immunity to infectious diseases. Let us suppose an unusually high 
mortality in the first year to be caused by diphtheria, scarlet fever, and 
other diseases that confer an immunity upon their survivors. In a sub- 
sequent period, say five years afterward, this lot of children would 140 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
There have been several studies of the relation of 
infant mortality to later mortality which were made 
by comparing the death rate of various countries in 
different ages of life. Some of these studies have 
shown that in localities where the infant death rate 
is high the death rate in childhood and later life is 
also high. The conclusion is then drawn that the 
early death rate could not have been selective because 
the death rate of subsequent years was not lower than 
the average. 
The argument, however, is quite inconclusive, not 
to say irrelevant. Where environmental conditions 
are very bad, we should expect a heavy death rate 
not only in infancy but all along the line. When we 
compare the life tables in different countries and dif- 
ferent periods we commonly find that, while they 
differ less for advanced ages than for the earlier 
years, one table shows an improvement over others in 
most age groups. The death rate may have been 
selective, nevertheless, in all periods of life. Causes 
of death vary much with age. Certain epidemic dis- 
have an advantage over other lots not previously exposed to these dis- 
eases, because they had become immunized by having contracted them. 
The reduced death rate of the first group as compared with the others 
would not necessarily be due to the selective working of their previous 
high death rate, but to the direct protective effect of their acquired 
immunity. It is unfortunate that the method referred to is vitiated by 
the peculiar effect of certain causes of death in directly causing im- 
munity, else it might be legitimate to argue that the low death rate of 
a group previously exposed to unusually fatal conditions is due to selec- 
tive elimination. Where immunity-conferring causes of death are not 
concerned, the method is apparently perfectly valid for studying the 
operation of natural selection. IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
141 
eases that affect childhood are rather infrequent in 
infancy, and from middle life on people are subject to 
attacks of cancer, diabetes, Bright’s disease, and heart 
troubles which are much rarer in earlier years. Many 
of these troubles depend to a certain extent on a 
hereditary diathesis, although they may be occasioned 
by outward circumstances. They may be reduced by 
improved modes of life. Nevertheless they are selec- 
tive in their action. Where a population lives under 
unwholesome conditions it will suffer a higher infant 
mortality as well as from these later causes of death 
from which a high infant mortality does not afford an 
adequate protection. 
We should expect that a high infant mortality would 
confer immunity in later life in some respects much 
more than others. A high general vitality is doubtless 
protective at all times. Narrow pelvis in women, for 
instance, may enhance the mortality from child-birth 
and would tend to be eliminated by natural selection 
in so far as it depends upon heredity. A woman with 
narrow pelvis may have been as an infant quite as 
vigorous as any other, so that infant mortality may 
have no relation to the prevalence of this character- 
istic in womanhood. Early feeding and other circum- 
stances doubtless have much influence upon this char- 
acteristic and we are uncertain as to how far it usually 
depends upon heredity, and I am using it chiefly to 
illustrate my point. But whether or not the illustra- 
tion is a good one, it is very probable that many causes 
of death which affect adults and which depend to a 142 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
considerable degree upon a hereditary diathesis would 
be little influenced by a selective infant mortality. 
The hereditary proclivity to their production, like 
many other hereditary traits, comes out only in a late 
period of development. 
Human beings differ, however, in general vitality and 
longevity, and these traits are correlated with a low 
infant death rate. Pearson found that long life in 
parents was correlated with a low infant mortality in 
the offspring. Ploetz found the same relation both 
among the middle classes and royal families in Ger- 
many. A. G. Bell’s studies of the Hyde family showed 
that long life of parents went along with low mortality 
of their children. In these cases we probably have a 
heredity of high vitality in the stock that expresses 
itself in long life of parents and constitutional tough- 
ness of their offspring. 
It occurred to the writer that one way in which light 
might be thrown upon the operations of the selective 
death rate in infancy would be through the study of 
the relative mortality of the two sexes, under different 
conditions of environment. Accordingly with the co- 
operation of Miss Jean Goff1 an investigation was 
made of the death rates of male and female infants 
under a variety of conditions which produce marked 
differences in the general infant mortality. This was 
done in the following ways: 
1 Holmes, S. J., and Goff, J. C., “The Selective Elimination of Male 
Infants Under Different Environmental Influences,” in Eugenics in Race 
and State, pp. 233-251, 1923. IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
143 
1. By comparing the sex mortality of infants during a 
series of years in which the rate of infant mortality had 
been improving. 
2. By comparing the sex mortality of infants in coun- 
tries with low infant mortality with the sex mortality of 
infants in countries with high infant mortality. 
3. By comparing the sex mortality among infants of 
native-born parents in the United States with the sex mor- 
tality among infants of foreign-born parents. 
4. By comparing the sex mortality of infants among 
negroes and whites in the United States. 
5. By comparing the sex mortality of legitimate with 
that of illegitimate children. 
6. By comparing the sex mortality of infants in city and 
country. 
The first year of life sees the death of many more 
boys than girls. It is true that more boys than girls 
are born, but the proportion of boy deaths is much 
greater than the sex ratio at birth. The sex ratio at 
birth, which is from 103-106 boys to 100 girls, is re- 
markably uniform in most races and in most periods 
of time. The ratio of deaths in the first year varies 
commonly from 110-140 boys to 100 girls. 
As we go from periods of time in which the infant 
death rate is high, as it was in fact in all countries 
until recent times, we find that, along with the general 
decrease of infant mortality, there is an increase of 
deaths of boys relatively to that of girls. The sta- 
tistics of all countries tell the same story. The coun- 
tries in which there has been the greatest improve- 
ment in infant mortality are those which show the 144 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
greatest change in the ratio of male to female infant 
deaths. 
In accordance with the preceding results we find that 
in countries having a high infant mortality the ratio 
of boy deaths to girl deaths approaches equality, while 
in those with a low infant mortality, the relative mor- 
tality of boys becomes increased. New Zealand with 
the lowest infant mortality in the world shows the 
highest ratio of male to female deaths. 
The children of foreign-born parents, frequently 
raised as they are in the crowded parts of our cities, 
show a higher mortality than children of native-born 
parents and also a lower proportion of boy deaths. 
The same relation comes out more strikingly in the 
infant mortality of the negroes which is very much 
higher than that of the native whites. 
The sex ratio at death is higher for legitimate than 
for illegitimate infants as we should expect from the 
relatively high mortality of the latter class. When we 
compare the sex ratios of infant deaths in city and 
country we obtain varied results according to the rela- 
tive severity of the infant death rates in these locali- 
ties. Formerly infant mortality was higher in cities 
where children were frequently supplied with poor milk 
and were exposed to more frequent epidemics, but 
owing to improved sanitation the infant death rate in 
cities has been reduced so rapidly that in many cases it 
is less than in the surrounding country. Formerly the 
ratio of male to female deaths was lower in the city IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
145 
than in the country, but in many cases the relation 
has been reversed owing to the rapid reduction of urban 
infant mortality. 
Data from all these sources of information agree in 
supporting the general conclusion that a low infant 
death rate removes relatively more boys than girls, 
while with a higher death rate the deaths of the two 
sexes become more nearly equal in numbers. The 
hand of death is laid more heavily upon the male; 
apparently he is the frailer creature. When we study 
the effect of the several causes of infant mortality we 
find that, barring the doubtful status of gonococcus 
infection, there is only one disease, whooping cough, 
which is responsible for more deaths among girls than 
boys. Girl babies probably contract gonococcus infec- 
tions through bath tubs and otherwise more readily 
than boys, but the number of deaths caused by this 
disease is very small. Measles, scarlet fever, diph- 
theria, syphilis, intestinal infections, tuberculosis, men- 
ingitis, pre-maturity, diseases of the heart, circulation, 
and nervous system, congenital malformations, and 
even accidents are more fatal to boys than to girls in 
the first year of life. 
What does it mean? It means, I believe, that the 
male is congenitally the weaker sex. When he is ex- 
posed to diseases he has less power to withstand them. 
The male is hereditarily different from the female in 
that he possesses a different complex of chromosomes 
which appears to be the reason for the determination 
of his sex. He is different from the female in every 146 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
cell of his body, since each nucleus lacks a certain 
amount of chromatin material present in the other sex. 
Natural selection can therefore be said to discriminate 
against the male, but he is fortunately saved from 
eventual extinction by virtue of the peculiarities of sex 
inheritance. 
The relative frailty of the male sex is manifested 
not only in infancy, but also to a greater or less degree 
throughout life. The higher mortality of males con- 
tinues, although to a diminishing degree, through child- 
hood, and soon overcomes the initial numerical pre- 
ponderance of this sex. In negroes, in fact, owing to 
their high infant mortality, the balance turns in favor 
of the females as early as the end of the first year. 
But throughout life, except sometimes in adolescence 
and the child-bearing period, the females of practically 
all ages show a lower death rate and a greater ex- 
pectancy of life than the males. And there are more 
women than men in the extreme old age groups be- 
tween eighty and ninety. 
While the incidence of mortality after infancy affords 
additional evidence of the congenital weakness of the 
male sex, the same conclusion is strongly supported 
also by the mortality of pre-natal life. It is significant 
that the sex ratio of still-born infants is exceptionally 
high. For deaths occurring earlier in embryonic de- 
velopment the sex ratio is higher still and the earlier 
the death the higher is the proportion of males. Ber- 
tillon gives the following data on the sex of abortions 
occurring in Paris: IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
147 
Months 
Sex Ratio 
Four 
180 
Five 
118 
Six 
112 
Prinzing, by compiling records of 24,300 abortions, 
obtains a sex ratio of 162.1 males to 100 females. 
What the sex ratio is at the time of conception we do 
not know, but from the earliest period at which the sex 
of aborted embryos is recorded, there is a gradual 
reduction of the sex ratio of embryos that die. 
The sex ratio in early embryonic life must have been 
rather high, because with a high male mortality the 
boys still outnumber the girls at birth. The general 
course of the death rates of the sexes in the first year 
and throughout later life simply continues the general 
trend of sex mortality observed in the pre-natal period. 
The attempt to explain the greater male mortality of 
infants as a result of increased difficulties of delivery 
is entirely inadequate to meet the situation. We are 
dealing with causes of differential death rate which 
are the most potent with the youngest and smallest 
embryos, and which continue after birth to a certain 
extent throughout the whole natural span of life. 
Male frailty is a constitutional matter correlated with 
the fundamental causes of maleness,—a germinal char- 
acteristic dependent on the peculiar chromosome com- 
plex of the sex. 
I have already alluded to whooping cough as the 
one conspicuous outstanding exception to the rule that 
causes of death are more fatal to male than to female 148 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
infants. This exception which has often been com- 
mented on in medical literature is very interesting. I 
have compiled and summarized all the data on the 
subject given in the United States Mortality Statistics 
as far back as data have been published.1 If we follow 
through the ratio of male and female deaths from 
whooping cough from the first year of life on through 
successive years to the straggling cases in the older age 
groups (for even old men and women sometimes con- 
tract the disease) we find that, although more females 
die in the first year than males (108 females to 100 
males), the ratio of female to male deaths is higher in 
the second year (140 females to 100 males), and keeps 
on increasing to near adolescence after which it is 
fairly stationary. Whether the exceptional character 
of the sex mortality from whooping cough is due, as 
has been suspected, to the different conformation of 
the male larynx (this being one of the secondary sex 
characters of the human species) or to some other 
factor associated with sex we do not know. It is note- 
worthy that relatively more males die as compared 
with females in the first year than in subsequent years. 
In this respect whooping cough is just like other dis- 
eases, despite its peculiar sex incidence. The relatively 
high male mortality of the first years as compared with 
later years is due, I believe, to the same constitutional 
weakness that is exhibited in relation to other causes 
1 Holmes, S. J., “The Mortality of the Sexes in the First Years of 
Life with Special Reference to Whooping Cough,” American Journal 
Public Health 12, pp. 378-381, 1922. IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
149 
of death. Whooping cough affords the kind of excep- 
tion which proves the rule, for along with its special 
virulence for the female sex the distribution of its sex 
mortality with age points to a constitutional factor in 
the male infant which in a measure offsets its specific 
action. 
We may summarize our results on sex mortality of 
infants by saying that in periods in the history of the 
individual in which infant mortality is high the ratio 
of male to female deaths is high, but in places and 
peoples where infant mortality is high the ratio of 
male to female deaths is low. We may understand 
this curious relation if we bear in mind that death is 
commonly the product of environmental and consti- 
tutional factors, and that what varies with place are 
the environmental factors and what varies with time 
are the constitutional or internal factors. 
As we pass back in the history of the individual, the 
constitutional disparity of the male as compared with 
the female increases. This is a part of his inheritance. 
In so far as death is a function of hereditary variation, 
it results in natural selection. In so far as death is 
a function of environment per se it is non-selective. 
When organisms are placed in situations where the 
death rate is very high many naturally vigorous forms 
perish; death becomes less stringently selective. When 
we multiply non-selective causes of death we tend to 
cause a relative increase of female deaths. When non- 
selective or slightly selective causes of death are re- 
moved the death rate that remains becomes more indie- 150 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
ative of the constitutional ability to maintain life. In 
places with a low infant death rate, i.e., where the 
external factors of mortality are so far as possible re- 
moved, the deaths which occur in spite of improved 
conditions depend to a relatively larger extent upon 
differences in constitution. Hence the males, consti- 
tuting as they do the frailer sex at this time, perish in 
relatively larger numbers. 
This consideration of sex mortality gives us an in- 
sight, I believe, into the general operation of natural 
selection. What the male is to the female, a con- 
genitally weaker individual of either sex is to a con- 
genitally stronger individual of the same sex. The 
more the death rate can be reduced by the elimination 
of unfavorable conditions the more stringently or dis- 
criminatingly selective it becomes. In other words, 
the greater is the difference, between those who perish 
and those who survive, because only the very weakest 
of the group will succumb. Increase the mortality and 
fairly vigorous individuals will be eliminated along 
with the weaklings. 
Of course a death rate may be too low for the per- 
manent welfare of the species, but every species would 
probably gain by being shielded from all those causes 
of death which are as apt to remove the strong as the 
weak. Causes of death vary greatly in their selective 
influence, and all those which are indiscriminate in 
their incidence are a hindrance rather than a help to 
natural selection. If it were in the interest of the 
species that the best 10 percent always survived, this IS INFANT MORTALITY SELECTIVE? 
151 
result could not be assured in the presence of non- 
selective agencies of elimination. 
Infancy in man is exposed to several kinds of selec- 
tive mortality: 
(1) The elimination on the basis of somatic or non- 
hereditary variations, a racially sterile form of selec- 
tion. 
(2) The elimination of infantile weakness which 
may not be correlated with weakness in later life. 
Many very puny babies have grown into exception- 
ally vigorous persons. As man has advanced from 
lower forms infants became weaker and required more 
care for their rearing. Not all variations in the direc- 
tion of infant weakness are racially injurious if allowed 
to accumulate. 
(3) The elimination of infant weakness which is 
correlated with adult weakness or defect. There is 
little doubt that a good deal of infant weakness is so 
correlated, as is indicated by the work of Ploetz and 
others previously mentioned. 
(4) The elimination of infants not in themselves 
weak, but which perish on account of the low men- 
tality of their parents. There is certainly much infant 
mortality of this kind, and, like the preceding variety, 
it is racially advantageous. Degenerate families have 
a notoriously high infant mortality. It is through 
their high infant mortality that natural selection is 
working most vigorously toward the eradication of 
such stocks. The correlation of high infant mortality 
with a high birth rate which the Neo-Malthusians 
attempt to show is due to the fact that a high birth 152 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
rate is the cause of the high death rate, is doubtless 
largely a result of the circumstance that both spring 
from a common cause in the ignorance, improvidence, 
or mental inferiority of the parents. The child of the 
high grade moron is probably as vigorous as any other. 
Since the death rate of such children is high it might 
be said to be due to environment merely and not to 
natural selection, but this would be incorrect. The bad 
environment of such a child, i.e., its unwise rearing 
owing to the low mentality of the parents, is a result 
of the heredity of the stock. Natural selection tends 
to eliminate such stocks, because heredity manifested 
in the adult creates an environment that is highly 
deleterious to infancy. 
Of all the forms of selective infant mortality this 
last is probably from the eugenic standpoint most 
advantageous. Ashby remarks that the one great fac- 
tor in saving infants even under unfavorable condi- 
tions of poverty and bad environment is the intelli- 
gence of the mother. It is perhaps this last kind of 
selective mortality which will be reduced most by our 
organized efforts to lessen the infant death rate. The 
more or less imaginary advocate of a high infant mor- 
tality rate might maintain that children should be 
shielded from the ignorance of their parents but not 
from their folly. The fool killer is the personification 
of that form of natural selection which, in various 
ways, is the most active in our present social regime. 
He can never be eliminated altogether, whether or not 
it is desirable to do so. CHAPTER VIII 
HAS CIVILIZATION DIMINISHED THE RIGOR OF 
NATURAL SELECTION? 
It has almost universally been assumed by writers on 
natural selection in man that the action of this agency 
has been greatly reduced, if not almost done away 
with, by improvements in medicine, hygiene, and the 
various arts of prolonging life. Conklin speaks of 
natural selection as “so far as possible nullified by 
civilized man.” Guyer states that “we have done 
away with the factor of natural selection.” Professor 
E. Ray Lankester says that the mental qualities of 
man have assumed such unprecedented power “that 
they have, to a very large extent, if not entirely, cut 
him off from the general operation of that process of 
natural selection and survival of the fittest which up 
to their appearance had been the law of the living 
world.” And I must plead guilty to having expressed 
myself on a former occasion to much the same effect 
in commenting on, “the remnant of natural selection 
which medical science has not succeeded in dispos- 
ing of.” 
Further reflection on the ways in which natural 
selection is working out in our modern society has led 
me to doubt if, after all, it is not acting as vigorously 
as ever, and in some respects even more so. It is 
153 154 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
obvious, of course, that we have made great advances 
in the arts of prolonging life. Several diseases have 
been practically conquered; cures for several maladies 
have been discovered, and epidemics which formerly 
swept away multitudes of human beings are now kept 
under control. One of the most striking achievements 
of modern science is its success in checking disease. 
The average length of life has been increased in the 
United States about fifteen years during the last cen- 
tury, and similar or even greater achievements have 
been made in other countries. 
But does this increased saving of life prove that the 
force of natural selection has been reduced? The 
obvious answer to this question would appear to be 
yes. Nevertheless there is, I believe, ground for doubt 
that this is the right answer. In the first place we 
should bear in mind that mere reduction in the num- 
ber of deaths per thousand of the population does not 
necessarily mean that the action of natural selection 
has suffered a corresponding reduction, or even any 
reduction. How natural selection is affected depends 
entirely upon how the reduction occurs, and it may 
even occur in such a way that the action of natural 
selection would be increased. The removal of purely 
adventitious causes of death, or causes depending in no 
way on the hereditary constitution of the individuals 
concerned, would make the mortality that remained 
more selective on the average than before. Causes of 
death vary greatly in their selective action. Earth- 
quakes and strokes of lightning probably discriminate CIVILIZATION AND NATURAL SELECTION 
155 
but rarely on the basis of differences of hereditary con- 
stitution. On the other hand, many epidemic diseases 
are probably more fatal to the congenitally weak. 
Bright’s disease and diabetes are more prone to elimi- 
nate individuals with a hereditary predisposition to 
these maladies. Haemophilia (bleeding) which is com- 
monly inherited as a recessive sex linked characteristic 
is responsible for a high percentage of the deaths of 
those afflicted by it. There are many pathological con- 
ditions transmitted by heredity which result in reduc- 
ing expectancy of life, all of which are indicative of the 
active role which natural selection is playing in our 
midst. 
An important part in selective elimination is prob- 
ably played by hereditary diatheses or proclivities to 
different infections. Diseases caused by micro-organ- 
isms are not properly described as hereditary, although 
they may be more prone to attack some hereditary 
stocks than others, and it is well known that some 
human races are comparatively immune to diseases to 
which other races readily succumb. For these reasons 
some writers have maintained that it is on the basis of 
ability to withstand diseases that natural selection in 
man chiefly operates. Dr. G. A. Reid has maintained 
this thesis at some length in his book on The Present 
Evolution of Man, as well as in more recent writings. 
And in a recent number of the Eugenics Review Mr. 
Carr-Saunders, in speaking of natural selection, says 
that “it has been very largely concerned with the selec- 
tion of disease resisting characteristics.” 156 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
Aside from occasional war, whose value as a selec- 
tive agency is open to question, there is little direct 
struggle of man with man that results in the elimina- 
tion of the weaker contestant. The once formidable 
wild beasts with which primitive man had to contend 
are now reduced to quite negligible elements in the 
struggle for life. We solicitously care for the weak in 
both body and mind, and doubtless enable many more 
of them to perpetuate their stock than could possibly 
have done so in primitive society. Natural selection 
rarely obtrudes itself upon our notice, and it is not 
surprising that it is so frequently spoken of as reduced 
to what President Cleveland would have designated a 
state of innocuous desuetude. 
Natural selection, however, is not difficult to dis- 
cover if looked for in the right way. Its action is 
shown in the inheritance of longevity and the correla- 
tion of longevity with fertility and low infant mor- 
tality. It is shown in the hereditary character of gen- 
eral health, and the existence of hereditary defects and 
diatheses to which allusion has been made. As was 
pointed out in the preceding chapter, its action is 
clearly indicated in the relation of infant mortality to 
parental intelligence. In fact, it is on the basis of 
intelligence that natural selection is acting with the 
greatest potency at the present time. 
Human beings in our industrial world are exposed 
to very different hazards. There are dangerous trades 
and unsanitary employments which greatly reduce the 
average longevity of those engaged in them. But CIVILIZATION AND NATURAL SELECTION 
157 
aside from the direct danger or demonstrable injury 
of occupations as such, there is a great difference in 
the average expectation of life among those following 
different employments. This is one fact that becomes 
apparent when we study tables of occupational mor- 
tality. In the subjoined table it may be seen that the 
death rate among clergymen is low not only in general, 
but in the several age groups. A common city laborer 
of twenty-five years of age is more apt to die within 
the next ten years than is a schoolmaster or a farmer. 
These differences of death rate which a table of occu- 
pational mortality exhibits are by no means of small 
magnitude. They represent a high degree of lethal 
selection. 
Occupational Mortality in England and Wales, 
1900-02, Expressed in Mean Annual Death 
Rates Per 1,000 
Occupations 
Age Groups 
2 5-35 
35-45 
45-65 
Clergymen 
2.72 
4.09 
15-53 
Schoolmasters 
3-64 
5-54 
15-76 
Coal miners 
5.08 
7-97 
23.22 
Carpenters 
4.76 
8.30 
20.03 
File makers 
9.70 
18.96 
40.04 
General shopkeepers 
11.08 
20.71 
30.17 
Inn keepers 
13-87 
22.50 
35-90 
In judging of the extent to which selection on the 
basis of differences in heredity comes into play here 158 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
we should bear in mind that people not only select 
occupations, but occupations select people. Different 
employments make very different demands upon those 
who pursue them. To qualify for the position of an 
engineer a person has to possess more than the average 
amount of mental ability. Almost any one above the 
level of a low grade moron can find a place somewhere 
in the ranks of unskilled labor. A fair amount of 
native ability is required to become a machinist or a 
carpenter. Men of superior native talents are found 
in all occupations, but there is nevertheless a tendency 
for human beings to become segregated into different 
occupations on the basis of mental ability. In other 
cases the basis for selection may be strength, endu- 
rance, agility, or some other natural aptitude. Men of 
deficient vitality do not become stevedores, and clumsy- 
fingered individuals are not apt to become typesetters. 
It is probable that this segregation of human beings 
would be carried out more in accordance with natural 
aptitudes as society develops a stabilized population 
and has been subjected for some generations to a fairly 
uniform industrial regime. 
Modern industry has greatly diversified the activities 
and living conditions of our population. For great 
multitudes of human beings, especially in the denser 
centers, it has made conditions of life distinctly bad. 
Between unwholesome conditions of labor, crowded and 
unsanitary homes, low wages, and the various draw- 
backs which these things entail, no small proportions 
of the inhabitants of large industrial cities are exposed CIVILIZATION AND NATURAL SELECTION 
159 
to an environment which exacts a heavy toll of death. 
Added to the direct effect of these agencies on the 
adults there is the still greater effect upon their off- 
spring. When we read that the infant mortality of 
the industrial city of Chicopee, Mass., in 1912 was 
177 per thousand births while that of Brookline was 
only 55 we can realize to what an extent the differen- 
tiation of occupation and status goes along with dif- 
ferences in the rate of infant mortality. This is shown 
more clearly by the relation between the infant mor- 
tality and the wages of the father. In Manchester, 
N. H., according to Duncan and Duke, where the 
fathers earned $450 or less annually the infant mor- 
tality was 242.9 per thousand born. With those earn- 
ing $650 to $850 annually the infant mortality rate 
was 162.6, while those earning $1,250 or more lost 
only 58.3 per thousand. It is in infant mortality more 
than in any other way that occupational selection 
shows its greatest effect. 
Probably human beings are more unlike in their 
native endowments of intelligence than in any other 
quality. We are coming to realize as never before the 
great importance of these differences in industry. Con- 
sider the natural industrial fate of the large group of 
persons belonging to the D class of the Army mental 
tests. These are persons with a mental age of less 
than twelve years, and unless especially favored by 
fortune, as most of them are not, they work into 
various subordinate and poorly-paid positions for which 
they are qualified. From the D and E classes of hu- 160 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
manity come a large part of our tramps, vagrants, 
prostitutes, and offenders of all sorts among whom 
natural selection, in one way or another, is active in 
its work of destruction. The infant mortality of the 
D class is often appallingly high. Of course we may 
blame the unwholesomeness of the occupations which 
the D class often enters and the poor conditions under 
which the D class often lives for its high death rate. 
People who are fond of explaining social phenomena 
in terms of environment would probably be entirely 
content with this interpretation. But in human society 
heredity has much to do with making the environment, 
or at least in determining in which of several environ- 
ments a person comes to live. A bad heredity creates 
a bad environment, and a bad environment means a 
high death rate. 
We should not lose sight of the fact, however, that 
many occupational diseases and causes of death pick 
out people of good or superior native quality. Several 
dangerous trades require persons of skill and training 
that can only be acquired by those having good minds. 
The high mortality of such persons is a racial misfor- 
tune. But aside from exceptional cases, there is in 
general a higher mortality among those who follow 
employments demanding little intelligence; and there 
is a relatively higher mortality among their children. 
While in some respects natural selection has acted 
on primitive man more severely than on his civilized 
congeners, it is doubtful if primitive man was so rigidly 
selected on the basis of intelligence. Perhaps the low CIVILIZATION AND NATURAL SELECTION 
161 
grade mental defectives would have been eliminated 
more quickly, but the dull normal class, which is very 
much more numerous, would probably get along nearly 
as well as the rest. Life is relatively uniform through- 
out the group in most primitive peoples; there is little 
diversity of occupation, and living conditions are much 
the same for the great majority. When one becomes 
ill there is little scope for the intelligent choice of 
doctors or methods of treatment. Infants when af- 
flicted by their peculiar disorders are treated by all 
classes of parents by methods which are equally 
ineffective. 
With the development of civilization and the diver- 
sification of industry people become exposed to condi- 
tions of life which are associated with marked differ- 
ences in their rates of mortality, and there are reasons 
to believe that these differences are correlated to a 
considerable degree with levels of intelligence. I am 
not sure, but I strongly suspect that a man in the D 
class of intelligence ratings is discriminated against 
relatively more in our modern industrial regime than 
he would be if he were one of a tribe of savages. I 
suspect that an A class man would live relatively longer 
compared with his fellows in our present civilization 
than he would if he were a Bushman or a Patagonian. 
Civilization tends to put the A men and the D men into 
very different stations, and it has not treated any too 
well the men who toil at the humbler tasks of life. 
While it has greatly reduced the general death rate it 
has probably made it more selective on the basis of 162 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
intelligence. The D man may more than compensate 
for his handicaps through his greater birth rate, but 
that is another matter. 
Note on the racial effect of prostitution. Prostitu- 
tion is sometimes spoken of as a disease of civilization. 
It draws off in each generation a not inconsiderable 
number of the female sex. Although not listed in the 
official enumeration of occupations issued by the United 
States Government, prostitution is nevertheless an ex- 
tensive and well-organized business. Numerous recent 
studies of the mentality of women of this calling have 
shown that a high proportion are mentally defective, 
or at least of low intelligence. While the widely- 
circulated statement that the prostitute lives on the 
average but seven years after she starts on her down- 
ward career is sheer pious invention, she is not what 
life insurance companies would consider a good risk. 
As a rule she soon becomes diseased; she has a weak- 
ness for liquor; and she is commonly imprudent in the 
care of her health. Among the relatively few offspring 
born to such women the mortality in the first year of 
life is frightfully high. Unquestionably were it not 
for their occupation and the diseases and hardships 
that it involves these same women would be producing 
very much larger numbers of children. Probably in a 
primitive society they would have formed the most 
prolific class. We have here another instance, and a 
very conspicuous one, of the way in which civilization 
is intensifying the elimination of stocks on the basis 
of levels of intelligence. CHAPTER IX 
SEXUAL SELECTION: ITS PRESENT SHORTCOMINGS AND 
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES 
In a previous volume on The Trend of the Race I 
have discussed at some length the present operation 
of sexual selection in man and compared it with its 
operation among primitive peoples. It was pointed 
out that in primitive man sexual selection was in the 
main eugenic. The strong and valiant man, or the man 
who had won success by virtue of his native talents, 
was the one most apt to acquire a wife, to say noth- 
ing of several wives. Among many peoples it was 
required that a man demonstrate his prowess in some 
way before he was allowed to marry. Strength, 
courage, and beauty (according to the standards of the 
tribe) were the qualities valued by the women, and to 
the extent that the women were allowed freedom of 
choice in the matter of marriage, to that extent their 
ideals became a force working toward their own realiza- 
tion in the inheritance of the race. 
But with modern civilized man the character of 
sexual selection has changed. The women, it is true, 
still admire and tend to choose the strong, manly, and 
handsome men, and the men tend to choose beautiful, 
sweet-tempered, and attractive women. The ugly and 
the disagreeable of both sexes are, as always, at a dis- 
163 164 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
count. Ideals of manhood and womanhood continue 
to be important factors in marriage selection, but to 
get at the net results of the matings of human beings 
we must compare the average quality of the mated 
and the unmated. Unfortunately we do not possess 
the data that would enable us to do this in any thor- 
oughgoing way. In the Great Unmarried (to use the 
title of Mr. Gallichan’s book) there are numerous 
hoboes, vagrants, fallen women, and human derelicts 
of all sorts. There is also an alarmingly high percen- 
tage (40-50) of female college graduates, and numer- 
ous other women of high intelligence and character 
who have qualified themselves to earn a comfortable 
and independent living. Whether the proportion of 
the more intelligent and successful men among the 
Great Unmarried has been increasing we do not know, 
but it is quite evident that the higher types of women 
have been abstaining from matrimony in ever-increas- 
ing numbers. The loss of this fine material for mother- 
hood is a very serious misfortune to the race. With 
the higher education of women, their increasing eco- 
nomic independence, not to mention the feminist 
movement, the evil, in the near future at least, prom- 
ises to increase. 
The last century has seen a great change in the com- 
position of the celibate class. This class continues to 
receive, as it always has, the persons who are rejected 
for their lack of traits which are attractive to the other 
sex, but it has also come to receive a greatly increased 
proportion of recruits from the highest types of hu- SEXUAL SELECTION 
165 
manity. To the extent that sexual selection has 
changed it has changed mainly for the worse. 
It may be objected that the increasing abstention 
from marriage by educated and intelligent women is 
not properly described as due to sexual selection, but 
this is merely a matter of nomenclature. Whether a 
woman does not marry because she is not sought after, 
or because she does not wish to marry, the effect on 
the race is the same. A single career is often chosen 
because of an elevated standard to which few men 
measure up. A man, on the other hand, may not 
aspire to a woman whom he considers his superior, 
and he may find that such a woman does not appeal 
so strongly to his mating instincts as the sexually 
attractive, butterfly type of female. Nearly all mat- 
ing in these days is on the basis of choice, but con- 
siderations other than the ability to secure a mate 
decide much more frequently than formerly the ques- 
tion of marriage or non-marriage. However, probably 
most women of marriageable age would marry if just 
the right man presented himself. 
The more intellectual classes, in addition to their 
increasing celibacy, are also coming to marry later in 
life. The racial effect of this is the same as if a larger 
proportion of them did not marry at all. A difference 
of a few years in marriage makes a very large differ- 
ence, as Galton has shown, in the average number of 
children per family. The inevitable upshot of all this 
unfortunate development is to cause a loss to the race 
of a vast amount of native ability. It is an unavoid- 166 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
able conclusion, I believe, that the loss so incurred is 
much greater than what is gained through the rejec- 
tion of undesirables in the choice of mates. 
The changing operation of sexual selection is lead- 
ing not only to a lowering of the general mental level 
of humanity, but it has other bad effects also. Let us 
consider its relation to beauty. It is quite obvious 
that those possessing beauty of face and figure are the 
most sought for as mates by the members of both sexes. 
The natural and primary effect of sexual selection, 
therefore, is to enhance the beauty of the human race. 
But, as in so many other cases, the institutions of man 
have seriously changed its influence. To a certain 
extent, of course, selection for beauty still functions in 
the normal way, but let us look at some of the secon- 
dary results of its action. 
Several of these have been discussed by Dr. Knight 
Dunlap in his small volume on Personal Beauty and 
Race Betterment. Dr. Dunlap emphasizes the idea 
that personal beauty is an index of the possession of 
characteristics which are racially valuable. Peculiar- 
ities which make up sexual attractiveness are signs of 
the ability to produce strong and healthy offspring. 
Personal beauty, therefore, has a very important bio- 
logical significance. Its enhancement in a people 
means the development also of a number of valuable 
associated traits. 
In our modern social life there is much beauty that 
from the racial standpoint simply goes to waste. As 
an illustration, which has been cited by Dr. Dunlap, SEXUAL SELECTION 
167 
we may take the stage. Not only in actresses, but in 
chorus girls and dancers, there is a demand on the part 
of the public for beauty of face and form. This de- 
mand is the expression of sex choice that normally 
results in the selection of wives. But the women of 
the stage bear few offspring. Their occupation makes 
children an undesirable encumbrance. Through the 
very qualities that attract the other sex they are drawn 
into a mode of life which condemns them to relative 
sterility. Their beauty of face and figure and the 
other valuable qualities of which these are an index 
are not handed on. 
There is a demand for beautiful and attractive 
women for mistresses for the rich, and these women 
also form a relatively sterile class. Beautiful women 
tend to marry men of wealth and are thereby elevated 
into a social stratum in which very small families are 
the fashion. Those with beauty and intellectual gifts 
which make them leaders in society have added temp- 
tations to limit their families. A number of influences 
have thus arisen in our social life which tend to asso- 
ciate beauty with sterility. Like intelligence, beauty 
is a social and economic asset. For this reason its 
transmission is sacrificed to the egoistic enjoyment that 
it brings. 
So much for the present shortcomings of sexual 
selection. It is perfectly evident that the operation 
of this agency could be very greatly improved. If 
sexual section ever comes near being the force that 
theoretically it might become, it must function in a 168 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
society of a relatively high degree of culture. It can 
never succeed well in a society in which extremes of 
wealth, education, and social position form a prevail- 
ing condition. Such a society is eugenically impossible. 
We need only look into the families of intellectual 
and cultivated people to observe that marriages com- 
monly take place between persons on approximately 
the same mental and social plane. An intellectual 
seldom marries a woman mentally below par, and vice 
versa. A typical woman of the Juke or Kallikak 
family would have relatively small chances of mar- 
riage in a community of fairly high intellectual level. 
Even if she were educated to the extent of her capacity 
her chances of marriage would be limited to men some- 
where near her own intellectual caliber, or to men of 
good stock who were ignorant and of low social status. 
In a relatively homogeneous community of comfortable 
financial circumstances and high average education the 
lower mental levels of humanity would probably tend 
to be relegated more than they are now to the celibate 
class. The more people in general are given the ad- 
vantages of education the more apparent do their dif- 
ferences in innate capacity become. We may not 
easily distinguish an ignorant or secondarily stultified 
person of fair native ability from a high grade mental 
defective, but if both had received the advantages of 
training they could be much more readily recognized. 
Conditions under which mental inferiority becomes 
more apparent would probably lead to a greater dis- 
crimination against the ill-favored class, 'Jme ugly do SEXUAL SELECTION 
169 
not mate with the ugly simply because others reject 
them. To a considerable extent they remain unmated 
on account of their ugliness. 
Sexual selection is a method by which ideals of man- 
hood and womanhood may find embodiment. In order 
that sexual selection achieve the best results these 
ideals should be high and fairly prevalent throughout 
the community. Choice should be free, uninfluenced 
by the endeavor to secure wealth or support, and un- 
hampered by class distinctions. One obvious measure 
of great eugenic importance is the inculcation of high 
ideals of marriage selection. In proportion as these 
can be diffused and made effective the race will tend 
to be reproduced more from its better types. As a 
method of improving the race sexual selection has mag- 
nificent possibilities. But their realization must go 
along with the elevation of humanity to a higher cul- 
tural and ethical plane. CHAPTER X 
DO EARLY MARRIAGES PRODUCE INFERIOR OFFSPRING? 
From the days of Aristotle, if not before, early mar- 
riages have been condemned on account of the belief 
that young parents are apt to produce inferior off- 
spring. Children, it was commonly held, should be 
begotten in the prime of life; it is then that the parents 
are able to transmit the greatest vigor of mind and 
body. If the parents are in the period of their decline, 
their children were held to be inferior owing to their 
inheritance of deficient vitality. These were very 
natural conclusions according to the older way of look- 
ing upon heredity as the transmission of character- 
istics from the bodies of parents to the bodies of their 
progeny. From this viewpoint children would be ex- 
pected to reflect, in a measure, the condition of the 
bodies of their parents at the time of conception. 
Our changed ideas of the mechanism of hereditary 
transmission have now put the matter in a quite dif- 
ferent light. If the germ plasm is as sharply set apart 
from the somatoplasm, or body plasm, and as free from 
the influence of the latter, as it was conceived to be 
by Professor Weismann, we should not expect that age 
of parents would have any influence on characteristics 
of progeny that are due to heredity. But even if we 
170 EARLY MARRIAGES 
171 
deny the transmission of acquired characters, there is 
the possibility, which is quite consistent with the essen- 
tial features of Weismann’s views, that bodily changes 
due to age might occasionally affect the germ cells so 
as to produce transmissible characteristics. Experi- 
mental support for this conclusion is, however, lack- 
ing, but this may be because there has been almost no 
systematic investigation devoted to the subject. Old 
bodies, with their accumulated toxins, may afford an 
environment less favorable to the vitality of the germ 
cells than younger bodies, but there would not seem 
to be a corresponding injurious influence from bodies 
that are too young. On the other hand, there is a pos- 
sibility of injury to offspring owing to their derivation 
from germ cells that are immature. But we are lack- 
ing in positive knowledge on these matters both in man 
and in lower organisms. 
Quite apart from the possible influence of the age 
of parents on the germ cells, there is the influence of 
maternal age on the offspring during their develop- 
ment. This is a purely somatic matter and has noth- 
ing to do with heredity. Nevertheless maternal age 
may have a very important bearing on the welfare of 
progeny, not only in infancy, but throughout life. Chil- 
dren of old mothers are apt to experience greater dif- 
ficulties at birth, and their mortality in the first year 
of life is relatively high. Children of very young 
mothers are also liable to injuries incidental to par- 
turition, and they are apt to suffer from the drawbacks 
of maternal inexperience. 172 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
One complicating factor influencing the character- 
istics of offspring is the effect of order of birth. First- 
born children show a higher percentage of still births 
than the second or third born. After the third or 
fourth child, the percentage of still-born infants in- 
creases with successive births. There is a parallel 
increase in the death rate in the first year of life as 
the birth rank increases. Since first-born children 
come from mothers who are, on the average, younger 
than the mothers of second or subsequent children, 
one may easily be led to attribute to age what is really 
due to order of birth and vice versa. Were we to limit 
our inquiries to the first or any subsequent birth rank, 
we should find that the percentage of still births shows 
an increase with the age of the mother after about her 
twentieth year of age. When we consider the influ- 
ence of maternal age on the mortality of children in 
the first year of life, it will be found that after the 
effect of order of birth has been eliminated there is a 
rapid rise of the infant death rate as maternal age 
increases from the early twenties to the end of the 
child-bearing period. This is a general fact borne out 
by all available statistics from a variety of countries. 
Data from New South Wales dealing with 277,799 
confinements show a fall in infant deaths to the 
twentieth year of the mother’s life, and then a gradual 
rise with later years, the infant mortality of mothers 
over forty being over four times as great as that of 
mothers of twenty years of age. The statistics com- 
piled by Gini show that, considering only first births, EARLY MARRIAGES 
the mortality of infants of mothers between thirty and 
forty years of age is over twice, and, of mothers over 
forty, more than five times that of mothers at twenty. 
Do the handicaps of the offspring of older mothers 
persist in latter years of life? Ewart has presented 
some statistics showing that the height and weight of 
six-year-old children, and to a less extent the height 
and weight of 13.5 year-old children, decrease with the 
advancing age of their mothers beyond the period of 
twenty-five years. The data were not very extensive 
and the influence of social and racial factors was not 
eliminated, so that these results are by no means con- 
clusive. It is a matter of very great importance to 
ascertain to what extent early inhibitions of growth 
and development persist in later periods of life. What 
is known of the effects of these early inhibitions on the 
development of animals renders it probable that human 
beings may be injured for many years, if not perma- 
nently, by untoward influences in th period of infancy. 
One test of the influence of pare ital age would be 
to ascertain if the later born members of a family live 
longer on the average than the earlier born who were 
therefore begotten by younger parents. The data on 
this subject have led different authors to quite oppo- 
site conclusions. The subject is one which presents 
opportunity for being misled into statistical fallacies, 
and new critical investigations are required finally to 
settle the question. Mr. Caspar Redfield has been 
writing for several years in support of the thesis that 
great men are usually born of parents of fairly ad- 
173 174 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
vanced age. On the other hand, he tells us, “Children 
of young parents are lacking in physical stamina and 
mental power. They are reckless, careless, sometimes 
vicious, and frequently drift into drunkenness and 
crime.” 
Mr. Redfield is a Lamarckian. In his opinion, chil- 
dren who are the product of immature parents inherit 
little mentality, while children born to parents who 
have acquired wisdom due to the experiences of a long 
life receive on the average a superior endowment of 
native intellect. Mr. Redfield has collected many 
instances of great men born to parents who were much 
beyond middle age. He finds that persons distin- 
guished for intellectual eminence have parents several 
years older than those of the average of humanity. 
Old parents, he concludes, are much more apt to pro- 
duce distinguished offspring than young parents are. 
The Jukes and the Kallikaks, he tells us, are degen- 
erate and of low mentality because of the early mar- 
riages that prevail in these notorious families. 
One may grant Mr. Redfield’s facts without accept- 
ing his conclusions. As a rule, early marriages are apt 
to occur in stocks of a low cultural level. These stocks 
only rarely produce people of intellectual distinction. 
A much more probable explanation is that the Jukes 
and the Kallikaks were not degenerate because they 
married early; they married early because they were 
degenerate. People of primitive races, to which Mr. 
Redfield refers, marry early because that is the primi- 
tive thing to do; it does not follow that their low EARLY MARRIAGES 
development is a consequence of their custom of early 
marriage. 
Investigation of the ancestry of great men discloses 
the fact that they come to a preponderating extent 
from the professional and fairly well-to-do classes 
among whom late marriages are a custom. The 
average age of the fathers of the men in Ellis’ Study 
of British Genius was 37.1; of one hundred cases of 
Galton’s British Men of Science, 36; and of thirty- 
nine cases cited by Yoder, 37.78. These do not differ 
greatly from the average ages of fathers of men of 
professional and allied classes given by Ansell, viz., 
36.5. The age of marriage in the professional classes 
is relatively high. According to Rubin and Wester- 
gaard it averages over five years higher than in the 
working classes, and among the latter, as Rowntree 
and others have shown, it is considerably higher among 
the skilled workmen than among the unskilled. Great 
men are not great because they have relatively old 
parents; they have relatively old parents because their 
parents, as a rule, marry later in life than the average 
of the population. Mr. Redfield’s argument for the 
importance of having children born to old parents is 
vitiated by a fundamental fallacy. He has assumed as 
a cause of greatness what is merely one of the char- 
acteristics of the stocks from which greatness com- 
monly arises. 
Mr. Redfield’s conclusions, moreover, are directly 
opposed to what is known of the relation of greatness 
to order of birth. Several studies have shown that 
175 176 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
among the children of a family the man who achieves 
eminence is more apt to be the first born than a mem- 
ber of any subsequent birth rank. This was found to 
be the case by Galton, Yoder, Gini, Havelock Ellis in 
his Studies of British Genius, and Cattell in his inves- 
tigations of American men of science. My own studies, 
together with those of some of my students, have 
yielded additional evidence for this conclusion. Now 
the first born is produced by younger parents than the 
second or any subsequent child. According to Red- 
field, he should be the least apt to achieve eminence 
of any one in the family. Whether the reasons for 
his success are biological or social may not be certain, 
but the fact of his preeminence nevertheless remains, 
and stands out as a strong argument against the as- 
sumed potency of parental age in producing superior 
minds. 
One cannot help associating the predominance of 
greatness among the first born with the increase in the 
number of still births and infant deaths as the mother 
increases in age. Are these things possibly the expres- 
sion of a tendency of offspring to deteriorate as their 
mothers pass from youth to old age? If there be such 
a tendency, it is an important thing to know. Why is 
a woman who bears a child after forty, more than four 
times as apt to lose this child in its first year as a 
woman who bears a child at twenty? Is it because 
the milk supply of the older woman is inferior in 
quantity or quality? Is it because women who have 
children after forty are apt to belong to stocks of EARLY MARRIAGES 
177 
inferior status among whom infant mortality is un- 
usually high? Is it in any way an after effect of the 
greater difficulties of parturition which older women 
experience? Or is it a result of the reduced vitality 
of the child due to the environment of an old body 
which has supplied its food and removed its waste? 
This latter conclusion is one that has considerable 
probability, although there may be an element of 
truth in the preceding ones. It is generally recognized 
that if the vitality of the expectant mother has been 
impaired through misfortune or disease, it may be re- 
flected in the weakness of her child. Then should we 
not expect that the natural waning of vitality due to 
age would also impair the vigor of her offspring? 
So far as the vitality of offspring is concerned, the 
available evidence points to the years between twenty 
and thirty as the best period for motherhood. Per- 
haps the lower limit might be reduced a year or two 
for women of more southern climates who mature 
more quickly than those farther north. In regard to 
fathers, there is no evidence of a reliable kind that age 
produces any effect on the offspring one way or the 
other. But young mothers would probably bring 
forth a more healthy crop of children; and a healthy 
childhood may signify much,—we do not now know 
how much,—for the subsequent development of the 
individual. 
From many standpoints, and especially from the 
standpoint of racial welfare, it is, I believe, a mistaken 
policy to discourage early marriages. And I wish to 178 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
be clearly understood as not presuming to offer advice 
as to marriage on any other ground than its influence 
upon progeny. It is quite possible that full repro- 
ductive maturity comes before years of discretion. It 
may not be amiss to point out, however, that the post- 
ponement of marriage greatly increases the chances 
that marriage will be sterile. The liability of women 
to conceive falls off quite rapidly after the twentieth 
year. For the sake of progeny, therefore, it is well 
that people marry early, as Nature intended them 
to do. CHAPTER XI 
IS BIRTH CONTROL AN AID OR A MENACE TO EUGENICS? 
The subject of birth control is arousing a deep and 
widespread popular interest. It is a subject that 
touches every famity. It not only affects the pocket- 
book; it is a matter that concerns the health and hap- 
piness of a large part of mankind. And by no means 
the least of the reasons for the great interest it 
awakens is its relation to the strong instinct of sex. 
The command, “Be fruitful and multiply,” was all 
very well in its time and place considering the pre- 
sumably eugenic quality of the persons to whom it was 
addressed. But the world is now much more populous 
than it was in the days of Adam, and the people it 
contains differ greatly in their possession of desirable 
hereditary qualities. The inhabitants of many coun- 
tries are altogether too numerous for their own good. 
One of the best things that could possibly happen to 
the over-crowded districts of China, India, and Japan 
would be for the people to declare a sort of procreative 
holiday in which the arrival of new babies would be 
held up until the overcrowding was in a measure 
relieved. 
Undoubtedly the Neo-Malthusians are right in their 
contention that unrestricted multiplication is a potent 
179 180 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
cause of war, much misery, and a high death rate. 
Human beings, like other creatures, tend to increase 
in numbers until conditions due to over-crowding be- 
come so bad that further increase is automatically 
checked. At times the surplus population may be 
drained off through migration, but as other localities 
usually have their human inhabitants who have to be 
dispossessed, this usually means war. 
As civilization has advanced, science has made the 
earth yield in greater abundance the materials which 
men require to sustain life. The world supports many 
more people than it did a century ago, especially in 
the regions under what is commonly called western 
civilization. Probably through further advances of 
science the yield of nature will be increased still more. 
But the process cannot go on indefinitely. Soil be- 
comes exhausted and its fertility instead of being 
restored to it is commonly drained off through sewers 
into the sea. Of course we do not know what dis- 
coveries may be made that will increase our supplies 
of food. But granting the contentions of the most 
obdurate optimists, the evil day is only postponed. 
Sooner or later the people of the earth will have to 
limit their numbers voluntarily or go on fighting and 
starving and dying of epidemics as they have done 
throughout history. 
There are those who defend this sort of thing and 
oppose limiting the birth supply because they hold 
that it is through over-population, strife, and starva- 
tion that the race has evolved. Such it is said is the BIRTH CONTROL AND EUGENICS 
181 
order of nature. Through this continual strife and 
the survival of the fittest mankind has developed to 
higher stages, and it must continue to employ the 
same methods if it evolves at all. 
When mankind in general gets to be sufficiently 
enlightened to appreciate the effects of unlimited 
fecundity it will, I believe, pay little heed to the 
preaching of this doctrine. It will simply balk. It 
will reap the rewards of present freedom from over- 
crowding and let the future take care of itself, as con- 
siderable sections of civilized mankind are now doing. 
The populations of most countries of Europe, and 
certainly of all countries of North America, are not at 
present near the saturation point. The evils of over- 
fecundity are rather to be found in certain classes and 
within particular families. These maladjustments en- 
able the Neo-Malthusian to make a strong appeal on 
humanitarian grounds. The pamphlet written by 
Mrs. Annie Besant on The Law of Population which 
had an enormous sale of several hundred thousand 
copies made a strong point of the misery among poor 
wage-earners which is greatly aggravated by their fre- 
quently large families. The industrial conditions pre- 
vailing in England when this pamphlet was written do 
not present a pleasing picture. Mrs. Besant’s essay 
was written to afford a measure of relief to the 
spawning, exploited masses. It was written in behalf 
of over-worked mothers and under-fed, poorly-clothed, 
and uncared-for children. Too many workers, too 
much competition, low wages, squalor, ignorance, ill- 182 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
ness, and over-crowded homes in which death was a 
frequent visitor,—such was the chain of consequences 
flowing from unrestricted multiplication which were 
vividly set forth in this celebrated essay. And the 
remedy proposed was family limitation which would 
reduce the population, decrease competition, increase 
wages, improve living conditions, reduce disease and 
death, and make people in general more enlightened 
and happy. 
Whatever we may think of the efficacy of this simple 
remedy it cannot be denied that family limitation would 
be a great boon to many struggling parents among the 
poorly paid working classes, and would enable them to 
give proper food, clothing, and education to a small 
number of children. There is no use in preaching 
Malthus’ remedy of late marriages to unskilled labor. 
Unskilled laborers marry younger than skilled laborers 
and they may be counted on to continue to do so. 
Family limitation is less practised among the unskilled. 
Those who have the largest number of children are 
generally those who can least afford them, while those 
who can afford to have the most children and rear 
them well have the least. 
This situation is bad socially, economically, educa- 
tionally, and morally. Worst of all it is bad eugeni- 
cally. Despite protests from certain quarters, I ven- 
ture to express the view that there is a certain degree 
of association between success, economically or intel- 
lectually, and the possession of good native ability. 
While the lower industrial classes include many good BIRTH CONTROL AND EUGENICS 
183 
minds, which from various untoward circumstances are 
kept in the ranks of unskilled and poorly-paid labor, 
these classes also receive the naturally dull, unenter- 
prising, unreliable, and incompetent who are inherently 
unqualified for holding any positions involving respon- 
sibility and intelligence. It is into these ranks that 
people of subnormal mentality—and there are many 
of them—inevitably gravitate. Unfortunately both for 
themselves and for society these people are unusually 
prolific. Their unrestrained fecundity lowers the gen- 
eral level of the race and aggravates our economic and 
social troubles. They form the class which birth con- 
trol has not yet reached in its downward course through 
the strata of society. 
The impelling force of the Neo-Malthusian move- 
ment was the effort to better the condition of the toil- 
ing masses. Family restriction, however, was practised 
long before this movement was launched, but it was a 
private and prudential custom largely confined to the 
educated and well-to-do. Neo-Malthusianism, on the 
other hand, comes as a sort of gospel. Its devotees are 
inspired with all the enthusiasm of the adherents of a 
new religion and some of them willingly suffer mar- 
tyrdom for the cause, at least to the extent of being 
subjected to occasional fines and imprisonment. Dr. 
Drysdale, its chief British apostle, sees in birth control 
the one great remedy for crime, poverty, and prosti- 
tution, to say nothing of numerous lesser evils. In fact 
over-population is held as responsible for so large a 
proportion of our woes that we are led to infer that 184 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
the adoption of Neo-Malthusian methods would almost 
usher in the millennium at once. 
Considerations of eugenics were originally quite out- 
side the purview of most of the earlier Neo-Malthusian 
propagandists. After eugenics came to be more in the 
public eye a number of Neo-Malthusians, Dr. Drysdale 
included, claimed that birth restriction, in addition to 
its other virtues, was distinctly eugenic in its effects. 
The same thesis has more recently been supported by 
Mr. Havelock Ellis and Mrs. Margaret Sanger. In 
Mrs. Sanger’s latest book, The Pivot of Civilization, 
there is a very clear presentation of our dysgenic situa- 
tion which is brought about by the present differential 
birth rate. There is also a recognition of the great 
importance of differences in heredity in our social and 
economic life and the urgent need for curtailing the 
propagation of our subnormal classes. The mental 
defectives should be sterilized or segregated at once. 
The fecundity of the next stratum above them should 
be limited by the dissemination of safe and effective 
methods of birth control, thus equalizing more nearly 
the birth rates of the various classes of the population. 
Unless this is done the classes of greater eugenic worth 
will continue to be outbred and the race will deteriorate. 
The trouble with birth control is that it is prac- 
tised least where it should be practised most. As it is 
at present employed its racial effect is undoubtedly 
strongly dysgenic. But its advocates contend that 
their great aim is to spread its benefits throughout all 
ranks of society and thus restore the balance of BIRTH CONTROL AND EUGENICS 
185 
births. Were this done the natural increase of our 
population would doubtless be reduced, but this per se 
may not be an evil. If the general birth rate were re- 
duced to the level of that of the intellectuals, however, 
the population would be decreased, and this would be 
an evil. In the United States we can comfortably sup- 
port, and we should support, a much larger population 
than we now possess. Each country should endeavor 
to increase its population to as large a number as can 
be maintained under conditions which are the most 
favorable for the development of its individuals, but 
no farther. Life is an end in itself, but it should not 
be allowed to increase until its quantity deteriorates its 
quality. 
Most Neo-Malthusians apparently fail to take into 
account the fact that birth control has been carried so 
far in stocks of higher social worth that it is rapidly 
leading to their extinction. The classes which there is 
every reason to believe are coming short of perpetuat- 
ing themselves are the graduates of colleges, teachers, 
scientific investigators, members of the learned profes- 
sions and the leaders in the social, economic, political, 
and intellectual life of the nation. We are suffering 
a frightful drain of our best blood. We can only con- 
jecture how great is the loss of those stocks that furnish 
our intellectual leadership. Curtailing the propagation 
of morons and dullards will come very far from afford- 
ing an adequate compensation for this loss. 
It is this situation which so many of the Neo-Mal- 
thusians fail to face. They are so carried away with 186 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
their enthusiasm for preventing people from being born 
that it apparently has not occurred to them that restric- 
tion might be carried too far. Dr. Drysdale’s book, The 
Small Family System, contains no recommendations 
regarding how small the family should be. Mrs. 
Sanger in her latest book makes no plea for an in- 
crease of the birth rate among the better stocks and 
derides the proposal that they enter into a “cradle 
competition” with the admittedly too fertile subnor- 
mals. There is an apparent reluctance to admit that 
considerable sections of the population are having too 
few children, even though it may be evident that they 
are not reproducing themselves. Even educated women 
remark glibly that “two children are quite enough” and 
express astonishment at a “large” family of four, quite 
unconscious of the fact that they are betraying only 
the shallowest notions of the most important function 
of their sex. And yet those who talk in this way are 
not stupid—at least all of them are not—else we should 
be quite content to see their breed become extinct. 
They are simply incredibly ignorant and unreflecting 
in regard to the perpetuation of life. 
That our racial inheritance will deteriorate unless 
people of good hereditary qualities have at least the 
minimum of three or four children needed to keep up 
their stock is a proposition seemingly too obvious to 
require stating. Nevertheless it is something that needs 
to be said. It is something which most people prob- 
ably do not know. And it is something about which BIRTH CONTROL AND EUGENICS 
187 
the Neo-Malthusians seem curiously reluctant about 
informing them. 
The birth control movement would gain greatly in 
moral force if it placed more emphasis upon the re- 
sponsibilities of those who take into their own hands 
the regulation of the birth supply. There are multi- 
tudes of people of good inheritance whose financial 
circumstances easily permit them to rear fair-sized 
families, but who are suffering their lines to become 
extinct through ignorance or wilful disregard of one of 
the most fundamental of all duties. Birth control is 
a biological innovation of great moment in the history 
of the race. Mankind has evolved without it, although 
at the cost of much suffering and loss of life. Its un- 
wise employment for a few generations would have a 
disastrous effect on our racial inheritance which it has 
taken untold ages to build up. If so powerful an in- 
strument for good or for ill is placed in the hands of 
human beings there should be some endeavor to induce 
them to use it wisely. If the Neo-Malthusians pre- 
sume to undertake the role of guiding the unenlight- 
ened public in this regard they should do something 
more than simply preach restriction. 
Nothing will be gained by attempting to force hu- 
manity back into reckless and unrestricted breeding 
with all the misery and high death rate which this would 
entail, whatever may be said for it from the standpoint 
of natural selection. Birth control has come to stay, 
and consequently it should be accorded decent treat- 188 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
ment. Attempts to put it under the ban by legislation 
or otherwise are productive only of harm. Its advo- 
cates are doing a good work in their efforts to abolish 
our fanatical laws which make the diffusion of cer- 
tain kinds of knowledge a crime. They are making a 
useful plea for a wider knowledge of sex. They are 
doing humanity a service in extending the benefits of 
birth control to the over-burdened mothers among the 
toiling masses. But their remedy is very far from a 
panacea for social ills, and while it may mitigate some 
of the evils of the differential birth rate, our inheritance 
is bound to deteriorate unless the fecundity of superior 
types can somehow be increased. 
There should be no need of a “cradle competition.” 
With birth control carried out most where it would do 
the most good the race could still increase in numbers 
without burdening the capables with more than an 
average of three or four children per family. Birth 
control can be made an important adjunct to eugenics, 
however far from being so it may be now. Alone it is 
entirely inadequate. CHAPTER XII 
WILL BIRTH CONTROL REDUCE FERTILITY? 
If birth control is to become a more widely prevalent 
custom, as now seems inevitable, the problem of its 
biological effects on the race becomes one of profound 
importance. These effects are many, but they may be 
considered from two standpoints: 1, in relation to the 
health of the individual, and 2, in relation to the in- 
herited qualities of the race. It is not my intention to 
discuss the influence of birth control methods on the 
physical welfare of the individual; that is a matter of 
individual hygiene which is involved in much contro- 
versy, and I prefer to leave it to the discretion of more 
competent writers. And I cannot do justice to so large 
a topic as the relation of birth control to heredity. My 
discussion will be limited to one aspect of the latter 
subject which, though generally neglected, is one of 
much significance for racial well-being. This is the 
influence of birth control on the hereditary fertility of 
the race. 
However greatly fertility may be modified by envi- 
ronment, it is nevertheless a hereditary character. It 
tends to run in families like blond complexions or 
short noses. Breeders are familiar with the striking 
variations in the fertility of different breeds of ani- 
189 190 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
mals. The Dorset Horns and Hampshire Downs sheep 
are much more prolific than the Scotch Black-faced or 
Leicester varieties. Many kinds of poultry are poor 
layers, while the Leghorns are prized for their high 
production of eggs. Careful selection of stock for 
breeding is therefore essential if the poultry man would 
obtain the maximum yield of eggs from his fowl. 
It is probable that the human species which contains 
so much hereditary diversity varies more in natural 
fertility than most species of animals and plants. The 
tendency of certain human families to produce twins 
has long been recognized. To a certain extent fertility 
in man is correlated with vitality. Pearson and his co- 
workers have not only shown that general health is 
hereditary but they have given statistical support to 
the common opinion that we tend to inherit long life. 
Life insurance companies have good reason, as they 
know from experience, for inquiring into the longevity 
of the ancestors of their policy-holders. 
Now long life means, as a rule, not only health, but 
an unusual degree of fertility. Of course if people are 
cut off in middle life they are prevented from produc- 
ing large families, but taking only those cases in which 
parents survive the child-bearing period, the longest- 
lived tend to show the highest fertility. Powys finds 
among the population of New South Wales that of 
mothers over forty-five years of age those who have 
had from five to seven children may expect to have the 
longest life. Similar results are reported by Pearson 
for other populations, and Alexander Graham Bell WILL BIRTH CONTROL REDUCE FERTILITY? 
191 
found in his study of the genealogy of the Hyde 
Family that the greatest longevity occurs in families 
of ten or more children. Other things equal, small 
families come from parents with less than average 
vitality or resistance to disease. The inferiority which 
Pearson and others have found in the first-born chil- 
dren of a family is doubtless due largely to the fact 
that, since there is a first-born member in every family 
large or small, first-born children are members of 
smaller families on the average than are the children 
of any subsequent birth rank. 
Where the natural course of reproduction is not 
meddled with the larger families with their superior 
vitality play a relatively larger part in perpetuating 
the race. There is a tendency for natural selection and 
what has been called reproductive selection, or the 
preservation of the prolific, to go hand in hand. But 
with the decline of the birth rate there has come to be 
a change. The large families have become more rare, 
and are found more commonly among people of sub- 
normal intelligence and shiftless habits. There has 
developed a custom of standardizing the size of the 
family, and consequently the larger families suffer the 
greatest curtailment. If procreation were checked after 
the fourth child was born, the stocks which are the 
most prolific would suffer a loss proportionally much 
greater than those which are less prolific. It would 
thus be brought about that a relatively larger part of 
the population would be born of stocks of low natural 
fecundity. The more fertile types would still have an STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
192 
advantage, but the average fertility of the race would 
certainly be reduced. Most Neo-Malthusians probably 
would not regard this result as anything to be deplored. 
But we should bear in mind that, along with this dimi- 
nution in natural fertility, there would tend to go also a 
decline in the physical vigor of the population. Rela- 
tively larger numbers would be born of parents lack- 
ing the physical stamina to produce large families. 
Notwithstanding all that may be said in favor of 
birth control, I do not see that there is any way of 
avoiding this conclusion. It can only be claimed that 
there are compensating advantages that outweigh this 
particular dysgenic influence. For the sake of the race 
it would be desirable if couples who are physically and 
mentally well endowed and who are in a position to 
give their children fair advantages in life were to rear 
large families of eight to ten children. Were all fami- 
lies to produce the four children which Mr. Roosevelt 
told us are required to keep up the race the result 
would be anything but fortunate. It is somewhat to 
be deplored that Mr. Roosevelt, whose appeal to »he 
sense of racial duty is worthy of all praise, was not 
more discriminating in his plea for fecundity; his main 
interest apparently was in numbers without much 
emphasis on quality. It is scarcely necessary to point 
out that the interests of future humanity require that 
many married couples have no children at all. Others 
are quite justified in limiting their children to a very 
small number. Health, poverty, and many other cir- 
cumstances may afford entirely adequate grounds for WILL BIRTH CONTROL REDUCE FERTILITY? 
family limitation. Family welfare as well as the racial 
welfare should be given its due consideration. But it 
is important for those favored by both heredity and 
environment to realize that they have it in their power 
through the production of large families to improve the 
physical and mental qualities of their race. If human 
beings assume the responsibility of regulating the birth 
supply, it should be done in the light of as full a 
knowledge of all the consequences as can be secured. 
The responsibility is a grave one, and nations and peo- 
ples may rise or fall according to the wisdom they show 
in discharging this trust. 
193 CHAPTER XIII 
SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS1 
It is often a misfortune for any good movement to 
become a fad. When this happens it is pretty sure to 
enlist the support of that object of Mr. Roosevelt’s 
wholesome dread, the “fool reformer.” And when 
the “fool reformer” gets to work, prejudice against 
what he advocates is inevitably aroused. 
The eugenic movement has perhaps its worst enemies 
in its over-zealous and ultra-radical friends. The ad- 
vocacy of doctrines strongly at variance with estab- 
lished ideals and social customs makes an impression 
on the public mind that is not likely to be effaced by 
any amount of sane and sober-minded teaching. Eu- 
genics is in a somewhat unfortunate position in that, 
through a little misrepresentation, it may easily be 
made to appear in an unfavorable light. Pearson tells 
us that Francis Galton, toward the close of his life, had 
come to fear that the new science of eugenics would 
do more harm than good. And considering the volume 
of nonsense on the subject that is published largely for 
the purpose of appealing to popular interest in sensa- 
1 Reprinted in part from the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1915. The 
article is reproduced here because several of the misconceptions that 
are discussed continue to be more or less in evidence in popular writing 
on the subject. 
194 SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS 
195 
tional things, there is more or less ground for Galton’s 
rather gloomy foreboding. 
The facility with which eugenics lends itself to cari- 
cature and cheap ridicule affords a temptation which is 
too strong for many writers to resist. No one would 
wish to deprive the editor of a country paper of his 
opportunity to wax facetious over “eugenic marriages” 
and “eugenic babies”; but it is a different matter when 
the same spirit of caricature is shown in articles pur- 
porting to give a serious and scholarly discussion of the 
subject. There are few questions of greater import 
than those relating to the forces which are molding the 
innate qualities of the human race. There is no knowl- 
edge which it is more important to have widely dif- 
fused than the knowledge of the means by which our 
human inheritance can be improved. And a peculiar 
obligation, therefore, rests on those who discuss this 
subject, to be guided, whatever their opinions may be, 
by a spirit of fairness, and to avoid the temptation, so 
often yielded to, of sacrificing strict accuracy of state- 
ment to rhetorical effect. 
The more I read controversial literature the more I 
am impressed with the frequent employment of the 
device of setting up a man of straw in order to demolish 
the object of attack with a great show of effectiveness. 
Such a performance is doubtless the outcome of a com- 
mon psychological failing: we all wish to be victorious 
in our encounters and to experience the feeling of 
triumph, even though we are led to expend our energies 
upon purely imaginary antagonists. 196 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
The best illustration of this method of attack which 
I have met with in the literature of eugenics is con- 
tained in an article by Mr. Fielding-Hall on Eugenics 
and Common Sense, which appeared in the Atlantic 
Monthly for September, 1914. The writer states that 
“the eugenist takes man purely as a plant or as an 
animal; he wants to breed him just as animals are 
bred”; and then, after attempting to show that domes- 
tic animals and plants have been rendered inferior to 
their wild ancestors through selective breeding for par- 
ticular qualities, he draws a melancholy picture of what 
would happen if the “eugenists” were to put their ideas 
into practice. “Therefore, suppose the eugenists had 
their way and established a state, what would the in- 
habitants of that state be like in a few generations? 
They would be tall, broad, muscular, beautiful, delicate 
to a degree, useless save for athletic contests or beauty 
shows, always in the doctor’s hands,—eugenic doctors, 
of course,—brainless, incapable of affection, almost 
wanting in courage, to a great extent sterile.” And 
further on we are told that “the eugenist omits love. 
He knows nothing about it or about the world”; and 
we are given a forecast of what the world would be 
if “the Eugenists could have their way and banish 
love.” 
One would naturally suspect that all this was written 
purely for the sake of humor, but a perusal of the entire 
article leaves no doubt of its serious purpose. Never- 
theless I have found myself recurring from time to time 
to certain passages with the uneasy consciousness that SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS 
197 
after all I may have mistaken the intent of the author. 
When one criticizes the doctrines of the eugenists the 
implication certainly is, if no one is singled out for 
attack, that the opinions combated are typical or repre- 
sentative of eugenic teaching. Nothing could be more 
manifestly unfair than to attack extreme or generally 
discredited doctrines under the implied assumption that 
such views are shared by eugenists in general. But 
this is precisely the kind of tactics which our author 
pursues with apparently a naive unconsciousness of the 
impropriety of such controversial methods. 
As the author quotes, near the beginning of his 
article, from “what he calls a leading eugenic text- 
book,” which, by the way, is Davenport’s Heredity in 
Relation to Eugenics, the unsuspecting reader might be 
led to suppose that the various extreme doctrines which 
are discussed were advocated in that volume. But 
not only are such doctrines not found there, but there 
is much that implies precisely the reverse. Where 
then are we to find the “eugenists” whom our author 
would hold up to scorn? 
I have had occasion lately to make a bibliography of 
articles and books on eugenics in which I have endeav- 
ored to include the titles of all contributions of any 
scientific value on this subject. Surely a representa- 
tive publication like the Eugenics Review, the official 
organ of the Eugenics Education Society of England, 
ought to voice the opinions of Mr. Fielding-Hall’s 
“eugenists,” in abundance; but after running through 
the files of that journal from its inception to the present 198 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
time, I have failed to find a single expression of what 
our author represents as typical eugenic doctrine. In 
a similar survey of the chief German journal of 
racial biology, the Archiv fur Rassen-und Gesellschafts- 
Biologie, my search was equally fruitless. So also was 
an examination of the publications of the Galton Labo- 
ratory in London, of the bulletins of the Eugenics 
Record Office in this country, and of various journals 
devoted entirely or in part to human heredity and 
social evolution. A few years ago there was an Inter- 
national Eugenics Congress held in London. One 
would naturally look to this widely representative body 
for authoritative expressions of eugenic doctrine. But 
if “eugenists” of our author’s type were represented at 
the Congress at all, they failed to make a single com- 
munication that found its way into the two volumes of 
the published proceedings. Probably no one has a 
better right to be regarded as an authoritative expo- 
nent of eugenic doctrine than the late Sir Francis 
Galton; but no one was more careful to disclaim the 
advocacy of any measures that are antagonistic to 
established social usage. 
Who then are these “eugenists” against whom Mr. 
Fielding-Hall does battle? I do not deny that some 
might be found, for almost every imaginable absurdity 
has its exponents. Our critic had sedulously refrained 
from mentioning any of the “eugenists” by name. One 
escapes a certain measure of responsibility in attack- 
ing doctrines which are attributed to no one in par- 
ticular. But in combating the views of people loosely SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS 
199 
referred to as “eugenists,” one should direct his argu- 
ments against opinions that are held by the majority, 
or at least a large percentage, of his opponents. It is 
scarcely to be supposed that any one who presumes to 
write on eugenics is unacquainted with the literature 
to which I have referred. But the author has chosen 
to ignore these sources of information, and has set up 
a eugenist man of straw who knows nothing of love, 
who would breed human beings as cattle are bred for 
points, and who is altogether a very ridiculous sort of 
person. 
Mr. Fielding-Hall objects to the conclusion that the 
laws of the improvement of corn and race-horses hold 
true also for man. We are told that there is much yet 
to be learned regarding the laws of heredity (which 
almost any one would cheerfully admit), and that the 
result of breeding domestic plants and animals is to 
produce races that are imperfect or degenerate in many 
respects, however highly they may have been developed 
in others. But when he passes to the statement that 
the attempt to improve the human race by selective 
breeding would end only in disaster, the conclusion by 
no means follows. Man improves animals and plants 
in certain directions to serve his own selfish purposes, 
and it is not to be wondered at that they are usually 
rendered less adapted to thrive in a state of nature. 
Animals are not bred for general intelligence, nor as a 
rule for general vigor, and hence they are usually, 
though in many cases not markedly, inferior in brain 
and general physique to their wild progenitors. Man, 200 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
however, is an animal molded to live in the somewhat 
artificial environment of civilized society; and if he has 
lost something of his ability to thrive under the con- 
ditions of primitive savagery, the loss is of no par- 
ticular disadvantage under what is now his normal 
mode of life. But why, if human evolution should be 
directed by eugenists, man should become “tall, mus- 
cular, brainless, and wanting in affection,’’ is incompre- 
hensible, unless the “eugenist,” with all his other stu- 
pidities, should deliberately set out to create so stupid 
a product. 
Few appreciate the enormous advances made in 
recent years in the study of heredity, and the large 
degree of “scientific precision” that has already been 
attained in our control of the heredity of plants and 
animals. Our author indeed admits that “there must 
be something in heredity,” but he candidly adds, “I 
have no idea what it is.” With all the doubt and un- 
certainty that attaches to many questions of human 
inheritance there is no doubt that any one who had 
a fair knowledge of the principles of genetics, and who 
was given control over the matings of human beings, 
could, in the course of a very few generations, produce 
a large number of very diverse types. He could breed 
a race of idiots, a race of dwarfs, a race of giants, an 
albino race, an insane race, a race of moral imbeciles, 
a race which would almost invariably get drunk in the 
presence of alcohol, a race of preeminent mental ability, 
or a race of unusual artistic talent. The task would SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS 
201 
be easy, as it would involve only the isolation of exist- 
ing strains of the human species. 
The possibilities of improving our inheritance, even 
with our present imperfect knowledge, are great. The 
difficulties are chiefly those of ways and means. Most 
eugenists agree that it is highly desirable to prevent 
the propagation of degenerate human beings. We 
know enough of the inheritance of feeble-mindedness, 
insanity, and several other defective traits to justify us 
in preventing those in whom these defects have been 
inherited from producing offspring. In regard to many 
other features of human inheritance we are still much 
in the dark, as eugenists realize as well as, if not better 
than, almost any one else. One need not fear that “the 
eugenists would eliminate all disease and with it all 
ability”; nor is it probable that “they would have pre- 
vented Lord Bacon from being born.” Only an imagi- 
nary eugenist would be likely to do anything so unwise. 
Any one familiar with current discussions of the 
policy of restricting parenthood cannot fail to be im- 
pressed by the general counsel of caution which is 
given by those most prominent in the eugenic move- 
ment. But no one with an adequate knowledge of 
human heredity can have any doubt that there are sev- 
eral forms of human ills which could be very materially 
reduced by the proper restrictive measures. 
Several years ago, in the valley of the Dora Baltia, 
there were many cretins and people afflicted with 
goiter. These people were allowed to marry among 202 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
their own kind and the result was the production of 
children who were defective like their parents. As 
David Starr Jordan, who visited the place several 
times, remarks, “They were breeding a special type of 
man utterly incompetent to take care of himself and 
utterly useless for all sorts of purposes.” A few years 
ago a policy of segregation was adopted: the cretins 
were confined during the reproductive period and not 
allowed to marry. At present they are nearly extinct. 
An opponent of eugenics might have warned us that 
our knowledge of the laws of heredity is not sufficient 
to warrant any meddling with the perpetuation of life 
among these people, and counseled the policy of laissez- 
faire. But if he had had his way, the idiots and im- 
beciles would still be with us. 
While many of the critics of eugenics admit that it 
is not only feasible but a social duty to eliminate our 
hereditary defectives, they offer various objections to 
any attempt toward the further improvement of the 
human race. There is a more or less prevalent convic- 
tion that most eugenists would have marriages deter- 
mined by the state in order to develop the desired type 
of man. People, and especially the American people, 
are naturally hostile toward any system which would 
impose restriction or regulation of freedom of marriage. 
And in so far as they have been led to look upon the 
eugenist as a person who aims to bring about matings 
which will tend toward the realization of a particular 
eugenic ideal, they are apt to experience resentment 
against such an infringement upon their natural rights. SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS 
203 
Who is to decide, it is often asked, what is to be the 
eugenic ideal? In this connection it is well to recall 
the remark of Francis Galton: “Society would be very 
dull if every man resembled the highly estimable Mar- 
cus Aurelius or Adam Bede. The aim of Eugenics is 
to represent each class by its best specimens; that 
done, to leave them to work out their common civili- 
zations in their own way.” 
There is a sufficient consensus of opinion as to what 
kind of human beings are desirable in an ideal state, 
so that we need not trouble ourselves about further 
details for some time to come. Health, good nature, 
moral stability, social sympathy, and intellectual abil- 
ity, I think almost every one would agree, we could 
well have in much greater measure than at present. 
We want more of such stock as the Lowells, the Lees, 
the Edwardses, the Adamses,—the stocks that have 
given us our authors, statesmen, educators, and suc- 
cessful men of the world; and we want less of such 
stock as the Jukes, the Tribe of Ishmael, the Kallikaks, 
and other degenerates who help fill our almshouses, 
insane asylums, and jails. We are confronted by the 
fact that families that fall within the first-mentioned 
classes are not on the average producing enough chil- 
dren to keep up their present number, while many of 
the least desirable stock are maintaining a relatively 
high degree of fecundity. The recent decline of the 
birth-rate among the classes of society that have 
achieved success is a serious menace to our racial wel- 
fare. And there is no escaping the conclusion that 204 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
such a decline has occurred during the past fifty years 
in most civilized countries of the world. 
The conservative eugenist wishes to effect a change 
in the differential birth-rate in such a way that fecun- 
dity shall be correlated with those qualities that are 
socially desirable instead of with qualities which we 
wish to eliminate. Most eugenists are keenly alive to 
the difficulties of effecting such a change, and they are 
quite generally agreed that any success in this direction 
must be preceded by a general enlightenment of the 
public, and an awakening, in those who are physically 
and mentally well endowed, of a sense of obligation 
to perpetuate the gifts which nature has bestowed 
upon them. In the catalogue of sins of omission there 
is none greater than the sin of racial suicide in a splen- 
didly endowed strain. As Major Leonard Darwin has 
remarked, “We of this generation are absolutely re- 
sponsible for the production of the next generation, and 
therefore of all mankind in the future; and to make 
every citizen realize his great racial responsibility in 
all things connected with marriage, to make him feel 
this as a deep-seated sentiment greatly affecting his 
actions, this is the eugenic ideal.” 
Eugenics is often attacked on the ground that, since 
we have much to learn of the factors of organic evolu- 
tion, any attempt to improve the innate qualities of 
men is premature. According to Mr. J. P. Milum, who 
contributes an article, “The Fallacy of Eugenics,” to 
the London Quarterly Review, “Eugenics is an appli- 
cation to human life of the current form of the evolu- SOME MISCONCEPTIONS OF EUGENICS 
205 
tion theory. The weak link in the evolution theory 
has been the attribution of creative power to selection. 
It is upon that very link that the eugenist has hung 
his case. Natural selection having failed in human life, 
it must be replaced, he declares, by conscious selection. 
And now we find that selection has no power whatso- 
ever! It would appear, therefore, that eugenics is an 
untimely birth!” 
Here we have the “fallacy of eugenics”! And since 
the subject can be disposed of in so simple and sum- 
mary a way, it is not a little remarkable that so many 
of the leaders of biological thought should have been 
deceived by its fair promises that have no hope of 
realization. It is a great mistake, however, to con- 
clude that the mutation theory, which the author rep- 
resents to be orthodox evolutionary doctrine, precludes 
the possibility of progressive evolution through natural 
or any other kind of selection. This theory simply 
substitutes relatively large and stable variations for 
the minute ones to which Darwin ascribed the gradual 
formation of species. So far as the problem of pro- 
gressive evolution in general is concerned, Professor De 
Vries, the chief exponent of the mutation theory, main- 
tains that his doctrine “is in fullest harmony with the 
great principle laid down by Darwin.” 
No intelligent evolutionist ever held that natural 
selection creates the variations which must be presup- 
posed before selection can produce any change. Dar- 
win understood this obvious fact as well as any one at 
the present time. Whatever may be said of the crea- 206 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
tive power of selection, it is a demonstrated fact that 
selection has played an important role in the improve- 
ment of many varieties of plants and animals. Cer- 
tainly the animal-breeder who refused to breed from 
his runts and scrubs would not be very “untimely,” 
even in the present backward state of the science of 
genetics. 
Whether one adopts the theory of mutation or ad- 
heres to the original form of Darwinian doctrine should 
not make the least difference in his policy in regard to 
checking the multiplication of defectives and incapables 
or endeavoring to increase the fecundity of the better 
breeds of human beings. It is in these two measures 
that the eugenic program essentially consists. 
The fact that in certain pure lines selection has not 
proved sufficient to produce modification beyond a cer- 
tain point has little direct bearing on eugenic measures, 
for the near future at all events. It is generally ad- 
mitted by mutationists that the ordinary process of 
selection applied to a mixed population is easily able 
to raise the stock to the level of its best strains. Hu- 
manity presents a mixture of strains to an extent that 
probably occurs in no species in a state of nature; and 
if selection means no more than bringing out those that 
are most desirable and eliminating the inferior breeds 
it is capable of untold benefits to society. When the 
human species has been raised to the level of its best 
specimens Nature will probably be kind enough to 
supply us with further mutations in the direction of 
progress. CHAPTER XIV 
IMMIGRATION AND THE FUTURE AMERICAN 1 
The last few years have witnessed a striking change 
in the prevailing sentiment of the American people on 
the subject of immigration. It has only recently come 
home to us that we are suffering from an attack of 
acute indigestion. Immigrants have been pouring in 
upon us more rapidly than they can be assimilated. 
Much of this influx assimilates with difficulty,—in fact 
scarcely at all in the first generation. Instead of the 
English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians who 
made up the bulk of our immigration before 1880, we 
have been receiving hordes of Poles, Southern Italians, 
Greeks, Russians, especially Russian Jews, Hungarians, 
Slovaks, and other southern Europeans,—stocks less 
closely related to us by blood than the northern Euro- 
peans and less readily imbued with the spirit of our 
institutions. Our immigrants lodge chiefly in cities, 
forming little communities speaking their own lan- 
guage, and preserving, so far as possible, their customs 
and traditions. They show a very high percentage of 
illiteracy and they furnish a great part of the unskilled 
labor of our mines, factories, and streets. 
Undoubtedly the immigrant is an economic asset to 
the country. His labor adds to the wealth of those 
1 Reprinted from The Independent, March, 1923. 
207 208 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
who employ him and increases the total wealth of the 
nation. On the other hand, he may impoverish those 
who have to compete with his labor. He takes the job 
of the native American, and the native American goes 
elsewhere, often, fortunately for himself, into a better 
position. The big financial interests of the country 
have very naturally been in favor of abundant immi- 
gration. The steamship and railroad companies want 
passengers; the mining and manufacturing companies 
want cheap labor. Immigration has been encouraged 
because, it is claimed, the resources of the country 
needed to be developed. There were railroads to be 
built, forests to be cut down and virgin soil to be tilled. 
The average American likes to see things go ahead. 
He is fond of bigness of all kinds and he likes to brag 
about it. Immigration, moreover, makes business, and 
business, it goes without saying, is a good thing to 
increase. 
But in addition to the economic motives for encour- 
aging immigration the Americans have been actuated 
by a more generous desire to extend to the down- 
trodden workers of the old world the blessings of free- 
dom and opportunity which this country affords. The 
average American used to believe that he lived under 
the most glorious government that ever existed under 
the sun. He felt himself a prophet of liberty. He 
would like to see his own political institutions replace 
the effete monarchies of less progressive nations, but 
in lieu of this, he would hospitably open the gates of 
his own country to the oppressed of other lands. IMMIGRATION AND THE FUTURE AMERICAN 
209 
But the attitude of the average American is chang- 
ing. He is suffering from an overdose of the unassimi- 
lated foreigner. He is finding that the foreigner creates 
many difficult problems and aggravates many existing 
evils. And with our increased growth of foreign popu- 
lation he is finding that political power in many locali- 
ties is passing out of his hands into those of aliens 
whom he has but very imperfectly indoctrinated with 
the ideas and ideals of American democracy. With 
continued influx of immigration at the pre-war rate 
and especially at the more rapid rate that would occur 
were no restrictions placed upon it, the American is 
beginning to wonder how long American traditions will 
last. Good old Puritan Massachusetts, which is no 
longer Puritan, by the way, but Roman Catholic, has 
according to the 1920 Census, 28 percent of foreign- 
born population, and but 31.9 percent of native-born 
of native parentage. Immigrants and the first genera- 
tion of their children make up over two-thirds of her 
population. New York City, which is the largest 
Italian city and the largest Jewish city in the world, 
to say nothing of being the largest Negro city, has only 
20.7 percent of native-born population of native par- 
entage. We have hitherto gone on the theory that, how- 
ever ignorant the foreigner might be, whatever may have 
been the institutions under which he lived, or whatever 
the stock from which he was derived, he or at least his 
children would become thoroughly Americanized in 
time. We had counted on America changing the for- 
eigner instead of the foreigner changing America. The 210 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
latter possibility is coming now to loom up in a por- 
tentous manner. Of late years we have made frantic 
efforts at Americanization. The process we found had 
been taking place much more slowly than we would 
like, and we went out of our way as never before to 
hasten it along. No nation can be a great nation with- 
out a spirit of unity,—a certain degree of like-mind- 
edness among its people. It is desirable also that it 
contain much diversity, but it should be diversity on 
approximately the same level. An infiltration of a 
moderate number of people from other countries is a 
wholesome influence in counteracting the tendency to 
fixity which is a natural proclivity of social groups. 
But carried too far it would result in making a people 
a mere hodge-podge of heterogeneous elements. 
Quite aside from the native quality of our immi- 
grants there is a danger in admitting them in such 
numbers as seriously to disturb the economic and social 
stability of the communities in which they come to live. 
If we were to receive the millions in Europe who, we 
are told, are ready and anxious to emigrate to America, 
we should have such an overwhelming mass of igno- 
rant, poverty-stricken humanity on our hands that 
“Americanization” in any reasonable time would be a 
hopeless task. Conditions in our cities are bad enough 
now. With unrestricted immigration they would be- 
come almost intolerable. 
The greatest permanent danger, however, lies in the 
likelihood of receiving stocks of inferior inheritance. 
The American is beginning to suspect that some of our IMMIGRATION AND THE FUTURE AMERICAN 
211 
racial immigration is of low racial value.1 Just as there 
are families on a low mental level, so there may be 
peoples on a low mental level. Unquestionably we 
have been getting much of this kind of human material. 
Our laws forbid the entrance of the insane, epileptic, 
and feeble-minded, but we detect only the most obvious 
cases. At the pre-war rate of over a million immi- 
grants a year only the most cursory examination was 
possible with existing facilities. Consequently many 
undesirables slipped through only to find their way 
later into poor houses or asylums for the insane, or 
otherwise prove themselves burdens on the community. 
Immigration has been and may be again probably 
the most potent factor in determining the quality of 
the future population of this country. If it is to be 
regulated in the interests of posterity the task should 
be begun as soon as possible, even though, through 
lack of knowledge, we may come far short of regulat- 
ing it in the proper way. We cannot afford to wait 
until we have all the facts in our hands before taking 
action. Several writers in dealing with this problem 
have advocated what I should describe as a misplaced 
caution. Professor J. W. Jenks, after commenting on 
the complexities and difficulties of the problem and 
urging a study of it in an impartial spirit, tells us, 
“When the facts are clearly established, we have then 
to answer the further question whether we shall admit 
or exclude or make a distinction among the races. 
1 This suspicion has been strengthened by the results of the mental 
tests applied to the recruits for the United States Army in the late war. 212 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
Whatever the decision may be, we have the extremely 
difficult question of how we can make legislation and 
enforce legislation that shall do justice to all and inflict 
no needless suffering.” 
The quotation reveals, I think, an entirely wrong 
attitude. The writer implies that other peoples have 
a sort of vested right to come here and that we have 
to act very carefully and gingerly about excluding any 
one desiring to enter. Why should we assume the 
burden of proof that certain stocks will make undesir- 
able additions to our population? We may need 
twenty years of meticulous investigation before we can 
prove our case to the satisfaction of critically-minded 
judges. In the meantime these questionable stocks will 
be pouring in upon us. Why not shift the burden of 
proof to the other fellow and require some assurance 
of his desirable qualities before admitting him to the 
country? We do not encourage people to enter our 
homes because we cannot prove that they are not 
criminals or imbeciles. We generally have some 
grounds for believing that they are at least respectable 
before we take them in. In regard to the immigrant 
the question should be not who can be proved bad 
enough to be sent away, but who can prove himself 
good enough to be admitted. The basis for selecting 
immigrants should be positive, not negative. 
In dealing with the admission of aliens we should 
assume that immigration is not a right, but a privilege, 
and that we are under no obligations whatever to ex- 
tend it to all peoples even of the white race. We may IMMIGRATION AND THE FUTURE AMERICAN 
213 
be loth to make invidious distinctions between different 
nationalities, but no foreign people has any more basis 
for objecting to such discrimination than some of our 
neighbors have for not being invited to our parties. In 
our three percent rule we are now making discrimina- 
tions, but it is under the cloak of a general mode of 
procedure. The proper regulation of immigration 
would probably compel us to abandon all pretense to 
impartiality and frankly state that there are several 
peoples that we do not want. Should we strongly sus- 
pect that the immigrants from any country are dele- 
terious to our welfare, either socially or racially, we 
should take measures to debar them and revise what- 
ever agreements on immigration we have made with 
the countries concerned. Whether these countries like 
it or not is a very secondary consideration compared 
with the preservation of the worth of our own future 
population. 
It may, however, be unnecessary to undertake the 
delicate task of discriminating against peoples or nations 
as such. There is a growing consensus of opinion among 
unbiased students of the problem that we should have 
higher standards of admission. We let in altogether too 
many who are mentally below par. Our literary test 
could well be made more than the very meager require- 
ment that it now is. It would undoubtedly help matters 
greatly if all incomers were compelled to undergo a 
series of thorough mental tests given in the language 
of the persons examined. Despite present defects in 
the art of mental testing and despite an occasional in- 214 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
justice to the immigrant, a test designed to exclude 
every one up to and including the level of a high grade 
moron would insure a much better result than we are 
now getting. Of course more thorough examination 
would involve great additional expense, but this would 
be a relatively small item compared with the gains from 
a more carefully selected immigrant population. 
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have regulated 
their immigration much more wisely than we, and con- 
sequently they are not suffering from some of the em- 
barrassments with which we have to contend. We may 
well follow their example in many respects. As Mr. 
Roosevelt said, we want immigrants of the right kind, 
and it might even pay us to import them and give them 
a bonus for coming besides. We need good, healthy, 
intelligent, and enterprising stocks, provided that they 
do not come too fast for proper assimilation, and we 
could well afford to put up with considerable difficulty 
in getting them assimilated. But to import poor hu- 
man material for cheap labor is not only bad economic 
policy in the long run, but a crime against future gen- 
erations. In our over-emphasis of money getting and 
our neglect of the human values of our people we are 
in danger of selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. 
Every American who is ambitious to see his country 
a truly great nation should be guided in his attitude 
toward immigration neither by considerations of wealth 
to be derived from imported cheap labor, nor by a sen- 
timental desire to make this country an asylum for the 
oppressed of other lands, but by the ideal of an America, IMMIGRATION AND THE FUTURE AMERICAN 
peopled by strong, healthy, and intelligent men and 
women having the normal and wholesome instincts that 
make for sound character and harmonious social life. 
It is no charity to extend the opportunities of living 
here to the failures of the old world. A policy of free 
admission would rather be a crime against the future 
children of our own land, for these have their rights 
as well as our contemporaries. It is to our descendants 
that we owe our first obligation. No misguided sym- 
pathy for the unfortunate inhabitants of other coun- 
tries should ever permit us to jeopardize the welfare of 
our future population. 
The. policy here advocated is not mere selfish nation- 
alism. Were we to put the matter solely on the basis 
of how best we can serve the great masses of mankind 
living outside of our own borders I should say, with- 
out hesitation, that our wisest course would be to solve 
our own problems in such a way as to become a healthy, 
intelligent, and prosperous people. A nation which suc- 
ceeds in doing this will perform the greatest possible 
service to the whole world. The example set and the 
methods employed to realize this end will encourage 
other nations to follow the same path. If a nation may 
seem selfish and exclusive in its efforts to attain the 
ends I have indicated, it is nevertheless taking the 
course which is the most altruistic in the end. 
215 CHAPTER XV 
THE BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE1 
The subject-matter of the present chapter is closely 
related to the theme of the preceding one. Immigra- 
tion brings about sooner or later the mixture of peo- 
ples and frequently also of distinct races. For the 
proper regulation of immigration, therefore, we should 
know whether the mixture of peoples and races is good 
or bad, both from the biological and the social stand- 
point. 
In regard to the mixture of peoples within the limits 
of the white race there seems to be little ground to be 
apprehensive of harm on the basis of what is known of 
biology. There are, I am convinced, considerable dif- 
ferences in average inherited ability as well as in tem- 
peramental traits among the nations of Europe which 
are contributing to our population. Some of these ap- 
parently stand below others in native intelligence, and 
it is not likely that anything will be gained by assimi- 
lating them. But this does not imply that the mixture 
is bad per se. It simply means that a superior stock 
had better breed among its own kind than mingle its 
blood with that of a people on a lower level. 
Most European peoples are the product of many 
1 Reprinted from Hygeia, July, 1923. 
216 BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE 
217 
strains. An Englishman, Frenchman, German, or Aus- 
trian might number by the dozen the racial stocks that 
have contributed to his inheritance. Were we to con- 
fine our attention to men of the highest order of genius 
a long list could be made of those who are the product 
of diverse racial ancestry. With all the diversities 
occurring within the subdivisions of the white race it 
would indeed be difficult to say whether it would be 
better biologically for the French, English, and Ger- 
mans to marry within their own groups or to marry 
with other Europeans of their own general level of 
development. All that can be said is that some of these 
inter-group marriages would result well and others ill, 
and the same could be said of marriages within any of 
these countries. Besides, the products of these cross 
marriages could scarcely represent much greater mix- 
tures than the component parental stocks themselves. 
The hereditary diversities within each country are 
ample to prevent any injurious effect of inbreeding for 
a long time to come. 
To ascertain the results of the intermarriage of dis- 
tinct races such as the Negro and white, or the white 
and Mongolian, is an undertaking that should be car- 
ried on in a critical and scientific manner and on an 
extensive scale. At present the whole subject is in a 
confused and most unsatisfactory state. The many 
observers who have studied the problem have arrived 
at the most diverse opinions. Quatrefages and 
Novicow regard the mixture of races as biologically 
advantageous. Agassiz, Lapouge, Schultz and others 218 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
have been emphatic in their condemnation of the 
products of race crossing. A favorite criticism of the 
half-breed is that he has the vices of both races and 
the virtues of neither. 
There is an extensive literature on race mixture, but 
from the scientific standpoint most of it is exceedingly 
superficial and disappointing. It is frequently marred 
by prejudice, and rarely is any attempt made to sepa- 
rate the social and the biological factors that conspire 
to determine the status and the characteristics of mixed 
breeds. Both those who favor and those who oppose 
the mixture of races appeal to the results of crossing 
varieties of plants and animals in support of their posi- 
tion, and succeed in finding biological analogies of the 
desired kind. Darwin and others have shown that 
crossing plants of related varieties frequently results in 
offspring of greater size, vigor, and fertility than the 
parental types. Numerous experiments have shown 
that the highest yield of corn comes from the crossing 
of different strains. The mixed or heterozygous state 
in corn is the condition of greatest growth and fertility. 
Inbred strains tend to deteriorate, but two such strains 
when crossed produce a hybrid whose yield commonly 
far exceeds that of either parental stock. The hybrid 
state per se seems to bring about an enhancement of 
vigor. It is not improbable, as has been suggested, 
that this phenomenon results from the increased num- 
ber of separate factors in the hybrid, but, however 
hybrid vigor is caused, it is a very common occurrence 
in animals and plants. There have been some obser- BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE 
219 
vations on human crosses which indicate, at least for 
stature, that results similar to those found in plants 
and animals sometimes occur. The measurements of 
Boas on the height of Indians, whites, and half-breeds 
showed that the latter averaged taller than either 
whites or Indians. Similar results have been reported 
by Fischer in his study of the Boer-Hottentot hybrids 
of South Africa. For the most part, however, there 
seems to be little to suggest that human crossbreeds 
exhibit that hybrid vigor seen so conspicuously in the 
crosses of corn and many other plants. 
Not infrequently, however, cross breeding in plants 
produces hybrids of greatly diminished vitality. The 
products of crossing some varieties of tobacco are small 
and weak forms. Many tobacco crosses of fair vigor 
are sterile. Others scarcely do more than germinate 
before they die. Parallel phenomena may be cited 
from crosses between varieties of animals. If we at- 
tempt to draw conclusions, therefore, regarding race 
mixture in man from the effects of hybridization among 
animals and plants we are on very uncertain ground, 
for we can find analogies for almost any kind of result. 
Topinard has made the plausible suggestion that the 
crossing of related racial stocks might have no bad 
results, but that the union of distantly related races 
might produce a deteriorated hybrid progeny. Spencer 
has claimed that wide racial crosses produce constitu- 
tional disharmonies, and Mr. Seth Humphrey in his 
book on Mankind has elaborated on the same idea. 
These views, however probable they may seem, are 220 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
based mainly on a priori consideration, and these are a 
very unsafe guide. 
When we turn to a consideration of the actual facts 
we find that the evidence is inconclusive and in some 
instances contradictory. Hoffman has reported on the 
favorable results both physical and mental of the 
crosses between whites and Chinese in Hawaii. Many 
favorable comments have been made on crosses between 
whites and Japanese. The Anglo-Polynesian hybrids 
of the Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands have been described 
as a healthy and prolific stock. Crosses of Indian and 
Negro, on the other hand, have been condemned as a 
most unfortunate combination, but the evidence from 
the biological standpoint is not conclusive. Half-breeds 
between Indians and whites do not seem to be deficient 
in vitality, and the observations of Boas indicate that 
their fertility is even greater than that of either pure 
race. The reasons for this difference may, however, be 
more cultural than physiological. 
The mulattoes which represent about the widest pos- 
sible racial cross have been credited with a relatively 
weak physique. The measurements of recruits during 
the Civil War showed that in chest expansion, lung 
capacity, and general strength the mulatto was on the 
average inferior to both whites and Negroes. The 
opinions of most of the examining surgeons of the army 
at that time were distinctly unfavorable to the mulatto 
as a physical product. We have no adequate data on 
the fertility of the mulatto as compared with that of 
either component race, although it has been repeatedly BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE 
221 
asserted that the mulatto tends to be sterile. The 
Boer-Hottentot hybrids studied by Fischer had fam- 
ilies averaging 7.7 children apiece, and this is certainly 
not indicative of waning fertility. The mulatto’s 
cranial capacity, according to Hunt and Topinard, is 
intermediate and depends roughly on his proportion of 
white blood. Intellectually there is abundant evidence 
that the mulatto is superior to his black brother. Al- 
most everywhere the leaders of the race have white 
blood, and the same is true of almost all of the race 
who have achieved distinction in any field. The evi- 
dence of the army mental tests goes to show that not 
only does the mulatto score higher than the Negro but 
that he makes a rating according to the proportion of 
white blood in his composition. Confirmatory evidence 
is also furnished by mental tests of Negroes and mu- 
lattoes in schools. 
Information furnished by mental tests concerning the 
inheritance of mental traits is as yet meager. An im- 
partial consideration of the available data on the men- 
tality of inter-racial crosses will, I believe, lead one to 
the view that the mentality of the crossbreed is some- 
where between that of the parental stocks. Hereditary 
factors influencing mental development are probably 
very numerous. Under these circumstances, as in the 
inheritance of skin color, we should expect inheritance 
to approach the so-called blending type. Superior races 
have nothing to gain and much to lose by amalgamat- 
ing with those on a lower level. When it comes to dis- 
tinct races on approximately the same degrees of in- 222 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
tellectual development, such as, for instance, the best 
of the Caucasians and the best of the Chinese, the 
product of race crossing may be on the same high plane 
of mentality. It must be confessed that our knowledge 
on this score is neither extensive nor critical, and we 
need much fuller information before drawing conclu- 
sions which would influence practice in regard to the 
fusion of races. 
Much of the condemnation of the crossbreed doubt- 
less results from his infusion of inferior blood combined 
with the frequently demoralizing influence of his un- 
settled social status. There may, however, be certain 
crosses which are unfortunate simply as combinations. 
Quite apart from intelligence, there are numerous pos- 
sibilities, through the combination of affective traits, 
of producing proclivities to all sorts of moral char- 
acter, good and bad. These results are commonly 
evaluated not from the biological standpoint, but in 
their relation to harmonious and effective social life. 
Here is an almost unexplored field which must await 
the development of a better technique for studying the 
instinctive and emotional traits of man before such 
progress can be made. At present no more than a good 
beginning has been made in this direction. 
The student of human heredity may not be in a po- 
sition to prove that in general the crossing of races, 
even very distinct races, is to be condemned per se. 
Aside from the alleged inferior physique of the mulatto 
there is little to indicate that human hybrids are very 
conspicuously inferior because of their hybrid origin. BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE 
223 
They may be inferior to the superior race. They are 
probably superior, at least mentally, to the inferior 
race. The crossing of races on different mental levels 
is therefore inadvisable. But before advocating or 
encouraging the mixture of different but equivalent 
races we should have fuller knowledge than we now 
possess of just what the results will be. The inher- 
itance of a superior race is a very precious possession 
to be conserved at all costs. The argument from igno- 
rance should not be used to defend race crossing be- 
cause we cannot prove that it is bad; it should be used 
rather to counsel caution because we do not know that 
it is not bad. In the light of our ignorance about race 
crossing, the wisest course is to go slow and play safe. 
Our ignorance is no justification for taking a leap in 
the dark. 
This needs especially to be emphasized in the light 
of other considerations drawn from our knowledge of 
Mendelian segregation. Formerly inheritance was con- 
sidered to be typically blending, and the subsequent 
generations of a racial cross were thought to be very 
much like the first. This is now known to be far from 
correct. Characters that appear to blend in the first 
generation of a cross segregate out in various combina- 
tions in the second and subsequent generations, and we 
get in wide crosses a motley array of the most diverse 
forms. This is because the parent types differ in a 
considerable number of hereditary factors. The more 
different factors there are the larger the number of dif- 
ferent combinations that can be made from them. And STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
224 
however harmonious the blend made in the first cross, 
the second generation is apt to produce many unfortu- 
nate combinations of traits. 
In the structures that go to make up the human 
head and face there are many characters that segregate 
out in various ways in the second generation of a racial 
cross. In each race there is a fairly harmonious adjust- 
ment of shape of skull, relative size of facial bones, size 
and shape of jaw, size of teeth, etc. In a cross of dif- 
ferent races owing to the varying dimensions of these 
several characters and their segregation in different 
combinations one may observe narrow jaws with broad 
head, small jaws with large teeth, and various other 
jumbles of anatomical characteristics, which certainly 
detract from comeliness if not effectiveness of physical 
organization. Kingsley, Talbot, and other writers on 
dental anomalies attribute a large part of our dental 
maladjustments to the intermarriage of different racial 
stocks. Large teeth set in small jaws are a fertile 
source of trouble, and there are other maladjustments 
of an analogous kind. 
Where species crosses are very wide or when species 
of distinct genera have been found to produce fertile 
hybrids the progeny in subsequent generations may re- 
vert almost completely to the parental type. This is a 
very peculiar phenomenon and quite different from what 
would be expected according to the principles of Men- 
delian inheritance if all possible germinal combinations 
were able to develop. Goodspeed and Clausen have 
developed the idea of special reaction systems charac- BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE 
teristic of the several species. Such systems consist of 
harmoniously functioning groups of factors, but in the 
second generation of a wide species cross those forms 
with a part of one system and a part of another do 
not survive. Only those succeed in developing which 
have a fairly complete system belonging to one or the 
other parent species. 
Comparatively little scientific study has been made 
of the second generation of human hybrids. The most 
detailed investigation of the subject is E. Fischer’s 
work on the Rehobother hybrids of South Africa and 
these give much evidence of the alternative inheritance 
of many traits, and a high degree of variability in 
physical characters and intelligence. One cannot look 
over the photographs of the many faces of the hybrid 
population that are given in Fischer’s book without 
noting the almost kaleidoscopic combinations of ances- 
tral features which they exhibit. If among the great 
diversity of human beings which follow the first racial 
cross a considerable proportion should prove to be 
undesirable products—as one might reasonably expect 
—the result would be unfortunate. It would take a 
very long time for a population resulting from race 
mixture to become a fairly homogenous group, and in 
the meantime it might suffer from the embarrassment 
of a considerable proportion of poor grade humanity. 
By way of summarizing our discussion of race mix- 
ture we may present the following tentative conclu- 
sions: 
The crossing of distinct races is not demonstrably 
225 226 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
followed, except possibly in the case of the mulatto, by 
a marked decrease in vitality in the hybrids. 
There seems to be no good evidence, on the other 
hand, except in the height of certain half-breeds, that 
there is any enhancement of vigor in human hybrids 
such as occurs not uncommonly in crosses among ani- 
mals and plants. 
There is no clearly demonstrated loss of fertility, 
despite many assertions to the contrary, in crosses of 
the most divergent races of mankind. 
The mentality of crosses between races of different 
degrees of mental development seems to be somewhere 
between the mental levels of the parental races. 
Even when two distinct races are on the same mental 
level extensive crossing should not be encouraged until 
more is known concerning just how it is likely to work 
out. Not only is our knowledge of the blending in the 
first generation insufficient, but we have little accurate 
information on the more important subject of the 
varied products of subsequent generations. Here we 
find broken up those combinations of ancestral heri- 
tages which have been worked out through a long 
struggle for existence. There is good ground for be- 
lieving, on the basis of our knowledge of genetics, that 
a great many of the products of Mendelian segregation 
are not particularly happy combinations. This suspi- 
cion is more or less confirmed by a casual inspection of 
the motley products of the so-called race fusion. There 
may, however, be advantages in the crossing of some 
races, but the fact should be established before crossing BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACE MIXTURE 
227 
becomes so extensive as to threaten the persistence of 
either pure race. Concerning race mixture in general 
it is well to adhere to the old maxim: Be sure you are 
right before going ahead. 
For many nations of the earth the problem of race 
crossing is a very practical one. In many parts of the 
globe the amalgamation of distinct races is actively 
going on, and the process, if carefully studied, would 
yield information as to what to follow and what to 
avoid. We have in the United States a great variety 
of laws on race mixture. In the Southern States quite 
generally the marriage of Negroes and whites is pro- 
hibited, frequently under severe penalties; and we find 
in different states varying percentages of Negro blood 
are specified as a bar to marriage with pure whites. 
Many states in the North place no obstacle in the way 
of Negro-white marriages. Nevertheless such mar- 
riages have never taken place in any considerable num- 
bers. Some states prohibit the marriage of white and 
Mongolians, and there are various laws as to the mar- 
riage of whites and Indians. 
Should these laws be repealed or kept in force? 
Should all states pass laws prohibiting inter-racial mar- 
riages? Or should marriages between certain races be 
allowed and those between others forbidden? From 
the nature of the case a uniform policy would seem to 
be most advisable. And for reasons previously stated 
I believe that our policy should be one of restriction. 
This policy should be followed until our knowledge of 
the effects of race mixture is sufficiently exact to enable 228 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
us to tell whether or not these effects are injurious. We 
do not need to experiment in this matter. There is 
enough race crossing of all kinds going on in various 
parts of the earth to furnish abundant material for 
observing how the process is working out. It may take 
some generations before the problem is satisfactorily 
solved. But in face of an issue of such importance for 
the racial welfare of mankind we can well afford to wait 
for more light. CHAPTER XVI 
THE BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
There are some topics upon which I have sometimes 
thought that people should be forbidden to write unless 
they have something particularly important to say. 
But in lieu of such a regulation for the protection of 
the reading public one should be guided by the con- 
sideration that the importance of the subject may jus- 
tify even very minor contributions to its discussion 
provided they aid in placing it in a somewhat clearer 
light. 
The Negro problem is one of the most pressing that 
confronts us as a people. The problem is unfortunately 
a perennial one, but it presents new phases from time 
to time. Of the several “solutions” that have been 
offered none has met with general approval. Amalga- 
mation, deportation, segregation within a limited area, 
and even sterilization have all been advocated and 
condemned either as undesirable or impracticable. 
Through no fault of his own the Negro is on our hands, 
and we must make the best of the situation somehow, 
with no very encouraging outlook ahead for relief 
from its difficulties and embarrassments. 
When the biologist considers the Negro problem he 
naturally directs his attention to birth rates, death 
rates, migrations and other component factors of the 
229 230 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
biological struggle for existence. For a struggle in- 
volving actual conflict the Negro race is one of the 
most poorly equipped on earth; but for the ability to 
propagate under untoward circumstances it is appar- 
ently one of the best. Chiefly through peaceful meth- 
ods of propagation the Negroes have taken much of 
Cuba and most of many other islands of the West 
Indies, considerable sections of Brazil, and a good part 
of our own Southern States. In climates to which 
Negroes are adapted other races have seemed to be 
unable to compete with them. If given an opportunity, 
the Negroes would probably replace the Polynesians 
in the Pacific, as they have largely replaced the Indian 
stocks on many of the islands of the West Indies; and 
they may ultimately form, in the tropics, a black belt 
encircling the globe. 
In the United States their increase has been rapid. 
Since 1860 they have increased from 4,441,830 to 
10,463,131 in 1920. Nevertheless their rate of increase 
has rapidly declined between 1910 and 1920 when it 
fell to only 6.5 percent of the 1910 enumeration. Most 
of the additions to our Negro population have come 
by birth, but there has also been a Negro immigration 
from abroad that has shown a notable augmentation 
during the past several years. These Negroes come 
chiefly from the West Indies and the Barbados, and 
they are more in demand than our native products on 
account of their better training and tractability. Dur- 
ing the past decade we have received annually some- 
where between 5,000 and 10,000 Negroes from these BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
231 
sources. There has been a slight emigration to Canada 
and other countries, but this has not been nearly enough 
to balance the gain. 
While the total Negro population of the United 
States has increased by 635,368 (as compared with an 
increase of 993,769 between 1900 and 1910) there 
are several states in which Negroes have actually de- 
creased in number. Thirteen states have shown a 
decrease in their Negro population in the last census, 
whereas only six (Connecticut, New Hampshire, Mis- 
souri, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee) showed a de- 
crease between 1900 and 1910. Curiously enough, 
some of these are southern states having a large Negro 
population. It is somewhat surprising to find that 
between 1910 and 1920 Alabama lost 7,630; Mis- 
sissippi, 74,303; Louisiana, 13,617; Kentucky, 25,718, 
and Tennessee, 21,330. In all these states except 
Kentucky and Tennessee there was an increase in 
Negro population in the previous decade, Kentucky 
losing 23,050, and Tennessee losing 7,155. Excepting 
the five states just mentioned, and Delaware, which 
lost 846, all of the other states losing Negroes in the 
last ten years were in the north and west; and as their 
Negro population was small their losses were not great. 
One very important cause of the decrease of Negroes 
in the southern and border states was the extensive 
migration of Negroes into the north and west. Pre- 
vious to their emancipation Negroes were chiefly con- 
fined to states in which slavery was a legalized insti- 
tution. Climate, habit, inertia, and many other causes 232 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
have kept most of the Negroes in the South, but the 
opportunities and privileges afforded them in the North 
have been luring ever-increasing numbers away from 
their old homes. The late war by creating numerous 
opportunities for labor in the industries of the northern 
states has greatly accelerated this migration. Mr. 
H. H. Donald, who has made a thorough study of 
Negro migration during the late war period, states, 
“When the Great War came and suddenly removed 
thousands of the aliens from the industries of the 
North, employers experienced such an urgent need 
that they were only too glad to draw freely from the 
Negro population of the South to meet their demands. 
As the economic interests here were paramount, racial 
prejudices were apparently swept aside, and the Ne- 
groes by the thousands were admitted into industries 
hitherto closed to them.” 
There were, according to the last census, 472,418 
more Negroes in the North and West in 1920 than in 
1910. Donald states that “it is clear that a smaller 
number went north for there was some natural in- 
crease,” but I am disposed to believe that a consider- 
ably larger number migrated, because some of the 
migrants died in the North, others (we do not know 
how many) returned before the 1920 enumeration, and 
the natural increase, for reasons to be given later, was 
probably a minus quantity. The number of Negro 
migrants in the war period has been estimated from 
150,000 to over 700,000, but the latter figure is prob- 
ably the more nearly correct. The states in the North BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
233 
and West which gained most in Negro population were 
those of the greatest industrial development. The 
gains in several of the states that increased most in 
Negro population are shown in the following table: 
Increase of Negroes in Several States in the Last 
Two Decades 
States 
1900-1910 
1910-1920 
New York 
34,959 
64,292 
Massachusetts 
6,081 
7,4n 
New Jersey 
19,916 
27,372 
Pennsylvania 
37,074 
90,649 
Ohio 
i4,55i 
74,735 
Indiana 
2,815 
20,490 
Illinois 
23,97i 
73,225 
Michigan 
1,299 
42,967 
Missouri 
-3,782 
20,789 
Arkansas 
76,035 
29,329 
Kansas 
2,027 
3,895 
Oklahoma 
81,928 
11,796 
Nebraska 
1,420 
5,553 
Maryland 
-2,814 
12,229 
District of Columbia .. 
7,744 
15,520 
Virginia 
io,374 
18,921 
West Virginia 
20,674 
22,172 
California 
10,600 
17,118 
Texas 
69,327 
51,645 
Previous to 1910 the bulk of the northern Negro 
migrants came from the border states of the South. 
This explains why Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri 
had an actual decrease of Negroes in this decade, and 234 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
why Virginia’s Negro population increased by only 1.6 
percent as contrasted with a much higher rate of in- 
crease of most states further south. In the war period 
Negroes were drawn more plentifully from all of the 
southern states. Estimates have placed the migrants 
from Alabama at 90,000, from Mississippi at 35,291, 
from Georgia at 48,897, from Louisiana at 16,912, from 
Florida at 10,291, from South Carolina at 27,560, from 
North Carolina at 35,570, and from Virginia at 49,000. 
These are of course only rude approximations, but they 
are indicative of the general trend. Mr. Donald be- 
lieves that there has been a “movement of the Negro 
population from the southern cities to the northern 
industrial centers, while there was going on at the same 
time a movement of the rural Negro population from 
the rural districts in the South into the depleted cities 
to take the place of those migrating to the North.” 
The general character of the Negro migration is an 
important factor in its biological influence upon the 
colored race. It has consisted chiefly of people in 
adolescent or middle age, and it is of peculiar signifi- 
cance that it has included a considerable proportion of 
women in the child-bearing period of life. In many of 
the cities and some of the states of the North, female 
Negroes outnumber the males. The South is therefore 
losing to the North the elements of the colored race 
that would contribute most to its natural increase. 
The effect of this movement on the colored race as 
a whole depends on how the net increase of the mi- 
grants is affected by their change of environment. BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
235 
It is a fact of much significance for his racial pros- 
pects that in the North the Negro becomes predomi- 
nantly a dweller in cities. The 152,467 Negroes in 
New York alone would make a fair-sized city. Phila- 
delphia and Chicago have each more than 100,000 
Negro inhabitants, and Detroit has witnessed a phe- 
nomenal increase in Negro population from 5,741 to 
40,838 in the last inter-censal decade. The extent to 
which the Negroes flock to the cities is best shown by 
the percentages of Negroes living in urban communi- 
ties in the northern states. According to the last 
census the percentage of Negroes living in cities in 
several of the northern states was as follows: Massa- 
chusetts, 95.9; New York, 93.3; Pennsylvania, 84.3; 
New Jersey, 78.8; Ohio, 83.8; Indiana, 88.9; Illinois, 
88.7; Michigan, 91.6; Wisconsin, 83.7; Minnesota, 
93.7; Iowa, 80.7; Kansas, 72.7; Nebraska, 91.5. It is 
of interest to compare with these the percentages of 
urban white population in some of the same states, 
viz., New York, 82.5; Pennsylvania, 63.6; Ohio, 63.2; 
Indiana, 49.5; Illinois, 67.3; Michigan, 60.7; Wiscon- 
sin, 47.4; Iowa, 36.1; Kansas, 33.6; Nebraska, 30.7; 
Minnesota, 44.0. In all of the northern states except 
Rhode Island and Nevada the proportion of their race 
living in cities is greater among Negroes than among 
whites, while the reverse is true of a majority, although 
not a large majority, of the states of the South, the 
exceptions being Virginia, West Virginia, North Caro- 
lina, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, 
most of which are border states. 236 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
That it is the mulattoes that are most prone to mi- 
grate is indicated by the fact that most of the Negroes 
of the North have some white blood. The states hav- 
ing the highest proportion of mulattoes in 1910 were 
Michigan, Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hamp- 
shire, and Massachusetts. The 1920 census shows the 
highest proportion of mulattoes in the New England, 
the Pacific, and the East North Central and Mountain 
States. The decreased proportion of mulattoes in the 
North revealed by the last census is due to several rea- 
sons. The migration of more of the darker Negroes, 
the dying off of previous mulatto migrants in the North 
during the inter-censal period, the low birth rate of the 
northern mulatto, and possibly a diminished amount 
of miscegenation have all conspired to reduce this 
ratio. 
The pure or nearly pure black is much more willing 
to remain amid his old surroundings than the Negro 
with a considerable infusion of white blood. The 
superior intelligence of the mulatto and his greater 
enterprise spur him on to improve his condition and 
to escape from the drawbacks of his status in the South. 
The mulatto has a better opportunity than the black 
in the more genteel occupations of Pullman car porter, 
waiter, barber, and house servant, all of which are pref- 
erable, at least in his opinion, to working in the cotton 
fields. Even in the North the mulatto is a Negro 
among Negroes, but he does not have to send his chil- 
dren to special schools or ride in Jim Crow cars. Eco- 
nomically and educationally the North holds out ad- BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
237 
vantages that make a strong appeal to the more ambi- 
tious spirits of colored extraction. 
Our knowledge of the birth rate of the Negroes is 
very incomplete.1 That it has been high is evident not 
only from direct observation but from the rapid in- 
crease of the Negro population in spite of a high death 
rate. Until recently there were no federal statistics 
of births, and now they are tabulated only for the Reg- 
istration Area in which most of the southern states are 
not included. In the Registration Area the Negro 
birth rate, to judge from rates of increase, is lower 
than in the states not included in it. In 1920 the 
Negro birth rate was so low in several states of the 
1 An index of the falling birth rate of the Negroes is afforded by the 
percentages of children under one year of age for the decades in which 
data on the subject are given. The proportions were as follows: i860, 
2.9; 1870, 3.1; 1900, 2.8; 1910, 2.6; 1920, 2.2. The percentages of chil- 
dren under five are: 1850, 16.5; i860, 16.3; 1870, 16.2; 1880 not given; 
1890, 14.0; 1900, 13.8; 1910, 12.9; 1920, 10.9. The following table affords 
significant data regarding the multiplication of the Negroes as com- 
pared with that of our native and foreign born population: 
Percentages of the Classes of the Population in Different 
Age Groups 
Age group 
Native white of 
foreign parentage 
IQ IO IQ 20 
Native white of 
native parentage 
IQIO IQ 20 
Negro 
IQIO IQ 20 
Under i year.... 
2.8 
2.5 
3-1 
2-5 
2.6 
2.2 
Under 5 years... 
13.2 
12.6 
14.2 
13.1 
12.9 
10.9 
5-9 years 
11.8 
11.9 
12.3 
130 
12.7 
12.1 
10-14 years 
10.8 
11.1 
11.8 
11.4 
11.8 
11.8 
15-19 years 
10.3 
9.6 
II -7 
9.6 
10.8 
10.4 
20-44 years 
35-6 
35-9 
37-5 
36.3 
37-3 
38.2 
Over 45 years... 
18.1 
18.8 
12.6 
16.6 
14-3 
16.4 238 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
North that more Negroes died than were born. This 
is what happened in Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michi- 
gan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, 
Wisconsin, and Kentucky. In the entire Registration 
Area the Negro birth rate was 26.3, whereas the death 
rate was 18.4, the large and increasing colored popu- 
lations of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina 
compensating for the losses in some northern states. 
In the same area the whites had a birth rate of 23.5 
and a death rate of 12.8. Barring migrations (which 
of course we cannot do) this would leave a rate of in- 
crease of 7.9 per 1,000 for the blacks and 10.7 per 1,000 
for the whites. From the ages of the Negro migrants 
to the North one would expect a relatively high birth 
rate. It is our foreign immigrants that keep the birth 
rate of our cities as high as it is, but the Negro influx 
has a different effect. That city life is proving destruc- 
tive to the Negro is clearly indicated by a comparison 
of births and deaths in the northern cities into which 
he is migrating. The following table showing the pro- 
portions of Negroes in certain age groups in rural and 
urban communities of the South, North, and West tells 
very convincingly of the destructive effects of urban 
and northern migration, and especially urban migration 
in the North and West. 
The Negro suffers a very severe handicap in the 
struggle for existence on account of his high death rate. 
According to Glover’s life tables based on the 1910 
census the average expectation of life for the Negro 
male is 35.05 years, and for the Negro female 37.67 BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
239 
years, while for the white man it is 50.23 years and for 
the white woman 53.62 years. Statistics of about one 
and three-quarter million policy-holders of the Indus- 
trial Department of the Metropolitan Life Insurance 
Percentage of Negroes of Certain Ages in Urban and 
Rural Communities of the North, South and West 
Ages 
Total 
Rural 
Urban 
Total United States 
Under 5 
12.9 
14.5 
8.6 
5-i4 
24.4 
27.3 
16.9 
25-44 
26.8 
23.2 
36.6 
South 
Under 5 
134 
14.6 
9.0 
5-i4 
25.6 
27-5 
18.3 
25-44 
25-3 
22.9 
34.3 
North 
Under 5 
8.1 
10.3 
7-5 
5-i4 
i5-3 
20.4 
13-8 
25-44 
38.8 
28.8 
41.7 
West 
Under 5 
64 
6.1 
6.4 
5-i4 
12.2 
13.2 
11.9 
25-44 
44*3 
4i-5 
45-o 
Company give the average length of life of the colored 
male as 37 years, and the colored female as 39 years. 
White male policy-holders of this company average 46 
years, and white females 52 years. According to Dr. 
Dublin, the statistician of this company, “the death 240 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
rate of colored persons is about 60 percent in excess of 
that of our white Industrial policy-holders.” 
The most frequent cause of death in Negroes is 
tuberculosis. Dublin states that the death rate from 
this disease “is more than twice as high among insured 
negroes as among white policy-holders. The disease is 
a veritable scourge among young negroes. At the ages 
between 10 and 14 years the tuberculosis death rate 
among colored boys is eleven times as high as it is 
among the white boys of the same ages. Colored girls 
at the same age period show a tuberculosis death rate 
eight times greater than that of white girls. . . . After 
age 35, there is not much difference in the effect of the 
disease between the two races.” 
Pneumonia ranks high as a cause of death among 
Negroes, especially in northern cities, but the influenza, 
possibly on account of a certain degree of racial im- 
munity, was much less fatal to the Negroes than to the 
whites during the recent epidemic. Typhoid fever, 
hookworm, and malaria cause much sickness and death 
among the Negroes, and some of the degenerative dis- 
eases of later life, such as Bright’s disease and heart 
disease, are especially prevalent among them also. 
Even homicide is no inconsiderable factor in the death 
rate of young males. The statistics of the Negroes in- 
sured in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company 
show that “from 15 to 35 years of age, negro males 
have a homicide rate approximately ten times that of 
white males. At these ages, homicide ranks third as a BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
241 
cause of death, being exceeded only by the figures for 
tuberculosis and the acute respiratory diseases.” 
Venereal diseases among the Negroes are notoriously 
common. The examination of army recruits for the 
late war showed a rate for gonococcus infection about 
six and one-half times as great for the Negroes as for 
the whites, and a rate for syphilis about seven times as 
great as for the whites.1 In the Negroes the rates for 
both these diseases were greater in urban recruits than 
in those from the country. The well-known effect of 
the first of these diseases in causing sterility in both 
sexes is doubtless of no small influence in reducing the 
birth rate among the members of the colored race. 
The disastrous effects of syphilis are more far reaching. 
It is one of the chief causes of abortions and still births, 
and one of the most potent causes of infant mortality. 
In later life, although it is not recorded as a cause of 
death in a very high percentage of cases, it is never- 
theless a contributory cause in a very large number of 
deaths ascribed to some other malady. It strongly 
predisposes people to contract tuberculosis and makes 
the course of that disease especially severe. In all 
probability, the high Negro death rate from tubercu- 
losis is to a considerable extent a secondary conse- 
quence of syphilitic infection. 
Since the period of slavery the biological status of 
the Negro has undoubtedly changed for the worse. 
There are no general statistics of Negro mortality be- 
* See the Report of the Surgeon General, Part 2, p. 2,349, 1920. 242 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
fore emancipation, but a few cities have kept records 
which are probably fairly reliable, and these records 
indicate that Negro death rates were higher after 
emancipation than they were before. Records from 
Charleston, S. C., which are the most complete, show 
that from 1822 to 1860 the Negro death rate was 26.45 
per 1,000, and in the post-war period, from 1866 to 1894 
it had increased to 43.33 per 1,000, the white death rate 
having decreased by 1.56 per 1,000 during the same in- 
terval. Mobile had a Negro death rate of 30.31 per 
1,000 from 1843 to 1855, and 35.60 per 1,000 from 
1876 to 1894. Savannah, Ga., showed also a higher 
Negro mortality after the Civil War than in the period 
from 1856 to 1860. It is not improbable that the trend 
of mortality in these cities prevailed quite widely in the 
cities of the southern states. The examining surgeons 
who compared Negro and white recruits for the army at 
the time of the Civil War were almost unanimous in 
their favorable opinion of the Negro’s fitness for mili- 
tary service. Dr. J. Streeter finds that “in muscular de- 
velopment and freedom from physical disqualifications 
they are superior to the average white man I have 
examined.” Another medical examiner, Dr. Stevenson, 
describes them as “physically well developed, muscular, 
and strong and quite as free from diseases as the 
whites.” In general, from the standpoint of physique 
and general health the Negroes were found to compare 
very favorably with the whites. Statistics of rejections 
from the United States Army showed for all diseases 
that 264.1 per 1,000 were rejected among the white BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
243 
recruits and only 170.2 per 1,000 among the Negroes. 
According to Hoffman, “The opinion of southern 
physicians who practised among negroes before the war 
was almost unanimous that consumption was less fre- 
quent among the colored population than among the 
whites.” The death rate for consumption in Charles- 
ton, S. C., from 1822 to 1848 was a little lower among 
the Negroes (342 per 100,000) than among the 
whites (347 per 100,000), but from 1865 on it was 
over twice as high among the Negroes. Between 1865 
and 1894 the death rate was 213 for whites and 576 
for Negroes. During the same years in which the 
tuberculosis death rate was falling rapidly for the 
whites it was actually rising for the blacks. 
It is significant that of Civil War recruits 11.4 per 
1,000 were rejected because of consumption among 
whites, and only 4.2 per 1,000 among the Negroes. 
About the same percentage of cases occurred among 
white and colored troops during the Civil War, but the 
death rate from this disease was considerably higher 
among the latter (6.31 as compared with 2.18 per 
1,000). In Africa the Negro is reported to be little 
susceptible to tuberculosis. His native freedom from 
this disease he continued to enjoy to a certain extent 
under slavery. In the period following emancipation 
he suffered a rapid increase of this scourge which has 
now become a chief cause of death. 
Venereal diseases among the Negroes have had a 
similar history. During slavery they were much less 
common than they subsequently became. More Ne- 244 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
groes were rejected as recruits during the Civil War on 
account of syphilis than whites (10.7 per 1,000 colored, 
3.8 per 1,000 whites), but there were fewer discharges 
per 1,000 for this disease among the colored troops, and 
a less proportionate admission to hospitals during the 
war. Both gonorrhea and syphilis were less prevalent 
among the colored troops. But it did not take long 
until venereal diseases became widely disseminated. 
“The fact is clearly proven,” says Hoffman, “that im- 
mediately after the war scrofula, syphilis, and other 
venereal diseases were excessively prevalent among the 
colored as compared with the white population.” 
By no means the least important of the factors 
affecting the biological fortunes of the Negro race is 
its increasing infusion of white blood. It is not im- 
probable that this infusion has a direct effect in reduc- 
ing the vitality and fertility of the mulatto, as has so 
frequently been claimed. But, as I have already 
pointed out, this is a question upon which we are in 
need of more information which can be furnished only 
by careful and critical research. As to the relative in- 
crease in the numbers of mulattoes as compared with 
the blacks there can be no doubt. The following table 
showing the relative proportions of blacks and mulat- 
toes in the decennial enumerations since 1860 indicates 
that the mulattoes have increased about twice as fast 
as the Negroes: 
There is, of course, no clear dividing line between 
Negroes and mulattoes, and the personal standards of 
classification of the census enumerators are doubtless BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
245 
subject to a considerable amount of variation. There 
is no good reason for supposing that these standards 
would change on the average in successive decades, 
unless, as suggested in the report of the census, the 
gradual whitening of the race would tend to increase 
the number classed as blacks. Doubtless very large 
numbers classed as black have some white blood in 
Increase of Mulattoes in the United States 
Years 
Per Cent Mulattoes 
Mulattoes to 1,000 blacks 
1850 
11.2 
126 
i860 
13-3 
153 
1870 
12.0 
136 
1890 
15.2 
179 
1910 
20.9 
264 
1920 
I5-9 
188 
them, so that the census figures for mulattoes represent 
less than their actual number.1 One of my anthropo- 
logical colleagues tells me that he has not seen a really 
pure African type for a long time. There may still be 
many pure Negroes in the South, but it is evident, even 
to the casual observer, that in the North and West by 
far the majority of Negroes have some white blood. 
1 According to the census report on the Negroes, “It is probably true 
that a much greater proportion than 20.9 per cent of the Negro popu- 
lation in 1910 were of mixed parentage. The proportion more or less 
affected by the dissemination has been estimated as high as three- 
fourths, and although no adequate data are available to substantiate 
such an estimate, the estimate is not in itself improbable.” 246 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
As a matter of fact, then, the American Negro is well 
on in the process of absorption. Probably he is some- 
where near one-fourth bleached already. Will the 
absorption go on until the black race is completely 
fused with the white? Human history has shown re- 
peatedly that when different races are brought together 
in the same territory, whether as masters and slaves, 
conquerors and conquered, or as sharers in common 
rights, mixture of blood almost invariably follows. 
Even the Jews who have endeavored with remarkable 
persistency to maintain the purity of their race have 
come to exhibit many of the anthropological character- 
istics of the races among whom they dwell. 
From the period of emancipation until the census of 
1910 the trend of the Negro population was clearly in 
the direction of eventual absorption. Another fifty 
years of the same relative increase of mulattoes would 
have produced great changes in the black race. Where 
the effective rates of increase of two stocks differ so 
greatly as those of the mulattoes and the blacks it does 
not take many generations to bring about extensive 
modifications in the composition of the population. 
Unlike the Jews, the Negroes present little resistance 
to amalgamation. Sexual selection favors the indi- 
viduals with a larger admixture of white blood. The 
Negroes are coming to be scattered more extensively 
through the white population, thus increasing the op- 
portunities for racial mixture. Will the mulattoes, 
then, keep on gaining on the blacks? 
In regard to this question the returns of the last BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
247 
(1920) census are of peculiar interest. They show a 
relatively smaller number of mulattoes than would be 
expected in accordance with the previous increase of 
mulattoes over the blacks. What is the reason for this 
change? 
The increase in the number of mulattoes is due in 
part to the natural increase of the mulattoes themselves 
and in part to the unions of whites and blacks. The 
greater part of the latter unions are illegitimate, since 
in most of the southern states and in some states of 
the North marriages of whites and Negroes are pro- 
hibited by law, and where they are legal they rarely 
occur, and they have been on the decrease for several 
years. It is encouraging to believe that the lack of 
the expected increase of mulattoes may be due to edu- 
cation and the development of a better type of morality 
in both whites and blacks. Possibly the crop of mu- 
lattoes represented an after effect of the period of 
slavery which is now beginning to wane. There is un- 
doubtedly a growing realization of venereal dangers in 
illicit sexual relations, and especially with members of 
the colored race. In many sections of the South, I am 
informed, such relations with Negroes are less counte- 
nanced than they formerly were. 
There are also other factors. One of the chief of 
these is the decline of the birth rate among the mulat- 
toes. In the North most of the mulattoes live in cities 
under conditions which make a large family an incon- 
venience. They are rapidly learning to limit their 
families. The drawbacks of their peculiar status make STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EU GENICS 
some of them loth to bring children into an environ‘ 
ment where they will be subject to the restrActions which 
their parents sometimes feel so keenly. ] Undoubtedly 
venereal infection which prevails so wi among 
urban Negroes contributes not a little to t be eduction 
of the birth rate. And the many other di ®ases wb*cb 
sap their vitality and whose effects are ' 
their high rate of mortality work toward llie en^* 
Physically the Negroes have been runm bwn bdl 
since the Civil War.1 Venereal diseases ha ve increased 
among them. In the North and West Neg|°es become 
crowded into cities and subjected in an e: * anced de- 
gree to the unwholesome conditions that _ave ma<*e 
cities in the past destroyers of men. The h peicen- 
tage of mulattoes in the North is due not :50 mucb t0 
the fact they are produced there as to the fa ct tbe 
mulatto, who is more intelligent and enterp r^nS tban 
his darker brother, is more apt to seek his' or^ane bY 
emigrating from the South. The South will rontinue *0 
breed Negroes and mulattoes and pour thein *nto +bp 
1 
1 Prof. J. W. Glover’s recent work, The United Stc^ej.'r of OUr 
1890, 1901,1910, and 1901-1910, issued by the Bureau of 
tains some interesting data on the death rates and tntS'J 
life among Negroes in 1901 and 1910. These tables are b*< COn- 
only in the original Registration Area which did not * £ 
the southern states. The expectation of life for Negroes-h 
somewhat since 1901 when it was 32.54 for males and 35.04 .° j i 0 
The greater expectation of life in 1910 is due almost en , r(5 
reduction of the mortality of infancy and early childhoot ‘ C 
r ■ r is 253.26 for 
portion per 1,000 dying in the first year is given for 1901 majes an(j 
males and 214.75 for females, and for 1910 as 219.35 for 
185.07 for females. As Glover states: “The expectation 
lower among Negro males in 1910 than in 1901 between ag 
and among Negro females between ages 8 and 85.” es x a BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
North. Here they will encounter relatively unfavorable 
climatic conditions which will decimate their ranks. 
To a certain extent they will be further bleached by 
mingling with the whites. Although there may be cer- 
tain economic and educational advantages in coming 
North, it nay be said as a general fact that when the 
Neg*0 tnc n North it goes to its destruction. 
It that the northward migration of the 
Negro will continue to occur in large numbers, although 
eventually he may learn his lesson and remain where 
he can best thrive. When Negroes become scattered 
more widt.y over the country opportunities for race 
mixture will be multiplied, but whether this dilution 
will actually increase race mixture will depend upon 
the attitudes of the races concerned. To what extent 
illegitimate race mixture is going on in the cities of the 
North is difficult to ascertain. But the northern people 
have not adapted themselves to the Negro. It is per- 
haps too soon to venture to say how the northern mi- 
gration of the Negro will affect his fusion with the white 
t Apparently there is less concubinage in the South 
• ic ’y. McCord 1 states, “The fact that sexual 
aween the races is becoming more and more 
ed' to dissolute white men and Negro prostitutes 
J in common with all prostitutes, bear few children 
s 1 rear fewer of them, is rapidly curtailing the infu- 
J 
sion of white blood. The further fact, also, that chil- 
dren from such unions suffer both from vicious environ- 
ment and degenerate heredity tends to make them less 
1 McCord, C. H., The American Negro. 250 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
prolific, even if they reach maturity, and to eliminate 
them by early death, thus cutting off their future 
propagation.” And Duncan1 expresses the opinion 
that “the whites who cohabit with Negro women 
to-day are generally white boys, usually under the age 
of twenty years, and old, broken-down, worn-out men, 
neither of whom are fit to beget children. This was 
quite different from before and for some years after 
the Civil War, when the best blood was infused into 
the Negro.” 
Whatever miscegenation is now going on in the North 
probably results in the infusion of white blood of a 
particularly undesirable kind. The Negro sections of 
our cities are commonly close to the “tenderloin” dis- 
tricts. And the Negro with his strong passions, weak 
inhibitions and his habit of living only in the present 
is typically a ready prey to vice. Du Bois has declared, 
“The Negro Academy ought to sound a note of warn- 
ing that would echo in every black cabin in the land. 
Unless we conquer our present vices they will conquer 
us. We are diseased. We are developing criminal 
tendencies and an alarmingly large percentage of our 
men and women are sexually impure.” 
Doubtless a large amount of race fusion will con- 
tinue to occur for many years to come. The effect of 
this fusion on the white race will depend in large 
measure upon the way in which it is brought about. 
As Mr. H. H. Laughlin has pointed out in a paper on 
1 Duncan, H. G., The Changing Race Relationship in the Border and 
Northern States. Philadelphia, 1922, p. 97. BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
251 
Race Assimilation by the Pure-Sire Method/ where the 
males of one race are constantly given preference over 
the males of another race, while the females of the first 
race do not mate with the second, there will be brought 
about a gradual disappearance of the second race. To 
a certain extent this would occur on the basis of per- 
manent marriages between the races. Marriages be- 
tween white and colored are a negligible factor in the 
United States, but in matings within the colored race 
there is a tendency for colored women to select men of 
a shade lighter than their own. Dr. C. B. Davenport 
who has made extensive studies of the heredity of skin 
color in Negro-white crosses says that “in Bermuda 
and Jamaica dark males have a smaller chance of be- 
coming fathers, and this selection against darker males 
must have a real effect in causing the hybrids to be- 
come, in successive generations, lighter.” In 93 mat- 
ings observed it was found that “in 65 the mother is 
the darker and in 28 the father is the darker.” 
Should this type of marriage selection prevail in the 
United States it cannot be counted on to produce a 
very rapid whitening of the colored race, although it 
would constantly tend in that direction.2 The blacks 
1 Journal Heredity, n, 259-263, 1920. 
2 The white blood in the mulattoes of the United States will prob- 
ably become slowly disseminated throughout the Negro race. In the 
volume on The Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915, it is 
stated that “whatever proportion mulatto future censuses may show 
for the Negro population, it is inevitable that the dissemination of 
white blood within the Negro population shall continue to embrace 
from period to period a larger proportion of that population until in 
fact the entire Negro population is affected,” p. 209. 252 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
are probably becoming whitened more rapidly through 
illegitimate unions between the races. If a colored 
woman has a child by a white father, she is prevented, 
for a time at least, from having a colored child by a 
colored father. The white father does not suffer from 
a corresponding disability; he may still have white 
children from white mothers. If inter-racial unions 
were confined to those between white fathers and Negro 
mothers, or to those between relatively white fathers 
and darker mothers, while the multiplication of the 
whites went on unimpaired, racial assimilation would 
occur entirely at the expense of the colored race. 
These are not the precise conditions that actually exist, 
although they are approximated in the way in which 
race mixture is now working out. Offspring of white 
mothers and black fathers are relatively rare. The 
illegitimate race fusion now going on cannot be said to 
cause no interference with the production of white chil- 
dren,—it may do so in various ways,—but undoubtedly 
it bleaches the blacks much more than it blackens the 
whites. Needless to say, I am not advocating race 
fusion of the kind described. There is an appalling 
damage to both races in the miserable procedure of 
amalgamation,—damage morally, and damage phys- 
ically through venereal disease, and in many other ways 
besides. Unfortunately these results seem to be the 
usual consequences of contact between whites and more 
primitive races all over the world. 
Some have thought that the Negro race in the United 
States is destined to dwindle away and either even- BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
253 
tually disappear or become a minor factor in our prob- 
lems of population. This is the position taken by Mr. 
E. Eggleston in his book on The Ultimate Solution of 
the American Negro Problem. Dr. Raymond Pearl1 
in discussing the vital index of the Negro (the vital 
index is the ratio of 100 births divided by deaths) 
states that “except in the rural districts of the south- 
ern states, practically never does the vital index of the 
negro population rise to a value of as much as 100. 
But plainly any population with a vital index under 
100 is a dying population. . . . Even in rural portions 
of the B. R. A. [Birth Registration Area] the negro 
index does not approach in magnitude the total white 
index nor the native white index for the same com- 
munities. This is true in the southern states as well as 
in northern. It would be difficult to find a more com- 
plete and critical demonstration than that furnished by 
these indices of the fact that the negro is biologically 
a less fit animal, in the American environment, phys- 
ical, social, and general, than the white. . . . Under 
conditions as they are, Nature, by the slow but dread- 
fully sure processes of biological evolution is appar- 
ently solving the negro problem in the United States, 
in a manner which, when finished, will be like all Na- 
ture’s solutions, final, complete, and absolutely definite. 
Just in proportion as the negro becomes anything but 
an agricultural laborer in the southern states does he 
hasten the time of his final extinction in this country.” 
I suspect that the early incompleteness of federal 
1 Pearl, R., American Journal Hygiene, x, p. 664-665, 1921. 254 
STUDIES IN EVOLUTION AND EUGENICS 
statistics on Negro births has led Dr. Pearl somewhat 
to exaggerate the tendency of the Negro race toward 
extinction. Some of the states with the largest Negro 
population have been very recently added to the Birth 
Registration Area. The statistics of Negro births in 
1915 (the first year of the reports on births) showed 
that the Negro birth rate was lower than that for the 
whites, but the subsequent reports indicated a rise of 
the Negro birth rate over that of the whites where it 
has since remained. This was in part due to the addi- 
tion of new states to the Registration Area. The vital 
index has risen to over 100 in several (7) of the states 
which had been running below this from 1915 to 1918 
inclusive, and it was upon the data for these years that 
Dr. Pearl’s conclusions were based. The figures for 
Negro births, as the reports themselves state, are prob- 
ably too low, and they cover for the most part states 
in which the Negroes are thriving least. 
The Negro race is still on the increase in the United 
States, but perhaps the census of 1930 will show that 
it has passed the turning point and begun to diminish 
in numbers. The factors upon which the biological 
fortunes of the Negro depend are many, and they pre- 
sent a varied complex of biological, economic, social, 
and ethical influences that range from the depredations 
of the boll-weevil to the awakenings of the Holy Spirit. 
The few factors which I have briefly discussed vary 
much in their action at different times. Some of them 
will doubtless increase in importance, viz., urban migra- 
tion, and perhaps, for a time at least, northern and BIOLOGICAL FORTUNES OF THE NEGRO 
255 
western migration. Tuberculosis and other respiratory 
diseases will probably decrease. Syphilis also will prob- 
ably decrease. Already life insurance companies are 
recognizing the benefits accruing from improved meth- 
ods of treating this disease. The Negroes will probably 
receive more of the benefits of the active efforts that 
are being made to reduce infant mortality. On the 
other hand, birth control will probably become much 
more prevalent among the Negroes, especially the 
mulattoes, and the residents of urban communities. 
With increasing numbers of Negroes going into indus- 
tries this procedure may soon reduce their birth rate 
until their deaths outnumber their births. The Ne- 
groes will have to make their way in the future against 
an ever-increasing pressure of the white population. 
The checks to population growth which automatically 
limit the natural increase of human beings will bear 
with especial severity upon the Negro. He will be 
likely to encounter increased race prejudice in the 
North if he continues to come in increasing numbers. 
Prediction of the eventual fate of his race in the United 
States is a precarious undertaking, but at present it 
must be admitted that his prospects are not good. 
THE END INDEX 
Agassiz, L., on race crossing, 217 
Alcohol, hereditary effects of, 26, 
42-44, 98-101 
Allen, J. A., 10, 11 
Ammon, O., natural selection in 
man, 95 
Ansell, C., effects of order of 
birth, 175 
Aristotle, 68, 170 
Ashby, H. F., infant mortality, 
152 
Bach family, 131 
Balzac, H., on heredity, 129 
Bateson, Wm., on variation, 26-31, 
124, 125 
Beauty, racial effects of, 166, 167 
Bell, A. G., longevity of parents 
and mortality of their children, 
142, 190, 191 
Bernhardi, Gen., 95 
Bertillon, J., sex ratio of abortions, 
146, 147 
Besant, Mrs. Annie, 106, 181 
Birth control, 167, 179-193, 255 
Birth rate, 70-72, 79, 80, 96, 102- 
105, 151, 162, 204, 237, 238, 241, 
247, 253-253 
Boas, F., Indian-white crosses, 219, 
220 
Boer-Hottentot crosses, 219, 221 
Bonnet, C., 29 
Bridges, C. B., 20 
Bumpus, H. C., natural selection, 
24 
Candolle, A. de, inheritance of 
ability, hi, 113 
Carr-Saunders, A. M., natural se- 
lection in man, 155 
Castle, Wm., effects of selection, 
19, 20 
Cattell, J. McK., ability and birth 
rank, 176 
Cesnola, A. P. de, 24 
Chamberlain, H. S., 91 
Chromosomes, 17, 18, 21, 22, 38, 41, 
60 
Clausen, R. E., 224 
Conklin, E. G., 153 
Constable, F. L., on heredity of 
ability, hi, 112, 128 
Cooley, C. H., ability and oppor- 
tunity, in 
Darwin, C. R., 3-17, 22, 24, 25, 27, 
28, 32, 33, 37, 39-41, 86, 97, 108, 
205, 218 
Darwin, L., 204 
Davenport, C. B., variation and 
germinal loss, 29; inheritance of 
epilepsy, 122; of ability, 124; 
sexual selection in Negroes, 
251 
Degeneration, 49-62, 65, 73, 75 
Delage, Y., 51 
De Vries, H., mutation theory, 14- 
16, 20, 31, 205 
Donald, H. H., Negro migration, 
232, 234 
Driesch, H., 15 
Drosophila, mutations of, 17, 18, 
21-24, 40-43 . 
Drysdale, C. V., on birth control, 
183, 184, 186 
257 258 
INDEX 
Dublin, L. I., mortality of Negroes, 
239-241 
Du Bois, on Negro vices, 250 
Duke, E., infant mortality, 159 
Duncan, B. S., 159 
Duncan, H. G., 250 
Dunlap, K., sexual selection in 
man, 166 
East, E. M., effects of selection, 
20, 21 
Eggleston, E., the Negro problem, 
253 
Eimer, O., 12 
Elderton, E. M., inheritance of 
ability, 109 
Ellis, H., birth rank of men of 
genius, 175, 176; birth control, 
184 
Eugenics, 62-109, 179-188, 194-206 
Ewart, R. J., effect of age of 
parents on offspring, 173 
Feeble mindedness, inheritance of, 
121-123 
Fielding-Hall, H., on eugenics, 
196-201 
Fischer, E., on Boer-Hottentot hy- 
brids, 219, 221, 225 
Gallichan, W. M., 164 
Galton, F., heredity of ability, 108- 
iii, 114, 118, 119; effect of order 
of birth, 175, 176; age of mar- 
riage and fertility, 165; on eu- 
genics, 194, 195, 198, 203 
Genes, 19, 20, 21, 38, 39, 60 
Germinal selection, 59-61, 78 
Gesell, A., precocious twins, 120 
Gini, C., effect of parental age on 
offspring, 172, 176 
Glover, J. W., life tables, 238, 248 
Gobineau, Count de, 91 
Goddard, H. H., 122 
Goff, J. G, selective death rate of 
infants, 142 
Goodspeed, T. H., 224 
Grant, Madison, racial inequality, 
9i 
Grinnell, J., isolation and the ori- 
gin of species, 10 
Gulick, L., effects of isolation on 
species forming, 10, 11 
Guyer, M. F., inherited eye de- 
fects, 44; natural selection in 
man, 153 
Haeckel, E., natural selection in 
man, 81, 82, 86 
Haemophilia, mortality from, 155 
Hagedoorn, A. L., 20 
Haller, 29 
Hoffman, F. L., race mixture, 220; 
Negro mortality, 243, 244 
Holmes, S. J., 142, 148 
Humphrey, S., disharmonious hy- 
brids, 219 
Hunt, cranial capacity of mulat- 
toes, 221 
Hurst, C. C., inheritance of musi- 
cal talent, 123 
Huxley, T. H., argument from de- 
sign, s, 36 
Hyde family, longevity of, 142, 191 
Immigration, racial effects of, 207- 
216 
Inbreeding, effects of, 218 
Infant mortality, 134-152, 159-162, 
176, 177 
Isolation, relation to the origin of 
species, 10, 11, 13 
Jacoby, ability and opportunity, 
hi 
Jenkin, Fleeming, on the origin of 
species, 10 INDEX 
259 
Jenks, J. W., on immigration, 211, 
212 
Jerome, Saint, 106 
Johannsen, W. L., 20 
Jordan, D. S., 202; isolation and 
species forming, 10, 11; bio- 
logical effects of war, 66 
Jordan’s law, 11 
Juke family, 104, 128, 168, 174, 
203 
Kallikak family, 104, 122, 128, 168, 
174, 203 
Kidd, B., on natural selection in 
man, 82-86 
Kingsley, N. W., effects of race 
mixture on teeth, 224 
Lamarck, J., 7 
Lamarckism, 7, 14, 45, 49, 50, 63, 
81, 174 
Lankester, E. Ray, panmixia, 51; 
natural selection in man, 153 
Lapouge, G. Vacher de, on natural 
selection, 95; on race crossing, 
217 
Laughlin, H. H., 250 
Leibnitz, 29 
Lombroso, C., genius and degen- 
eracy, 124 
Lotsy, J. P., on variation due to 
crossing, 27, 37 
MacDonald, selection in man, 24 
MacDowell, E. C., alcohol and 
heredity in rats, 44 
Malthus, T. R., 182 
Mann, M., germinal stability, 42, 
43 
McCord, C. H., mixture of whites 
and Negroes, 249 
Mendel, G., 15, 17, 37, 55, 73, 121, 
129 
Mendelism, 15, 17-23, 26-31, 37-42, 
45, 55, 73, 119, 121-131, 223-226 
Merriam, C. H., on geographical 
variation, 10 
Milum, J. P., on eugenics, 204, 205 
Moltke, von, on effects of war, 95 
Moreau, J. J., 124 
Morgan, C. Lloyd, panmixia, 51 
Morgan, T. H., on mutations, 17, 
18, 20, 24, 31; on Darwinism, 32 
Mutation, 13-22, 31, 32, 41-43, 205 
Natural selection, 5-14, 22-25, 33- 
61, 62-69, 77, 78, 81-97, 102, 134- 
162, 205, 206, 253-255 
Negroes, 143, 144, 146, 217, 220, 
221, 227, 229-255 
Neo-Malthusianism, 151, 179-193 
Nordau, Max, degeneration and 
genius, 124 
Novicow, J., effects of race cross- 
ing, 217 
Odin, A., heredity and genius, in, 
112 
(Enothera, mutations of, 42 
Orthogenesis, 8, 23, 24 
Paley, Wm., design argument, 12, 
36 
Panmixia, 7, 8, 49-62 
Pauly, A., 39 
Pearl, R., hereditary effect of al- 
cohol, 100; Negro birth and 
death rates, 253, 254 
Pearson, K., heredity of ability, 
109-111; birth rate, 70; selection 
in man, 24, 89, 139, 142; inferior- 
ity of first born, 191; on Gabon’s 
views of eugenics, 194 
Plato, ideas on race improvement, 
68 
Ploetz, A., infant mortality and 
longevity of parents, 24, 142, 151 INDEX 
260 
Powys, A. O., 190 
Prinzing, F., sex ratio of abor- 
tions, 147 
Prostitution, racial effects of, 162 
Quatrefages, J. L. A., effects of 
race mixture, 217 
Quetelet, biometric methods, 108 
Race Mixture, 216-228 
Redfield, C. L., age of parents and 
genius, 173-176 
Rehobother hybrids of Africa, 219, 
221, 225 
Reid, G. A., selective action of 
disease, 155 
Richardson, sexual selection 
among Indians, 68 
Romanes, G. J., on Weismannism, 
7; isolation and the formation 
of species, 10; panmixia, 51, 57 
Roosevelt, T., on race suicide, 192; 
on immigration, 214 
Roux, Wm., intra selection, 9 
Rowntree, S., age of marriage of 
skilled and unskilled workers, 
175 
Rubin, M., 175 
Salisbury, Lord, natural selection, 
8, 24 
Sanger, M., on birth control, 184 
Schallmayer, W., biological effects 
of war, 94 
Schiller, F. C. S., natural selec- 
tion and teleology, 39 
Schultz, A. P., race crossing, 217 
Schuster, E., inheritance of ability, 
109 
Seashore, C.. E., inheritance of 
musical talent, 130 
Sexual selection in man, 68, 77, 78, 
163-169, 246, 251 
Snow, E. C., natural selection in 
man, 139 
Spencer, H., 7, 34; natural selec- 
tion in man, 81 
Stanton, H., inheritance of musical 
talent, 130 
Steinmetz, S. R., biological effects 
of war, 94, 95 
Stockard, C. R., alcohol and he- 
redity, 26, 43, 44, 99-101 
Talbot, E. S., on effect of race 
crossing on teeth, 224 
Thorndike, E. L., on inheritance 
and training, 116; on twins, 119. 
Topinard, P., cranial capacity of 
mulattoes, 221; race mixture, 
219 
Tower, W. L., mutations, 24, 26 
Tribe of Ishmael, 203 
Twins, 118-121 
Variation, 5, 8, 10, 12, 16-32, 34-46, 
50-61, 96-98, 102, 108 
Wagner, M., on effects of isolation, 
10, 11 
Wallace, A. R., natural selection 
and man, 8; species forming and 
geographical distribution, 10, 11; 
sexual selection in man, 103, 104 
War, racial effects of, 64-69, 77, 
82-95 
Ward, J., natural selection and 
teleology, 39 
Ward, L. F., genius and opportu- 
nity, hi, 112 
Weeks, D. F., inherited epilepsy, 
122, 123 
Weidemann, Mrs. P., inheritance 
of musical ability, 130, 131 
Weismann, A., heredity, 7, 23, 170, INDEX 
261 
171; natural selection, 7, 35; pan- 
mixia, 49-Si, 58-61; germinal se- 
lection, 59-61 
Weldon, W. F. R., natural selec- 
tion, 24 
Westergaard, H., age of marriage 
and status, 175 
Whooping cough, sex mortality in, 
145, 147, 148, 149 
Wolf, G., panmixia, 51 
Woods, F. A., inherited ability, 
109 
Yoder, A. H., age of parents of 
men of genius, 175, 176