The Project Gutenberg eBook, Abstracts of Papers Read at the First International Eugenics Congress, by Various
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Table of Contents
READ AT
The First International Eugenics Congress,
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.
JULY, 1912.
ENGLISH.
CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., Ltd., 227-239, Tooley Street, London, S.E.
Section I.
Biology and Eugenics.
[VARIATION AND HEREDITY IN MAN. (Abstract.)]
By Professor G. Sergi, Professor of Anthropology, Rome.
In his paper Professor G. Sergi wishes to show that in man after his morphological characteristics are established there occur no profound variations to change the typical forms which are naturally persistent.
The principal discussion concerns the different forms of the skull which are important as characteristics of race. Professor Sergi distinguishes in the human skull two principal and primordial forms: the dolichomorphic and the brachymorphic are both very ancient, as they are found contemporaneously in European human fossils. Consequently he attacks the idea of the transformation of one form into another. He does not find it demonstrated that the dolichomorphic type is transformed into the brachymorphic, and considers the causes adduced for this supposed transformation insufficient. It is neither the effect of environment of the plains or of the mountains, or the climatic influence of extreme cold, or the increase of volume of the brain supposed to be due to greater cerebral activity owing to a more developed culture, that the form of the skull is transformed into another type. All these suppositions are contrary to facts, because dolichomorphic and brachymorphic skulls are found alike in mountain and plain, in northern and southern regions, among primitive and civilized populations, in fact without any distinction.
The mutations that are believed to be found in the different populations are due to the effect of intermixture and penetration of new demographical elements, and not to the transformation of forms. That is also proved by the crossing of the two different human types from which no intermediary forms are derived: but instead there occurs in the heredity a segregation analagous to that under the Mendelian theory. If this were not so, to-day after many thousands of years of intermixture of the most diverse races, there would be but a single form derived from transformation; the demonstration of the facts proves that this has not occurred.
There is a great persistence in human physical forms, the variability is minimum after the formation of the races, and does not effect the changes of type.
The same fact can be noticed for the external characteristics of man, such as the colour of the skin, the colour and form of the hair, and the colour of the iris. It is solely in the crossings that there can be intermediary formations which have not indefinite heredity, because the segregation of characteristics takes place also in this case.
But the studies and observations on this matter are still incomplete, especially according to the Mendelian theory, and there is need of new and careful observation.
As to the pathological inheritance, there exist facts that confirm it in a general way, but the laws under which this heredity occurs have not been fully verified.
[ON THE INCREASE OF STATURE IN CERTAIN EUROPEAN POPULATIONS.]
(Abstract.)
By Soren Hansen, M.D.,
Director of the Danish Anthropological Survey, Copenhagen.
The improvement in stature in many European countries during the past 50 years is generally ascribed simply to improved hygienic and economic conditions, but the question is really very intricate. The presence of different racial elements, social selection with its tendency to draw the well-made into towns, and the falling death-rate, etc., complicate the investigations. In all countries there is a great lack of truly comparable data from earlier years. The British Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, for example, though it collected an enormous amount of material, was unsuccessful in its endeavours to solve the main question. Single cases, e.g., the comparison of factory children with the boys of the York Quaker school (Anthropometric Committee, Brit. Ass. 1883), are certainly of great interest, but how can such cases be taken to represent the average?
Other countries possess a rich source of information in their conscription lists. Thus, in Denmark these lists show an unmistakable increase of 3.7 cm. (11/2 inch) in the average height of the adult Dane during the past 50-60 years. Similar increases are noted from Norway, Sweden and Holland. This increase suggests that there may have been more or less periodic waves of increase and decrease in height, since, on the one hand, we cannot imagine such an increase continuing indefinitely, and on the other, we know that the men of, say, 1000 years ago were quite as tall as they are at present. What are the agencies alternately improving or impairing the racial qualities? First of all, have we sufficiently exact, numerical information regarding the racial qualities?
A critical examination of all available data is very necessary. For example, the weight of new-born children is stated to have increased in England by 59 and 82 grams during the past 20 years, and in Denmark we can point to an increase of 40 grams in 35 years. But when we consider all the possible sources of error, it must be admitted that these statements, and especially the former, require confirmation. The material is not homogenous. Again, it is stated, that the average height of adult women in France has increased by 3 cm. in the last 80 years—but when we read that the total number of measurements in the last period was only 255, we cannot rely very much upon this statement.
On the whole, it may be said, that we have a few cases of definite increase and a goodly number very doubtful. We really need to have the first of the principal recommendations of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration carried out in all countries, for, the more we subject the available data to critical scrutiny, the more we see the hopelessness of attaining to any real and fruitful conclusions, unless we have an efficient organisation of capable workers, backed by governmental as well as private support.
[THE SO-CALLED LAWS OF INHERITANCE IN MAN.]
(Abstract.)
By Professor V. Guiffrida-Ruggeri,
Professor of Anthropology, Naples.
The Mendelian laws find verification in man. Every race, whether a sub-species or a variety, has an hereditary possession of certain characters; a possession which is completely transmitted to the descendants, in whom is preserved the same germ plasm as in the progenitors.
The researches of C. B. and G. Davenport seem to have proved the recessive character of albinism and its obedience to the Mendelian law. Hurst has presented figures which show that the inheritance of colour in the iris of the human eye obeys Mendelian laws. Davenport has established the order of dominance by the form of hair, which also obeys the Mendelian law.
De Quatrefages, many years before the re-affirmation of Mendel's discoveries, wrote:—
"The union of individuals of different races involves a contest between their two natures—a contest of which the theatre is the field where the new being is organised. Now, this contest does not take place en bloc, so to speak, as has been generally admitted. Each of the characters of the two parents struggles on its own account against the corresponding character (its antagonist, as has just been said). When the hereditary energy is equal on both sides there necessarily ensues a kind of process of which the consequence is the fusion of the maternal and paternal characters in an intermediate character. If the energies are very unequal the hybrid inherits a character borrowed entirely from one of his parents; but this parent, conqueror on one point, may be conquered upon another. Hence, there results with the hybrid a juxtaposition of characters derived from each of the types of which he is the child."
Above all, I have wished to call attention to the so-called laws of dominance, because of their great importance. We may conclude that in the case of man the dominant characters are also the original ones.
[THE INHERITANCE OF FECUNDITY.]
(Abstract.)
By Raymond Pearl,
Biologist, Maine Agricultural Experiment Station.
The purpose of this paper is to give an account (necessarily abbreviated, and without presentation of complete evidence) of the results of an investigation into the mode of inheritance of fecundity in the domestic fowl, and to point out some of the possible eugenic bearings of these results.
It is shown that while the continued selection, over a period of years, of highly fecund females failed to bring about any change in average fecundity of the strain used, this character must nevertheless be inherited since pedigree lines have been isolated which uniformly breed true to definite degrees of fecundity.
It is further shown that observed variations in actually realized fecundity (number of eggs laid) do not depend upon anatomical differences in respect to the number of visible oöcytes in the ovary. The differential factor on which the variations in fecundity depend must be primarily physiological.
Fecundity in the fowl is shown to be inherited in strict accord with the following Mendelian plan:—
1. Observed individual variations in fecundity depend essentially upon two separately inherited physiological factors (designated L1, and L2).
2. High fecundity is manifested only when both of these factors are present together in the same individual.
3. Either of these factors when present alone, whether in homozygous or heterozygous form, causes about the same degree of low fecundity to be manifested.
4. One of these factors, namely L2, is sex-limited or sex-correlated in its inheritance, in such way that in gametogenesis any gamete which bears the female sex-determinant F does not bear L2.
5. There is a definite and clear-cut segregation of high fecundity from low fecundity, in the manner set forth above.
From the standpoint of eugenics it is pointed out that these results furnish a new conception of the mode of inheritance of fecundity, and may be helpful in suggesting a method of attacking the same problem for man.
[ETHNIC PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS.]
(Abstract.)
By Prof. Enrico Morselli,
Director of the Clinic for Mental and Nervous Diseases, Genoa University.
All natural varieties or races of mankind differ, not only by their physical, but also by their mental, characters. There exists, therefore, an "Ethnic Psychology" which, along with "Ethnic Somatology," constitutes the complete Science of Anthropology or the Natural History of Man. This must describe and classify races and populations under a double aspect—physical and psychical.
The psychical characters of races are in part original, and in part acquired through adaptation. These persist in a race as long as such mesological adaptation lasts; they vary with modifications of the conditions of life, including social activities and inter-racial relations.
In mixed unions, amongst different races, there are always some which are more vigorous, biologically and mentally, more fully developed, which impress their characters upon their descendants. For the vitality and well-being of mixed or metamorphic populations a certain amount of difference amongst the parent races is necessary, but too great a difference is injurious to the offspring.
The offspring of mixed unions present in their psychology a mixture, again a combination or fusion of the mental characters of the parent races: sometimes certain psychical characters of a race become the dominant characters.
All ethnic groupings have their destiny marked out by the grade attained in the human psycho-physical hierarchy. Nevertheless, it is necessary that each race or nation, when it knows its contribution to the development of universal civilisation, should contemplate the preservation of its own ethnic type. Differentiation amongst peoples is an indispensable factor in human progress.
The science of eugenics should not look for the realisation of a uniform type of man, but vary its aims and methods according to the natural differentiation of races and nations, taking account of ethnic psychology equally with ethnic somatology.
The humanity of the future will be physically and mentally superior to the existing humanity, but the amelioration of the species ought not to aim at the equality of races and populations. These races and populations ought not to lose their acquisition of particular adaptations to different conditions of existence.
A science of universal or common eugenics should allow a eugenic ethnology to exist, which should indicate and facilitate for each race or nation the defence and propagation of its own physical type and its own mentality. The most vigorous and dominant races will always be those which know how to create and preserve in sexual unions their characteristics of structure and culture.
[THE INHERITANCE OF EPILEPSY.]
(Abstract.)
By David Fairchild Weeks, M.D.,
Medical Superintendent and Executive Officer, the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics at Skillman, U.S.A.
In this paper the writer has endeavoured to learn what laws, if any, epilepsy follows in its return to successive generations, and the relation it bears to alcoholism, migraine, paralysis, and other symptoms of lack of neural strength.
The data used in the study was analysed according to the Mendelian method which assumes that the inheritance of any character is not from the parents, grandparents, etc., but from the germ plasm out of which every fraternity and its parents and other relatives have arisen. If the soma possesses the trait of the recessive to normality sort, it lacks in its germ plasm the determiner upon which the normal development depends, and this condition is called nulliplex. If the soma possesses the trait of the dominant to normality sort, the determiner was derived from both parents and is double in the germ plasm, or normal, all of the germ cells have the determiner; or else it came from one parent only, is single in the germ plasm, or simplex, and half of the germ cells have and half lack the determiner.
The method of obtaining the data was by means of field workers, who interviewed in their homes the parents, relatives and all others interested in the epileptic patient. These visits have established a friendly feeling toward and an intelligent understanding of the Institution and its work.
The study is based on the data derived from 397 histories, covering 440 matings.
The matings are classified under the six possible types, of nulliplex × nulliplex, nulliplex × simplex, nulliplex × normal, simplex × simplex, simplex × normal, and normal × normal.
Under the first type all those matings where both parents were epileptic, one was epileptic and the other feeble-minded, or both were feeble-minded, are classified. According to Mendel's Law, all of the children should be nulliplex. The data showed all of the children defective.
Under the type nulliplex × simplex, all matings where one parent was epileptic or feeble-minded and the other "tainted," that is, alcoholic, neurotic, migrainous, or showed some mental weakness, are classified. From this type of mating, 50% of the offspring are expected to be nulliplex and 50% simplex. From the matings where one parent was epileptic or feeble-minded and the other alcoholic, there were 61% mentally deficient or nulliplex, the remainder simplex. The figures for the offspring from the other matings showed 47% nulliplex, and 53% simplex.
For the third type, nulliplex by normal, all those matings where one parent was epileptic or feeble-minded and the other reported as mentally normal are classified. From this type of mating, the expectations are that all of the children would be simplex. A study of the ancestors of the normal parents showed these parents simplex rather than normal. The analysis of the offspring showed at least 43% nulliplex, which is a close fitting to the type of mating nulliplex × simplex.
The fourth type of mating is simplex × simplex. Here, all matings where both of the parents were "tainted" are classified. The expectation is that 25% of the offspring would be nulliplex, in reality 35% were found to be mentally deficient.
Simplex × normal is the fifth type of mating considered. The matings where one parent was tainted and the other supposedly normal, are classified here. From a study of their ancestors these normal parents appeared to be simplex, and the classification of the offspring showed more than 25% nulliplex, which is the expectation from simplex × simplex mating.
The sixth type is normal × normal, and the matings where both parents were reported normal is studied under this heading. Here, as before, a study of the ancestors of these normal parents indicates that they are simplex, and not normal. The classification of the children showed a close fitting to the expectation from a simplex × simplex mating.
A special study of the matings where one or both of the parents was migrainous or alcoholic, shows a close relationship between these conditions and epilepsy.
The following conclusions are drawn from the study.
The common types of epileptics lack some element necessary for complete mental development. This is also true of the feeble-minded.
Two epileptic parents produce only defectives. When both parents are either epileptic or feeble-minded their offspring are also mentally defective.
Epilepsy tends in successive generations to form a larger part of the population.
The normal parents of epileptics are not normal but simplex, and have descended from tainted ancestors.
Alcohol may be a cause of defect in that more children of alcoholic parents are defective than where alcoholism is not a factor.
Neurotic and other tainted conditions are closely allied with epilepsy.
In the light of present knowledge, epilepsy, considered by itself, is not a Mendelian factor, but epilepsy and feeble-mindedness are Mendelian factors of the recessive type.
Tainted individuals, as neurotics, alcoholics, criminals, sex offenders, etc., are simplex and normals or simplex and normal in character.
[THE INFLUENCE OF THE AGE OF PARENTS ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE OFFSPRING.]
(Abstract.)
By Antonio Marro,
Director of the Lunatic Asylum, Turin.
The natural law of heredity holds good whether for the physical characteristics or for those which are biological and moral.
The apparent anomalies which children present in not reproducing the qualities of the parents, and the unlikeness frequently noted among the children of the same family, only serve to reveal the presence of the particular conditions of the parents at the time of begetting which has influenced the offspring.
We have a proof of this law in the anomalies presented by the children of parents who, at the time of begetting, were themselves in anomalous conditions by reason of intoxication or disease.
Among the conditions of parents which are capable of influencing the characteristics of children must be included the changes which their organism undergoes by reason of advancing age.
I propose to study the effects of age on the physical and moral characters of the children. My researches have extended to numerous criminals and insane persons, as well as to scholars of the public schools and other normal persons affected or not with special diseases.
Of my studies on criminals, the result is: that the children of young parents are found in large numbers guilty of offences against property; and this is natural. The first impulse to that is not due to wickedness, which impels them to inflict harm on others, but to love of pleasure, of revel, of idleness—all features of youth, during which period the passions are very active, and no restraint present with which to repress and subjugate them.
Swindlers alone are exceptions to this rule, but swindling is a crime of riper years, according to the dictum of Quetelet.
Among crimes of personal violence, I have found a numerical superiority in the children of aged parents. Assassins, homicides, those who show the completest absence of sentiments of affection and often delusions of persecution more or less pronounced, gave a proportion of children of aged parents far greater than that furnished by all the other categories of delinquents; the proportion is as high for fathers as for mothers of advanced age.
Here, too, we note a certain correlation between the state of discontent, of suspicion, of frigid egoism, which the decline of physical energy tends to arouse in the old, and the absence of affectionate sentiment and a tendency to delusions of persecution which are usual in murderers. Among the insane, moral idiocy in particular, and the degenerative forms in general, appeared more frequently in children of aged parents.
As to schoolboys, I have noticed that the minimum of good conduct and the maximum of better developed intelligence coincides with the possession of youth by both parents.
The age of complete development corresponds to a maximum of good conduct and a minimum of bad conduct, and retains a large proportion of intelligent children.
In the period of decline of both parents, good conduct of children is observed in a smaller proportion than in the preceding period, and high intelligence in a very small proportion.
Among biological qualities I have made observations on longevity; among persons of 70 and 80 whom I have examined there is a large proportion of parents who themselves enjoyed remarkably long lives, which proves the transmissibility from father to son of powers of resistance against the stresses of life.
Among physical qualities I have made note of the fact that from alcoholic or aged parents were descended children in whom degenerative physical characteristics were most frequently apparent, recalling some features of an inferior human type, such as exaggeration of the frontal sinuses, the torus occipitalis, ears with the Darwinian tubercles prominent, the forehead receding, etc. At the same time the ascendants of those who presented typical and anomalous characters, due to morbid influences of various kinds and following on faulty development of the fœtus, such as cretinism, congenital goître, nasal deflections, strabismus, plagio-cephaly, hydrocephaly, dental malformation, etc., showed a large number of alcoholics and epileptics.
The explanation of the pernicious consequences to the psycho-physical characters of the children of parents too young or too advanced in age does not present much difficulty.
At the younger period the organism is still in process of formation; the incomplete development of the skeleton, as of all the other organs, continually absorbs a mass of plastic materials necessary to the formation of offspring. So we may consider that the faults of children born of too young parents are due to an incomplete development because of the insufficiency of plastic material.
We must, on the other hand, seek in the conditions which accompany old age for the reason why it has a disastrous influence on the vitality of the germinal elements of the parents and predisposes the descendants to various forms of physical and moral degeneracy.
During this period we have in the tissues, instead of a development and renewal of protoplasm, the tendency to an accumulation of fat; and in the whole organism, chiefly in the tissues of the arterial system, we find the tendency to a deposit in their structure of an amorphous substance which converts the supple elastic canals into rigid tubes; and from this a general slowing up of the organic functions (circulation, oxidation, secretion) results; the blood, not reaching the degree of elaboration which it possessed before, acquires a greater acidity, and cannot by the ordinary excretory channels so quickly get rid of the catabolic products with which it is charged.
By reason of these conditions the organism of older people undergoes a sort of slow and gradual intoxication, which, at the same time as it shows itself in the individual by the gradual languishing of all his functions, influences in a disastrous manner the germs which develop within him, and predisposes them to become beings condemned to degeneracy.
Consequently this cause of degeneracy enters the general category of intoxications.
(Abstract.)
By R. C. Punnett,
Professor of Biology, Cambridge.
To the student of genetics, man, like any other animal, is material for working out the manner in which characters, whether physical or mental, are transmitted from one generation to the next. Viewed in this way he must be regarded as unpromising, not only from the small size of his families, the time consumed in their production, and the long period of immaturity, but also because full experimental control is here out of the question. For these reasons man is of interest to the student of genetics, chiefly in so far as he presents problems in heredity which are rarely to be found in other species, and can only be studied at present in man himself. The aim of the Eugenist, on the other hand, is to control human mating in order to obtain the largest proportion of individuals he considers best fitted to the form of society which he affects. It is evident that to do this effectually he must have precise knowledge of the manner in which transmission of characters occurs, and more especially of those with which he particularly wishes to deal. Precise knowledge is at present available in man for relatively few characters; and those characters, such as eye-colour, and certain somewhat rare deformities, are not the kind on which the Eugenist lays great stress. The one instance of eugenic importance that could be brought under immediate control is that of feeble-mindedness. Speaking generally, the available evidence suggests that it is a case of simple Mendelian inheritance. Occasional exceptions occur, but there is every reason to expect that a policy of strict segregation would rapidly bring about the elimination of this character.
There is reason to suppose that many human qualities are more complicated in their transmission, and it is probable that certain phenomena now being studied in plants and animals will throw definite light upon man. Though characters are frequently transmitted on the Mendelian scheme quite independently of one another, there are cases known in which they are linked up more or less completely in the germ cells with the determinant of a particular sex. Sex-limited inheritance of this nature has been carefully worked out in particular cases in Lepidoptera and poultry. As yet there is much to be learnt in this direction, and further progress may be expected to lead eventually to a precise knowledge of the mode of transmission of many human defects, such as colour-blindness and hæmophilia. It is not unlikely that a similar mode of transmission will be found to hold good for many human characters usually classed as normal.
Another set of phenomena which will probably be found of importance in the heredity of man are those included under the terms "coupling" and "repulsion." Characters, each exhibiting simple Mendelian segregation, may become linked together more or less completely in the process of heredity, or the reverse may occur. Our knowledge of these phenomena is at present almost completely confined to cases in plants, but evidence is beginning to be obtained for their occurrence in animals. It is not unlikely that they will be found to play a considerable part in human heredity. For one of the most noticeable things about man is the frequency with which children resemble one or other parent to the seemingly almost complete exclusion of the other. In view of the mongrelisation of the human race, the frequency of these cases is very remarkable, and can hardly fail to suggest that some sort of coupling between characters plays a large part in human heredity.
Except in very few cases, our knowledge of heredity in man is at present far too slight and too uncertain to base legislation upon. On the other hand, experience derived from plants and animals has shewn that problems of considerable complexity can be unravelled by the experimental method, and the characters concerned brought under control. Though the direct method is hardly feasible in man, much may yet be learnt by collecting accurate pedigrees and comparing them with standard cases worked out in other animals. But it must be clearly recognised that the collection of such pedigrees is an arduous undertaking demanding high critical ability, and only to be carried out satisfactorily by those who have been trained in and are alive to the trend of genetic research.
Section II.
Practical Eugenics.
[GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS UPON "EDUCATION BEFORE PROCREATION."]
(Abstract.)
By Adolphe Pinard,
Professor at the Faculty; Member of the Academy of Medicine of Paris.
Sir Francis Galton has entitled Eugenics the new science having for its object the study of the causes subject to social control which can improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physical or mental.
Eugenics, thus defined, is nothing else but "Education before Procreation," which has been studied in France for a number of years, and which constitutes the first part of child-culture, "a science having for its object the search for information relative to the reproduction, preservation, and improvement of the human species"( [1]).
[ [1] v. De la Puériculture in Revue Scientifique, 1897.
The Congress ought then to have for its object to work for the investigation of the conditions necessary to secure a favourable procreation. Now, it appears that the word "Eugenics," from the etymological point of view, does not characterise either explicitly or sufficiently the proposed object, while the word "Eugénique," of [Greek: gennaô], at once recalls to the mind the idea of a favourable procreation( [2]).
[ [2] Besides, the word "Eugenics" recalls in France a chemical term: eugenic-acid.
It is part of the duty of our first principal sitting to lay down a rule upon this point.
Certainly, biological, sociological, and historical researches, laws and social customs regarded in their relations with the science of Eugenics, are necessary and will undoubtedly result in extremely interesting data, but from now it is above all things urgent to establish and proclaim eugenic principles.
Researches relating to physiological heredity and pathological heredity ought to be pursued without interruption, but it is necessary to make known as soon as possible to the masses of the people the individual conditions, fully understood, which alone permit a favourable and healthy procreation. In a word, it is necessary, by every means and as soon as possible, to organise a great movement in order to show to the greatest number of human beings the absolute necessity for a conscientious, i.e., an enlightened procreation. We must bravely approach the civilising of the reproductive instinct, which alone has remained in a barbarous state amongst all the so-called civilised nations from the earliest times.
Then only, when societies have fulfilled this duty, will they have the right to investigate what they ought and can effect against those for whom future offspring would be recognised as fatally disastrous.
Finally, it is fully understood that researches relating to selection in the human species must be pursued in a parallel manner, as is now done with such fruitful results for animals and vegetables in Genetics, and in throwing light upon the constantly increasing conquests of this other science.
[PRACTICAL ORGANIZATION OF EUGENIC ACTION.]
(Abstract.)
By Dr. Louis Querton,
Professor at the University of Brussels.
Now that many studies on the physiology and hygiene of reproduction of man have been made, and many investigations on degeneration have been conducted, we may face the problem of the betterment of the race, from a practical standpoint.
If the eugenic action cannot yet strive directly against hereditary transmission of anomalies, it can fight successfully against the causes of degeneration which act during the development of the individual.
Physical and social environment influences these causes, which, on account of their growing complexity, create more and more obstacles to the normal evolution of the individual, while at the same time they force him to acquire greater and more varied aptitudes.
To thwart the prejudicial action of the environment on the development of the individual, the systematic organization of this development seems to be of first importance.
The control of the development of the children, at the different phases of their evolution, is strictly necessary to assure the education of the individual and to check the degeneration of the race.
The control is already established for certain classes of children, and during limited periods of their development. Nurslings, school children, and labourers can already, sometimes compulsorily, be submitted to control.
But the insufficiency of the actual organization is very evident, and the results are, from the eugenic standpoint, unsatisfactory.
In order to be really effective and to contribute to the improvement of the individual and to the betterment of the race, the control of the development should, as far as possible, be exerted over all children, and it should last during the whole period of their evolution. This control should be compulsory, as well as education; it should be exercised by an institution, the frequentation of which, as well as that of school, might be forced upon all children whose development is not submitted to an effective control in their homes. Private initiative should create such institutions everywhere, and thus prepare legislative interference.
These methodically organized eugenic institutions should, in the future, be the development of the administrative institutions, which actually establish the civil state of individuals. They would tend to facilitate the education of individuals and public bodies; at the same time they would assure the strict application of the laws concerning the protection and education of childhood.
They would collect the documents necessary to the scientific knowledge of the facts of heredity, and would supply precise information concerning the effective work of different social institutions on transformation of the race.
(Abstract.)
By C. B. Davenport,
Director, Eugenics Record Office, U.S.A.
Of the various laws limiting freedom of marriage three are of biological import. First, the limitation of relationship between the mates; second, the limitations in mental capacity of the mates; and third, limitations of race.
For the first there is a biological justification in so far as cousin marriages are apt to bring in from both sides of the house the same defect. For the second the justification is partial; but there is equal reason for forbidding the marriage of normal persons both of whom have mentally defective parents or other close relatives. The denial of marriage between races has this justification, that most other races have not, through selection, attained the social status of the Caucasian. In such cases the socially inadequate should be sterilized or segregated in other races as well as in the Caucasian.
[EUGENIC SELECTION AND THE ORIGIN OF DEFECTS.]
(Abstract.)
By Frédéric Houssay,
Professor of Science, University of Paris.
Eugenics, which is a social application of biological science, cannot yet be judged by its results; it must be judged by its tendencies. To determine these, we must adjust them to principles generally admitted.
And inasmuch as it advocates practical rules and seeks to check the propagation of the unfit, by isolation or sterilization (voluntary or enforced), it is an artificial selection.
Its justification lies in the fact that, without intervention, the descendants of defectives or degenerates would, in a few generations, eliminate themselves by early death of children or by natural sterility. This would produce a natural selection which Eugenics simply proposes to anticipate by social economy.
It seems that, by applying Darwinian principles, the group of defectives, considered at a given moment, could be rapidly extinguished. But this group is continually reinforced by fresh degeneration of healthy stocks which become tainted.
Hence the need to keep our eye on the re-formation of the group as well as its elimination, and to keep in touch with Lamarckian principles. The study of the origin and hereditary conservation of defects points already as essential factors, to alcoholism, syphilis, and more generally every chronic ailment and diathesis, among which gout must be put in a leading position. Everything which will tend to restrain the action of these factors is of capital importance from our present point of view, whether it occurs in the ranks of rich or poor.
The questions, thus, which Eugenics seeks to answer would be on this view reduced to questions of hygiene and morals.
So that the different biological principles, which sometimes seem in mutual opposition, would become convergent, and would find in Eugenics a ready reconciliation and a field of useful co-operation.
[PRELIMINARY REPORT TO THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS CONGRESS,]
Of the Committee of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders' Association to Study and Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ Plasm in the Human Population.
(Abstract.)
By Bleecker Van Wagenen, Chairman.
1. Brief history of the American Breeders' Association, the Eugenics Section and the Committee on Elimination of Defective Germ Plasm.
2. Concise statement of the problem before the Committee and reasons for the investigation.
3. History of legislation in the United States authorising or requiring the sterilization of certain classes of criminals, defectives and degenerates who are under the control of the State in institutions. Digest of the laws now in force. (This may be given as a lantern slide with greater effect.)
Legal views concerning the constitutionality of these laws.
4. Investigations of vasectomy in Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts and elsewhere, with detailed reports of some typical cases. (With lantern slides.)
5. Reports of sterilization of females, both of normal and abnormal mentality, with a number of typical cases showing after-effects. (With lantern slides.)
6. Some observations in thremmatology suggesting important questions concerning the practical effectiveness of sterilization as a eugenic measure.
7. Technical description of several kinds of sterilizing operations as now performed. Vasectomy, ovariotomy and salpingectomy (with and without complete excision), castration.
8. Reports of several cases of persons, male and female, who having been completely sterilized for a time, recovered the power of procreation and actually did procreate thereafter.
9. State of public opinion regarding sterilization in the United States at the present time. Letters from Governors of States, views of Social Workers and Institution people. Conflicting views of Roman Catholics (as such). Digest of arguments set forth in a long controversy carried on in the American Ecclesiastical Review, chiefly in Latin.
10. Brief report of other data collected by the Committee and programme for future work, with a call for co-operation in securing further data pertinent to this inquiry.
[EUGENICS AND THE NEW SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS.]
(Abstract.)
By Samuel George Smith.
The new social consciousness is indicated; first, by the larger powers and duties assumed by the State: second, by the new sense of social solidarity affecting persons and groups of persons within the State. The exclusion from parenthood of such wards of the State as the feeble-minded, the insane, and the pauper has gone beyond debate; and for all that are legally excluded from parenthood, custodial care is required. There is need to develop a new ethical sense of the individual in regard to his own relations to the social group. We have not yet sufficient facts to establish a definite relation between physical fitness and social efficiency. This is the place for caution.
Questions of maternity among the poor: (a) Hard labour must be forbidden to the expectant mother; (b) she must have nourishing food; (c) surroundings must be wholesome. The economic problem is solved in the increased vitality and consequent earning power of the coming generation.
Problem of the parenthood of the better classes: just as important and more difficult. The question is not only vital and economic; it is also ethical.
The ignorance of parents and the defects of children. The State has invaded the home, and has set standards, both physical and moral, for the family. It is the duty of the State to secure the proper physical environment for the home. It is a municipal problem. It is a problem of public health. The whole movement looks to the triumph of a vital democracy, which is more important than either political or industrial democracy.
Relations of alcoholism to neurasthenia, of tuberculosis to feeble-mindedness, of bad social and labour conditions to both, indicate cross sections in the problem. Vices of the rich in most countries are greater than the vices of the poor. A vital democracy cannot be based upon physical tests and material comfort. Its deepest foundations are psychical and ethical.
[PRACTICABLE EUGENICS IN EDUCATION.]
(Abstract.)
By Dr. F. C. S. Schiller.
The danger to mankind arising from the preservation of the unfit under social conditions. The self-destructiveness of civilization. Its superiority dependent on the transmission of accumulated knowledge by education. The danger of failure in educational systems. Is the education of the rich necessarily a failure? The middle classes as providers of ability to man the professions; but the price they have to pay at present is too often racial extinction. The draining of ability from the lower classes.
The existing educational system and its potential value for eugenics. Its unintellectual character. The liberal endowment of a "liberal education." Commercialism and the scholarship system. The athletic system, the play instincts and moral training. Both systems are Darwinian and appeal to British character.
Suggested improvements: (1) in the athletic system; "fitness," not a merely physical ideal; (2) in the scholarship system; "liberal education" to be conceived as intrinsically useful, and not merely a game with intrinsically useless subjects.
Should scholarships be restricted to the needy? The educational dangers of this policy. The eugenical value of the existing system.
The possibility of infusing eugenical spirit into athletics. The appeal of eugenics to the upper classes. A real versus a sham nobility. The eugenical ideal essentially a matter of sentiment and not necessarily anti-democratic.
Section III.
Sociology and Eugenics.
[THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ELITE AND THE ECONOMIC ELITE.]
(Abstract.)
By Professor Achille Loria,
University of Turin.
Artificial selection could be perfectly applied to the human species, in which case marriages would be arranged between persons better endowed, physically and mentally, and the worse endowed would be excluded from marriage. But this selection encounters the gravest practical difficulties; because, if it is relatively easy to estimate the physical qualities of man, nothing on the other hand is harder than to estimate his mental qualities. A dynamometer of intelligence does not exist, and Galton's method of observing the points of merit of University graduates is very insufficient and fallible.
In face of these difficulties there naturally arises the idea of inferring the psycho-physical aptitudes of individuals from their social and economic position, or from their income, which is easily measured. In accord with this idea, it would be a question of acting so that marriages would be effected exclusively and predominantly amongst individuals provided with superior incomes, and to prevent, as far as possible, marriages between persons of inferior incomes, or of no income at all.
But all this would be plausible if there should be a real analogy between the economic élite, and the psycho-physical élite, or if the former were really a product of the latter. Now, this is precisely what I deny. The economic élite is not in the least the product of the possession of superior qualities, but is simply the result of a blind struggle between incomes, which carries to the top those who, at the start, possess a larger income through causes which may be absolutely independent of the possession of superior endowments. (See my Sintesi economica—Paris, Giard et Briard, 1911.) Hence, nothing makes it impossible that the wealthier people should be precisely the worst endowed, physically and mentally, and this as a matter of fact happens in innumerable cases.
Besides, we have an indirect proof of this in the very results of selective processes as, until now, they are practised. And, in fact, conjugal selection to-day takes place precisely amongst individuals of the same class, or belonging to the same standard of income, so that persons of the upper classes always marry exclusively amongst each other. So then these marriages, which, according to the theory, ought to give more splendid results, give, on the contrary, more wretched results. Galton's same law of "return to the mean," or the fact that the descendants of persons of high class sometimes have inferior endowments as compared with the average of the race, could not be fulfilled if persons of the upper classes who marry with each other were really select persons, physically and mentally.
There would also be in this case a falling off from the super-normal qualities of an exceptionally gifted parent, but in that case the characters of the children would always be superior to those of the descendants of the lower classes. If this does not happen, if the children of the upper classes show qualities inferior to those of the average of children of the lower classes, this proves conclusively that married people of the superior classes were not in the least endowed with specially high aptitudes, but, on the contrary, presented the opposite characteristics. Thus, the same law of Galton, properly interpreted, shows the absolute independence of largeness of income and excellence of individual qualities, hence the absurdity and danger of Eugenics upon an economic foundation, such as many desire.
The researches of Fahlbeck upon the Swedish nobility, which show the rapid extinction of the upper classes who practise Economic Eugenics, is a further proof of the absence of any link between economic superiority and psycho-physical superiority; since if the wealthier people, who usually intermarry, were really the better endowed, their descendants would never show those phenomena of extinction which betray a leaven of inner degeneration.
I conclude that Economic Eugenics is already practised to-day upon a large scale, and hence it is already possible to form an accurate judgment upon its results—which are those of return to the mean—degeneration and extinction of race. Now, these same results show that the economically superior classes are not at all the best endowed, and often even degenerate, and that, therefore, the only method calculated to effect a conjugal selection which would be socially useful is not to unite in marriage the richer people, but individuals really possessing superior qualities, and to exclude from marriage those who do not possess them.
[THE CAUSE OF THE INFERIORITY OF PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTERS IN THE LOWER SOCIAL CLASSES.]
(Abstract.)
By Professor Alfredo Niceforo,
Of the University of Naples.
The author has compared the physical, demographic, and mental characters of the upper and leisured classes with the same characters in individuals of the inferior and poor classes. He has made use of several methods: (1) A comparison between the well-to-do and the poor children in schools; (2) a comparison between individuals belonging to different professions; (3) a comparison between the rich and the poor quarters of the same city.
He has also studied 4,000 children of the schools of Lausanne; Italian peasants; conscripts of different countries, classified according to their occupation; and the rich and the poor quarters of Lausanne, Paris, etc.
He has found that individuals of the lower classes show a smaller development of stature, of cranial capacity, of sensibility, of resistance to mental fatigue, a delay in the period when puberty makes its appearance, a slackening in growth, a very large number of anomalies, etc.
The causes of these differences ascertained in comparing the two groups are of the mesological and individual order.
Of the mesological order because the conditions of life where men of the lower classes are forced to live constitute one of the causes of the deterioration of their physical and mental characters.
Of the individual order because, thanks to biological variation, every man is born different from all other men, and men who are born with superior physical and mental characters tend to rise in the superior classes, while men who are born with inferior physical and mental characters tend to fall in the most wretched classes.
However, in studying the catalogues of measurements and observations, the author has found that in the mass of men belonging to the superior classes one finds a small number of men with inferior qualities, while in the mass of men forming the inferior classes one finds a certain number of men presenting superior characters.
It is between these two exceptional categories that social exchanges should be made, allowing the best and most capable of the lower stratum to ascend, and compelling the unadapted who are found above to fall to the lower stratum.
[THE FERTILITY OF MARRIAGES ACCORDING TO PROFESSION AND SOCIAL POSITION.]
(Abstract.)
By M. Lucien March,
Directeur de la Statistique Générale de la France.
Statistics of families furnish, perhaps, the most appropriate data for the examination of the factors which govern the productiveness of marriages or their sterility.
Statistics concerning the children born in the eleven and a half million French families, classed according to occupation, have been prepared in France for the first time as a result of the census of 1906. These statistics give information as to the number of children per family, either alive on the day of the census or previously deceased, in each occupation, for all the families in the whole country taken together, and for the different provinces. Further, a special investigation of the 200,000 families of employees and workmen in the public services has furnished more circumstantial details, which have enabled the number of children and number of deaths of children in a family to be brought into relation with the income of the head.
The results obtained by the method described above are the subject of this report. The effects of occupation, social position and income are analysed by means of co-efficients expressing the productiveness of marriages, after eliminating the influence of such factors as duration of marriage, age, and habitat, all of which may obviously affect the productiveness of a marriage.
These results confirm what has been learnt from previous researches of the fertility of different social classes, but they go further in that they show that the difference is not exclusively dependent on income.
In general there are more children per family in the families of workmen than in the families of employers, and the latter contain more than those of employees other than workmen. Further, one finds industries in which the number of children in the employers' families is larger than in the families of workmen in other industries. Thus, differences are introduced by the occupation. Industries employing many hands seem the more favourable to the production of large families, both among workmen and among employers. Agriculture, in which a large number of persons are engaged in France, does not seem to conduce to fertility. Fishermen and sailors in the merchant service, on the other hand, appear to form the class in which fertility is the most considerable.
The importance of the occupational factor is such that we could place its influence on the same plane as that of "concentration" of population, with which it is in close relation, since persons following certain classes of occupation, as, for instance, the members of the liberal professions, and clerks and other salaried employees are most numerous in towns.
It does not appear that in France casual and unskilled labourers, persons in the receipt of Poor Law relief, etc., are specially prolific. There is not thus in reality too much risk of seeing the renewal of the population carried out in a dangerous manner by its least valuable section. However, even among the working classes, the most highly paid occupations are not those among which one finds the greatest number of children.
The economic, social, or moral burden of children is a factor bound up in a complex manner, not only with the individual conditions of existence, but also with the transformations of society, progress in manners and customs, and the conception which one forms of life.
It is this burden which must be allieviated where allieviation would be most effective and produce the best results, in order to put a stop to a movement which may be dangerous to civilisation.
(Abstract.)
By Vernon L. Kellogg.
(Professor in Stanford University, California.)
The claim that war and military service have a directly deteriorating influence through military selection on a population much given to militarism, has been clearly stated by von Liebig, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Tschouriloff, Otto Seeck, David Starr Jordan, and others, not to mention the ever-anticipating Greeks. Military selection may be conceived to work disastrously on a population both through the actual killing during war by wounds and disease of the sturdy young men selected by conscription or recruiting, and also by the removal from the reproducing part of the population of much larger numbers of these selected young men both in war and peace times. Another phase of the racial danger from military service is the possibility of the contraction of persistent and heritable disease which may be carried back from camp and garrison with the return of the soldiers to the population at home.
As likely as seem all these and certain other anti-eugenic influences arising from military selection, the substantiation of their actual results on a basis of observed facts is necessary to give them real standing as eugenic arguments against militarism.
The writer is engaged at present in an attempt to find and expose certain actual results of military service and war that have direct relation to racial modification. His paper presents some pertinent facts and figures already gained. These facts are examined in the light of the criticisms of such men as Bischoff and Livi, who have recognized the weaknesses in military and hygienic statistics, and in the light of other opportunities for error both in the recording and the interpretation of the facts, which have suggested themselves to him. Also there has to be considered the possible reality of eugenic advantages from military selection. Seeck and Ammon believe they have discovered some.
The writer, holding in mind both the dangers of error and the possibility of eugenic advantage, believes himself nevertheless able to present certain definite facts showing considerable direct eugenic disadvantage in certain types of militarism.
[EUGENICS IN PARTY ORGANIZATION.]
(Abstract.)
By Roberto Michels,
University of Turin, Italy.
An oligarchy is invariably formed in all political parties for reasons based partly on individual psychology, partly on crowd psychology, and partly on the social necessity of party organisation. Under the first head is grouped the individual's consciousness of his own importance, which with opportunity develops into the natural human lust for power, and, further, such individual qualities as native tact, editorial ability, and so on. Crowd psychology is characterised chiefly by the incompetence of the masses, their dependence upon traditional methods of party government, and their feeling of gratitude to leaders who have suffered for the cause. Finally, the necessity for party organisations grows with every increase of numbers and extension of functions. It is physically impossible for large party groups to govern themselves directly. All parties live in a state of perpetual warfare with opposing parties, and, if they are revolutionary in character, with the social order itself. Tactical considerations, therefore, and, above all, the necessity of maintaining a condition of military preparedness, strengthen the hands of the controlling clique within the party and render every day more impossible genuine democracy.
The selective or eugenic value of party organization is that it allows men gifted with certain qualities to rise above their fellows into positions of superiority, which, for the considerations set forth above, are more or less permanent. This value is of the greater importance because the opportunities for able and ambitious workmen to rise by the economic ladder to the rank of employers are rapidly disappearing, at any rate, in old countries.
The qualities necessary for a successful party leader are discussed. Briefly stated, they consist of oratorical ability, which is partly a psychical and partly a physiological and anatomical character; energy of will; superiority of intellect and knowledge; a depth of conviction often bordering on fanaticism and self-confidence, pushed even to the point of self-conceit. Also in many countries, as for instance Italy, physical beauty is important in helping a man to rise, while in rarer cases goodness of heart and disinterestedness influence the crowd by reawakening religious sentiments.
We have seen that some elements of the crowd are seized by the selecting-machine of the party organisation that raises them above their companions, increasing automatically the social distance between them and their followers. To put this automatical selecting-machine into action, certain individuals appear, possessing special physical and intellectual gifts that distinguish them spontaneously from the mass of the party.
[THE INFLUENCE OF RACE ON HISTORY.]
(Abstract.)
By W. C. D. and C. D. Whetham.
The history of Europe presents a long series of nations successively rising and falling in the scale of prosperity and influence. Such persistent alternations suggest a common cause underlying the phenomena. All history is the record of change. The outward change as recorded by the chronicler has probably its counterpart in unnoticed variations of the internal biological structure of the nation.
Most nations are composite in character. They contain two or more racial stocks, fulfilling different functions in the national life. It is probable that the proportion in which these stocks are present is not always constant. The variation in proportion is possibly the agent effecting the internal change in structure, which becomes manifest outwardly in the rise or decline of the nation.
The physical characters of the population of Europe during historic times indicate three chief races: (1) the Mediterranean, (2) the Alpine, (3) the Northern. The individuals of these races possess also distinct mental and intellectual attributes, and the history of Europe is fundamentally the story of the interaction of the three races.
It is suggested that the supreme power of Greece and Rome, each in its own direction, was due to the attainment of a fortunate balance between the social and political functions of the constituents of the nation, the directing power being supplied chiefly by the invaders of northern race, who formed the dominant class among the southern indigenous Mediterranean population. In each case, the northern elements grew gradually less, through such agencies as losses in war, the selective action of a differential birth rate, and by racial merging into the more numerous southern stock.
The outburst of artistic genius and intellectual pre-eminence which marked the Renaissance in North Italy may perhaps be due to a similar racial composition, the northern elements being supplied by the descendants of the barbarian invaders of the later Roman Empire.
Great Britain has also similar racial elements. The Mediterranean race, spreading up the shores of the Atlantic, enters largely into the composition of the people of the south-west. The northern element, immigrant from the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, is strongest in the east and north.
We know that there are now at work two influences affecting the average racial character of the English nation; (1) the increase in the urban population at the expense of the rural, (2) the voluntary restriction of the birth rate which affects certain sections of all classes more than others. It is probable that both these changes tend to favour selectively the southern racial elements at the expense of the northern. Eventually, the present structure of society may become unstable in consequence of this racial alteration, and the necessary readjustment, in its turn, will contribute a chapter to history.
[SOME INTER-RELATIONS BETWEEN EUGENICS AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH.]
(Abstract.)
By Frederick Adams Woods, M.D.,
Harvard Medical School.
The relative influence of heredity and environment has long been a subject for debate, but, for the most part, such debates have not been profitable. It is true that heredity cannot be separated from environment if only one individual be considered; but as soon as we inquire into the causes of the differences between man and man, it is perfectly possible to gain real light on this subject, so important to the advocates of eugenics. Everything must be made a problem of differences. The mathematical measurements of resemblances between relatives close of kin will sometimes serve. At other times, the correlation co-efficient is of no avail, and only an intensive study of detailed pedigrees will bring out such differences as cannot be due to the action of surroundings.