The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.)

"Nations are gathered out of nurseries."

Charles Kingsley.

"To be a good animal is the first requisite to success in life, and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition of national prosperity."

Herbert Spencer.

CONDITIONS WHICH HAVE EVOLVED THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS

Infant Mortality-Marriage and Motherhood-Heredity-Environment-Education-Disease and Vice-History-Summary.

There has been evinced during recent years a desire to know something more definite about the science of eugenics.

Eugenics, simply defined, means "better babies." It is the art of being well born. It implies consideration of everything that has to do with the well-being of the race: motherhood, marriage, heredity, environment, disease, hygiene, sanitation, vice, education, culture,-in short, everything upon which the health of the people depends. If we contribute the maximum of health to those living, it is reasonable to assume that the future generation will profit thereby, and "better babies" will be a direct consequence.

We are frequently told that we must take the world as we find it. This has been aptly termed, "the motto of the impotent and cowardly." "Life is what we make it," is the more satisfying assertion of the optimist, and most of us seem to be trying to make existence more tolerable and more happy. It is encouraging to know that intelligent men and women to-day seek an opportunity to devote serious consideration to the betterment of the race, while yet the pursuit of wealth and pleasure are enticing and strenuous occupations.

It would be superfluous in a book of this character to enter into any lengthy explanation as to how the science of eugenics proposes to work out its problems. We hope only to excite the interest of mothers in the subject, and to instruct them in its rudiments and principles.

It will be of distinct advantage, however, first to briefly consider the conditions,-which are known to all of us,-which have led up to the present status of the subject.

Infant Mortality.-No elaborate argument is necessary to prove that the present infant mortality, in every civilized country, is too high. It is conceded by every authority interested in the subject, no matter what explanation he offers, or what system he advances as a solution of the problem.

Marriage and Motherhood.-Every intelligent person knows that most young girls enter into the marriage relationship without a real understanding of its true meaning, or even a serious thought regarding its duties or its responsibilities. We know that their home training in domestic science is generally not adequate, and that their educational equipment is inefficient. We also know that economic necessity has deprived them of the tutelage essential to social progress and physical health, and has endowed them with temperamental characteristics undesirable in the mothers of the race. Maternity is thrust upon these physically and mentally immature young wives, and they assume the principal r?le in a relationship that is onerous and exacting. We know that the duties of wife and mother require an intelligence which is rendered efficient only by maturity and experience. We know that many, if not most, young wives acquire habits which undermine their health and their morals unwittingly, and we also know that the product of this inefficiency results in the decadence and the degeneration of the race.

Heredity.-Much remains inexplicable at the present time regarding this intensely interesting department of science. We do know, however, that its truths are being investigated and tabulated. Our present knowledge of its principles has demonstrated the existence of laws from which we can ethically deduce explanations of conditions which were, in the past, not amenable to any classification. These relate to individual and racial characteristics. We are beginning to learn that we can modify these characteristics by proper selection, by environment, and by education. This process will, to an eminent degree, redound to the permanent advantage of mankind. We may reasonably aspire to a system of race-culture which will eliminate the undesirable or unfit, and conserve all effort in the propagation of the desirable or fit. This is a consummation to be desired, and if by any system of eugenics the promise of the future is realized it is deserving of the intelligent interest and the active co?peration of every aspiring mother.

Environment.-By environment we mean the provision of suitable surroundings in its largest sense. A child to be fit and efficient must be born of selected parentage, the home surroundings must be desirable, the educational possibilities must be advantageous, the sanitary and hygienic conditions must be suitable, opportunities for physical and spiritual culture must be provided, and the State must ensure justice and the right to achieve success. We know that-generally speaking-these conditions do not exist. We know that the dregs of the human species-the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, the imbecile, the epileptic, the criminal even,-are better protected by organized charity and by the State than are the deserving fit and healthy. We know that in the slums thousands of desirable children waste their vitality in the battle for existence, and we know that, though philanthropy and governmental supervision and protection are afforded the deaf, the dumb, the blind and degenerate child, no helping hand is held out to save the healthy and efficient child, who must pay in disease and inefficiency the price of his normality in degrading toil, in factory and pit, where child labor is tolerated. We need the awakening which is the promise of the eugenist, that these wrongs will be righted, not by the statesmanship which believes that empires are founded and maintained by the power of material might, but by a process which will ennoble selected motherhood and give to every child born its due and its right.

Education.-The present system of education is one of the great reflections on the intelligence of the human race. One of the greatest of contemporary writers has characterized it as "a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future." Even the humblest of us-who would willingly believe the system efficient, who have no desire to invite criticism as to our opinion-are forced to acknowledge that there is something wrong with the educational system now in vogue. The writer is disposed to believe, however, that the fault is not wholly one of art. The conditions with which education has to contend are essentially hypothetical. It may be that the laws of heredity and psychology, when fixed, will evolve, at least, a more rational and a more ethical hypothesis. So far as eugenics is concerned with education, its limitation is defined and fixed. If the innate ability is not possessed by the child, no system of instruction, and no art of pedagogy, will ever draw it out. When the proper material is supplied by an adequate system of race culture, science may probably supply the requisite complementary data which will ensure an educational system that will really educate.

Disease and Vice.-The eugenic idea is more directly concerned with disease which tends to deteriorate the racial type. The average parent has no means of adequately estimating the significance of this type of disease. It has been estimated that one-half of the total effort of one-third of the race is expended in combating conditions against which no successful effort is possible. Think what this means. The struggle of life is a real struggle, even with success as an incentive and as a possible reward. It becomes a tragedy when we think of the wasted years, the hopeless prayers and the anguish of those who fight the battle which is predestined to end in apparent failure. We are disposed to doubt the justice of the Omnipotent Mind who created us and left us seemingly alone-derelicts in the eddies of eternity.

This is but a finite fault, however. The truth is that the scheme of the universe is unalterable, we are but part of the whole and must share in the evolution of the process. An apparent failure is not necessarily a discreditable one. Most lives are failures, if appraised by human estimate. Take for example the life of a young wife who marries a man with disease in his blood. She begins her wedded life with certain commendable ideals. She is young, enthusiastic, ambitious, strong, and she inherently possesses the right to aspire to become an efficient home-maker and a good mother. She gives birth to a child, conceived in love, and during her travail she beseeches her Creator to help her and to help her baby, as all women do at such a time. Her baby is born blind and it is a weak and puny mite. The mother recovers slowly, but she is never the same vigorous and ambitious woman. Later her strength fades away, her enthusiasm falters, the home is blighted and seems a desecrated spot. The baby is a constant worry, it is always sick, it needs expensive care and it exhausts the physical remnant of its mother's health. It finally dies and is laid away, not forgotten, but a sad, sad memory. The ailing and dispirited mother is informed that she must submit to an operation if she desires to regain her health, if not to save her life. She returns from the hospital-not a woman-a blighted thing, an unsexed substitute for what once was a happy, sunny, healthy, innocent girl.

This is not an overdrawn tale,-it is a true story, a common, every-day story. Who was to blame? Why were her prayers not heard? Why, indeed? One might as well ask why seemingly splendid civilizations decayed into forgotten dust, or why empires rotted away. The answer is the same.

History.-From the eugenists' standpoint history is prolific only in negation. A correct interpretation of its pages teaches us that it has not taught the lesson of the "survival of the fittest," but rather the survival of the strongest. That the strongest is not always the "fittest" needs no commentary. That the fit should survive is the genetic law of nature, and it has been strictly obeyed by biology and humanity when these sciences have adhered to, and have been under the jurisdiction of the natural law.

When religious schisms swayed the world, the stronger party, in material strength or in actual numbers, massacred the weaker, which was frequently the fitter from the standpoint of desirability as progenitors of the race. Thus posterity was deprived of what probably was the representative, potential strength of generations.

At a later date religious schism changed her modus operandi but accomplished the same pernicious purpose, as the following shows:

"Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy, and the consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus, by a policy, was brutalized the breed of our forefathers."

When religion was not the dominating power, mankind was ruled by militant tyrants. The non-elect were slaves,-uneducated, uncivilized, debased and diseased. The elect were licentious and indolent. Neither class practised any domestic virtues, or respected the institution of motherhood. The process of the selection of the fittest for survival for the purpose of parentage, and for the consummation of the evolutionary gradation, through which the human race is apparently destined to pass, was again in abeyance for a series of generations.

In our own times, the fate of nations and the destiny of their people would seem to depend upon the size of the fighting force and the efficiency of the ships we build; our ability to dicker and barter, to gain a questionable commercial supremacy, and the loquaciousness of our politicians. This, at least, is the criterion upon which the modern statesman estimates the quality of present-day civilization. He is not apparently interested in the story of the ages. The progress of God's supernal scheme through ?ons of bigotry and darkness neither suggests nor inspires in him a loftier constructive analysis. He is content to leave the destiny of nations to tons of material, tons of men and tons of talk.

Nowhere do we find any reference to the quality of the blood-stream of the people. Nor does it seem to have been discovered by those who wield authority, that the glory of a nation depends upon its brains, not its bulk; nor do they apprehend that the greatness of a people is not in its past history, but in its ever-existing motherhood; and that its battles, in the future, must be fought, not on battlefields, but in its nurseries. When we judge our national worth and wealth by the quality of our maternal material, and estimate our greatness and our glory by the record of our infant mortality, we will have carved an enduring niche in the celestial scheme that will be unchangeable and for all time.

There are in Britain to-day over a million and a quarter females of marriageable age in excess of the number of marriageable males. A war between Britain and Germany would unquestionably be the bloodiest war in all history, and it probably would be the last one, because it would only end in the dominance of one power over all the others. If we concern ourselves only with Britain-from the eugenic standpoint-who would dare compute the ratio of marriageable females over the males after the war was over? The consequence of such a war on posterity would be tragic. It would mean the annihilation of the fittest for fatherhood for generations. Only the unfit would be left from which to begin a new breed.

The multitude of females who would necessarily be left unable to participate in the highest function of womanhood would have to be self-supporting. The economic problem would, therefore, have a far-reaching influence and even if solved adequately as an economic problem, it could never be solved satisfactorily as a sociological, or as a problem in eugenics.

Infant mortality is too high. Apart from the statistical proof which shows it, we may rightly construe as further proof of it, the widespread effort being made in every civilized country in the world to ameliorate the condition.

The laws and ethics of marriage are inadequate. Its true purpose is frustrated and racial and individual injustice and imperfection are the products of existing conditions.

Motherhood, in its every aspect is not, and has not in the past, been elevated to the plane which a true estimate of its supreme importance to the race justifies.

Heredity as a scientific principle is undeveloped, and because of maladministration in past generations, the present generation is endeavoring to do the work, the fruits of which it should be enjoying.

Environment in its highest sense is impossible because of inadequate laws, imperfect hygienic and sanitary knowledge, incomplete education, vice and disease.

If there was not some supremely important, cardinal error somewhere, it is reasonable to suppose that in one or other of the departments of human effort we would have reached the summit of idealism. The State, as an institution, would have evolved a perfection which would enable it to exist as an independent mechanism, complete and ideal in all its ramifications. We have had no such state, however. The highest type of empire has been ludicrously dependent upon the minor exigencies of individual human existence.

Science would have evolved the superman, but history, as we have seen, has persistently deprived science of the material wherewith to contribute him.

The institution of marriage would have been a fixed and an inviolable guarantee of the happiness of the home, but human wisdom has erred and the solution is as yet apparently undiscovered.

Investigation into every field of human effort shows that the ultimate aim in view, if any, was something other than the welfare of the race, as a race or as individuals.

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