IT

T is freely allowed by most authorities on heredity, that men are just as subject to its laws, both in body and mind, as are any other animals, but it is almost universally doubted, if not denied, that an establishment of this fact could ever be of large practical benefit to humanity. It is objected that, philosophise as you will, men and women will continue to marry as they have hitherto done, according to their personal likings; that any prospect of improving the race of man is absurd and chimerical, and that though enquiries into the laws of human heredity may be pursued for the satisfaction of a curious disposition, they can be of no real importance. In opposition to these objections, I maintain, in the present essay, that it is feasible to improve the race of man by a system which shall be perfectly in accordance with the moral sense of the present time. I shall first describe the condition, such as I believe it to be, of the existing race of man, and will afterwards propose a scheme for its improvement whose seeds would be planted almost without knowing it, and would slowly but steadily grow, until it had transformed the nation. If the ordinary doctrines of heredity in a broad sense be true, the scheme in question must, as it appears to me, begin to show vigorous life so soon as the mass of educated men shall have learnt to appreciate their truth. But if the doctrines be false, then all I build upon them is of course fallacious.

The bodily and mental condition of every man are, in part, the result of his own voluntary and bygone acts; but experience teaches us that they are also shaped by two other agencies, for neither of which he is responsible; the one, the constitu

tional peculiarities transmitted to him by inheritance, and the other, the various circumstances to which he has been perforce subjected, especially in early life. Now, in this essay I do not propose to allude to ordinary education, family and national tradition, and other similar moral agencies of high importance. I leave them for the present, to one side; the residue with which alone I am about to deal, may be concisely and sufficiently expressed by the words 'race' and 'nurture.' It is to the consideration of the first of these that the following pages are chiefly devoted; but not entirely so, for I acknowledge that we cannot wholly disentangle their several effects. An improvement in the nurture of a race will eradicate inherited disease; consequently, it is beyond dispute that if our future population were reared under more favourable conditions than at present, both their health and that of their descendants would be greatly improved. There is nothing in what I am about to say that shall underrate the sterling value of nurture, including all kinds of sanitary improvements; nay, I wish to claim them as powerful auxiliaries to my cause; nevertheless, I look upon race as far more important than nurture. Race has a double effect, it creates better and more intelligent individuals, and these become more competent than their predecessors to make laws and customs, whose effects shall favourably react on their own health and on the nurture of their children. The merits and demerits of different races is strongly marked in colonies, where men begin a new life, to a great degree detached from the influences under which they had been reared. Now we may watch a band of Englishmen, subjected to

no regular authority, but attracted to some new gold-digging, and we shall see that law and order will be gradually evolved, and that the community will purify itself and become respectable, and this is true of hardly any other race of men. Constitutional stamina, strength, intelligence, and moral qualities cling to a breed, say of dogs, notwithstanding many generations of careless nurture; while careful nurture, unaided by selection, can do little more to an inferior breed than eradicate disease and make it good of its kind. Those who would assign more importance to nurture than I have done, must concede that the sanitary conditions under which the mass of the population will hereafter live, are never likely to be so favourable to health as those which are now enjoyed by our wealthy classes. The latter may make many mistakes in matters of health; but they have enormous residual advantages. They can command good food, spacious rooms, and change of air, which is more than equivalent to what the future achievements of sanitary science are likely to afford to the mass of the population. Yet how far are our wealthier classes from the secure possession of those high physical and mental qualities which are the birthright of a good race. Whoever has spent a winter at the health-resorts of the South of France, must have been appalled at witnessing the number of their fellow-countrymen who are afflicted with wretched constitutions, while that of the sickly children, narrowchested men, and fragile, delicate women who remain at home, is utterly disproportionate to the sickly and misshapen contingent of the stock of any of our breeds of domestic animals.

I need not speak in detail of the many ways in which the forms of civilisation, which have hitherto prevailed, tend to spoil a race, because they must, by this time, have

become familiar to all who are interested in heredity; it is sufficient just to allude to two of the chief. among those which are now in activity. The first is, the free power of bequeathing wealth, which interferes with the salutary action of natural selection, by preserving the wealthy, and by encouraging marriage on grounds quite independent of personal qualities; and the second is the centralising tendency of our civilisation, which attracts the abler men to towns, where the discouragement to marry is great, and where marriage is comparatively unproductive of descendants. who reach adult life. In a paper just communicated to the Statistical Society, I have carefully analysed and discussed the census returns of 1,000 families of factory operatives in Coventry, and of the same number of agricultural labourers in the neighbouring small rural parishes of Warwickshire, and find that the former have little more than half as many adult grandchildren as the latter. They have fewer offspring, and of those few a smaller proportion reach adult life, while the two classes marry with about equal frequency and at about the same ages. The allurements and exigencies of a centralised civilisation are therefore seriously prejudicial to the better class of the human stock, which is first attracted to the towns, and there destroyed; and a system of selection is created whose action is exactly adverse to the good of a race. Again, the ordinary struggle for existence under the bad sanitary conditions of our towns, seems to me to spoil, and not to improve our breed. It selects those who are able to withstand zymotic diseases and impure and insufficient food, but such are not necessarily foremost in the qualities which make a nation great. On the contrary, it is the classes of a coarser organisation who seem to be, on the whole, most favoured under this principle of selection, and who sur

vive to become the parents of the next generation. Visitors to Ireland after the potato famine generally remarked that the Irish type of face seemed to have become more prognathous, that is, more like the negro in the protrusion of the lower jaw; the interpretation of which was, that the men who survived the starvation and other deadly accidents of that horrible time, were more generally of a low and coarse organisation. So again, in every malarious country, the travelleris pained by the sight of the miserable individuals who inhabit it. These have the pre-eminent gift of being able to survive fever, and therefore, by the law of economy of structure, are apt to be deficient in every quality less useful to the exceptional circumstances of their life. The reports of the health of our factory towns disclose a terrible proportion of bad constitutions and invalidism among the operatives, as shown by intermitting pulse, curved spine, narrow chests, and other measurable effects; and at the same time we learn from the census that our population is steadily becoming more urban. Twenty years ago the rural element preponderated; ten years ago the urban became equal to it; and now the urban is in the majority. We have therefore much reason to bestir ourselves to resist the serious deterioration which threatens our

race.

I have hitherto addressed myself to the purely physical qualities of mankind, on the importance of which it would have, been difficult to have sufficiently insisted a few years ago, when there was a prevailing feeling that the mind was everything and the body nothing. But a reaction has set in, and it has become pretty generally recognised that unless the body be in sound order, we are not likely to get much healthy work or instinct out of it. A powerful brain is an excellent thing, but it requires for its proper maintenance a good pair of lungs, a

vigorous heart, and especially a strong stomach, otherwise its outcome of thought is likely to be morbid. This being understood, I will proceed to the mental qualities of

our race.

I have written inuch in my work on Hereditary Genius about the average intellect of modern civilised races being unequal to cope with the requirements of the mode of life which circumstances have latterly imposed upon them, and much more might be said on the same subject. The advance in means of communication has made large nations or federations a necessity, whose existence implies a vast number of complicated interests and nice adjustments, which require to be treated in a very intelligent manner, or will otherwise have to be brutally ordered by despotic power. We have latterly

seen that the best statesmen of our day are little capable of expressing their meaning in intelligible language, so that political relations are apt to become embroiled by mere misunderstanding of what is intended to be conveyed. In no walk of civilised life do the intellects of men seem equal to what is required of them. It is true that AngloSaxons are quite competent to grapple with the everyday problems of small communities, but they have insufficient ability for the due performance of the more difficult duties of citizens of large nations. Consequently, the functions of men engaged in trades and professions of all kinds are adjusted to a dangerously low standard, and the political insight of the multitude goes little deeper than the surface, and is applied in few directions except those to which their guides have pointed. Great nations, instead of being highly organised bodies, are little more than aggregations of men severally intent on self-advancement, who must be cemented into a mass by blind feelings of gregariousness and reverence to mere rank,

mere authority, and mere tradition, or they will assuredly fall asunder. As regards the moral qualities, which are closely interwoven with the intellectual, we cannot but observe the considerable effect which the influence of many generations of civilised life has already exercised upon the race of man. It has already bred out of us many of the wild instincts of our savage forefathers, and has given us a stricter conscience and a larger power of self-control than, judging from the analogy of modern savages, they appear to have had. The possibility of eradicating instinctive wildness, and of introducing an instinctively affectionate disposition into any breed of animals, is clearly proved by what has been effected in dogs. The currish and wolfish nature of such as may be seen roaming at large in the streets of Eastern towns, has been largely suppressed in that of their tamed descendants, who, after many generations of selection and friendly treatment, have also acquired the curious innate love of man to which Mr. Darwin drew attention. this gives hope for the future of our race, especially if 'viriculture' be possible, notwithstanding that our present moral nature is as unfitted for a high-toned civilisation as our intellectual nature is unfitted to deal with a complex one. It is curious to observe the great variety in the morals of the human race, such as have been delineated by Theophrastus, La Bruyère, and the phrenologists. It seems to me that natural selection has had no influence in securing dominance to the noblest of them, because in the various tactics of the individual battle for life, any one of these qualities in excess may be serviceable to its possessor. But the case would be very different in those higher forms of civilisation, vainly tried as yet, of which the notion of personal property is not the foundation, but which are, in honest

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truth, republican and co-operative," the good of the community being literally a more vivid desire than that of self-aggrandisement or any other motive whatever. This is a stage which the human race is undoubtedly destined sooner or later to reach, but which the deficient moral gifts of existing races render them incapable of attaining. It is the obvious course of intelligent men-and I venture to say it should be their religious duty-to advance in the direction whither Nature is determined they shall go; that is, towards the improvement of their race. Thither she will assuredly goad them with a ruthless arm if they hang back, and it is of no avail to kick against the pricks. We are exceedingly blind to the ultimate purposes for which we have come into life, and we know that no small part of the intentions by which we are most apt to be guided, are mere illusions. If, however, we look around at the course of nature, one authoritative fact becomes distinctly prominent, let us make of it what we may It is, that the life of the individual is treated as of absotutely no importance, while the race is treated as everything, Nature being wholly careless of the former except as a contributor to the maintenance and evolution of the latter. Myriads of inchoate lives are produced in what, to our best judgment, seems a wasteful and reckless manner, in order that à few selected specimens may survive, and be the parents of the next generation. It is as though individual lives were of no more consideration than are the senseless chips which fall from the chisel of the artist who is elaborating some ideal form out of a rude block. We are naturally apt to think of ourselves and of those around us that, being not senseless chips, but living and suffering beings, we should be of primary importance, whereas it seems perfectly clear that our individual lives are

little more than agents towards attaining some great and common end of evolution. We must loyally accept the facts as they are, and solace ourselves with such hypotheses as may seem most credible to us. For my part, I cling to the idea of a conscious solidarity in nature, and of its laborious advance under many restrictions, the Whole being conscious of us temporarily detached individuals, but we being very imperfectly and darkly conscious of the Whole. Be this as it may, it becomes our bounden duty to conform our steps to the paths which we recognise to be defined, as those in which sooner or later we have to go. We must, therefore, try to render our individual aims subordinate to those which lead to the improvement of the race.

The enthusiasm of humanity, strange as the doctrine may sound, has to be directed primarily to the future of our race, and only secondarily to the well-being of our contemporaries. The ants who, when their nest is disturbed, hurry away each with an uninteresting looking egg, picked up at hazard, not even its own, but not the less precious to it, have their instincts curiously in accordance with the real requirements of Nature. So far as we can interpret her, we read in the clearest letters that our desire for the improvement of our race ought to rise to the force of a passion; and if others interpret Nature in the same way, we may expect that at some future time, perhaps not very remote, it may come to be looked upon as one of the chief religious obligations. It is no absurdity to expect, that it may hereafter be preached, that while helpfulness to the weak, and sympathy with the suffering, is the natural form of outpouring of a merciful and kindly heart, yet that the highest action of all is to provide a vigorous, national life, and that one practical and effective way in which individuals of feeble consti

tution can show mercy to their kind is by celibacy, lest they should bring beings into existence whose race is predoomed to destruction by the laws of nature. It may come to be avowed as a paramount duty, to anticipate the slow and stubborn processes of natural selection, by endeavouring to breed out feeble constitutions, and petty and ignoble instincts, and to breed in those which are vigorous and noble and social.

The precise problem I have in view, is not only the restoration of the average worth of our race, debased as it has been from its 'typical level' by those deleterious influences of modern civilisation to which I have referred, but to raise it higher still. It has been depressed by those mischievous influences of artificial selection which I have named, and by many others besides. Cannot we, I ask-and I will try to answer the question in the affirmative · introduce other influences which shall counteract and overbear the former, and elevate the race above its typical level at least as much as the former had depressed it? I mean by the phrase 'typical level' the average standard of the race, such as it would become in two or three generations if left unpruned by artificial selection, and if reared under what might be accepted as fair conditions of nurture and a moderate amount of healthy, natural selection. It is to be recol lected that individuals are not the offspring of their parents alone, but also of their ancestry to very remote degrees, and that although by a faulty system of civilisation the average worth of a race may be come depressed, it has nevertheless an inherent ancestral power of partly recovering from that depres sion, if a chance be given it of doing So. It has, on the one hand, the advantage of the civilised habits ingrained into its nature, and, on the other hand, it may rise above the abnormal state of depression to