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!EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS!
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Emphasis has been given, in several of the foregoing chapters, to the
!desirability of inheriting a good constitution and a high degree of vigor and disease-resistance. It has been asserted that no measures of hygiene and sanitation can take the place of such inheritance.
In an ordinary population, the age of death is determined to the extent of probably 50% by heredity.
In so far, then, as euthenics is actually providing man with more
favourable surroundings,--not with ostensibly more favourable surroundings which, in reality, are unfavourable--there can be no antagonism between
!it and eugenics. Eugenics is, in fact, a prerequisite of euthenics, for it is only the capable and altruistic man who can contribute to social progress; and such a man can only be produced through eugenics.
!Eugenic fatalism, a blind faith in the omnipotence of heredity regardless of the surroundings in which it is placed, has been shown by the study of long-lived families to be unjustified. It was found that even those who inherited exceptional longevity usually did not live as long as their inheritance gave them the right to expect. If they had had more euthenics, they should have lived longer.
!But this illustration certainly gives no ground for a belief that euthenics is sufficient to prolong one's life beyond the inherited limit. A study of these long-lived families from another point of view will reveal that heredity is the primary factor and that good environment, euthenics, is the secondary one.
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It is not by accident that inherited longevity in a family is associated
!with low mortality of its children. The connection between the two facts was first discovered by Mary Beeton and Karl Pearson in their pioneer work on the inheritance of duration of life. They found that high infant mortality was associated with early death of parents, while the offspring of long-lived parents showed few deaths in childhood.
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If the infant mortality problem is to be solved on the basis of
knowledge and reason, it must be recognised that sanitation and hygiene can not take the place of eugenics any more than eugenics can dispense with sanitation and hygiene. It must be recognised that the death-rate
in childhood is largely selective, and that the most effective way to
!cut it down is to endow the children with better constitutions. This can not be done solely by any euthenic campaign; it can not be done by swatting the fly, abolishing the midwife, sterilising the milk, nor by any of the other panaceas sometimes proposed.
We admit that it is possible to keep a lot of children alive who would otherwise have died in the first few months of life. It is being done,
!as the New York figures, and pages of others that could be cited, prove. The ultimate result is twofold:
Some of those who are doomed by heredity to a selective death, but are kept alive through the first year, die in the second or third or fourth year. They must die sooner or later; they have not inherited sufficient resistance to survive more than a limited time. If they are by a great effort carried through the first year, it is only to die in
the next. This is a statement which we have nowhere observed in the propaganda of the infant mortality movement; and it is perhaps a disconcerting one. It can only be proved by refined statistical methods,
but several independent determinations by the English biometricians leave no doubt as to the fact. This work of Karl Pearson, E. C. Snow, and Ethel M. Elderton, was cited in our chapter on natural selection; the reader will recall how they showed that nature is weeding out the weaklings, and in proportion to the stringency with which she weeds them out at the start, there are fewer weaklings left to die in succeeding
!years.
!To put the facts in the form of a truism, part of the children born in any district in a given year are doomed by heredity to an early death; and if they die in one year they will not be alive to die in the succeeding year, and vice versa. Of course there are in addition infant deaths which are not selective and which if prevented would leave the infant with as good a chance as any to live.
In the light of these researches, we are forced to conclude that
!baby-saving campaigns accomplish less than is thought; that the supposed gain is to some extent temporary and illusory.
There is still another consequence. If the gain is by great exertions made more than temporary; if the baby who would otherwise have died in the first months is brought to adult life and reproduction, it means in many cases the dissemination of another strain of weak heredity, which natural selection would have cut off ruthlessly in the interests of race betterment. In so far, then, as the infant mortality movement is not
!futile it is, from a strict biological viewpoint, often detrimental to the future of the race.
!Do we then discourage all attempts to save the babies? Do we leave them all to natural selection? Do we adopt the "better dead" gospel?
Unqualifiedly, no! The sacrifice of the finer human feelings, which would accompany any such course, would be a greater loss to the race than is the eugenic loss from the perpetuation of weak strains of heredity. The abolition of altruistic and humanitarian sentiment for the
!purpose of race betterment would ultimately defeat its own end by making race betterment impossible.
!But race betterment will also be impossible unless a clear distinction is made between measures that really mean race betterment of a fundamental and permanent nature, and measures which do not.
We have chosen the Infant Mortality Movement for analysis in this chapter because it is an excellent example of the kind of social betterment which is taken for granted, by most of its proponents, to be a fundamental piece of race betterment; but which, as a fact, often
means race impairment. No matter how abundant and urgent are the reasons for continuing to reduce infant mortality wherever possible, it is
dangerous to close the eyes to the fact that the gain from it is of a
kind that must be paid for in other ways; that to carry on the movement without adding eugenics to it will be a short-sighted policy, which increases the present happiness of the world at the cost of diminishing
!the happiness of posterity through the perpetuation of inferior strains.
While some euthenic measures are eugenically evils, even if necessary ones, it must not be inferred that all euthenic measures are dysgenic. Many of them, such as the economic and social changes we have suggested in earlier chapters, are an important part of eugenics. Every euthenic measure should be scrutinised from the evolutionary standpoint; if it is eugenic as well as euthenic, it should be whole-heartedly favoured; if it
!is dysgenic but euthenic it should be condemned or adopted, according to whether or not the gain in all ways from its operation will exceed the damage.
In general, euthenics, when not accompanied by some form of selection (i. e., eugenics) ultimately defeats its own end. If it is accompanied
by rational selection, it can usually be endorsed. Eugenics, on the other hand, is likewise inadequate unless accompanied by constant
improvement in the surroundings; and its advocates must demand euthenics as an accompaniment of selection, in order that the opportunity for
getting a fair selection may be as free as possible. If the euthenist likewise takes pains not to ignore the existence of the racial factor,
!then the two schools are standing on the same ground, and it is merely a matter of taste or opportunity, whether one emphasises one side or the other. Each of the two factions, sometimes thought to be opposing, will be seen to be getting the same end result, namely, human progress.
!Not only are the two schools working for the same end, but each must depend in still another way upon the other, in order to make headway. The eugenist can not see his measures put into effect except through changes in law and custom--i. e., euthenic changes. He must and does appeal to euthenics to secure action. The social reformer, on the other hand, can not see any improvements made in civilisation except through the discoveries and inventions of some citizens who are inherently superior in ability. He in turn must depend on eugenics for every advance that is made.
It may make the situation clearer to state it in the customary terms of biological philosophy. Selection does not necessarily result in progressive evolution. It merely brings about the adaptation of a species or a group to a given environment. The tapeworm is the stock example. In human evolution, the nature of this environment will determine whether adaptation to it means progress or retrogression, whether it leaves a race happier and more productive, or the reverse. All racial progress, or eugenics, therefore, depends on the creation of a good environment, and the fitting of the race to that environment.
Every improvement in the environment should bring about a corresponding biological adaptation. The two factors in evolution must go side by
!side, if the race is to progress in what the human mind considers the direction of advancement. In this sense, euthenics and eugenics bear the same relation to human progress as a man's two legs do to his locomotion.
Social workers in purely euthenic fields have frequently failed to
remember this process of adaptation, in their efforts to change the environment. Eugenists, in centering their attention on adaptation, have sometimes paid too little attention to the kind of environment to which the race was being adapted. The present book holds that the second factor is just as important as the first, for racial progress; that one
leg is just as important as the other, to a pedestrian. Its only
conflict with euthenics appertains to such euthenic measures as impair the adaptability of the race to the better environment they are trying
!to make.
!Some supposedly euthenic measures opposed by eugenics are not truly euthenic, as for instance the limitation of a superior family in order that all may get a college education. For these spurious euthenic measures, something truly euthenic should be substituted.
Measures which show a real conflict may be typified by the infant mortality movement. There can be no doubt but that sanitation and hygiene, prenatal care and intelligent treatment of mothers and babies, are truly euthenic and desirable. At the same time, as has been shown, these euthenic measures result in the survival of inferior children, who directly or through their posterity will be a drag on the race. Euthenic
!measures of this type should be accompanied by counterbalancing measures of a more eugenic character.
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Barring these two types, euthenics forms a necessary concomitant of the eugenic program; and, as we have tried to emphasise, eugenics is likewise necessary to the complete success of every euthenic program.
How foolish, then, is antagonism between the two forces! Both are
working toward the same end of human betterment, and neither can succeed without the other. When either attempts to eliminate the other from its work, it ceases to advance toward its goal. In which camp one works is largely a matter of taste. If on a road there is a gradient to be
leveled, it will be brought down most quickly by two parties of workmen, one cutting away at the top, the other filling in the bottom. For the
!two parties to indulge in mutual scorn and recrimination would be no more absurd than for eugenics and euthenics to be put in opposition to each other. The only reason they have been in opposition is because some of the workers did not clearly understand the nature of their work. With the dissemination of a knowledge of biology, this ground of antagonism will disappear.
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