The extent to
which the intelligence of school children is dependent on
defective
physique and unfavourable home environment is an important practical question,
if we wanted to find out whether the healthy children were the most
intelligent. One is constantly hearing stories of how the intelligence of
school children has been improved by some treatment which improved their
general health, but these stories are rarely presented in such a way as to
contribute evidence of scientific value.
It was desirable
to know what exact measurement would show. The intelligence of all the children
in fourteen schools was measured in its correlation with weight and height,
conditions of clothing and teeth, state of nutrition, cleanliness, good
hearing, and the condition of the cervical glands, tonsils and adenoids. It
could not be found that mental capacity was closely related to any of the
characters dealt with.[8] The particular set of characters measured was taken
because it happened to be furnished by data collected for another purpose; the
various items are suggestive rather than directly conclusive. Here again, the
correlation in most cases was less than .1, as compared with the general
heredity correlation of .5.
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The
investigation need not be limited to problems of bad breeding.
Eugenics, as its
name shows, is primarily interested in "good breeding;" it is
particularly worth while, therefore, to examine the relations
!between
heredity and environment in the production of mental and moral superiority.
If success in
life--the kind of success that is due to great mental and moral superiority--is
due to the opportunities a man has, then it ought
to be pretty
evenly distributed among all persons who have had favourable opportunities,
provided a large enough number of persons be taken to allow the laws of
probability full play. England offers a good field to investigate this point,
because Oxford and Cambridge, her two great universities, turn out most of the
eminent men of the country, or at
!least have done
so until recently. If nothing more is necessary to ensure a youth's success
than to give him a first-class education and the chance to associate with superior
people, then the prizes of life ought to be pretty evenly distributed among the
graduates of the two universities, during a period of a century or two.
!This is not the
case. When we look at the history of England, as Galton did nearly half a
century ago, we find success in life to an unexpected degree a family affair.
The distinguished father is likely to have a distinguished son, while the son
of two "nobodies" has a very small chance of becoming distinguished.
To cite one concrete case, Galton found[9] that the son of a distinguished
judge had about one chance in four of becoming himself distinguished, while the
son of a man picked out at random from the population had about one chance in
4,000 of becoming similarly distinguished.
The objection at
once occurs that perhaps social opportunities might play the predominant part;
that the son of an obscure man never gets a
chance, while
the son of the prominent man is pushed forward regardless of his inherent
abilities. This, as Galton argued at length, can not be
true of men of
really eminent attainments. The true genius, he thought, frequently succeeds in
rising despite great obstacles, while no amount of family pull will succeed in
making a mediocrity into a genius, although it may land him in some high and
very comfortable official position. Galton found a good illustration in the
papacy, where during
many centuries
it was the custom for a pope to adopt one of his nephews as a son, and push him
forward in every way. If opportunity were all that is required, these adopted
sons ought to have reached eminence as often as a real son would have done; but
statistics show that they
!reached
eminence only as often as would be expected for nephews of great men, whose
chance is notably less, of course, than that of sons of great men, in whom the
intensity of heredity is much greater.
Transfer the
inquiry to America, and it becomes even more conclusive, for this is supposed
to be the country of equal opportunities, where it is a popular tradition that
every boy has a chance to become president. Success may be in some degree a
family affair in caste-ridden England; is it possible that the past history of
the United States should show
!the same state
of affairs?
!Galton found
that about half of the great men of England had distinguished close relatives.
If the great men of America have fewer distinguished close relatives,
environment will be able to make out a plausible case: it will be evident that
in this continent of boundless opportunities the boy with ambition and energy
gets to the top, and that this ambition and energy do not depend on the kind of
family he comes from.
Frederick Adams
Woods has made precisely this investigation.[10] The first step was to find out
how many eminent men there are in American history. Biographical dictionaries
list about 3,500, and this number provides a sufficiently unbiased standard
from which to work. Now, Dr. Woods says, if we suppose the average person to
have as many as twenty close relatives--as near as an uncle or a grandson--then
computation shows that only one person in 500 in the United States has a chance
to be a near relative of one of the 3,500 eminent men--provided it is
purely a matter
of chance. As a fact, the 3,500 eminent men listed by the biographical
dictionaries are related to each other not as one in 500, but as one in five.
If the more celebrated men alone be considered, it is found that the percentage
increases so that about one in three of them has a close relative who is also
distinguished. This ratio
!increases to
more than one in two when the families of the forty-six Americans in the Hall
of Fame are made the basis of study. If all the eminent relations of those in
the Hall of Fame are counted, they average more than one apiece. Therefore,
they are from five hundred to a thousand times as much related to distinguished
people as the ordinary mortal is.
!To look at it
from another point of view, something like 1% of the population of the country
is as likely to produce a man of genius as is all the rest of the population
put together,--the other 99%.
!This might
still be due in some degree to family influence, to the prestige of a famous
name, or to educational advantages afforded the sons of successful men. Dr.
Woods' study of the royal families of Europe is more decisive.[11]
!In the latter
group, the environment must be admitted--on the whole--to be uniformly
favourable. It has varied, naturally, in each case, but speaking broadly it is
certain that all the members of this group have had the advantage of a good
education, of unusual care and attention. If such things affect achievement,
then the achievements of this class ought to be pretty generally distributed
among the whole class. If opportunity is the cause of a man's success, then
most of the members of this class ought to have succeeded, because to every one
of royal blood, the door of opportunity usually stands open. One would expect
the heir to the throne to show a better record than his younger brothers,
however, because his opportunity to distinguish himself is naturally greater.
This last point will be discussed first.
Dr. Woods
divided all the individuals in his study into ten classes for intellectuality
and ten for morality, those most deficient in the qualities being put in class
1, while the men and women of preëminent
intellectual and moral worth were put in class 10. Now if preëminent intellect and morality were at all linked with the better chances
that an inheritor of succession has, then heirs to the throne ought to be more
plentiful in the higher grades than in the lower. Actual count shows this not
to be the case. A slightly larger percentage of
inheritors is
rather to be found in the lower grades. The younger sons have made just as good
a showing as the sons who succeeded to power; as one would expect if intellect
and morality are due largely to heredity,
!but as one
would not expect if intellect and morality are due largely to outward circumstances.
Are
"conditions of turmoil, stress and adversity" strong forces in the
production of great men, as has often been claimed? There is no evidence from
facts to support that view. In the case of a few great commanders, the times
seemed particularly favourable. Napoleon, for example, could hardly have been
Napoleon had it not been for the French revolution. But in general there have
been wars going on during the whole period of modern European history; there
have always been opportunities for a royal hero to make his appearance; but
often the country has called for many years in vain. Circumstances were
powerless to produce a great man and the nation had to wait until heredity
produced him. Spain has for several centuries been calling for genius in
leadership in some lines;
!but in vain.
England could not get an able man from the Stuart line, despite her need, and
had to wait for William of Orange, who was a descendant of a man of genius,
William the Silent. "Italy had to wait fifty years in bondage for her
deliverers, Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel."
"The upshot
of it all," Dr. Woods decides, "is that, as regards intellectual
life, environment is a totally inadequate explanation. If it explains certain
characters in certain instances, it always fails to explain many more, while
heredity not only explains all, or at least 90%, of the intellectual side of
character in practically every
!instance, but
does so best when questions of environment are left out of discussion."
Despite the good
environment almost uniformly present, the geniuses in royalty are not scattered
over the surface of the pedigree chart, but
form isolated
little groups of closely related individuals. One centers in Frederick the
Great, another in Queen Isabella of Spain, a third in
!William the
Silent, and a fourth in Gustavus Adolphus. Furthermore, the royal personages
who are conspicuously low in intellect and morality are similarly grouped.
Careful study of the circumstances shows nothing in the environment that would
produce this grouping of genius, while it is exactly what a knowledge of
heredity leads one to expect.
In the next
place, do the superior members of royalty have proportionately more superior
individuals among their close relatives, as was found to be the case among the
Americans in the Hall of Fame? A
count shows at
once that they do. The first six grades all have about an equal number of
eminent relatives, but grade 7 has more while grade 8 has more than grade 7,
and the geniuses of grade 10 have the highest proportion of nearer relatives of
their own character. Surely it cannot be supposed that a relative of a king in
grade 8 has on the average a much less favourable environment than a relative
of a king in grade 10.
!Is it not fair,
then, to assume that this relative's greater endowment in the latter case is
due to heredity?
Conditions are
the same, whether males or females be considered. The royal families of Europe
offer a test case because for them the environment is nearly uniformly
favourable. A study of them shows great mental and moral differences between
them, and critical evidence indicates that these differences are largely due to
differences in
!heredity.
Differences of opportunity do not appear to be largely responsible for the
achievements of the individuals.
!We need not
stop with the conclusion that equality of training or opportunity is unable to
level the inborn differences between men. We can go even farther, and produce
evidence to show that equality of training increases the differences in results
achieved.
This evidence is
obtained by measuring the effects of equal amounts of exercise of a function
upon individual differences in respect to efficiency in it. Suppose one should
pick out, at random, eight children, and let them do problems in multiplication
for 10 minutes.
!After a number
of such trials, the three best might average 39 correct solutions in the 10
minutes, and the three poorest might average 25 examples. Then let them
continue the work, until each one of them has done 700 examples. Here is
equality in training; does it lead to uniform results?
Dr. Starch made
the actual test which we have outlined and found that the three best pupils
gained on the average 45 in the course of doing
!700 examples;
while the three poorest gained only 26 in the same course of time.
!Similar tests
have been made of school children in a number of instances, and have shown that
equality of training fails to bring about equality of performance. All improve
to some extent; but those who are naturally better than their comrades usually
become better still, when conditions for all are the same. E. L. Thorndike
gives[12] the following tabular statement of a test he conducted:
!THE EFFECT OF EQUAL AMOUNTS OF PRACTICE UPON INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCES IN THE MENTAL MULTIPLICATION OF A THREE-PLACE BY A THREE-PLACE
NUMBER
!
Amount done Percentage of
per unit of correct figures time in answers
!
Hours of
Practice
|
| First 5 Examples First 5 Examples
| | |
| | Last
5 or 10 | Last 5 or 10
| | Examples |
Examples
| | | | |
!| | |
Gain | |
Gain
Initial highest
five individuals 5.1 85
147 61 70 78 18
" next
five " 5.1
56 107 51 68 78 10
" " six " 5.3
46 68 22 74 82 8
" " six " 5.4
38 46 8 58 70 12
" " five " 5.2 31 57
26 47 67 20
" " one individual 5.2 19 32
13 100 82 -18
!
Similar results
have been obtained by half a dozen other experimenters,
!using the tests
of mental multiplication, addition, marking A's on a printed sheet of capitals,
and the like. It would be a mistake to conclude too much from experiments of
such restricted scope; but they all agree in showing that if every child were
given an equal training, the differences in these traits would nevertheless be
very great.
We are driven
back to the same old conclusion, that it is primarily
inborn nature
which causes the achievements of men and women to be what they are. Good
environment, opportunity, training, will give good heredity a
chance to express itself; but they can not produce greatness from bad heredity.
CALEB SALEEBY’S Parenthood & Race Culture: An Outline of Family Eugenics
CALEB SALEEBY’S Parenthood & Race Culture: An Outline of Family Eugenics
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