Part 4

This lesson from the book of Nature we have been studying has a universal application. Its truths are applicable in every field and department wherein man and his activities are employed--in private conduct, religion, government and industry.

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Of all animals man is most subject to disease and defect in body and in mind. Sickly, or mal-formed wild animals are so rare as seldom to be seen. This is almost as true of domesticated animals, though epidemics sometimes sweep them off. Animals mentally defective are almost unknown. But man is assailed with a thousand ailments. Defective organs, functional disorders, chronic invalidism are common. Malformations of body, also of brain causing idiocy, stupidity, insanity and crime, are a hundred times more frequent in man than in lower animals, wild or domesticated. Why this difference? The answer is easy for anyone familiar with the laws of evolution.

The sedulous sifting by natural selection of animals in the wild state has left no sickly or half-witted degenerates to burden the world with a like progeny. If at rare intervals the law of variation should drop a mal-formed specimen into Nature’s sieve it would be quickly eliminated along with the great mass of averages. Practically the same is true of domesticated animals where the watchful eye of man is substituted for Nature’s.

As natural selection is hampered in its operation among domesticated animals by the interference of man, so is it limited on the human plane. There, we find virtually no selection, neither natural nor artificial. Hence the degeneracy--physical, mental, moral. Both Nature and man, in their respective fields of operation, select only a few of the best for propagating purposes--Nature eliminating the rest by death, and man by sterilization. But on the human plane man--acting mercifully toward the individual, mercilessly toward the race--does his best to thwart Nature. He prolongs the lives of weaklings, of the maimed-from-birth, of the deaf and dumb and blind, and of the mentally sub-normal. So far, all is well. But he permits these victims of an inferior ancestry to marry and procreate almost without limit. What then can we expect but for the world to be burdened with invalids, runts, and the mal-formed--cursed with morons, sub-morons, half-wits, quarter-wits, and predestined criminals? And worse for the entire race, this class shades upward by imperceptible degrees into all gradations, mingling its inferior strains with the best. It has always been so; therefore all of us, far more than wild animals, have a mixed ancestry, of the good and the less good.

Why is it that man has not learned to rid himself of this lower fringe of degeneracy as is done in the case of every other species of animal? It is mainly because the superstition of an out-worn theology has so muddled his brains that he has been unable to see that the laws of Nature are as applicable to himself as to all other creatures. He has always fancied himself as occupying a higher plane than that on which Nature has her laboratory. So he has always depended on “divine” laws, not those of “carnal nature,” to plant his feet on higher ground. And we see the result. Notwithstanding his high intellectual and moral faculties, as a race, he is the most defective animal on earth. What is the remedy?

If we would solve this pressing problem we must apply the laws of Nature to man in some such manner as they have always applied to the rest of the animal kingdom. The unfit must be prevented from reproducing its kind. How? There are only two methods: Nature’s, by bringing about the death of the unfit prospective parent, and man’s, the sterilization method. But among the better traits of man which have been slowly evolved in his agelong struggle reaching back to an immemorial past is sympathy, mercy. This bars him from using Nature’s method of preventing undesirable offspring; nor can he use the sterilization method except in extreme cases. Born criminals, perverts, and other abnormal misfits who persist in indulging their selfish passions in detriment of the Common Good--for such, comprising perhaps 5 to 10 per cent of the race, sterilization is the quickest and surest preventive. Once the milder type of defectives are made to realize the heinous crime of bringing degenerate children into the world they would in most cases refrain from marriage and procreation. Wise restrictive laws and an awakened public opinion would do the rest. This eugenical system is the only one that promises hope for the salvation of the race. From generation to generation, owing to the fecundity of the less fit and their proneness to “let Nature take her course,” their numbers increase, and so, too, the danger increases of their swamping the fitter.

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From the exposition of natural selection it will be seen that all the laws of organic development--either of individuals, varieties or species--fall under two heads: those of heredity (the harking back to ancestral characters) and those of environment (all outside influences). Variation, which seems so contradictory of the law of “like producing like,” is in reality a result of heredity. Offspring inherit traits, more or less repressive in one or both parents, in different degrees--this is variation.

The gist of the matter is: heredity transmits to environment the ancestral traits or characters, good and bad, of each creature. From these inherited traits environmental laws select and nourish those best fitted to each particular environment, and neglect, repress or destroy the less fit. At the birth of the individual heredity has done its work, for good or ill; then environment receives the legacy bequeathed by its ancestry and completes the job--whether for the individual’s weal or woe depends both upon the quality of the material heredity handed down, and upon the character of the particular environment that works upon the material. As prior to birth heredity is the only factor in producing the individual, the absolute necessity of preventing the reproduction of the unfit, the inferior, becomes apparent; as after birth environment is the only factor, or sum of factors, in his production, the making the best possible environment for every one is the one absolute essential.

The individual man, no less than other organisms, is a creature of heredity and environment. This is as true of his intellect and of his moral character as of his body. He is not a thing separate and apart, but a link in the chain of cause and effect. He is orbit-bound as planets are. Every thought of his brain, every desire of his heart, every deed of his hand is a natural and (circumstances considered) unavoidable result of the laws of Nature working in and through him--as surely as every cause produces an effect and that every cause is itself an effect of a prior cause. In cases where opposing forces or influences tend to move the will in different directions it obeys the stronger--follows the path of least resistance. It cannot do otherwise--no more than Newton’s apple could have moved toward the moon.

Scientists are generally agreed that none but “inborn” traits, the inherited ones, are transmissible to posterity--though Dr. Krammerer has recently furnished some evidence to the contrary. If the generally accepted view be the true one, then of course “acquired” characters--the “improvements” of environment--die with the individual. Certainly, environment cannot put into the individual what it had no capacity for at birth; it can only develop what is already there. Hence the conclusion: We may, we must, improve the environment for the good of the living generations as they arise; but above all, prevent the reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable benefit of the countless generations that are now waiting their turn in the womb of the future.

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Man is such an egotistical creature--being a near relative of the gods, as he imagined, and being specially created and made lord over the other creatures--that he has always regarded himself as above and beyond Nature and not subject to her laws, or only so far as his body was concerned--that being the one link connecting him with Nature.

As the little boy evolved from his inner consciousness his idea of the camel, of which he had never seen even a picture, so man in olden times evolved his theories of the origin of the world and of himself, and the part he was to play in life. According to his primitive way of thinking, the earth--which he regarded as the center of the universe--was a very small affair, over which Nature presided as a sort of satrap whose rulership was subject to interference at any time by the Great King. According to his theory there were two sets of laws, natural and divine, and they were often in conflict with each other. But man always had the right to appeal his case to the higher authority when not satisfied with Nature’s rulings. She had neither part nor jurisdiction in the human mind or soul--that coming not by way of her but directly from God.

This was essentially the belief of millions for thousands of years, and it is the belief of millions today. This is the soil in which nearly all the creeds of today are rooted.

The old theologians made a distinction between God’s works and Nature’s works, divine laws and natural laws. It is because of this dual idea of God and Nature that the most fruitful scientific discovery of all time is barred from the schools in some states and denounced as “atheism” from many a pulpit. Those who hold to the old theology do not realize how completely science has destroyed the foundations of their ancient belief, nor have they any conception of what an incalculable service modern thought has been to religion in clearing it of its impediments.

The bringing of science and reason to play in the progress of man, the bringing of the blind forces of Nature more and more under subjection to his enlightened intelligence--this is but Nature exalting herself. Having built up a higher plane, the human plane, Nature works upon that to refine and ennoble herself--not purposely, or only so far as man works with a purpose. All, all is Nature.

Transcriber’s note:

Obvious printing errors, such as partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Full stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added.

Spelling in common use at the time of publishing, such as “aligator” and “agelong”, has been kept as is. Obvious typos have been corrected.