SOMETHING ABOUT EUGENICS

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 134, 7 June 1911, Page 8

SOMETHING ABOUT EUGENICS

By SIR ROBERT STOUT. } (A Lecture delivered at the Leys Institute, Auckland.) PART I. If you look at the edition of Webster's j Dictionary that was published in ISH(>, j and then called a new edition, you will I find tlie word " eugenic, ,, and its meaning is given as ''pertaining to or derived I from clot es." It i* not, however, about [ an aromatic shrub that I propose to speak to-night. The word '"eugenic " is ' applied to cloves because cloves was a plant that belonged to the genus "cv- . geniu," called so in honour of Prince ■ Eugene of Saxony. You will find in the j dictionary, however, another word, "eu- j geny," meaning " well-born." In newer j dictionaries the words, " eugenic, eugenics " appear, meaning the science of i noble birth, or that which relates to the j development and improvement of the j hlimaii race. The history of this word j shows how our language has ever been j enriched by the acknowledgment of new | words. It is to the late Francis Galton j that we are indebted for, I might call it, \ the creation of the science called Eugen- j ic-s. and the teaching of Eugenics in the I London University. is this science worth lecturing about? you may ask. j We have many n-sociations in our; midst—political, religious, social—but : though very varied as they are in their j aims and methods, 1 believe if (Ik> mem- j bers were asked what their aim was,! they would all say to improve the rnce. j Political societies are founded so that ' we may have a better regulation of man I in society, for man is, as Aristotle told us nearly 2300 years ago, "a political animal." Some people think that if our Government system is good, the race will improve. If we ask the members of any church society or of any churcn what their aim is, they will tell us that it is to redeem mankind and make them lead righteoue lives. To my mind the | marvel of our modern life is the number j of societies that are working for the ] betterment of mankind and the enthusiasm of their members, but it is often asked what matters it whether we have a Czar or President if the lot of the poor and needy remains the same. What does it signify the; church is governed if presbyter is often " priest writ large," and if, as some apparently hope to see, the wealth of the world were equally divided amongst men and women, say once a year, what would the gain be if the race j was degenerate and if there was no im- ' provement seen in the mental, physical | and moral quality of men and women?! Thb farmer would not be thought much [ of to-day if his sheep were what is i called " culls " and his cows degenerates. | So in human life, if the race is not to im- j j prove—if the men and women are not to ' ,be physically strong, mentally alert and "kind and. considerate to all their kind— what is the value of our politics, our religious or our social life? Our aim should surely,be to get the best possible, race of people. Some in '■our midst object to the Chinese . and Japanese coming to New Zealand. Why do they object? It cannot be merely the colour of their skins. It must be because of the belief that our civilisation is higher than that of the Chinese and Japanese, and that, a sudd-en influx of a Jaxge number of people of a different civilisation would tend to lower our ideals of life, and further, that our variety of the human species is worth keeping pure. These, can be the only grounds for such an exclusion." *lf we then have factors in our midst that tend to lower our civisurely it is our bounden duty to cwsider out position, and see if those things that make for the degeneration of our nice cannot be remedied. We are doing much, to improve our race, and though ,the wheels of progress move slowly they are moving. We are spending large sums of money on our education system. We are spending large sums on hospitals and on charitable aid and on old-age pensions. Our doctors are ever studying the human system and its diseases, and Boiid progress has been made during-the past centuries in alleviating human •troubles. . The best races of the world are encouraging medical research. Some diseases that were considered hopeless to contend with—black death, plague, typhus, typhoid, and consumption—have all been grappled with, and in many instances with most satisfactory results. Then we have had many social movements and social experiments, and as the foundations for their existence there are two beliefs—one that the race needs improvement, and the other that it can be improved. This is the faith of the social reformer. His ideal is continued progress. Eugenics is really a phase of this struggle for social reform, and 3t is a phase that is based, I believe,' on a solid scientific foundation. Aβ I have said, so I repeat, that it is to the late Francis Galton that belongs the glory and honour of, the foundation of the science. The science is really an offshoot of the doctrine of evolution. It is, in fact, the doctrine of ascent or descent applied to human beings. Since 1860 the fact of heredity has become acknowledged in every phase of life) vege- ■» table, animal, human. Eugenics deals mainly with the fact- of heredity in mankind. We have recognised the doctrine of heredity in reference to plant lue If we read the works of a botanist dealing with plant distribution or plant life we see how he arranges and classifies one kind of plant, as allied to another. If he finds a plant, say on the sea coast of a continent, and the. same plant on an island hundreds of miles away, he has a theory how tho p ant got there. . He will W rit7of the carrmgeo tw seed by the wind, the"seed being lifted into the upper current of air by a high wind, and carried from the

continent to the island, or he may Bun . gest the carriage of the seed bvbirds across the ocean or that the seed inav have been carried there in the ocean itself. All these theories and others have been propounded because botanists recognise that like produces lik"e and that heredity counts. They do not be lieve that varieties of plants have'suddenly come into being. it takes some time before a new genus or new species , can be evolved. Aβ for example Now •Zealand once stretched over hundreds t IIIJV,l lI JV,f a / t0 tllp S °- Jtl > east Th I IB the belief of botanists to-day on,! ItVL y arr ! riJ at t,lftt delusion i We ontlf CO f l( i eratio « of the plant Ihr B \ iD , the - ond "f«l work of Lu. tber Burbank of He haa erteted new fruits. He and othershave

improved the seeds of many** plants, and the time may come, when we shall have a better wheat, better oats and better barley than we have now, ana all through the recognition of the power of heredity. Wallace, in his famous paper read at the Linnean Society, which was one of the lirst publications pointing how new species were created, said: "Kvery species lias come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing, j closely allied species." Recognising this luniliision, fortified as it is by the fossil I remains lound in the world, especially iin South America and Australia, the I proof of heredity is clear, in South ! America the fossil animals found, the I Kdentata as they are called, are close--lly allied to the" sloths, the anteatera, j thr> armadillos, which though unknown in Europe, are found in South America. £o in Australia fossil remains of pouehj bearing animals arc found allied to the ; marsupials now in Australia. New I species have not sprung on the earth at J oiv.w without ret'ei'ence !to ancestors, j neither in the flora nor the fauna of i any country. lv animal life also again lee -us con- ! sider what an enormous improvement j there has been made in our domestic i animals. What a variety of dogs .there I are now. What a variety of cattle. j What a variety of sheep, and the breeds lof cattle and sheep go on improving. A cow now-a-days can produce far more ! milk than a cow could do 100 years ago, I and the wool from the sheep has been ! marvellously developed. if we want further improvements we expect that j raisers by careful attention to breeding j will be able to produce different varieties ; suitable, for different climates. The reI cognition that there can be such a thing ias breeding is an admission that, pay- ■ ing attention to the ancestors, affects the I olfspring. How far the world has tra- \ veiled in this respect can be best illustrated by Professor Huxley's book on the horse. You will remember that in it he tolls how the far back ancestor of the horse was a small five-toed animal. If we compared the ancestor of the horse with the horse of to day we could not realise that the horse we know was descended from such an animal. In I stock-raising everything depends on breeding, in watching for any and every i strain, and carefully choosing strains. i If we are to accept the opinions of the recent Scotch farmers' delegates that have been amongst us, our farmers have not reached the development in domestic animals that can be seen in Britain. Is there heredity in the human being? The wonder is that we have taken so long to realise its full effect. We have to remember, however, that the primitive races had no conception of heredity. If you were to ask an Australian black j how life was created in humanity he would tell you something that would j certainly surprise you, and races not so \ primitive believe in the transmigration • of souls, and that mankind can be creatled from dust. The doctrine of incarnation amongst the Australian blacks is i very interestingly explained in the new edition of the "Golden Bough," by Professor Frazer (vol. i., p. 100). We recognise now to some extent the importance of heredity in human beings. The late Francis Galton, in his book on "Hereditary Genius," published in 1869, , gave many pedigrees of many eminent men to prove that ability descends. He gave one example, namely, that of the 1 Bach family. That family was a musical family for six generations. It began in ; 1530, and it culminated in Sebastian I Bach, the sixth in the genealogical table. I There were more than 20 eminent musicians in the and in 1750 120 of the family met at a concert, and all were musical. The Coleridge family was anotHer example. There is still one judge of the High Court of England a Coleridge, and there are others taking a good position in the social life of England. There have been at least eight very celebrated men of this family. The Wordsworth family is another that has had quite as many distinguished men. If we accept Mendel's law, as it is termi ed, we have carefully to note the ability of the mother as well as that of the father. Mendel's law is thus illustrated ! regarding the breeding of Andalusian i fowls. This is referred to by Bateson, the celebrated Cambridge biologist, and ; by Punnett in a recent book. It is men- ! tioned 'by Whetham in his new book, i called "The Family and the Nation." He i says that black and splashed white Andalusians each breed true when mated to- : gether. We possess then a definite . splashed white breed and a definite black , breed. If we cross a white bird with a ! black the resulting chicks are all blue. So far the result seems simple, and we , are inclined to believe in these fowls as an intermediate hybrid colour between ■ black and white. But if we breed fur- > ther generations exclusively from these ■ blue birds we find that they do not I i breed true to type. No definite blue race i can be established. Of a large number [ of birds with two blue parents, about . half will be blue, one quarter will be I white,- and one quarter black. Now, . these white and black birds, though de- • rived from blue ancestors, will once more . breed true just as did the white and I black of the first generation. By mating i together two white birds we can re- ! establish the pure splashed white strain, which shows no sign of its blue ances- ■ try, and similarly we can recover the , pure black strain uncontaminated by blue to any number of generations. If . we think what this phenomenon must , mean in the hereditary process, ! we are allowed' to presume that the germ cells of the blue birds are not hy- . brids like the birds themselves. Some ! of the germ cells of a blue bird must be pure white in character, others pure J black. When two blue birds pair it is ■ an even chance whether twe uniike cells meet and develop into a blue chick, or two like cells join to form either a pure I black or a- pure white bird. I could give illustrations in reference to peas and ' other plants to show you that the in- ' iluence of the mother can never be dis-

regarded. It is just as powerful ac that of the father. There is another thing that has to be remembered in heredity in the human being, that the human being is more composite and of longer life than are domestic animals. It has more strains of different characters and cells, and it is often impossible to predict what the offspring may be, because of the composite character of the ancestors. (To be continued.)