SOMETHING ABOUT EUGENICS

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 136, 9 June 1911, Page 7

SOMETHING ABOUT EUGENICS

$j SIS EOBEET STOUT..' v lecture delivered at the Leys Insti- •' • tute, Auckland.) PART H. r juts' mentioned the cases of the nLages'aad WoSlswortlis. Perhaps „; the best illustrations to show the fj of mothers is that of the Dares'and the allied families. Taking SlLus Darwin as the founder of the I tofc and taking the fact that there tsro able families joined with the j tLjjbs (the Wedgwoods and the Gal-I Si h-c shall find that in five generaLjj'no less than sixteen distinjruisiied ll of science have been produced, were Fellows of the Royal Society x£ ten were lineal descendants of Eras- !~ Darwin, and it has been well asked v» recent author, who can assess the !Le of the Darwin strain to mankind? -jj" something more than ability tie- I Degeneracy descends. Weak-1 Lg descends. Let us take the illustra- ' of deaf mutes. Here is an actual j A deaf mute mated with one Sjo was'not a deaf mute. They had two jjjiren. One was a deaf mute and one j -is not The one who was not a deaf -ute mated with a normal person. The , -gnlt however, was one child who was a j w mute. If two deaf mutes marry j £ chances are that all their children I -53 be deaf mutes. I can give illustra- | fe'eas. of course, where this happened to j tar generations. Then take the heredity j the weajf. Some are subject to con- i tamjtion. Though consumption is a dis- \ jjse, and the microbe has been found, | ad the disease cannot, therefore, he said ; j. be hereditary in the ordinary sense; | Jt if persons have a lower vitality and j breathing organs, the chances are i fcjt tSey will be liable to catch, and not jtfe to shake off. tubercular disease. They He unable to resist the microbe. The jgnfafly defective have the same record. i "man married a mentally defective j TKjtun. They had one child mentally de{shve. She married and had three chiljjlgl mentally defective, and one of them, ,I=o, had a child mentally defective. Then fliereis also such a thing as families that m> sterile and tend soon to extinction — {nalies in which children are rare. One j peculiar example of this is in connection j pfj. heiresses or co-heiresses. Heiresses. ' 15 yon are aware, are often the last of isialie. The money of a family has de- j aaded to one female or to perhaps two fcaules. Marriages with them often repltinno children. Galton gives examples it Ms "Hereditary Genius."' Out of 31 peerages, in 17 cases marriage with heiress was followed by sterility. Again, J- ssts from 1760 down to 1869, of 22 jjgiEfl Premiers, 14 left no male deKendrnts, and seven of them or their gjs married heiresses. Take another fest Cut of 200 wives of peers. 100 were harases. They had 41-4 children, whilst fie other 100 that were not heiresses had GO children. A marriage of an heiress is,fhentEore, sometimes not an advantage. There" is another aspect of descent we staid consider. Does crime descend? Tint is, you may be aware, a record of es ranffly that produced 260 criminals sad prostitutes, and cost the State an tLBSBt. of over a-quarter of a million— tH hm one or two criminals. I know A cc family in New Zealand which has hi crMnals hefore the Courts for 36 the. If yon carefully examine the! gßsatogyof many criminals you will dismiT a iereditary criminal taint. I bora criminals in a prison who had j Masdes, or fathers, or brothers alsoj zpH. To prevent tlm kind of descent esil States of America have provided. ihstie remedy, and declared that after issrtain number of convictions a crimi- » shall not be allowed to produce his eker species. That crime descends is jmsi. quite as clearly 33 that ability or Fitness descends.

Bit let us make a larger comparison, ci leave individual families, and pjcce at the effect of heredity in nations, let as take, first, Spain, Spain was once fie greatest nation in Europe. She was fe nation that was most celebrated for ffifiitive. Her explorers went to all prte of the world. Columbus the Genoese et rat from Spain, and in the fiffearth. and sixteenth centuries she sent o adventurous, pushing people to sHne America. These men of adKanrre and da-ring did not, however, ssay Spaniards. They married Amelias aborigines, and the value of the rains of :their blood was lost to Spain. Sea she had many sincere logical, men. They became her bishops e4 leaders of her church, and we know fcsa Sonde, in his book on the Council c Trent that the Spanish bishops were fe most sincere of all those who ascabled at that great conference. The fcch, however, prohibited marriage to tti priests. They were celibates and got no advantage from the good *Uhß of blood that they possessed. *Ma she persecuted those who were *n?ed heretics—men many of them of fckfleetual ability and fired with a befeia freedom. These she put in prison, ?kSed or expelled from her kingdom, gaapa, one of the greatest thinkers of >& world, was descended from this class, lost the value of the Mnafcnrous daring strain, the strain of ™fcay and moral prowess. By the «™*7 of her priests she lost tne. high *M strain; and by the exclusion of S intellectuals she* became poorer in H mental strain, and what has been the a poor record she has toto France, we find that the ™¥Mal Napoleonic wars killed directmad indirectly millions of Frenchmen. g fflost able physically were slain and nation had to depend upon her sec--2f wd third rates for her children, Prance fell, and perhaps the H* of the Prussian war was a proof ■ aeredity. It has been said by many historians that the fall of the fV& £m pire is to be attributed wholly tkUT* factors -(D 'that the hest Romojf not &aye large families, and (2) and vice abounded in her

,<?. all these fflnstratioiis show what i ggg means_ to human beings, and j »2d t I ? QSt ' "* our race ' a to subsist i mm *_ OT «rthrown by other races, O ™SS—(l) to our breed-1 US T,* 65 *' and < 2 > t0 a P r °P" I for oar P eo P le - Ow birth, ft. X mea n the birth rate of . Ir-JrE 0I oßr P«°ple is falling. Who j tb"»M + m ° St DOW in Endand'to-dav?; *ora3lv9 t* P h y skail . v ' mentally and fc&s.»rf - , are to believ e these statot So « is in Germany. °>- her lars ? e dties wa * confe*t«,» , U has fallen aad we & T J* "Jenifer that in Germany to- 1 - population of the courrtrv dis- l and simple is hardly any I •fie H*r X was in IS7 °- The ma « ' SS eS5e of the Papulation of Ger-! *>tte W 5 c V sl » - Tears *« been j *'i«in^ er # ci - t!es ° f Germac 7- This is ! "•""fchn*. a eat industrial a nd development. *B is-S 516 io a ten dency in car times J .v° Ur most careful consider- ££ m thai is the lessening of the |W among tie most able. Her-

Bert Spencer has pointed out that an undue nervous development sometimes tends to sterility. Many examples may be given, but a human being is such a complex animal that the cause may not always be undue brain development. j Certain it is that our four ablest English philosophers of the past 100 years have had no descendants. I mention Sir I William Hamilton, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, and Herbert Spencer.' If their names are to survive it must' be in their great works. Independently of the overdevelopment of brain, which often ends in a weakened physical constitution, there is a tendency to smallness in families among the most able and tho well to do. (To be concluded.)