BETTER AMERICAN FAMILIES 



Heredity in Its Relation to Social Selection in the Formation of Distinctive 



American Strains 



WiLHELMINE E. KeY 



Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Spring Harbor, 



Long Island, N. Y. 



HISTORIES have hitherto been 

 written as though the genius of 

 a nation were something mys- 

 terious, impersonal, which in- 

 heres in its constituent people, lifting 

 them and their institutions to a zenith 

 of power, and then as certainly bring- 

 ing to them decadence and death. The 

 life of a race has been conceived as 

 unfolding itself in obedience to immu- 

 table law, which in the mere passage of 

 time effects its extinction even as it 

 effected at an earlier period of its de- 

 velopment complete expression of its 

 potentialities. So far as analogies from 

 biology have been sought, we have said, 

 in brief, "This people lives ; hence it 

 must, in due course of time, die." At 

 the best, we assign as conceivable causes 

 of national decline one or two out- 

 standing facts. Thus Rome fell be- 

 cause of malaria or dissolute living, and 

 Spain suffered fatal weakening through 

 the emigration of her able men and the 

 multiplication of her religious orders. 



NATURE OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 



The facts of history take on new 

 interpretations with the years. In the 

 rewriting of history which the present 

 world crisis has stimulated we witness 

 an encouraging attempt to disentangle 

 all the factors germane to this vital prob- 

 lem. In this effort the social psychol- 

 ogist has preceded the historian in seek- 

 .ng the essentials of the social process 

 n the traits and tendencies of the indi- 

 /idual, the influence of the environment 

 )n those traits and tendencies, and in 

 he ideals and social standards he is led 

 o establish. In particular are we taking 

 iccount of the nation's dominating per- 



sonalities, their nature and origin, the 

 interplay of these personalities with the 

 masses, as well as the response of the 

 latter to the urge of ideals and tradi- 

 tions as represented in institutions ; for 

 institutions are nothing more than the 

 enduring expression of the dominating 

 personalities of the past. 



From time to time in the life of a 

 people danger signals are flung out and 

 impassionate voices give warning of the 

 doom that is certain to overtake per- 

 sistent indulgence in national sins. 

 From its earliest beginnings America 

 has listened to many such jeremiads, 

 though of late these prophets of im- 

 pending dissolution have been over- 

 borne by the chorus of self-gratulation 

 following young America's part in de- 

 ciding the world conflict. Our irresistible 

 man-power, with the spiritual reen- 

 forcement which it brought to the win- 

 ning of the Great Cause, gives grounds 

 to many for belief in the essential 

 soundness of our national tissue, while 

 to the less assured the war is viewed 

 as furnishing the stimulus which shall 

 speedily evoke new and unexpected vir- 

 tue in the body politic. So, at the be- 

 ginning of the Crimean War, sang 

 Tennyson of the moral regeneration to 

 be wrought in decadent Britain. Be- 

 tween these two extremes lies the mid- 

 dle ground of earnest questioning as to 

 what is fundamental in the genesis and 

 development of national tendency. 

 What, in essence, is that process of 

 "Americanization" which, in the space 

 of a few centuries, has gone far to 

 transform a heterogeneous mob of im- 

 migrants into a nation with its present 

 role in world politics? 



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