BIOLOGY AND GOVERNMENT 



Further Discussion of AUeyne Ireland's Article on Democracy and the 

 Accepted Facts of Heredity. 



O. F. Cook and Robert Carter Cook 



DR. WOODS has asked for bio- 

 logical consideration of ques- 

 tions raised by Mr. Alleyne 

 Ireland in an article entitled: 

 "Democracy and the Accepted Facts of 

 Heredity," in the December number of 

 this journal. To see that theories of 

 government need to square with biolo- 

 gical facts is an advanced position in 

 political philosophy. Biologists may not 

 accept the applications proposed by Mr. 

 Ireland, but there can be no question of 

 the need of bringing the two fields of 

 thought into closer relations. 



That acquired or environmental char- 

 acters are not inherited, that mental and 

 moral traits are inherited, that selective 

 or assortive mating tends in nature to 

 preserve adaptive or advantageous 

 characters, that progressive evolution- 

 ary changes appear as individual varia- 

 tions, not as mass transformations, are 

 statements that most biologists accept, 

 but they do not seem to afford a basis 

 for Mr. Ireland's reactionary theory of 

 government. The question of breeding 

 families or classes of great, ideal rulers 

 has a flavor at once medieval and 

 Utopian, but human interests are many- 

 sided and need to be viewed from various 

 angles. 



The proposition that assortive mating 

 separates the population into distinct 

 superior and inferior groups would need 

 to be supported by definite evidence.^ 

 Wild species do not divide or become 

 bimodal in relation to characters of 

 adaptation, probably because the non- 

 adaptive extreme is eliminated by 

 natural selection. The human species 



may not become bimodal for the oppo- 

 site reason, that civilization tends to 

 elimiinate the more capable and to pre- 

 serve the inferior or the mediocre, the 

 meek who inherit the earth after the 

 more aggressive have destroyed each 

 other or exhausted themseh'es in the 

 struggle. 



The main difficulty in applying 

 general biological facts to human in- 

 terests is that people in civilized 

 countries are no longer engaged in a 

 struggle for existence, but endangered 

 rather by superfluity. The primitive 

 necessities of food, clothing and shelter 

 are now placed within reach of all, 

 through applications of science to agri- 

 culture and other arts. How to protect 

 ourselves against greed, luxury and 

 urban degeneration is the biological or 

 eugenic problem of civilized countries. 

 The use of alcohol is only one artificial 

 habit that is clearly prejudicial to the 

 race under the conditions of our pres- 

 ent civilization. The entire system of 

 sedentary urban existence, of education, 

 commerce and industry, undoubtedly 

 has a sterilizing tendency that is exerted 

 especially upon the superior stocks. The 

 continual drafting of the more capable 

 elements of the population from the 

 country to the city is a persistent and 

 dangerous form of adverse selection, as 

 explained in an article on "Eugenics and 

 Agriculture," published in June, 1916, 

 in this journal. Hence, instead of 

 becoming bimodal or tending to separate 

 into superior and inferior groups, as 

 Ireland imagines, our tendency is to 



1 Mr. Ireland has here doubtless drawn upon some unpublished evidence which I have been 

 collecting for a number of years showing that the lower elements of society are being more and 

 more removed from the upper, presumably by the action of assortative mating. The reasons 

 why this should take place on a priori grounds are extensively discussed in the final chapter of 

 my "Influence of Monarchs," 1913. — Acting Editor. 



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