BIOLOGICAL EUGENICS 



Relation of Philanthropy and Medicine to Race Betterment — Study of Genetics 



Shows that no Race Can be Bred Immune to All Diseases or 



Defects — Nevertheless, Medicine and Charity Must 



Pay More Attention to Heredity^ 



Leon J. Cole, 

 Professor of Experimental Breeding, University of Wisconsin. 



IN ACCEPTING the invitation to 

 speak before this Conference on the 

 subject of The Relation of Philan- 

 thropy and Medicine to Race Bet- 

 terment, I wish to make it clear that I 

 do so with no special knowledge of 

 medicine or of sociology. But if by 

 Race Betterment is meant in this 

 instance the production of an inherently 

 better race rather than simply the bet- 

 tering of conditions — if it means bio- 

 logical improvement rather than social 

 improvement — then I may perhaps 

 avoid the charge of presumption, since 

 neither medical science nor sociology 

 has as yet amassed sufficient data for a 

 very clear understanding of what their 

 biological effects upon the race may be. 

 Consequently the subject may be 

 regarded to a considerable extent in the 

 light of biological analogy, and if such 

 facts as are known fit in with biological 

 theory and deductions in other lines, 

 we may from this gather some assurance 

 that we may apply the reasoning of 

 biology, in its narrower sense, to the 

 destiny of mankind, which is, of course, 

 a cognate field of biology in its broader 

 meaning. 



For we must not forget that man is 

 still an animal, however much he may 

 specialize socially; and although he 

 may by his superior knowledge abrogate 

 many of the laws which bind his more 

 lowly kin, the bird, the fish, the maggot, 

 or ameba, he cannot hope to escape 

 from the operation of certain of nature's 

 methods, and one of the most funda- 



mental and tyrannical of these is that of 

 reproduction. The heritage of society 

 is passed in an uninterrupted flow from 

 one generation to the next; but not so 

 the biological inheritance, for between 

 the individual of one generation and 

 that of the next there is a rearrange- 

 ment, a shuffling of the cards face down, 

 leading to an indefiniteness of results 

 which has long made this problem one 

 of the most difficult of biological 

 questions. 



So it is as a biologist that I propose 

 to discuss the question before us, and I 

 believe you will agree that until we 

 have enough facts to enable us to see 

 definitely what medicine and philan- 

 thropy are actually doing for the race, 

 we shall have to predict as best we can 

 what they will probably do from our 

 knowledge of general biological laws; 

 and our predictions will have value di- 

 rectly in relation to the correctness and 

 extent of our knowledge of these laws. 

 This becomes at once apparent when 

 we consider the diametrically opposed 

 attitudes of certain biologists, sociolo- 

 gists and social reformers. One believes 

 that the himian race already possesses 

 the potential factors for a richer and 

 fuller life, that this more or less latent 

 potentiality is rather universally dis- 

 tributed, at least within certain group 

 limits," and all that is needed is a 

 better environment to bring it out. 

 Such maintain that biological evolution 

 has largely stopped in the case of civil- 

 ized man, and that social evolution, 



'Address (here abridged) delivered before First National Conference for Race Betterment, 

 Battle Creek, Mich., January 8, 1914. 



^See for example Smith, S. G., "Social Pathology," New York, 1911, section on Eugenics, 

 especially pp. 308 and 309. 



305 



