306 



The Journal of Heredity 



the evolution of the environment, has 

 com]:)letely taken its place. Thus 

 Smith in his Soeial Pathology, asserts 

 that while "Charles Darwin may learn 

 important lessons from pigeons and 

 pigs, and a brood of lesser men may talk 

 about human marriage in the terms of 

 the stock farm, . . . the men of 

 our generation who are studying the 

 problems at closer range will more and 

 more discuss them in terms of social 

 psvchology."' Another holds that evo- 

 lution and selection, or evolution by 

 selection, is in effect as always; that the 

 potentialities of individuals differ, and 

 that they develop differentially accord- 

 ing to this inherited potentiality and to 

 the limiting influence of the environ- 

 ment. Furthermore, that such individ- 

 uals as are able to survive the environ- 

 ment and to produce offspring, bequeath 

 to their successors only that which 

 they themselves inherently possessed. 

 Or still others, while believing that 

 Natural Selection is biologically opera- 

 tive, attribute to the environment 

 an ameliorating effect upon the germ 

 ])lasm, which means the "inheritance of 

 acquired characters." When men differ 

 to this extent in their interpretation of 

 natural laws, is it surprising that they 

 fail to agree on specific means for race 

 betterment ? 



PHILANTHROPY AND MEDICINE. 



At first thought it might seem odd 

 that ]jhilanthro]jy and medicine should 

 be classed together in a discussion of 

 this nature. The former draws upon 

 the resources of the individual, or of 

 the state, if we use the somewhat 

 broader word charities, while the latter 

 is ordinarily a source of income and 

 livelihood to the individual practicing 

 it. In this sense the same might be 

 said of agriculture or manufacture. 

 But medicine and ]:)hilanthroi)y have 

 this in common — the one tends to 

 relieve the want, the other the suffering, 

 and both often to i)r()long the life of 

 the recipient.* And for this last reason 

 they are both of the same immediate 



^Loc. cit., p. 304. 



*"'rhe most obvious result of charity as a selective force has been to lengthen the lives of the 

 individuals cared for." — Warner, A. (i., "American Charities," New York, 1908, p. 23. 



'"American Charities," 1908, p. 20. Sec also, Pearson, K. "The Scop^' and Importance to the 

 State of the Scicme of National liu^cnics," ICuj^enics Lai). IavI. Series, I., 1909, pp. 2.?, 24. 



eugenic importance. I shall therefore 

 treat of them together in general, 

 discussing specific instances from one 

 or the other as the case may be. 



Almsgiving and charity are as old as 

 history, and it is generally conceded 

 that these give advantage to the 

 biologically and sociologically unfit 

 which enaljle them to live longer and to 

 proi^agate more than they normally 

 would. But with one or two exceptions, 

 until recently, no thought was given, so 

 far as we know, to the possible influence 

 of this upon the race. Nevertheless, to 

 quote Warner,^ "Plato, more than two 

 thousand years ago, warned his country- 

 men of the degradation in store for any 

 nation which perpetuated the tmfit 

 by allowing its citizens to breed from 

 enervated stock; and he sketched for 

 them an imaginary reiniblic in which no 

 considerations of inheritance, of family 

 ties, or of pity were ]jermitted to stand 

 in the way of the elimination of the weak 

 and the perfection of the race." 



With the rise of the study of economics 

 these questions often came to the fore, 

 and then the whole matter was given a 

 new turn by the revolutionary ideas of 

 Natural Selection which permeated so 

 many fields after Darwin's publication 

 of the "Origin of Species." Biologists 

 and others were not slow to apply the 

 new ideas to man's racial development, . 

 and from this time really dates the 

 ])eriod of active discussion, and often 

 violent disagreement, on the relation 

 of social advance to race improvement 

 or degradation. 



As social reformers were concerned 

 with bettering the environment, a work 

 which could often be seen to produce 

 immediate and marked results in adding 

 to the health and material comfort of 

 the populace as a whole, the gradual al- 

 most complete acceptance by biologists 

 of Weismann's doctrines as to the non- 

 inheritability of environmentally pro- 

 duced modifications natiu'ally led to a 

 widening of the breach l)etween those 

 who i)laced their faith in social measures 

 and those who foresaw the direful elTeels 



