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NATURE 



[February i8, 19 15 



a mystery to-day as when the law was first formu- 

 lated by Sir Isaac Newton.." Thus writes Prof. 

 Eddington in one of those excellent articles on "Some 

 Problems of Astronomy," which appear monthly in 

 the Observatory (February, p. 93). The article con- 

 tinues as follows : — " In the meantime, theories of 

 matter, of aether, and of electricity have arisen, have 

 held their vogue, and have been superseded by others ; 

 but gravitation stands apart from these changing 

 views. No experiment has as yet shown any relation 

 between it and the other phenomena of nature ; the 

 simple law, unconditional and universal, has been 

 all-sufficient hitherto. We have grown accustomed to 

 regarding gravitation as something outside the scope 

 of ordinary physical theories. If a new model of the 

 atom is put forward, we ask if it accounts for the 

 Zeeman effect, for chemical aflfinity, for the dispersion 

 of light, and a host of incidental phenomena ; but it 

 would be considered unfair to suggest that it ought 

 to account for the one fundamental and universal pro- 

 perty of matter — gravitation." Prof. Eddington then 

 discusses suggestions that have been made concerning 

 possible mechanisms for gravitation, and finally asks 

 the question, " Does gravitation conform to the prin- 

 ciple of relativit)'? " A decisive result of one of the 

 tests, whether it be positive or negative, would, he 

 states, be of remarkable importance, and "a positive 

 result would mean that gravitation has been pulled 

 down from its pedestal, and ceases to stand aloof from 

 the other interrelated forces of nature." 



EUGENICS AND WAR. 



''PHE second Galton Lecture, in memory of Sir 

 *■ Francis Galton, born February 16, 1822, was 

 delivered on Tuesday evening to the Eugenics Educa- 

 tion Society by Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, of Aber- 

 deen University, who spoke on eugenics and war. 

 Certainties as to the effect of war on the natural 

 inheritance of the race have not yet been established, 

 but some probable risks are discernible. In ancient 

 times, when fighting was the order of the day, a 

 weaker clan may have been literally extirpated by a 

 stronger, as black rat by brown rat ; but nation does 

 not exterminate nation nowadays. In ancient times 

 a battle may have been an effective sifting put of the 

 weaker, less nimble, more cowardly combatants ; but 

 it is not so now. For the elimination is either 

 fortuitous or in the wrong direction. The finest 

 bodies of men are chosen for the most hazardous 

 tasks, often involving terrible mortality, and the con- 

 spicuously brave are particularly apt to be cut off. 

 In modern warfare the sifting tends to be dysgenic. 



In the second place, there is in the making and 

 maintenance of the army, in a nation with voluntary 

 military service, a selection of the more chivalrous, 

 the more virile, the more courageous, the more 

 patriotic, and among these there is a mortality high 

 above that of non-combatants, which means some 

 degree of impoverishment of the race. If the number 

 of combatants was small in comparison with that of 

 the non-combatants, the degree of impoverishment 

 might be slight, but if we have in our British popula- 

 tion about 6,250,000 men between eighteen and forty- 

 five, and if we have, as we may well have, a fighting 

 force of three millions, the disproportionate mortality 

 among the combatants is likely to be serious. The 

 eugenic safeguard is in the sound nucleus of "fit" 

 and brave men who remain tp keep things going, and 

 in the women (though they again are differentially 

 affected in Belgium and Serbia), but it looks as if 

 this war meant for Britain a disproportionate elimina- 

 tion of those whom we can least afford to lose. 



Darwin's sentence, in reference to the past, is prob- 

 ably true of the present: "The bravest men, who 

 were always willing to come to the front in war, and 

 who freely risked their lives for others, would on an 

 average perish in larger numbers than other men." 



In the third place, there can be little doubt that 

 the economies and retrenchments after a great war 

 tend to handicap most severely the more highly 

 individuated members of the community. The highly 

 skilled, whose work is not absolutely necessary, will 

 be pinched most ; and they are the salt of the race. 

 On the whole, the tendency of modern warfare is 

 dysgenic. 



The second subject of discussion was the Darwinian 

 concept of the struggle for existence, in regard to 

 which there is widespread misunderstanding. As 

 Darwin said, the term is used "in a large and meta- 

 phorical sense," to include all forms of the clash that 

 occurs when organisms assert themselves in any 

 fashion against environing limitations and difficul- 

 ties. The reactions may be competitive or non-com- 

 petitive, self-regarding or other-regarding, with teeth 

 and claws, or with wits and kindness. It is not 

 doubted that one way in which animals answer back 

 to their difficulties and limitations is to intensify inter- 

 necine competition ; it is maintained, however, that 

 another way, common among the finer forms of life, 

 is to increase parental care or to experiment in co- 

 operation. An extraordinarily large proportion of the 

 time and energy of living creatures is devoted to 

 activities which are not to the advantage of the 

 individual, and it is an inadequately appreciated part 

 of nature's strategy that the types that survive are 

 not only those that sharpen weapons and thicken 

 armour, but also those in which the individual has 

 been more or less subordinated to the welfare of the 

 race. The improbability of war being the saving 

 grace of human history grows upon us. 



The third point in the lecture was that since war, 

 biologically regarded, is, in spite of all its nobility, 

 heroism, and skill, a reversion to the most primitive 

 and crude form of the struggle for existence, it 

 involves a serious risk of slipping down the rungs of 

 the ladder of evolution. What sowings of dragons' 

 teeth there must be in the terrible struggle of this 

 war; is it weak to be afraid lest by and by the crop 

 that springs from them may include something worse 

 than armed men? 



The discussion then turned to the eugenic position 

 in regard "to some practical questions. It is possible 

 that the losses of the war, taken along with the 

 falling birth-rate, may move public sentiment to a 

 stronger disapproval of selfish forms of celibacy and 

 to a stronger encouragement of chivalrous marriages. 

 There is patriotism in dying for our country, perhaps 

 also in marrying for her. In regard to the marriage 

 of recruits, more than eugenic considerations have to 

 be borne in mind, but where adequate provision is 

 secured for the possible widows and children, there 

 seems no reason to place obstacles in the way of the 

 marriage of recruits of suitable age and good record. 

 It is for eugenists to scan critically all proposals 

 hurriedly projected to meet crises of war strain, such 

 as putting children at the disposal of the farmer— a 

 doubly dangerous suggestion. To be resisted also is 

 the natural desire to economise in the higher super- 

 necessaries, such as various forms of art, for this 

 means crippling super-men. One of the results ot 

 the war is likely to be a freshened enthusiasm for all- 

 round physical fitness, and it must be granted that 

 all improvements of nurture are eugenic as long as 

 it is clearly recognised that veneering does not make 

 bad wood sound. The British temperament has an 

 inherent dislike of coercion, and schemes of compul- 



NO. 2364, VOL, 94] 



