The Group Mind Part 23

[108] _Op. cit._ p. 20.

[109] _History of Civilisation_, p. 137.

[110] In this connexion it must be remembered that in Hindu society the man of proved and acknowledged holiness is permitted and encouraged to procreate a large number of children.

[111] _Europe and Asia._

[112] _Op. cit._

[113] Guizot a.s.serted that, even when new ideas and inst.i.tutions have originated elsewhere, it has usually been only by their adoption in France that they have been spread through Europe (_A History of Civilization in Europe_).

[114] I cite these pa.s.sages after M. Boutmy, _op. cit._ p.

168.

[115] The most frank, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, expression of the difference is _The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon_, by Ed. Demolins.

[116] _History of Civilisation in England_, Vol. II, p. 114.

[117] _Comment la route cree le type social_, Paris, Didot et Cie.

[118] _Histoire de la Formation particulariste_, Paris.

[119] The reality of selective effect of migration is shown by the stature of American immigrants; those from Scotland are said to be two inches taller than the average Scotchman; and De Lapouge shows (_Les Selections Sociales_, Paris, 1896, p.

367) that a superiority of stature almost as marked, may be inferred for the French and German immigrants of America from the statistics of the armies of the Civil War.

[120] A. Reibmayer (_Inzucht u. Vermischung beim Menschen_, Leipzig, 1897) insists upon the importance of isolation and consequent inbreeding for the formation of superior strains and subraces. He points out that the geographical barriers of Europe have favoured in this way the production of distinctive national types. Like Stewart Chamberlain, Flinders Petrie, and others, he regards the dark ages of Europe as a period of chaos directly due to the overcoming of these geographical barriers and the consequent prevalence of crossbreeding on a large scale.

[121] _White Capital and coloured Labour._

[122] Aristotle says "want of men was the ruin of Sparta."

Fathers of three sons were exempted from military service, and of four sons from all State burdens.

[123] Several writers have pointed out the importance of these facts and at least one professional historian has insisted strongly upon them, namely O. Seeck in his _Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt_, Berlin, 1910, vol. 1.

[124] On this topic cp. Dr Archdall Reid's _The Present Evolution of Man_ and his _Principles of Heredity_, in which books the effects of selection by disease and by alcohol are vividly set out.

[125] _Op. cit._

[126] O. Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen_, Jena, 1900.

[127] De Lapouge, _Les Selections Sociales_; cf. also W.

Alexis, _Abhandlungen zur Theorie der Bevolkerungs-und Moralstatistik_, Jena, 1903, and W. Schallmayer's _Vererbung und Auslese in ihrer soziologischen und politischen Bedeutung_, Jena, 1910.

[128] Ammon's Law.

[129] Pointed out by Francis Galton and Fouillee.

[130] On the other hand it tends (partly no doubt by deliberate design) to spread itself by insisting upon the duty of procreation. This effect is said to be very considerable in French Canada and only to be partially counteracted by a very high rate of infantile mortality.

[131] _The Nineteenth Century_ for April, 1906.

[132] In _National Life and Character_, a pessimistic though intellectually stimulating book.

[133] _Provident Societies_, by Sidney Webb, and _The London Population_, by D. Heron.

[134] It must be recognised also that in Great Britain emigration has, during the last three centuries, tended in all probability in the same direction as the various forms of social selection-namely, to the deterioration of the home population; for in all ages it is the bold and enterprising persons who seek new homes in far countries, leaving the weakly, the timid, the dull, and the defective behind in the mother country. Even the convicts that we exported at one time to our colonies were probably persons of more than average capacity, though some of them may have been innately defective in moral disposition.

[135] _etudes sur la selection chez l'homme._ Paris, 1904.

[136] _England and the English._

[137] Notably by Prof. Flinders Petrie in his _Revolutions of Civilisation_.

[138] _Op. cit._ p. 407.

[139] De Laponge does not stand alone in this opinion. Many biologists and leaders of thought have expressed it hardly less strongly, though not all of them have attached so much importance to the influence of the towns. It has been expressed in general terms by Dr and Mrs Whetham (in the _Hibbert Journal_ for Oct. 1911), by Dean Inge in a number of forcible articles, by Mr W. Bateson in his 'Herbert Spencer Lecture' for 1912, and by other writers in a number of articles in the _Eugenics Review_ and other journals.

[140] This conclusion may perhaps be said to be now generally accepted by those who have given any thought to the matter. A.

R. Wallace argued strongly in this sense; the late Benjamin Kidd set out the evidence impressively in his _Social Evolution_, Chapter IX; and it is implied by all the many writers who, as we have noted, agree in regarding the processes of selection in the civilised nations as in the main reversed or detrimental.

[141] I refer the reader to my _Social Psychology_.

[142] In this connection I may again refer to _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by C. Hose and W. McDougall.

[143] It has been translated into nine languages and was reprinted ten times in the first year after its publication.

[144] Shortly before his death Mr Kidd published (in the year 1918) his _Science of Power_. In this book he showed a complete change of face on the question of the importance of innate qualities. He denied all importance to changes of innate qualities, whether for better or worse, because, as he maintained, "the social heredity transmitted through social culture is infinitely more important to a people than any heredity inborn in the individuals thereof" (p. 273); and he made in this book a violent and scornful attack upon the late Francis Galton and upon all who follow him in believing that the decay or improvement of the racial qualities of a people are of importance for its prosperity and development, and who, therefore, approve of Galton's effort to found a science of Eugenics. Kidd did not anywhere in his last book acknowledge that he had made this very great change of principle, which completely undermines the whole argument of his _Social Evolution_, but complacently suggested that, as Newton and Darwin are regarded as the fathers of modern physical and biological science respectively, so in the future Kidd will be regarded as having founded anew in his _Social Evolution_ the science of society. On reading the _Science of Power_ after having written this chapter, I was amazed at this a.s.sumption on behalf of a book whose most fundamental doctrine the author had himself renounced, and I turned again to the earlier work to verify my brief summary of its argument. I confess that it is not easy to make sure of what the author was driving at.

But I find that Kidd, in discussing the influence of religious systems, wrote (on p. 307) "Natural selection seems, in short, to be steadily evolving in the race that type of character upon which these forces act most readily and efficiently; that is to say, it is evolving religious character in the first instance, and intellectual character only as a secondary product in a.s.sociation with it." On the following page I find-"The race would, in fact, appear to be growing more and more religious," and "a preponderating element in the type of character which the evolutionary forces at work in human society are slowly developing, would appear to be the sense of reverence." And there are many other pa.s.sages which, in spite of the habitual lack of precision of Kidd's language, can only be interpreted to mean that the improvement of moral or religious character, on which he so strongly insists as a feature of recent centuries, involves and depends upon improvement of innate qualities in the ma.s.s of the people.

[145] Otto Seeck (_op. cit._ vol. 1. p. 270) writes-"The equipment of the legionaries remained unchanged from Augustus to Diocletian: no improvements of tactics, no new munitions of war were brought into use during more than three hundred years. The Roman saw his enemies becoming ever more terrible, his own army ever less efficient; for now this, now that, Province was laid waste and all were threatened. It was, therefore, to the most urgent interest of every citizen that this state of affairs should be remedied; the most cultured circles were familiar with the needs of the army, for all the higher officers came from the cla.s.s of Senators and n.o.bles.

Nevertheless, there appeared not a single invention, which might have a.s.sured to the Roman soldiers their erstwhile superiority! Books indeed were written upon tactics, strategy and fortification, but their authors almost without exception were content to expound in a formal manner what their more capable forefathers had taught; in this literature the expression of any new idea was carefully avoided.... As in the military sphere, so also was it in all others. Neither in agriculture, nor in handicrafts, nor in the practice of statecraft, did a new idea of any importance appear since the first century after Christ. Literature and art also moved only in sterile imitation, which became always more poverty-stricken and technically feebler."

[146] Cf. _La Cite Antique_ of F. de Coulanges.

[147] A fact which provides another argument against use-inheritance.

[148] This was written before the Great War but needs, I think, no modification.

[149] Francis Galton and his disciples have produced much evidence to show that the educated cla.s.s of Englishmen includes a very much larger proportion of strains of high ability than the rest of the people, it having been formed by the long continued operation of the social ladder. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this conclusion.

[150] Prof. S. Alexander, in his _Moral Order and Progress_, was perhaps the first to draw attention to this form of the struggle for existence.

[151] This last sentence perhaps is only partially true. A rigid system of State Socialism would involve a retrogression in this respect.

[152] As the Spaniards well-nigh exterminated in the name of the Church the civilisation and the nations of Mexico and Peru.

[153] _Introduction to Social Psychology_.

[154] _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_, London, 1907; an interesting work similar in tendency to Kidd's _Social Evolution_.