UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFOKWJ 
 AT 
 LOS ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 MANKIND 
 
 RACIAL VALUES AND THE RACIAL PROSPECT
 
 MANKIND 
 
 RACIAL VALUES AND THE RACIAL 
 PROSPECT 
 
 ''~T?T-^^J^ 
 
 BY 
 
 n S£TH K. HUMPHREY 
 
 /• 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1917 
 
 _^ <> <-<i i** _♦ cy
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published September, 1917
 
 HT 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 Foreword ix 
 
 I. A Racial View 
 
 Prehistoric Man — Great Age of Man — Racially 
 Non-Progressive — Individual and Race Develop- 
 ment Not Related — Unprecedented Demands of 
 Modern Life — Man Nearing His Limitations. 
 
 II. Principles of Inheritance lo 
 
 Like Tends to Produce Like — Acquired Traits Not 
 Transmitted — Damage to Germ-plasm Affects 
 Inheritance — The Persistence of Unit Characters 
 — Method of Inheritance. 
 
 III. Significance of Inheritance .... 20 
 
 Man Develops True to Physical Inheritance — Elas- 
 tic Response of Mind to Impressions — Heredity 
 and Environment Compared — Unlikenesses and 
 Inequalities in Inheritance — Relation of Features 
 to Character — The Superior Inheritance. 
 
 IV. Birth-Rate and Race Values ... 31 
 
 Man Discards Nature's Methods — Breeding of 
 Man and of Animals in Nature — Man Breeds 
 Away from Survival of Best — Erratic Parent- 
 hood Mostly at Extremes. 
 
 V. Deficient Increase of the Superior 38 
 
 The Superior Inheritance — The Ambitious — The 
 Intellectuals — The Rich — Women and Race 
 Values — ^The Feminist Movement — Men Choose 
 Inferior Women.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VI. Excessive Increase of the Inferior 57 
 
 The Obviously Defective — The Ineffective — Their 
 Parts Socially and Industrially — Subnormal 
 Women — Spreading Defect Upward — Philan- 
 thropy Assists Increase. 
 
 VII. Effects of Disproportionate Increase 70 
 
 Ineffectives Clog Social Machine — Infertility of 
 Superior More Vital — Civilization Dependent 
 upon Influx of Ability — The Signs of Decadence 
 — Critical Disproportion Between Effectives and 
 Ineffectives — Racial Decline Precedes Defeat at 
 Arms. 
 
 VIII. Human Values in Reserve 78 
 
 Successive Breeding-Grounds — The Migrator — Sur- 
 vival of the Best — Isolation a Factor in Race 
 Building — Impediments of Language and Racial 
 Differences. 
 
 IX. Exhaustion of Reserves 86 
 
 Race Conservation on New Basis — Quick Com- 
 munication Hastens Exhaustion of Reserves — 
 New England — Overestimate of Individual — 
 Civilization Must Breed Its Own Race Values — 
 A Glimpse Ahead. 
 
 X. Rise of the Aryan 97 
 
 Man's Time Compared to All Time — Physical and 
 Mental Unlikenesses — Origin of the Aryan — His 
 Characteristics — His Migrations — Racially De- 
 structive Influences — Depreciated Race Mixtures. 
 
 XI, Aryan Racial Values 108 
 
 Small per cent of Superior Ability — In France, 
 England, Germany — Ability in the United States 
 — The Eighty per cent Middle-mass — Persistence 
 of Racial Differences — Their Part in the War. 
 
 XII. The Nations at War: The Entente 118 
 
 A Racial Search Without Prejudice — France — 
 Great Britain — Russia — Race Suicide. 
 
 vi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 XIII. The Nations at War: Germany . . 
 
 The German Aryan — A Distinctive Stock — Causes 
 of German Aloofness — Prussianism — Germany's 
 Advantage Is Youth, Not Inheritance — Degener- 
 ating Influences — Germans and English of the 
 Future. 
 
 133 
 
 y 
 
 XIV. America: The Melting- Pot 151 
 
 Making of the American Type — Race Mixtures — 
 The Indian-White — Dual Personality — Melting- 
 Pot Can Only Mix, Not Fuse — Mongrelism — 
 Mixtures of Unlike Types. 
 
 / 
 
 XV. America: The Negro-White .... 
 
 Complete Racial Estrangement of White and Black 
 — The Tragedy of Two Beings in One — Statistics 
 on Negro Worthless — Negro-White Characteris- 
 tics — Blood Ties Make Races Inseparable — A 
 Weight upon Race Values. 
 
 161 
 
 XVI. America: The Labor Immigrant ... 168 
 
 Effect on Race Values — Racial Requirements — A 
 Measure of Race Value — Southern Italians — 
 Historic Migrators and Labor Immigrants — Our 
 Immigration Laws — America's Rush to Develop- 
 ment. 
 
 XVII. English, or German? 181 
 
 One or the Other Must Become Dominant — 
 Racial Prospects of English-Speaking Peoples 
 — ^The United States, Canada, Australia, New 
 Zealand — Our Participation in the War — The 
 Monroe Doctrine — The Uncertain Future. 
 
 XVIII. Eugenics 196 
 
 Positive and Negative Methods — Abuse of Eu- 
 genic Warnings — Unwarranted Alarms — Eu- 
 genics by Compulsion — Its Ineffective Appli- 
 cation — Social Workers — Eugenics for the 
 Whole Community. 
 
 vil
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CBAPTBR PAGE 
 
 XIX. Conclusion 206 
 
 Nature Requires Fecundity of Its Strong — State 
 Interference with Parenthood an Established 
 Fact — ^Tracing Its Probable Extension — Im- 
 pending Need Is Fertility of the Specially En- 
 dowed — A Look into the Future — Our Obliga- 
 tion to the Race.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 Under the stimulus of a growing convic- 
 tion that all is not as well as might be with 
 the inherent qualities of the human race, 
 science has gathered in the last dozen years 
 more knowledge as to what racial values 
 are, and the manner of their inheritance, 
 than in all the years preceding. This knowl- 
 edge is well set forth in a more or less tech- 
 nical literature, but it has reached the gen- 
 eral reader mainly through the public press, 
 and so indifferently that its practical relation 
 to life is usually misapprehended. 
 
 This book aims to present the subject of 
 race untechnically — rather in its broad so- 
 cial aspect — and to awaken in the lay reader 
 an appreciation of the fundamental part 
 played in human affairs by inborn racial 
 quality. The writer does not make a prac- 
 tice of referring to authorities, for the reason 
 that scarcely an assertion is made on the 
 strength of any single authority. It has been 
 
 ix
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 the intention to make no statement involving 
 questions of heredity, either in the chapter 
 on "Principles of Inheritance," or in any 
 other part of the book, which is not based 
 on generally accepted laws. 
 
 Comprehension of the workings of inheri- 
 tance in mankind brings light to many per- 
 plexing questions. The disputed claims of 
 environment and heredity become less tangled 
 as we learn to distinguish between character 
 values which must be impressed anew upon 
 each generation, and character values which 
 pass down through the generations virtually 
 unaffected by life's experiences; and we ar- 
 rive at the important fact that development 
 I of the individual is transitory in effect and 
 does not accomplish race development. We 
 see that in a highly organized society the fall- 
 ing birth-rate is chargeable to the more fit of 
 the race, while the less fit are coaxed to greater 
 fertility; that a civilization tends in this and 
 other ways toward self-extinction, and sur- 
 vives only so long as it may draw upon re- 
 serves bred under more normal conditions to 
 a better grade of survival values. So human 
 stocks in reserve — the new strength that must
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 flow always into the veins of a civilization — 
 become a matter of deep concern. 
 
 Intermixing of unlike peoples is found to 
 result variously. When the unlikenesses are 
 complementary and do not involve great in- 
 equalities of mental strength, the inheritances 
 may reinforce each other and produce excep- 
 tional offspring; but the mating of radically 
 unlike strains, especially of superior with in- 
 ferior, yields for the most part ineffective in- 
 heritances, well below the average of the ; 
 parent stocks. This tendency to revert to a 
 type approximating the least worthy of the 
 group is assisted always by the greater fer- 
 tility of the inferior types. One need not be 
 a savant to perceive the bearing of these 
 facts upon the mixings of all sorts now going 
 on in our own United States. 
 
 In the new light the repeated disruptions of 
 civilization under influences seemingly inade- 
 quate for so great disaster become less inex- 
 plicable. Our own more intimate problems 
 take on a new significance — the Negro- White, 
 the Labor Immigrant, and all other ingredients 
 of our famous Melting- Pot. Some day we 
 may apprehend that the eflficacy of any melt- 
 
 xi
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 ing-pot depends not so much on the melting 
 as on the wise selection and proper mixing of 
 ingredients which have it in them to produce 
 something worth while. 
 
 Then there is the look into the future — in 
 many of its aspects a new age for mankind, 
 filled with untried difficulties; and we see in 
 racial values effectively conserved the one 
 hope for all future civilization. History, in 
 recounting the various happenings to man- 
 kind, has not always dealt understandingly 
 with the inborn nature of man himself. To- 
 day, a race consciousness — not in a narrow 
 sense, but all-embracing — is developing in 
 thoughtful minds the world over, and in its 
 light the events of the past will be better 
 interpreted, and the future more safely met. 
 
 The stirring of this consciousness among 
 specialists in human welfare, particularly edu- 
 cators and social workers, is shown in their 
 recognition of feeble-mindedness as a heredi- 
 tary defect, to be eliminated by withholding 
 parenthood from the mentally defective. But 
 this is a conception of human breeding in its 
 most elementary form; the remaining ninety 
 odd per cent of mankind are classed in a 
 
 xii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 lump as "normals," for no other reason than 
 that they are not feeble-minded. As a matter 
 of fact, gradations in racial worth continue on i 
 through all humanity from the dullest to the j 
 keenest, and the inadequate birth-rate of the I 
 better grades strikes more directly at the fun- 
 damentals of civilization than the abnormal in- 
 crease of defectives. Every historic failure of 
 the race has been associated with decline in the 
 quality of its leadership. The feeble-minded 
 never overturned a state; they are a racial as 
 well as a social menace, and, since nature is 
 no longer permitted to destroy her weaklings, 
 state control of their reproductive function is 
 logically the first step in adjusting the propa- 
 gation of the race to our artificial way of 
 living. But if society, dependent more and 
 more on artifice as its complexities increase, 
 does not take the next logical step and extend 
 its control to erratic parenthood wherever found, 
 from the excessive fecundity of the improvi- 
 dent to the voluntary barrenness of the cul- 
 tured, racial impoverishment will bring us to 
 the common end of all civilizations since the 
 beginning. 
 
 Man will never so belittle his transcendent 
 xiii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 inheritance as to attempt its reproduction by 
 methods approved for various forms of domes- 
 tic Ufe. His unique capacity for responding 
 to external impressions sets him apart as more 
 essentially a creature of environment. But 
 we cannot escape the realization that our 
 prodigious labors to develop the individual 
 are not checking in the least the downward 
 course of those values which follow the inex- 
 orable laws of breeding. 
 
 The writer has no insistent views with re- 
 spect to systems for perpetuating human life, 
 except that all systems so far devised have 
 failed under the stress of every high culture 
 to maintain effective inheritance values. Civ- 
 ilization has always been self-destructive. 
 Whether ours is to survive depends upon 
 whether we elect to use our superior knowl- 
 edge for the maintenance of a breed of men 
 fit to carry it on. The author leaves his 
 readers at the threshold of the problem that 
 before many years will absorb the interest of 
 mankind — so to conserve the inherent quali- 
 ties of the race that for once in its history it 
 shall be able to withstand the blight of its 
 own culture. 
 
 xlv
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 It has been thought best to present and 
 develop this broad aspect of the subject clear 
 of its many special appeals to our interest, 
 and to commend the reader to further study. 
 Many good books on Heredity, Genetics, Eu- 
 genics, Race Culture, Mendelian principles of 
 inheritance, and other biological facts neces- 
 sarily omitted here, are offered to the reader 
 who wishes to go further into the subject of 
 race. Francis Galton's "Hereditary Genius" 
 and other writings are virtually the basis 
 for the present eugenic movement. C. W. 
 Saleeby, Havelock Ellis, Karl Pearson and 
 W. Bateson write from different points of the 
 English view. In America, the books of C. 
 B. Davenport, W. E. Castle, H. H. Goddard, 
 David Starr Jordan, and E. G. Conklin are 
 among the best. Three good books on race 
 history are W. Z. Ripley's "Races of Europe," 
 H. F. Osborn's "Men of the Old Stone Age," 
 and Madison Grant's "Passing of the Great 
 Race." Most of these books, both English and 
 American, can be found in any well-equipped 
 library. Several of them contain bibliographies 
 which will take the reader into any branch of 
 the subject, and as deeply as he may wish to go. 
 
 XV
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 If this study, in its attempt to give a prac- 
 tical view of the racial problem, succeeds to 
 any extent in promoting intelligent discus- 
 sion of the race's future, it will have served 
 its purpose. 
 
 XVI
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A RACIAL VIEW 
 
 PREHISTORIC MAN — GREAT AGE OF MAN — RACIALLY NON- 
 PROGRESSIVE — INDIVIDUAL AND RACE DEVELOPMENT 
 NOT RELATED — UNPRECEDENTED DEMANDS OF MOD- 
 ERN LIFE — MAN NEARING HIS LIMITATIONS 
 
 THE search into the past for knowledge of 
 the race's beginning seems to have a 
 peculiar fascination. With something of the 
 unattached orphan's yearning for an accred- 
 ited parentage we grasp at any bit of evidence 
 relating to our forebears. So a few skulls and 
 bones dug here and there out of the earth's 
 strata — relics of men who lived somewhere in 
 those incredibly long stretches of time which 
 preceded history — are made to tell us many 
 things, perhaps, about the earlier races which 
 they in the flesh would not have revealed. 
 
 From the mass of speculation that has been 
 woven about this scanty evidence, coupled 
 with the more reliable facts disclosed by an- 
 thropology, we may accept these points as 
 fairly established: man was evolved through
 
 MANKIND 
 
 countless ages from a species akin to the an- 
 thropoid apes; and as a being not so very far 
 removed from the human type as we have 
 known it for less than ten thousand years, 
 man has lived, according to the best geological 
 guessers, somewhere between five hundred 
 thousand and one million years. To have 
 learned this much has alone made the vast 
 amount of research worth while. 
 
 Because the relics of prehistoric man him- 
 self are disappointingly few, and the remains 
 of his implements and art are in greater pro- 
 fusion, our knowledge of him pertains more 
 to what he did than to what he was. His 
 accomplishments are revealed so far as they 
 can be revealed by imperishable remains only; 
 but the best of man's handiwork is perish- 
 able, so that of his attainments in this respect 
 we are left in the dark. Furthermore, while 
 these remains tell us much about his various 
 stages of development, they disclose nothing 
 of his capacity for development, which is a 
 quite different matter. Man in no past age 
 can be measured by what he succeeded in 
 doing — and much less by the little of his works 
 that we have succeeded in finding. We sim-
 
 A RACIAL VIEW 
 
 ply do not know to what heights prehistoric 
 man might have attained if set in the midst 
 of our own opportunities. He had not, as we 
 have, the accumulated knowledge of the ages 
 to assist him. It was he who laboriously 
 wrote the first pages of the great book of hu- 
 man experience which we have only to read. 
 Peace to his ashes ! 
 
 But we do know that since the earliest times 
 which furnish us with human remains in suffi- 
 cient number to warrant the drawing of any 
 safe conclusions, the actual progress of the 
 human stock, either in brain capacity or in 
 physical power, has been practically negligi- 
 ble. It has been negligible, partly because 
 ten thousand years count as nothing in the 
 ages required for evolutionary development; 
 but more significantly because civilization im- 
 poses conditions upon man which effectually 
 block — indeed, reverse — the processes of evo- 
 lution. 
 
 The vastness of the span of human life be- 
 fore even the first trace of a civilization was 
 left upon the earth taxes the power of the 
 imagination; but it is perhaps even more diffi- 
 cult for us to comprehend that man has made 
 
 3
 
 MANKIND 
 
 no appreciable mental or physical progress 
 since our earliest acquaintance with his his- 
 tory. We blind ourselves to this truth by 
 assuming that as a civilization becomes great, 
 the human stock which is concerned in 
 building it also becomes great. Civilization 
 presents an imposing accumulation of the 
 work of successive generations, but in these 
 successive generations there has been no cor- 
 responding cumulative effect in individual cal- 
 iber, in potential capacities. The accomplish- 
 ments of Egypt, Greece, and Rome — taking 
 into account the accumulation of human ex- 
 periences at the command of each period — 
 show every whit as much capacity, initiative, 
 imagination, daring, as anything we do to-day. 
 What we mistake for an improving race is the 
 more complete development, the better util- 
 ization, of its inherent capacities, and of the 
 things on and under the earth which lend 
 themselves to man's advancement. An ad- 
 vancing civilization demands an increasingly 
 effective exercise of all the ability of the com- 
 munity. The individual makes a bigger show- 
 ing — he is compelled to make a bigger showing 
 — but he is still the same caliber of man, and 
 
 4
 
 A RACIAL VIEW 
 
 each generation begins all over again with its 
 A, B, C's, with no greater capacity for learn- 
 ing them because its fathers learned to do 
 great things. 
 
 But having once learned his A, B, C's, the 
 man of ability absorbs with ease the store of 
 human knowledge. He begins his work in the 
 world well up toward the top of the eminence 
 so painfully builded by those who have gone 
 before, and, just as painfully, adds his little 
 quota to the top. The creators of the pres- 
 ent-day enormous businesses, with their world- 
 wide ramifications and their extraordinary de- 
 mands upon the administrative capacities of 
 the individual, are really in their mental and 
 physical make-up no more than the counter- 
 parts of, let us say, the legendary Merchant of 
 Venice, whose slow-journeying vessels gave 
 him leisure to overspend his money; or the 
 clever Joseph, who once cornered the wheat 
 supply of Egypt. Our captains of industry 
 work with far better facilities and in a much 
 more developed social organization. Joseph, 
 with his keenness for controlling the output, 
 might have been a Rockefeller in the nine- 
 teenth century. And Antonio, with steam 
 
 S
 
 MANKIND 
 
 and the wireless, could have managed ten 
 times as many ships with less worry over ''the 
 dreadful touch of merchant-marring rocks.'* 
 The ordinary motorman, whose spectacular 
 driving of a fifty-ton trolley-car down into 
 subways and over the roaring elevated would 
 have caused a Rameses to shudder and a 
 Cyrus to turn pale, is doing no more than their 
 underlings could have learned to do, had they 
 been put to it. They simply were not put to 
 it. His inborn equipment probably is not su- 
 perior to that of the man who drives a lazy 
 horse to town, or, five thousand years ago, 
 worked on the Pyramids, or — for aught we 
 know — fifty thousand years ago chased the 
 mammoth with a stone hatchet. Our motor- 
 man is one among the millions who are now 
 trained to fill the thousand and one nerve- 
 racking, soul-devouring situations created by 
 the most intensive system of living the world 
 has ever seen. And these millions are the de- 
 scendants of equally capable billions who died 
 with most of their ability unexpressed, because 
 they lived in a world whose work required so 
 little expression of it. 
 The history of the race down to one hundred 
 6
 
 A RACIAL VIEW 
 
 years ago is a story of undeveloped human ca- 
 pacities, of resources in nature lying fallow 
 through the ages. It is difficult to realize the 
 comparative suddenness of this demand upon 
 the individual for a more complete use of his 
 powers; difficult to appreciate in how many 
 respects material existence for the main bulk 
 of humanity proceeded on a dead level from 
 the time of Moses until well on into the last 
 century. Transportation and communication 
 were no more rapid in colonial days than with 
 the ancient Egyptians. Nothing swifter than 
 the horse was known to either Xerxes or Wash- 
 ington, and in every age man carried his own 
 messages. The home was the unit of industry 
 until the birth of our grandmothers, and the 
 slowness of accomplishment held the masses, 
 almiost as closely in one age as in another, to a 
 simplicity of life that precluded display of 
 special ability. Leadership and specialization 
 were required of very few. The limitations of 
 human capacity were little comprehended, be- 
 cause the great mass of mankind had never 
 been pushed within comprehending distance of 
 its limitations. 
 Now, the devices of science and invention 
 7
 
 MANKIND 
 
 have set up new standards for the measuring 
 of men. The few possessed of the quahties 
 for leadership, initiative, and organization are 
 sought out and pressed to the Hmit of capac- 
 ity. But it is far more significant of the revo- 
 lutionary change in living conditions that, in 
 this day, knowledge, skill, and ability for sus- 
 tained, concerted effort under authority are 
 demanded of a vastly greater proportion of the 
 plodding masses, who hitherto have directed 
 their own more or less inefficient efforts. The 
 day for the working out of one's own needs, in 
 one's own way, and in one's own time, has 
 gone by, and with it, possibly, one of the se- 
 rene satisfactions of life. Capacities are put 
 to the test en masse. The testing differenti- 
 ates men as never before, and sends the less 
 able to the human discard with pathetic sure- 
 ness. 
 
 And this complex, interlocking whirl of ex- 
 istence falls upon men and women whose exact 
 prototypes — until yesterday, as the world's 
 time goes — spun and wove and wrought with 
 their hands all the things that were made, 
 dreaming little of conveniences that add noth- 
 ing to serenity, of quickened processes that 
 
 8
 
 A RACIAL VIEW 
 
 yield no leisure, or of short-cuts that impel 
 only to greater haste ! 
 
 No wonder that the Httleness of men stands 
 out against the bigness of their jobs. The vi- 
 tal concern of the day is not for further 
 achievement. It is for man himself, upon 
 whom the burden of all this achievement must 
 continue to rest. The demand is not only for 
 exceptional men who can cope with the great 
 problems of leadership, but for more capable, 
 bigger men in every walk of life. The near- 
 ness of man's load to his fixed limitations is 
 painfully in evidence. 
 
 Never was it so true as now that "the proper 
 study of mankind is Man." That study is 
 going forward under skilled leadership in 
 many places, especially in England and Amer- 
 ica. Mankind was in a fair way to be eclipsed 
 by its own achievements; but it is a healthy 
 sign of the times that the mania for achieve- 
 ment has at last turned to the rather desperate 
 case of the human race itself.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE 
 
 LIKE TENDS TO PRODUCE LIKE — ACQUIRED TRAITS NOT 
 TRANSMITTED — DAMAGE TO GERM-PLASM AFFECTS IN- 
 HERITANCE — ^THE PERSISTENCE OF UNIT CHARACTERS 
 — METHOD OF INHERITANCE 
 
 THIS book is for the lay reader who is 
 willing to think, but not ready to go into 
 the depths of a new science. Technical terms 
 will be avoided; simple illustration may be 
 made to serve in place of scientific and ob- 
 scure discussion. 
 
 One general principle underlying all breed- 
 ing is embodied in the popular expression, 
 "like tends to breed like." A comprehensive 
 study of inheritance would take us into the 
 refinements of this fundamental idea, but a 
 brief statement of the main facts of heredity 
 is all that is essential for the reader's under- 
 standing of the chapters to follow. 
 
 It has been established beyond reasonable 
 doubt that both physical and mental inheri- 
 tance in human stock follow laws of breeding 
 
 lO
 
 PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE 
 
 quite similar to those for any other stock. 
 This truth was late in arriving, by reason of 
 its running constantly afoul of man's deep- 
 seated notion that he, of all creatures, exists 
 apart from the general scheme. Now that we 
 recognize ourselves as one of the earth's crea- 
 tures, scientific investigation has open to it 
 the broad field of animal and plant experi- 
 mentation for determining certain correspond- 
 ing facts in human heredity which cannot be 
 directly determined, and for confirming obser- 
 vations made in the study of man himself. 
 
 The most prevalent notion which the lay- 
 man has to unlearn is that the acquirements 
 due to environment — to the various experi- 
 ences of life — become in some way a part of 
 the heritage of the next generation. The idea 
 that improving the individual improves the in- 
 heritance of the race lingers most persistently 
 among those who have most need of knowing 
 better. 
 
 It is now almost universally held as a proven 
 fact that traits acquired through mental im- 
 pression are not transmitted to offspring. 
 Training, education, discipline, do not get 
 into the blood. All inheritance comes through 
 
 II
 
 MANKIND 
 
 the germ-plasm; the germ-cells develop within 
 the body in strict accordance with their in- 
 heritance through both parents, and are no 
 more affected by any life experience, short of 
 actual physical mutilation, than is the shape 
 of one's ears or the mole on one's cheek. The 
 germ-plasm cannot be educated or uplifted. 
 
 If we make a jack-o'-lantern out of a pump- 
 kin, and afterward plant the seeds, we do not 
 expect a crop of jack-o'-lanterns. Repeat the 
 cutting and plant the seeds through fifty gen- 
 erations of pumpkins; not a jack-o'-lantern 
 will be grown. The inheritance is from the 
 seed, not from the pumpkin. 
 
 The human seed is equally unaffected by 
 externals which do not damage the germ itself. 
 Life's experiences must be impressed anew 
 upon every generation as it comes along, and 
 a thousand years of external impressions will 
 not add or subtract or improve or corrupt one 
 hereditary characteristic in the germ-plasm. 
 
 But influences which physically damage the 
 germ-plasm itself, and thus disturb its proper 
 functioning, do have a direct effect on the 
 heritage of offspring. Alcohol in excess, lead, 
 and various strong drugs, seem to act in this 
 
 12
 
 PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE 
 
 way. Venereal diseases are supposed to be 
 particularly injurious to germ-plasm. Possi- 
 bly there are other systemic poisons, induced 
 by fatigue or by civilization's nerve-racking 
 complexities, of whose subtle effect on the 
 germ-plasm, and thus on the race, we are still 
 unaware. 
 
 It is of great significance that the only en- 
 vironmental influences which affect inheri- 
 tance at all are destructive influences, tending 
 to impair the normal heritages of offspring. 
 This leads to the rather sombre conclusion that 
 while an individual cannot possibly add value 
 to the heritage of his children by the most ex- 
 emplary behavior, his misbehavior may seri- 
 ously damage it. The most that can be done 
 for the germ-plasm is to maintain its normal 
 condition of physical vigor. 
 
 Nearly every trait as we view it in the indi- 
 vidual is really a more or less complex ensem- 
 ble of simple, or unit, characters. "Unit" 
 characters may roughly be defined as the indi- 
 visible items which make up the character- 
 building material. These combinations are of 
 almost infinite variety, and some of them may 
 have the appearance of new traits; but the 
 
 13
 
 MANKIND 
 
 novelty is merely one of combination, and en- 
 vironment has no more part in arranging these 
 combinations than in creating the units which 
 compose them. 
 
 Excepting always the systemic poisons 
 which actually mutilate the germ-plasm, the 
 persistence of unit characters through the gener- 
 ations unchanged hy life histories is the great 
 fact of reproduction. Thus, the child inherits, 
 not from the traits which his parents and 
 grandparents chanced to develop in their lives, 
 but from the traits which descended to them 
 and through them in the essentially immortal 
 germ-plasm. The son is not precisely a "chip 
 off the old block"; more correctly, he is a chip 
 off the old block's original make-up, and that 
 make-up reaches back for generations. His 
 inborn equipment has no trace of the veneers 
 which time put upon his parents. We may 
 regret that the child does not partake directly 
 of the parents' chastened maturity, but if we 
 stop to consider that in that case it would also 
 partake of every physical blemish and mental 
 twist which "the slings and arrows of out- 
 rageous fortune" had put upon them, we may 
 be thankful that each child, unless its inheri- 
 
 14
 
 PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE 
 
 tance has been actually poisoned, begins with 
 a clean slate the development of its inherited 
 virtues and defects. 
 
 The child's inheritance of the traits which he 
 is to develop is determined irrevocably by the 
 union of two single cells from the germinal 
 material of its parents. Since no two cells 
 developed by either parent contain exactly the 
 same combination of unit characters, no two 
 children of the same parents have exactly the 
 same inheritance; and as theirs is the closest 
 relationship possible, it follows that the prob- 
 ability of any two people being bom into the 
 world exactly alike is infinitely small. 
 
 According to the laws of chance, the child's 
 traits will more nearly resemble those of his 
 parents, since he and they draw their inheri- 
 tances from more nearly similar germinal ma- 
 terial. But he also has the probability — di- 
 minishing rapidly with the remoteness of the 
 ancestor — of inheriting from the entire list of 
 his forebears other traits which may not have 
 appeared in his parents, or in any intervening 
 generation. The average probability of in- 
 heritance, as generally agreed upon, is one- 
 half from the parents, one-fourth from the 
 
 IS
 
 MANKIND 
 
 grandparents, one-eighth from the great- 
 grandparents, and so on through an infinite 
 series of fractions, whose sum is one, which 
 represents the complete inheritance. But the 
 actual degree of hereditary likeness between 
 the child and either parent, grandparent, or 
 other ancestor varies more or less, being de- 
 pendent upon the characteristics within the 
 two germ-cells which happen to unite. 
 
 While the proposition "like tends to breed 
 like" is generally true, since three-fourths of 
 the average inheritance goes no further back 
 than the grandparents, it is easy to see that 
 radical unlikenesses are to be expected from a 
 mixed ancestry. The germinal material made 
 up from their unlike contributions offers a 
 wide range of inheritance possibilities. Now 
 it happens that man is the only creature that 
 habitually mates with unlikeness among his 
 immediate kind, and is not over-particular 
 when it comes to mixing extreme types, or 
 even races. Consequently the human breed is 
 the most thoroughly mongrelized, and pro- 
 duces the most diversified offspring, of any on 
 earth. There is no telling what unheard-of 
 trait a child sometimes may pick out of his 
 
 i6
 
 PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE 
 
 ancestry — and it comes as a surprise to most 
 parents, because their acquaintance with the 
 personal traits of their ancestors is sHght. 
 The notion is curiously prevalent that only 
 undesirable traits thus reappear; but what is 
 more natural than that fond parents should 
 regard a child's unwelcome characteristics as 
 a stroke descended from oblivion, while its vir- 
 tues are modestly accepted as reflections of 
 their own ? As a matter of fact, some people 
 would be poor sticks indeed, had they not 
 chanced upon a few ancestral virtues which 
 their parents overlooked. 
 
 So much for the fundamental principles of 
 inheritance. The investigations of recent 
 years have taken our knowledge far beyond 
 the scope of these simple statements. But 
 for a broad view of the race's history and of 
 the race's future, and for a conception of the 
 separateness of racial and cultural influences, 
 certain basic facts should be kept in mind : 
 
 Hereditary likeness is the general expecta- 
 tion. The only human qualities which endure 
 are those which are bred in the race. All en- 
 vironmental effort must be expended anew 
 
 17
 
 MANKIND 
 
 upon each generation. We may seemingly 
 transform the character of a man, and still no 
 more affect his germ-plasm than his eyebrows. 
 Inheritance fixes the capacity of the individual 
 to respond to environment, to develop; upon 
 the quality of inheritance depends primarily 
 the quality of all human achievement, of civ- 
 ilization itself. Thus the first essential for 
 stable progress is a race of humans well bred, 
 in the literal sense. 
 
 However we may succeed in applying the 
 principles of heredity for the improvement of 
 other forms of life, anything like the same 
 methods are unthinkable for the human spe- 
 cies, and not even to be desired, since the re- 
 sults to be sought are not at all similar. Yet 
 it must be admitted that our new knowledge 
 of these matters imposes upon us a new re- 
 sponsibility for the future quality of the race. 
 Our present most conspicuous effort is to get 
 the utmost out of human material as it comes 
 to us; Its coming is still at haphazard, as in 
 the days of Abraham. Unless we make use 
 of our knowledge to correct the disastrous 
 breeding faults which develop with a high cul- 
 ture, we shall sometime be no better off than 
 
 i8
 
 PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE 
 
 older peoples who went to grief in ignorance 
 of these faults, charging their downfall to fail- 
 ure of the gods. It would be a failure of 
 human skill in its supreme test if we were to 
 succeed in bringing all other creatures to per- 
 fection and fail with our own kind. Such con- 
 siderations as these lend a vital interest to the 
 study of racial problems. 
 
 19
 
 CHAPTER III 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INHERITANCE 
 
 MAN DEVELOPS TRUE TO PHYSICAL INHERITANCE — ELAS- 
 TIC RESPONSE OF MIND TO IMPRESSIONS — HEREDITY 
 AND ENVIRONMENT COMPARED — UNLIKENESSES AND 
 INEQUALITIES IN INHERITANCE — RELATION OF FEA- 
 TURES TO CHARACTER — THE SUPERIOR INHERITANCE 
 
 NOW it may be asked, "What is the sig- 
 nificance of inherited traits ? What do 
 they do for the every-day man as we see him 
 on the street ?'* 
 
 In his physical aspect, man, given anything 
 like normal conditions, develops true to the 
 image predetermined by inheritance, down to 
 the least item in his anatomy. It is a remark- 
 able fact that physical inheritance yields very 
 little to any environmental influences, short 
 of malnutrition, accident, and disease — and 
 these three are abnormal conditions. In the 
 usual case, physical response to environment 
 is fairly direct, measurable, and understood. 
 In this respect man is on a level with the 
 animals. 
 
 20
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INHERITANCE 
 
 But the human mind, in its elastic response 
 to a vast multitude of external influences, so 
 far transcends every other phenomenon which 
 man is called upon to study, that he has diffi- 
 culty in conceiving its ultimate subservience 
 to the immutable laws of heredity. The mind 
 so quickly reflects external impressions that 
 impressed traits and hereditary traits appear 
 confusingly alike and intermingled. Its ex- 
 pansive willingness to take on all manner of 
 influences, good and bad, leads many enthu- 
 siasts to the buoyant view that proper en- 
 vironment can make up for almost any lack 
 in mental inheritance. 
 
 Controversies over the relative importance 
 of heredity and environment are pointless, 
 since the two factors are so essentiafly unlike 
 that comparison is impossible. Heredity sup- 
 plies the material, both physical and mental; 
 it is the business of environment to develop 
 this material into the finished product, as 
 manifested in the individual. Obviously, the 
 effect which environment can produce in any 
 case is limited by the capacity of the inheri- 
 tance to respond. The best carpenter in the 
 world cannot make a mahogany table out of 
 
 21
 
 MANKIND 
 
 pine boards, although he may make a good 
 imitation of one. So may "uplift" enthusi- 
 asts bedeck a poor stick of a man with the 
 habiliments of virtue and prop him up in the 
 straight and narrow path, without making a 
 real man of him. But the carpenter has the 
 best of it — veneers stick to a cheap table bet- 
 ter than to a cheap man. 
 
 Good material for the making of a man or 
 a table is the prime essential. Inherited lim- 
 itations are fixed; environmental limitations 
 may be overcome. A mentally strong man 
 in an unfortunate environment is self-impelled 
 to get out of it and into one which matches his 
 powers. His forceful inheritance is the ever- 
 present, dominating factor which shapes his 
 career. A weak man settles into his environ- 
 ment unless carried forward by external im- 
 pulses; but external impulses are spasmodic, 
 while his environment remains the ever-pres- 
 ent, dominating factor which shapes his ca- 
 reer. The strong inheritance may laugh at 
 environment; the weak succumbs to it. 
 
 The extraordinary effort now put forth to 
 improve and make fit the individual does not 
 get him past his inherent mental limitations; 
 
 22
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INHERITANCE 
 
 it really brings them out into stronger relief. 
 In our estimates of men, for whatever pur- 
 pose, mental limitations are the most ob- 
 served of all human traits. We are viewing 
 and measuring hereditary mental differences 
 in almost every one of our daily contacts — dif- 
 ferences which cannot be accounted for by 
 differences in life experiences. From the be- 
 ginning to the end of life each one of us un- 
 wittingly proclaims the various inclinations 
 and limitations of his mental inheritance by 
 responding variously to experiences; more 
 readily to this, less readily to that, and to 
 some others not at all. 
 
 Personal intimacies bring to light these in- 
 herent characteristics. We are most keenly 
 alive to them among members of our own 
 fam.ily, for whom environment has been simi- 
 lar. In a less degree they enter into all our 
 personal estimates. We naturally seek friends 
 among those in whom a similarity of environ- 
 ment has developed congenial tastes, plea- 
 sures, habits, and outlook — all acquired char- 
 acteristics — but as acquaintance proceeds we 
 hold as friends only those whose more intimate 
 qualities — qualities which have not been re- 
 
 23
 
 MANKIND 
 
 modelled by environment — prove to be com- 
 patible with our own. 
 
 The search for inborn traits does not wait 
 for intimacy. We begin it the moment we 
 look a stranger in the face. Mental individ- 
 uality is closely bound up with physical indi- 
 viduality. Certain mental traits correspond 
 so habitually to certain physical features that 
 we proceed, without a fixed rule in our heads 
 for doing so, to "size up" the eyes, nose, 
 mouth, chin, forehead — the tout ensemble — 
 and set a measure of the man before we know 
 him. In a sense, the mind is cast into the 
 physical mould, and the rigidity of this mould 
 argues a corresponding stubbornness of in- 
 herited mental characteristics. The correla- 
 tion of mental and physical parts has been too 
 much exploited by charlatans, and too little 
 studied by scientists. 
 
 These unlikenesses in character traits sug- 
 gest the inequalities in mental inheritance 
 which we all know exist, yet scarcely compre- 
 hend in their true significance. We ascribe 
 altogether too many of these obvious inequali- 
 ties to differences in opportunity and training. 
 
 24
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INHERITANCE 
 
 Because there is a certain sameness in untried 
 youth, it does not follow that similar opportu- 
 nities will disclose anything like equal capaci- 
 ties. A wheelbarrow and a sewing-machine in 
 the back yard are equally inert — neither ex- 
 presses anything. But that does not imply 
 that by skilful handling the wheelbarrow can 
 be made to sew. 
 
 Inequality — of races, of individuals within a 
 race, within a community, within a family — 
 that is an idea fundamental to the study of 
 mankind. 
 
 Man is a gregarious animal. Luckily for 
 social peace, a wholesome inclination to con- 
 form in all essentials to the social order sets 
 ninety per cent of us to a constant redirecting 
 of some, and suppressing of other, inherited 
 traits. We aim to present a harmonious front 
 to society and conceal the discords. Society 
 exists because we succeed so admirably in do- 
 ing this. The average good citizen may be 
 safely permitted at large only because he keeps 
 a few of his natural-born proclivities locked 
 up. He keeps them locked up, not merely be- 
 cause he wishes to deceive his fellow men as 
 
 2S
 
 MANKIND 
 
 to their existence, but because he himself rec- 
 ognizes their undesirability. 
 
 As for the ninety per cent who willingly 
 conform to the social order, these distinctive 
 inherent traits yield so readily to the persua- 
 sive efforts of the individual and society that 
 they are of little importance in any but a 
 technical consideration of inheritance values. 
 They give us individuality, and add spice to 
 acquaintance; they may break up friendships, 
 but they do not disrupt the community. 
 People who cannot abide each other may be 
 equally conscientious and valuable citizens. 
 
 The inheritances of special capacity or tal- 
 ent for doing certain specific things, such as 
 the power to create art, music, poetry, and the 
 like, while of great value to the community, 
 are rarely attended by well-rounded capacity 
 in other directions, and are possessed by so 
 few that a consideration of inheritance values 
 for the main bulk of humanity may ignore 
 them. The inheritance, too, of specific incli- 
 nation to deceit and crime in persons other- 
 wise normal seems to be based on reliable evi- 
 dence; if true, the cases are exceptional; we 
 are going to look elsewhere for the main 
 
 26
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INHERITANCE 
 
 sources of habitual criminality and general 
 undesirableness. 
 
 What, then, if not the gift of special talent, 
 is the nature of the inheritance which leads 
 to great achievement ? 
 
 The superior inheritance is a mind balanced 
 to meet the unusual demands of life unusually- 
 well, rather than one foreordained to distin- 
 guish itself in a single respect; it is of that 
 quality of brain — one might almost add, quan- 
 tity of brain — which impels to creative lead- 
 ership in whatever activity it may select. It 
 dominates environment, and advances into 
 new undertakings. It is the mark of the 
 social migrator — the man of initiative who 
 extricates himself from the mass and changes 
 some bit of the world, for better or for worse, 
 by his contact with it. 
 
 Minds of this transcendent quality give 
 order and meaning to all constructive effort. 
 They co-ordinate and make effective the la- 
 bors of the vast masses of humankind — the 
 mediocrity that accepts the world as it finds 
 it, plays its passive part in its chance environ- 
 ment with undistinguished honor, and goes 
 to oblivion. 
 
 27
 
 MANKIND 
 
 The clog in this workable arrangement is 
 the ineflFective mind. Mental deficiency has 
 its mark upon the great majority of those who 
 fail habitually in their obligation to society. 
 An ill-equipped, meagre, or distorted brain 
 has no place in the general scheme. Its main 
 offense is that it must continue to exist un- 
 placed. It fails to conform because of gen- 
 eral lack of brain capacity to turn environ- 
 ment to good account, not often because of 
 any inborn desire to commit unsocial acts. 
 
 These three measures roughly outline the 
 grades of mental capacity. All humankind 
 cannot by any means be assorted into three 
 distinct classes, or into any number of classes. 
 Mental inheritances are of such infinite va- 
 riety that the line of gradation descends from 
 the keenest intellect to the dullest without a 
 distinguishing break. But classification of 
 human beings for specific purposes is as proper 
 and necessary as the classification of any other 
 form of life, regardless of the "border-line" 
 individuals who cannot be classified. 
 
 This complex characteristic of the excep- 
 tional man — call it all-round mental capacity, 
 intellectual caliber, or quality or quantity of 
 
 28
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF INHERITANCE 
 
 brain force — is made up of many simpler char- 
 acteristics, in a great variety of combinations; 
 for that reason the element of chance is largely 
 eliminated from its probability of inheritance 
 by offspring. Thus it happens that this most 
 important attribute of man is also the most 
 certain in its adherence to the laws governing 
 heredity — a fact of great encouragement to 
 those who would like to see the race disen- 
 tangled from its load of worthlessness and 
 raised to greater mental strength. 
 
 The reader probably has noticed by this 
 time that much emphasis is laid upon the 
 value of mental inheritance, while physical 
 inheritance values have had little considera- 
 tion. This is because, physically, the race 
 seems to be adequate to all reasonable de- 
 mands upon it. A race of giants and Me- 
 thuselahs could scarcely have done better. 
 Variations in physique have had small part 
 in making and unmaking civilizations. 
 
 While certain influences damaging to physi- 
 cal values have been introduced by present- 
 day civilization, there is not the slightest 
 evidence that the race as a whole has deterio- 
 rated physically in all its long history. And, 
 
 29
 
 MANKIND 
 
 finally, we do not have to worry over man's 
 physical inheritance, for the simple reason 
 that the physically vigorous do their full share, 
 and more, toward the propagation of the race. 
 
 If as much could be said for the mentally 
 vigorous, the earth would not be strewn with 
 the tragic wrecks of civilization after civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The greatest gift of inheritance is brains, 
 and with lack of them the strongest man is 
 the most helpless of animals.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 BIRTH-RATE AND RACE VALUES 
 
 MAN DISCARDS NATURE's METHODS — BREEDING OF MAN 
 AND OF ANIMALS IN NATURE — MAN BREEDS AWAY 
 FROM SURVIVAL OF BEST — ERRATIC PARENTHOOD 
 MOSTLY AT EXTREMES 
 
 IT is a confirmed habit of the thoughtless to 
 meet all warnings of racial decline with a 
 vague faith that nature will somehow step in 
 before serious mischief is done, and keep the 
 race going on forever unimpaired — having in 
 mind, perhaps, the seeming permanence of 
 other forms of life more directly under her 
 control. It is a beautiful thought that na- 
 ture is standing by with a generous purpose 
 to set right whatever our folly may happen 
 to set wrong, but the fact is that man broke 
 away from nature's scheme for maintaining 
 species almost at the beginning. The first 
 use man made of his wits was to soften the 
 conditions of living. Right there he opened 
 a new portal to survival values. The old 
 physical basis of survival of the fittest gave 
 
 31
 
 MANKIND 
 
 way to the new — the survival of the wittiest. 
 The man who first drew over his back a skin 
 other than his own made possible the survival 
 of a being who could not live without para- 
 phernalia. It was he who started the arti- 
 ficial life that has brought us to apartment- 
 houses and pocketbooks. 
 
 To-day we survive the destructive agencies 
 of nature, not because of physical fitness, but 
 because of the many artifices with which our 
 ingenuity has surrounded us. Almost the 
 only items we now take direct from nature 
 are breath and sleep. And these many arti- 
 fices lead to still another phase in the race's 
 life — the survival of the unfittest. 
 
 So at this late day it is absurd to allege a 
 contract with nature to look out for our racial 
 integrity. The best evidence that she will 
 not do it is that she never has done it. Not 
 one of all the preceding civilizations has been 
 able to survive its own destructive influences. 
 Other species proceed with an even develop- 
 ment until, perhaps, the turn of a geological 
 age reverses living conditions and destroys 
 them, but a half-dozen developments of the 
 human race have gone to pieces during the 
 
 32
 
 BIRTH-RATE AND RACE VALUES 
 
 merest fraction of a geological age. To be 
 sure, man survives physically and unim- 
 paired, but man's development is one of 
 brains, and of creations due to brains, not of 
 physique, and his failures have been failures 
 to maintain the quality of his brain, the very 
 thing which he develops. 
 
 Unless we are able to discover the cause of 
 these failures, and to apply a remedy, there 
 is no ground for belief that our civilization 
 will not eventually follow those which have 
 gone before. 
 
 Since we know that racial values are bred, 
 not made, we must look into man's system of 
 breeding for both the cause and the remedy. 
 More than likely we shall fairly agree as to 
 the causes of racial decline, and still be of 
 many minds over the question of remedies. 
 
 We perceive and understand the effects of 
 breeding in animals, because the breed makes 
 the animal as we see it — it is not refashioned 
 by environment. We scarcely perceive or 
 understand the effects of breeding in man, be- 
 cause we succeed so well in refashioning him 
 into something quite different from the crea- 
 ture bred. Yet it is the creature bred that 
 
 33
 
 MANKIND 
 
 breeds again, that carries forward the racial 
 values, not the thing that we have fashioned. 
 Civilized man and the animals differ widely 
 in their practice of breeding. Naturally, then, 
 we should expect a widely differing result in 
 genetic values. For instance, among animals 
 in the natural state, the harsh struggle for 
 existence eliminates the born weaklings be- 
 fore they can reproduce their defective kind. 
 We recognize this as one of nature's methods 
 for maintaining a vigorous species. Our hu- 
 manity impels us to preserve the weak; and 
 while we fail more frequently than not with 
 the physically defective — God be praised ! — 
 we succeed in coaxing the mentally weak to 
 an unhappy maturity, to breed their infirmity 
 with that pristine sexual vigor so character- 
 istic of the irresponsible. A similar perpetu- 
 ating of defective strains among animals we 
 would at once recognize as disastrous. We 
 conceal the damage in our own case by mul- 
 tiplying almshouses, institutions, homes, and 
 all sorts of social props for the deficient. 
 Again, in natural life the instinct for repro- 
 duction presses more markedly upon the vig- 
 orous and the fit, and nothing intervenes to 
 
 34
 
 BIRTH-RATE AND RACE VALUES 
 
 divert it; the fittest are the most proHfic. 
 That instinct in man presses as markedly 
 upon the physically inclined, and gives us a 
 physically vigorous race; but the mentally 
 superior habitually divert it from its natural 
 function, and the inevitable result to the race 
 is mental impoverishment. 
 
 The world has been worrying itself of late 
 about the birth-rate — whether it is rising or 
 falling, in this or that country — as if a nation's 
 strength depended on the number, not the 
 quality, of its people. Yet the world knows 
 that surplus populations are to-day stifling 
 certain countries, and will eventually stifle 
 others. The test for survival is to be, in- 
 creasingly, one of possessing the best human 
 stocky and no more of it than can properly exist. 
 
 The question of rate of increase pales into 
 nothingness before the question of what sort 
 of stock is supplying the increase. Since man 
 stands unique among all living creatures for 
 capricious range of fecundity, the direction in 
 which his caprice is leading him is of vital 
 importance to the race. 
 
 The direction is evident. Stocks of high 
 35
 
 MANKIND 
 
 genetic value, as measured by those individ- 
 uals who have attained more or less eminence, 
 are not by any means as prolific as those stocks 
 which are less capable, less provident, less 
 valuable to the community, and of less ge- 
 netic worth. This disproportionate rate of 
 increase manifests itself in the number of off- 
 spring brought to maturity in each genera- 
 tion; in the frequency of the generations; and 
 in the greater number of living generations 
 of those who multiply more frequently. In 
 other words, the more capable and provident 
 of a community marry at a later age, have 
 fewer children, and a less number of genera- 
 tions on earth at a given time, than those 
 who are less provident and presumably of less 
 genetic value. Thus all three of these factors 
 operate together to decrease the proportion 
 of superior human stock as represented in the 
 population. 
 
 This charge of erratic parenthood cannot 
 be laid against an entire people. Only in a 
 general way are the more prolific found among 
 the less desirable strains, and the less prolific 
 among the better strains. Most excellent 
 stock sometimes indulges in large families, and 
 
 36
 
 BIRTH-RATE AND RACE VALUES 
 
 many worthless individuals leave no offspring 
 at all. To both of these we should be grate- 
 ful as special conservators of the race. 
 
 Those who should multiply and do not, and 
 those who multiply grievously and should not, 
 will be our concern in the next two chapters. 
 
 37 
 
 130513
 
 CHAPTER V 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 THE SUPERIOR INHERITANCE — ^THE AMBITIOUS — THE IN- 
 TELLECTUALS — THE RICH — WOMEN AND RACE VALUES 
 — ^THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT — MEN CHOOSE INFERIOR 
 WOMEN 
 
 THE exceptionally desirable inheritance 
 has already been described: 
 
 "It is of that quality of brain — one might 
 almost add, quantity of brain — which leads to 
 creative leadership in whatever activity it 
 may select. It dominates environment, and 
 advances into new undertakings. It is the 
 mark of the social migrator — the man of 
 initiative who extricates himself from the 
 mass and changes some bit of the world, for 
 better or for worse, by his contact with it." 
 
 Leadership in the creative arts, in litera- 
 ture, science, business, education, finance, 
 statesmanship — in all affairs which determine 
 the character of a civilization — may come to 
 inheritances such as this. But this charac- 
 teristic is of no single quality. It is as well the 
 impelling force in lesser inheritances, born, 
 
 38
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 perhaps, into spheres of meagre opportunity, 
 yet recognizable in the man who strives and 
 achieves better than his fellows. It follows 
 no lines of social cleavage. Its possessor is 
 of the kind that knocks unbidden, and more 
 than once, at opportunity's gate. He may be 
 the lawyer who gains the bench, or the clerk 
 who finally owns the store. He is the one 
 man in the ditch who becomes a boss, or the 
 boss who blossoms into a contractor, or the 
 contractor who afterward goes to Congress 
 and devotes his rugged virtues to the service 
 of his country. And the newsboy who man- 
 ages to get to college and breaks away from 
 his father's trade is a full-fledged member of 
 this well-mixed fraternity. 
 
 We say that such men have ambition, as if 
 that were a specific quality which impels one 
 to endeavor. Ambition is no more than the 
 outward symptom of innate superiority striv- 
 ing to express itself. No fool has ambition, 
 except as our educational system foists it 
 upon him as a substitute for brains. 
 
 Innate superiority is not always easily rec- 
 ognized. Lack of opportunity, or the scars 
 left by long strife against odds, may conceal 
 
 39
 
 MANKIND 
 
 it. Sometimes its manifestations may be dis- 
 tinctly antisocial. But the point to bear in 
 mind is that imperfectness of expression does 
 not lessen the value of such an inheritance as 
 a transmitter of exceptionally good character- 
 istics to future generations, in whom they may 
 have better opportunity for development. 
 
 So from every walk of life in the cities, and 
 from towns, villages, country — the great reser- 
 voirs of unexploited human material — come 
 the best of their kind, impelled by their for- 
 tunate inheritances toward the centres of 
 achievement. This is the phenomenon of 
 leadership, not only in America, but in every 
 civilized country. 
 
 These are indeed the stocks from which to 
 breed a race of men. A system of selective 
 breeding would choose just these — but selec- 
 tive breeding of humans is away beyond 
 present attainment. The best that could be 
 hoped for would be a generous infusion of 
 their good blood into the blood of the race. 
 Then, as a matter of fact, how do they breed ? 
 
 They fulfil their racial duties less completely 
 than almost any other set of individuals in 
 the community. The stressful, shifting con- 
 
 40
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 ditions under which they work out their 
 emergence are directly opposed to anything 
 in the nature of a handicap. They are as in- 
 clined to marry as are all normal, healthy 
 people, and most of them do marry, but pru- 
 dence is a dominant trait with them, and pru- 
 dence suggests both a late marriage and a 
 limited family. Here, again, is that doubly 
 sure promoter of disproportion between hered- 
 itary strength and hereditary unfitness. They 
 arrive at a settled condition too late in life, 
 and the economic problem is too pressing upon 
 most of them, to admit of the full and free 
 exercise of their natural inclinations with 
 regard to family. 
 
 Thus a civilization picks out the best from 
 every part of her human supply, leads it to 
 greater achievement, and to less fertility. It 
 does not matter that these men die; it does 
 matter that they let their exceptionally good 
 germ-plasm die with them. The loss of their 
 rich inheritances, which might have enriched 
 other inheritances till the end of time, defi- 
 nitely impoverishes the world's racial values. 
 
 Of course we all know that exceptionally 
 able men often have commonplace children — 
 
 41
 
 MANKIND 
 
 especially if they have commonplace wives, 
 as so many able men do who marry before 
 they have emerged. A wife with poor inheri- 
 tance values cuts down by half the already 
 too meagre probability of a superior inheri- 
 tance for the children. In any case the prog- 
 eny of able parents tend to revert to medioc- 
 rity, for the very simple reason that all of us 
 have much more of mediocrity than of great- 
 ness in our ancestry, and therefore in the 
 germinal material from which our children 
 draw their inheritances. But this does' not 
 alter the fact that rich inheritances can come 
 only from germ-plasm rich in possibilities. 
 The genuineness of the loss to the race in the 
 cutting off of superior germ-plasm is not less- 
 ened because it might not always have pro- 
 duced greatness in the immediate offspring. 
 The able man who leaves no children deprives 
 the race of the benefit which would come from 
 a diffusion of his strong qualities through it, 
 and reduces the probability of future excep- 
 tional inheritances. 
 
 Another order of ability and genetic values 
 well above the average might be taken to in- 
 
 42
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 dude the culture and intellectual refinement 
 of the community — more particularly repre- 
 sented among educators, statesmen, writers, 
 jurists, physicians, scientists, editors, preach- 
 ers, artists of various sorts — and all the like 
 whose abilities are more directly and ostensi- 
 bly employed for the well-being of society, in 
 controlling its affairs, in shaping its thought 
 and cultivating its tastes, rather than in seek- 
 ing personal advantage. They are character- 
 ized by a pervading sense of social obligation, 
 a more or less unconscious altruism that leads 
 them to accept satisfaction with good work 
 done as a conspicuous part of their reward. 
 
 This describes the most honorable, effec- 
 tive, and altogether important group in the 
 community life. They are the leaven in the 
 social lump. They shape the social structure 
 in which we live and move and have our being, 
 the most of us too unimaginative, too pre- 
 occupied, to perceive that we do not build it 
 ourselves. 
 
 Conspicuous financial success comes to very 
 few of these, and when it does it comes late. 
 Society in every country of high culture is 
 content to let this very valuable source of 
 
 43
 
 MANKIND 
 
 genetic material undertake the rearing of 
 families under economic burdens such as do 
 not press upon any other worthy group in a 
 community. To begin with, long years of 
 preparation, then longer years before a fair 
 measure of success is attained, tend to post- 
 pone marriage, with the inevitable lengthen- 
 ing of the span between generations, and cur- 
 tailment of family. And all the time their 
 many close contacts with those of more lib- 
 eral means require them to possess the extra 
 trappings of good living which their own re- 
 finement and good taste make them long for. 
 Incomes, to be sure, are well above the aver- 
 age, but not as well above the average as are 
 their position and requirements. Many a 
 thrifty artisan can save a better competence. 
 Even their very earnestness to give the best 
 they have in them to their chosen work leads 
 them away from the handicap of a large 
 family. They wish, also, to give their chil- 
 dren the best things in home, nurture, and 
 education — and the smaller the family the 
 more they can give. 
 
 One could hardly erect a more formidable 
 barrier against the rearing of a large family. 
 
 44
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 Any observer who compares even casually the 
 unthinking fecundity of the masses with this 
 studied effort of our intellectuals to make 
 financial ends meet, knows that they fail ade- 
 quately to perpetuate their superior heritages. 
 They constitute another vitally important 
 group that absorbs more of the world's best 
 stocks than it returns to them. The failure 
 of the intellectuals of Europe in this respect 
 is as ominous as with us, although the astound- 
 ing fertility of our labor immigrants stands 
 out in more vivid contrast against the infer- 
 tility of the effective American stocks. We, 
 in the Eastern States at least, are being liter- 
 ally bred off the earth. 
 
 The fortunate — or unfortunate, as often 
 happens — members of a community who are 
 loosely described as "the rich" are most di- 
 rectly under popular suspicion of indifference 
 to racial duties. (Of course all these classifi- 
 cations are quite arbitrary, overlap one an- 
 other more or less, and are made only to facili- 
 tate this brief comparative study of genetic 
 values and fecundity.) 
 
 Possessors of wealth are of two distinct 
 45
 
 MANKIND 
 
 sorts — the builders of fortunes, and the in- 
 heritors of fortunes. First, we will examine 
 the builders. 
 
 None but the well-balanced, alert, compre- 
 hending mind, set in a vigorous and healthy- 
 body, can perceive and develop opportunity 
 and sustain the degree of physical and mental 
 concentration necessary for the management 
 of large affairs. These are the substantial 
 qualities of inheritance which, if not turned to 
 money-making by a particular bent — or per- 
 haps by mere circumstance — might easily lead 
 their possessor to eminence in other spheres of 
 leadership not so strictly measured by dollars 
 and cents. Many great money-makers dem- 
 onstrate their bigness of personality by attain- 
 ing distinct success and public usefulness in 
 affairs quite apart from their main occupa- 
 tion. To be sure, some fortunes seem to 
 grow out of a sheer chance from the skies, 
 followed up by a narrow, stingy persistence, 
 but these are the exceptions. Bigness of 
 action, and a certain dependableness of char- 
 acter, are among the parts of most great 
 builders of wealth. 
 
 It goes without saying that the race could 
 46
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 hardly receive a more valuable legacy than a 
 generous perpetuation of heritages such as 
 these. But builders of fortunes are for the 
 most part self-made men — "social migrators" 
 — beset throughout their early years by the 
 migrator's temptations to forego the encum- 
 brance of a family during the struggle for 
 success. We have already gone into the 
 shortcomings of the exceptionally endowed 
 with respect to racial duties. A glance at his 
 two, one, or none, as against the six or eight 
 offspring of the ubiquitous, happy-go-lucky 
 improvident, will reveal the small part that 
 his rich heritage has in perpetuating racial 
 values. 
 
 The fortune-builder's children, and theirs in 
 turn — the inheritors of wealth — get their view 
 of life from a very different angle. No class 
 in the community has less incentive to be 
 really useful and more incentive to be worse 
 than useless. Inherited wealth, in its way, is 
 a more fiery ordeal for character than pov- 
 erty. It picks out much of its own bad blood 
 and sends it to profligacy. Bad stock thus 
 partially disappears from the ranks of wealth. 
 Most important, too, for the enrichment of 
 
 47
 
 MANKIND 
 
 its blood, wealth's effective appeal to the am- 
 bitious of lesser affluence gives it the pick of 
 matings from the superior stocks of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 Then, in spite of the fact that one of the 
 most obvious and every-day of social phe- 
 nomena is that of money sustaining myriads 
 of people in positions to which their innate 
 capacities would never have raised them, it 
 must be admitted that a high proportion of 
 exceptionally good stock is lodged with in- 
 herited riches. The lack of necessity and am- 
 bition to do things puts much of it on the 
 dilettante shelf, but that does not lessen its 
 genetic value. We could forgive inherited 
 wealth for becoming the burying-ground for 
 a large portion of the talent which succeeds 
 in getting under its ample roof, if it would 
 only pass on in good measure its unusual in- 
 heritance values — for wealth becomes redis- 
 tributed, while good blood survives, and in 
 later generations might give a good account 
 of itself. 
 
 No one pretends that the offspring of the 
 rich compare in numbers with those of any 
 other considerable group; neither does the 
 
 48
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 greater proportion of survivals make up for 
 the deficiency. But there is this to be said 
 in their favor: among the inheritors of riches 
 it is the substantial, the superior in character, 
 who have the larger families. They are free 
 from the economic considerations and the de- 
 mands of ambition which beset the family 
 desires of the worthy in every other group. 
 It is a curious fact that the rich, by sending 
 many of their worst to an unfertile life and 
 by breeding more numerously from their best 
 stocks, follow more closely the scheme of na- 
 ture for conserving hereditary values than any 
 other group in the community. But they fol- 
 low it so gingerly, and so many of them not 
 at all, that they do not maintain their num- 
 bers on a parity with the average. The silent 
 streets of the rich proclaim the death of germ- 
 plasm that should have been perpetuated. 
 
 Little has been said of woman's part in 
 sustaining racial values. The major part 
 taken by men in the conduct of affairs, and 
 the more obvious relation of men's abilities to 
 the world's progress, are responsible for this. 
 But women have equal part with men in de- 
 
 49
 
 MANKIND 
 
 termining the inheritances of their children of 
 both sexes. A woman may convey mascuHne 
 traits from her male progenitors to her male 
 offspring which do not appear in her own in- 
 heritance; that is, a woman inherits neither 
 the physical nor the mental texture of a man, 
 although she may transmit both. The women 
 of a line will reproduce for generations the 
 heavy beards, hairy, muscular forms, and 
 masculine habits of mind of their males, while 
 they themselves remain womanly in physique 
 and manner of thinking. Conversely — to be 
 more convincing and strictly impartial — the 
 feminine characteristics of a line may be car- 
 ried down through the males, but not a male 
 among them will have in his own being those 
 finer attributes of physique, or the delicate 
 alertness of thought, the intuitive penetra- 
 tion, the exquisite quality of love for off- 
 spring, which make the glory of womanhood. 
 The law of inheritance for men and women 
 does not raise the question of equality; it 
 states the fact of mental and physical differ- 
 ences so impassable that men and women can- 
 not be measured against each other. Certain 
 women, whose feminine characteristics are 
 
 so
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 more or less obscure, deem it their business in 
 life to proclaim the equahty of the sexes. 
 This is an innocuous phrase as appHed to two 
 complementary beings, both equally essential 
 for a complete demonstration of human attri- 
 butes. Then, in dense ignorance of the limi- 
 tations imposed by inheritance, they proceed 
 to mistake equality for similarity. They con- 
 vince themselves, and also many sincere, esti- 
 mable women who vaguely comprehend their 
 real and just grievance against social condi- 
 tions, that women are held from doing man's 
 part in the world's affairs only by long habit, 
 prejudice, lack of opportunity and training. 
 
 While there is much to be commended in 
 the feminist movement, particularly in its 
 aspirations for a more equitable share in po- 
 litical and legal rights, it must be said that in 
 many of its essential aims, and so far in most 
 of its attainments, it is a movement away 
 from motherhood and toward the chimerical 
 idea that woman must prove her equal worth 
 by doing man's work. These poorly guided 
 women miss the wide difference that lies be- 
 tween transmitting a trait down the family 
 line and inheriting it themselves. Men might 
 
 SI
 
 MANKIND 
 
 as reasonably assert that, because they can 
 transmit the glorious feminine endowments of 
 their mothers to their daughters, they must 
 have the same traits somewhere concealed 
 within their own make-up. But a man who 
 sets out to imitate the qualities of womanhood 
 is regarded as a sexual mistake. 
 
 Present economic conditions will hold many 
 women to tasks which are not wholly of their 
 own choosing, and full opportunity to work 
 under satisfactory conditions is no more than 
 their just due; but society would be relieved 
 of a racial menace if the economically inde- 
 pendent women bent on demonstrating the 
 equality of the sexes could be made to com- 
 prehend their equal responsibility with men 
 for supplying good racial material to future 
 generations, and the small responsibility of 
 either men or women for the conduct of those 
 affairs for which the other's qualities are pe- 
 culiarly fit. Their conversion might turn back 
 the best of them to their more natural func- 
 tion, to the everlasting benefit of the race. 
 For it is just such women as these — strong- 
 minded, capable, with initiative that reveals 
 itself in protest — who are the potential moth- 
 ers of a great race. 
 
 52
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 Another serious loss to the race of most 
 excellent potential motherhood is chargeable 
 almost wholly to man. From a racial view- 
 point, a man chooses his mate poorly. To be 
 sure, he seeks fine qualities of mind in the 
 woman he wishes to marry, but he also de- 
 mands other attractions in her which fre- 
 quently are at variance with those qualities. 
 He is attracted by smoothness of contour and 
 delicacy of features, both clearly indicative of 
 simplicity of intellectual endowment. Curve 
 of eyebrow, beauty of hair, teeth and figure 
 and color of cheek are strong matrimonial 
 assets which may, or may not, be associated 
 with genetic worth. The eye expressive of 
 high intelligence is not so fascinating as the 
 dreamy, limpid eye expressive of sensuous 
 mediocrity. Men set great store by sweet- 
 ness of disposition, but few of them use 
 their calm judgment in choosing between the 
 woman of intelligent common sense, who will 
 meet the trials of life with cheerful adapta- 
 bility, and the amiable creature whose placid 
 non-resistance settles under adversity into a 
 peevish discontent. 
 
 While hardly aware of it in most instances, 
 men are inclined toward women of inferior 
 
 S3
 
 MANKIND 
 
 genetic possibilities because they meet the 
 more insistent surface requirements. For that 
 reason we have great numbers of able men 
 married to decidedly inferior women. This 
 damage to race values is vastly more serious 
 than is usually realized. The heritages of the 
 children are cut down more than half-way to 
 that of the inferior mother, while the superior 
 women who could have enriched the race carry 
 their lines to extinction. We all know of 
 many unmarried women, especially daughters 
 of men of exceptional ability, whose fine in- 
 heritances are shown in strength of features, 
 in vigor and independence of mind — the very 
 qualities which have turned men from them. 
 The abler women, too, are now so little de- 
 pendent upon marriage for a living that they 
 are inclined to wait for the man who measures 
 up to their ideals, and their inclination carries 
 them too often into confirmed spinsterhood. 
 
 It is lamentably true that many of these 
 most excellent women could not be, as wives, 
 so companionable and altogether satisfying as 
 some other women who have extremely little 
 of racial value to give to their children. Wife- 
 hood involves more than motherhood, and it 
 
 54
 
 DEFICIENT INCREASE OF THE SUPERIOR 
 
 seems hardly just to fix the whole responsi- 
 bility upon men; yet the poignant fact re- 
 mains that many a great man will never be 
 born because his potential mother could not 
 measure down to the man-made ideal of a 
 wife. 
 
 In these various ways and in others which 
 are more or less closely related to them, civil- 
 ization ever3rwhere tends to extinguish the 
 very stocks upon which its greatness depends. 
 In the clear light of our present knowledge 
 that education, training, social work, can no 
 more stay the effects of breeding than stop 
 the wind that blows, we see that this deficit 
 in superior human material can be made good 
 only by replacement from other stocks — and 
 at the expense, in turn, of the genetic values 
 in those stocks. The replacement of these 
 destroyed racial values, and the reservoirs of 
 human supply from which fresh stocks are 
 drawn, are the crux of this study, and will be 
 dealt with in a later chapter. 
 
 From the opposite direction another power- 
 ful factor works toward the depreciation of 
 racial values — the rapid, uncontrolled multi- 
 
 55
 
 MANKIND 
 
 plication of the masses who are so far below 
 a fair average of social worth that they en- 
 cumber society more than they assist it. 
 They do not threaten progress as seriously, 
 perhaps, as the destruction of the superior 
 stocks, since the height of a civilization is 
 measured wholly by the achievements of its 
 great men, but they are more disturbing to 
 the social structure on which a civilization 
 must rest. These men and women deserve 
 careful study. 
 
 S6
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 THE OBVIOUSLY DEFECTIVE — ^THE INEFFECTIVE — THEIR 
 PARTS SOCIALLY AND INDUSTRIALLY — SUBNORMAL 
 W^OMEN — SPREADING DEFECT UPWARD — PHILAN- 
 THROPY ASSISTS INCREASE 
 
 A WELL-FOUND ED optimism prevails 
 among workers for social betterment 
 with respect to the problem of the most obvi- 
 ously defective — the idiotic, imbecile, feeble- 
 minded, insane, and epileptic. Permanent 
 custodial care, to give them the little happi- 
 ness that can come into their lives, and to 
 stop their prolific reproduction of their own 
 miserable kind, offers a clear way out from 
 under a rapidly increasing social burden. 
 
 A good beginning has been made, but even 
 with the bright prospect of cutting off this 
 fertile source of human misery and racial cor- 
 ruption, scarcely a State in the Union has 
 provided for more than one-fourth of its 
 recognized defectives. Still, the fight for 
 
 57
 
 MANKIND 
 
 segregation eventually will be won, and, with 
 the case resting in most able hands, we may 
 go the length of assuming an early and ma- 
 terial relief from this particular social dis- 
 order. The remedy is obvious, and its more 
 complete application awaits a slow-moving 
 public opinion. 
 
 This most talked-of group is dismissed with 
 a paragraph in order to take up the more 
 subtle and altogether baffling menace of the 
 semidependants, who range from just above 
 the custodial grade to the lower fringes of in- 
 dustrial life. The conditions in this group are 
 greatly complicated by our immense foreign 
 immigration. The immigrant will have at- 
 tention in another chapter. It is not the in- 
 tention to include now those of the foreign- 
 born whose deficiency is rightly chargeable to 
 their special handicap, nor the worthy who 
 have been brought to dependence through mis- 
 fortune. Excluding these, there is still a vast 
 army in the border-land which lies between 
 complete helplessness and a really useful place 
 in society, whose trouble may be described in 
 three words: ineffective mental equipment. 
 As distinguished from more clearly recognized 
 
 58
 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 defectives, they may well be called "ineffec- 
 tives." 
 
 For the problem set us by these men and 
 women there is no solution in sight. They 
 cannot by any stretch of public sentiment be 
 permanently separated from the privileges of 
 ''citizenship and parenthood, and they cannot 
 with their meagre abilities meet with reason- 
 able continuity the simplest requirements of 
 good citizenship and good parenthood. 
 
 We find these ineflfectives everywhere. 
 Steadfastness of action or of purpose is not 
 in them. They may spend their lives within 
 a stone's throw of opportunity and never 
 meet it. In their lower grades are the alco- 
 holics, dope-fiends, loafers, tramps, petty of- 
 fenders — and petty workers when not offend- 
 ing. Social order, with its simple demands 
 for individual adjustment, does not appeal to 
 them because they can comprehend so little 
 that is beyond their own instincts. They get 
 religion in the mission and lose it in the saloon. 
 
 So they drift about between feeble efforts 
 at making a living and chronic entanglement 
 with the law; filling the criminal courts, jails, 
 almshouses, and public institutions generally. 
 
 59
 
 MANKIND 
 
 This class engages three-fourths of our enor- 
 mous corrective and philanthropic machinery, 
 and much of it can be sure of keeping out of 
 jail only when it is in the lap of charity. 
 
 This is merely descriptive of society's most 
 puzzling group. More to the point is the fact 
 that these men and women are notoriously 
 prolific, with respect to both legitimate and 
 illegitimate offspring. Their sex instincts are 
 uppermost from early youth. It is their one 
 steadily persistent and vigorous characteristic. 
 They have not the ordinary discretion of the 
 humblest among those who try to merit the 
 respect of society. Many begin their careers 
 with a record of illegitimacy, and end with 
 large families which they do not even pretend 
 adequately to support. People of this mental 
 grade are no more constant in their marital 
 relations than in any other. Their succes- 
 sive matings as they roam about, and the 
 promiscuity of married and unmarried, com- 
 bine to produce an incredible number of chil- 
 dren. 
 
 The women of these high-grade subnormals 
 are as ill-fitted to the social scheme as the 
 men, and from a racial point of view are in- 
 
 60
 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 finitely more damaging. Investigations in 
 New York, Chicago, and other large cities 
 have shown mental incapacity to be the out- 
 standing cause of prostitution and persistent 
 bearing of illegitimate children; yet most of 
 these women are above the custodial grade. 
 
 It is with a fine regard for the universal 
 frailty of mankind that we judge somewhat 
 leniently the woman who, under the stress of 
 her unsophisticated affections, makes one seri- 
 ous mistake; but there is something positively 
 grotesque in society's method of handling sub- 
 normal women who continue to multiply their 
 defective heritages. These women have been 
 known to return again and again to free ma- 
 ternity institutions — five, eight, and as many 
 as fourteen times. Were a foolish woman to 
 leave a banana peel on the sidewalk she 
 would be prosecuted, but she may leave a 
 string of defective children, one after another, 
 to plague society forever afterward, and not 
 only go free, but each time the State's doctors 
 and nurses stand ready to assist her as at a 
 holy function. And each time she is turned 
 loose upon society, because "she can support 
 herself" ! 
 
 6i
 
 MANKIND 
 
 In another way these women inflict a most 
 insidious damage upon the race. If they 
 were to confine their matings with those of 
 their own kind, it would be merely the case 
 of unfitness multiplying unfitness; but a good 
 many of these women are of attractive per- 
 sonality, and in their youth the very lack of 
 mentality gives to their features a placid ap- 
 peal which attracts normal men. Sometimes 
 these infatuations result in marriage — more 
 often they do not; but in either case this in- 
 termixture of good and bad blood produces a 
 degraded offspring. The disastrous spread of 
 hereditary mental defects through the better 
 stocks is due almost wholly to matings be- 
 tween normal men and mentally weak women 
 — rarely to matings of feeble-minded men 
 with normal women. 
 
 Again, the careless promiscuity of these 
 women accounts for the wide prevalence of 
 venereal disease among themselves, and the 
 illicit incursions of men of better heritage 
 spread the infection upward, with excruciating 
 injustice to the good women whom they 
 marry, and with horrible consequences to their 
 children and to the race. It will be recalled 
 
 62
 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 that venereal disease Is one of the few ac- 
 quirements of man which act directly upon 
 the germ-plasm. 
 
 A study of racial values should not presume 
 to pass upon the merits and demerits of social 
 institutions, but it is bound to set forth every 
 kind of influence which bears upon those 
 values, even if the good intentions of social 
 organizations are involved. Unfortunately, 
 these good intentions do happen to aggravate 
 in several respects this menace of the mentally 
 ill-equipped. 
 
 Our new knowledge of hygiene and new 
 methods of preventing infant mortality have 
 naturally achieved their most conspicuous re- 
 sults among those who have hitherto suffered 
 the highest death-rate because of slovenly im- 
 providence, neglect of the most obvious rules 
 of sanitation, and general unintelligence In the 
 care of children. There is in this no implica- 
 tion that we should do otherwise than extend 
 succor to all children in the community alike; 
 there is simply the fact that the great 
 campaign for saving infant lives does most 
 of its saving in the very class which is del- 
 
 63
 
 MANKIND 
 
 uging us with worthless human stock. It 
 has augmented their already disproportionate 
 rate of increase by a very considerable per 
 cent. 
 
 Individuals above the grade of those com- 
 mitted to the public charge as defectives, or 
 recognized as committable, cannot be further 
 classified in the distribution of public bene- 
 fits. Opportunities for relief of every de- 
 scription are open pretty much alike to those 
 of deserving qualities who are under special or 
 temporary misfortune, down to those who can 
 never be fitted into a worthy niche in the 
 social scheme and held there. So charity has 
 drifted almost unconsciously beyond its in- 
 tended function of repairing social injustices 
 and relieving workers in distress, to a tremen- 
 dous expenditure of social effort upon the 
 habitually non-supporting. Free material re- 
 lief, free dispensaries, free hospitals, free den- 
 tistry, free attendance on maternity cases, 
 free district nurses, free shelters and aids of 
 every description — these are righteous gifts of 
 humanity to the worthy unfortunate, but 
 these in such profusion as we have them did 
 not come into existence to care for the worthy 
 
 64
 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 unfortunate, or even to meet the imperfec- 
 tions of our social system, as so many like to 
 believe. Their chief business is with those 
 who are habitually below the level of self- 
 support because of hopeless mental inferiority. 
 The net result, then, is every conceivable form 
 of charity for the relief of every conceivable 
 form of inconvenience which may overtake 
 these people, from illegitimate children to old 
 age. 
 
 This is not said in criticism. If society can 
 devise no method for eliminating its enormous 
 "border-line" population, it must take upon 
 itself a part of the functions which it expects 
 the normal family to assume. The condition 
 is stated because nearly all of these social 
 props for the deficient ease the way for the 
 rapid multiplication of hereditary unfitness. 
 It is a very pretty thing to say that nobody 
 shall suff^er for lack of food and clothing, but 
 the consciousness that nobody will be per- 
 mitted to suffer frees many a shiftless man 
 and woman from what little compunction 
 they may have in producing offspring away 
 beyond their ability to care for. They breed 
 with the cheerful certainty that they and 
 
 6S
 
 MANKIND 
 
 their oflfspring will be looked after somehow. 
 The element of fitness has little part in deter- 
 mining the survival of their weaklings. Many 
 a worthy family endures in secret far greater 
 privation and suffering than would send these 
 people scurrying to the cover of charitable 
 rehef. Facilities for better living, rightly cal- 
 culated to improve their citizenship, enable 
 more of the unfit to marry, and insure the 
 survival of their ineffective children. 
 
 It is significant that semidependants are in 
 greater numbers in what might be termed the 
 higher grades of incompetency. In other 
 words, the further removed they are from any 
 possibility of inclusion in the committable 
 grade, the more there are of them. They 
 reach their greatest numerical strength among 
 the intermittent workers, the odd-job seekers, 
 the men and women who flit in and out of 
 industry, unskilled and unwanted. The ris- 
 ing demand of industrial life upon the quality 
 of the individual discloses incapacity which 
 has heretofore ''got by,'* and adds its num- 
 bers to the prolific natural increase. 
 
 To be sure, the handicaps of foreign birth, 
 66
 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 poor environment, and physical defect account 
 for some of the ineffectives, but they do not 
 account for the slovenly ineptitude, the indif- 
 ference to instruction, the lack of persistent 
 effort to make good, which send nine-tenths 
 of all ineffectives on their pathetic wanderings 
 through the lower grades of industry. 
 
 Just as we have learned that alcoholism 
 and habitual criminality are due mainly to de- 
 fective mental inheritance, we are now learn- 
 ing that ineptitude, indifference and shifti- 
 ness which persist in the midst of reason- 
 able opportunity are due mainly to a similar 
 ineffective mental equipment. In justice to 
 itself society is bound to provide fair condi- 
 tions for the self-development of every indi- 
 vidual; in no other way can innate capacity 
 and innate incapacity be correctly disclosed. 
 But this does not imply that one who has 
 spent years within reach of the advantages 
 offered in a country like America must be 
 led up by the hand to each of the essentials 
 for the making of good citizenship. We are 
 coming to recognize conspicuous lack of initia- 
 tive as a sign of mental inferiority. A man 
 who cannot scent opportunity through a few 
 
 67
 
 MANKIND 
 
 obstacles and go after it has something wrong 
 with his make-up. 
 
 So the army of the poorly endowed grows 
 in every civilized land, by addition as new 
 incompetency is revealed, and by its own 
 rapid multiplication; and to this level the 
 human precipitate from every degenerative 
 influence in civilization eventually settles. It 
 is a menace already of huge proportions, if we 
 did but know it. But we succeed well in 
 America in covering the extent and rapidity 
 of its growth with soothing draughts of char- 
 ity. England's ineffectives have multiplied 
 beyond the possibility of concealment. And 
 most of us rather like to remain blind to the 
 increasing proportion of poor human material. 
 Human interest centres upon vigor, strength, 
 achievement. Its back is toward those who 
 fail to achieve — until, perhaps, their sheer 
 force of numbers brings them into unpleasant 
 view. 
 
 As one reviews the latter days of the Roman 
 Empire, and reads of the many devices in the 
 way of public entertainments for amusing and 
 controlling the hordes of the unsocial who had 
 
 68
 
 EXCESSIVE INCREASE OF THE INFERIOR 
 
 accumulated most grievously, the question 
 arises, How soon will we arrive at the time 
 when our own unsocial masses shall have be- 
 come unwieldy ? One thing is certain; our 
 more humanitarian methods are bringing the 
 fateful day upon us at a more rapid rate. 
 The principle of the survival of the fittest had 
 not been in Roman days so completely sup- 
 planted by the principle of the survival of 
 the unfittest. And we are going ahead with 
 the knowledge whicli the Romans did not 
 have, that neither diversion nor punishment 
 of the ineffective, unsocial individual can have 
 the slightest permanent effect against the 
 dangerous qualities which he is breeding into 
 the race. 
 
 69
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 EFFECTS OF DISPROPORTIONATE INCREASE 
 
 INEFFECTIVES CLOG SOCIAL MACHINE — INFERTILITY OF 
 SUPERIOR MORE VITAL — CIVILIZATION DEPENDENT 
 UPON INFLUX OF ABILITY — ^THE SIGNS OF DECADENCE 
 — CRITICAL DISPROPORTION BETWEEN EFFECTIVES AND 
 INEFFECTIVES — RACIAL DECLINE PRECEDES DEFEAT 
 AT ARMS 
 
 IN the two preceding cnapters the range of 
 human breeding has been gone over, from 
 the best to the worst of it. If the racial factor 
 seems to have been brought into unwarranted 
 rehef from among the many other factors 
 which enter into the making of social condi- 
 tions, it must be remembered that this picture 
 is intended to show our breeding system clear 
 of the environmental devices which we have 
 set up about it. Since cultural progress and 
 racial progress run in separate courses, sepa- 
 rate treatment of them is justified. Failure to 
 comprehend this separateness has kept us to 
 the cultural view of progress, and away from 
 a proper racial consciousness. We are in 
 blissful ignorance of the fact that while civil- 
 
 70
 
 EFFECTS OF DISPROPORTIONATE INCREASE 
 
 izatlon makes great display of the individual, 
 it steadily unmakes as much of racial values/ 
 as it can lay hands on. 
 
 Over-supply of inferior stocks and under- 
 supply of superior stocks have widely differ- 
 ing effects in the destructive process. 
 
 The clogging of the social machine with in- 
 effective humans makes its smooth running 
 impossible and an ideal social and political 
 state a fantastic dream; yet so long as their 
 numbers are not sufficient to bring about so- 
 cial chaos, and industry keeps on its feet 
 under its increasing load of workers who are 
 held face to the front by a prod at the back, 
 this section of the human family can have lit- 
 tle effect in the region of actual achievement. 
 A civilization is measured across its pinnacles, 
 not around its foundations. 
 
 The persistent infertility of the better stocks 
 aims directly at the height of these pinnacles 
 of achievement. Science, literature, the cul- 
 tural arts, and the ethical and philosophic 
 standards which are the essence of civiliza- 
 tion, cannot exist in wholesome, vigorous 
 quality without superior human values in 
 good supply. Failing adequate self-perpetu- 
 
 71
 
 MANKIND 
 
 ation, a civilization must rely upon the emer- 
 gence of exceptional men from its reservoirs 
 of human supply — sometimes from the masses 
 in its cities, but more from towns, villages, 
 country, or distant lands — wherever there is 
 unexploited human material which has bred 
 more in accordance with nature's design to 
 conserve effectives and discourage ineffectives. 
 
 The value of this supply cannot be esti- 
 mated by its numbers, like so many men to 
 be lined up and shot at or fed into the indus- 
 tries. It must be of the quality of men and 
 women who breed a fair proportion of able 
 men. 
 
 Now, each migration of ability from a group 
 removes from it one source of genetic value. 
 The group tends thereafter to breed more 
 nearly true to its average quality, and to pro- 
 duce fewer migrators. Repeating this with- 
 drawal of the better stocks a sufficient numbei" 
 of times, the group may still continue to breed 
 the quality of men to be lined up and shot at 
 or fed into the indus«tries, just as great deca- 
 dent peoples on the Mediterranean are breed- 
 ing to-day, but as a source of men able to keep 
 a civilization going it will be as "played out" 
 
 72
 
 EFFECTS OF DISPROPORTIONATE INCREASE 
 
 as a mine that has had its veins of ore dug 
 down to unresponsive rock. 
 
 The impoverishing of a civihzation's racial 
 values may be spread over centuries, while 
 the individual, comprehending little more 
 than his own span of life, fails to note its ap- 
 proach. But before its lessening supply of 
 exceptional ability becomes a generally recog- 
 nized menace, the signs are unfailing to those 
 who will look for them. The momentum of 
 the industrial machine may still be carrying 
 forward material development, while at the 
 same time the social structure is being under- 
 mined. 
 
 These are some of the signs by which we 
 may know a people going to decay through 
 failure of their sustaining stocks: Such a 
 people, having been led for generations to 
 moral and cultural heights not of their own 
 creating, are left to face a dearth of true 
 leadership among ideals upon which they 
 do not have a self-sustaining grasp. Then 
 becomes manifest how little they have had 
 to do with the building of those ideals. The 
 great middle-class masses suffer compara- 
 tively little in the quality of their mental 
 
 73
 
 MANKIND 
 
 inheritances from the erratic breeding of the 
 extremes; they are quite as ripe at one time 
 as at another to revert to their more natural 
 inclinations if bereft of capable leadership. 
 Without their Moses, the people in any 
 age turn as easily as the Israelites to run 
 after false gods. Pseudo-leadership, display- 
 ing a thousand forms of sensuous attrac- 
 tiveness, finds in them a ready following. 
 Literature tries out every avenue of sensa- 
 tional appeal with no more than a reflection 
 of its former stable worth. Sexual morbidity 
 becomes the dominant note in the new sym- 
 phony of living. Art, music, philosophy, 
 ethics, even religion, unable to attain to 
 more lofty ideals, frantically pursue neu- 
 rotic vagaries for something to set before an 
 unguided popular fancy. Cohesion and unity 
 of thought and purpose — sure evidences of 
 orderly leadership — give way to a feverish, 
 rampant individualism that leads in all direc- 
 tions and arrives nowhere. Little, distorted 
 souls catch the public eye, and conspicuous- 
 ness is esteemed as greatness. Desire for 
 luxury and self-gratification, always present 
 in the unthinking, await only the disintegra- 
 tion of old ideals to develop into excesses. 
 
 74
 
 EFFECTS OF DISPROPORTIONATE INCREASE 
 
 The people turn their backs upon the wisdom 
 of centuries, and strive madly, almost pain- 
 fully, for sensuous enjoyment. 
 
 All this while the ineffectives of the race 
 have been steadily multiplying their kind 
 against the infertility that overtakes the rest 
 of mankind in the ascending scale of racial 
 worth. The over-crowded discontent down 
 underneath finds added cause in the riotous 
 extravagance of those above for shaking the 
 foundations of the social structure. It mat- 
 ters little which of the two most threatens its 
 stability, for, like a wounded bird, a decadent 
 civilization is never left to die of its own hurt; 
 a structure so rotten becomes a standing in- 
 vitation to less emasculated peoples to step 
 up and topple it over. It is said that every 
 wounded bird has an enemy at hand to put a 
 merciful end to its sufferings. History shows 
 that every civilization, become decrepit, has 
 been spared the humiliation of falling to 
 pieces of its own weight by the timely appear- 
 ance of a willing foe. 
 
 From Babylonia to Mexico are the remains 
 of civilizations burned out, of peoples formerly 
 great whose best blood has been so long and 
 persistently drained away from them that to- 
 rs
 
 MANKIND 
 
 day they breed as true to a low mediocrity as 
 rabbits breed long ears; peoples long since 
 turned back by poverty to the forms, but not 
 to the substance, of thrift and virtue; living 
 among imposing structures left by their illus- 
 trious predecessors, with no conception of the 
 greatness of either because the rich heritages 
 which made their greatness possible were not 
 passed on to them. 
 
 Of course the fall of successive civilizations 
 cannot be viewed, recorded, and disposed of 
 in this easy manner. The event for each was 
 conditioned on a thousand influences more or 
 less peculiar to its own case. But the self- 
 destruction of its best blood is the common 
 factor which determines for every civilization 
 that it is bound to die. It is also the only 
 factor that can account for the significant 
 failure of every fallen civilization to come 
 back to even a semblance of its former life. 
 For conquest has not usually obliterated peo- 
 ples; were the qualities which make for great- 
 ness still in them, their fall would have been 
 a catastrophe to be repaired, a wrong to be 
 avenged with the strength that follows a 
 chastening of the spirit, and great civiliza- 
 
 76
 
 EFFECTS OF DISPROPORTIONATE INCREASE 
 
 tions would have risen again upon the ruins 
 of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. 
 
 Racial decadence must precede defeat at 
 arms if the conquest of a people Is to be made 
 secure. The conquering of racial strength by 
 military strength, however profitable at the 
 time, makes in the end an over-expensive 
 enemy; hence the utter folly of most wars 
 between civilized nations. Napoleon, with 
 all his genius for war, had to learn in bitter- 
 ness the futility of conquering racially sound 
 peoples. Bismarck's easy ravishment of 
 France stirred a volcano that may yet de- 
 stroy his Empire. William II, viewing con- 
 quest with mediaeval eyes in this enlightened 
 age, blundered worst of all. And the victors 
 in this war can do as badly if they fail to 
 shape their terms of peace to the inexorable 
 facts of racial strength. 
 
 It is not in the line of this study to apply 
 to history the principle of erratic breeding. 
 That is a work for historians. Some day the 
 histories of dead civilizations will be re- 
 written with a better estimate of the factor 
 that was more potent than the sword in wip- 
 ing them so completely off the earth. 
 
 77
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 HUMAN VALUES IN RESERVE 
 
 SUCCESSIVE BREEDING-GROUNDS — ^THE MIGRATOR — SUR- 
 VIVAL OF THE BEST — ISOLATION A FACTOR IN RACE 
 BUILDING — IMPEDIMENTS OF LANGUAGE AND RACIAL 
 DIFFERENCES 
 
 THE evident dependence of a civilization 
 upon importations of ability from un- 
 developed stocks leads naturally to the ques- 
 tion, How have the superior inborn qualities 
 of these undeveloped stocks been maintained 
 for thousands of years against the drain of 
 each succeeding civilization ? 
 
 The human race has in effect maintained 
 enormous successive breeding-grounds apart 
 from its centres of civilization, in which selec- 
 tive processes, somewhat imperfect, to be sure, 
 operated to perpetuate vigor and ability, 
 and to eliminate weakness and incapacity. 
 A conspicuous feature in the history of the 
 race has been its constant migrations into 
 less settled, less civilized portions of the earth, 
 
 78
 
 HUMAN VALUES IN RESERVE 
 
 and generally westward. These migrations 
 have been of every variety, but usually of a 
 selective nature in that a large proportion of 
 the migrators were the more hardy, resource- 
 ful, and ambitious of the peoples from which 
 they came. These stocks settled in new 
 country and lived under conditions which 
 approached closely the terms for the survival 
 of the more fit. 
 
 Whether they were the earliest migrators 
 from the still undiscovered cradle of civiliza- 
 tion in Asia who made the Babylonian and 
 Egyptian civilizations, or the vigorous hordes 
 of northern Europe out of whom has come 
 much of present-day European culture, or our 
 own hardy pioneers from the East to the West 
 of only one hundred years ago, there was al- 
 ways a similarity in the fundamental condi- 
 tion that strength, vigor, and resourcefulness 
 were the guarantees of survival. The sturdy 
 routine of every community life away from 
 contact with civilization centres about the 
 home and children. They become naturally 
 the main interest of an existence rather bare 
 of objectives. They were the strength of the 
 patriarchal or tribal groups among the less 
 
 79
 
 MANKIND 
 
 developed peoples, and the chief material ad- 
 vantage and social asset of strong men and 
 women who had left behind them the dis- 
 tractions of more highly organized society. 
 Naturally, the vigorous and resourceful se- 
 cured these benefits of home and children in 
 greater degree. They were the more prolific, 
 as nature intends her strong shall always 
 be. The weak and ineffective were less able 
 to gain even the simple protection and neces- 
 saries which made possible their own sur- 
 vival. In the face of adverse conditions some 
 weaklings died, others gave up the contest 
 and returned to mingle their feebler heredity 
 with the stay-at-homes. Thus the selective 
 process, begun with the choosing of vigorous 
 stocks for migration, was in the usual case 
 continued as long as primitive conditions 
 lasted; constantly improving a human stock 
 rich in the physical and mental qualities 
 which go to the successful building of a 
 civilization. And the significant thing about 
 this process is that it created no new qualities; 
 it multiplied the good and decimated the bad 
 in the human material with which it had to 
 do. The essence of this breeding system, as 
 
 80
 
 HUMAN VALUES IN RESERVE 
 
 of any other, is in the high quahty of the 
 first selection of the stocks to be bred, and 
 in continuing the selection of the best over 
 a considerable period. However we may 
 now revolt at the thought of breeding hu- 
 man beings, we have the good racial values 
 of to-day, and our civilization, only because 
 living conditions until comparatively recent 
 times held the bulk of the race to the busi- 
 ness of breeding effective human stock. Our 
 human fuel, like the coal we burn, is a gift 
 from another age. 
 
 If we remember that until scarcely more 
 than a thousand years ago dominant, consum- 
 ing civilizations were few and localized, while 
 vast portions of the temperate zone offered 
 favorable conditions for natural selective 
 breeding, we may readily understand why the 
 sturdy qualities of the race have outlived the 
 successive local dissolutions. The steady in- 
 crease since early history in the number of 
 contemporaneous civilizations indicates that 
 racial upbuilding in the human preserves was 
 more than keeping pace with racial destruc- 
 tion at the centres. It is apparent that, until 
 at least within the last few hundred years, 
 
 8i
 
 MANKIND 
 
 dearth of selectively bred human material 
 was never more than a local phenomenon. 
 
 In a description so brief it is impossible 
 to Indicate more than a general trend in hu- 
 man breeding under natural conditions. Its 
 ways were not so simple nor its selections 
 always the best for the ultimate good of the 
 race, as one might hastily conclude. There is 
 a wide distinction between *' fittest" as ap- 
 plied to natural selection, and "best" as used 
 to designate an ideal. In natural breeding of 
 animal and plant life the "fittest" survive, 
 not because they are the "best" according to 
 some external standard of desirability, but 
 because they are best adapted, fitted, to meet 
 the stern conditions of their environment. It 
 is only in our breeding-stables and the like, 
 where we select for desirable points, that none 
 but the "best" survive. 
 
 Fortunately for the race, it may be said of 
 human breeding under natural conditions that 
 most of the qualities which survive as the 
 "fittest" for the vigorous life are also the 
 "best" for the purposes of civilization. 
 
 In a system of selective breeding so imper- 
 fect as that of man even under the most 
 
 82
 
 HUMAN VALUES IN RESERVE 
 
 natural conditions, it is essential that the 
 best genetic values be turned back into the 
 racial blood for many generations, even many- 
 centuries, before the proportion of exception- 
 ally good material becomes sufficiently great 
 to withstand for any considerable time the 
 drain of a civilization. Isolation is the most 
 effective means for preventing the escape 
 of the ambitious and resourceful from the 
 monotony of racial development to the ex- 
 citements of individual development. There 
 is the isolation of distance and of inacces- 
 sibility by reason of oceans and great moun- 
 tain ranges. These have now been pretty 
 much overcome with respect to every portion 
 of the earth. Previously in this book the 
 remarkable dead-level of means for travel 
 and communication down to one hundred 
 years ago was commented upon; we now 
 see that this inability of peoples to get to- 
 gether was one effective means for preserving 
 great areas of the human family for future 
 exploitation. Greece and Rome exhausted 
 the resources of their own peoples and de- 
 pendencies without getting access in any 
 general way to the values in the undeveloped 
 
 83
 
 MANKIND 
 
 hordes to the north of them. Consequently 
 these hordes succeeded Greece and Rome 
 in estabUshing the civIHzations of another 
 age. If at any stage of the world's history a 
 powerful civilization had had free draft upon 
 all the undeveloped human stocks of the 
 earth, that civilization might have lasted 
 long and blazed with exceeding glory, but 
 with its final burning out all prospect of fu- 
 ture civilizations for this earth would have 
 been as dead as Babylon. 
 
 But physical isolation alone did not pre- 
 vent the putting of the whole world's racial 
 powder into one rocket. The impediments of 
 language, customs, inborn racial antagonisms, 
 fundamental differences in mental constitu- 
 tion and, therefore, in responses to similar 
 impressions — these assisted geographic im- 
 pediments in preventing excessive drafts upon 
 the world's human values in reserve, and both 
 together determined the slow succession of 
 essentially unlike civilizations. 
 
 Thus the inaccessibility of the world's com- 
 plete store of human values to the prodigal 
 demands of any one civilization was the guar- 
 antee that another should always rise to take 
 
 84
 
 HUMAN VALUES IN RESERVE 
 
 its place. And this raises the pertinent ques- 
 tion, How would a universal civilization man- 
 age to replenish its extravagant waste of effec- 
 tive human material ? 
 
 85
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES 
 
 RACE CONSERVATION ON NEW BASIS — QUICK COMMUNI- 
 CATION HASTENS EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES — NEW 
 ENGLAND — OVERESTIMATE OF INDIVIDUAL — CIVILI- 
 ZATION MUST BREED ITS OWN RACE VALUES — A 
 GLIMPSE AHEAD 
 
 WITH the brief generalizations in the 
 preceding chapter we may take this 
 racial Inquiry from the somewhat even course 
 of past history to the more interesting racial 
 chaos of the present day. Will the reserves 
 of undeveloped ability hold out under twen- 
 tieth-century conditions ? 
 
 We scarcely appreciate that the revolution- 
 ary developments of a hundred years have 
 wholly reset the course of human affairs and 
 made forecasts of the future based upon the 
 past like as many dreams; we realize still less 
 that this revolution has affected the very 
 foundations of race existence. The world 
 now faces an utterly new prospect for the 
 perpetuation of its racial values. 
 
 Distance and physical barriers have yielded 
 86
 
 EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES 
 
 to modern invention. Man now flashes his 
 words across the earth by no less than four 
 effective devices; his several methods of trans- 
 port make light of seas and continents. So 
 with the spread of life's complexities to the 
 remotest corners has come a levelling of con- 
 ditions, and opportunity waits everywhere 
 upon those of exceptional capacity. 
 
 Thus we have come almost unawares upon 
 this critical situation: the system of breeding 
 selectively in isolation, either in lands distant 
 or in rural communities close at hand, is made 
 impossible; the only guarantee that the world 
 has had of human values in reserve for its 
 constant rebuilding has gone by the board; 
 and now mankind must find a way to con- 
 serve its effective inheritances in the midst of 
 all-pervading influences which directly oppose 
 their conservation. 
 
 This is something that has not been done 
 since the beginning. The ancient Greeks 
 attempted the breeding of ability as they saw 
 racial impoverishment coming upon them, but 
 failed. Perhaps other civilizations tried to 
 replace from within the vigor that had ceased 
 to come from without. We do not know. 
 
 87
 
 MANKIND 
 
 But we do know that if they had succeeded 
 they would have Uved. 
 
 Yet so long as there were great stores of 
 potential ability inaccessible to these civiliza- 
 tions, it did not matter so much that they 
 burned themselves out. Others stood ready 
 to kindle the torch of a new civilization at the 
 dying embers of the old, and to carry it for- 
 ward until they, too, should sink exhausted 
 before those who were to succeed them. But 
 now that all effective human material is being 
 drafted at once into the service of a world- 
 wide civilization, it does matter greatly that 
 we are consuming it in the same lavish way 
 without a thought of future replenishment. 
 
 Quick communication has done more than 
 open up every human preserve to exploita- 
 tion; It has facilitated the rapid peopling of 
 the last of the world's vacant spaces. But 
 vacant spaces could never again have served 
 the race as in all the ages past. A vacant 
 America to-day could not escape the railroad, 
 steamship, telegraph, telephone, and become 
 In the old sense a land held to the develop- 
 ment of racial values. This is equally true of 
 any section of the earth still open and favor-
 
 EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES 
 
 able for settlement. Opportunity, not physi- 
 cal barrier, now holds strong men to the wilds 
 — and the pursuit of opportunity leads di- 
 rectly away from race development. 
 
 In a word, there are to-day no areas of 
 selective breeding. The easy access of arti- 
 ficial conditions to every habitable spot on 
 earth has made race development in the old, 
 natural way an impossibility. We may as 
 well dismiss the prospect of future selective 
 migrations, of peoples held for centuries to 
 the upbuilding of hereditary values. 
 
 A specific example may convey a clearer 
 idea of these racial happenings. The immi- 
 gration of the Puritans and Pilgrims equipped 
 this new country with a quality of stock 
 which for many generations was most In evi- 
 dence as the great, sustaining stock of the 
 land. They were, to begin with, selected 
 stocks, with an exceptionally large proportion 
 of strong personal characteristics. It was this 
 same stock, somewhat mixed with other 
 stocks more or less worthy, that from time 
 to time pushed westward and again west- 
 ward, until it reached the Pacific coast, and 
 each time It was the more ambitious, the 
 
 89
 
 MANKIND 
 
 more vigorous of the communities who mi- 
 grated. 
 
 For more than one hundred years the 
 flower of this nation's abihty came from the 
 rugged country districts of New England; 
 but even the wonderful qualities which were 
 in the rich heritage of New England could 
 not withstand the double drain of the flight 
 to the cities and the successive migrations to 
 the West. New England's position as the 
 main source of exceptional men is gone. It 
 is to the great West, to which has gone much 
 of the best of New England's stock, that we 
 now look and will increasingly look for the 
 main strength of the nation. It would seem 
 as if our supply were almost infinite — as if 
 so great a volume of unexploited material of 
 strong ancestry could never be exhausted. 
 
 But these selective migrations can no more 
 take place. Every portion of this country is 
 now in the condition of a settled community, 
 just as New England was in the position of a 
 settled community one hundred years ago. 
 And as the eastern centres of population 
 were at that time beginning their drain on 
 the New England districts, centres of popu- 
 
 90
 
 EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES 
 
 lation now dotted all over our land are in a 
 similar way draining the entire country at 
 once of its best stocks. 
 
 This wholesale drain upon unexploited re- 
 serves is now an almost universal phenome- 
 non. The lure of the new-fangled civilization 
 reaches every spot on earth. City, college, 
 factory, business, are within a day's journey 
 of all but a few. No superior man, restless 
 in his too meagre surroundings, is beyond 
 hearing of the call to self-development; then 
 why stick to the slow business of race devel- 
 opment ? The weak brother remains behind 
 to multiply, while the strong rises to a posi- 
 tion of greater usefulness and comparative 
 infertility. No sooner does inborn capacity 
 show itself in the remotest corner than it is 
 whisked away to "make good." 
 
 The tapping of the whole world's human 
 resources is quite as if several reservoirs of 
 water, in usual times drawn upon succes- 
 sively, were at once piped for rapid delivery 
 to a great, final aquatic display. This sort of 
 display we are now witnessing. The easy flow 
 of talent to its opportunity, the unprecedented 
 gathering of the world's ability at its effective 
 
 91
 
 MANKIND 
 
 centres, leads naturally to a burst of material 
 achievement the like of which was never be- 
 fore seen. And never did ability work to so 
 good advantage. Each new discovery adds 
 to knowledge, and the new knowledge leads 
 to further discovery. The cumulative reac- 
 tions of one upon the other give an almost 
 uncanny potency to human endeavor. 
 
 Small wonder that common sense is re- 
 peatedly assailed by insistence that man must 
 suddenly have become a very superior being. 
 It is little understood that the great achieve- 
 ments of to-day are due to the unfolding of 
 one discovery after another in natural se- 
 quence, by many experimenters and in vari- 
 ous departments of science. We should not 
 mistake cumulative effects for individual ef- 
 fects, nor assume a rise in individual capacity 
 because of results from intense co-ordination 
 of the world's talent. 
 
 The eye fixes upon the capstone of a pyra- 
 mid, not because it is an uncommon stone, 
 but because it is at the top of so many other 
 stones. Nowadays we are in the spectacular 
 business of putting capstones to many pyra- 
 mids of achievement whose lower tiers were 
 
 92
 
 EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES 
 
 laid by predecessors of equal ability, equal 
 resourcefulness — laid, perhaps, with greater 
 ingenuity in the lack of our own scientific 
 knowledge. A broader appreciation of the 
 patient labor of the ages, which we are now 
 turning to quick account, might assist our 
 modesty and awaken us to the extravagant 
 use we are making of the world's store of 
 hereditary values. 
 
 To be sure, this exceptional stock is not led 
 at once to destruction, but it is led to a com- 
 parative infertility that makes further drafts 
 upon reserves inevitable. We see with our 
 own eyes the effects of this drain in country- 
 sides, villages, small towns, at this moment 
 in process of succumbing, not to any lack of 
 numbers, nor to decrease in natural oppor- 
 tunity, but to the dead weight of their own 
 depreciated human material. These breed- 
 ing-places which have emptied the last of 
 their superior values into the insatiable maw 
 of civilization fail to teach us a lesson because 
 until now there have always come forward 
 other communities, other reservoirs from 
 which the needed supply could be drawn. 
 For that reason as much as any other, we do 
 
 93
 
 MANKIND 
 
 not see in a racially impoverished country- 
 side the beginnings of a racially impoverished 
 civilization. 
 
 Since there are to be no more reservoirs of 
 unexploited values to succeed those now 
 being depleted, it follows naturally that the 
 racial values of the future will he just such as 
 society decides to breed within its own environ- 
 ment. If it chooses to ignore the situation 
 and continues to breed away from the best 
 as it has always done, this million-year-old 
 human race is comparatively near the end of 
 its effective life. To survive, civilization 
 must somehow get its race values into a 
 stable condition of supply and demand within 
 itself. These are the alternatives. 
 
 It is unthinkable that this world-wide 
 civilization — unified with respect to scientific 
 achievement, however disrupted politically — 
 will not at least attempt to meet these ex- 
 traordinary racial conditions. Our command 
 of knowledge and of ways and means should 
 lead us to a greater success than the Greeks 
 attained. A consciousness of race in its 
 larger sense is rapidly developing among the 
 thoughtful of all countries. The near future 
 
 94
 
 EXHAUSTION OF RESERVES 
 
 seems likely to be quite occupied with schemes 
 for reversing the present destructive order of 
 human propagation. What sort of workable 
 plan will finally be evolved is a matter of con- 
 jecture, but whatever it is, it will undoubtedly 
 involve in some degree the yielding of the 
 individual to the good of the race. If this is 
 to continue as an orderly world, the time is 
 coming — why speculate as to the century, 
 since man's existence is reckoned in ages — 
 when the business of race conservation will 
 be taken over by society and given a place 
 among other activities commensurate with 
 its importance. The people of that day will 
 look back with incredulous wonder upon the 
 time when any two people not in jail or the 
 lunatic asylum could procreate at will; and 
 with equal wonder that exceptional ability 
 should have been permitted to carry with it 
 to the grave its irreplaceable inheritances — • 
 rich with the selective breeding of centuries, 
 only to be destroyed at the beginning of use- 
 fulness. 
 
 Possibly these people will also be looking 
 at gasolene in a phial and at coal in a museum; 
 but for these their ingenuity will have devised 
 
 95
 
 MANKIND 
 
 substitutes. There is no substitute for brains. 
 The only way to multiply rich inheritances is 
 to breed them, and the only way to eliminate 
 undesirable inheritances is to stop breeding 
 them. 
 
 How infinitely beyond conception must all 
 this be in a social state that restrains scarcely 
 one-fourth of its outright defectives from re- 
 producing their kind, and merely hints at 
 the wastage of its superior hereditary values ! 
 Yet to assert that the community will never 
 guide the reproductive function of any except 
 its defectives is to confess the ultimate failure 
 of all civilization. 
 
 96
 
 CHAPTER X 
 RISE OF THE ARYAN 
 
 man's time compared to all time — PHYSICAL AND 
 
 MENTAL UNLIKENESSES ORIGIN OF THE ARYAN — HIS 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS — HIS MIGRATIONS — RACIALLY DE- 
 STRUCTIVE INFLUENCES — DEPRECIATED RACE MIX- 
 TURES 
 
 WITH the thought that the world's sup- 
 ply of ability is now running to ex- 
 haustion in a manner without parallel in any 
 previous racial failure, it becomes a matter 
 of fascinating importance to inquire into the 
 present resources of the human race in this 
 respect. What are the prospects of the vari- 
 ous civilized peoples for a continuance of 
 racial effectiveness ? And are there dormant 
 peoples now on earth who may be carrying 
 undeveloped the divine fire, as dormant peo- 
 ples since the beginning have carried it until 
 opportunity came ? 
 
 A book that holds to a non-technical pres- 
 entation of an essentially technical subject 
 should not lead its readers into the mazes of 
 
 97
 
 MANKIND 
 
 race history. That Hterature is voluminous, 
 with scarcely two writers of the same opinion, 
 mainly because too many of them are bent on 
 persuading their readers to some pet idea. 
 Yet among the best of them there is sufficient 
 accord with respect to fundamentals to estab- 
 lish the subject upon a foundation of reason- 
 ably certain facts, and to commend it as a 
 most fruitful study. 
 
 The earliest fragments of race history take 
 us back only a step into the long stretch of 
 man's life as a developed human; and if we 
 conceive that the untold ages of his evolution 
 from his ape-like ancestors lie still further 
 back in that impenetrable darkness of time, 
 we may be able to comprehend how infinitesi- 
 mally little man has been affected by evolu- 
 tionary processes since our acquaintance with 
 him. Those processes undoubtedly are as 
 active to-day as in any day of the world's life, 
 but time is the essential factor with them, 
 and man's time, compared to All Time, is like 
 a minute in a thousand years. 
 
 Opinion is divided on the question whether 
 all mankind is descended from a single wide 
 variation among his unhuman predecessors, 
 
 98
 
 RISE OF THE ARYAN 
 
 or from several different variations, in several 
 localities and probably in different though not 
 widely separated periods. Significant differ- 
 ences in bone structure between races now 
 living incline many to the latter view, but 
 the question does not in the least concern us. 
 Marked unlikenesses and inequalities, espe- 
 cially of mental attributes, are the facts of 
 to-day, however they arrived. 
 
 Mankind is divided into races primarily ac- 
 cording to physical unlikeness; but dissimilari- 
 ties of mental attributes and capacities are so 
 closely associated with outward physical dif- 
 ferences that they enter as important factors 
 in distinguishing races one from another. 
 Whether or not the mental attributes which 
 have set up the White as the dominant race 
 of the world were also once lodged with the 
 Yellow, the Black, and other inferior races, 
 and gradually became lost through out- 
 breeding during their millenniums of separa- 
 tion from the parent stock, is a question as 
 unanswerable as it is unimportant. The out- 
 standing fact is that they are not possessed of 
 these attributes to-day. This search for ra- 
 cial ability to maintain the world's civiliza- 
 
 99
 
 MANKIND 
 
 tions need not go a step beyond the unmixed 
 White. 
 
 The origin of the White race — or the Aryan, 
 which is so nearly coincident with the White 
 that the names for our purpose may be used 
 interchangeably — is quite generally held to 
 have been somewhere in the plains of Central 
 Asia, at a time when that vast region was 
 better wooded, more fertile, and blessed with 
 a greater rainfall than it is now. To this 
 great Aryan race are attributed the qualities 
 which have made the white man pre-eminent 
 for his capacity to dominate environment, to 
 migrate, to colonize, to subdue both nature 
 and other men, to turn both to his advantage, 
 to develop a high state of social organization, 
 and, in a widely comprehensive sense, to 
 bring things to pass. Indeed, many go to the 
 length of ascribing appearances in any race 
 of these dominating qualities to some more or 
 less remote infusion of Aryan blood. 
 
 Many thousand years ago the Aryan began 
 the migrations of his restless, dominating 
 breed — migrations that have never ceased to 
 this day — venturing into the lands of other 
 peoples, to conquer, to establish civilization, 
 
 100
 
 RISE OF THE ARYAN 
 
 and then to fail, as dominant peoples have 
 always failed, mainly through the dissipation 
 of their racial values. 
 
 One of the earliest, if not the first, of the 
 Aryan migrations was to the South, down 
 into the hot plains of India, into a climate 
 poorly adapted to the survival of a people 
 bred under totally different conditions. Sur- 
 vival of migrants is largely dependent on their 
 reasonable adherence to isothermal lines. No 
 pure Aryan stocks have lived and multiplied 
 in the tropics; a people so far outside its cli- 
 matic element must seek the questionable 
 protection of mixing its blood with that of 
 native peoples. So in India the Negroid- 
 Aryan increasingly survived; and as the 
 chances of survival naturally increase in such 
 cases with the proportion of native blood, the 
 Aryan infusion in the Negroid of India finally 
 became diluted to a degree which enabled it 
 to persist in the hybrid race. This attenuated 
 Aryan stock is in unmistakable evidence 
 among certain high-caste East Indians of the 
 present time. 
 
 To later Aryan migrations are ascribed the 
 Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations. Like 
 
 lOI 
 
 ^
 
 MANKIND 
 
 those of India, these incursions of the Aryans 
 seem to have taken on early the character of 
 infusions of Aryan blood, which in time were 
 even more completely absorbed into that of 
 the native peoples — of whose origin, by the 
 way, we know next to nothing. These, and 
 other faintly traceable developments at the 
 eastern end of the Mediterranean, were essen- 
 tially the work of mixed Aryan-native stocks, 
 hampered from the first by the mixture with 
 inferior blood, and finally swamped by the 
 excess of the native infusion. Not until the 
 days of Greece and Rome does the Aryan 
 appear to have been successful in maintaining 
 his racial integrity through very considerable 
 periods of time — and with that success came 
 the acme of his cultural development. 
 
 Other great Aryan migrations over-ran all 
 of central and western Europe, giving rise to 
 Celt, Engle, Frank, Norse, Teuton — names 
 familiar as among the parent stocks of the 
 actively dominant peoples of our time — all 
 Aryans, differentiated into unlike peoples by 
 unlike inheritances from the original Aryan 
 stocks, by the differing effects of environ- 
 ment and acquired habits upon survival 
 
 I02
 
 RISE OF THE ARYAN 
 
 values, and, most of them, by mixture with 
 native stocks. 
 
 Thus we view briefly the advance of the 
 great Aryan peoples. For the record of their 
 surgings back and forth in endless, conflict, 
 their overflowings and readjustments and 
 failures and successes, their slow and painful 
 attaining to the heights which distinguish 
 them above all other peoples, we should have 
 to read most of the volumes of the world's 
 history. 
 
 The disappearance of strong Aryan charac- 
 teristics from the scenes of the earlier Aryan 
 developments about the Mediterranean can- 
 not be so fully charged to unfavorable climate 
 as in the case of the Indian migration. It is 
 reasonable to suppose that, with the greater 
 complexity of each succeeding Aryan civiliza- 
 tion, the conditions of living increasingly ar- 
 rayed themselves, as we know they are 
 arrayed to-day, against the adequate survival 
 of the better stocks. A dominant race in 
 contact with inferior native peoples turns 
 away from breeding much as the dominant 
 individual among the passive of his own kind. 
 Both are preoccupied builders of civilization; 
 
 103
 
 MANKIND 
 
 diverted constantly from the main scheme of 
 nature by a thousand schemes of their own; 
 the first to gain the trappings of luxury, the 
 first to feel the effects of indulgence, the first 
 to neglect their racial duty among hordes 
 that do no other duty as well. As to these 
 earlier peoples we can only surmise, but in 
 the civilizations of Greece and Rome we 
 know, that social conditions favored racial 
 destruction essentially as they favor it in our 
 own civilization. We must never forget that 
 since history began there has been no appre- 
 ciable change in inheritable character traits — 
 only in the infinite variety of their combina- 
 tions. Human nature has had in every age 
 the tragedy of its weaknesses as well as the 
 glory of its strength. So, beginning with the 
 very earliest civilizations, these age-old weak- 
 nesses have played an increasing part with 
 that other racially destructive habit of the 
 Aryan — mixing with inferior stocks — at tum- 
 bling race. State, and civilization into a dusty 
 heap with periodic certainty. 
 
 It must be obvious that no source of domi- 
 nant blood is to be found in these leavings of 
 dead civilizations. There is no such thing as 
 
 104
 
 RISE OF THE ARYAN 
 
 resurrection for characteristics which have 
 been ehminated from the heritage of a people. 
 Thus our search narrows. With these de- 
 cayed branches of the Aryan race ehminated 
 along with Yellow and Black and all mixtures 
 of races, one must be impressed by the vast- 
 ness of the multitudes of the earth's inhabi- 
 tants who are forever without prospect of 
 developing characteristics at all comparable 
 with those of the present actively dominant 
 Aryan peoples. It is a common mistake to 
 regard non-Aryans as races in their infancy, 
 delayed in maturing, and destined for later 
 emergence. There is no basis for the belief 
 that these races are following, ages behind, in 
 the footsteps of the Aryan. They may safely 
 be regarded as contemporary races, following 
 different courses because of different origins, 
 or because of ages of divergence in the devel- 
 opment of widely different inheritances. The 
 world has been theirs as well as ours, and 
 probably for as long. Climatic condition is 
 not a determining factor in racial develop- 
 ment. A race with inborn qualities for prog- 
 ress chooses its climate just as it chooses its 
 fields and woods and harbors. The dominant
 
 MANKIND 
 
 race determines its environment; environment 
 does not determine which shall be the domi- 
 nant race. The best natural conditions on 
 earth failed to make anything of the Ameri- 
 can Indian, and the scenes which favored the 
 Mediterranean civilizations were passive wit- 
 nesses of their downfall. 
 
 Our estimate of race values must not be 
 misled by what these inferior peoples can be 
 taught to do; their measure is in what they 
 can do of themselves. It is of no consequence 
 that an Abyssinian can handle a gun with 
 the dexterity of a white man, or that Congo 
 natives take quickly to the telephone; they 
 are a million years away from creating either. 
 
 The peoples of four-fifths of the globe yield 
 a desultory acceptance to the achievements 
 which issue from the dominant Aryan. The 
 best of them are eager copyists who may 
 adapt, but rarely add to the original. Other 
 peoples, particularly the Chinese, Japanese, 
 and East Indians, created early civilizations 
 of their own — the two latter quite certainly, 
 and the Chinese probably, because of early 
 infusion of Aryan blood. But their own esti- 
 mate of these creations of depreciated Aryan 
 
 1 06
 
 RISE OF THE ARYAN 
 
 is shown in their desire for the essentials of 
 pure Aryan civiUzation. 
 
 Then it is to the Aryan peoples now leading 
 in the world's affairs that we must look for 
 the perpetuation of those qualities which build 
 and sustain civilizations. This part of our 
 study can be no more than a speculative esti- 
 mate of racial possibilities and prospects 
 based upon premises already set down. If 
 we have come to a truer understanding of 
 what constitutes racial values, this estimate 
 should be in the nature of a revaluation of 
 the hereditary elements in mankind upon 
 which the whole future life of the race de- 
 pends. A matter so vast is sure to come 
 very imperfectly from only one man's opinion. 
 It is hoped that this attempt to show the 
 urgency of the situation may turn others, 
 eager for vital problems, to the study of the 
 human breed. A world facing a racial crisis 
 more profound than any in its history needs 
 the counsels of its ablest men. 
 
 107
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 ARYAN RACIAL VALUES 
 
 SMALL PER CENT OF SUPERIOR ABILITY — IN FRANCE, 
 ENGLAND, GERMANY — ABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES 
 — ^THE EIGHTY PER CENT MIDDLE-MASS — PERSISTENCE 
 OF RACIAL DIFFERENCES — ^THEIR PART IN THE WAR 
 
 TURNING from the fruitless quest for 
 ability among the great multitudes of 
 the earth's inhabitants to an examination of 
 the more promising Aryan, the first and most 
 striking discovery we make is that exceed- 
 ingly few individuals among these dominant 
 peoples are really dominant. The active 
 substance of civilization is involved with the 
 destinies of a mere handful. 
 
 Some one has said that if France were to 
 lose fifty of her greatest statesmen, fifty lead- 
 ing scientists, fifty each of her shining lights 
 in education, art, music, and so on, there 
 would be nothing left of France. This states 
 in an exaggerated way a deep truth which can 
 be far more convincingly illustrated. We 
 may continue with France as an example, al- 
 ios
 
 ARYAN RACIAL VALUES 
 
 though the case fits England, Germany, and 
 America as welL 
 
 The population of France is about forty 
 millions. Then, instead of a few hundred, 
 suppose France were suddenly to lose four 
 hundred thousand — one per cent — of her very 
 best in human values; not of the physically 
 best, such as are being lost in the horrible 
 war, but of the best in intellectual and crea- 
 tive ability, in leadership, in genetic worth. 
 What would be left of France ? Gather in 
 every man and woman in France who leads, 
 sustains, creates, and brings to pass the things 
 that are vital to her life; then to the sum of 
 all these add as many of equal potential 
 worth, who in the nature of things would 
 succeed them; and still this one-per-cent con- 
 scription of France's best would be unfilled. 
 Add, again, the most promising child in every 
 family that has ever produced exceptional 
 ability; it is doubtful whether then the list of 
 four hundred thousand would be complete. 
 
 This idea is so pertinent that it cannot be 
 impressed too strongly. Take the illustration 
 to England — eliminate a half million of her 
 active and potential leaders; and to Germany 
 
 109
 
 MANKIND 
 
 — subtract six hundred and fifty thousand 
 from her best genetic values. What would 
 be left of Europe ? 
 
 Bring it home to our own United States. 
 One per cent of the population is one million. 
 Ten times this many physically fit could be 
 raised to defend their country, but could we 
 find a quarter of one million who have a vital, 
 constructive part in the making of it .? If so, 
 remove these from the nation's life, and then, 
 to complete the lists, three times as many 
 more chosen from the most promising of the 
 country's blood. What would be left of the 
 United States .? 
 
 A smaller unit may bring the idea closer. 
 In New York City is supposed to be concen- 
 trated much of the country's ability. A list 
 of one hundred would include New York's 
 really big men. The names of not more than 
 one thousand would be generally recognized 
 in the country at large for actual achieve- 
 ment. ''Who's Who in America," with its 
 fine-tooth comb, finds less than four thousand 
 men and women worthy of its not too dis- 
 criminating pages. New York is popularly 
 considered as swarming with financial and 
 
 no
 
 ARYAN RACIAL VALUES 
 
 industrial magnates. Within the Kmits of a 
 thousand one could put all its leaders of 
 finance and captains of industry, and still 
 have places to spare. 
 
 Yet the toll of one per cent would call for 
 jorty thousand of New York's best. What 
 would be left of New York .? 
 
 It seems incredible that the loss of only- 
 one individual in every hundred could so 
 devastate human values in any vigorous na- 
 tion. But we are wholly misled in our esti- 
 mate of a nation's strength by the always 
 satisfactory proportion of its physical vigor. 
 Physically, a people can hold its own almost 
 indefinitely. In the physical display which 
 any active nation can make we lose sight of 
 the rather appalling fact that its construc- 
 tively effective brains are concentrated in 
 the heads and inheritances of an unbelievably 
 small number. 
 
 It may be contended that this one per cent 
 represents only as much of the world's ability 
 as can find place for its exercise, and that from 
 the inexhaustible masses would rise greatness 
 in any numbers and as often as needed. It is 
 true that a nation's resources of ability in 
 
 III
 
 MANKIND 
 
 prospect cannot easily be defined. Emer- 
 gence is from every walk of life, and often 
 from unexpected places. Yet nothing is more 
 absurd than the notion that ability is apt 
 to come from any sort of condition. Because 
 a cabin gave us our greatest President, we 
 need not set our eye at every cabin door in 
 expectation of another Lincoln. Ability is 
 never careless of its ancestry. A mind capa- 
 ble of great things may not have had its 
 origin in greatness, but it must have had 
 somewhere in its line strong, well-ordered in- 
 heritances whose character units in happy 
 combination were fitted to endow it. Trac- 
 ing the ancestral lines of "self-made" men, 
 we find that they were very ably assisted, in- 
 deed, at the most critical period of their mak- 
 ing. There are no self-made men. 
 
 There can be no serious question that abil- 
 ity descends in certain lines and is forever 
 absent from other lines. The facts of inheri- 
 tance and actual experience demonstrate this. 
 The spread of opportunity is revealing the 
 resources of ability by bringing it more gener- 
 ally into the light. The insatiable demand 
 for men big enough to take leadership may 
 
 112
 
 ARYAN RACIAL VALUES 
 
 miss a few in obscure environments, but it is 
 constantly missing fewer. 
 
 Thus our one per cent, clearly more than a 
 full measure of ability disclosed, becomes a fair 
 index of a people's store of ability in prospect. 
 Possibly it does not sufficiently include this 
 ability in prospect; for every person matured 
 there must be more than two or three in the 
 stages of minority. Proper allowance, too, 
 must be made for ability obscured, and for 
 resources not yet tapped. 
 
 Suppose we make this allowance generously 
 and assume that for every individual who de- 
 velops exceptional capacity there are ten 
 sources from which his like might possibly 
 rise; in other words, raise our estimate of 
 sustaining inheritances from one to ten per 
 cent. Then, for a single convincing example, 
 make the toll from Greater New York ten 
 per cent— four hundred thousand of her best 
 in genetic values. Does the wildest optimist 
 believe that New York's population would 
 then hold anything more of racial promise 
 than the decadent populations of the Medi- 
 terranean .? 
 
 It is a startling thought that inheritances 
 113
 
 MANKIND 
 
 of the quality essential to the effective main- 
 tenance of civilization are lodged exclusively 
 with a scant ten per cent of the population. 
 Yet that is the logical conclusion if we ac- 
 cept what appear to be plain facts. 
 
 Earlier in this study a rough estimate 
 placed ten per cent of our own population 
 below the level of acceptable citizenship; now 
 we arrive at another ten per cent who exceed 
 that modest requirement. Then what of the 
 great middle-mass of eighty per cent, who 
 live as naturally and honestly as they can in 
 difficult surroundings and go to rest in ob- 
 livion ? 
 
 The term "acceptable citizenship" sets 
 forth their worth and their limitation. They 
 are like a great body responding to the incli- 
 nations of a head; their willing acceptance of 
 the social order makes little demand on initia- 
 tive. They may do their work with spon- 
 taneity, but they keep within the lines of 
 precedent. In an advancing civilization they 
 adopt devices which they could not devise, 
 marvel at discoveries which they could not 
 make, and reflect among themselves the light 
 that is shed upon them. They take the stim- 
 
 114
 
 ARYAN RACIAL VALUES 
 
 ulus of their daily lives from a higher at- 
 mosphere as unconsciously and with as much 
 right as they breathe the free air of heaven. 
 The great scheme of civilization is for them, 
 not of them, and when it fails they settle of 
 their own weight to a new level of mediocrity. 
 
 One other special fact with respect to domi- 
 nant branches of the Aryan should be im- 
 pressed: the persistence of characteristic race 
 differences against the levelling effect of an 
 easily diffused, general civilization. 
 
 Centuries of race differentiation and politi- 
 cal readjustment have made of the Aryan a 
 medley of unlike peoples. In Europe, state 
 lines follow rather imperfectly the natural 
 cleavage of race characteristics. Take, for 
 example, the three leading national groups — ■ 
 English, French, German. Only a partisan 
 will deny that the chief attainments of the 
 world's civilization are in the life of all, though 
 differently interpreted and applied, and that 
 each has contributed after its own manner to 
 the general advancement. Yet with all their 
 acceptance of these common benefits, strong 
 character resemblances within the separate
 
 MANKIND 
 
 states, and quite at variance as between the 
 states, give to each an aspect of isolated race 
 unity. The words German, French, EngHsh 
 are associated in our minds with distinctive 
 racial characters. These impressions are based 
 upon fact, and there need be no prejudice in 
 them. 
 
 The statement earHer made that all races 
 may be regarded as contemporary, and differ 
 in their attainments because of long diver- 
 gence, holds equally true for these Aryan 
 peoples now on essentially the same level of 
 civilization. Germany, France, and England 
 are not following one another along a single 
 scheme of development, differing because at 
 different stages, and all destined eventually 
 to pass through similar cultural experiences. 
 Each has come to flower after the manner in- 
 duced by its own particular inheritance values, 
 and is not destined to flower again after the man- 
 ner of any other. This fact is vital to every 
 forecast of Europe's future. German character 
 will never evolve into French character, and 
 Englishmen will be English until they mix 
 with some other race and cease to be. 
 
 These racial differences did no more than 
 ii6
 
 ARYAN RACIAL VALUES 
 
 assist political ambition and commercial ri- 
 valry in bringing about the present cata- 
 clysm. But even if they are not the most 
 poignant of all that have made Europe a 
 battle-field, racial differences are to stand 
 after all other differences have given way to 
 new conditions and new contentions. Here 
 again is the immutability of the character 
 unit — that fundamental principle set down 
 early in this book and appearing in some 
 form at almost every page. 
 
 Thus we have two outstanding character- 
 istics of the dominant Aryan peoples : 
 
 A small ten per cent of their best in genetic 
 values stands between them and the oblivion 
 that overtakes every people bereft of capable 
 leadership; and 
 
 Racial divergence limits each Aryan group 
 to its own characteristic interpretation of hu- 
 man values. 
 
 With these in mind we may now take a 
 view of race values in the nations involved in 
 the great war. 
 
 117
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 A RACIAL SEARCH WITHOUT PREJUDICE — FRANCE — 
 GREAT BRITAIN — RUSSIA — RACE SUICIDE 
 
 IN the midst of a frightful conflict bent on 
 determining stupendous political, social, 
 and economic issues, this delving among the 
 contending nations for racial facts may seem 
 like picking berries in a forest fire. Yet what- 
 ever happens to everything else, the facts of 
 race are to be the facts of the future — unad- 
 justed in the general adjustment, sadly dam- 
 aged, of course, as to their values, but even 
 more pronounced in their antagonisms, and 
 as persistent as ever in human affairs. 
 
 It is essential that we do not let our opin- 
 ions be assailed by the distressing events of 
 the day if we are to get a sane view of race 
 values in the nations at war. Racial differ- 
 ences cannot properly be viewed through the 
 heat of all the other differences which now 
 afflict the world's judgment. This search is 
 
 ii8
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 concerned with the war only as it touches 
 the question of racial worth. There is al- 
 ready an abundance of war literature — most 
 of it oblivious to the racial significances in- 
 volved. A study of the war from this one 
 neglected view-point has no apologies to offer 
 for its incompleteness as a general picture. 
 
 Who in 1914 would have said that France 
 could stand for nearly three years against 
 assaults beside which her own batterings of 
 the Teuton a hundred years before were as 
 child's play ? Not those, surely, who mea- 
 sure her by her gay capital. But in this crisis 
 Frenchmen may thank their stars that Paris 
 is not France, and that of leadership they still 
 have sufficient to fling their passive millions 
 against the enemy. Yet this war, won or 
 lost, is not to settle the destiny of France. 
 The destiny of every nation is so bound up 
 in its racial values that it can laugh at the 
 fortunes of war as temporary disturbances in 
 the long course of its existence. This is 
 equivalent to what has been said in effect 
 before, that to assail a nation whose racial 
 strength has not given way to degeneration 
 
 119
 
 MANKIND 
 
 is to gain little more than an expensive 
 enemy. 
 
 France in 1871 was racially sound, in spite 
 of her dissipations. She could be conquered, 
 but not subdued. Did ever a nation win a 
 prize more filled with burdensome hate than 
 Alsace-Lorraine and the gold at Spandau, and 
 profit less by the experience ! Again in 1914 
 Germany, for whom attention to detail is a 
 religion, was equally blind to this funda- 
 mental consideration. A more intelligent es- 
 timate of France's race values would have 
 shown that she was not ready to die, nor to 
 subdue her culture to the tone of any other, 
 nor even to give up any part of her country 
 or wealth without a continuity of protest 
 that in time would plague her conqueror out 
 of more than its value. The courageous re- 
 sponse of the French to the frightful de- 
 mands of this war has given France a new 
 and glorious place among the nations. The 
 French temperament has turned enthusiasm 
 almost to ecstasy. France is showing a 
 burst of new life that thrills the world. 
 
 And yet the racial prospects of France are 
 of the darkest. It is true that Paris is not 
 
 120
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 France, but It is the heart of France. If 
 Paris does not represent the vast outside 
 population of France, it is because the French- 
 man who is not touched by the mode of 
 Paris is of the passive millions. Paris typi- 
 fies the leadership of France; it is to her dom- 
 inant handful that she appeals. And Paris, 
 of all the capitals of Europe, is farthest on 
 the way to Babylon, Memphis, Athens, and 
 Rome — with Vienna, in clumsy swiftness, a 
 close second. 
 
 Race mixture has not been much of a de- 
 generating influence in France. Her race 
 values have gone down under the long-con- 
 tinued failure of her best stocks adequately 
 to perpetuate themselves. Compared with 
 the other great nations of Europe, France has 
 had longer periods free from tormenting wars 
 — periods given over to the advancement of 
 culture and to the enjoyment of it. Luxury 
 has had more time and opportunity to play 
 havoc with her race values, and in this, lux- 
 ury has been assisted by the very quality of 
 French temperament which has made the 
 glory of French culture. No new blood can 
 come to France — her resources are within the 
 
 121
 
 MANKIND 
 
 realm. Her African possessions are more of 
 a drain than a prop to her racial vitality. 
 Her decline is not to be stayed by a forced 
 rise in the birth-rate; numbers secured in 
 that way add nothing to race values. Her 
 j handful of effectives is shrinking — as those of 
 her rivals are shrinking, only faster — and no 
 agitation over birth-rate can set the effectives 
 of France, or of any other nation for that mat- 
 ter, to mending their ways. France is nearer 
 to the critical disproportion between her con- 
 structive and non-constructive elements than 
 either of her greatest rivals — England and 
 Germany. We can speak here of France and 
 England as rivals, for a racial study may 
 ignore alliances and look upon war as a dread- 
 ful episode, working disaster to the race 
 values of all, but changing little the race rela- 
 tion by either victory or defeat. 
 
 But racial decline is a sluggish forerunner 
 of racial collapse. By every sign discernible, 
 France is equipped to hold her course safely 
 past the present crisis, safely past any events 
 within our reckoning. We may estimate her 
 future in relation to that of other peoples, 
 but not in years, decades, or with any cer- 
 tainty in centuries. 
 
 122
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 The outstanding fact for this inquiry is 
 that France is not to be a source of future 
 abihty to make good the wastage of present 
 civilization. We must look to peoples whose 
 human values have not been so long and per- 
 sistently exploited. France's contributions 
 to the world's advancement may continue, 
 but the days of her greatest achievement are 
 in the past. Long before the world is over- 
 hard pressed for sustaining race values, France 
 will have ceased to be a dominant factor in 
 its civilization. 
 
 Great Britain is pre-eminently the country 
 of extremes in racial values. No other coun- 
 try excels her in the production of able men, 
 in the adequacy of their numbers, and the 
 genetic richness of the stocks from which 
 they are derived. Yet Great Britain has a 
 higher proportion of ineffective, underbred, 
 hopelessly inferior white stocks than any 
 other dominant nation. 
 
 We are not interested here in the political 
 significance of this condition, nor in the sec- 
 tional exclusiveness, the persistent social iso- 
 lation of types, which have carried differen- 
 tiation of genetic values in Great Britain to 
 
 123
 
 MANKIND 
 
 unprecedented lengths. Let us take the con- 
 dition as it exists. 
 
 No great power has come to permanent 
 disaster solely through the increase of its 
 unsocial population. There must be also a 
 drop in its effective values. One able man 
 outnumbers a hundred ineffectives in the 
 control of any situation not actually devel- 
 oped into a riot — and the mob is the most 
 effervescent of any manifestation of power. 
 England is keenly alive to the threat of her 
 racially depreciated masses — in London's East 
 End, in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, in 
 the substratum of her agrarian population, 
 and throughout all her manufacturing and 
 mining regions; not the steady workers, but 
 the hordes of intermittents and unworkables, 
 effective only at the business of reproducing 
 their kind, adding misery to misery unceas- 
 ingly. They make for England a social prob- 
 lem that is already a severe tax upon her re- 
 sources of control, and will become more im- 
 posing when the war ends. Yet they will 
 never get their hand upon Great Britain's 
 helm until failure of her best stocks compels 
 the last remnant of her dominant blood to let 
 
 124
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 go. If England can devise a way to reduce 
 the fecundity of her ineffectives she may 
 lighten her social burden, but for the preser- 
 vation of her national life she must look to 
 the adequate perpetuation of the high genetic 
 values which supply her with able men. 
 
 No country has had a better heritage. 
 Engle, Celt, Saxon, Norse, Dane, Norman — 
 migrators, invaders all of them, bred under 
 conditions rigorous In their selection of re- 
 sourceful men. If we hold in mind the per- 
 sistence of the character unit unchanged 
 through the centuries, we may picture the 
 hardy and adventurous of these stocks as 
 mingled in the virile, domineering Englishman 
 of to-day. 
 
 Those who have any knowledge of England 
 will not even have to ask what she Is doing 
 with her rich inheritances. In a previous 
 chapter is detailed the wasting of our own 
 purest and best Aryan inheritances. That 
 chapter can be applied to English stocks with 
 very little adaptation; details need not again 
 be entered into. England's scheme of hered- 
 itary titles and hereditary wealth sustain 
 poor genetic values in high places along with 
 
 i2q
 
 MANKIND 
 
 the good, perhaps even more generally than 
 with us, but in the main the decreasing fer- 
 tility of Great Britain's higher classes aims 
 directly at her richest inheritances. 
 
 Thus Great Britain's approach toward a 
 critical disproportion between her sustaining 
 and her socially dependent stocks is an arith- 
 metical certainty. As with France, the time 
 of her arrival cannot be computed in years, 
 or decades, or centuries. This war has dis- 
 closed the remoteness, not the nearness, of 
 her downfall. We simply know that the 
 racial values of Great Britain are distinctly 
 on the wane, and that unless something oc- 
 curs to reverse her racial trend she will have 
 been counted out in favor of less debilitated 
 peoples long before the world loses the last 
 of its Aryan civilizations. 
 
 But the superb English inheritance has 
 gone to all parts of the earth, to develop the 
 traditional English resourcefulness long after 
 the home stock shall have been depleted of 
 its effective values. England's contribution 
 to the world's genetic values is to be her 
 crowning achievement. The great new civ- 
 ilizations in North America, Australia, New 
 
 126
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 Zealand, South Africa — In the generations to 
 come, any one of these may grow to be an- 
 other England in world strength. If under a 
 new conception of human relations these 
 English-speaking peoples yield their small 
 differences and get together in singleness of 
 purpose, the dominating world civilization 
 for unnumbered centuries to come will be 
 English in language and in those qualities 
 which have made England great. Upon this 
 union depends the survival of individualism 
 in its most wholesome aspect. 
 
 Russia, because it is a land of immense 
 numbers and unknown racial values, is popu- 
 larly regarded as a mighty reservoir of human 
 possibilities, awaiting only better environ- 
 mental conditions for their expression. 
 
 This is presuming on ignorance. Because 
 Russian capacities seem to be mostly untried, 
 it is not safe to assume either that they do or 
 do not exist in quality fitted for a self-sustain- 
 ing development. The Slavic masses of Rus- 
 sia, like every other people from Hottentot to 
 finest Aryan, come to a higher level of exis- 
 tence under improved conditions, yet we have 
 
 127
 
 MANKIND 
 
 learned that very few, even among the ablest 
 races, actually contribute to the maintenance 
 of that higher level. Our inquiry is not for 
 peoples capable of receiving from civilization; 
 it is for the few capable of giving to it. This 
 indicates the question which we now ask of 
 Russia. 
 
 To begin with, we must distinguish between 
 the numerous and variegated Slavic peoples 
 of Russia, and the half-Teuton handful that 
 not only dominates but is the Russian Empire 
 as we know it, so closely is it identified with 
 everything constructive in Russian life. Rus- 
 sia may be said to be an Asiatic monster with 
 a half-European head. It is in the monster, 
 not in the head, that Russia's unknown racial 
 values lie. 
 
 Russia embraces a most heterogeneous 
 population of one hundred and fifty million 
 people, two-thirds Slavic, nearly one-third 
 ranging from strong infusion of Mongolian 
 to Aryan mixtures with inferior stocks of 
 unknown origin. In the absence of any defi- 
 nite racial history, we are compelled to 
 estimate Russia's inheritance values largely 
 by inference from the degree of progress she 
 
 128
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 has made in her contacts with other peoples 
 of Europe. 
 
 A strong argument against the possession 
 of any high degree of initiative and creative 
 capacity by the Slav is in the very fact of his 
 continued submission to domination by groups 
 essentially foreign in blood. No true Aryan 
 stocks leave the expression of their national, 
 commercial, and industrial life so generally 
 to a foreign element. The natural inference 
 from this condition is that the Slavic inheri- 
 tance does not well compare with the Teu- 
 tonic in the qualities adapted for taking a 
 leading part in civilization. 
 
 Another convincing evidence of the Inferior 
 quality of the Slavic inheritance is in the 
 slight contribution the Slav has made to the 
 world's attainments. From her manufactur- 
 ing processes to her art, everything that is 
 best in Russian life is borrowed. Even the 
 example and inspiration of his European 
 overlords have not led the Slav to a degree of 
 self-expression that gives promise of any 
 unusual future for his people. 
 
 It is too early — a generation too early — to 
 assume that the recent overthrow of the 
 
 129
 
 MANKIND 
 
 Czar and his government means a democracy 
 for Russia. We might as well have hailed 
 Mexico as a glorious democracy when Maxi- 
 milian fell. Illiterate Russia has many years 
 of painful struggle, of slow education, ahead 
 of her before she can even determine the 
 capacity of her suppressed millions for self- 
 government. The revolution was directed 
 against Germans and Pro-Germans; there 
 is unquestionably a strong Teutonic infusion 
 in the Slavic upper classes that is Pro-Slavic, 
 and will act with the new regime. Russia 
 may have a more liberal government, but 
 for years to come it will be such as the Teu- 
 tonic-Slavic ruling class chooses to give her. 
 True democracy is a dream for a people 
 three-quarters of whom are decades away 
 from adequate self-expression. 
 
 To whatever heights the Slav may attain, 
 the indications are that those heights will be 
 below the level of the pure Aryan. No per- 
 sistent borrowers or imitators of the Aryan 
 civilization are destined to supplant the Aryan 
 so long as he maintains his racial integrity. 
 Mere numbers will never command his hom- 
 age. 
 
 130
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: THE ENTENTE 
 
 There is a vague threat to racial values in 
 Russia's steadily increasing intimacy with 
 Aryan Europe. Intermixing with inferior 
 stocks has had a large part in the downfall of 
 past civilizations. The Russian menace is 
 not so much in any prospective hostility, as 
 in an increased participation in the affairs of 
 Europe which may lead to the spread of her 
 inferior stocks through peoples more purely 
 Aryan. England and France assume a grave 
 responsibility to the human race in playing 
 at intimacy with a nation whose masses are 
 racially so distinct from their own. 
 
 This war is little short of a headlong plunge 
 into race suicide. It is conceivable that a 
 little play-war offering adventure abroad — 
 like, perhaps, our affair with Spain — might 
 attract a high proportion of roving spirits 
 whose value in any sustained effort at home 
 is conspicuously absent, and thus not mate- 
 rially affect racial values. But a war that 
 gathers up every physical and mental effective 
 in Europe and sets them to fighting each 
 other with the greatest destructive appliances 
 ever known, killing most of the bravest and 
 
 131
 
 MANKIND 
 
 best and letting a high proportion of the more 
 timid survive to assist the weakhngs at home 
 in perpetuating the race — that war sets for- 
 ward a thousand years the final wind-up of 
 effective humanity on earth. It is safe to 
 say that among the millions killed will be a 
 million who are carrying superlatively effective 
 inheritances — the dependence of the race's 
 future. Nothing is more absurd than the 
 notion that these inheritances can be replaced 
 in a few generations by encouraging the fe- 
 cundity of the survivors. They are gone for- 
 ever. The survivors are going to reproduce 
 their own less valuable kind. Words fail to 
 convey the appalling nature of this loss. 
 
 132
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 THE GERMAN ARYAN A DISTINCTIVE STOCK — CAUSES 
 
 OF GERMAN ALOOFNESS — PRUSSIANISM — GERMANY'S 
 ADVANTAGE IS YOUTH, NOT INHERITANCE — DEGENER- 
 ATING INFLUENCES GERMANS AND ENGLISH OF THE 
 
 FUTURE 
 
 GERMANY, from the view-point of racial 
 values, is the most interesting of all the 
 Aryan groups in Europe. In development of 
 her inheritance she is the youngest — and 
 youth is always full of possibilities. 
 
 Speculation, with some show of probability, 
 ascribes the origin of the Germanic peoples to 
 the later Aryan migrations into Northern 
 Europe. The strength and richness of their 
 Aryan inheritance has been fully demon- 
 strated, and its value as a component part of 
 the ascendant Aryan blood is not to be much 
 changed by the fortunes of this war, however 
 Germany's relation to other Powers may be 
 affected. As a people that is unquestionably 
 destined for a longer activity than some other 
 Aryan peoples, it is necessary that we discuss 
 
 133
 
 MANKIND 
 
 frankly and without prejudice the quahties 
 which are distinctively characteristic of the 
 German. 
 
 In the ceaseless mixings that have made 
 distant cousins of all Aryan peoples, the ten- 
 dency of these later arrivals was to do their 
 mixing through overflowing westward upon 
 other peoples, and to maintain the integrity 
 of the original stocks against influx of foreign 
 blood. This is particularly true of Germans 
 in their later history; German kinships with 
 foreign peoples are mostly on foreign soil. 
 Germans are in no sense purer Aryan than 
 the English and French, but they are not so 
 much a product of intermixture of Aryans 
 once differentiated from each other. They 
 owe few of their characteristics to Aryans 
 other than their original stock. Thus Ger- 
 man kinship with Aryan peoples is especially 
 remote; in his inheritance the German is the 
 most pronounced foreigner in Europe. 
 
 The racial isolation of Germany has been 
 accentuated by a number of events in her 
 history. Until long after other European 
 Powers had achieved a unity of their respec- 
 tive elements which made possible a fair de- 
 
 134
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 gree of individual development, the present 
 Germany remained a people divided against 
 itself into petty states, warring and warred 
 upon, the frequent victims of each other and 
 of their more powerful neighbors. Under 
 these conditions anything more than sporadic 
 expressions of German inheritance values was 
 impossible. Theirs was a case of arrested 
 development. Their centuries of vicissitudes 
 tended to make the Germans, naturally an 
 introspective people, more self-centred, and to 
 harden the racial lines between them and 
 other European peoples. Although constant 
 wars made a severe drain upon their best 
 stocks, the German peoples were held al- 
 most continuously to the rigorous conditions 
 of living which make for the survival of 
 strength and resourcefulness. They were still 
 gathering nation-building forces while others 
 were well along into the stages of dissipating 
 them. When the unifying of her peoples gave 
 Germany her opportunity for development, 
 she was ready for it with a wealth of untried 
 inheritance values backed by the enthusiastic 
 eagerness of youth. 
 
 Modern Germany could not have timed her 
 I3S
 
 MANKIND 
 
 arrival to better advantage. It coincided al- 
 most exactly with that burst of achievement 
 which began less than a century ago and set 
 the whole world at the business of developing 
 its individuals. Germany entered upon this 
 outpouring of the world's ability with her own 
 store of genius comparatively untouched. 
 She soon gathered the impetus of her unduly 
 retarded development. She had far to rise, 
 and her rise to the level of the other great 
 Aryan Powers was spectacular even for this 
 era of spectacular achievements. 
 
 The rapidity of Germany's advance has im- 
 pressed the world. It impressed her rivals 
 more particularly. Most of all, and signifi- 
 cantly, it impressed the German people them- 
 selves. Perhaps none of her rivals could have 
 gone through the unique experiences of Ger- 
 many and kept their heads. Certainly Ger- 
 mans did not. In few words, Germany came 
 into her own in a cloud of self-conceit, the like 
 of which has never before afflicted a whole 
 people. It befogs their relations with other 
 peoples and locks them up in their own circle 
 of ideals. 
 
 So far we have three causes for the dis- 
 136
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 tinctiveness of the German character: the 
 remoteness of his connection with other 
 Aryan stocks; the long period of his sup- 
 pression, and the upward twist given to his 
 self-esteem by the perfectly logical rapidity 
 of his development. 
 
 The first and chief of these is racial. 
 Heredity is the fundamental reason for those 
 characteristics which will always distinguish 
 a German; it determines that part of his 
 mental make-up which will live and die with 
 him. This statement, attempting no def- 
 inition of what these characteristics are, 
 ought to please both Germans and their 
 critics; Germans should find satisfaction in 
 the racial basis for the qualities which they 
 admire in themselves, while their critics, 
 having in mind other German traits, will be 
 confirmed in their view that Germans are an 
 incorrigible lot. The neutral opinion would 
 be that, just as the German has demonstrated 
 the richness of his inheritance, he has dem- 
 onstrated its limitations, its variance from 
 other inheritances. 
 
 But the factor in Germany's estrangement 
 from her sister Aryan peoples, overshadowing 
 
 137
 
 MANKIND 
 
 all these three and setting her ofiF as of a dif- 
 ferent race, is Prussianism, and all that Prus- 
 sianism stands for in the ethics of human 
 relations. 
 
 We are not interested here in the political 
 aspects of Prussianism, but in the fact that it 
 is a phenomenon distinctly racial in character. 
 The Prussian type is not wholly an environ- 
 mental differentiation from the Germanic 
 stock. It bears evidence of more remote and 
 more fundamental character differences than 
 could thus come to it. The Prussian inheri- 
 tance is of sterner texture than that of the 
 other Germanic stocks. The sculpturally hid- 
 eous row of the Sieges Allee is not the expres- 
 sion of one egoist's dangerous mediaevalism, 
 but of the whole Prussian type. The astound- 
 ingly cold-blooded militarism of Bernhardi, 
 oblivious almost beyond belief to those human 
 rights which are the ethical basis of civiliza- 
 tion, finds enthusiastic response among the 
 elect of Prussianism. 
 
 It is to the domination of this essentially 
 foreign and least cultural element in Germanic 
 character that intellectual Germany has given 
 herself. The rise of that leadership happened 
 
 138
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERiMANY 
 
 to coincide with the advent of the world's 
 greatest opportunity for development. This 
 opportunity would have come to the German 
 people as it came to all other strong Aryan 
 peoples; yet its coincident arrival with Prus- 
 sian militarism and the rigid, non-individual- 
 istic administrative system which joins with 
 militarism to produce Kultur seems to have 
 convinced introspective, docile, scientific Ger- 
 many that it is to Prussia that she owes her 
 phenomenal progress. Some day she may 
 truly estimate the skilful manipulator of 
 conditions which were of themselves evolving 
 modern Germany. 
 
 In another and significant respect Prussian- 
 ism is involved in the racial destinies of 
 Europe. Its oft-avowed attitude of hostile 
 impatience toward every people and every in- 
 stitution that stands in the way of German 
 ambition; its devotion to the doctrine of force 
 as the mainspring of Kultur; its forty years of 
 peace in sinister preparation for "Der Tag" 
 — the Day that is now upon us; these were 
 the prime elements in the long-gathering 
 cloud that finally burst over Europe. It was 
 apprehension of these that had large part 
 
 139
 
 MANKIND 
 
 with the baser motives of vengeful France 
 and calculating England in bringing about 
 their wholly unnatural, unracial alliance with 
 Russia, and lent the color of justification to a 
 pact otherwise unjustifiable in a civilized 
 people. Prussianism unwittingly forced the 
 pact; the pact In turn stirred the hate of Ger- 
 many and fixed irrevocably the designs of 
 Prussianism. Who shall say that the guilt 
 belongs chiefly to the one or to the other ? It 
 is sufiicient to say that If the events of this 
 war make easier the racial mixing of Russia's 
 semi-Asiatic hordes with Aryan Europe, the 
 failure of Europe's Powers to set the protec- 
 tion of their Aryan inheritance above all 
 other ambitions will have been the most stu- 
 pendous failure in the history of mankind. 
 
 In these various ways German aloofness 
 was promoted. In strong contrast is the 
 racial history of English character. It Is only 
 in mixture of superior with inferior stocks 
 that a depreciated race results; the mingling, 
 as in England, of dlff^erent but equally vigor- 
 ous and resourceful stocks results in a race 
 not only unimpaired, but equipped with a 
 
 140
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 wide range of characteristics derived from its 
 component elements. In her formative pe- 
 riod, England's racial experience was one the 
 direct opposite of isolation. It is quite con- 
 ceivable that a race built upon her broad 
 foundations would have a better comprehen- 
 sion of racial differences than one, like Ger- 
 many, which derived its characteristics from 
 a more exclusive source and has continuously 
 inbred them under unique conditions. 
 
 This breadth of view in her human rela- 
 tions has attended England's centuries of 
 conquest and made possible the British Em- 
 pire. She has the faculty for mitigating the 
 injustices of her most flagrant seizures of ter- 
 ritory with an understanding of racial differ- 
 ences so practical and satisfying that protest 
 cannot make effective headway against her. 
 The most striking example of this is the most 
 recent — that of the Boer colonies; an outraged 
 people brought to a semblance of loyalty after 
 a few years of wise administration. 
 
 It is no reflection on Germany's ability In 
 other respects that she has not this compre- 
 hension of inheritance values other than her 
 own. Germany herself admits an exasperat- 
 
 141
 
 MANKIND 
 
 ing proportion of failures in her diplomatic 
 and colonizing relations; and most other civi- 
 lized peoples seem now to be in agreement that 
 German domination over any but Germans 
 would be impracticable. In a word, they do 
 not feel that Germany could impose her con- 
 trol upon a foreign people without attempt- 
 ing in her enthusiasm to impose the whole 
 rigid German institution. No more irritating 
 failure can be conceived than an individual- 
 istic people stretched to fit the unyielding 
 framework of Kultur. 
 
 Germany herself is the greatest sufferer 
 from her inelastic attitude toward the ideals 
 of other peoples. It is not commercial rivalry 
 that has turned the world's opinion against 
 her. Every neutral nation has in England a 
 greater rival; and surely English history can- 
 not have attracted their favor. England has 
 appropriated all the parcels of earth of espe- 
 cial interest to her, and is quite ready to set- 
 tle down. To-day she is in the position of a 
 prosperous burglar, viewing old age some dis- 
 tance ahead, who takes to preaching on the 
 iniquity of breaking and entering. Yet she 
 is forgiven her sins because of the world bene- 
 
 142
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 fits which have come from her prosperity. 
 The very thought of Britannia ruHhg the seas 
 should make righteous Aryans mad. But 
 they are scarcely provoked because they feel 
 that if she did not, some other power would 
 rule them worse. 
 
 Germany's day will come when she pierces 
 the armor of her self-conceit and sees the light 
 of other peoples. She has no failures in her 
 commercial relations. She meets the for- 
 eigner in his own language, and makes goods 
 exactly to suit, at the same time scarcely ap- 
 preciating any of his ideals. Germany has 
 no warrant for this attitude. There is not 
 the slightest evidence that her Aryan inheri- 
 tance is filled with greater possibilities of de- 
 velopment than any other. It does not fol- 
 low that, because she has risen speedily under 
 the pressure of conditions, she is to shoot up 
 to cultural heights not already attained. 
 Germany's coming may be likened to the fill- 
 ing of an empty reservoir from its overfull 
 neighbors. The water rushes spectacularly, 
 but with all its roar it does not rise a thou- 
 sandth of an inch above the level of its source. 
 Germany owes much of her rise to an inpour- 
 
 143
 
 MANKIND 
 
 ing of the world's attainments, if she would 
 but know It. She has drawn liberally from 
 the common source to bring herself so quickly 
 to the common level. Her achievements have 
 been In the nature of perfecting and extending 
 the scope of the creations of others, rather 
 than in creating. The progress of unified 
 Germany is more Identified with the material 
 trappings of civilization and the development 
 of German Kultur than with the sort of cul- 
 ture which is civilization itself. In literature, 
 art, music, philosophy, modern Germany has 
 not matched the achievements of her own 
 pre-empire days. Least of all the German 
 states has Prussia, the builder of the Empire 
 and the chief exponent of Kultur, contributed 
 to the world's cultural attainments. 
 
 Germany's advantage is in the newness of 
 her vigor, the abundance of her developed 
 ability, and the small proportion of her hu- 
 man dross. Germany has mistaken these for 
 symptoms of racial superiority. While there 
 is nothing in them to raise the world's civili- 
 zation into realms unattalned, they do assure 
 to Germany a very significant length and 
 strength of racial life for the attainment of 
 
 144
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 those ideals of which the German inheritance 
 is capable. They give to the German a sur- 
 vival value which other Aryan stocks in Eu- 
 rope do not possess. For this reason an esti- 
 mate of Germany's exceptional prospects for 
 survival should be of especial interest. 
 
 It is inconceivable that Prussianism is to 
 survive the present war. The solidarity that 
 comes to a people with war is a pleasing spec- 
 tacle, but it is essentially an arrangement for 
 the purposes of war, and not a lasting ac- 
 quirement. A truer estimate of a nation's 
 unity may be based upon conditions preced- 
 ing war, for under war's forced attitude of 
 harmony grievances accumulate and serve 
 afterward to intensify old discords. 
 
 One-third of Germany's population has for 
 years refused to accept the degree of indi- 
 vidual self-effacement demanded by her over- 
 lords. The bogie lying in wait for Prussian- 
 ism is in the thinking millions now fighting 
 its battles. Twice beaten is the government 
 that must return empty-handed from war to 
 the pent-up antagonisms of its dissenting ele- 
 ments. There is good prospect that Ger- 
 many's prize from this war is to be emergence 
 
 HS
 
 MANKIND 
 
 from Prusslanism into a more companionable 
 relation with other peoples and a broader 
 usefulness as coinheritor of the matchless 
 Aryan blood. 
 
 The spring of 1917 may be too early to 
 bid final adieu to Prussianism, but whatever 
 happens, one great result of the war is to be 
 Germany's awakening to a broader apprecia- 
 tion of other Aryan peoples. If with that 
 more amiable outlook upon the world comes 
 a greater degree of co-operation, the way will 
 be opened to a still more effective demonstra- 
 tion of the German inheritance. 
 
 For no disaster coming from this war can 
 take away Germany's fundamental advantage 
 of youth; neither can the winning of it infuse 
 new blood into nations feeling the initial pal- 
 sies of age. In the last analysis, when the 
 memory of the war has dimmed, survival will 
 be, as it has always been, of those who best 
 maintain the purity, strength, and proportion 
 of their effective stocks. Yet it is an impres- 
 sive fact that after the war Germany will face 
 a universality of condemnation and distrust 
 such as is usually reserved for outlaw peoples 
 who care nothing for the world's opinion. 
 
 146
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 In the ordinary course, Germany's initial 
 advantage would carry her racial values cen- 
 turies beyond those of either England or 
 France. But we know that the ordinary 
 course of human events took a most perplex- 
 ing turn during the last century, and is now 
 running no one knows exactly whither; yet 
 there are signs by which we can to some extent 
 estimate the future of German racial values. 
 
 We have seen that extraordinary conditions 
 came upon the new Germany and bore her in 
 a half century through centuries of develop- 
 ment. The age-old inclination of the human 
 to look upon achievement and turn from 
 decay leads one to forget that along with 
 Germany's rapid advance travelled all the 
 degenerative influences which afflict civiliza- 
 tion. Germany faces to-day, only somewhat 
 more distantly than her neighbors, the spectre 
 of degeneration that is in the wake of every 
 civilized people. Her serious concern over 
 falling birth-rate, increase of ineffectives, and 
 spread of sensuous indulgence indicates that 
 the racial problems of France and England 
 are rapidly becoming the racial problems of 
 Germany. 
 
 147
 
 MANKIND 
 
 Germany's survival values can be more 
 safely measured against those of other peoples 
 than in terms of years or centuries. In cast- 
 ing about for comparisons, it becomes evident 
 that Europe has no stock that seems to prom- 
 ise the lasting quality of the German. But 
 in America, Australia, New Zealand — in the 
 stocks which for centuries have been going 
 out from Great Britain to develop her posses- 
 sions — there is the vigor and richness of genetic 
 values that usually attend migration and se- 
 lective development under natural conditions. 
 These stocks bid for a future in every way 
 comparable with the future of the German. 
 
 Then, in that future, is it to be this fresh 
 English-speaking giant of many lands against 
 the German ? But why must racial differ- 
 ence and the impediment of language forever 
 separate the creative forces of the world into 
 opposing camps ? 
 
 We do not know why. We only know that 
 so far in the history of mankind unlikenesses 
 of tongue and inheritance have steadily re- 
 sisted the plain teachings of reason and 
 philosophy; and now the religion of Jesus 
 Christ has given way to frantic appeal to 
 
 148
 
 THE NATIONS AT WAR: GERMANY 
 
 a God who may be anything from Mars to 
 Mammon, according to the particular desire 
 that is in the soul of the man who utters it. 
 
 It is more the voicing of a fervent world 
 longing than a justifiable hope, that sometime 
 a new vision of man's purpose on earth — a 
 vision unhampered by miracle and mysticism 
 — may come to these two greatest of all Aryan 
 peoples and unite them in complete under- 
 standing for the attainment of a more endur- 
 ing civilization than the world has yet seen. 
 The preachers of hate and force should die 
 with this war; but would that more enduring 
 civilization come to peoples unstirred by 
 racial differences ? The question leads into 
 regions beyond our present inquiry. We may 
 only conclude that unless human nature itself 
 gets a revolutionary twist, the chief vitalizers 
 of the civilization to come will be speakers of 
 German and speakers of English; in what 
 relation, no one knows. 
 
 But this much we may learn, if we open 
 our minds to it: wars may alter, hasten, or 
 postpone, but they settle nothing in the larger 
 current of human affairs; the final determiner 
 is racial value. The people, English or Ger- 
 
 149
 
 MANKIND 
 
 man, which in some way effects the adequate 
 survival of its superlatively effective stocks, 
 will not need to make war eventually to pos- 
 sess the earth. 
 
 Now we turn to those speakers of English 
 who went out from Great Britain to the 
 new lands of the earth; beginning with the 
 earliest and most numerous of them all — 
 our own people. More particularly we shall 
 examine them with respect to their racial 
 prospects, since that is to determine more 
 than anything else their place in the future 
 world civilization. 
 
 150
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 AMERICA: THE MELTING-POT 
 
 MAKING OF THE AMERICAN TYPE — RACE MIXTURES — 
 THE INDIAN-WHITE — DUAL PERSONALITY — MELTING- 
 POT CAN ONLY MIX, NOT FUSE — MONGRELISM — MIX- 
 TURES OF UNLIKE TYPES 
 
 "TT7E, the people of the United States," 
 ▼ V assembled from all quarters of the 
 globe, proclaim among other things that we 
 are engaged in the experiment of administer- 
 ing the most individualistic system of govern- 
 ment on earth to the most diverse population 
 ever got together. And nineteen-twentieths 
 of us who have enough intelligence to recog- 
 nize the effort as an experiment indicate, by 
 calling it so, our cocksureness of success — 
 else we would not utter the word aloud. 
 
 We are primarily inheritors of English 
 blood. The qualities handed down to us by 
 our English-speaking ancestry are the quali- 
 ties which have made our greatness. No 
 other inheritance has had conspicuous part in 
 American achievement. What is to be Amer- 
 
 151
 
 MANKIND 
 
 ica's destiny as coinheritor of England's gen- 
 erous contribution to the world's racial values ? 
 
 Mixing of diverse peoples, the thing written 
 large on the tombstones of departed civiliza- 
 tions, we hail as the means for evolving an 
 American type. Magnificent courage, this, 
 blended with an altruism that knows nothing 
 of heredity. 
 
 Because of America's unusual opportunities 
 for self-expression, our so-called Melting-Pot 
 may seem for a time to yield more of racial 
 values than are put into it. Since the begin- 
 ning, every civilization has attempted to off- 
 set its racial losses by increasing the develop- 
 ment of the individual. But never before has 
 a nation deliberately Invited the spectre of 
 race mixture to its vitals, and staked Its future 
 racial values on the proposition that two and 
 two make six or ten, according to the degree 
 of optimism prevailing at the moment. 
 
 To begin with, we must understand the 
 true significance of race mixture. Take, for 
 an extreme example, the union of two diverse 
 races — the American Indian and the White 
 man. This is a mingling within a single being 
 of characteristics which have been strangers to 
 
 152
 
 AMERICA: THE MELTING-POT 
 
 each other for ages unknown. Here once more 
 we must call to mind the persistence of the 
 character unit. Even in this most intimate 
 relation these very unlike character units, In- 
 dian and White, go on through the generations 
 unchanged. The half-blood Indian is not in 
 reality a creature midway; he is a mixture of 
 characteristics as purely Indian and as purely 
 White as if they had found companionship in 
 a being wholly of their own kind. In out- 
 ward appearance he is a blend of Indian and 
 White complexions and features — an apparent 
 development of a new and distinct type — but 
 in mental response to environment there is 
 strong suggestion of the dual personality 
 which we know actually exists in him. 
 
 The curious persistence in the half-blood of 
 habits exclusively characteristic of the White 
 came to the writer's attention a dozen years 
 ago during a close study of the Indian, in the 
 preparation of a sympathetic history of cer- 
 tain Northwestern tribes. The values which 
 had survived in the Northwestern Indian 
 were those adapted to the rather improvident 
 life of the hunter — the dependant upon the 
 chance of the hour for subsistence. He had 
 
 153
 
 MANKIND 
 
 few of the characteristics which distinguish 
 the White man as a creature chiefly occupied 
 in looking after his future needs; during the 
 ages of his separate development, those char- 
 acteristics seem to have been bred out from 
 the inheritance of the Indian about as effec- 
 tually as opposite and equally persistent in- 
 fluences have bred them into the White man's 
 inheritance. Now, the experience of Indian 
 agents as given in reports year after year 
 shows that it was always the half-blood who 
 evinced a spontaneous desire for a garden and 
 crops; the half-blood who voluntarily looked 
 after and protected his live stock. And the 
 same reports show that the full-blood acquired 
 these habits with the greatest difficulty, and 
 was held to a perfunctory, uncomprehending 
 exercise of them only by vigilant and unceas- 
 ing oversight. Both were required by gov- 
 ernment agents to learn the White man's way; 
 the whole point is in the spontaneity of the 
 half-blood's adaptation, and in the full-blood's 
 lack of it. 
 
 The half-blood's voluntary exercise of hab- 
 its exclusively of the White man is a man- 
 ifestation of his White inheritance; the Indian 
 
 154
 
 AMERICA: THE MELTING-POT 
 
 in him would never have impelled him to it. 
 This is merely one illustration of the profound 
 fact that, even in their most discordant mix- 
 ings, character units neither blend nor lose 
 their identity, nor is a single new one formed. 
 So it is with any mixture of unlike peoples. 
 What appears to the eye as a blend is an inti- 
 mate mixture in new combination, exactly as 
 in individuals deriving their inheritances from 
 a single race. 
 
 Thus our "Melting- Pot" would not give 
 us in a thousand years what enthusiasts ex- 
 pect of it — a fusing of all our various racial 
 elements into a new type which shall be the 
 true American. It will give us for many gen- 
 erations a perplexing diversity in ancestry, 
 and since our successors must reach back into 
 that ancestry for characteristics, this diversity 
 will increase the uncertainty of their inheri- 
 tances. They will inherit no stable blended 
 character, because there is no such thing. 
 They will inherit from a mixture of unlike 
 characteristics contributed by unlike peoples, 
 and in their inheritance they will have certain 
 of these characteristics in full identity, while 
 certain others they will not have at all. 
 
 155
 
 MANKIND 
 
 There is nothing new in this. It is a com- 
 monly recognized phenomenon in promiscu- 
 ously bred domestic animals, and is known 
 as mongrelism. Every breeder knows that 
 there is no telling what kind of chicks or cat- 
 tle will spring from the persistently mixed 
 stocks of a careless farmer. They may resem- 
 ble neither their parents nor each other in 
 size, color, or general characteristics, because 
 of the confused nature of the germ-plasmic 
 streams from which they draw their inheri- 
 tances. Nothing short of generations of se- 
 lective breeding for specific characteristics will 
 bring back such stocks to a reasonably stable 
 inheritance. 
 
 In the case of man, nature spent untold 
 ages in selective breeding of White, Yellow, 
 and Black to bring each to a fairly stable in- 
 heritance — to a degree of unity in general 
 traits that makes for harmony within each 
 race, and sharply differentiates the races 
 from one another. Less unlike influences, 
 exerted for shorter periods of time, produced 
 the groups of less diverse character found 
 within each of these races. With the differ- 
 ent types of the White race thus produced we 
 
 156
 
 AMERICA: THE MELTING-POT 
 
 are most familiar, and we know that within 
 each group there is a more effective harmony 
 than can easily be developed between the 
 groups. 
 
 With the growth and closer contacts of 
 peoples, these different types become in- 
 creasingly mixed. When the mixture is of 
 types having no seriously conflicting un- 
 likenesses or inequalities — as in the case of 
 England's basic stocks — inheritance values 
 are not especially disturbed. They may, in 
 favorable combinations, actually reinforce one 
 another. This fact is universally taken ad- 
 vantage of in developing new and improved 
 types of domestic animals. 
 
 But it is to the mixtures of unlike and con- 
 flicting characteristics, the superior with the 
 inferior, that disaster comes. This is espe- 
 cially true of the inheritance of mental char- 
 acteristics in man. Not only is there un- 
 certainty as to what such an individual's 
 inheritance will be; there is no certainty that 
 from the mixed collection at his disposal he 
 will draw characteristics in sufficient harmony 
 with each other to make a workable inheri- 
 tance. This is the crucial fact in race mix- 
 
 157
 
 MANKIND 
 
 ture. We speak of conflict of races; there 
 may be a very real conflict of races, of types, 
 within a single being. An individual so con- 
 stituted cannot come to effective develop- 
 ment, for he has not the unincumbered quali- 
 ties of any one of the stocks which entered 
 into his inheritance. 
 
 It is for this reason that persistent mixing 
 of unlike human types, especially of superior 
 with inferior, results in deterioration far be- 
 yond that due to a simple averaging of values. 
 Truly, our " Melting- Pot " of racial values 
 needs vastly more of skill and intelligence for 
 the mixing of its ingredients than we have so 
 far displayed, if the brew is not to be an un- 
 savory mess. 
 
 We are often led away from an appreciation 
 of racial unlikenesses, and toward the view 
 that humanity at bottom has most of its 
 attributes in common, by the occasional re- 
 appearance in an inferior stock of traits im- 
 planted long before by some intruder from a 
 superior type. We may return to the Ameri- 
 can Indian for illustration of this. From 
 time to time Indians apparently full-blood 
 have come out of the great Northwest who 
 
 158
 
 AMERICA: THE MELTING-POT 
 
 manifested surprising initiative and ability in 
 matters supposed to be wholly outside and 
 beyond the Indian capacity. This is a stock 
 argument of those who would set the Red 
 man on a racial level with his White brother. 
 The shortest answer to this is that no Indian 
 is sufficiently familiar with his ancestral tree 
 to say whether he is full-blood or mixed. In- 
 fusions of White blood began with the earli- 
 est Spanish traders of the Pacific coast, and 
 have never ceased. Those who have read the 
 unedited record of the Lewis and Clarke ex- 
 pedition overland to the North Pacific, in the 
 early years of the nineteenth century, will 
 appreciate the trail of White inheritance left 
 in the wake of that intrepid band. Since 
 their day hunters, gold seekers, adventurers 
 have constantly traversed the Indian country 
 with the same incidental result. 
 
 Of course these sporadic infusions would 
 eventually be so absorbed into the great body 
 of full Indian blood as to be lost to the eye, 
 except for the lighter complexions of the 
 quarter and eighth bloods in evidence here 
 and there. But the White characteristics 
 would persist as White as ever until actually 
 
 159
 
 MANKIND 
 
 bred out of the race. It is quite possible, 
 even probable, that an Indian, in physical 
 aspect a full-blood, would now and then have 
 reached well back into his germ-plasmic 
 streams, as is the freakish way with all of us, 
 for mental traits contributed by some able, 
 adventurous White ancestor. It is no dis- 
 paragement of the Indian's capacity to imi- 
 tate the White man's way, to suspect him of 
 white blood if he sets out to initiate the White 
 man's way. 
 
 The Indian seems to present no special 
 racial problem. We have used him here to 
 illustrate the significance of race mixture. 
 He bids fair to become in time an attenuated 
 infusion in the White blood of the nation — 
 the more attenuated the better, for despite 
 his good qualities the Indian had little in his 
 inheritance to benefit the Aryan stock, and 
 much to encumber it. We are to be merci- 
 fully spared at least one source of racial im- 
 poverishment by the fading away of the 
 American Indian. 
 
 So we may turn with this much of relief to 
 an examination of other ingredients in the 
 famous "Melting- Pot." 
 
 i6o
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 AMERICA: THE NEGRO-WHITE 
 
 COMPLETE RACIAL ESTRANGEMENT OF WHITE AND BLACK 
 — ^THE TRAGEDY OF TWO BEINGS IN ONE — STATISTICS 
 ON NEGRO WORTHLESS — NEGRO-WHITE CHARACTER- 
 ISTICS — BLOOD TIES MAKE RACES INSEPARABLE — A 
 WEIGHT UPON RACE VALUES 
 
 IN the Negro-White this country faces a 
 race problem that overshadows every 
 other in its mixed population. The problem 
 is not between full White and full Black; the 
 two opposites of the world's peoples have not 
 enough in common on which to base a sub- 
 stantial difference. It concerns the Mulatto, 
 a being who is neither the one nor the other, 
 and yet is part of both. 
 
 Two more diverse races were never called 
 upon to remingle their inheritances. We do 
 not even know that it is a remingling, for 
 that implies racial acquaintance in a former 
 age. Yet it matters little whether or not 
 White and Black were derived from a com- 
 mon ancestor; the period of their divergence 
 as separate races is so lost in the back recesses 
 
 i6i
 
 MANKIND 
 
 of time that no claim now to singleness of 
 origin can soften the fact of their complete 
 racial estrangement. 
 
 So distinct from each other are their in- 
 heritances that never in history have full 
 White and full Black lived in the intimate 
 relation of equality. Yet within the limits of 
 his person the Negro- White carries the ele- 
 ments of both in the closest association. We 
 know, of course, that these elements hold 
 their identity even in this strange companion- 
 ship. Black remains Black and White is still 
 White. We call him Mulatto, but classify 
 him in law and society with full-blood Negro; 
 here we shall call him Negro- White, to em- 
 phasize the fact that in the fundamentals of 
 his inheritance he is truly a hyphenated citi- 
 zen. And so absurd a misnomer has the 
 word "Negro" become that we must speak 
 of the unmixed African as Black. 
 
 It is presumable that most White stock 
 mingling with Black is of the non-assertive, 
 inferior quality which would of itself settle 
 complacently into any environment, even 
 into such as this; the average Negro-White 
 takes as easily the conditions within his soul 
 
 162
 
 AMERICA: THE NEGRO-WHITE 
 
 as the Inferior White takes the conditions in 
 his neighborhood. But we know that in the 
 days of slavery much of the best Southern 
 white blood found its way into colored veins. 
 Those dominating, assertive traits still wan- 
 der unchanged through the germ-plasmic 
 streams of many an humble colored folk. 
 What a chaos of emotions, then, must there 
 be in the soul of him whose sadly mixed in- 
 heritance happens to include some of these 
 passion-sown jewels of the White man ! Is 
 there a more excruciating intimacy than that 
 of dominantly White, bred through unnum- 
 bered generations to association with the best 
 of Aryan, fettered within the limits of a soul 
 to a company of uncomprehending Black ? 
 
 The Negro-White thus afflicted is a living 
 protest. His is not the protest of a Negro — 
 no Negro protests his race. It is the cry of a 
 forceful Aryan in soul-entanglement with an 
 utterly strange being. How little do we 
 comprehend the character arrangement of 
 this racially perplexed individual ! He does 
 not even comprehend himself. When, with 
 quivering voice and muscles tense, he de- 
 claims against the injustices done "his race," 
 
 163
 
 MANKIND 
 
 he falls into the common error that "his race" 
 is the Negro. He, too, yields to general 
 opinion and the law that a single line, drawn 
 close up to full White and farthest away from 
 full Black, divides the two races. 
 
 As a matter of fact, a line between Negro 
 and White would have to thread its way 
 through every cell in the Negro-White's 
 body. Classification of him with either race 
 is absurd, no matter at what degree of color 
 the line is drawn. The Negro- White belongs 
 to neither race. He has the unchanged 
 qualities of both. 
 
 We little realize into what error this classi- 
 fication of the Negro-White leads us. His 
 thousand acts of initiative in conforming to 
 the Aryan way are impelled by his White 
 characteristics, yet so accustomed are we to 
 regard as Negro every person with a trace of 
 colored blood that we set down these acts to 
 the credit of the Negro. Most of the litera- 
 ture and all the statistics covering Negro ac- 
 complishments are worthless, since they deal 
 mainly with doings of White men incum- 
 bered with Black inheritances. There is no 
 initiative in the full-blood Negro to follow 
 
 164
 
 AMERICA: THE NEGRO-WHITE 
 
 the White man's way, however well he may 
 be taught to do so. 
 
 This last statement will be vigorously pro- 
 tested with an array of "Negroes" who have 
 demonstrated a White man's capacity. But 
 as with the Indian, no Negro in America can 
 say with any certainty that he is full-blood 
 African. Continued infusions of Black into 
 a once mixed line may so reduce the propor- 
 tion of its White characteristics as to obscure 
 them from the eye, but so long as any remain 
 they are identical with their predecessors that 
 first strayed over from the Aryan, and still 
 effective for determining character, although 
 of less net effect because of their load of 
 Black. Now when a "Negro" attains to more 
 than an imitative success in those matters 
 which pertain exclusively to the White man, 
 and through the ages were beyond the at- 
 tainment of the African, it is a sensible con- 
 clusion that he is dominated by his White 
 characteristics. Booker Washington is said 
 to have had a remarkably able White father. 
 Surely no one who has watched his great edu- 
 cational work would say that the Black in- 
 heritance of Booker Washington was thus 
 
 165
 
 MANKIND 
 
 demonstrating Itself. And very few colored 
 people who manifest White initiative claim or 
 appear to be full Black. 
 
 It is just this entanglement In the flesh of 
 White and Black that makes the hopelessness 
 of any solution for the Negro- White problem. 
 Nature Is wise In decreeing sterility for the 
 offspring of racially discordant matlngs. The 
 offense against her cannot become self-per- 
 petuating. She would have been more than 
 kind had she put a like ban upon the evil 
 matlngs of White and Black, for that would 
 have left the races virtually full White and 
 full Black, with their common desire to live 
 each after Its own fashion. Then there could 
 have been no race problem. With the fall of 
 slavery the separation would have been easily 
 effected, and the integrity of the White race 
 maintained. 
 
 But nature decrees that the Aryan shall 
 pay dearly for his forcible crossings with in- 
 ferior peoples. That decree Is written upon 
 the vanishing ruins of every dead civilization. 
 And so now In America, a tenth of our popu- 
 lation is of Negro blood In some degree, 
 grafted upon us by the unbreakable ties of 
 
 i66
 
 AMERICA: THE NEGRO-WHITE 
 
 blood infusion. Why talk of deporting to 
 their African home a people whom no one 
 can separate into White and Black ? Why- 
 talk of the Negro-White as either Negro or 
 White ? 
 
 So to the ever-increasing proportion of our 
 own inferior stocks we must add in one lump 
 this depreciated mixture of ten millions, to 
 hasten the day when the critical dispropor- 
 tion of our ineffectives shall have been at- 
 tained, and we, too, go the way of all others. 
 
 167
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 EFFECT ON RACE VALUES — RACIAL REQUIREMENTS — A 
 MEASURE OF RACE VALUE — SOUTHERN ITALIANS — 
 HISTORIC MIGRATORS AND LABOR IMMIGRANTS — OUR 
 IMMIGRATION LAWS — AMERICA'S RUSH TO DEVELOP- 
 MENT 
 
 THE unthinking altruism of a generation 
 or more ago that viewed this country 
 as a free haven for the oppressed, disgruntled, 
 and unwanted of all nations is gradually 
 yielding to the instinct of national self-preser- 
 vation. This instinct, in its unintelligence, 
 leads naturally to the social rather than to 
 the racial view. A very considerable number 
 of disabilities is now listed in our immigration 
 regulations for excluding undesirable aliens, 
 mainly because we are beginning to compre- 
 hend the tremendous social distortions which 
 result from the injection of immigrant masses 
 faster than they can be assimilated. In the 
 literature on immigration there is little appre- 
 ciation of its racial significance. But it is the 
 
 1 68
 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 realization that every foreigner imported to 
 dig our ditches is also a potential father of 
 our population that concerns us at this mo- 
 ment. His uncertain social qualities as an 
 ignorant ditch digger are of infinitely less sig- 
 nificance than his qualities as a race builder. 
 We may profitably turn from the much-dis- 
 cussed social aspect of immigration to study 
 its effect on racial values. 
 
 First, let us make use of our new knowledge 
 to ascertain what the maintenance of our 
 present racial values requires of us, and then 
 see how well the quality of the incoming alien 
 squares up with the requirements. 
 
 If we have learned anything from this 
 study it is that a civilization lives only so 
 long as it is able to develop from its available 
 sources a fair proportion of exceptional indi- 
 viduals whose function it is to leaven the 
 human lump. We also know that civiliza- 
 tion has the disastrous habit of dissipating 
 these best values, and in its present go-lucky 
 method of propagation is helplessly depen- 
 dent for its existence upon fast-diminishing 
 sources of supply. These essentials of race are 
 as vital to us in the United States as they were 
 
 169
 
 MANKIND 
 
 to every civilization that eventually died for 
 lack of them. 
 
 The imperative requirement, then, from any 
 influx of human stock is that it shall be com- 
 petent to replenish the hereditary values which 
 in the ordinary course are being drained out 
 of our native population. It is not enough 
 that it shall be capable of reproducing a dead 
 level of worthy mediocrity; we ourselves are 
 multiplying that grade of individual in more 
 than sufficient numbers for our racial good. 
 We want new possibilities injected into the 
 source from which our leaders must come. 
 The new stocks should be capable of sending 
 their fair share to the pinnacles of our civili- 
 zation. And the very least that we should 
 require of all immigration is that it brings to 
 us genetic values in as good proportion as 
 they exist in our native population. If they 
 bring us any less, they bring us racial depre- 
 ciation. 
 
 How are these genetic values to be recog- 
 nized } Certainly not by the state of develop- 
 ment to which the individual immigrant has 
 attained. Environment may have held him 
 from an effective disclosure of his capacity. 
 
 170
 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 But in this age of world-wide opportunity for 
 ability to demonstrate itself, there is a criterion 
 for making a fair estimate of the racial possi- 
 bilities of a given people taken as a whole: 
 
 If our immigrants come from countries 
 which are themselves in process of growth 
 through the upward migration of exceptional 
 individuals from their masses, we may rea- 
 sonably expect that the stocks which are com- 
 ing to us from those same masses contain po- 
 tential capacities which will add to our racial 
 values. 
 
 But if these immigrants come from coun- 
 tries or communities which have long since 
 been denied a vigorous growth by reason of 
 having drained their masses of their best 
 material, it is safe to assume that those masses 
 have reached a condition of breeding true to 
 a mediocrity which will continue under any 
 and all conditions. The importation of stocks 
 from those communities will merely add to 
 the growing inability of our own masses to 
 produce the superior stocks which alone make 
 a civilization possible. 
 
 A proposition of this kind has to meet the 
 absurd notion that, somehow, the free oppor- 
 
 171
 
 MANKIND 
 
 tunities and high ideals of this country will 
 develop to American standards any sort of 
 material that happens to come to us. But 
 the best that our institutions can do is to 
 develop stocks which have capacity for de- 
 velopment; if the stufif is not in them, and has 
 been demonstrated in their own country to 
 have been absent from their germ-plasm for 
 generations, nothing under heaven that we 
 can do will put genetic value into them or 
 into their offspring. Their children and their 
 children's children will not have those char- 
 acteristics which are essential to creative lead- 
 ership, and will simply add to the depreciated 
 human material which we already have. No 
 amount of education or environmental work 
 of any sort can push that stock beyond the 
 limit of its narrow capacity. 
 
 With these basic principles in view, let us 
 take a look at the various immigrations of 
 laboring classes to this country. 
 
 Until a generation ago by far the greater 
 proportion of our labor immigrants came 
 from the north of Europe. These immigrants 
 on arrival did not present any more favorable 
 personal appearance than do the immigrants 
 
 172
 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 whom we are now receiving from southern 
 Italy, the Baltic regions, and the Levant. 
 But the Germans and Scandinavians — taking 
 as examples two of our most worthy immi- 
 grant stocks — came from countries which 
 were themselves in full vigor and have since 
 continued developing at a rate commensurate 
 with other civilized nations. The very fact 
 of their increasing development indicates with 
 certainty the genetic value of their stocks, 
 and this value has been amply ^demonstrated 
 in the development here of the immigrants 
 from these countries. Under our greater op- 
 portunities they have given us the benefit of 
 hereditary values which at home have made 
 their countries to prosper. 
 
 But immigration from the countries of 
 northern Europe has very largely ceased. In 
 its place we are receiving in increasing num- 
 bers each year, to the extent of a million or 
 more, immigrants from southern Italy and 
 from numerous other countries adjacent to 
 the Mediterranean. Not one of these coun- 
 tries is in a condition of healthy internal 
 growth. As a fair example of all of them, we 
 will consider southern Italy. 
 
 173
 
 MANKIND 
 
 The populations of southern and northern 
 Italy differ so widely that they can scarcely be 
 thought of as one people. They scarcely re- 
 gard each other as one people. So superior 
 are the people of northern Italy that it is safe 
 to say that the existence to-day of Italy as a 
 whole is due to the strength of its northern 
 population. Southern Italy as a people by 
 itself would hardly hold a place on the map 
 of Europe. 
 
 Southern Italy is in the condition of having 
 been drained of its superior blood for hun- 
 dreds of years. It has long since ceased to 
 produce exceptional individuals in any sig- 
 nificant number. Potential leaders do not 
 need to emigrate from a country where ability 
 is the scarcest characteristic. The mass from 
 which we draw Italians has so thoroughly 
 parted with its superior stocks that for gen- 
 erations it has been breeding almost as true 
 to type as rabbits breed, and with as little 
 hope of developing unusual individuals. 
 
 This condition is equally true for the forty- 
 odd types which are now coming to us from 
 non-progressive communities. Indeed, many 
 of them never were possessed of particularly 
 
 174
 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 worthy inheritances; their peoples have never 
 seen racial heights which at any time would 
 have justified the minghng of their inheri- 
 tances with the progressive Aryan. 
 
 Anti-restrictionists assume to compare fa- 
 vorably our labor immigration with the his- 
 toric migrations which have produced every 
 great civilization, including our own. No 
 more futile argument could be attempted. In- 
 itiative, daring, exceptional inheritance striv- 
 ing to express itself in new undertakings, con- 
 science that would not be suppressed — these 
 were among the qualities which selected the 
 migrators of history for the building of civili- 
 zations. Present-day immigrants, more often 
 than not, are selected by steamship agents for 
 their fitness to get by the immigration inspec- 
 tors, and they come to attach themselves to 
 a social order already established. Not one 
 of the qualities which stirred the historic mi- 
 grator to action is essential to so mild an ad- 
 venture. Such selection as we have is mostly 
 selection from a poor discard. 
 
 Equipped as we are with knowledge of ra- 
 cial significances, it should be apparent with- 
 out argument that continued importation of 
 
 i7B
 
 MANKIND 
 
 these Inferior genetic values, added to our own 
 increasing product, would some day bring 
 us to the critical disproportion between non- 
 progressive and sustaining stocks which de- 
 termines always the life of a civilization. 
 
 The vagueness of our notion as to what 
 really constitutes racial value is displayed in 
 our immigration laws. They are designed 
 solely to exclude physically and mentally un- 
 sound stocks, and certain persons of color. 
 Beyond that, "A man's a man," in the eyes 
 of Uncle Sam. The world's age-long story of 
 what happens to depreciated mixtures of peo- 
 ples has not penetrated under that old beaver 
 tile. So between the money lust of foreign 
 steamship companies and the eager desire of 
 our huge industries for manual laborers of a 
 type that will "stay put" industrially, we 
 are loading up with racial material that is 
 also going to "stay put" in every other re- 
 spect, in spite of our million endeavors to 
 make something more than imitative stuff 
 out of it. 
 
 Here, again, protest will be entered. Do 
 not exceptional individuals arise now and 
 then from these apparently hopeless sources ? 
 
 176
 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 They do. But they arise so infrequently that 
 they prove only the general barrenness of 
 their hereditary values. We should hold to 
 a view of proportion in our estimates of these 
 people. One Mary Antin does not compen- 
 sate for the tens of thousands of Russian Jews 
 who never get beyond a driving acuteness in 
 small trade, and range down from that to 
 gunmen for wages and incendiaries for insur- 
 ance. 
 
 What if our immigration laws should suc- 
 ceed perfectly in excluding the physically and 
 mentally unsound ^ The complete attainment 
 of their purpose would bring us only to the 
 threshold of race protection. In physical and 
 mental soundness there is no indication of the 
 qualities which we must have if we are not 
 to be overtaken by the dead level of medioc- 
 rity that already claims nine-tenths of the 
 world's peoples. 
 
 What are we going to do about it ? It is 
 difficult to reshape laws which have no basis 
 in the fundamental needs of the situation. If 
 we are to sustain the quality of our heritage 
 and give permanency to the advantage we 
 now have in the world's affairs, we must begin 
 
 177
 
 MANKIND 
 
 afresh with the conception that every drop of 
 imported blood containing less of promise 
 than our native blood lowers our capacity to 
 resist degeneration. A standard set upon 
 this basis would indeed be beyond the dreams 
 of the most ardent restrictionist, and far be- 
 yond present attainment. But this study is 
 dealing with facts, not compromising with 
 expediency, and any lower standard will de- 
 preciate our racial values with arithmetical 
 certainty. 
 
 It is not the purpose to argue for a compre- 
 hensive scheme to protect our inheritances 
 against depreciation by immigrant stocks. 
 Our commercial habit of fifty years past is 
 against the practicability of any scheme that 
 approaches adequacy. But why do we force 
 to abnormal proportions the development of 
 our resources by importing hordes of inferior 
 peoples, only to have them plague the life out 
 of us when lessening raw material shall have 
 returned us to more normal conditions .? Is it 
 because we have no vision of that compara- 
 tively near future .? Then what of a thou- 
 sand years hence, or ten thousand .? Time is 
 coming upon the human race with centuries 
 
 178
 
 AMERICA: THE LABOR IMMIGRANT 
 
 Still unnumbered, whether we reckon with 
 them or not. No other undeveloped lands 
 invite us to rush our present task to comple- 
 tion. Why load the business of a century 
 upon the shoulders of each generation, when 
 the centuries are without end, and the earth's 
 resources are limited .? 
 
 Suggestions of this sort are not in tune 
 with the kind of Americanism that worships 
 bigness of achievement and fancies itself par- 
 ticularly circumspect if it looks ahead more 
 than a generation. The movement for con- 
 servation accomplished chiefly the saving of 
 lumber forests, for that was the failure near- 
 est impending. But forests can be grown 
 again. The prospective exhaustion within a 
 few generations of irreplaceable ore, coal, and 
 oil deposits seems to carry no special appeal. 
 Then why should Americans be expected to 
 worry over the prospect of racial failure .? 
 
 It is an idle boast that in forty years we 
 have seen more of material progress than 
 Egypt saw in her four thousand. The point 
 is that Egypt saw four thousand years. In 
 this there is a permanence that has no relation 
 to our high-speed development. With us, 
 
 179
 
 ]\ ANKIND 
 
 progress and permj nence do not seem to have 
 reached a working agreement. There is as 
 much suggestion of continuity in our attitude 
 as in that of an aeroplanist pointing upward 
 at an angle of forty degrees. The difference 
 is that the aeroplanist's attitude is a mere 
 preHminary to a definite plan; he is not leav- 
 ing it to some catastrophe ahead to show him 
 a new course. 
 
 The powers that control the material affairs 
 of this country seem to have left the contem- 
 plation of these things to those who can do 
 no more than give out futile warnings. Mean- 
 while, vision of the future is shortened by the 
 brilliancy of the present, and deliberate living 
 is becoming a lost art. So there is left the 
 conclusion that to our other sources of racial 
 impoverishment we must add, and by all the 
 signs must continue to add, masses of hu- 
 manity from the racial wastage of Europe. 
 By that much more we dim the prospects of 
 the English-speaking Aryan in the civiliza- 
 tion of the future. 
 
 1 80
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN? 
 
 ONE OR THE OTHER MUST BECOME DOMINANT — RACIAL 
 PROSPECTS OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES — THE 
 UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND 
 
 OUR PARTICIPATION IN THE WAR — ^THE MONROE 
 
 DOCTRINE — ^THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE 
 
 IF differences of inherited characteristics are 
 to continue to hold German and EngHsh- 
 speaking peoples to separate ambitions and 
 ideals, it is in the nature of things that in the 
 course of time one or the other shall become 
 racially dominant and give the color of its 
 interpretations to the culture of a receptive 
 world. In view of unlikenesses in these inter- 
 pretations, especially with respect to the rela- 
 tion of the individual to the state and of 
 states to each other, it is of vital concern to 
 the civilization of the future which of these 
 two shall come to dominance. Unless am.ong 
 the significant reversals of the age there occurs 
 one in human nature itself, the ideals to be 
 impressed in a not distant future upon the 
 earth's impressionable multitudes will not be 
 English and German, but English or German. 
 
 i8i
 
 MANKIND 
 
 The decision, if it must come, will even- 
 tually rest upon survival of racial values. 
 What, then, are the comparative racial pros- 
 pects of Germany and the various English- 
 speaking peoples ? 
 
 One outstanding difference is that Ger- 
 many, self-contained, fully populated, will 
 continue to hold an advantage she has held 
 from the beginning, in being able to maintain 
 the integrity and purity of her stocks against 
 deteriorating mixtures. Without exception, 
 the younger English-speaking peoples — and 
 even England herself — have sought in varying 
 degree the temporary advantage that comes 
 from importing inferior stocks to do their less 
 pleasant tasks. 
 
 Let us consider first our own racial pros- 
 pect. In the three preceding chapters we 
 have studied the results in the United States 
 of this commercially profitable but racially 
 suicidal mingling of unlike peoples. The 
 African infusion, and the past, present, and 
 future importations from non-progressive for- 
 eign stocks, together constitute what might 
 be called an extraneous load upon our racial 
 values. It is significant that a similar load 
 
 182
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN ? 
 
 of anything like its proportions does not rest 
 upon any other Enghsh-speaking peoples, 
 except, perhaps, South Africa. This seems 
 to be a special handicap put upon the United 
 States of America. Although disproportion- 
 ate increase of superior and inferior stocks re- 
 mains the chief factor in racial depreciation 
 among all civilized peoples, our own special 
 handicap is not to be passed over lightly. The 
 tendency of twenty or more distinct peoples 
 to maintain a relative separateness of ideals, 
 while living as neighbors and outwardly sub- 
 scribing to American citizenship, is only a few 
 degrees less threatening than would be a free 
 intermixture of all their inheritances. A long 
 and persistent intermixture would tend to 
 develop social unity in the much-heralded 
 "true American" of the Melting- Pot, but may 
 Heaven preserve us from a unity that comes 
 with the passive worthlessness of a downward- 
 bred mongrel type. We can better afford racial 
 separateness, with all its menace to social 
 peace. 
 
 Yet these rigid alternatives hold us to a 
 most perplexing condition of suspended effec- 
 tiveness; a workable social understanding can- 
 
 183
 
 MANKIND 
 
 not be forced against the persistent separate- 
 ness of so many peoples, while a decent re- 
 gard for the future of the race should turn us 
 from the dull harmony of mongrellsm. There 
 seems to be no way out; but that very fact 
 should restrain us from getting any farther in. 
 In the light of present knowledge, further 
 loading up with inferior stocks would be de- 
 liberate race suicide. 
 
 Whatever we may do to check further dis- 
 astrous type mixtures, our disadvantageous 
 start in this matter is bound to affect our fu- 
 ture position with respect to both Germany 
 and the English-speaking peoples. Yet against 
 these racially and socially disquieting influ- 
 ences, the United States still has Aryan 
 values as effective as those of any inheritor 
 of England's widely distributed legacy. Those 
 early stocks were of the sort of genetic mate- 
 rial to build a great Republic. What if they 
 did not foresee our careless invitation to peo- 
 ples who could never respond harmoniously 
 to their lofty ideal of culture .? They thought 
 that this was to be a land for their children's 
 children, and they did their best to carry out 
 the idea by following the Biblical injunction 
 
 184
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN ? 
 
 to people the earth. They were prolific; their 
 increase overflowed westward again and again, 
 as far as the Pacific coast, and their descen- 
 dants in turn, effectively mingled with the 
 sturdy product of the earlier migrations from 
 northern Europe, have endowed this country 
 with a fund of genetic values that needs only 
 to be maintained — even in its present propor- 
 tion — to insure permanence to the most for- 
 tunately situated people on earth. But to 
 hold these values to their present proportion 
 is the most difficult order ever put up to the 
 American people. 
 
 Of the other English-speaking countries, 
 Canada is a land of material opportunities 
 comparable in many respects with our own. 
 Racially she has the advantage of us in the 
 purity of her British-descended stocks, and in 
 the prospect of continuing that purity if she 
 has the wisdom to choose to do so. The 
 cloud on her racial horizon is her legacy of 
 original French stocks, which persist in re- 
 maining at a genetic and cultural level below 
 that of the dominant English-speaking popu- 
 lation. They may fill a worthy place in Can- 
 ada's economic scheme, but they do not fur- 
 
 i8s
 
 MANKIND 
 
 nish their proportion to the essential abiHty 
 of Canada's people, and to that extent are a 
 hinderance to her racial future. 
 
 But in Canada, as with us, the Star of Em- 
 pire has moved westward; and in that great 
 West is the purest and best of her Aryan in- 
 heritances, needing, as ours, only to be per- 
 petuated to make of Canada one of the great 
 peoples of the world. 
 
 The racial difficulties of South Africa do 
 not augur well for her place among the Eng- 
 lish-speaking communities of the future. Her 
 dominant people have displayed an admirable 
 comprehension of race values in attempting 
 to stay the almost overwhelming flood of in- 
 ferior stocks, but the odds against them are 
 so immense that nothing short of revolution- 
 ary tactics will save South Africa for a great 
 Aryan future. 
 
 The pure White of India is an exotic, and 
 can never be anything else. Neither India 
 nor any other tropical country has an Aryan 
 future. The beautifully mystical culture of 
 India is essentially non-Aryan, and is not 
 under discussion. 
 
 In Australia and New Zealand we come 
 i86
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN ? 
 
 again to lands brilliant in promise of a great 
 future for the English-speaking Aryan. Both 
 have their race problems, and both are meeting 
 them with conspicuous intelligence. Coun- 
 tries of dimensions so magnificent, with re- 
 sources scarcely touched and peopled by Brit- 
 ish stocks still in the full vigor of youth, have 
 only to conserve the one and adequately per- 
 petuate the other to make sure of a future 
 well out into the unknown that lies ahead of 
 us all. 
 
 The United States, Canada, Australia, New 
 Zealand — four young giants of the earth, 
 growing and with abundant resources for fur- 
 ther growth. Were these four, with England 
 as their mutual bond, joined in singleness of 
 purpose to carry forward to still greater 
 achievement the humane culture that distin- 
 guishes the English-speaking Aryan, who 
 could effectually set up against them ? Ger- 
 many has youth, but it is the youth that com- 
 pares well with the old age about her, not 
 with these four lusty sons of Great Britain. 
 Germany may more easily preserve the purity 
 and strength of her inheritance within her 
 
 187
 
 MANKIND 
 
 realm, but her realm is full and her overflow 
 must go out to an inevitable mingling with 
 other peoples, unless by sheer force she gains 
 foothold on forbidden ground. Any one of 
 these four English peoples has undeveloped 
 resources greater than the resources of all 
 Germany. But resources alone determine 
 nothing in human affairs; they are the instru- 
 ments of resourceful peoples. What is more 
 clear, then, than that English-speaking peo- 
 ples, with their superior opportunities, have 
 only to perpetuate their genetic values in 
 order to make sure of a predominating in- 
 fluence in the future civilization .? 
 
 One of the most profoundly stirring episodes 
 of this war has been the coming of England's 
 sons from every quarter of the globe to re- 
 vitalize the land that gave them life; not only 
 her sons, but her subject peoples from every 
 dominion have flocked to the English stand- 
 ard, for there was full recognition that the 
 war is to decide between a further-reaching 
 Prussianism, and the world culture of which 
 Great Britain is the chief exponent. And 
 conspicuous among these who have given of 
 their best blood that this world culture may
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN ? 
 
 endure unaffllcted with Prussianism are Can- 
 ada, Australia, and New Zealand — three of 
 the four greatest descendants of Great Brit- 
 ain. Then the United States, after fevered 
 years and months of assisting in eminently 
 proper and neutral ways, came out squarely 
 for her natural allies. 
 
 As a nation not bound to England by politi- 
 cal ties, the war was, diplomatically, no affair 
 of ours. But in stressful times like these, the 
 age-old ties of race raise their appeal above 
 the dictum of governments. The require- 
 ments of political neutrality were holding 
 us to an attitude as unracial, as artificial 
 with respect to our deepest emotions, as 
 ever a strong people assumed toward their 
 own kind in time of need. By entering this 
 war we not only did the obvious thing in 
 the present crisis, but we also set ourselves 
 right with a far more enduring situation; 
 if we had not put effective meaning into the 
 blood relationship while the war was on, 
 that relationship would have been thinner 
 than water for years afterward. The hope 
 of the English-speaking peoples is in unity; 
 a cultural union to last through the cen- 
 
 189
 
 MANKIND 
 
 turies, but also temporary unions of force 
 whenever force threatens their cultural ideals. 
 Those differences in racial character which 
 outlive wars and their futile settlements de- 
 mand that nothing be left undone which 
 will lead to a more workable understanding 
 among Britain's descendants. At this late 
 day, however much we may do, we cannot 
 match the frightful sacrifices already made 
 by the Allies. But In their broken condition 
 after the war we shall have opportunity to 
 use our vast resources for their upbuilding 
 — not as a favor, but as a deferred obliga- 
 tion. And if we let commercial selfishness 
 turn us from this demonstration of brother- 
 hood, we would not deserve the respect of 
 English, or French, or of any other people 
 that has done its full part from the beginning 
 of the war. -, 
 
 The time may come, too, when we ourselves 
 shall need the active backing of our English- 
 speaking cousins, if we persist in maintaining 
 a situation so unracial as that imposed by the 
 Monroe Doctrine. The masses in the Cen- 
 tral and South American Republics are for 
 
 190
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN ? 
 
 the most part mixtures of decadent Spanish 
 with Negro and native Indian stocks. In 
 certain locaHties, where intermixture has been 
 going on for several centuries, it has evolved 
 a fairly homogeneous type of depreciated hu- 
 man, who may indeed be hailed as the "true 
 American" of the Melting-Pot. He is a few 
 degrees lower, perhaps, than we in the United 
 States could evolve in a like number of cen- 
 turies of promiscuous breeding, but the low- 
 class Spanish-American type is a faithful illus- 
 tration of the ineffectiveness that comes from 
 persistent mingling of unlike inheritances. 
 
 The saving fact for these so-called Repub- 
 lics is that they all have a smattering of fairly 
 capable leaders, mostly of Spanish blood, 
 whose chief aim seems to be to impose them- 
 selves upon, rather than leaven, the always 
 excessive and sometimes overwhelming masses 
 of the inferior. Consequently, these govern- 
 ments, with a few exceptions, alternate more 
 or less frequently between the anarchy of 
 bandit leaders and a despotism so uncertain 
 of its tenure that it must turn the opportunity 
 of office to quick profit. And knowledge of 
 race tells us that all talk of such peoples 
 
 191
 
 MANKIND 
 
 emerging some day into higher levels is mer- 
 est cant. 
 
 This is not a discussion of the Monroe Doc- 
 trine. It may be expedient for us to insist 
 that we shall tolerate no expansion of Euro- 
 pean Powers on this hemisphere. But what 
 we say in effect is that some of the richest 
 portions of Central and South America shall 
 remain undeveloped in the hands of incom- 
 petents, unless outside private interests are 
 willing to undertake the work under the pil- 
 fering tyranny of their farcical governments. 
 
 It is a novel attitude of protection for our 
 government to assume, unbidden, toward in- 
 competency on so grand a scale. Such has 
 never been the habit of the dominant Aryan. 
 It would be, perhaps, ethically correct if the 
 ethical consideration were sincerely back of 
 it, but that pretense would deceive nobody. 
 We were not so tender of the American In- 
 dian's right to his undeveloped country. We 
 imposed upon him a civilization which he did 
 not want, while dispossessing him of lands 
 which he most earnestly did want, giving 
 always the color of legal enactments to what 
 in its essentials was never a whit more than 
 
 192 '
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN ? 
 
 the ages-old driving of the weak before the 
 strong. 
 
 By the way, if after the teachings of this 
 book the reader wants further evidence of 
 the persistence of human character traits 
 down through the ages unaffected by environ- 
 ment, he can find it in the Indian record of 
 his own United States. The unswerving de- 
 termination to have and to hold, and the 
 comprehending humanity that softens the 
 bitterness in its wake, are both in us, un- 
 changed from the old Briton. 
 
 However kindly our feelings may be toward 
 our Southern neighbors, the Monroe Doctrine 
 was not intended to express them. It is a 
 device to save ourselves the inconvenience of 
 powerful neighbors; and a clever one it would 
 be if it did not happen to entail the virtual 
 closing of a huge portion of the earth to 
 reasonable development for the good of man- 
 kind. There's the rub. The world has never 
 before had to deal with its like, but it is 
 against all experience in human affairs that 
 a barrier so artificial set across the natural 
 course of ascendant peoples should hold in- 
 definitely. 
 
 193
 
 MANKIND 
 
 With the Hght of our new knowledge of 
 racial values thrown upon this problem we 
 should restudy it most earnestly. If it ap- 
 pears that sometime domination by ascendant 
 Aryans must come to those oft-distracted 
 peoples, which shall it be — Prussianism, that 
 must break whatever it cannot bend to its 
 unyielding Kultur, or the strong, satisfying 
 guidance of the speakers of English ? The de- 
 cision will affect the welfare of both Americas. 
 Its importance gives us another reason for 
 making our kinship with English-speaking 
 peoples a more effective relation than it now is. 
 
 So we look out upon a future clouded with 
 perplexities which can scarcely be defined. 
 Against that uncertain future we must pre- 
 pare. An unshakable bond of mutual un- 
 derstanding between the speakers of English 
 is the most obvious preparation. But that 
 alone will not suffice. We know that in the 
 affairs of men mere numbers are of little 
 avail, and the accumulated trappings of 
 civilization have in themselves no lasting 
 strength. The source of all strength is in 
 an abounding racial vigor. It is the one sure 
 
 194
 
 ENGLISH, OR GERMAN? 
 
 reliance for the meeting of whatever may 
 come. It is the motive power behind all 
 successful human effort, and the failing of 
 it is the palsy that marks nations for de- 
 struction. 
 
 The truth of these things is making uneasy 
 those whom superiority has heretofore made 
 confident. They are beginning to see limits 
 to their most essential resource; to see that 
 without racial strength the mere numbers 
 of the world's inferior hordes might indeed 
 prevail against them. 
 
 The threat of racial failure has given life to 
 a new enterprise for the conservation of hu- 
 man values — Eugenics, "Well-born.'' So far 
 it is the beginning of a promise. But in its 
 main idea are possibilities now unthought of, 
 awaiting only man's necessity and determina- 
 tion, to serve the race. 
 
 195
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 EUGENICS 
 
 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE METHODS — ABUSE OF EUGENIC 
 WARNINGS — UNWARRANTED ALARMS — EUGENICS BY 
 COMPULSION — ITS INEFFECTIVE APPLICATION — SOCIAL 
 WORKERS — EUGENICS FOR THE WHOLE COMMUNITY 
 
 THE aim of eugenics is to improve the 
 hereditary quaHties of the race. Eu- 
 genics can hardly be considered as a science 
 by itself. It is rather a propaganda that 
 makes use of various departments of knowl- 
 edge for the furtherance of its ideals. 
 
 In its positive aspect eugenics undertakes 
 to promote intelligent matings among the fit 
 and to increase the number of their offspring. 
 Negatively, its object is to educate and warn 
 against unfit matings. These are the two 
 methods usually dwelt upon in eugenic liter- 
 ature. A third, which might be termed eu- 
 genics by compulsion, urges the imposition of 
 definite prohibitory measures by the fit upon 
 the careless fecundity of the unfit. In this 
 there is greater promise of effectiveness than 
 
 196
 
 EUGENICS 
 
 in all other eugenic devices combined. Each 
 of these methods will be reviewed in turn. 
 
 Positive eugenics, seeking as it does an in- 
 creased propagation among the superior stocks 
 of the race, offers at first glance an exceed- 
 ingly attractive prospect. No doubt the 
 propaganda for a higher conception of racial 
 duties among the better stocks will have a 
 certain good effect, but it comes directly 
 against the universal experience of man that 
 congeniality of acquired tastes, the appeal of 
 affection or personal attractiveness, some- 
 times wealth or social position, and, not least, 
 the accident of propinquity, are the most 
 natural determiners in the choice of mate. 
 None of these is much concerned with actual 
 inheritance values. It would be difficult to 
 conceive of the naturally inclined man or 
 woman putting away these considerations and 
 deliberately setting out to pursue the eugenic 
 ideal. If consideration of heredity appears at 
 all, it is afterward, and as a censor, to let pass 
 or condemn the proposed mating. But this 
 at once puts the case into the realm of nega- 
 tive eugenics. 
 
 In its negative aspect, with Its warnings 
 197
 
 MANKIND 
 
 against matlngs which would be apt to result 
 in unfit children, eugenics first gets into range 
 of practicability. A great many unfortunate 
 marriages which are now consummated in 
 blissful ignorance would be avoided through 
 a proper understanding of eugenic principles. 
 Undoubtedly a workable advisory system will 
 in time be devised for the dissemination of 
 eugenic knowledge. But the propaganda is 
 also capable of doing infinite harm in excusing 
 or alarming those who have no really sub- 
 stantial impediment to fit parenthood. 
 
 To begin with, these eugenic warnings reach 
 more particularly the intelligent, alert, sus- 
 taining elements of society — the very individ- 
 uals who have least need of them. They 
 awaken little interest among the great middle 
 masses, and touch not at all the incompetents 
 who are the principal source of depreciated 
 human material. This is the fundamental 
 weakness of eugenics as a voluntary measure. 
 
 Those of a community who have the best 
 genetic values, already pressed by social and 
 economic considerations to put aside their 
 racial duty, now meet the eugenist, setting 
 up a new obstacle. It is a trick of human 
 
 198
 
 EUGENICS 
 
 nature that those in search of excuse should 
 be the most easily alarmed. Any individual 
 in the land wishing to escape his duty to the 
 race can manage to find in his ancestry one 
 or more of the racial imperfections to which 
 eugenics has directed its "Thou shalt not." 
 This may easily be the determining factor in 
 killing off many a line rich in inheritance 
 values. 
 
 Then, too, in these days when the economic 
 problem rises up between a normal young 
 man and his honest family desires, his courage 
 is not at all assisted by the numerous ques- 
 tions which eugenics would put to the woman 
 of his choice. Admonished to look into her 
 ancestry, he discovers that all four of her 
 grandparents died of something. Of course 
 this is no news to him; the novelty is in con- 
 templating the chilly fact as a eugenic prop- 
 osition, and it gives him a new and terrifying 
 view of the young lady. No matter if her 
 grandparents lived with no more than the 
 usual discomforts to a reasonable age; he sees 
 at once four different means for her taking 
 off, and four distinct afflictions lying in wait 
 for his prospective children. Thus the eu- 
 
 199
 
 MANKIND 
 
 genie idea, besides excusing him who wants 
 no children at all, overworks the imagination 
 of him who would have the best of children. 
 Eugenics, in its rightful search for imperfec- 
 tions which would mar the effective years of 
 human life, unpleasantly discloses age, in- 
 firmity, death — things which nature has be- 
 neficently put in the background of the mind. 
 
 Probably no other propaganda of a semi- 
 technical nature has met with as much de- 
 structive unintelligence. Its almost morbid 
 appeal to the imagination is seized upon by 
 space writers to spread grotesque misinforma- 
 tion broadcast. Newspaper items relate all 
 sorts of cases which illustrate the popular 
 misunderstanding. An expectant mother will 
 devote herself to poetry, music, and all beau- 
 tiful things. Sometimes the father catches 
 the notion of the hour, and goes in for lofty 
 thinking. The mother, so far as any effect 
 on her child is concerned, might as well take 
 to shoplifting, or knitting tidies, or marching 
 with the suffragettes. 
 
 It will be a grand day for parenthood when 
 parents come to realize that the character 
 equipment of their child is as much a deter- 
 
 200
 
 EUGENICS 
 
 mined fact at the time of conception as it is 
 that a tree shall bear peaches or apples before 
 it has pushed its first shoot above ground. 
 The matter of heredity must be attended to 
 before marriage. All effects thereafter are 
 environmental. 
 
 The appeal of eugenics for a voluntary ap- 
 plication of its teachings seems to be fated to 
 abuse, or to misinterpretation, or it goes un- 
 heeded by those having most need of it. We 
 are coming to a realization that something 
 more effective than a warning finger must be 
 behind its well-meant advice. 
 
 Eugenics by compulsion is that "something 
 more." It does not wait upon the absurd 
 expectation that intelligence and co-operation 
 will manifest themselves in quarters where 
 neither exists. Its ideal of complete effective- 
 ness is in putting the reproductive function 
 of the entire community under the calm judg- 
 ment of authority, just as is every other 
 human activity that touches upon social wel- 
 fare. Naturally, these judgments will fall 
 most upon those least inclined toward them. 
 This is the universal experience of restrictive 
 government, and the object of it. There is 
 
 201
 
 MANKIND 
 
 no reason except the obsolete one of custom 
 why the function most vitally concerning the 
 human race should not submit, as all lesser 
 functions have submitted, to intelligent gui- 
 dance. 
 
 Toward the full attainment of this ideal we 
 have travelled about one short step. There is 
 a growing recognition of the necessity for cut- 
 ting off the increase of downright human un- 
 fitness, but public indifference to even this 
 first essential in race preservation is evidenced 
 by the segregation of less than one-fourth of 
 the country's obviously feeble-minded. In 
 Massachusetts, for example, there are some 
 fifteen thousand persons who admittedly 
 should be segregated. There is room for less 
 than one-sixth of these in the State's institu- 
 tions. Organizations acquainted with condi- 
 tions attending the free sex-relations of the 
 remaining five-sixths have spent years in at- 
 tempting by every means of publicity to 
 arouse opinion throughout the State. They 
 still implore and beg in vain of the lawmakers 
 for one more institution which shall take care 
 of a few hundreds out of the many thousands 
 still at large. 
 
 202
 
 EUGENICS 
 
 One cause of this blindness to the necessities 
 of race is the present mania for development 
 of the individual, setting environment above 
 everything. Those who should be looking 
 after both our racial and environmental wel- 
 fare have gone education-mad — and the ve- 
 hemence of their enthusiasm has set them 
 mostly at loggerheads. There is a certain 
 humor in the fact that a people so particular 
 as to the quality of materials which go to the 
 making of its pianos, pigs, and flowers should 
 be willing to take its human material blind- 
 folded. A saner view of both education and 
 heredity must be developed before real prog- 
 ress can be made in conservation of racial 
 values. 
 
 Of all persons in the community, it does 
 seem that social workers, having so much to 
 do with the kind whose prolific increase is 
 doing serious racial havoc, should approach 
 every one of their problems with a compre- 
 hensive appreciation of inheritance values. 
 Keeping an utterly incompetent family to- 
 gether is little more than multiplying it into 
 six or eight families for social workers of the 
 next generation to look after. Enthusiasm 
 
 203
 
 MANKIND 
 
 for social work does not need dampening; it 
 needs redirecting to the work of stopping al- 
 together the propagation of such unfit mate- 
 rial. A conception that one is working toward 
 the elimination of these unhappy families for 
 all time, instead of temporarily bolstering 
 them up for further increase of unfitness, 
 should heighten enthusiasm for social work. 
 
 If child-rescuing agencies, bent on taking 
 away the offspring of these miserably unfit 
 parents, would come to realize that in too 
 many instances Little Wanderers' Homes 
 clear the way for other little wanderers to ap- 
 pear, they might see the necessity for devising 
 means to stop completely the output of such 
 families. 
 
 The usual answer of social workers to sug- 
 gestions of this sort is that facilitating the 
 increase of the unfit is an unavoidable inci- 
 dent of their work. This answer condemns 
 their method without satisfying the complaint 
 in the least. This is not the day for unques- 
 tioning acceptance of results so dangerously 
 ambiguous. 
 
 We do not apprehend the actual degree of 
 supervision of parenthood which eventually 
 must come if the present standard of human 
 
 204
 
 EUGENICS 
 
 quality Is to be maintained. Suppose that 
 every defective in the land were segregated 
 during the entire reproductive period — the 
 full attainment of present eugenic endeavor. 
 Then suppose that the great army of scarcely 
 committable "borderliners," the ineffectives, 
 were w^holly cut off from reproducing by ster- 
 ilization or other means — a wild supposition, 
 something unattainable in the present state 
 of opinion. This would rid society of its 
 tremendous burden of the specially unfit. 
 But what would it add to the specially fit at 
 the other end of the scale, the prime essential 
 in any civilization ^ Nothing. Civilization's 
 critical disease is the failure of its best stocks, 
 not the fecundity of its worst. And elimina- 
 tion of unfitness scarcely touches this disease. 
 An orchard prone to decay cannot be forever 
 trimmed out unless new trees are planted. 
 But a meaning not thus far disclosed can 
 be read into the eugenic ideal. Its complete 
 effectiveness is in putting the reproductive 
 function of the whole community under the 
 calm judgment of authority. "The whole 
 community" — that includes the best as well 
 as the worst of us. The final chapter is a 
 speculation based on this idea. 
 
 205
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 NATURE REQUIRES FECUNDITY OF ITS STRONG — STATE 
 INTERFERENCE WITH PARENTHOOD AN ESTABLISHED 
 FACT — TRACING ITS PROBABLE EXTENSION — IMPEND- 
 ING NEED IS FERTILITY OF THE SPECIALLY ENDOWED 
 — A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE — OUR OBLIGATION TO 
 THE RACE 
 
 NATURE maintains vigor of species not 
 only by eliminating unfitness, but by 
 requiring of the strong a fecundity in propor- 
 tion to their strength. Do we expect to save 
 our species with a half-measure ? Are we 
 consistent in denying parenthood to the un- 
 fit, while the specially fit are permitted to 
 neglect their racial duty ? 
 
 In this there is suggestion of some entirely 
 new order for the propagation of the human 
 race. This is the coming of a new age. The 
 old has vanished with its simple demands 
 upon human capacity, and the course of man 
 is left in a sense uncharted among strange 
 difficulties. The forces which have destroyed 
 every civilization in the past are working to- 
 
 206
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 day with double intensity. For the first time 
 in history, unexploited human values cannot 
 be drawn upon with assurance of others in 
 reserve. Never before were these values so 
 lavishly expended. 
 
 We cannot know to what devices a race so 
 encompassed may turn for its salvation. But 
 in the light of what has already happened we 
 may trace the course of human breeding at 
 least a little way into the future. 
 
 Until less than one hundred years ago any 
 organized attempt to segregate the feeble- 
 minded for the avowed purpose of stopping 
 their sexual activities would have been looked 
 upon as a blasphemous interference with the 
 plan of the Almighty. Impossible people 
 were restrained, but their sexual deprivation 
 was an incident of their confinement, not the 
 object of it. Now, we check the reproduction 
 of defectives with as little compunction as a 
 stockman resists the incursion of scrub Indian 
 ponies into his breeding-stables. The elemen- 
 tary idea that there is no moral, social, physi- 
 cal, or religious obstacle to the imposition of 
 sexual control is becoming fixed in the pub- 
 lic mind. It is truly a wonderful thing that 
 
 267
 
 MANKIND 
 
 at last the race is using a rudimentary dis- 
 crimination in the choice of its parents. 
 
 This control is being rapidly extended to 
 Include all who are regarded as in the com- 
 mittable grade. A few more years, or per- 
 haps a generation or two, will end the sexual 
 liberty of the obviously feeble-minded. 
 
 The next real advance will be the control of 
 parenthood among the vast group of "bor- 
 derliners" — people distinctly antisocial, yet 
 hardly committable except for special of- 
 fenses. They will be reached somehow as the 
 recognition of their menace grows, even if it 
 becomes necessary to confine them for the 
 whole reproductive period. But in all prob- 
 ability sterilization will have an important 
 part in their elimination. Means are already 
 at command for depriving either sex of the 
 power to reproduce, without causing the func- 
 tional disturbances which attended the older 
 and more drastic methods. The full applica- 
 tion of this racial remedy can come only after 
 another change in the general attitude of 
 mind toward the imposing of sexual restric- 
 tions. Yet this advance will involve nothing 
 so revolutionary as the first step that took us 
 
 208
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 away from an almost fatalistic view of par- 
 enthood. It will follow logically the elimina- 
 tion of the more unfit. 
 
 The elimination of unfitness is not to be a 
 continuous problem of anything like its pres- 
 ent immensity. What appalls now is the 
 vast accumulation of unfitness whose self-per- 
 petuation must first be cut off. Once we 
 have done this and new generations are born 
 free of their numerous progeny, the few spo- 
 radic cases of hereditary defect appearing in 
 a normally bred population will offer no real 
 problem. 
 
 A happy day for mankind, we think, when 
 a merciful oblivion shall have closed upon its 
 miserables. Yet if nothing shall have been 
 done in the meantime to overcome the per- 
 sistent infertility of its superlative inheri- 
 tances, these also will have disappeared quite 
 as thoroughly, and the race will find itself a 
 vast sea of human mediocrity, unable to do 
 more than reflect the diminishing glories of a 
 past age. So accustomed are we to seeing 
 special ability rise from undeveloped masses 
 that we can scarcely imagine a whole people 
 whose special ability has been developed to 
 
 209
 
 MANKIND 
 
 the point of self-extinction. The reaHzation 
 of this will come to our successors if they 
 hold to elimination as the only means for 
 preserving the race. 
 
 But our forecast of the course of human 
 breeding cannot safely go beyond the prob- 
 able wiping out of hereditary defect among 
 enlightened peoples. The way beyond that 
 to civilization's most impending need — the 
 adequate perpetuation of its superior inheri- 
 tances — is over a chasm of difficulties. Our 
 civilization leads its most effective men and 
 women so inevitably to every kind of worthy 
 activity except that of rearing an abundance 
 of worthy children, that we cannot picture 
 them as turning back from life's engaging 
 complexities to the humdrum of race building. 
 Neither could we in our present state devise 
 any scheme of persuasion or compulsion for 
 turning them back in anything like sufficient 
 numbers. Before this can be done mankind 
 must arrive upon new premises, must gain 
 a new outlook, from which our position 
 and our view will appear wofully circum- 
 scribed. 
 
 What will be the nature of the new prem- 
 
 2IO
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 ises and the new outlook ? We may at least 
 surmise: 
 
 The men and women of that day will have 
 become so accustomed to methods for cutting 
 off undesirable strains that the principle of 
 state interference with parenthood will not 
 of itself prejudice any contemplated action. 
 Thus to-day's greatest obstacle to effective 
 race improvement will have been cleared 
 away. 
 
 They will be definitely against the problem 
 of race preservation, which for us is only in 
 its beginning. Their closer view of it will 
 have the advantage, too, of more light — 
 much needed light — on matters pertaining to 
 heredity and human breeding. 
 
 Long contemplation of the subject which 
 we have just begun to study will have 
 brought them to a discriminating familiarity 
 with hereditary values. In our present mar- 
 riage system they will see race conservation 
 left to the chance of every human emotion, 
 from love of riches to admiration for yellow 
 hair. On the other hand, an intelligent dis- 
 tribution of the germ-plasmic possibilities of 
 their ablest men will appeal as forcefully to 
 
 211
 
 MANKIND 
 
 their enlightened sense as any other scientific 
 breeding prospect now appeals to us. Then 
 could we expect the thinking men of that day, 
 sorely pressed by the consciousness of disap- 
 pearing racial values, to look longingly upon 
 this clear advantage to the race without de- 
 vising some honorable means for attaining it ? 
 
 How they would attain it we do not know. 
 But it can be taken for granted that any 
 method, to become effective, must have full 
 sanction of law and society. Free love, and 
 all other devices of the kind whose aim is 
 greater sexual license, lead straight to racial 
 decay. Birth control, as a voluntary measure 
 to be put into the hands of the general public, 
 has the fatal defect of every eugenic appeal to 
 intelligence and foresight, in that it would be 
 adopted by the intelligent and generally ig- 
 nored by the thriftless. 
 
 The irresponsible are forever attempting to 
 get away from the unnatural sex condition 
 under which man alone of all creatures must 
 of necessity live. Unhappily, a checked ap- 
 petite becomes a distorted appetite. Civili- 
 zation cannot do otherwise than impose more 
 or less sexual restraint; thus a most whole- 
 
 212
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 some and necessary function of the body is 
 made to appear as an unclean thing. It not 
 only takes on the semblance of evil; it actu- 
 ally becomes a source of infinite social harm. 
 In the very nature of things it can be subdued 
 only to a worse behavior. The usual mistake 
 is to put the odium of this evil upon the func- 
 tion itself, rather than upon its unavoidable 
 suppression. 
 
 But if we are to make headway toward a 
 solution of the race's great problem, the sex 
 relation must be considered in its original in- 
 tent, without that sense of uncleanliness which 
 leads most of us to regard marriage as giving 
 respectability to an otherwise wicked inclina- 
 tion. Against the prejudice of ages this will 
 be difficult. Suggestion of any variation 
 from the binding of two personalities for life 
 is sure to be regarded as an attempt to pro- 
 mote sensual freedom. Even discussion of 
 the possibilities gives a wrench to certain 
 deep-seated notions, supposed to be of vir- 
 tuous origin, but in truth evidences of a uni- 
 versally enslaved instinct. We proclaim the 
 breaking down of the so-called "conspiracy 
 of silence," as if we were already facing the 
 
 213
 
 MANKIND 
 
 whole matter of sex with perfect candor. In 
 reahty we have only dragged into the open its 
 festering vices and iniquities. Its value as a 
 constructive agency to be manipulated for the 
 upbuilding of the race has scarcely come into 
 the prospect. If regarded in the light of its 
 essential goodness of purpose, the devising of 
 ways for a more intelligent use of the sex 
 function becomes an altogether reasonable and 
 decent human concern, and we are quite likely 
 to find that its possibilities were not wholly 
 exhausted by the institution of marriage. 
 
 The great war is going to bring this question 
 to the fore generations earlier, perhaps, than 
 it naturally would have come. The score of 
 millions now fighting are the picked men of 
 Europe. The bravest and strongest of these, 
 again, assume the greater risks and are among 
 the killed In very high proportion. Several 
 millions will never return. The disproportion 
 between women and men of all grades of 
 effectiveness will be depresslngly obvious; but 
 the excess of women of high genetic worth, as 
 against the surviving men who could be 
 equally worthy fathers of their children, will 
 be the most portentous racial fact after the 
 
 214
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 war. If custom decrees that this undimin- 
 ished body of exceptional women shall have 
 its normal expectation of motherhood cut 
 down to meet the havoc wrought by the war 
 upon their natural mates, Europe's racial 
 values will suffer at one stroke the equiva- 
 lent of centuries of ordinary racial decline. 
 Whether or not we think that this states a 
 situation impossible to remedy, it states a 
 truth obvious to any student of race. 
 
 The more obvious truth — the coming dis- 
 parity in the numbers of women and men of 
 all grades — has not escaped general recogni- 
 tion. Ways for meeting the condition are 
 already being suggested. With the return of 
 peace the stricken peoples are certain to take 
 up the matter of rehabilitating their human 
 stock as one of their acute problems. 
 
 At least two grand mistakes could be made 
 in this racial crisis. It has been proposed in 
 behalf of one nation — noted for its insistence 
 on "food for cannon" — that illegitimacy on 
 the large scale be countenanced, or at least 
 winked at. Doubtless great numbers of men 
 would rally to this scheme, but it must be 
 admitted that a high proportion of them 
 
 215
 
 MANKIND 
 
 would be of the irresponsible and character- 
 less variety. As for women, illegitimacy al- 
 ways has been and always will be exclusively 
 the habit of the weak in mind. Few women 
 whose progeny would be worth while could be 
 persuaded even by the plea of duty to their 
 country. The effect of the scheme would be 
 to multiply unfitness among peoples sadly in 
 need of a higher proportion of fitness. 
 
 The mistake more likely to be made will be 
 to encourage the fecundity of the married by 
 a system of proportional rewards in position, 
 employment, relief from taxes, and other 
 benefits, in the endeavor to make up for the 
 enforced barrenness of the unmated women. 
 Every such appeal takes its main hold upon 
 the least valuable elements in the community. 
 The result might be pleasing to the worship- 
 pers of mere numbers as the source of national 
 strength, but those numbers would show a 
 still greater increase in the disproportion of 
 the inferior. 
 
 The whole question of birth-rate is mud- 
 dled by failure to recognize quality as a req- 
 uisite in human breeding. There is not a 
 country in Europe that should not welcome 
 
 216
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 a lessened total of births as a Godsend. 
 Their problem is in the lessened number of 
 males of the sort to perpetuate ability. 
 Nothing will bring back the superlative dead 
 to mate with the superlative living. The 
 most fertile mating in pairs of Europe's best 
 will not relieve the inability to pair, nor re- 
 store the race's top values to their normal 
 proportion. Yet what else can be done ? 
 
 This leads again into the realm of specula- 
 tion. We cannot foresee what changes in 
 sentiment and custom may be induced by 
 future stressful conditions. We do not even 
 know that the consummation of fatherhood 
 may not sometime be wholly disconnected 
 from personal sensuality. In the laboratory 
 of the expert floriculturist, the pollen does not 
 need the wind to convey it to fertilization. 
 The thought of such an artifice is, of course, 
 revolting to us, but we might as well view 
 calmly a suggestion not intended for our day 
 and age, yet remembering that seemingly dim 
 possibilities have a way of coming true over- 
 night. 
 
 The present system of marriage will without 
 doubt continue indefinitely for the great bulk 
 
 217
 
 MANKIND 
 
 of mankind, so we need not gasp at the pros- 
 pect of a future moral overturning. Mar- 
 riage is one of the few conventions of society 
 which take their fundamentals from nature, 
 and for reasonably natural human conditions 
 a better arrangement is hardly conceivable. 
 But as conditions of living become more arti- 
 ficial and a civilization approaches its critical 
 need with respect to race values, marriage 
 fails in its chief purpose among the very ones 
 whose progeny is most needed. The best of 
 the race not only grow away from the habit 
 of large families; the many social exactions of 
 marriage lead them habitually to mismate. 
 A highly complex society develops in its 
 strong men and strong women so many points 
 of individual sensitiveness that their living 
 together is made difficult. If they marry 
 late, as they are inclined to do, they seldom 
 choose each other. In decent regard for his 
 own happiness the man usually marries for 
 qualities which can be lived with, while the 
 woman either remains single or takes up with 
 a docile worshipper. In any case the race 
 loses the enriching effect that can come only 
 from their combined inheritances, because 
 
 218
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 they have an honest distaste for spending 
 their whole Hves in each other's company. 
 
 The ideal of any breeding system is to 
 bring together the best of the species in their 
 most effective combinations, unhampered by 
 any other condition. In our own case this 
 ideal is not wholly appropriate, yet we might 
 hope to advance toward it as we grow wiser. 
 But as we grow wiser the insistent details of 
 marriage more and more obscure the race- 
 building ideal. 
 
 Of course it is way beyond the function of 
 society, with its present view, to impose the 
 rearing of children on anybody. Yet we are 
 learning to say with growing insistence to one 
 group in the community: "You must let your 
 miserable inheritances die with you. This is 
 not ordered as a punishment. Involuntarily 
 you have brought something out of the past 
 which is not good for society, and it must be 
 left behind as the race goes forward." Per- 
 haps sometime we may learn to say to this 
 other group: "You must perpetuate your 
 valuable inheritances. You did not create 
 them — ages of selection and fortuitous com- 
 bination passed them on to you, and they 
 
 219
 
 MANKIND 
 
 are not yours to dispose of at conven- 
 ience." 
 
 It is a futile hope that any voluntary scheme 
 will restore the birth-rate of this group to 
 normal proportions. An obligation of some 
 kind is essential. It is conceivable that so- 
 ciety, when it shall have learned better to 
 recognize exceptionally worthy conservators 
 of the race, may put upon these few an obli- 
 gation other than marriage — one equally hon- 
 orable and under regulation, but dispensing 
 with the test of living together and having for 
 its prime object a high-bred progeny. As- 
 suming that marriage will remain indefinitely 
 as the convention of all but the few, the exist- 
 ing order need not be in the least disturbed. 
 There is no fundamental reason in nature 
 why parenthood should be forever linked with 
 the terrors and joys of lifelong companion- 
 ship. Conservation of exceptional race values 
 may become too important a matter to be 
 always bound up with the host of minor con- 
 siderations which lead people to marry or not 
 to marry, to have children or not to have 
 children. 
 
 The war has made marriage impossible for 
 220
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 a vast number of Europe's best women. A 
 more liberal convention would give to every 
 woman of superior inheritance the honorable 
 right to have children — children of a selected 
 paternity which would inspire the mother 
 with high expectations for their future. Even 
 in normal times and in our own country there 
 are well-born women by the tens of thou- 
 sands, unmated because of the very qualities 
 which indicate their high genetic worth, who 
 are held to a round of somewhat meagre in- 
 terests, because there is no acceptable way 
 for the exercise of a perfectly wholesome 
 bodily function which would bring to them 
 the greatest of gifts and the noblest of occu- 
 pations, and to the world a new generation of 
 the well-born. Interest in motherhood might 
 revive in the hearts of noble women if it were 
 so that they could as honorably receive the 
 paternity of their children from some com- 
 manding figure among men as they now re- 
 ceive his ideals, or his books, or his lectures, 
 or any other bestowal of his exceptional gifts. 
 Why should not a woman, glowing under the 
 inspiration of a master mind, exclaim from 
 the purity of her soul: "Fortunate would be 
 
 221
 
 MANKIND 
 
 any woman whose child might have the pros- 
 pect of that superb inheritance!" 
 
 None but a presumptuous individual would 
 attempt now to forecast the details of a new 
 convention; the skill of Europe may be en- 
 gaged upon this problem sooner than we think. 
 These views are merely speculative; yet we 
 can hardly get on unsafe ground as long as we 
 stick to the view that no arrangement of the 
 kind is possible that does not have as com- 
 plete sanction as is bestowed by the marriage 
 ceremony. Then why should we not con- 
 template without foreboding the inevitable 
 thrashing out of the sex-relation after the 
 war, if we are confident that any effective 
 advance must bring the reproductive func- 
 tion into a more, not a less, wholesome re- 
 pute .? 
 
 We in America cannot square ourselves 
 with posterity by merely cutting off feeble- 
 mindedness. At Its best this would be a 
 negative achievement. A generation so ex- 
 travagant with its human resources should be 
 as intently working at the other end — the 
 big end — of the problem of human breeding. 
 Not only devastated Europe will be in need 
 
 222
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 of a constructive racial policy. Our own 
 racial values are in a condition which could 
 scarcely have been brought to pass by several 
 wars. There is no more patriotic study for 
 true Americans than the adequate perpetua- 
 tion of the racial values which have made of 
 us a great nation. The absolutely unique 
 conditions under which the world's effective 
 inheritances must ever hereafter be bred 
 should command the thoughtful attention of 
 every lover of Mankind. 
 
 223
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DLL on the last date stamped below. 
 
 BfC^ LD-URt 
 
 JM 2 9 1979 
 
 "^ IB-ugi 
 
 
 rWXS W7 2-9T 
 
 24139 
 
 .ijnii ^^ «7 r^r^
 
 i[ nil] III I II I! iiir .. - . 
 
 3 1158 00336 8049 
 
 D 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 111 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 nil 
 
 mill 
 
 1 
 
 II 
 
 I'l 
 
 III 
 
 "1 
 
 T" 
 
 AA 001376133
 
 iiiliiiiiliiill