Applied Eugenics | Page 3

settlement
wardens, doctors, clergymen, educators, editors, publicists, Y. M. C. A.
secretaries and industrial engineers. It ought to lie at the elbow of
law-makers, statesmen, poor relief officials, immigration inspectors,
judges of juvenile courts, probation officers, members of state boards
of control and heads of charitable and correctional institutions. Finally,
the thoughtful ought to find in it guidance in their problem of mating. It
will inspire the superior to rise above certain worldly ideals of life and
to aim at a family success rather than an individual success.
EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS.
The University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin July 1918.

APPLIED EUGENICS
CHAPTER I
NATURE OR NURTURE?

At the First Race Betterment Conference held at Battle Creek, Mich.,
many methods were suggested by which it was believed that the people
of America might be made, on the average, healthier, happier, and more
efficient. One afternoon the discussion turned to the children of the
slums. Their condition was pictured in dark colors. A number of
eugenists remarked that they were in many cases handicapped by a
poor heredity. Then Jacob Riis--a man for whom every American must
feel a profound admiration--strode upon the platform, filled with
indignation.
"We have heard friends here talk about heredity," he exclaimed. "The
word has rung in my ears until I am sick of it. Heredity! Heredity!
There is just one heredity in all the world that is ours--we are children
of God, and there is nothing in the whole big world that we cannot do
in His service with it."
It is probably not beyond the truth to say that in this statement Jacob
Riis voiced the opinion of a majority of the social workers of this
country, and likewise a majority of the people who are faithfully and
with much self-sacrifice supporting charities, uplift movements, reform
legislation, and philanthropic attempts at social betterment in many
directions. They suppose that they are at the same time making the race
better by making the conditions better in which people live.
It is widely supposed that, although nature may have distributed some
handicaps at birth, they can be removed if the body is properly warmed
and fed and the mind properly exercised. It is further widely supposed
that this improvement in the condition of the individual will result in
his production of better infants, and that thus the race, gaining a little
momentum in each generation, will gradually move on toward ultimate
perfection.
There is no lack of efforts to improve the race, by this method of direct
change of the environment. It involves two assumptions, which are
sometimes made explicitly, sometimes merely taken for granted. These
are:
1. That changes in a man's surroundings, or, to use the more technical

biological term, in his nurture, will change the nature that he has
inherited.
2. That such changes will further be transmitted to his children.
Any one who proposes methods of race betterment, as we do in the
present book, must meet these two popular beliefs. We shall therefore
examine the first of them in this chapter, and the second in Chapter II.
Galton adopted and popularized Shakespere's antithesis of nature and
nurture to describe a man's inheritance and his surroundings, the two
terms including everything that can pertain to a human being. The
words are not wholly suitable, particularly since nature has two distinct
meanings,--human nature and external nature. The first is the only one
considered by Galton. Further, nurture is capable of subdivision into
those environmental influences which do not undergo much
change,--e.g., soil and climate,--and those forces of civilization and
education which might better be described as culture. The evolutionist
has really to deal with the three factors of germ-plasm, physical
surroundings and culture. But Galton's phrase is so widely current that
we shall continue to use it, with the implications that have just been
outlined.
The antithesis of nature and nurture is not a new one; it was met long
ago by biologists and settled by them to their own satisfaction. The
whole body of experimental and observational evidence in biology
tends to show that the characters which the individual inherits from his
ancestors remain remarkably constant in all ordinary conditions to
which they may be subjected. Their constancy is roughly proportionate
to the place of the animal in the scale of evolution; lower forms are
more easily changed by outside influence, but as one ascends to the
higher forms, which are more differentiated, it is found more and more
difficult to effect any change in them. Their characters are more
definitely fixed at birth.[1]
It is with the highest of all forms, Man, that we have now to deal. The
student in biology is not likely to doubt that the differences in men are
due much more to inherited nature than to any influences