How to Live, Eugene Lyman Fisk [best thriller books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Eugene Lyman Fisk
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The same is true of crime. The 80,000 prisoners constantly supported in the United States are recruited not evenly from the general population, but mainly from certain family breeds.[59] Criminality among “The Jukes” is a rule, among Jonathan Edwards’ descendants, the exception. The same is true of mental abilities of different kinds. Galton showed that the prominent English judges, statesmen, chancellors, etc., were furnished by certain family lines only, and were not drawn evenly from all families.[60] The same is true of feeble-mindedness.[61]
The question of what traits are desirable and what traits are undesirable might seem, on first thought, rather a difficult matter to determine. Few of us would like to have our neighbor’s taste in the matter constituted as a standard of judgment upon our own traits. There is one standard of judgment, however, that is so broad and impersonal and so founded on the elements in society to which all individuals are subject, that it can justly serve as a line of division between the desirability and undesirability, broadly speaking, of individual traits for perpetuation. This is the measurement by the standard of social worth and service commonly designated as “fitness.”[62] Above this dividing line may be roughly grouped the genius, the specially skilled, the mediocre, who are a service to society, or at least not a burden. Below this line may be grouped those feeble-minded, paupers, criminals, insane, weak and sick, who are a burden, economically and socially. That is, a person’s traits are desirable of perpetuation if so balanced as to render the individual not a burden to others.
It must undoubtedly be true that many families possess, inherently, traits of ability which have never had an opportunity to exhibit themselves. This may account for the apparently sudden appearance of great men and women without obvious hereditary background. It is plainly possible, furthermore, to bring about a special combination of two family lines, the mental traits on neither of which exhibit remarkableness, but which, when combined, bring an extremely happy result.
Mental ability does not depend upon education. Education can only enable an individual to utilize more fully his inherent ability; it cannot increase capacity.
The same is true, of course, of physical capacity. Sandow has an extraordinary muscular ability, developed by certain exercises. Similar exercises will not, however, develop all men into Sandows, no matter how constant their faith and persistent their efforts. Sandow was, we may assume, hereditarily gifted with a superior muscular capacity, which his exercises have enabled him to fully develop. It is true, however, that few people ever realize their full physical and mental capacities, owing to lack of opportunity, inclination, etc., and that there generally exist untold possibilities for improvement for those who wish to get the most out of themselves.
It is apparent that the make-up of an individual is the result of a very complex combination of traits. For this reason, the makeup is not likely to fall heir to all “bad” traits, any more than it is to all “good” traits. Even the feeble-minded, who have fallen heir to such an intensely undesirable trait—or rather, to the lack of intensely desirable traits—in many instances have simultaneously inherited many desirable traits, such as kindness, gentleness and generosity, often lacking in those possessed of scholarly capacities. Many women of the border-line type of feeble-mindedness, where mental incapacity often passes for innocence, possess the qualities of charm felt in children, and are consequently quickly selected in marriage. If a mentally able man possess as an ideal of womanhood other traits than mental capacity, no amount of schooling for his child can make up for the difference between the mental capacity of the offspring of such a mating, and the offspring of a mating with an able-minded woman. Although the trait of able-mindedness is dominant, so that the mating of an able and a feeble mind will result in fairly able-minded offspring, who may even be above the average, mentally, such offspring carry in their own germ plasm the defect derived from their feeble-minded parent, which defect may then be passed on to future generations through the germ plasm from which their children get their inheritance. A mother’s hereditary influence on the child is just as important a factor as the father’s, generally speaking. Where feeble-mindedness exists on a family line, care should be exercised by the able-minded members of that line not to mate with another line possessing cases of feeble-mindedness, lest the offspring then fall heir to feeble-mindedness, which can skip a generation. An appreciation of what is feeble-minded, and a realization of its inheritability can not help but modify a man or a woman’s admiration for the traits or lack of traits which it embraces.
Persons possessing weak physical makeups may possess strong mental capacities, and vice-versa. Persons of superior mental capacities may lack loftiness of character. It might happen that in so mating as to prevent the perpetuation of an undesirable trait, physical, mental or moral, a desirable trait would be lost along with it. In any mating transaction, therefore, choice must necessarily compromise upon the favorable hereditary action of a majority of the traits on the two family lines. One must relinquish any quest for perfection. After eliminating the individuals possessing the grossly unsocial traits below the dividing line of social fitness, one must choose with respect to a majority of socially fit traits, in addition to the elements of personal congeniality and affinity. The two last-named elements, however, generally serve as useful narcotics in blinding the mating individuals to the existence of the compromise, and the real becomes the ideal.
Each trait in the mosaic of one person is transmitted or not transmitted to a child according to the mating of that particular trait—mating with trait or lack of trait—rather than according to the mating of the two persons as a whole. That is, when a man and woman marry and bear offspring, it is not the mating of two units, but it is the mating of myriads of pairs of units—the units being the constituent traits and lack of traits (contained in some mysterious way in the germ plasm), each trait-mating producing its own trait-offspring. The collection of these trait-offspring makes up the child.
It has been observed that traits differ with respect to their action in mating. Given a specific type of trait-mating, say of a trait with like trait, or trait with the lack of that trait, some types always reappear in the next generation or else are lost entirely from the family line unless reinfused, whereas other types of traits may not reappear in the next generation, but still appear in a generation further removed. Another type of trait is transmissible only by one sex of a family line, and can not be transmitted by the other sex.
From these facts, it is readily understandable how important becomes the consideration of the marriage of relatives, such as cousins,[63] who are, of course, individuals of the same family line, whose mating brings together like groups of traits, thus strengthening the existence of these traits, whether desirable or undesirable. Cousin marriages, when the family possess traits of mental ability, may result in children who are geniuses; but cousin marriages, when the family line possesses traits of mental inability, may result disastrously with respect to offspring. Family lines possessing traits of mental weakness should most assuredly join only to family lines possessing traits of strength in those regards.
In calculating the inheritability of traits, it is also necessary to consider that certain physical, mental and moral traits flower at the arrival of certain ages only. It is necessary to look along the whole line of a life, as traits may exist at one age and not at another. A boy’s beard does not appear until puberty. Likewise, other physical and mental and moral traits sometimes do not manifest themselves until specific ages, according to the type of the family breed. Because a parent dies before the development of the trait does not preclude its transmissibility to his offspring. Huntington’s chorea, an extremely undesirable trait, does not develop until middle life, but is transmissible to offspring even though the father dies from some other cause before the period when the disease in his own person would be expected to appear.
We can best understand the laws governing the inheritance of traits by taking a few concrete cases. The first case is that of an Andalusian fowl. We shall consider the two species, pure bred black and pure bred white, and confine ourselves to observing the inheritance of the single characteristic, plumage color. Of course, as long as the black mate only with the black their children will be black, and as long as the white mate with white the children will be white. But if a white mates with a black, the children will not be either black or white, but blue. All will be blue. But the most interesting facts appear in the next generation, when these hybrid blue fowls mate with black or white, or with each other. The original of the cross between the white and the black is an entirely new color blue, which may be considered a sort of amalgam of black and white. But a cross between the blue and the black will not be any new color, but will be either black or blue—and the chances are even. That is, in the long run about half of the children of the blue and black parents will be blue and half will be black. None of the children will be white. So also crossing the blue with the white will result in half of the children being blue and half, white. Still more curious is the result of mating blue with blue. One might imagine that in this case all the children would be blue, but only half will be blue, while a quarter will be black and a quarter white.
These laws are a curious mixture of chance and certainty. In certain circumstances, as we have seen, we can predict with certainty that the offspring will be black, white, blue, or whatever the case may be. In other circumstances we can only state what the chances are. But these chances can be definitely stated as one in two, one in four or whatever it may be, and where there are large numbers of offspring this amounts to a practical certainty that definite proportions will have this or that color, or other characteristics.
Two parents are like two baskets or bundles of traits from which the child takes its traits at random. In the wonderful play of Maeterlinck’s, called the “Bluebird,” we are taken to the “land before birth,” where the children are waiting to be born, having
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