Feeble-mindedness

It is necessary to remember that feeble-mindedness is largely handed on by heredity. It was formerly supposed that idiocy and feeble-mindedness are mainly due to environmental conditions -- to the drink, depravity, general disease, or lack of nutrition of the parents; and a few authorities on the feeble-minded still hold that view. But serious as the results of such bad environmental conditions may be, and frequent as they are in the parentage of the feeble-minded, they do not form the fundamental factor in the production of the feeble-minded, and some scientific authorities even deny that they can produce mental defect in the offspring at all, though that position is doubtless too extreme. Exact investigation is now showing that feeble-mindedness is inherited to an enormous extent. Some years ago Dr. Ashby, speaking from a large experience, estimated that at least 75 per cent, of feeble-minded children are born with an inherited tendency to mental defect. More precise investigation has since shown that this estimate was under the mark.

Not only is feeble-mindedness inherited, and in a much greater degree than has hitherto been suspected even by expert authorities, but the feeble-minded tend to have a much larger number of children than normal people. That, indeed, we might expect, apart altogether from the question of any innate fertility. The feeble-minded have no forethought and no self-restraint. They are not ordinarily capable of resisting their own impulses or the solicitations of others, and they are unable to understand adequately the motives which guide the conduct of ordinary people. The average number of children of feeble-minded people seems to be usually about one-third more than in normal families, and is sometimes very much greater.

Eichholz, another authority on the feeble-minded, found that in one group of defective families about 60 per cent, of the children died young. That is probably an unusually high proportion, and in Eichholz's cases it seems to have been associated with very unusually large families; but the infant mortality in such families is always very high.

This large early mortality of the offspring of the feeble-minded is, however, very far from settling the question of the disposal of the mentally defective, or we should not find large families of them propagated from generation to generation. The large number who die early merely serves, roughly speaking, to reduce the size of the abnormal family to the size of the normal family, and some authorities consider that it scarcely suffices to do this, for we must remember that there is a considerable mortality even in the so-called normal family during early life. Moreover, we have to consider the social disorder and the heavy expense which accompany this large infantile mortality. Illegitimacy is frequently the result of feeble-mindedness since feeble-minded women are peculiarly unable to resist temptation. A great number of such women are continually coming into the workhouses and giving birth to illegitimate children whom they are unable to support, and who often never become capable of supporting themselves, but in their turn tend to produce a new feeble-minded generation, more especially since the men who are attracted to these feeble-minded women are themselves -- according to the generally recognised tendency of the abnormal to be attracted to the abnormal -- feeble-minded or otherwise mentally defective. This is not only the cause of a great burden on the rates, but also a perpetual danger to society and a constant, it may be ever-increasing, depreciation of the quality of the race.

Moreover, by our present methods of charity we increase rather than diminish the evil, for, as Sir Edward Fry has well said, "the beneficence of one generation becomes the burthen and the injury of all succeeding ones." "Vastly more effective than ten million dollars to charity," remarks in the same spirit Dr. Davenport, the Director of the New York Station for Experimental Evolution, "would be ten millions to Eugenics. He who by such a gift should redeem mankind from vice, imbecility, and suffering would be the world's wisest philanthropist." There is no need to put such an expenditure of wealth in opposition to charity. It would be charity, and in accordance with the whole Christian conception and tradition of charity. But it would be charity according to knowledge, charity applied at the right spot, and not merely allowed to run to waste, or, worse, to turn to poison.

But it is not only in themselves that the feeble-minded are a burden on the present generation and a menace to future generations. They are seen to be even a more serious danger when we realise that in large measure they form the reservoir from which the predatory classes are recruited. This is, for instance, the case as regards the fallen. Feeble-minded girls, of fairly high grade, may often be said to be predestined to immorality if left to themselves, not because they are vicious, but because they are weak and have little power of resistance. They cannot properly weigh their actions against the results of their actions; and even if they are intelligent enough to do that, they are still too weak to regulate their actions accordingly. Moreover, even when, as often happens among the high-grade feeble-minded, they are quite able and willing to work, after they have lost their respectability by having a child the opportunities for work become more restricted, and they drift into prostitution. The association between prostitution and feeble-mindedness is intimate. Everywhere, there can be no doubt, a considerable proportion of these women were, at the very outset, in some slight degree feeble-minded, mentally and morally a little blunted through some taint of inheritance.

Criminality, again, is associated with feeble-mindedness in the most intimate way. Not only do criminals tend to belong to large families, but the families that produce feeble-minded offspring also produce criminals, while a certain degree of feeble-mindedness is extremely common among criminals, and the most hopeless and typical, though fortunately rare, kind of criminal, frequently termed a "moral imbecile" is nothing more than a feeble-minded person whose defect is shown not so much in his intelligence as in his feelings and his conduct. Even the possession of a considerable degree of cunning is no evidence against mental defect, but may rather be said to be a sign of it, for it shows an intelligence unable to grasp the wider relations of life and concentrated on the gratification of petty and immediate desires. Thus it happens that the cunning of criminals is frequently associated with almost inconceivable stupidity.

Closely related to the great feeble-minded class, and from time to time falling into crime, are the inmates of workhouses, tramps, and the unemployable. The so-called "able-bodied" inmates of our workhouses are frequently found, on medical examination, to be in more than 50 per cent, cases mentally defective, equally so whether they are men or women. Tramps, by nature and profession, who overlap the workhouse population, and are estimated to number 20,000 to 50,000 in England and Wales, when the genuine unemployed are eliminated, are everywhere found to be a very degenerate class, among whom the most mischievous kinds of feeble-mindedness and mental perversion prevail, as well as the tendency to petty criminality and sometimes to more serious crime. Inebriates the people who are chronically and helplessly given to drink largely belong to the same great family, and do not so much become feeble-minded because they drink, but possess the tendency to drink because they have a strain of feeble-mindedness from birth.

These are the kind of people tramps, prostitutes, paupers, criminals, inebriates, all tending to be born a little defective who largely make up the great degenerate families whose histories are from time to time recorded. Such a family was that of the "Jukes" in America, who, in the course of five generations, produced 709 known descendants who were on the whole unfit for society, and have been a constant danger and burden to society. Yet another such family is that of the "Zeros." Three centuries ago they were highly respectable people living in a Swiss valley. But they intermarried with an insane stock, and subsequently married other women of an unbalanced nature. In recent times 310 members of this family have been studied, and it is found that vagrancy, feeble-mindedness, mental troubles, criminality, pauperism, immorality, are, as it may be termed, their patrimony.

These classes, with their tendency to weak-mindedness, their inborn laziness, lack of vitality, and unfitness for organised activity, contain the people who complain that they are starving for want of work, though they will never perform any work that is given them.

It will be seen that in this sketch of the problem before us in an effort to regenerate the race, much stress is laid on the feeble-minded in the full sense of that term. Little has been said of insanity, which differs from feeble-mindedness by being acquired during life, though nearly always on a basis of inherited weakness. There is a reason for attempting to make this distinction, notwithstanding the fact that in many families feeble-mindedness is found side by side with insanity, and has indeed been said to be the tree upon which most insanities are grafted. Feeble-mindedness is an absolute dead weight on the race; it is an evil that is unmitigated. The heavy and complicated social burdens and injuries it inflicts on the present generation are without compensation, while the unquestionable fact that in all degrees it is highly inheritable renders it a deteriorating poison to the race; it depreciates the whole quality of a people. But insanity is not so fatal, so incurable, so altogether without compensation. The candidates for insanity may never become insane, or, having become insane, they may recover. Such candidates for insanity may be the best of people, above the average in intelligence, in conduct, in ideals; even in their eccentricities they may furnish a necessary element of variety and colour to life. We need not, in- deed, share the fear of those who think that if the insane disappeared or ceased to propagate there would be no more genius. It is certainly true that some men of the highest genius have themselves been on the borderland, and even over the borderland, of insanity, but if rarely or never happens that people of genius spring from parents who were definitely insane. If, however, we wish to attack these problems radically we are wise to concentrate ourselves, in the first place, on the problem of feeble-mindedness.

It is doubtless a significant fact that the districts with a high death-rate are also, as has lately been found, the districts with a high lunacy rate; the selection of death kills off the unfit, but it does not necessarily improve the quality of those it spares; though it seems, at all events, to make a rough attempt to preserve, on the whole, the level of life. But, whatever the exact action of natural selection may be, as soon as we begin to interfere with it and improve the conditions of life, by caring for the unfit, enabling them to survive and to propagate their like -- as they will not fail to do in so far as they belong to unfit stocks -- then we are certainly, without intending it, doing our best to lower the level of life. We increase, or at best retain, the unfit, while at the same time we burden the fit with the task of providing for the unfit. In this way we deteriorate the general quality of life in the next generation, except in so far as our improvement of the environment may enable some to remain fit who under less favourable conditions would join the unfit.

It is now possible for us to realise how the way lies open to the next great forward step in social reform. Our sense of social responsibility is becoming a sense of racial responsibility. It is that enlarged sense of responsibility which renders possible what we call the regeneration of the race.

It is only of recent years that it has been rendered possible. Until lately the methods of propagating the race continued to be the same as those of savages thousands of years ago. Children "came" and their parents disclaimed all responsibility for their coming; the children were sent by God, and if they all turned out to be idiots the responsibility was God's. That is all changed now. We have learnt that in this, as in other matters, the Divine force works through us, and that we are not entitled to cast the burden of our evil actions on to any Higher Power. It is we who are, more immediately, the creators of men. We generate the race; we alone can regenerate the race.

Galton, during the last years of his life, believed that we are approaching a time when eugenic considerations will become a factor of religion, and when our existing religious conceptions will be reinterpreted in the light of a sense of social needs so enlarged as to include the needs of the race which is to come. Certainly, for those who have been taught to believe that man was in the first place created by God, it should not be difficult to realise the Divine nature of the task of human creation which has since been placed in the hands of men, to recognise it as a practical part of religion, and to cherish the sense of its responsibilities.

If our new knowledge in this field is still very imperfect, there is one point concerning which general agreement may be said to be reached, and that is the desirability of breeding out, so far as possible, the feeble-minded. Even the Mendelian students of heredity, who, with considerable reason, regard inheritance as a highly complicated matter, conclude that, at all events, we may feel sure that it will be well, if possible, to eliminate the feeble-minded from the race. No doubt there are some who would regret the disappearance of weak-mindedness with its possibilities of the "divine fool," and so it may be as well to say that there is no chance of eliminating the occasional possibility of imbecility, or allied conditions, as a natural spontaneous variation. It is the feeble-minded families with their complicated and multiform ramifications which we may safely try to root up. That is why on previous pages it has been thought well to exhibit some of these ramifications of feeble-mindedness, and to show how much social and racial damage they cause. If we seek to classify the feeble-minded, taken in the largest mass, with reference not to their forms but to the degree of their mental defectiveness, they may be said (following Damaye's classification) to fall into four groups:

The need of confining and caring for the first two classes is fairly clear; the feeble-minded of the third class obviously require special attention because they are capable of being very mischievous. It is the large fourth class which presents the most difficult problem.

A considerable proportion of the higher grade feeble-minded can, with careful training, be taught to earn their living in the world. The bulk of them need to be isolated from the world in special institutions and colonies, where they can to some extent be utilised, where they will do no harm to themselves or others, and be reasonably safe from the risk of propagating their kind. This was the main recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Feeble-Minded in 1908. It will, however, be an expensive and costly measure if carried out on an adequate scale. It must also be remembered that the improved education and training of the hereditary feeble-minded, in order to fit them for some work in the world at large, will not enable them to produce any fitter offspring than if they had remained untaught and untrained. In view of these considerations it seems desirable to supplement the recommendations of the Royal Commission by the adoption of methods for rendering those of the feeble-minded who are free to move about in the world unable to propagate their kind, as can now be done in simple and harmless ways. The feeble-minded, realising their own weakness, are often willing, and even anxious, to be in this way protected against themselves. To make such a practice compulsory, or to apply it to criminals who are not hereditarily feeble-minded, would not only be on many grounds undesirable, but it would unnecessarily discredit the method. It is the more reasonable, as well as the more Christian plan, to allow the unfit to make themselves "eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven's sake" and not as a punishment.

Even, however, if we confine our preventive methods to the feeble-minded our problem still remains very extensive, for we have to remember that feeble-mindedness accounts for a large part of that burden of pauperism which the gigantic machinery of the Poor Law was devised to deal with, and which a Royal Commission investigated in the most elaborate detail only a few years ago. That Commission, in the ponderous volumes jt produced, set forth some excellent recommendations on matters of detail. But it failed to go to the root of the matter and devised no method for damming the stream of pauperism at its source. The more perfectly the Poor Law machinery works, the more it encourages the evil it seeks to deal with. That is so because of the nature of the human material composing the great bulk of pauperism. It is mentally defective, so that the workhouse (which seems so awful a fate to ordinary poor people) is as welcome to the pauper as the prison often is to the criminal. An investigation not long since carried out at the instance of the Council of the Eugenics Education Society, though not extensive in its scope, perhaps brings us nearer to the remedy for pauperism than ill the elaborate recommendations of the Royal Commissioners. It was found that paupers tend to belong to pauper families, even to the fourth generation, and that they tend to intermarry with pauper families; it was also found that they tend to manifest more or less obvious signs of mental weakness, and the conclusion was inevitable that their hereditary pauperism was based on an inheritance of mental defect. It is obvious that all our philanthropy directed to the present generation only will not remove this kind of pauperism but rather increase it; we need to extend our philanthropy to the generations to come. And if, for instance, we resolved, with all proper precautions, in the case of these defective paupers of the second, third, or later generations, not to give Poor Law relief, except to those who had voluntarily consented, as a condition of such relief, to undergo the preventive surgical treatment referred to , we should be effectively working for the abolition of pauperism.

In these simple and practical ways by specially training the feeble-minded, by confining them in suitable institutions and colonies, and by voluntary sacrifice of procreative power on the part of those who are able to work in the world we shall be able, even in a single generation, largely to remove one of the most serious and burdensome taints in our civilisation, and so mightily work for the regeneration of the race.

In the great garden of life it is not otherwise than in our public gardens. We repress the license of those who, to gratify their own childish or perverted desires, would pluck up the shrubs or trample on the flowers, but in so doing we achieve freedom and joy for all. If in our efforts to better social conditions and to raise the level of the race we seek to cultivate the sense of order, to encourage sympathy and foresight, to pull up racial weeds by the roots, it is not that we may kill freedom and joy, but rather that we may introduce the conditions for securing and increasing freedom and joy. In these matters, indeed, the gardener in his garden is our symbol and our guide. The beginning of the world is figured as an ordered and yet free life of joy in a garden. All our efforts for the regeneration of the race can be but a feeble attempt to bring a little nearer that vision of Paradise.

"The influence primarily responsible for the modern eugenics movement was the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolution following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859."
- Samuel J. Holmes, Human Genetics, 1936, chapter 25.

Click here for more information about the pernicious effects of Darwnism on humanity.

A very interesting read: I don’t know much about Eugenics, haven’t seen much presented on it before.

Setting aside the obvious ethical issues (the over-riding morality of which being acknowledged), it would seem that eugenics would have some solid scientific support thru what we have learned from Animal Husbandry and Plant Propagation.

We can reliably produce an animal — say, a dog — to have very precise characteristics and few-or-no flaws. We can do the same with plants.

So why not Humans? Why is Eugenics discredited?

Why is Eugenics discredited?

Because there is no gene for prostitution, "hereditary pauperism" or "feeble-mindedness". And the studies (e.g., Jukes) were fraudulent.

IIRC Sweden stopped involuntary sterilizations only relatively recently.

Thanks for your response. You write:

> Because there is no gene for prostitution, “hereditary pauperism” or “feeble-mindedness”. And the studies (e.g., Jukes) were fraudulent.

Okay, but if it works for dogs, why not people? If I want a female German Shepherd who is good with children, overtly affectionate, agile, medium-sized, good around guns and loud noises, strong bite and obedient, I can go to a breeder and have that precise dog produced. I know that for a fact, because I did exactly that, and she’s licking my face right now...

There are no genes for any of those attributes that I know of. But a breeder can select a male with a bloodline that produces some of these characteristics, and a female whose bloodline supplies the rest, cross the two and bingo! There is the dog, custom-built to order.

So why not people? And why would that be undesirable?

I'm probably not the best person to give an answer, but I will attempt two:

1) If we design animals and develop a better horse, that has little ethical relevance for mankind. But if we manipulate human genes and develop "better people" then we have given ourselves the role of Creator (which we should not) and we would be making people, not in God's image, but in an image that seems pleasing to us. From a Christian standpoint, this is not good for us to do.

2) Historically, eugenics has tended to involve a lot of coercion. Retarded relative? Well, someone will grab her, drive her across town, sterilize her and bring her back home. Don't ask questions, unless you want trouble. Or, if some people (like the Jooooos) are classified as sub-human, then we load them on trains, take them to special camps, and kill them. Great way to improve overall genetic health of the human race.

No. I would say that from an ethical standpoint, this idea reduces us to the level of mere animals (better horses = better humans) and in addition, the implementation of the idea reduces us to the level of devils.

This is not for humans to do.

Intelligence has some genetic component but nurture plays a huge role in how that potential is developed.

There’s a book out called “Disrupting Class” which has a chapter in it about how young children learn that is fascinating. Very early childhood social interaction with the parents plays a key role. He provides references to the research done in that area. It was in chapter 6 IIRC.

It’s well worth reading.

Okay, but if it works for dogs, why not people?

Because people are not dogs.

If I want a female German Shepherd who is good with children, overtly affectionate, agile, medium-sized, good around guns and loud noises, strong bite and obedient, I can go to a breeder and have that precise dog produced. I know that for a fact, because I did exactly that, and she’s licking my face right now... So why not people? And why would that be undesirable?

To answer the question of why it would be undesirable, consider who would be the dog-people, and who would be the dog-people buyers who go to the dog-people breeder to get the precise dog-person they want. And who would be the dog-people breeders, in this scenario?

If someone wants to choose a mate on that criteria, in such an analytical way, that certainly is their choice.

It should NOT under any circumstances, be forced on us by the government or any other elitist, we-know-what’s-good-for-you-even-if-you-don’t group.

Because people are not animals nor a commodity.

Thanks for that.

So if I’ve interpreted correctly what you’ve written, from your viewpoint (and mine as well) Eugenics isn’t so much “false science” that has been proven wrong and discredited, so much as it is an “evil science” that mankind is best not to meddle with for a whole bunch of good ethical reasons, not least of which being that a) we don’t know what we’re doing, and b) even if we did we would misuse Eugenics to serve other-than-noble ends.

Would that be right?

Thanks for your response. You write:

> Because people are not dogs.

(Grin!) Some people might say “more’s the pity”, but I take your point.

> To answer the question of why it would be undesirable, consider who would be the dog-people, and who would be the dog-people buyers who go to the dog-people breeder to get the precise dog-person they want. And who would be the dog-people breeders, in this scenario?

I suppose that might be a role taken up by those who do arranged marriages like they do in some cultures. One of which being muslims...

...ok, which I guess answers that question rather tidily.

I guess where I am getting to in my learning on this thread is that Eugenics isn’t “bad science” or “false science” that has been proven scientifically to be false, but rather that it is “unethical science” or “evil science” that we as humans oughtn’t to meddle with.

Just because we *can* technically do something doesn’t mean that we *have* to or *ought* to or *must* do it.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.