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Typos — p. 93: examplars [= exemplars]; p. 104: Hesslichkeit [= Hässlichkeit]; p. 119: Kluckholn [= Kluckhohn]
Chapter V The Source of Aristocratic Quality — I
31 — The Creature of Quality As already stated, the thesis of this book involves the conception of an aristocratic society as one in which the degree of power wielded by the dominant class is always commensurate with their quality, and in which any increase in their power is always contingent on an increase in their quality. [cf. (1) Chap. I.] Two questions have now to be considered — first, what this quality consists of; and, secondly, how it is produced in human form. In short, we have to determine how exemplars of Flourishing Life, who are able to order their own and their followers' lives in accordance with the minimal conditions essential for a flourishing community, may come to be. Before attempting a solution of this problem, it is important to abandon certain fundamental errors which still cling like spiritual barnacles to our thought on human performance. The greatest of these errors which, in these days of indurated false doctrine, it is difficult to drop, is the belief that a man can do or express what he himself is not; that by taking thought, by study, or long training, a creature who is psycho-physically chaos, confusion, and disharmony, can express, impose, or produce order, harmony, and quality. We speak of "indurated false doctrine" advisedly; for it is centuries old, and derives from the original error, committed over two thousand years ago, of supposing that a man's soul, mind, or psyche, functions independently of his body, and is in its manifestations unrelated to that body's nature. According to this ancient and still modern superstition, education, training, nurture in fact, will make anyone anything that may be desired. The faithful of this superstition might perhaps fight shy of training a man to be a Molière, a Michael Angelo, or a Newton. But, with enviable assurance they will undertake to train modern disharmonious men to be aristocrats, to become a ruling élite, and to stamp order, harmony, and quality on their Age.
From the outset, therefore, we profess our faith only in those procedures which give some promise of producing a people who cannot help expressing order, harmony, and quality, because they are order, harmony, and quality. Looking on Man as a psycho-some, a psycho-physical whole, neither of whose aspects — the psychological or the physical — can function unilaterally, unconditioned by the other, we accept as inevitable the conclusion that he must display quality of both body and spirit before he can measure, assess, appreciate and, above all produce, quality of any kind. The fact that we now know supreme psycho-physical quality only in animal form, in the best bred of our domestic animals, and that we have long lost the very feeling of being a thorough-bred, a creature of psycho-physical quality, a creature like Job's horse — hors concours, on top of the world, calmly and yet deeply exuberant with well-being (Job, Chap. XXXIX) — makes it difficult to imagine what psycho-physical quality in human form must be like. For, transposed into the loftier key of a higher organism such as Man, it would inevitably transcend the kindred feeling of being Job's horse. We who are modestly content to call ourselves "well",, or, according to the pseudo-scientific jargon of the day, "fit", when all we can claim is that we are not at the moment under a doctor; we moderns, whose very features proclaim our chaotic ancestry and, therefore, the pervasive chaos of our whole psycho-physical make-up — how could we know what it feels like to be a thorough-bred and to possess the symmetry, harmony, dignity, and quality of a fine animal? Only yesterday did we learn about the worst of the crimes which for centuries we have been frivolously committing against ourselves. It is not a hundred years since the important truth gradually began to emerge — and ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent of educated people still do not know it — that physical traits, organs, and parts of organs, bones and parts of bones, endocrine glands, body cells and blood cells, may be inherited independently from either parent; so that if parents are disparate, as most parents are today, their child or children are mosaics of odd parts, a confusion of more or less badly adjusted, badly proportioned, badly balanced, bodily components, and cannot, except by a fluke, form a harmonious whole. Thus this worst of all crimes which, for centuries now all civilized peoples have been committing against themselves, has
In its consequences, this crime exceeds in gravity both that which Sir Walter Langdon-Brown describes as preserving "harmful mutations", and leading to a slow deterioration of the "genetic material" of civilized communities (Nature, 23 October, 1943); and that of ignoring, in the choice of a mate, visible, obvious, almost palpable, signs of biological inferiority. At all events, any group of nations which for centuries has been recklessly perpetrating this major crime against themselves, as we of Western Civilization have been doing, cannot reasonably expect to consist of people of quality; least of all can they expect to compose the soil from which an aristocracy may arise. For the selected groups which can qualify as examplars of Flourishing Life, and can be expected to express authentically the demands of that Life, cannot spring from a population every member of which is a living confusion. Here lies, as we shall see, the secret of all aristocracy; and every other condition necessary for the emergence of a ruling élite must prove inadequate if this major condition be not first fulfilled. We should need a poet of the stature of Job to describe a human examplar of Flourishing Life, risen from a people of quality. But where today would such a poet find his model? At all events, our thesis rests on the claim that an aristocracy — a ruling élite in the best sense — is an impossibility where the reckless breeding of populations lacking psycho-physical harmony, symmetry and quality, has long prevailed. And when once we have adduced the biological evidence showing how a people of quality, and the élite emerging from it, is produced, the further historical evidence relating to the actual appearance of such an élite in the past will be examined with special attention to conditions in this country. Provisionally, however, we may state as a proposition to be proved in the sequel, that wherever and whenever an aristocracy in our sense has existed, it has always been the outcome of conditions diametrically opposite to those that have existed for centuries throughout Western Civilization. It has always been the offshoot, the flower, of a people who, by avoiding the reckless mating of disparates, and its dire consequences, have as individual organisms attained a degree of psycho-physical harmony, symmetry, and quality, which has enabled genuine exemplars of Flourishing Life to emerge from their midst. To all those who have grasped the most important of the facts
32 — The Present Difficulty of Perceiving our Parlous Plight
Our eyes, corrupted by long habituation to the inferior in human form, react so differently when we turn from the animal world to gaze on ourselves; we are so much accustomed to look on humanity unexactingly and are so blunted to the spectacle of type-mongrelization, of disorder and confusion presented by every one of our fellow-creatures; we are so familiar with subnormal health, chronic disability and defect, inferior stamina, sub-normal balance, asymmetry, and ugliness; most of us are ready to accept, even as mates, creatures so far removed in quality from our pedigree spaniels, setters, fowls, horses, and cattle, that we have long ceased to notice how deplorable the average human being really is.
And this reckless mongrelization, by making every individual the final and unique product of the combination and permutation of millions of odd and different traits, ends in producing a completely atomized population, in which everyone is unique of his kind in some form of peculiar ugliness, ill-health, or defect. There can be no affinities, no real understanding, either of feeling or of type. Because everybody is a none too prepossessing unicum. Nowhere, however, as already hinted above, does the romantic and gambling expectation of something for nothing display itself more conspicuously than in our still unshaken belief that quality and order can come from these modern atomized populations. It is thought that everything will be all right — or "quite all right", as the mob, top and bottom now say — if only we all cultivate a "sense of humour", acquire "unselfishness", read our poets, try to be good democrats, and above all raise the standard of living. As if quality and order were features of human life and capacity which could be conjured in from outside! A timely remark by Conklin is relevant here. In his Chapter on the Purposive Improvement of the Human Race, contributed to [(73) p. 572], he says: "There is no satisfactory evidence that good environment will produce improved heredity or bad environment, bad heredity." It is too easily forgotten that, despite the alleged considerable improvement in the standard of living in recent years, no corresponding improvement in psycho-physical quality has been registered in the general population. Data given below (see pp. 112, 113) bear this out. But the kind of statement, of which many examples could be quoted, about this failure of improved conditions to enhance human quality, is illustrated by the following remark of the Labour Correspondent of the Sunday Times. On 17 July, 1949, he wrote: "To be frank, it is the judgment of lifelong workers in the East End that the mental quality and moral courage of the mass of dock workers have, if anything, deteriorated while their economic and social conditions have so greatly advanced." But
To do so now is to confess a faith in primitive magic beside which the savage's belief in his idol is wisdom itself. But is there a modern man who does not expect it? — Not that we underrate the importance of at least that part of nurture which consists of sound dieting, for we have already emphasized this importance (68). But the soundest diet will not turn a mongrel into a thoroughbred. In every expression of modern Man, the lack of a sense of order and quality is palpable. Shoddy and Brummagem are enthroned, because modern men are themselves biological Brummagem. Had things been otherwise, even the lowest workman would have fought mechanized mass production, not as the Luddites did, because it threatened to rob the worker of his bread, but because it was an insult to his instinct of workmanship and the sense of quality behind it. This lack of a sense of order and quality is seen in high and low, workman and ruler, in the pecuniary yardstick by which all indiscriminately measure their fellows. It is exhibited in the awe felt for occupants of high office, when nothing but the emoluments of high office remain. It appears in the widespread absence of any critical faculty, whether among the educated or uneducated. There are exceptions, of course, and one of these is machine production. This still exacts and receives a certain amount of good workmanship. But only because in the machine an irreducible minimum of quality and order, both of material and fashioning, is of the nature of the product. Without that minimum it will not work. But even here, we understand from both engineers and habitual users of machinery, that the requirements of the irreducible minimum are not everywhere met. One further exception must be noted. Whilst workmanship has shown a decline in quality in almost every article of use, the quality of salesmanship has advanced by leaps and bounds. There are schools for training in this art. At the time of writing, its refinements and their complexity could hardly be exceeded even if they aimed at turning out expert scientists; the test being, not the extent to which the finished salesman can merely increase his market, but the extent to which he can do so whilst his employers increase the shoddiness of their goods. But only the fewest resent the insult concealed beneath the salesmanship racket. The rest, having forgotten what quality means, no longer know how it recommends itself. Had they remembered, had they in their hands a splinter of the yardstick by which quality is measured, they could not, as we have seen, be cozened to play their part in present-day so-called
So long have they been indoctrinated with the belief that humanity is not dependent on the rules governing the cultivation of quality in other living organisms that, in Man, and consequently in modern civilization, which is his expression, quality has gone by the board. 33 — Why we Moderns know no Aristocrats
Carrel [(105) Chap. I] says with some truth that "in practically every country there is a decrease in the intellectual and moral calibre of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs". Why is this? Why also is there little hope of regenerating the ruling classes from below?
Now in animals and human beings, although the conditions are infinitely more flexible and capable of accommodating adjustments, the same principle applies. When slightly or even grossly incompatible structures are brought together in its general build, there is, of course, nothing like the same rigid unadaptability in the animal or human organism as there is in the machine. For the living organism effects compensations of which the machine is incapable. But — and this is probably true of all living organisms — perfect order, ideal functioning, high-quality performance, and well-being, cannot exist where such accommodations and compensations, whether slight or serious, become necessary. Thus, when disparate couples become parents, there is the constant and inescapable danger that their children will, throughout their constitutions, from the features of their faces to their bones, internal organs, glands, and blood-vessels, be afflicted with disharmonies and disproportions which, even if they do not seriously impair functioning, will reduce efficiency and cause defects and confusion in the individual organism. The reason is that, as almost every character, every organ, and sometimes different parts of the same feature or organ, are inherited independently from either of the two disparate parents and their stock, no harmony, ideal order, or balance can characterize the child of such parents. Consequently, unless the separate sources from which a child derives are approximately uniform, unless there be no appreciable disparities between the corresponding parts of its parents' constitutions (primary and secondary sexual characters apart) the child cannot be free from disproportions and disharmonies. [(128) p. 90.] It is, however, important to grasp from the first that this principle of heredity, by which bodily parts are inherited independently from either parent, operates to the disadvantage of the offspring only if the parents are disparate. It can have no untoward consequences where the parents are biologically standardized and are, therefore, uniform in type throughout, except for their sexual differences. Nor does the term "disparate parents" by any means imply only parents of different nations or races. For, within the same nation, as in modern England, for instance, couples may now be seen by the
Whenever you see European or English people in the mass, what should immediately strike you is that their faces all differ. No series of even three or four seem to conform to a common mould, not to speak of a fine mould. There is an amorphousness, a sort of individualized and wholly unique kind of disharmony and plainness in every one of them. Although the couples among them may be of the same nation and city, they display obvious and often conspicuous differences of type, stature, build, and constitution. Even differences due to disparate endocrinological equipment are common. Tall are paired with short, aquiline with soubrettes, schizothymes with cyclothymes, fat with thin, and heavy with light. And their children you will know have inherited independently the disparate bodily parts of their disparate parents. This aspect of modern civilized couples is so much taken for granted that it is never commented on — a sufficient proof of the marked difference of our standpoint when, from contemplating animals, we look at ourselves. Very rarely do present-day people display enough freshness of vision to notice what is perhaps the most disquieting feature about us moderns! As for being shocked by it — nothing could be further from their minds. As we shall see in a moment, almost every feature which is different in either of two disparate parents may be inherited independently by their child and cause it to be a mosaic of gross or minor incompatibilities. The importance of this fact was noticed in its more conspicuous manifestations by Darwin ninety years ago. He says [(157) Vol. II, Chap. XV], of the crossings of five-toed Dorking fowls with ordinary birds, "the chickens often have five toes on one foot and four on the other". Of the crossing of solid-hoofed pigs with common pigs, he says, "some of the offspring had two feet furnished with properly divided and two with united hoofs." The chapter refers to similar irregularities occurring in the crossing of disparate strains of plants. And he concludes: "With hybrids and mongrels it frequently or even generally happens that one part of the body resembles more or less closely one parent and another part the other parent." Mjoen, in April 1922, adduced evidence to show that disharmonies also occur in the crossing of disparate rabbits. [(56) Vol. XIV, p. 37.]
From the data available in 1927, Crew concluded that "the fact that there are inherent differences in the size of organs and parts is of profound significance when it is remembered that it involves the inevitable sequel that racial and other crossings can lead to serious disharmony." [(113) Chap. VI. The italics are mine, A.M.L., as it is important to note Crew's inclusion of "other crosses" besides those of race in his generalization.] Over eighty years ago, Herbert Spencer wrote: "The offspring of two organisms not identical in constitution is a heterogeneous mixture of the two, and not a homogeneous mean between them." [(117) pp. 397–398.] Recent scientific findings, therefore, compel us to conclude that all symmetry, order, harmony, and ideal proportion in an animal or Man, which evoke the comment "fine creature", can be the outcome only of deriving from parents who are what biologists term homozygous, i.e. genetically uniform. Among the sharply differentiated individuals of all civilized populations today, such "fine creatures" are not only rare but, when they happen to appear, are also wholly freakish; the outcome of a fluke, a happy hereditary chance. Hence the frequency with which the siblings of such "fine creatures" are plain, or actually ugly and inferior of build. The unscientific layman of average intelligence, confronted by the facts about the independent inheritance of bodily parts, does not need to be told what are its deeper implications. He sees at once that, if this principle makes psycho-physical symmetry, order, harmony, and good proportions impossible where descent is from disparate parents and their stocks, it is obvious that the disharmony and disorder cannot be confined to the visible in animals and Man. It may have taken half a century to discover that it does not end there. But was the inference not inevitable from the start? So often are the disproportions and disharmonies faint or elusive; so often are their consequences equally faint or elusive, leading only to chronic unsmooth functioning, that both medical men and intelligent laymen overlook them. Millions do not even know that psycho-physical disabilities may be due to them. Only
Besides, owing to the fact that we moderns of Western Civilization are all now bred from more or less disparate parents, none of us has the experience, the personal knowledge, of the exuberance, buoyancy and joie de vivre, which result from being a perfectly proportioned and harmonious thoroughbred. Hence the standard of what is called "health" is something so modest, so remote from the supreme well-being of the creature bred from a standardized uniform stock, that there is no consciousness of any shortcoming, even when the only reason for claiming to be "healthy" is that one is not in hospital. Among the grosser disabilities which immediately suggest anatomical disproportion and disharmony, as the result of deriving from disparate parents, are, for instance, congenital dislocation of the hip-joint, where the ball of the femur does not fit the pelvic socket. And it is significant that investigators like Bryn found that this disproportion "is especially common in areas where there is an unusually intense mingling of races." [(77) p. 296.] Mjoen makes the same claim and adds: "These abnormalities . . . provoke the suspicion that other organs or parts thereof in the mongrel may show disproportions and disharmonies in size and functional capacity which, though they may not be apparent, may have serious consequences in the creature's life." [(158) 1st article, pp. 171–173.] The child of parents disparate in size may inherit from one parent a colon so large in proportion to the stature he inherits from his other parent, that all his life he may be plagued with symptoms, acute or sub-acute, of the disorder known as "Hirschprung's disease". [(77) p. 377.] Similarly, in the crossing of tall and short, there may be disproportion, not only due to the independent inheritance of the upper and lower body segment from different parents, but also to the fact that the heart and circulatory system may be inherited from the shorter, whilst the stature comes from the taller parent-a condition which often leads to more or less defective functioning. [(79) p. 239.] Davenport shares this view and, referring to the disharmonies resulting from the mating of disparate couples, he speaks of large men with small internal organs and inadequate circulatory systems, which conditions tax the organism. [(79) p. 329.] Crew concurs. He says, "observations show that the lengths of the supra-sternal regions are independently inherited as are also the lengths of the different regions of the lower limbs" [(113) Chap. VI. See also (72) p. 29.] The same principle applies to Rodenwaldt's
Miss Fleming found in mixed crosses between negro and white women in England the character of eye, skin, hair, and lips inherited with some degree of independence [(79) p. 356], whilst in an original monograph on Growth and Development, she gives many facts bearing on our present subject. "I made a study", she says, "of some hundreds of children of mixed Anglo Negro parentage. . . . In those cases where the father was a negro with widely arched jaws and the mother an Englishwoman with a V-shaped palate and crowded teeth, the child sometimes inherited palate shape from one side and the shape of the lower jaw from the other, leading to great disharmony. In one such case the upper jaw was V-shaped and small, and the teeth in it were small, while the lower jaw was large and widely arched, with large teeth, so that these slipped over the outside of the upper lip. This disharmony was sufficiently great to affect speech. In other cases the upper jaw was well arched and the lower small and cramped, causing post-normal occlusion . . . Many cases of heredity of small anomalies in the teeth were noted." [(140) vii.] Talbot, who also found examples of characters independently inherited in the offspring of Negro-Portuguese and Indian parents [(33) p. 98], was one of the earliest investigators to discover, in 1898, in children of disparate English parents, disharmonies of teeth and jaws similar to those noticed by Miss Fleming in negro and English crosses. [(33) pp. 249–250.] Crew also records corresponding data. [(113) Chap. VI.] It is important constantly to remind the reader that disparities between parents are not confined to actual race-crossings, otherwise it might be thought that only where differences of race occur, are disproportions and disharmonies to be expected. It is well, therefore, to recall Crew's remark that in "other crosses", besides those of race, disharmonies result through the independent inheritance of bodily parts from disparate parents. The examples drawn from crosses between races are given only to prove the existence of this feature of the mechanism of heredity. Thus, J. B. S. Haldane observes quite rightly: "If you would forbid a fair-haired Swede to marry a dark Sicilian you would logically be compelled to forbid him from marrying a dark-haired Swede also." [(81) Chap. VI.] It is conceivable that even people afflicted with visible disharmonies and disproportions may nowadays be as viable as the better proportioned, and in fact often are. But it is more difficult to believe that when the internal organs, glands, and the nervous controls of the organism suffer from corresponding disharmonic and disproportions, there can be the same buoyant vitality, serenity,
Crew speaks of the "disharmony . . . between size of body and size of some important organ or organs, disharmony among the various components of the endocrine chain", which can "arise from ill-advised inter racial mating." We add, on his authority, "and from other crosses" of disparates. Mjoen does not even exclude diabetes as probably caused by congenital disharmony; for, he says, the frequency of this disease in Lapp and Norwegian hybrids may be due to large hybrids inheriting their pancreas from the smaller race, with consequent inadequate functioning. [(158) 2nd article, p. 74.] All these facts seem conclusive in support of Crew's claim, published in 1927 and quoted on page 100; and nobody who is aware of them and their import can fail to perceive the error of supposing that a population like ours of modern England, wholly random bred from parents who, in the vast majority of cases, are disparate, could possibly produce, assess, or judge a thing of quality, or be capable of order or harmony. The present prevalence of plainness and downright ugliness which is also to be ascribed to the independent inheritance of bodily parts from disparate parents, also argues a lack of quality in a population. For if the various features of the human face can be inherited independently from disparate parents, it is unlikely that a harmonious and beautiful mask will result in the child, even if each of the parents happens to be good-looking in his or her own way. And thus every plain or ugly person proclaims the existence of a corresponding chaos and disorder in his constitution. Truth to tell, however, not only are the various features of the face inherited independently from either parent, but some of the features themselves may have separate parts which are inherited independently. Thus Crew informs us that at least "four hereditary factors inherited independently" may determine the shape of the nose. [(113) Chap. VI.] This is also stated by Lundborg. [(128) p. 90.] Crew also tells us that "differences in the shape and length of the ear are controlled by many different independent hereditary factors." Lundborg also points out that the chin is probably inherited independently of the parts constituting the angle of the jaw. [(128) p. 36.] Can we wonder that plainness and ugliness should have become as general as they are today and were already sufficiently conspicuous in the middle of last century to attract the attention of an observer as alert as Nathaniel Hawthorne? (See Section 44 infra.) Only in private conversation and very rarely have we heard the present prevailing ugliness commented upon. In January 1949,
In view of what has been said above, however, the intelligent reader will hardly need to be told that such prevalent ugliness, by arguing random breeding from disparate parents, also implies a corresponding condition of chaos, disorder, and disharmony throughout the constitution. And, in this sense, a generally ugly population, like that of modern England, cannot be expected to be a healthy and exuberant population, possessed of quality. It is significant that penetrating observers, like Kretschmer and George Draper, have both claimed a connexion between plain looks and a poor constitution. [(119) pp. 38–39, and (36) p. 59.] There is also an old German proverb which reads: "Hesslichkeit stellt eine schlechte Prognose vor." (Ugliness presupposes a bad prognosis.) Herbert Spencer, without our knowledge of the far-reaching effects of the independent inheritance of bodily parts, also saw in ugliness a sign of "inward imperfections" [(117) p. 393]; whilst in [(26, Chap. IV] evidence is given of the prevalent ugliness among mental defectives. Hence the large body of data we possess relating to the reduced viability and general psycho-physical inferiority of mongrels, not to mention mongrels to the nth generation such as most of us in Europe and America now are. Where there is no optimal symmetry and harmony of the bodily and, above all, of the subcutaneous parts; where these are not ideally proportioned one to another so as to ensure smooth uneventful functioning, the man, like the animal, is not a first-class machine, he has no order or harmony and is not, in fact, a thing of quality. When, therefore, it is remembered that, besides being unstandardized and deriving from unstandardized stocks, modern people inherit either the predisposition to disease, or are actually tainted with diseases known to be hereditary, it is no more than a mockery to allow them to believe that with P. T., good food, and a free Medical Service, they can hope to be even healthy and vigorous, not to mention possessed of that buoyancy, exuberance, and quality which we associate with a thoroughbred animal. In [(26) Chap. III] there is a list of authorities who testify to the impaired vitality of mongrel stocks and to their confused instinctual, emotional, and intellectual life. Davenport (73), in the chapter on "The Mingling of Races", gives many instances of this; whilst Boas, of the Columbian School, who is averse to all race discrimination, is compelled to admit that, in Negro and White
There is also the positive evidence in favour of stabilized uniform stocks which shows them to be of better stamina, sounder health, and more resistant than random-bred people. In [(26) Chap. III] many data are given to this effect. But of peculiar interest is Livingstone's discovery that syphilis was "incapable of permanence in any form in persons of pure African blood anywhere in the centre of the country. In persons of mixed blood it is otherwise." (Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, 1857, p. 128.) Bryk confirms this of the East African Negro (Neger Eros, p. 124); whilst the claim that neuro-syphilis is never found in "a true native" of the Sudan is made by Dr. T. F. Hewer [(16) 21.7.51] and confirmed in [(16 of 21 April, 1951]. In the same issue (p. 897) the claim is repeated in respect of the Chinese. Voisin remarks of the closely-inbred islanders of Batz, that "cancer is unknown and only one woman is known to be consumptive." (Contributions à l'Histoire des Mariages Consanguins, 1865, p. 435.) Shapiro, in (37), reports similar facts about the Norfolk Islanders, who are also closely inbred. And so on. When, however, we turn from the well-known opponents of random breeding to authorities who defend the doctrine of universal mixture, and find to our surprise that they, too, acknowledge "lowered vitality" in hybrids, our gratification is fraught with some perplexity. Could the admission have been made in an unguarded moment, or was the context thought sufficiently abstruse not to be widely read? Be this as it may, we certainly find [(109) Intro., p. 21] the suggestion that hybrids may have lowered vitality; whilst Mayr, [(143) pp. 266 267], remarks that "no sufficient reason has yet been found for the narrowness of many hybrid zones of long standing except possibly a lowered viability of the hybrid." Before closing this section, reference must be made to one other serious consequence of random breeding from disparate stocks and
Darwin, in [(157) Chap. XIII], shows that out-breeding leads to reversion in the cultivated distinct types of various species — pigeons, ducks, horses, rabbits, cattle, pigs, etc. — and produces throw-backs to the original common ancestor of the whole group of varieties. We cannot give even the briefest summary of all his findings, but will concentrate on his experiments with pigeons, which are classical. He took a male Nun (white, with head, tail, and primary wing feathers black), a breed established as long ago as 1600, and crossed him with a female red common Tumbler, which variety generally breeds true. "Thus", he says, "neither parent had a trace of blue plumage, or of bars on the wing and tail." He reared several young from this cross and all of them had characters of the wild rock pigeon, from which all distinct types of pigeons are descended — blue in their plumage, of which the parent stocks had no trace, besides one or two other primitive markings. He obtained similar reversionary characters from crossing male black Barbs with female red Spots, snow-white Fantails with Trumpeters, and so on; and he came to the conclusion that "the act of crossing in itself gives an impulse towards reversion." [(157) II, p. 13.] Half a century later, A. D. Darbishire confirmed these findings by crossing the Japanese waltzing mouse and the Albino (Breeding and the Mendelian Discovery, 1911, Chap. VI, VIII, and XIV), whilst Archdall Reid records similar phenomena in Principles of Heredity, pp. 69–75. Commenting on his discoveries regarding reversion which, we remind the reader, related to mammals as well as birds, Darwin says, "we may perhaps infer that the degraded state of so many half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition produced by the act of crossing, even if mainly due to the unfavourable moral conditions under which they are generally reared." [(157) II, p. 21.] Nor can we altogether rule out the possibility that both the pervasive ugliness, as well as the frequency of low and coarse types in modern civilized crowds, may be due in part to this factor of reversion, following upon reckless random breeding. It is also conceivable that even the declining intelligence of modern peoples may be the result not only of the confused mental states caused by the excessive mixture of different strains, types, and individuals,
Darwin also found the phenomenon of reversion in crossing plants [(157) Chaps. XIII and XXVII], whilst, strange to say, in the Commons on 13 July, 1939, Lloyd George (later Earl Ll. G.), whom none could suspect of advocating aristocratic principles, put the matter so vividly that his exact words must be given. Speaking of the bud-pruning and graft-crosses of apple trees at Churt, he said: "You cut off all the bud branches that produce a particular apple and then graft these little bud branches on to other apple trees in order to convert that stem to the production of a particular crop. But I will tell you what happens sometimes. Unless you are very careful . . . the old stock breaks out and if it does it destroys the tree. You do not get either a pippin or a Bramley. All that happens is that the tree is so utterly muddled between the one and the other that it produces only sour and desiccated crabs" — the primitive fruit from which all varieties derive. It is not known whether Lloyd George was aware of the findings of Darwin and other later scientists regarding the degenerative consequences of cross-breeding owing to the phenomenon of reversion; but, at all events, he seems to have understood perfectly what probably occurs in such cases. For it will be noted that he says, "the tree is so utterly muddled between the one and the other" that it regresses to a former stage of evolution. Three years before this important statement to the Commons, we had written, as the result of a study of the relevant data [(26) p. 143], that "Nature has a tendency to revert when she is confused by marked or excessive crossings of divergent types"; and had
For, in contending that cancer is a degenerative disease, the authorities describe it as an aberration of certain body cells by which they regress to an embryonic type, and to their invasion and destruction of the mature cells about them. As Lockhart-Mummery has pointed out, cancer is due to a diminution in the natural stability of his (the cancer patient's) cell nuclei. (The Origin of Cancer, 1934, Chap. VIII. See also Hastings Gilford, F.R.C.S., The Cancer Problem and its Solution.) There must be other contributory factors, such possibly as prolonged irritation, trauma, an impure condition of the blood, etc., which in certain individuals expedite this anarchy of certain cells. But, if we accept Carrel's view that the tissues and blood cells "are apparently endowed with instincts which continue to manifest themselves even when they become purposeless" [The Relation of the Cells to One Another (73), p. 216], why should it seem strange that they should become "utterly muddled" when, owing to random breeding between disparate types, cells with varying instincts are brought together? Carrel [(105) Chap. III, Sec. 15] declares that "the organism seems to have become more susceptible to degenerative diseases", whilst Sir Humphrey Rolleston, writing on What Medicine has done and is doing for the Race [(73), p. 447], says that nowadays "one out of every seven persons reaching the age of thirty years will die of Cancer", and adds that whereas in 1884 the annual mortality rate per million persons living was 563 for Cancer and 2,574 for Tuberculosis, in the corresponding figures for 1928 the proportion is almost reversed. He says the mortality from Cancer "is increasing, though this may in part be due to the survival of a large number of people, as a result of improved hygienic conditions, to the age when malignant disease most commonly occurs." At all events, there can be no doubt about the increase, for whereas in 1939 the death-rate from cancer for men and women together was 3,255 per million, in 1949 it was 3,752 and in 1950, 3,989. (The Times, 31.5.51.) See also [(16) 28.4.51], for a table showing steady annual increase since 1949. This alleged improvement of hygienic conditions and the longevity it secures, does not mean that more are now healthy than in the past. Carrel maintains, on the contrary, that precisely these improved conditions are helping to keep alive "many human beings of poor quality." [(105) Chap. VI, Sec. 7.] It may not, therefore, necessarily follow that the longer lives of modern men and women have much bearing on the increase of cancer, especially as there is some evidence to show that "cancer
All we can be certain of is that, despite "improved hygienic conditions" which have prolonged life, deaths from cancer are not declining. Consequently, in the light of our knowledge of the body's cell constitution and of reversion and its causes, it is conceivable that this last phenomenon may be a contributory factor in the increase of malignant disease. Again, whether this be granted or not, the compelling evidence of reversion in cross-breeds leads us to infer a disturbing influence in the mere process of cross-breeding which unstabilizes the cells of the organism, whether in a tree or an animal, and we do not need to accept Carrel's theory of cell-instincts [(73) p. 218] to see that this may be so. At all events, since in probing the disquieting mystery of cancer no clue should be neglected, we quote the following interesting statement. It is admittedly meagre evidence of the connexion here claimed. Seeing, however, that, as far as we are aware, we were the first to suggest this connexion in (26) seventeen years ago, that we had no private laboratory in which to test the claim, and that we appear still to be alone in suspecting a connexion between the increase of cancer and the relatively recent practice of wild random-breeding between disparates, it is no wonder that more evidence in support of our claim is not to hand. What has been discovered about it, therefore, has depended more on accident than research, and for this reason we may regard the following as significant: In an article, "Laying Cocks and Crowing Hens", Dr. Alan W. Greenwood, in 1947, wrote: "In the study of Cancer also fowls are important. Here we have stumbled on a curious and perhaps important phenomenon. At Edinburgh we were heavily involved with breeding experiments designed to analyse the hereditability of production. Inbred lines are maintained and we have been in the habit of supplying young chicken for research work in many directions. The usefulness of our stock for cancer work was suspect until it was determined that the relatively poor response to inoculations with cancer material was in the offspring of our particular inbred line. In these it was extremely difficult to induce cancer which proved rapidly fatal to most other birds." (The Countryman, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, p. 208.) This seems to indicate that the body cells of inbred birds of uniform stocks possess greater stability than those of other birds, and lends considerable colour to the suggestion outlined above,
To anyone aware of the nature of a malignant growth, the connexion suggested above between increased random-breeding from disparates and increased mortality from cancer might have been reached a priori. It is, therefore, all the more interesting to see that Dr. Greenwood's statements may ultimately prove to contain a valuable truth. 34 — Supplementary Remarks on Random Breeding from Disparates
In the previous section, it was shown that the outcome of random breeding from parents that are disparate, is a population composed of men and women each of whom is unique, and defective in health, build, stamina, harmony, and looks. It was also pointed out that, as such creatures are not examples of either order or quality in themselves, it is otiose to expect either order or quality of them.
At all events, Lundborg believed that random-breeding produces changes in the constitution as a result of the disequilibrium of the nervous system and the endocrine balance. (Hereditas, Vol. II, R.B.M., p. 79.) Of random-bred folk, he says: "No definite line points the way for them, they waver between disconnected and hereditary tendencies." [(128) p. 163.] Mjoen, in an article already referred to [(56) Vol. XIV, p. 36], says, "the main feature" of the Lapp-Norwegian hybrid is "an unbalanced mind", and he adds (p. 38), that "the growing criminality [in Western civilization?] is due to unharmonic race-crossing". He uses the term "race crossing". But since there are no pure races in Europe now, it is preferable to speak only of the random breeding of disparate types, strains, and stocks. Davenport, alluding to the same kind of people, says, "they will tend throughout their lives to be restless, dissatisfied, ineffective", and he declares that much modern crime and insanity is due to inherited, badly adjusted, mental and temperamental differences. [(72) p. 234.] There are also many independent witnesses to the fact that nervous unbalance is disquietingly common. Carrel [(105) Chap. IV, Sec. 10] says: "The frequency of neurosis and psychosis is doubtless the expression of a very grave defect of modern civilization." And, speaking of conditions in the U.S.A. where about 68,000 new cases are admitted to insane asylums every year, he points out that "if the admissions continue at such a rate, about one million of the children and young people who are today attending schools and colleges will, sooner or later, be confined in asylums." Dr. Frances Harding, referring to the same matter, says: "If the growth of insanity continues at its present rate every man, woman, and child will probably be mad by the year 2039." (Daily Press, 8.11.36.) Mannheim, as already seen [(104) Part V, III] acknowledges a rising tide of neurosis in the individual today." True, he attributes it to our institutional chaos; and in [(43) Chap. V, iii] again implies this; but at least he recognizes it as a fact. Trigant Burrow, in [(107) Chap. V], speaks of modern man's "universal neurosis", and adds (Chap. VI): "The universality of
George Herbert Betts, in [(64) Chap. III], declares that "it is likely that no one of us is wholly free from certain 'twists' of personality that keep him from perfect balance and adjustment." Indeed, as was already claimed in [(26) Part II, Chap. II], it is not at all improbable that a high percentage of the so-called "conflicts" treated by the New Psychology are really congenital, and their "psychogenetic" history, diagnosed as such and treated by the psycho analytical therapy, is probably but a scientific rationalization of conditions that have another meaning. As the reader of (26) will appreciate, some doctors are beginning to see this. Briffault says (The Mothers, Vol. I, Chap. VI): "As regards the liability for a tendency to nervous disorder to assume a more pronounced form in the offspring, my impression is that such a liability is considerably greater when the two parents arc dissimilar than when they are similar in their constitutions and heredity; for in addition to the tendency itself there is then superadded the unstabilizing effect of the clash of two unharmonious heredities." Freud and Adler, whom it is unnecessary to quote at length, believed that in their time neurotic symptoms were exceedingly prevalent. In his Civilization and its Discontents, Freud, however, gives as usual a sexual twist to the roots of the neurosis; whereas Adler, who is, we submit, nearer the truth, emphasizes the importance of organ-inferiority. And here, many a careful observer of modern humanity will confirm him. It is men's deep and very real half-conscious sense of the malaise caused by their psycho-physical conflicts and disharmonies, which gives them their "inferiority feelings", and it is to these chronic inferiority feelings that, in a flash, any trivial provocation, slight, or vexation, becomes anchored. But, joined to the incessant drag within them of their chronic sense of inferiority, the relatively trifling provocation acquires so much weight that we get those passionate outbursts of hostility and anger which make adult life so difficult. (Compare with Section 13 above.) Indeed, it is hard to understand how anyone contemplating us twentieth-century Europeans, not with the jaded eye of habit, but with a fresh critical eye, can fail to see the jumble of incompatibles every one of us is. The fact that Medicine takes surprisingly little notice of the many untoward consequences of these incompatibilities and that, despite the prevalence of ill-health, many highly random-bred people pass as healthy, induces even observers trained in biology to ignore the consequences of both random breeding from disparate parents and of the independent inheritance of bodily parts from
As Thomas Hunt Morgan says, however: "Scientific ethics, based on knowledge of the harm that may be done to future generations by reckless propagation, is not yet strong enough to persuade those carrying injurious traits to desist from propagation." [(138), p. 210.] Nevertheless, apart from the harm caused by the transmission of injurious traits by reckless propagation, it cannot be denied that constitutional disharmony and chaos play a very important part in modern psycho-physical disabilities. When we hear from Lord Horder that "one person out of every ten is too dull or too unhealthy to be absorbed in industry" (Address before the Academy of Medicine in New York in May 1936. Daily Press, 19.5.36); when, in answer to a question in the Commons on 1 February, 1943, Arthur Henderson said: "One in five of the men called up for National Service is rejected on medical grounds" (Daily Press, 26.2.43); and we read the deplorable facts about recruits revealed by Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery at the Royal Eye Hospital, Southwark, on 10 October, 1947; when, moreover, we are informed that "in general only one out of every ten people you meet in the street is really physically fit" (Health the Unknown, by John Comerford, 1947, p. 67), we should bear in mind that even among the small proportion of modern people assumed to be healthy, a narrow scrutiny would most probably reveal a large percentage afflicted with all the sub-acute symptoms of malaise typical of random-bred civilized mankind, though not displaying any diagnosable morbidity. Otherwise the universality of neurotic symptoms in our civilization would be unexplained. In spite of all the facts advanced in Section 33 above, The Columbian School of Anthropology, by minimizing its gravity, try cavalierly to ignore the whole phenomenon of disharmony and confusion
For instance, Ashley Montagu mentions with satisfaction that only in 1 of 119 children of Chinese fathers and white mothers, "was there any evidence of any asymmetric or disharmonious physical character in the hybrid." The child in question had one orbit "Chinese in shape, the eye dark opaque brown and Mongoloid fold marked. The other orbit was English in type, eye colour the grey with a brown net so common in English people, and there was no Mongoloid fold." [(96) Chap. 8.] But in his satisfaction at finding only .84 per cent of 119 mongrels conspicuously disharmonious, he fails to consider that other less obvious confusions and disharmonies, some subtle, others gross, probably afflicted the whole group. In contradiction of the compelling facts assembled in Section 33, moreover, the Columbian School tells us that what they call "racial mixture", but which, as we have seen, should now be termed "mixture of types, stocks, and strains", has no untoward effects. On what scientific grounds can Ruth Benedict, for instance, dogmatically affirm that "modern instances of the evils of racial mixture do not prove that intermixture is a biological evil"? [(134) p. 47.] And, except before an uninformed audience, what conviction does Spitz expect to carry with his sweeping statement that "there are neither proved advantages nor disadvantages of racial mixture"? [(116) 5, iii.] Goldenweiser is guilty of a similarly dogmatic and inaccurate assertion when he says [(82) p. 401]: "We need not intermarry with Mongolians, but no harm will result if we do." What is the precise meaning of the word "harm" in this statement? Nor is Unesco any less culpable when, in its Statement by Experts on Race Problems, it sets out as "at present scientifically established", the following conclusion on miscegenation: "There is no evidence that race mixture as such produces bad results from the biological point of view." (Statement 4 of Summary of Findings. New Biology. Penguin Books IX, p. 127.) In order to substantiate such claims, it would be necessary to refute all the data given above, not to mention those to the same effect that I have not had space to include. These data cover over ninety years of research by investigators who, in view of the lapse of time alone, must be regarded as independent, and their testimony all converges towards the same conclusion. Are we not entitled, therefore, to place the onus of proving the error of this converging testimony on those who contest the conclusion to which it points? At most it might be conceded that, as a rule, the bodily parts independently inherited do not now affect actual viability; in fact that such confused organisms as result from breeding from disparate
It is clear from this passage that Rodenwaldt appreciated what is here being contended-that the confusions and disharmonies, to which breeding from disparates inevitably leads, are none the less handicapping for not now being actually lethal; and whether we look on such badly-bred organisms merely from the standpoint of their bodily functions or from that of their feelings, emotions, tastes, and volitional powers, we cannot fail to recognize in them the consequences of chaos and disorder. No wonder, then, that Carrel should be moved to declare that "the future discoverer of a method of inducing tissues and organs to develop harmoniously will be a greater benefactor to humanity than Pasteur himself." [(105) Chap. III, Sec. 14.] The only incomprehensible feature of this statement is that Carrel should not have known Nature's way of contriving that tissues and organs shall develop harmoniously in the individual. It is this subject which will now occupy us. 35 — How Quality is Produced in a Living Organism
What, then is the man of quality? How does he come about? How in the past was mankind able to produce the aristocrat?
Seeing, now, that even at this late hour in the world's history, when peoples untouched by Western civilization become ever more rare, we are nevertheless able to classify certain distinctive types among primitive peoples, all of whom have become so through being highly standardized by means of segregation and inbreeding in a stable environment, we have a belated and admittedly fast-disappearing concrete demonstration of the validity of the above assumptions. Where we find such peoples, they are conspicuously alike, and the antiquity of their origins, coupled with their total lack of artificial aids to imperfect functioning, argues a degree of viability, stamina, and efficiency of which we of latter-day Europe have no knowledge. Turn to any treatise on ethnology, and the meaning of the above will immediately become clear. Between the individual members of distinct races of primitives, a striking resemblance will be observed, not merely that which the untrained eye perceives in any group of strange people, but a resemblance which might result from being cast in the same mould. They present a marked contrast to the infinite diversity of facial and bodily features, statures and endocrine characters to which attention was called in Section 33, and which is now to be observed among the highly differentiated members of, say, a London or Paris crowd, which, in their ignorance, most people regard as merely "interesting". On leaving such a crowd in a modern metropolis to confront a group of people from a segregated, inbred, and standardized community, we get the same impression as when we leave a flock of birds random-bred from every variety of domestic fowl, in order to look at a flock of Light Sussex or Rhode Island Reds. The former, displaying all the possible combinations and permutations of their mixed ancestral strains, may present a spectacle of individual uniqueness; but the experienced poultry-keeper does not need to have studied the relevant text-books to know that stamina and character, not to mention many acquired qualities, are lower in these random-bred than in the standardized stocks. Thus, in a state of nature, when the rigorous elimination of individuals below an optimal level proceeds automatically from one
Thus a strictly segregated people, through the inbreeding which segregation imposes, tend in time to become uniform, and this uniformity means that conflicts, disharmonies, and discords of a physiological and psychological kind have been eliminated. Now it is important to note that a standardized tribe or community of this kind can have offspring that are disharmonious, unbalanced, and afflicted with conflicts in their psycho-physical make-up, only if they mix with others outside their group who are differently constituted. And they then become what is known as a miscegenated stock, inheriting odd and incompatible bodily parts independently from their disparate parents. Except for the stress here laid on the supreme importance of the consequence of the independent inheritance of bodily parts from disparate parents, a factor in inheritance to which attention has already been called in two books (26) and (68), all anthropologists, of what school soever, are agreed concerning the above outline of principles. From Sir Arthur Keith to his doctrinal opposite, Dr. Boas, all maintain that the segregation of any group of men or animals, together with the inbreeding such segregation imposes, ultimately makes the group psycho-physically uniform so that breeding from disparate couples and the diversity and disharmonies this produces, becomes impossible.
The following excerpts from some of the leading modern anthropologists will be seen to bear out what is maintained above. Ruth Benedict, for instance, writes: "Geneticists count that with the strictest inbreeding for some seventeen generations — which would mean today the continuous inbreeding of some strain since before Columbus was born — they can get a strain which satisfied genetic requirements of purity; it would breed true." [(134) p. 39.] By "breeding true" we must here understand that process of reproduction in which the offspring of any two parents in the group would be not only like their standardized parents, but also like the rest of the group. Of large urban centres, she says: "These vast concentrations, drawn from every corner of the earth . . . do not give the conditions under which racial types readily become fixed. Such conditions are represented rather by the peasant populations of much of Europe — people rooted in the land they cultivate, and inbreeding within narrow confines" (pp. 41–42). This accounts for Boas's statement that "none of our modern populations is stable from a hereditary point of view." [(7) Chap. II.] "There certainly existed", Ruth Benedict observes, "in earlier times many areas of characterization, the representatives of which are not found today, though their blood is inextricably mingled in degrees in surviving races." [(134) p. 41.] J. W. Bews (15), says: "Inbreeding leads to racial or genetic purity. Races become uniform by inbreeding . . . Moreover, through the action of Natural Selection, undesirable or inferior types tend ultimately to be eliminated and sound types preserved, so that inbreeding ultimately may lead to the production of sound good types which are genetically pure, or in other words, stable types" (p. 54). Boas (131), says: "Racial heredity implies that there must be unity of descent, that there must have existed at one time a small number of ancestors of definite bodily form, from which the present population has descended. . . . In isolated communities, where the same families have intermarried for generations the differences are less than in larger communities" (p. 5). Of the uniform type found in the inbred populations of a small Spanish village and a South Italian village, he says: "Since all families are interrelated, it is clear that all the families are very
In [(7) Chap. II], Boas says of the uniformity of type due to inbreeding in segregated communities: "The Eskimos of North Greenland, for instance, have been isolated for centuries. Their numbers can never have exceeded a few hundred . . . The ancestors of the tribe were presumably a small number of Eskimos who happened to settle there and whose blood flows in the veins of all the members of the present generation. The people all bear a considerable likeness . . . We have information of this kind from one of the isolated Tennessee valleys, in which people have intermarried among themselves for a century. The family lines in the community are very much alike." [Many such examples are given in (26).] Kluckholn [(99) Chap. I] says of primitive societies: "Commonly there is a high degree of biological inbreeding so that any member of the society, chosen at random, has about the same biological inheritance as any other." In [(III) p. iii] Keith says: "If a group is to work out the evolutionary destiny inherent in its genes, it is necessary, not only that it should be isolated, thus preventing intercrossing, but that its integrity and its perpetuation should be maintained for a long succession of generations." All such groups "are inbreeding societies" (p. 14 (For confirmation of the view that isolation and inbreeding are necessary for the production of a uniform type, see also J. B. S. Haldane [(81) Chap. V].) In short, throughout the book, Keith argues that only in segregated and inbreeding groups has genetic homogeneity been achieved. As instances of island groups who through segregation and inbreeding have developed specific traits, he says: "Many of the populations of the smaller islands of the Mediterranean are characterized by peculiarities of their head forms and blood groupings" (p. 142). Quoting S. Hanson on the natives of the Faroes, he adds: "The fiords and valleys of the islands facilitate the formation of small communities, differing in mental capacity as in bodily form. Such communities could not fail, when removed to small distant islands, to develop into distinct types." (Ibid.) He also quotes Sir William Flower who, reporting on a collection
The business of such groups or corporations, he says, is "to nurse and develop" their "stock of genes". He gives two conditions necessary to this end: (1) The tribe or group "must endure for a long age"; (2) It must "remain intact and separate from all neighbouring and competing tribes." [(55) p. 23.] Ruth Benedict implies much the same idea regarding a "stock of genes" developed by segregated and inbred peoples, when she points out how, under such conditions, "curious specializations occur. The Lapps have a ridge along the middle of the palate, and the Inca of Peru specialized in an interparietal bone in the skull. These are anatomical minutiæ which arose originally by mutation and have been made common in those corners of the world by inbreeding of family lines." [(134) p. 39.] Kluckhohn also calls attention to this matter and tells us that "the Japanese have an unusual muscle in their chest." [(99) Chap. IV.] Mottram makes a similar allusion when he says that the regression of the thymus gland starts earlier in Jews than in Gentiles. [(118) Chap. VII], Crew also gives examples of the same kind in [(113) Chap. VI]. In larger groups, the present representatives of which probably display the characters acquired after the separation and dispersal of the original humanoid stem, we see such specializations as peculiar hair form, pigmentation, nose and lip formation, etc. But in the different blood groups, too, we probably have to recognize the different branches of the human species; and the fact that, in blood transfusions "if the wrong combination is made the result is fatal to the patient, for the red blood corpuscles are precipitated and agglutinated and stop up the capillaries", vividly illustrates the importance of affinity, at least in this sphere. [(138) p. 47.] But, if it is important in this sphere, because the effects of disparity are so immediate and dramatic, why is it assumed by many anthropologists and geneticists that it is not important in other spheres? It may be strongly suspected that it is because, in other spheres, the principle of disharmony and incompatibility works not only less dramatically, but, in the majority of cases, in a manner too hidden and chronic to give rise to obvious symptoms. It has certainly been argued by some investigators that even today the blood groups are still to some extent localized. For instance, "group A is commonest in
In cases where the blood factor Rh. plays any part, i.e. when one parent is "Rhesus positive" and the other "Rhesus negative", the incompatibility is so severe that it may cause death in their children; whilst a transfusion of blood, in which the donor's was incompatible with the receiver's from the standpoint of the Rhesus factor, might prove equally fatal. Another very significant fact about blood groupings is mentioned by David Harley. In his Blood Groups of Man in Theory and Practice [1938 (6)], he says: "It has been reported that successful skin grafting from one person to another can occur only when the individuals are of the same blood group." Returning now to our main theme, it may be pointed out that as the authorities for this section have been selected from rival schools of anthropologists, no purpose can be served by multiplying the evidence supporting the claim that, in a state of nature, men tend, whether as tribes, groups, or clans, to live as isolated inbreeding communities, in which uniformity of type and therefore homogeneity of genetic equipment are ultimately established. Keith, indeed, maintains that "right down to the dawn of civilization the habitable earth formed a mosaic of separated territories and of peoples" . . . and he adds: "the segregation of mankind into a multitude of small units came to an end with the dawn of civilization." [(111) pp. 3 and 16.] Whilst Frank H. Hankins, estimates at several thousands of years, "the time of the separation [and dispersal?] of the original humanoid stem into those branches which evolved the existing types of men". [(127) p. 291.] So that down to the dawn of civilization, we may picture the human world as composed of numerous distinct communities, inhabiting delimited areas; and assume that in each of them there could have been no marked disparity between parents, because of the stabilized uniformity of type that had been reached. Consequently, all these various peoples had optimal harmony and proportion between their bodily parts, and on that account a viability which enabled them to survive in health and soundness, despite their lack of artificial aids and medical resources. We must assume, in fact, what most original discoverers and explorers actually report of them — that they were fine animals. As J. W. Bews says (p. 118 above), in the circumstances described, "races became uniform . . . undesirable or inferior types tend ultimately to be eliminated, and sound types preserved." For
A priori, this conclusion is inevitable. Because, if homo sapiens has existed half a million years or more, it is difficult to explain his survival in various differentiated types the world over, at least in primitive conditions, unless we assume that his way of life made him a fine animal. That an important part of the quality accounting for the viability as well as the beauty of primitives, often noticed by explorers, must be the harmony and optimal proportions of their bodily parts, is moreover, indicated by the fact that where, in the past, Man has been found as a thoroughbred, the condition of homogeneity, i.e. of uniformity of type, as the outcome of segregation and inbreeding, has always been present. We certainly have evidence in archæology of inter-tribal wars, invasions, and the appropriation of new territory by peoples who either ousted, exterminated, or else mingled with and absorbed other races. But, even if such occurrences may be reckoned as frequent, it does not really affect the picture. For we do know that until relatively recent times the environment of primitive man was very stable, that things moved with extreme slowness and that, therefore, even if mingling did take place, it was probably always followed by long periods of isolation and inbreeding, which restored homogeneity or uniformity to the populations thus genetically disturbed. In this respect it is relevant to remark that anthropologists as a whole are so much convinced of the power of continued isolation and inbreeding to evolve a homogeneous population that, speaking of present-day English people, with their individual differences, both of quality, health, and type, Hankins says: "If isolation could be enforced for another thousand years or more it might then be possible to speak of them as the British race" [(127) p. 281], meaning that they would have acquired morphological uniformity, or what Ruth Benedict calls, "the genetic requirements of purity". Ruth Benedict herself propounds the same principle when she says [(134) p. 42]: "If . . . every man's life were safe only within the walls of Britain or London, if this persisted for generations, then heterogeneous populations of the moment would, in course of time, become homogeneous, that is, something that would warrant the name of a stable race." Darwin recognized the same fact in regard to "giving uniformity to the individuals of the same species." [(157) Vol. II, Chap. XV.]  has a similar passage when he says of the Spanish, Italian, French, German, English, and American nations: "Could any of these nations exist for some millenniums without further
Keith sums up the principle in a line when he says: "Nations are incipient races." [(55) p. 140.] Of course, he means only in the event of their receiving no accretions from outside. Thus he says [(44) p. 28]: "Give the inhabitants of any land a national spirit, let that land be preserved intact over many generations, and a race which answers Huxley's definition will certainly appear." Nor, as we might expect, is the case any different with animals. There is no doubt, for instance, that the process known as "raciation" (or race-making) as well as of "speciation" (or species-making), in each of which uniformity of type is the result, are brought about only through isolation and inbreeding in groups separated from their original stock. Thus Mayr [(143) pp. 33 and 35], says: "It is becoming more certain with every investigation that species descend from groups of individuals which become separated from the other members of the species through physical or biological barriers and diverge during this period of isolation. The concept of the isolated population as incipient species is of the greatest importance for the problem of speciation." And "in most species of animals and probably plants every population differs genetically to a lesser or greater degree from every other population of the species". Furthermore, on p. 155, we find the following: "A new species develops if a population which has become geographically isolated from its parental species acquires during the period of isolation characters which promote, or guarantee reproductive isolation when the external barrier breaks down." See also Allee [(153) p. 103], for a similar point of view. Whilst (op. cit., pp. 157–158) says of racial differentiation in all living organisms: "organic variability, adaptability to changed conditions,eventual hereditary of the newly developed and sustained characters, and prolonged segregation of the new groups", are the causes, and he points out that the "phenomenon of raciation, i.e. of differentiation into races is common to all organisms. It is an important . . . necessary step towards speciation."There is no need to labour the point. The evidence in favour of the fact already noticed regarding human beings — that isolation and inbreeding ultimately produce uniformity of type in a group and may, if prolonged, lead to a new race and finally to a new species, is equally true of animals. Thus, to mention only one instance of the sort, J. B. S. Haldane [(25) p. 35], tells us that "after twenty or more generations of brother and sister mating [in guinea pigs] there is no more resemblance between parent and offspring than between cousins". |
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