Facts and Fictions of Life

I know a man in New York City who had what is called a "family history" of consumption, who was rejected on that account by every life insurance company in this country thirty years ago. Well, that frightened him within an inch of his life; but with that inch he set to work to build his house "facing the other way," as he expressed it to me when I met him ten years ago, when he was, as he still is, a hale, hearty old gentleman. He is not and never could have been exactly robust; but he is as well, as happy and as content as the average man who has not inherited his unfortunate potentiality. It is true that nothing but intelligent and wise care all these years, nothing but his temperate and judicious life, could have compassed this end. I use the word temperate in its general sense. So far as I know he has not denied himself any of the best of life, which he has been amply able to secure; but he has at all times kept his house "facing the other way." His hereditary threat, while it has not driven him with a lash, has, it is true, lived in the back yard – which it does and will and must with us all, no matter what our environment or wisdom may be; but we need not foolishly throw open the windows, swing back the doors and invite it to take possession, while our own individuality moves down into the coal cellar.

I have taken as illustrations in both of these papers inherited disease and its developments, but this is done only for convenience and because it will explain more fully, clearly and easily to most people what is meant. That our heredity is equally strong and certain in its mental and moral potentialities and tendencies is also true.9 It is likewise true that the environment – the conditions under which we develop, curb or direct our natural tendencies – has a great and modifying rôle to play.

If placed in the cradles of luxury, would not all trace of mental, moral and physical heredity of a fortunate type disappear from the darlings of Murray Hill in their adopted environment of squalor and vice; and would not the haggard and half-starved, ill-nurtured waifs of Mulberry Bend blossom as the rose in strength and virtue in their new environment of luxury and of wholesome and healthful surroundings? Just here a digression seems necessary; for while I have no doubt that the change (even on the terms usually implied) would work wonders in both sets of infants, still it is to be remembered that for such a test to tell anything of real value to science, the exchange would need to be made upon another basis from that which is generally used as an argument, because it is incorrectly assumed that the children of luxury (as a rule) are born with clean and lofty heredity. This is, alas, so far from the case that it is almost a truism that "the highest and the lowest" (meaning the richest and the poorest) are "nearest together in action and farthest apart in appearance, only." They both frequently give to their children tainted mental, moral and physical natures with which to contend. The self-indulgence of the young men of the "upper classes" leaves a burned-out, undermined and tainted physical heredity almost a certainty for their children, while the ethical tone of such men – their moral fibre – is higher only in appearance and the ability to do secretly that which puts the tough of Mulberry Bend in the penitentiary because he has not the gold to gild his vices and to dazzle the eyes of society. The exchanged children, therefore, would not be so totally different in inherited qualities, after all. They would have alike a tainted ancestry. Their physical natures are the hotbeds of vices or diseases that are to be developed or curbed according as environment shall determine. But the foundation in both cases – the ground – both mental, moral and physical, is sowed down and harrowed in with the tainted heredity. The mother in both instances, as a rule, is but an aimless puppet who dances to the tune played by her male owner – a mere weak transmitter or adjunct of and for and to his scale of life. Therefore to point to the fact that to change these classes of infants in the cradle is to exchange (by means of their environment only) their mature development, also, from that of a Wall Street magnate to a Sing Sing convict, tells nothing whatever against the power and force of heredity. It tells only what is always claimed for fortunate or unfortunate environment – that "It gilds the straitened forehead of the fool," or that

"Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;Robes and furr'd gowns hide all; plate sin with gold,And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it."

Let us start fair. Let us understand that no environment can create what is not within the individuality – that heredity has fixed this; but that environment does and must act as the one tremendous and vital power to develop or to control the inheritance which parents stamp upon their children. Notwithstanding, you are personally responsible for the trend, the added power and development you give to much that you inherit. You are personally responsible to the coming generation for the fight it will have to make and for the strength you transmit to it to make that fight. Many a father and mother transmitted to their "fallen" daughter the weakness and the tendency to commit the acts which they and their fellows whine about afterward as "tarnishing the family honor." If they had tied her hand and foot and cast her into the midst of the waves of the sea expecting her to save herself they would be no more truly responsible for her death, be it moral or physical.

And let me emphasize here that I do not attribute all of the moral and physical disasters of the race to the fathers of the race. By no means. I believe with all my heart that the mothers have to answer for their full share of the vice, sorrow and suffering of humanity. Woman has not, perhaps, been such an active agent, and much of the wrong she has done to her children has been compassed, through what have been regarded as her very virtues – her sweetest qualities – submission, compliance, self-abnegation! In so far as the mothers of the race have been weakly subservient, in that far have they a terrible score against them in the transmission of the qualities which has made the race too weak to do the best that it knew – too cowardly to be honest even with its own soul.

I do not believe that the sexes, in a normal state, would differ materially in moral tone. Why? Simply because throughout all nature there is no line of demarcation between the sexes on moral grounds. The male and the female differ in qualities, but neither is "better," "purer" nor "wiser" than the other – dividing them on the basis of sex alone. I do not believe that women are (under natural and equal conditions) better or purer than men, as is so often claimed. I do not believe that men are (under natural and equal conditions) wiser and abler than women. These are all artificially built up conditions, and they have fixed upon the race a very large share of its sorrow, its crime, its insanity, its disease and its despair. They have weakened woman and brutalized man. Children have been bom from two parents, one of whom is weakly self-effacing and trivial, narrow in outlook and petty in interests – a dependant, and therefore servile; while the other parent is unclean, unjust, self-assertive and willing to demand more than he is willing to give. These conditions have morally perverted the race so that it will continue long to need those evidences against, instead of for, civilization – almshouses, insane asylums, reformatories and prisons.

It is usual to point with vast pride to the immense sums of money we spend year by year to support such charitable and eleemosynary institutions, instead of realizing, in humiliation and shame, that what we need to do, and what we can do, in great part, is to lock the stable door before the horse is stolen; that what we need to do, and what we can do, in large measure, is to regulate conditions and heredity so that we may congratulate ourselves in pointing to the small sums of money needed year by year to care for the unfortunate victims of inherited weakness or vice. We don't want our country covered with magnificently equipped hospitals, asylums, poor-houses and prisons. What we want is intelligent and wise parentage which shall depopulate eleemosynary, charitable and penal institutions. We don't want to continue to boast of a tremendous and increasing population of sick or weak minds encased in sick or weak bodies – half-matured, ill-born, mental, moral and physical weaklings who drag out a few wretched years in some retreat and then miserably perish.

We want men and women on this continent who shall be well and intelligent and free and wise enough to see that not numbers but quality in population will solve the questions that perplex the souls of men. We want parents who are wise and self-controlled enough to refuse to curse the world and their own helpless children with vitiated lives, and who, if they cannot give whole, clean, fine children to the world, will refuse to give it any. Nothing but a low, perverted and weak moral and ethical sense makes possible the need of an argument on this subject. It is self-evident the moment one stops to ask himself a few simple and primitive questions: "Am I willing to buy my own comfort and pleasure at the expense of those who are helpless? Am I willing to be a moral and physical pauper preying upon the rights of my children? Am I willing to be a thief and misappropriate their physical, mental and moral heritage? Am I willing to be a murderer and taint with slow poison their lives before they get them? Am I willing to do this by giving to them a weak and dependant and silly mother and a father who is less than the best he can be – who arrogates to himself the prerogative of dictator who has no account to render?"

All these questions apply to the health of the nation and to what it shall be in the future. When we speak of the health of a nation, we are so given to thinking of the physical condition, only, of its citizens that the more comprehensive thought of their mental, moral, ethical and business health is likely to escape our minds. Indeed, I fancy that few persons realize that even in the matter of business ethics and general moral outlook (including the nation's political policy, of course) heredity cuts a very wide swath. But it is true that national business morals are as distinctive from generation to generation as are the physical characteristics, well-being or mental qualities of the different peoples. Some one will say, "True, but all this is due to difference of environment," – forgetting that the special features of our environment itself (outside of climate and soil) are due primarily to the hereditary habits and bias of a people. Natural selection, per se, ceased to have full force the moment man reached the stage when he was able to control artificial means of protection or power.. The "fittest" ceased to be so upon the basis of inborn quality. Artificial means – from the use of a sharp stone to overcome a stronger (or "fitter") antagonist, on up to the skilful application of money where it will do the most good – took the place of primary "natural selection," and the "fittest" to survive in the mental, moral, physical, financial or political arena became he who could command the artificial means of guiding and controlling the natural forces of primary "selection." The "tough" lives in the "slums" primarily because his parents did. He inherited his social and ethical outlook as well as his physical form, and the mould in which his thoughts have run was fashioned by nature and secondarily fixed by an environment or surrounding which also came to him as a part of his inheritance.

Heredity and environment act and react upon each other with the regularity and inevitability of succession of night and day. Neither tells the whole story; together they make up the sum of life; and yet it is true that the first half – the part or foundation upon which all else is based and upon which all else must depend – has been taken into account so little in the conduct and scheme of human affairs that total ignorance of its very principle has been looked upon as a charming attribute of the young mothers upon whose weak or undeveloped shoulders rest the responsibility, the welfare, the shame or the glory, the very sanity and capacity, of the generations that are to come!

1

Fitzgerald "thanked God" when Mrs. Browning died. See reply by Robert Browning in Athenaeum.

2

Our lives progress on the lines of least resistance." – Van Dbr Waukr, M. D.

3

While reading the proof for this book this corroborative and interesting illustration appeared in the New York World of date June 24:

The tragedy which has been expected to occur any time at the Zoo was enacted yesterday, when Alice, the lioness who gave birth to three whelps on Wednesday morning, ate one and killed another. The third was only rescued by strategy. Animals never kill their young in their wild state, except the male lion, from whom the female hides the young. In captivity it's a common thing. Keeper Downey first discovered the deed, and when the Director arrived Alice was just finishing one of her offspring. Another lay dead in the corner and the third had crawled away and was crying pitifully. Director Smith had the door raised which leads into another cage and Alice was coaxed inside. Then the door was let down and Keepers Downy and Snyder caught the only survivor and secured the body of the other. It was a dangerous proceeding, as Alice was terribly angry and beat her great body against the thick iron bars.

The dead cub was sent to the Museum of Natural History, and after a good deal of skirmishing around by Keepers Downey and Shannon a Newfoundland dog belonging to an employee of Clausen's Brewery, on East Fifty-fifth street, who yesterday morning gave birth to eight pups, was found, and last evening the survivor of the triplets was taken to the brewery.

The Director will pay the owner of the dog $3 per week for the baby's board and lodging, and, to the credit of the generous-hearted mother dog, she has taken the little lioness to her breast without so much as a questioning look.

She licked it and snuggled it as she did her own and caressed it into nursing. After it is a few weeks old and is strong it can be taken away from the dog and, with little trouble, can be brought up on a bottle.

4

"Alienists bold, in general, that a large proportion of mental diseases is the result of degeneracy; that is, they are the offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic and consumptive parents, and suffer from the action of heredity." – Dr. MacDonald; author of Criminology.

"Who has sinned, this man or his parents that he was blind?"

Bible.

5

The report of the marriage of another educated and refined white woman to a full-blooded Sioux Indian shows the species of lunacy that attacks those who make a hobby of Indian education. The woman who has cast in her lot with an Indian, whose savagery is only veneered with civilized manners, will repent of her act, as all her sisters in misery have done before her. As a husband the American Indian is not a model, for even long training among white people fails to uproot his native idea that a woman is simply provided to bear him children and to do hard work which is beneath his dignity. —

N. Y. Press. June, 1893.

6

My friend, the agent, saw his face.

7

It has now been several years since the operation, and the child is like other children. – H. H. G.

Is not that common-sense in surgery?

8

"Brown-Sequard observed that injury to the central or peripheral nervous system (spinal cord, oblongata, peduncle, corpora quadrigem-ina, sciatic nerve) of guinea pigs produced epilepsy, and this condition even became hereditary. Westphal made guinea pigs epileptic by repeated blows on the skull, and this condition also became

hereditary." – ** Manual of Human Physiology," by L. Landou, translated with additions by W. Sterling. 1885.

Dr. L. Putzell, in his "Treatise on the Common Forms of Functional Nervous Diseases," 1880, after describing the methods by which Brown-Sequard produced epilepsy traumatically in guinea pigs, says: "Brown Sequard also made the curious observation that the young of guinea pigs who had been made epileptic in this manner, may develop the disease spontaneously. These experiments have been verified by Schiff, Westphal and numerous other observers."

9

"Alienists hold, in general, that a large proportion of mental diseases are the result of degeneracy; that is, they are the offspring of drunken, insane, syphilitic and consumptive parents, and suffer from the action of heredity." – Dr. Arthur McDonald, author of "Criminology."

It is sometimes asked, if children were changed in the cradle, and those of fortunate parentage carried to the slums to be nurtured and taught and those from the slums.

"To one at all familiar with the external aspect of insanity in its various forms, it seems incredible that its physical nature was not sooner realized. Had the laws of heredity been earlier understood, it would have been seen that mental derangements, like physical diseases and tendencies, were transmitted." – Prof. Edward S. Morse.