"We find," he says, "in all societies that the strongest barrier and the most fundamental prohibitions are those against incest. This we shall explain, not by any hypothesis about a primitive act of legislation nor by any assumption of special aversion to sexual intercourse with inmates of the same household, but as the result of two phenomena which spring up under culture. In the first place under the mechanisms which constitute the human family serious temptations arise. In the second place, side by side with the sex temptations, specific perils come into being for family life, due to the existence of incestuous tendencies. On the first point, therefore, we have to agree with Freud and disagree with the well-known theory of Westermarck, who assumes an innate disinclination to mate between members of the same household." 1
And further: "Incest must be forbidden because, if our analysis of the family and its n Ie in the formation of culture be correct, incest is incompatible with the establishment of the first foundation of culture. In any type of civilization in which custom, morals and law would allow incest, the family could not continue to exist. . . . The alternative type of culture under which incest is excluded is the only one consistent with the existence of social organization and culture." 2
This seems to be but a more modern and more scientific way of stating Moyse Amyraut's explanation of the reasons for the incest prohibitions, 3 and Lord Raglan, stigmatizing it as a reversion to the savage view of social institutions, dismisses it. But while it may be difficult to accept it as wholly adequate, it seems not at all improbable that the incest taboos may originally have arisen in magic, as Sir James Frazer, Ernest Crawley, and Lord Raglan suppose, and have been perpetuated when their sociological effect suited the social taste of certain peoples.
Brenda Seligman traces the history of the incest prohibitions to an attempt at establishing social harmony. And she explains the rule against brother and sister incest as an outcome of the jealousy of the father when he has relinquished his own right over his daughters. "The parent-child type is the fundamental incest law," she says, "but the brother-sister type is an auxiliary to it." 4
1 SEX EXPRESSION IN SAVAGE SOCIETY. (London, 1927, p. 244.)
2 Ibid., p. 267. How Malinowski reconciles all this with the fact that the family survived in Egypt, Persia and Peru, in spite of incest, it is difficult to see.
3 See p. 98 supra.
4 JOURN. OF THE ROY. ANTHROP. INST., LIX, p. 268. The whole essay should be read by those interested in the origin of the incest laws. Dr. Briffault (MO, I, pp. 250–291) opposes Darwin by finding the origin of the incest taboos in the jealousy of the matriarch. Of the transfer of the son's attachment to another woman, he says: "It meant the loss of the influence which the mother seeks to retain. . . . And since in the primitive group there is no object to which the young male . . . can turn except his sisters, it is any disposition to such a relationship that will draw upon it the full force of the mother's opposition" (p. 253). "Her instincts would equally oppose relations between fathers and daughters" (p. 258).
There is plausibility in this view, although it is not reconcilable with Morgan's view. 1 But the same objection applies to it as to Malinowski's explanation — namely, that it argues too much sociological prescience in the savage. It still seems to me that magic as a basis, with sociological advantages to certain people only as the cause of ultimate fixation, is the more probable explanation of the incest prohibitions; though what the nature of the magic was, it is now impossible to conjecture. Lord Raglan's contribution is interesting, but it remains, as he himself. more or less acknowledges, an ingenious guess.
This does not pretend to be more than the briefest sketch of the controversy. But, for the purposes of this work it was not so necessary for me to give a complete record of all the different points of view, which can be found elsewhere, as to show that modern anthropological science has at all events abandoned any attempt at explaining the remote and traditional laws against incest, as due to any observation of its injurious effects on the offspring.
* * * * * * *
Before turning to the one question which, from the standpoint of this book, is the most important — the relation of consanguineous unions to eugenics, and drawing my conclusions, I must first clear up certain difficulties.
(1) In certain quarters it is held that people who live under the same roof and are brought up together have no incestuous desires towards each other, and therefore that, whether incest is biologically right or wrong, it is in any case "unnatural" and opposed to human instincts.
(2) Certain breeders of livestock and others have claimed that cross-breeding increases vigour, size, etc.
(3) Others claim that races which are the result of a cross, or several crosses, are superior to purer races.
1 T.E., IV, p. 108.
(4) It is claimed that the ruling families and aristocracies of Europe have degenerated through inbreeding.
I shall take these objections in the order in which I have stated them.
(1) Westermarck, as we have already seen, 1 believed that people feel an aversion "to unions with others with whom they live."
Havelock Ellis also holds this view. He says: "Between those who have been brought up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision, hearing, and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm level of affection, and deprived of the potency to arouse the erethistic excitement which produces sexual tumescence." 2
Others, less authoritative, take this standpoint, and it is widely adopted by the middle classes of all civilized countries, whose newspapers, as a rule, rigorously shield them from all disturbing data, whether culled from their working-classes at home or primitive peoples abroad, calculated to indicate the frequency of incestuous unions or of incestuous temptations between house-mates.
In all this strong and honest conviction regarding the supposed indifference of house-mates, subjective feelings doubtless play a very important part. The individual is apt to proceed from the conscious thought, "I could never have married my brother", or, "I could never have married my sister", to the generalization, "nobody can marry a close relative", thus forgetting all the powerful repressions imposed in very early childhood by over rigid sex-phobia and incest-phobia (particularly rigid in European middle-class communities) which have left no memory of the potent incestuous temptations and sentiments of early life, but only their corresponding neuroses and phobias.
Freud, for instance, flatly denies this alleged indifference between house-mates. He says: "Psycho-analysis has taught us that the first object selection of the boy is of an incestuous nature, and that it is directed to the forbidden objects, the mother and the sister." 3
Furthermore, he states "that the experiences of psycho-analysis make the assumption of such an innate aversion to incestuous relations altogether impossible. They have taught, on the
1 See p. 106 supra.
2 S.P.S., IV, p. 205.
3 TOTEM AND TABOO, p. 28.
contrary, that the first sexual impulses of the young are regularly of an incestuous nature, and that such repressed impulses play a role which can hardly be overestimated as the motive power of later neuroses." 1
I need hardly remind the reader of the weighty support given to this point of view by Dr. Malinowski's acceptance of it. 2 Brenda Seligman also disagrees with Westermarck's standpoint. 3 And Sir James Frazer, arguing against this same standpoint, says: "We may safely affirm that if the deep horror which Dr. Westermarck assumes as the ultimate origin of exogamy ever existed, it no longer exists at the present day." 4
Moreover, if we suppose the feeling of indifference or of instinctive aversion alleged by Havelock Ellis and Westermarck to exist between house-mates — why the laws?
"It is not easy," says Sir James Frazer, "to see why any deep human instinct should need to be reinforced by law. There is no law commanding men to eat and drink, or forbidding them to put their hands in the fire. Men eat and drink and keep their hands out of the fire instinctively for fear of natural, not legal penalties, which would be entailed by violence done to these instincts. The law only forbids men to do what their instincts incline them to do; what nature herself prohibits and punishes, it would be superfluous for the law to prohibit and punish. Accordingly we may always safely assume that crimes forbidden by law are crimes which many men have a natural propensity to commit. If there were no such propensity there would be no such crimes, and if no such crimes were committed, what need to forbid them? Instead of assuming, therefore, from the legal prohibitions of incest that there is a natural aversion to incest, we ought rather to assume that there is a natural instinct in favour of it, and that if the law represses it, as it represses other natural instincts, it does so because civilized men have come to the conclusion that the satisfaction of these natural instincts is detrimental to the general interests of society." 5
This seems to me completely to dispose of those who like Havelock Ellis and Westermarck argue that propinquity destroys sexual desire or stimulation, and we are forced to conclude with Ernest Crawley that "if, then, there is an instinct against inbreeding, it stultifies itself in a very curious way. . . . It would
1 Ibid., p. 206.
2 See p. 107 supra.
3 Op. cit., p. 245.
4 T.E., IV, p. 97.
5 Ibid., pp. 97–98-
be more correct to say that there is an instinct for in-breeding, which is checked by human religious ideas." 1
George Meredith, no mean psychologist, actually believed propinquity to be the foundation of sexual love, and declared that had Prince Ferdinand of Naples left Miranda much longer on the island with Caliban, she would perforce have married the brute as the result of propinquity. 2 I have myself given some curious statistics to the same effect in a previous chapter, 3 while Paul Popenoe believes that "love is to a large extent a matter of propinquity". 4
Certainly with women propinquity seems more of a stimulus than a bar to sexual love, and it still remains to be proved that a it is not so with men.
Besides, little of what Havelock Ellis and Westermarck allege can possibly apply to fathers; because the desire, whether conscious or unconscious, of the father for his grown-up daughter or daughters, is such a constant clement in every-day life, particularly in England, that everybody, one would suppose, must have knowledge of it. Occasionally a play like Besier's THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET calls the attention of the public to an extreme case of unconscious parent-child incest-temptation, 6 but there can hardly be an observant married man in England who has not encountered much the same attitude of unreasoning opposition in his father-in-law, more especially if he happened to select a favourite daughter for his wife.
I say "particularly in England", because, at least in the middle classes here, this phenomenon is extremely common. What the cause can be I cannot discuss in great detail. The principal cause is, of course, the universal tendency to incest, which in the middle classes remains a temptation to which no one ever yields. But, apart from this, it may be due to sex-starvation in the middle-aged male, whose wife has long ceased to "tempt" him, and whose morals (unlike the male continental's) restrain him from affairs with strange young women of his daughters' ages. Or it may be due to some extent to the daughters themselves, who,
1 C.M.R., p. 412.
2 See EVAN HARRINGTON, Chap. XXIX. See also Flora Annie Steele (op. cit., p. 115).
3 See Notes on p. 13 supra.
4 M.M., p. 42.
5 In 1921–1922 I wrote a novel, THE GODDESS THAT GREW UP, dealing with this theme, and its publication in 1922 brought me a number of letters from spinsters, saying they now understood their father's irrational and stubborn opposition to their engagement — a fact which had remained a mystery to them until then.
bred in the usual sex-phobia of bourgeois England, tend to "spiritual" comradeship with their father, in which much coquetry and flirtatiousness play a part otherwise reserved for strange men.
A third possibility may be that it is due to the influence of the right disparity of ages. Owing to the ridiculous notions current in England concerning the correct relative ages of spouses, and to the tendency to postpone the marriage of a girl until she is far over twenty — she ought rarely to be more than eighteen when she marries 1 — girls after puberty are forced much more than is necessary, to adapt their adult female lives to that of a male, their father, who, on Aristotelian principles, at least, is almost the ideal mate for them as regards age. A man between eighteen and twenty-five is much too young to be a good partner, whether intellectual or otherwise, to a girl of eighteen. The girl feels this and is therefore more attracted to men other father's age. And yet all the traditions and customs of her country restrict her to the men not more than six or seven years her senior at the outside.
(2) The increased vigour and size which are alleged to result from crossing two different breeds or races is not an imagined phenomenon, although its interpretation may have led to a good deal of error and to much over-estimation, particularly in the popular mind, of the advantages of miscegenation. The first knowledge civilized mankind had of this phenomenon was probably in the ancient myths of the Greek and Semitic peoples.
It will be remembered that the union of Ouranos, who was of the race of the gods, with Ge, the Earth (a cross which probably took place, though, as I have shown elsewhere, 2 it was really between a conquering and a defeated people) produced a race of Titans or giants; while at the beginning of Semitic mythology, when "the sons of the gods saw the daughters of men that they were fair . . . there were giants in the earth in those days. . . ." 3
A similar production of giants from a cross is recorded in the myth of the migration of Odin, after which there was a great mingling of the people. 4
1 See Part III, Chap. II infra on this point.
2 MAN'S DESCENT FROM THE GODS (London, 1921, Chap. II).
3 GEN. vi. 2–4.
4 See the HERVARASAGA.
These are probably mythological accounts of historical facts recording a biological phenomenon much exploited by butchers and others, according to which a mingling of breeds or races produces increased size and vigour, or what is commonly known as heterosis.
Darwin, writing in 1875, said: "The good effects of a cross between almost any two breeds is at once shown by the great size and vigour of the offspring. . . . Such crossed animals are, of course, of no value to the breeder; but they have been raised during many years in several parts of England to be slaughtered . . . at fat-cattle shows a separate class has been formed for their reception. The best fat ox at the great show at Islington in 1862 was a crossed animal." 1 Darwin gives similar facts relating to sheep, 2 and quotes Mr. Crate (who five times won the annual gold medal of the Smithfield Club Show for the best pen of pigs) who said: "Crosses answer well for profit to the farmer, as you get more constitution and quicker growth; but for me, who sell a great number of pigs for breeding purposes, I find it will not do, as it requires many years to get anything like purity of blood again." 3
This heterosis, which is usually confined to the first generation, must be understood as a kind of spontaneous reaction in the progeny to the mingling of two hitherto inbred stocks or individuals. It offers no guarantee of the persistence in the blended stock of the favourable characters it produces, 4 and it must not be supposed that it is a phenomenon which can be expected of random bred stocks.
To argue on the basis of this phenomenon of heterosis that crossing is therefore desirable for the random-bred "biological proletariat" of modern England and modern Europe, is nonsense, and no arguments in favour of miscegenation or against
1 V.A.P.U.D., II, p. 97.
2 Ibid., II, p. 99.
3 Ibid., II, p. 102. Darwin also gives instances of heterosis in plants and trees. See especially ibid., p. 111. See also H.E., pp. 205–206, and 230–232.
4 When I say "favourable characters", the term should be understood to mean chiefly "increased size". And if increased size is always to be regarded as an improvement, this result may usually be reckoned on from the crossing of inbred stocks. The fact, however, that scientists are not agreed as to the undoubted advantage of this increased size is shown by Dr. J. A. Mjoen, the famous Scandanavian biologist, who, in writing of human hybrids, says: "When some scientists are inclined to think that many hybrids represented a good human type, we must not forget that they consider the large size of the hybrid as a symptom of health, strength and vigour. I have tried to show that this symptom is treacherous." (E.R., Vol. XIV, April. 1922. HARMONIC AND UNHARMONIC CROSSINGS, p. 38.)
inbreeding, which turn on this phenomenon are worth considering from the standpoint of eugenics.
Thus Ruggles Gates says: "The hybrid vigour, or heterosis arising from crossing, both in plants and animals, is confined very largely, or in some cases entirely, to the first hybrid generation." 1
Dr. Crew says, "Hybrid vigour, or heterosis, is based in heterozygosity," and he emphasizes these points in regard to it:—
Hybrid vigour "is the peculiar property of the first cross. For its production it is necessary that the parental individuals shall be pure-bred and themselves as fine specimens of their breed or herd as may be. Without the pure-bred, there cannot be the cross-bred of any worth. The first cross, deliberately bred for a definite commercial purpose, must not be used for further breeding." 2
It may not be strictly accurate to say that the greater size or vigour, or any other intensified character, obtained by crossing, is confined wholly to the crossed generation, because cases are known of a continuation of the advantage in a modified form in subsequent generations. Thus Shapiro, in his study of the Pitcairn and Norfolk Islanders who were, as the reader will recall, the result of a cross between Tahitan women and Englishmen, says:"It is clear . . . that the average stature of the Norfolk men surpasses that of the parent stocks, English and Tahitan. . . . This increase of height among the hybrids is due to heterosis. The Norfolk Islanders, modern descendants of the Pitcairn Islanders, have a mean stature which is reduced from that of the F1 generation [first crossed generation], but which is still greater than that of the parent stocks." 3
On the other hand, Dr. Rodenwaldt, in a careful study of the Hybrids of Kisar, says they show no signs of any heterosis, 4 though we should remember that he is dealing with very late descendants of parental stocks which he can describe only conjecturally. According to Corrado Gini, the results of crosses
1 H.E., p. 206.
2 H., pp. 69–70. See also Lundborg's description of heterosis in regard to human beings (R.B.M., p. 59).
3 D.B.M., p. 33. The same writer has also recently spoken of "some evidence of hybrid vigour" in the cross between Hawaiians and North Europeans. Taking average height of former as 171.3 cm. and of latter as 172 cm., he found the hybrids' mean stature 173.5. But he records this only of F.1. generation. (See NATURAL HISTORY JOURN. OF AMER. MUS. OF NAT. HIST. XXXI, 1931, p. 47). I remind the reader that the Hawaiians before their contact with Europeans were a highly inbred race.
4 M.A.K., p. 127.
between Europeans and Australians are unfavourable in the first generation. 1
Thus in at least two carefully observed peoples, who are the result of a cross, we find one with a slight permanent increase of stature, and the other with no noticeable heterosis whatsoever.
Professor Lundborg, however, claims a good deal of recent heterosis among Europeans through mixing. He says that latterly there has occurred an increase in their mean height due to heterozygosity, 2 and elsewhere he seems to speak of this increase as a permanent acquisition. 3 He says it is probably due to the improved means of communication, which have dispersed inbred stocks from their backwaters. 4 He even suggests that the superior height of urban over rural populations in Sweden may be due to heterosis as the result of greater mixing in the towns than in the country. 5
Even, however, if a permanent slight increase of height c6uld be definitely traced to mixing, this evidence of enduring heterosis would have little bearing on the problem of modern genetics and the choice of a mate, as it confronts the present-day populations of Europe. Because we must bear in mind that in the example vouched for by Shapiro we are concerned with a cross in which one parent stock (the Tahitans) was certainly inbred, while in the doubtful examples claimed by Lundborg, he too speaks of a dispersal of inbred stocks through improved communication.
Nevertheless, where inbred stocks still exist, as they undoubtedly do in Europe, crosses consummated with them might still be expected to produce heterosis, though it is well to remember that this would probably be merely ephemeral, its actual value, according to Mjoen, doubtful, and the places and occasions where such crosses can be made grow every day more rare. 6
It is possibly the ephemerality of spontaneous and apparent improvements of this sort that explains much of the disappointment which follows on the choice of an exceptionally fine-
1 P., p. 127. See also end of Note 5, p. 55 supra.
2 H.R., p. 83.
3 R.B.M., p. 67.
4 Ibid., p. 68.
5 Ibid., p. 69. See also Dr. J. A. Mjoen (op. cit., p. 38): "It is a fact that during the last decades the unfortunate mingling of races has increased to an enormous degree as the result of philanthropic measures of migration." See also his article, VOLK UND RASSE (p. 76), quoted in Note 6, p. 125 infra.
6 In his articles in VOLK UND RASSE (p. 74 of 2nd article) Mjoen suggests that heterosis may be due to an anomaly of the endocrine glands following miscegenation. (For description of articles see Note 6, p. 125 infra.)
looking creature as a mate, and it may also explain the frequently observed phenomenon of the non-recurrence of genius in certain families.
I mean by this that though in families in which genius has been latent or recessive in the parental stock (in the case of Bach, Darwin, Pitt and many others) the production of a great man may not be ascribed to heterosis, on the other hand, in families like those of Marcus Aurelius and Napoleon it certainly seems as if it might be so ascribed. Because, while in the first cases the elements productive of great men were present, if only the happy combination and permutation of the stock qualities happened to occur, in the latter, where there appears to be no reason to suspect superlative qualities in the stock, a suddenly heightened degree of intellectual ability may have been the result of crossing.
My examples may not be fortunate. But I think it is probably sound to assume two possible causes of great ability in a man:—
(a) The sudden combination of the best elements in two stocks both possessing elements of high ability.
(b) The spontaneous production of high ability through heterosis.
Though even in the latter case the parental stocks would have to be good average, or above average, and inbred.
I feel, therefore, inclined to agree with Kretschmer, who suggests that heterosis (Luxurieren) accounts for genius, 1 and to some extent with Dr. Brunold Springer, who claims that all genius and all creators of culture are of mixed blood. 2 But I deny that heterosis and mixed blood accounts for all genius. It accounts only for those geniuses who have been, as it were, bolts from the blue. 3 And, in any case, the present trend of biological practice in humanity cannot possibly promise the production of a continued crop of such geniuses; because, since heterosis is a phenomenon of crosses between inbred stocks, the widely established practice of random breeding must put an end to it.
Thus the phenomenon of heterosis cannot be used as an argument against inbreeding, or in favour of mixed breeding, since whatever advantages may be obtained by the phenomenon,
1 G.M., pp. 70, 71, 103, 104.
2 DIE BLUTMISCHUNG ALS GRUNDSATZ DES LEBENS.
3 Kretschmer admits another origin of genius besides heterosis. G.M., p. 24, he speaks of that concentration of musical or other qualities through inbreeding occurring in Bach, Goethe, Hölderlin, Uhland, Schelling, etc. See also G.M., pp. 63–64. In Galton's HEREDITARY GENIUS there is also a mass of evidence testifying to an origin of genius other than heterosis.
it is essentially one dependent on pre-existing close consanguinity. It can, therefore, hardly concern the random-bred biological proletariat of modern Europe, and to conjure them to continue their random-breeding in the hope of achieving any of the advantages connected with heterosis would, of course, be highly unscientific. 1 From the success obtained by breeders of live-stock, who have crossed two inbred strains for the meat market, however, there has spread abroad, particularly among the populace, the belief that crossing is good per se; and it is this unfounded and ignorant prejudice that it is important to undermine in a sound treatise on mating.
(3) Those who claim that races which are the result of a cross, or of several crosses, are usually superior, belong also to that section of the modern world which, obsessed with the error that inbreeding is per se deleterious, imprudently assume that out or mixed breeding must necessarily be advantageous.
Truth to tell, however, as we have seen, there is no essential virtue about out or mixed breeding. Those desirable qualities not already present in the parental stocks are not likely to be created by any amount of crossing or re-crossing, while those that are there are only likely to be attenuated and diluted. Even when heterosis produces favourable qualities, we must remember that these are not spontaneously created by the mere act of crossing two inbred stocks alone. They are but intensifications of pre-exisiting qualities. 2
Nobody would claim that the incessant crossing between innumerable races that has been going on in the Levant, 3 or in South America, ever since the ancient Greeks and the ancient Peruvians ceased to exist, has produced stocks anything like as desirable as these two inbred peoples. Nobody would claim that modern North America, with its hotch-potch of races, is superior to ancient inbred Egypt. Nor would anybody in his senses ever expect anything like the greatness from the United States that Egypt is known to have achieved.
There cannot, therefore, be any virtue in crossing per se, and those who claim that there is speak without authority and in contradiction of the assembled facts.
The example frequently advanced in lecture halls by people
1 For suggested causes of favourable characters in heterosis, see H., p. 69, also p. 143 infra for further remarks on this point.
2 See p. 115 supra.
3 For a condemnation of the Levantines, see Nilsen, quoted by Lundborg, R.B.M., p. 163.
usually more full-throated than well-informed, is that of England. They say, here is a great nation, if not the greatest that has ever been, and it is the product not of one, but of several and continued mixtures.
To such people, the best reply is to urge them to study their subject.
As a matter of fact, there was not anything like the amount of crossing they allege in the production of the English people as it existed up to the middle of the seventeenth century; though what has happened since, in the period which I regard as one of decline, and have shown to be so. 1 it is, of course, impossible to describe.
The earliest inhabitants of Britain, 2 who have survived to our time, were probably a people of Basque and early Mediterranean type, white-skinned but swarthy, like the darkest Italians and Spaniards, and many of their descendants can be recognized in Great Britain to-day. They spread over the whole island and all over Ireland, and outlived to a great extent the subsequent Celtic and Celtic-Aryan invasions.
The people who made these invasions came in successive waves, sometimes at long intervals, and ultimately drove the Euskarians or Basques from certain parts of the island, without, however, annihilating them.
Who were these invaders?
The first were known by the somewhat fanciful name of Aryans — a fair-skinned, yellow-haired and blue-eyed folk, who had moved westward from their home in eastern or central Europe, and had reached the western borders of the continent as a conquering and superior race, establishing themselves over the whole of what is now France, Spain and the Low Countries as a rough aristocracy among the defeated, servile early inhabitants. Only in the most completely conquered areas, however, did they ever form the principal part of the population, and when they reached Britain they had so far improved their armaments as to be able to over-run the island fairly quickly. In the south they settled in large numbers — hence the fact that the Romans found a tall, fair-haired, light-skinned race when they landed — but in the west and north more sparsely. In certain
1 See my DEFENCE OF ARISTOCRACY, Chaps. IV and V.
2 I apologize for entering into this matter, even quite briefly, at this point; but those persons must be held to blame who ignorantly spread the democratic prejudice in favour of mixed breeding by repeatedly ascribing England's greatness to her alleged highly cross-bred stocks.
parts of Wales and Scotland, indeed, the Mediterraneans actually remained masters; but almost everywhere else they mingled with these Aryan-Celts and learnt their language, and it was this compound mass of pure Celts, mixed Celt-Mediterranean and pure Mediterranean that is ordinarily designated as "Celtic", when compared with the Teutonic English, or later Celts, who came to England several centuries afterwards.
The Roman occupation, which was little more than a military garrisoning of the country, left little impression on this compound of two races. Besides, most of the legionaries in Britain were, in any case, Gauls, Spaniards, Germans or Low Dutch, that is to say, themselves a mixture of Euskarian and Celtic elements. 1
After the Romans, however, a series of invasions followed, although from the standpoint of the island's ethnological composition, these successive raids hardly altered the position one iota. The English and Saxons were what Ripley calls Teutonic, or late Celts. 2 They were Low Dutch pirates of the same stock as the original invaders of Britain. Opinions diner as to whether they killed off all the Britons. But it seems most unlikely that they did, and the only change they made was to turn the balance in certain parts against the Mediterranean proportion in the nation. The Northmen (Scandinavians), Jutes, and Danes, were of the same stock as the English and Saxons, speaking dialects of the same Celtic tongue, though hailing from different parts of the continent, slightly or very far north of the homes of the English and Saxons. And the Normans or Norsemen, who constituted the second large contribution of Scandinavian blood to the Mediterranean-Teutonic amalgam, were essentially of the same stock as the preceding invaders. 3 They were the same as the Danes who had colonized western England, though perhaps largely intermixed with Mediterranean elements in Gaul, and having forgotten both their original Teutonic tongue and their laws. So far as the proportions of the dark and fair races are concerned, however, the Normans left Britain much as it was before.
1 R.E., p. 311, where Ripley says: "When they [the Romans] abandoned the islands they left them racially as they were before." Most authorities concur.
2 Ibid., p. 121.
3 Of the invasions, Stubbs says (op. cit., I, p. 11): "Not only were all the successive invasions of Britain . . . conducted by nations of common extraction, but with the exception of the ecclesiastical influence, no foreign interference that was not German in origin was admitted at all." See also R.E., p. 311 for confirmation.
This is necessarily but a very brief and sketchy account; but it is substantially sound, and suffices to show that the story o£ the alleged great mixture of races in the composition of the English of the Middle Ages is pure myth, and that at most we must reckon with a mixture of Mediterranean and Teutonic-Celt, which was never complete, which was probably never anything but local, and which, throughout the Middle Ages and up to Cromwell's time (that is to say, for 365 years), was left to inbreed on this island (Ireland having been left chiefly Mediterranean), and thus to become, at least in certain districts, a homogeneous type.
Both Mediterranean and Teutonic-Celts were of a high type. Both were certainly closely inbred at the time of their union, 1 and the first offspring of their mixture were not improbably examples of heterosis, some of the advantages of which may, in an attenuated form, have become perpetuated in posterity.
But to say of the English that they are more mixed in blood than either the Italians, the French, or Germans, and to ascribe their superiority to this fact, is simply untrue. 2 The English originally arose from a mixture of at most two races. 3 Their insular position forced endogamy upon them — an advantage France and Germany never had — and their great culture at the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the outcome of a long period of inbreeding (enforced partly by their geographical position and partly by their own laws) 4 imposed upon the original stocks forming their ancestral races.
England's greatness since the seventeenth century has been due
1 Authorities for this have already been given. But, as to Germans, Tacitus is interesting, as he seems to have known that inbreeding produced homogeneousness. GERMANIA, IV: "In the peoples of Germany there has been given to the world a race untainted by inter-marriage with other races, a peculiar people and pure . . . whence it comes that their physique, in spite of their vast numbers, is identical; fierce blue eyes, red hair, tall frames, etc." (trans. by M. Hutton. London, 1914).
2 Gobineau knew this and ascribed England's conservatism to the homogeneity and purity of the English race (op. cit., p. 42).
3 To show how ill-informed they are who claim that England's greatness is due to the mixture of races, there is strong authoritative support for the view that. until the seventeenth century, the English were chiefly of one race. For, if Sergi is right in his view that the fair or Teutonic race is but a modified variant of the original dark Mediterranean race, and Ripley is right in arguing that, of the three races of Europe — Teutonic, Alpine and Mediterranean — England is wholly free of the second, then the two points of view taken together point to the English having been derived from two different stocks of the Mediterranean race — the fair Teutons and the dark Mediterraneans. See Prof. Sergi's THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE (London, 1901) and Ripley: R.E., p. 365.
4 For these laws, see my DEFENCE OF CONSERVATISM, Chap. V.
to her drawing, ethnologically, upon the capital of that marvellous period during which she isolated herself, avoided miscegenation, and grew homogeneous and harmonious; and her wave of decline started about a hundred and sixty years ago, when the momentum of her advancement was still powerful enough to carry her to her zenith in the late nineteenth century. The wholesale miscegenation which started chiefly in Cromwell's time, had so far altered the fibre of the nation that, in 1770, she already began making mistake after mistake, both in her domestic, her colonial and her foreign policy, so that by the time Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 the zenith had been reached and the life of the country and the Empire was full of tendencies of decline. 1
Thus although, as we shall see, the crossing of races normally produces disharmony and conflict, and therefore chaos and strife in the life of a nation; if the races are not too disparate, and the period of disturbed equilibrium and conflict can be safely overcome and followed by a long period of inbreeding and rigorous selection, during which homozygosity or psycho-physical harmony and beauty may be restored, and provided also that the stocks crossed are of a high quality, there is no reason why the cross should not bring about desirable results.
This, however, is very far from constituting a plea in favour of indiscriminate, continuous and universal miscegenation such as is commonly advanced by ill-informed, sentimental and thoroughly Christian people in public assemblies. For in the minds of such people there is no knowledge of the problems involved, but only a democratic, unreasoning and ignorant prejudice in favour of random and mixed breeding as such.
Speaking generally, Dr. Rice says: "The mixing of divers races of human beings is practically always to be regarded with regret. It is often said that by such mixtures superior races may be developed, and they cite the case of animal breeders who cross their stock to get better combinations; but practical breeders do not think of crossing two pure breeds unless they are prepared to stand by for a long time and exercise a very rapid selection of offspring." 2
In his monograph on race mixture. Dr. Lundborg says that
1 For an expert's views on miscegenation in England during the last few centuries, see Note 2, p. 142 infra.
2 R.H., p. 308. See also p. 311. Corrado Gini also recommends rigorous selection if a cross is to be successful (P., p. 96). See also W.S.H., pp. 40, 44, 51, 81, and 91, for five separate authoritative opinions against the mixing of races.
"crosses between closely related races is generally successful both physically and psychologically, but the mixing of races only remotely related usually produces the most unfavourable results." 1 He insists, however, as most authorities do, on a long period of segregation and inbreeding after the cross, in order to produce the required homozygosity and homogeneity, which are the prerequisites of psycho-physical harmony and hence of health and high achievement, and he approves of J. P. Lotsy and W. A. Goddijn, the explorers, who say: "By segregation of hybrids new races arise." 2
Lundborg also quotes England and Japan as examples of this, as does also Dr. Reibmayr. 3
As I have already shown, even if England had the crossed races, she enjoyed subsequent segregation and inbreeding, both as the result of her geographical position and her wise laws. Moreover, the condition insisted upon by Rice and others — rigorous selection — certainly played a part in producing mediæval England, because until quite recently nothing like the medical and charitable interferences with Natural Selection ever existed. Although the original stocks were not so desirable as in Japan and England, there also appears to have been a happy blend of races in Chile, resulting in comparative homogeneity and harmony. Thus J. P. Lotsy and W. A. Goddijn quote R. C. Haines as affirming "that in Chile a national type has been formed from the mixture of Spaniards and Indians with 'almost no reversion' to the parent races", 4 while reports are also favourable of the cross between English and Maori and German and Samoan. 5
Shapiro, too, claims much the same of the Pitcairn and Norfolk Islanders. He says, there is "less variability among the Norfolk Islanders than among their parent stocks", and he adds, "this unexpected homogeneity of the hybrids contrasted with the English and Tahitans, may be explained by the long-continued and extensive inbreeding among the islanders." 6
1 R.B.M., pp. 165 and 167.
2 R.B.M., p. 57.
3 R.B.M., p. 153, and D.E.T.G., p. 9. Corrado Gini (P., p. 135) also takes this standpoint.
4 GENETICA, 1928. Hybridization Among Human Races in S. Africa, p. 139, foot-note.
5 R.B.M., p. 160.
6 D.M.B., pp. 58 and 68. On p. 58, Shapiro says: "Normally low-standard deviations are associated with racially pure strains. The homogeneity of the Norfolk Islanders may be explained by the fact that they have been, since the inception of the colony, inbreeding very closely. In one individual the genealogy showed that for a possibility of four white great-great-grandparents, there was only one — Fletcher Christian."
But this happy result is not always achieved. Some still deny that it is possible, and that even in England and Japan no homogeneous race has ever been produced from the original cross. It may be true of England that no such homogeneity or harmonious blending has occurred as that claimed for the Norfolk Islanders. But it is very doubtful whether the English were ever so highly inbred or were ever subject to such rigorous selection.
Thus even Lundborg, who admits the possibility of a new race formation through crossing in some cases, says "As a rule, however, neither a new race is formed, nor does either parent race become resuscitated; but, even in the course of centuries, there results only a mixed population, which displays the most varied combinations of the characters belonging to the parent stocks." 1
Dr. Eugen Fischer, in his exhaustive study of the Bastards of Reheboth, concludes: "Thus we have described a mixture of races, or rather a mixture of race characters, but no mixed or blended race." Then he adds: "We have thus been unable to advance any proof of the existence of a genuine bastard race." 2 And, if we glance at the nineteen portraits of typical Reheboth hybrids at the end of his book, their terrifying ugliness and asymmetry confirms his words. Every line in those hideous features speaks of discord and conflict, and this in spite of the close inbreeding these people have practised. Thus it would seem as if widely divergent races can never blend, and the emphatic views against such unions becomes intelligible.
Ruggles Gate, for instance, says: "As regards world eugenics, then, it would appear that intermixture of unrelated races is from every point of view, undesirable, at least as regards combinations involving one primitive and one advanced race." And he adds, "It is therefore clear that miscegenation between, for example, the white races and African races — which for ages have been undergoing separate evolution, which must have been at very different rates, assuming that both are descendants from the same original stock — is wholly undesirable from a eugenic or any other reasonable point of view." 3 Earlier in the same work, he says:
1 R.B.M., p. 167. See also p. 45.
2 R.B., p. 223. See also p. 225. See also R.E.W., p. 85, where the slowness of modification and complete blending is insisted on.
3 H.I.M., pp. 335–336. See also Dr. Fritz Lenz. (B.F.L., p. 692), and J. W. Gregory: THE MENACE OF COLOUR (London, 1925, pp. 225–242), where there is a judicial summing up of the evidence for and against miscegenation, with a conclusion against the practice.
"In the new countries, such as North and South America, and parts of Africa, the cross-bred races which have sprung up through miscegenation between Europeans and more primitive peoples are at a disadvantage from every point of view." 1
This verdict is supported by the bulk of expert testimony. Lundborg, for instance, quoting E. A. Ross (in SOUTH OF PANAMA) condemns the mulattos, the mestis (Indian + European) and the Zambos (negro + Indian) as being inferior to their parent stocks in physical strength, resistance to disease, intellect and longevity. 2 Quoting Gregory (THE MAN OF COLOUR) he writes: "The hybrids between people in very different grades of culture such as the 'Cape Boys', though they have been very useful in subordinate services, are rather a warning than an encouragement to the miscegenation of distant races." And he also condemns the mestis (hybrids) of Kisar, the Eurasians, 3 and the crosses between white and negro and Indian and negro in South America. 4
Again in 1921 he declared himself convinced that miscegenation increased the disposition to tuberculosis, at least in Sweden. 5 But this means simply that it lowers resistance.
The same charge is made by Dr. Jean Baptiste de Lacerda in his remarks on the crosses between Portuguese and negroes, although he is inclined to plead race equality. "As a rule," he says, "they are not muscular . . . they seem to have little power of resistance." 6
Dr. Livingstone seems to have had some experience of this
1 H.I.M., p. 329. See also B.F.L., where, of crossing widely divergent stocks, it is said: "The whole mechanism of nuclear division and cell division, and above all that of the reduction division, is disturbed and the two different sections of the nucleus are not properly adapted each to the other."
2 R.B.M., p. 159.
3 See also S.R.C. (A. P. Pillay, p. 85), where a similar condemnation will be found.
4 R.B.M., p. 160.
5 H.R., p. 78 and elsewhere. R.B.M., p. 120. See, too, Mjoen: E.R., April, 1922, p. 38.
6 PAPERS ON INTER-RACIAL PROBLEMS, Ed. by G. Spiller (London, 1911, p. 30). Also Spencer (P.B., p. 399), who as early as 1854 suspected that crossing lowered stamina. "Is it not a fact," he asks, "that the pure-breeds are hardier than the mixed ones? Are not the mixed ones, though superior in size, less capable of resisting unfavourable influences — extremes of temperature, bad food, etc.? And is not the like true of mankind?" Also Mjoen (RASSENKREUZUNG BEIM MENSCHEN, in VOLK UND RASSE, July, 1928, p. 170), who says the military authorities of Norway have repeatedly declared that the mixed population of northern Norway (hybrids of Norwegians and Lapps) provides on the whole few desirable recruits. In VOLK UND RASSE of April, 1929, p. 74, he says he found tuberculosis and diabetes more prevalent among hybrid stocks than in the rest of the population.
phenomenon in Africa, although he did not know its genetic significance. He writes: "A certain loathsome disease which decimates the North American Indians, and threatens extirpation to the South Sea Islanders, dies out in the interior of Africa without the aid of medicine. . . . It seems 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; and the virulence of the secondary symptoms seemed to be, in all the cases that came under my care, in exact proportion to the greater or less amount of European blood in the patient. Among the Coramas and Griquas of mixed blood it produces the same ravages as in Europe; among half-blood Portuguese it is equally frightful in its inroads on the system; but in the pure negro of the central parts it is quite incapable of permanence." 1
Corrado Gini, on the authority of Mjoen, also claims that the cross-breeds of Norwegian and Eskimos are unfavourable, and inferior to both parents. 2 "The crossing of certain races," he says elsewhere in the same work, "produces particularly unfavourable offspring. This is believed to be specially true of the mixture of whites and negroes as shown by experiences in Portuguese Africa and America." 3
On the other hand. Dr. Eugen Fischer and Dr. Rodenwaldt both report no increased susceptibility to infectious diseases in their hybrids than in the respective parent stocks. 4 This may be due either to more rigorous natural selection, 5 or to ideal conditions. Lundborg, commenting on this fact, says: "If the Reheboth Bastards and Kisar Hybrids do not appear more susceptible to infectious diseases than their parent stocks, this is probably due to the fact that their populations live under exceptionally favourable external conditions." 6
F. L. Hoffman, who collected a quantity of data on the crossing of negro and white, and negro and other races, quotes a letter from Dr. Rogers, dated 1895, about a settlement of thirty fine, full-blooded Dahomeyans near Mobile, Ala. as follows:—
. . ."The offspring of those who had married native-born coloured persons exhibited characteristics of an inferior physique
1 MISSIONARY TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN S. AFRICA (London, 1857, p. 128). Also N.E., p. 124, where Bryk says much the same of the E. African negro, in whom, he declares, syphilis usually stops at the primary stage.
2 P., p. 127.
3 P., p. 100.
4 R.B., pp. 177–222, and M.A.K., p. 311.
5 Both authors admit that rigorous selection did take place.
6 R.B.M., p. 121.
to those of the original Africans and they do not enjoy good health." 1
Mr. Hoffman himself says: "It may be said, only with emphasis, that the cross-bred of white man and coloured woman is, as a rule, a product inferior to both parents, physically and morally." 2 And he adds: "It has been stated by Nott and proved by subsequent experience that the mulatto is in every way the inferior of the black, and of all races the one possessed of the least vital force." 3
He then adduces the evidence of various doctors given in the report of the Provost-Marshal General.
H. B. Hubbard, M.D., said: "Although I have known some muscular and healthy mulattoes, I am convinced that, as a general rule, any considerable admixture of white blood deteriorates the physique and impairs the powers of endurance." 4
Dr. McKnight said: "I believe a genuine black far superior in physical endurance to the mulatto or yellow negro." 5
J. H. Mears, M.D., said: "The majority of those rejected [for the Army] are of northern birth and generally mulattoes." 6
L. M. Whitby, M.D., said: "The conviction arising from an examination of a few hundred shades of colour is that the negro proper is well adapted for military service, but that the mulatto and all varieties of mixture of black and white have degenerated physically." 7
R. H. Smith, M.D., said: "In this country the mixture [of the coloured] with the whites contributes greatly to lower the health and the stamina." 8
Referring to some anthropometric data collected by Dr. Gould, Hoffman says: "On the basis of these observations, the conclusion is warranted that the mixed race is physically the inferior of the white and pure black, and as a result of this inferior degree of vital power we meet with a lesser degree of resistance to disease and death."'
Thus Dr. Lenz informs us that in twenty-eight States of the
1 RACE TRAITS AND TENDENCIES OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO (New York 1896, pp. 177–178).
2 Ibid., p. 180.
3 Ibid., p. 182.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 183.
8 Ibid., p. 182–183. See also D.M., p. 14. "The suggestion that mixed races develop susceptibility of which pure types are incapable appears frequently in the history of epidemic diseases."
9 Op. cit., p. 184. See also B.F.L., p. 177, for confirmation.
U.S.A. marriages between whites and coloured races are forbidden by law, and he approves of this legislation. 1
But, if the mixing of two races is precarious and leads to doubtful and frequently disastrous results, how much more so is the mixing of several?
"The mixing of all possible unlike races," says Dr. Lundborg, "results on the whole in very inferior offspring. As the result of multifarious miscegenation there arises in the metropolises of the world a biological proletariat, particularly in the lowest classes." 2 And later on he says: "A general mixture would certainly result for the whole of mankind in a fateful downfall of the highest culture races and all their achievements." 3
Writing of the Win Tribe of mongrel Virginians, composed of a mixture of English, Indian and Negro, A. E. Estabrook and Ivan E. McDougle speak of them as "not a very edifying example either of a miscegenated or of a highly inbred stock. . . . The whole Win tribe is below the average, mentally and socially. They are lacking in academic ability, industrious to a very limited degree and capable of taking little training. . . ." 4
Thus, in this case, despite close inbreeding, no good results have been obtained owing to the inferior elements in the mixture, and probably also owing to its complexity. And the same is reported by Lundborg of the gipsies. The gipsies are inbred, but started as an inferior stock, and, cross only with inferior individuals in the countries through which they wander. 5
In accordance with our previous claims, there is no need to add that the crossing of races destroys character and spiritual qualities, because these go with the physical attributes and are inseparably bound up with them. If there is conflict and discord in the latter, there must also be in the former. But every authority, from Darwin to Ruggles Gates argues that crossing is injurious to character, and we shall see from what follows that this result is inevitable. 6
What, then, from the standpoint of the future, is there to be said for the crossing of races? It would appear as if there were very little. The three conditions of a successful blend — segregation, inbreeding, and selection — have, as we have seen, not
1 M.A.R., p. 303.
2 R.B.M., p. 146.
3 R.B.M., p. 166.
4 MONGREL VIRGINIANS. The Win Tribe (Baltimore, 1926, p. 199).
5 R.B.M., pp. 153–154. Havelock Ellis also seems to think that even modern man instinctively dislikes the mixing of races. (S.P.S., IV, p. 176): "It is difficult to be sexually attracted by persons who are fundamentally unlike ourselves in racial constitution."
always been successful, even after many generations, in producing a harmonious and homogeneous blend. And what hope have we of these three conditions ever again being imposed for eugenic purposes?
There are possibly only two arguments that can be brought forward in favour of race-crossing.
(a) It means for the inferior race an elevation in the hierarchy of human races. But it should be remembered that this is at the expense of the higher race.
(b) It may lead to superior adaptation in certain circumstances.
Thus, Corrado Gini says mulattoes are more resistent to certain diseases and tropical climates than the whites." 1 Dr. Eugen Fischer has shown that the Hottentot blood in the Bastards of Reheboth has led to satisfactory adaptation to African conditions. 2 Shapiro also claims superior adaptation for the Norfolk Islanders. 3 Hoffman also claims that intellectually (though not morally) the mulatto is the superior of the pure black. 4 While Dr. Jean Baptiste, who has not much good to say of the cross between Portuguese and negroes, admits that "they are physically and intellectually well above the level of the blacks, who were an ethnical element in their production." 5
Professor East Finch also claims greater intellectual gifts for the mulatto than for the negro. 6
Except for certain physical advantages in the tropics and elsewhere, however, in all the cases of superior adaptation mentioned, the advantages gained by crossing have been at the expense of the superior race. And even in respect to the physical advantages secured, it may be questioned whether the gain of local superior adaptation is worth the sacrifice.
Seeing that the mixing of races is only an extreme case of the
1 P., p. 131. See also Darwin on the mulatto's immunity to yellow fever in tropical America. (D.O.M., p. 193.)
2 R.B., p. 177.
3 D.M.B., p. 69. See also A.H.E., p. 32, where Dr. Beddoe suggests that the cross of the French-Canadians of Quebec with Red Indian blood "brings their constitution into better harmony with the climate," and may account for their having multiplied from a few thousand to a million in a century.
4 Op. cit., p. 184. Against this, however, see Davenport's tests (H.I.M., p. 354) which pointed the other way.
5 PAPERS ON INTER-RACIAL PROBLEMS, p. 380.
6 Ibid., p. 111. Also, H.I.M., p. 354. See also P.S.M., where Macdonald, p. 37, forms an unfavourable view of light-brown and yellow-skinned girls in "public" schools in America. Ed. Byron Reuter, on the other hand, in RACE MIXTURE (New York, 1931) is convinced that the mulatto is superior to the negro. See J.A.M.A., 25.4.31.
marriage of unlike or dissimilar people, and that it is therefore out-breeding or exogamy in its worst form, everything that can be said on the score of discord, conflict, and an inharmonious psycho-physical constitution, against the marriage of dissimilars, applies with even greater force to the mixing of races; while, in addition, there is the element of the degradation, or sacrifice, of the higher race.
