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The New Genetics and the Beginnings of Eugenics

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The New Genetics and the Beginnings of Eugenics 20 · "The Hour of Eugenics" Rather, I pull together some of the conclusions that emerge from the history of eugenics in Latin America and use them as a springboard for some reflections on the relations between science and politics in different social and political settings. In particnlar, I examine the lessons of eugenics for what I call a "politics of scientific interpreta­ tion," a major theme of my book. I The New Genetics and the Beginnings of Eugenics Eugenics was hardly a new idea in 1883, despite the new name coined for it that year. In some ways the weeding out of unfit indi­ viduals went back to the Greeks, as British eugenists were fond of pointing out, perhaps because the association gave classical authority to the otherwise shocking notion that since not all individuals are equally endowed in nature not all should necessarily be allowed to reproduce themselves. Nevertheless, "our" eugenics, properly speaking, belongs to the late nineteenth century and to the era of modern hereditarian sci­ ence. The eventual enthusiasm for eugenics expressed by scientists, physicians, legal expert;, and mental hygienists must be seen as the culmination of a long process of intellectual and social transforma­ tion in the nineteenth century, in which human life was increasingly interpreted as being the result of natural biological laws. Early in the century, for instance, Thomas Malthus, whose works on the "laws" of the biological inevitability of human overpopulation haunted nineteenth-century political economy, remarked 'that it did not by any means seem impossible that by selective breeding "a certain de­ gree of improvement, similar to that amongst animals, might take place among men." He added, however, "As the human race could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the bad speci- 22 "The Hour of Eugenics" The New Genetics and Eugenics · 23 mens to celibacy. it is not probable that an attention to breed should In this book, Galton took it upon himself to prove by simple 1 ever become general. " genealogical and statistical methods that human ability was a func­ The moral objections to the deliberate control of human breeding tion of heredity and not of education. From the demonstration of to improve the species seemed unanswerable, especially in the light the part played by heredity in human talent, it seemed a relatively of the inadequacy of knowledge of the matter or of the pattern of easy move from this knowledge to its social possibilities: "I propose hereditary transmission. But as hereditarian explanations of both to show in this book," said Galton in the very first sentence of his pathological and normal traits in human beings gained in popularity introduction, "that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheri­ in mid-century, so protoeugenic speculations and proposals in­ tance .... Consequently, as it is easy ... to obtain by careful creased. For example, in 1850 the French scientist Prosper Lucas, in selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses, gifted with the pecu­ one of the most widely read studies of heredity of the period, drew liar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be up genealogical tables of the mental and moral characteristics of con­ quite practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious demned criminals and urged the French government to discourage marriages during several consecutive generations. m the perpetuation of such lineages, on the understanding that crimi­ Nevertheless, the path from hereditarianism in biosocial thought nality would thereby be checked and French society improved per­ 2 to the deliberate manipulation of the hereditary fitness of human manently. This example serves to remind us that negative eugenics populations was far from straight and narrow. Until the end of the did not depend on a specific theory of heredity, such as Mendelism, nineteenth century moral and political. distaste for interfering in hu­ even though eugenic ideas became more acceptable as the consensus grew that the laws of heredity were actually understood. man reproduction continued to prevent the translation of eugenic arguments into action. Galton's deductions from evolutionary biol­ ogy intrigued but troubled Charles Darwin, for instance; Darwin New Theories of Heredity and Evolution cited Galton several times in his Descent of Man, but though he seemed 3:t times to be on the brink of accepting the necessity for The new evolutionism of the 1860s was of great importance to the some kind of eugenic control over human reproduction in the name rise of eugenics in giving it a new scientific rationale and its indis­ of evolutionary advancement, Darwin was reluctant about so radical pensible terminology. The first assays into the dangerous territory a notion. 4 For most of his contemporaries, moral caution overrode of human hereditary and social policy by the "father" of eugenics the apparent logic of Galton's argument that, as civilization im­ himself, the scientist, traveler, geographer, and statistician Francis proved so that the weak and unfit were cared for, thereby diminish­ Galton, occurred in 1865 shortly after his reading of The Origin of ing the power of natural selection to eliminate the unfit, society Species. Evolution gave Galton ideas that, clustered together in a should contemplate a deliberate social selection to protect future gen­ new fashion, formed the kernel of eugenics: the significance of he­ erations from biological unfitness. reditary variation in domestic breeding, the survival of the fittest in By the end of the nineteenth century, however, attitudes began to the struggle for life, and the analogy between domestic breeding and change. The reasons for this were as much social as scientific. The natural selection. The implications of natural and domestic selection last three decades of the nineteenth century saw growing eco­ for human society were worked out in more substantial, if substan­ nomic competition among nations and the rise of new demands tially flawed, fashion in 1869 in Hereditary Genius, a book that still from previously marginalized groups. Working-class and feminist stands as the founding text of eugenics. politics challenged the status quo. Socially, the optimism of tlje I. As quoted in J. Dupaquier et al., Malthus Past and Present (London: Academic 3. Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (1869; London: Julyan Friedmann, 1979), Press, 1983), p. 268. p. I. 2. by Example given Frederick B. Chllrchill, in "Hereditary Theory to Veter~ 4. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols. bung: The. Transmission Problem, 1850-1915," Isis 78 (1987): 342. (London: John Murray, 1871), vol. I, esp. pp. 167-84. 24 · "The Hour of Eugenics" The New Genetics and Eugenics · 25 mid-Victorian period began to give way to widespread pessimism · ,of transmutation. In the Lamarckian tradition it was assumed that about modern life and its ills. Anxiety about the future progress of external influences on an individual life could permanently alter the society was reinforced by unease about modernity itself. This anxi­ germ plasm, so that .the distinction between germ plasm and soma­ ety provided the context in which a scientific ·movement of reform plasm was blurred. As a theory of inheritance, the inheritance of could develop. "Degeneration" replaced evolution as the major met­ acquired characters had long been commonplace'in biology-it was aphor of the .day, with vice, crime, immigration, women's work, in f~ct the standard explanation of how heredity worked. 9 and the urban environment variously blamed as its cause. 5 The belief Gaitan had been ccmvinced since the r 86os that Lamarckian ideas that many of the diseases rife among the poor-tuberculosis, syph­ were wrong, in part because of his socially based conviction that the ilis, alcoholism, mental illness-were hereditary merely fueled the "genius" or intellectual success enjoyed by people like himself was fear of social decay. Many writers believed the "rapid multiplication unconnected to the educational and other social opportunities he en­ of the unfit" to be a further threat. 6 Events seemed to be bearing out joyed. He preferred to believe that social eminence was due to an Galton's belief that the modern race was "over-weighted, and ... inherited fitness that no amount of· social engineering could affect likely to be drudged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its and that was passed on from generation to generation by biological powers. "7 Meanwhile, the mysteries surrounding heredity seemed inheritance. His. own genealogy, which linked him to the Darwins about to be solved by new conceptual and technical developments in and the Wedgwoods, successful families of Victorian Britain, gave science. From evolution, whose essence was the natural selection of personal satisfaction and inner conviction of the correctness of his inherited variations in animals and plants, Gaitan had concluded that view .that ability and success were primarily matters of biological society could do quickly what nature in the past had done more history. slowly, that is, improve the human stock by the deliberate selection Several historians have analyzed the complicated social roots of of the fit over the unfit. 8 What was required to give such an idea Galton's eugenic argument; what is significant to our story is the weight in scientific circles was concrete knowledge of how heredity way the language of "disinterested" science disguised those roots. 10 worked, a knowledge that
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