( 1) THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT AND THE EUGENIC IDEA IN BRITAIN, 1900 - 1914: A HISTORICAL STUDY T. YOUNG Ph.D. LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS (2) ABSTRACT This research falls into two parts. The first part begins with some observations on the methods employed in the writing of intellectual history. These observations are essentially critical and lead on to a detailed discussion of some proposed alternatives. The first chapter does not claim to have solved difficult theoretical and methodological problems but rather to have made possible greater clarity and awareness of what the problems are o In the light of these considerations an examination is then made of the relationship between Darwinian Biology and the major social doctxine claiming inspiration from it, namely~ Eugenics. With reference to this connection the central argument maintained is that there were systematic links between Darwinism and Eugenics o An attempt is made to analyse those links firstly by examination of certain theoretical features of Darwinism itself and secondly by an examination of the misreadings of Darwinism practised by Eugenics o This analysis is complemented by a detailed investigation of the structure of Eugenic thought as it appeared in Britain before the First World Waro The second part then extends this general picture by means of a number of case studies of Eugenic thinking and action on specific issues. The issues studied are those at the centre of controversy. during the period namely pauperism, alcoholism and mental deficiency. The priority in these case studies is the further development of the account of Eugenic thought but in each case there is an attempt, firstly to assess the impact of the Eugenic idea on public opinion and secondly, especially in the case of mental deficiency, to assess what legislative impact, if any, the Eugenic idea may have had. (3) TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I - THE THEORETICAL STRUCTURE OF EUGENICS Chapter I - WRITING THE HISTORY OF IDEAS Chapter II - THE THEORETICAL ROOTS OF EUGENICS: FORMS OF DARWINISM Chapter III - THE EUGENIC PROBLEM Chapter IV - THE EUGENIC SOLUTION AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM Part II - CASE-STUDIES IN EUGENICS Chapter V - BROKEN MAINSPRINGS: EUGENICS, POVERTY AND PAUPERISM Chapter VI - DEGENERATE PARENTHOOD: EUGENICS AND ALCOHOLISM Chapter VII - EUGENICS AND FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS PART I Chapter VIII - EUGENICS AND FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS PART II Conclusion (4) Part I - THE THEORETICAL STRUCTURE OF EUGENICS In the first part of this research I have tried to accomplish three different objectives and in this introduction some of their purposes and limitations are explained. The first chapter, perhaps unusually in a study of the history of ideas, devotes considerable space to some discussion of how to approach this kind of historical writing and more specifically to an analysis of the work of two particular contemporary writers in this field. Hopefully this exercise has been more than just sterile exegesis. I have tried to bring out the presuppositions of much conventional history writing, primarily with a fairly detailed look at Lovejoy. This has been done through the analysis of other perspectives to show what possible criticisms can be made of those presuppositions. There is a very thin line here dividing internal and external forms of criticism. The difficulty, it seems to me, has been well put by J.R. Searle: "if internal he (the critic) must learn enough about the subject to see where its regular practitioners are going wrong, to correct their mistakes, and in that sense to do it better than they do i tit - "If, on the other hand, he tries to make purely external attacks - the practitioners of the subject are doing such and such, but they should be doing so and so - there is a danger that his criticisms may simply amount to a preference for doing something else altogether" (1). I have tried to get round this difficulty towards the end of Chapter One by an example from the history of botany which shows the weaknesses of some of the conventional approaches. The presentation of alternative perspectives has forced the closer consideration of some of the major questions in writing the history of ideas. The value of the exercise is not in any easy methodological 'pay_off' but in the view that sustained analysis of particular styles of history writing makes for clarity of thought when one approaches one's own material. What can be said by way of conclusion to this point is that the results of this chapter were to give the rest of the research, to use the conventional jargon, a strongly internalist flavour (2). (5) The second chapter begins the actual analysis of Eugenics by trying to establish with some precision its connection with Darwinism. It illustrates one of the great difficulties in writing intellectual history, namely, boundary problems. Some attempt is made to resolve these by analysing certain aspects of Darwin's writings without deviating too much into properly philosophical or biological territory. The problem that I am trying to deal with here is that while at one level the links between Darwinism and the social doctrines 'borrowing' from it have always been obvious the precise connections have seemed (at least to me) irritatingly vague (3). In this chapter I tried to show how those connections might be possible. Finally in Chapters Three and Four the attempt is made to present as accurate a picture as possible of the Eugenic doctrine as it emerged in Britain befo~~ the First World War. There were methodological difficulties here, of course, which are discussed in the appendix to Chapter Three. The material is divided firstly into an analysis of the major concepts deployed by the Eugenists in their account of the biological effects of modern society and secondly an analysis (in Chapter Four) of the structure of their proposed solutions. It seemed useful at that point to add a brief account of some of the contemporary reactions to the Eugenic doctrine. FOOTNOTES (1) Times Literary Supplement 21 Nov 1975 (2) The distinction is, of course, a familiar one. For an interesting discussion in the biological field see Garland Allen - Genetics, Eugenics and Society: Internalists and Externalists in Contemporary History of Science (Social Studies of Science 6(1976)105-22) (3) For different angles see K.E. Bock - Darwin and Social Theory (Philosophy of Science 22(1956)123-134); R.J. Halliday - Social Darwinism (Victorian Studies XIV(197l)389-405); J.A. Rogers - Darwinism and Social Darwinism (Journal of the History of Ideas XXXIII (1972)256-280) (6) Chapter I - WRITING THE HISTORY OF IDEAS "Tout le monde admet que ltesprit dtune ~poque marque toutes les activit{s de lthomrne. Le difficult{ ne consiste pas tant ~ faire des rapprochements, qur~ les justifier. Un esprit s~rieux r~pugnera toujours ~ passer dtune th~me politique ~ une forme architecturale, d'une pratique religieuse \ une doctrine scientifique. Cette voltige intellectuelle range de d~consid:rer l'histoire des id~es au pr~s de bons esprits, ou n~gligeant les contingences,, les donn~es ,materielles et techniques, les traditions propres a chaque science et a chaque art. Pourtant les rapprochements s'imposent". (J. Roger - Les ~ , Sciences de la Vie dans la pensee francais du XVIII siecle). Traditionally the academic study of the history of ideas has dealt with a number of problems that can usefully be separated into the internality of texts and relations between texts. A number of major problems have recurred: problems of interpretation and meaning; problems of the forms of language,; problems of the division of texts into different spheres and genres. The fact that these spheres and genres are not watertight itself engenders a whole series of problems concerned with the relations between texts: questions of relations between philosophy and the sciences; between sciences and ideologies; indeed questions about the nature of interpretation itself. More recently another range of issues has come to be seen as central, namely the relations between texts and social organisation (in the widest sense). This has led to studies of both a macro-type (relations between texts and types of society for instance) and a micro-type (relations between texts and an author for instance) (1). Often, perhaps even usually, these two aspects are seen as complementary. So, to take a famous example, the 'rise of science' has often been seen as the product of people concerned with practical or technical problems (navigation, ballistics etc.,) which problems were themselves produced by new social practices or organisation. These are crude descriptions but not so as to be unrecognisable. It seems reasonable to say that the dominant position in this field of study is what might be called a history of ideas/sociology of (7) knowledge couple. The complementary relation between these two approaches is one of continuisrn/reductionism. That is to say that the history of ideas (beyond the merely mechanical recapitulation of what has been said in the past) deploys concepts usch as 'tradition', 'spirit of the age' (2) 'influence; and various developmental principles whose combined effect is to display continuities and connections and erase apparently superficial dafferences. This can be seen both in its programmatic statements and in empirical work. For Lovejoy, the history of ideas, "is concerned only with a certain group of factors in history, and with these only insofar as they can be seen at work in what are commonly considered separate divisions of the intellectual world; and it is especially interested in the processes by which influences pass over from one province to another" (3). Lovejoy shows the effect of such ideas in the following quotation (one of many that could be cited): " ••• while in an age in which many men of science were also theologians, this change in the religious and ethical application of the conception (the Platonic conception) tended, of itself, to promote a kindred change in scientific ideas" (4).