The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    86/546 page 56
    Can there possibly be any connexion between these sets of facts—that these peoples created our civilization, that they lived in enclosed areas, that they were closely inbred and incestuous, and that they were vigorously healthy and harmonious enough for their creations in culture to have indelibly stamped the whole of the modern world ? There is at present much prejudice against consanguineous and particularly against incestuous matings. Is it possible that like other superstitions, like the ascription of disease to some invading microbe and the belief in the superiority of the soul over the body, it is based merely on ancient magic ? If the modern prejudice against consanguinity and incest is part of the old magic stock-in-trade, it is important to get rid of it, because the vital question of the mating of like or unlike is involved, and because the people responsible for civilizing the world were probably greater than a people like ourselves who have left no stone unturned in order to decivilize it. How does modern science regard inbreeding and incest ? I may say, straight away, that much as I was jeered at ten years ago for publicly advocating as a eugenic measure the repeal of our laws against incest, to-day I find almost the whole of authoritative science on my side. If, however, the science of the past had done what it always should do, and had compared its own findings with the tastes and traditions of the greatest cultures of antiquity, it would necessarily have hesitated before supporting magic and religion ; because history and anthropology confirmed the advocates of inbreeding. Darwin, the greatest biologist of what will probably be known as the darkest age of English history, the nineteenth century, succumbed to the influence of his democratic and magic-ridden environment. One can see his great intellect battling with his emotional bias in favour of the sloppy errors of his day, and the fact that in the end it was defeated has left a blemish on the one great thing the nineteenth century attempted. For, although he collected a mass of evidence pointing to the London, 1878, I, p. 264). The Hebrews called the rest of mankind Goïm, and the Greek barbaros = not Greek, implied inferiority. After the Persian War it came to mean outlandish, brutal, rude. The word “ was used of all defects which the Greeks thought foreign to themselves and natural to other nations.” (Liddell and Scott : Article, barbaros.)
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image