Eugenics in race and state.

  • International Congress of Eugenics
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Eugenics in race and state. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    371/534 (page 355)
    SOME LIMITATIONS OF PRESENT THEORIES 355 That many mental and temperamental constitutions may be explained by the workings of single factors like endocrine abnormality, does not solve all the problems of personality, nor does it disqualify the claims of those who would give a wider range to the transmission of acquired potencies. We must also admit that the Mendelian theory is rather mechanical in its application, relying upon the workings of mathematical relations. It has been said that it recalls the materialistic conceptions of half a century ago. This contention has been rejected, and it has been stated that no assertion is made that matter is the cause of mind, but that life is a unit in the germ cell. It seems to me, writes Professor Conklin of Princeton, that mind is related to the body as function is to structure. Precisely, and there are different views regarding this relationship. Philosophically speaking, these views lean towards the theory of what has been called mon¬ ism, or the one-ness of force and matter. If a personal note is permitted I will say that my own leanings are in the same direction. Since we have learned that electrons, or units of pure force, are the basic units of matter, this theory has received new impetus. But we must be clear about the fact that such views take no cognizance of those elements of personality which are psychic or spiritual in essence, if there are such things. In spite of assertions to the contrary, extreme views about the decisive influence of heredity contrast sharply with many of the ethical conceptions of the race. We may well claim that the human soul is still an unsolved mystery, and that the biological viewpoint presents only one aspect of the riddle of human life. It has its limitations, and we must recognize the claims of other viewpoints. We must approach the problem from more than one angle. The problem of life has many aspects. Psychological testing has similar limits. It has rendered valuable ser¬ vice in determining differences in mental operations, in vocational aptitudes, in scholastic endowments. But it has been overs tressed. We are witness¬ ing a veritable epidemic of mental testing. Extreme claims have been made for these short-cut methods of sizing up men. Halbert P. Gillette, editor of Engineering and Contracting (Chicago) points out one of the gravest of the fallacies of these tests, namely the assigning of quantitative values to incommensurable qualities, and then using these quantities as if they were related to common units of measure, The tests commonly in use are all based upon the original method of the Binet-Simon scale, creating the artificial index of a so-called mental age. They fail, as they are usually applied, to penetrate into the deeper recesses of the conscious self, tp reveal the workings of the subconscious mind, of the phenomena of suggestion and of hypnotic states, and to measure what we may call the metaphysics of human conduct.