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.

    384/534 (page 368)
    368 A. p. TREDGOLD development of the offspring. The effect of these deleterious agencies would naturally be greatest upon that determinant of the germ plasm which represented the most delicate and most recent evolutionary achievement, namely, the germinal representative of the brain. As a result of a compara¬ tively slight devitalisation of the germ the offspring is born with an increased instability and diminished power of resistance of his nervous system, and this condition may be manifest as hysteria, epilepsy, neurasthenia, insanity, and a defective capacity to develop the acquirements which are necessary for successful social adaptation, in other words a defective educability. With a more pronounced degree of germinal impairment there is an actual imperfection of structure, giving rise to the various grades of mental deficiency. The number of persons who are actually mentally defective, that is to say who are so defective as to be unable to maintain their existence without some form of supervision or assistance, is very considerable. I estimate that in the United Kingdom there are at least four such persons per 1000 of the total population. There are, however, a still larger number of persons who, although not defective to this extent, are yet subnormal, inasmuch as they are defective in the power of developing the higher mental qualities to the average extent. I think that a very large proportion of these owe their condition to a germinal impairment, and that they are not the descend¬ ants of a race which has never evolved, but that they represent a definite retrogression, being in fact manifestations of degeneracy. It is important to note that a defect of this kind is transmissible, and that the propagation of these persons may in course of time produce a very serious depreciation in the aggregate efficiency and capacity of the nation. At this point there arises a very interesting and important question, namely, if the developmental potentiality of the germ plasm may be dimin¬ ished, may it not also be augmented? Or, to put the question specifically Avith regard to educability.—Is it possible as a result of the stimulus afforded by the process of education and the subsequent exercise of mind, continued generation after generation, to so augment the germ potentiality for mental development that the educability of the race may be increased? This question is obviously one of supreme importance both to the educa¬ tionalist and the sociologist; there is, however, probably no problem in the whole of biology which has been, and still is, more keenly discussed, and regarding which opinions are more widely divergent—for it is the old ques¬ tion of the transmissibility of acquired characters. Lamarck, in 1809, answered it in the affirmative, and both Darwin and Herbert Spencer supported this view; indeed until the last forty or fifty years it was accepted