Eugenics and Moral Theology

Eugenics, the science of good breeding, is the youngest of all the sciences, but she already displays considerable vigor and she has a very high estimate of her own importance for the welfare of mankind. The late Sir Francis Galton put Eugenics on a scientific basis and gave it its name. In 1904 he founded the Francis Galton Laboratory in the University of London for the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally. By his will he left a considerable portion of his wealth to this institution. The Eugenics Education Society was founded in London in the year 1908 with the object of rousing public opinion to a sense of the importance of the subject, and spreading knowledge, and providing teaching on it among the people. This Society publishes a quarterly Review.

Eugenics builds on the facts of heredity. Together with a tendency to slight variation, offspring in general display the qualities of their parents. This fact has, of course, been known for ages, and breeders of animals and growers of plants have taken advantage of it to improve their stock. Man is subject to the phenomena of heredity as well as animals and plants, and eugenists propose to make use of the old and new knowledge which modern science has gained and will continue to gain on the facts of heredity in order to improve the breed of men. The conviction which has been gaining ground for some years past that at present in England the worse stocks are increasing faster than the better stocks of the population gives actuality and urgency to the proposal. It is pointed out that in former times pestilence, famine, war, and generally harder conditions of life eliminated the weaker and the unfit. Nowadays medical science and the amenities of modern civilization preserve many who would not have survived in ruder circumstances. Weaklings in body and mind not only survive in greater numbers under modern conditions, but they multiply more rapidly than the sounder stocks. The number of the insane, neurotic, feeble-minded, sickly, unhealthy, degenerates, and undesirables is steadily increasing, and threatens to poison the life of the nation. Many causes seem to be working in the same direction. The higher and better classes marry later, as a rule have fewer children, and many of the more enterprising emigrate to other lands, where there is a better opening for their energy and ability. The poor are more improvident. They marry earlier, have larger families, the mother often works in the factory and cannot suckle her babies or look after her children; even when they are healthy themselves they frequently intermarry with vitiated stocks. The strain of modern competition and the unhealthy environment furnished by our large centers of industry tell with deadly effect on our laboring population, the great bulk of the nation. The daily constant

grind wears down the strongest constitutions, and destroys their physique and nerve power. Probably more disastrous than all other causes is the general absence of religion with its controlling, soothing, and vivifying influence. After all, the worst enemies of bodily, mental, and spiritual health are neither inherited defect, nor insanitary environment, nor the grinding wear and tear of competitive industry; but drink, gluttony, lust, pride, avarice, and the other unbridled passions of poor human nature. At any rate the Christian religion exercises a very powerful controlling influence over these passions, and helps a man to keep them in subjection to reason. Religion, too, soothes and recreates as nothing else can do; it calms the mind, and tends to prevent useless fretting and discontent. The general decay of religion robs men of all these salutary influences, and nothing can be found to take its place. The effect of these and other causes on the physical and mental health of the nation is nothing less than appalling. For confirmation of this we need not go to alarmists. It will be sufficient to quote the sober and deliberate judgments of one or two scientists of standing on the crisis which has arisen in the national life. Professor J. A. Thomson writes: “We have to face a more difficult problem when we consider the multiplication of the relatively unfit. It is, we suppose, true that these have now a better chance to survive and multiply than at any other epoch in the history of our race. Especially perhaps in Britain do the weeds tend to increase more rapidly than the flowers. It is impossible to ignore the seriousness of the outlook.

If, as Professor Karl Pearson points out, 25 per cent. of the married couples in Britain produce 50 per cent. of the next generation, how much depends on the character of that 25 per cent. From the most diverse regions we have reports of the alarming increase of what not even the most optimistic can regard as other than undesirables. In a fine climate and in a period of cheap food and high wages, the ratio of defectives — including deaf and dumb, lunatics, epileptics, paralytics, crippled and deformed, debilitated and infirm — is said to have increased from 5.4 per 1,000 above 15 years in 1874 to 11.6 in 1896. Particular statistics, such as these, may be open to criticisms, but there are scores of similar statistics from almost every civilized country and there is no escape from the general result. As Emerson said, we are breeding men with too much guano in their composition.”¹

¹ Heredity, p. 528.

In his lecture on The scope and importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics [1909], Professor K. Pearson says: “A clean body, a sound if slow mind, a vigorous and healthy stock, a numerous progeny, these factors were largely representative of the typical Englishman of the past; and we see to-day that one and all these characteristics can be defended on scientific grounds; they are the essentials of an imperial race. ... We reach the state of affairs which Mr. Sydney Webb tells us is demonstrable in another intellectual circle in this country, an almost childless population with no inheritance of its ability. And against this we have to set the maximum fertility which is reached by the degenerate stocks! . . . The progress of the race inevitably demands a dominant fertility in the fitter stocks. If that principle be not recognized as axiomatic by the mentally and bodily fit themselves, if the statesman does not accept it as a guide in social legislation, then the race will degenerate, until, sinking into barbarism, it may rise again through the toilsome stages of purification by crude natural selection. I am not pessimistic in this attitude. I know that the English people has been aroused to self-consciousness more than once in its history, and I believe that now it can be brought to realize that safety lies in a conscious race-culture. . . . On the one hand I do not raise an alarmist picture of our coming decadence, nor on the other hand would I leave you without insisting that there is grave occasion for earnest thought.”²

² Op. cit., pp. 41-45.

It is obvious that Eugenics is a subject of interest to Moral Theology, and that the two sciences touch at several points. We shall not then be justly accused of meddling in what does not concern us, if we inquire into the attitude which theology should adopt towards the newcomer. We have no wish to provoke another conflict between science and religion, but, as the eugenists allow, this is a matter which specially concerns the moralist and the theologian. Indeed if any conflict takes place, it will not be the theologian who has provoked it. The theologian has reason to complain that some eugenists have gone out of their way to deliver a gratuitous assault on what is dear to theology. Thus, Professor W. Bateson, in his inaugural lecture on The Methods and Scope of Genetics, 23rd October, 1908, said: ‘The blundering cruelty we call criminal justice will stand forth divested of natural sanction, a relic of the ferocious inventions of the savage. Well may such justice be portrayed as blind. Who shall say whether it is crime or punishment which has wrought the greater suffering in the world? We may live to know that to the keen satirical vision of Sam Butler on the pleasant mountains of Erewhon there was revealed a dispensation, not kinder only, but wiser than the terrific code which Moses delivered from the flames of Sinai.”³ The Eugenics Review, November, 1910, p. 169, had the following: “A considerable proportion of criminals are known to be feeble-minded, and a considerably larger proportion of criminals are driven into crime by hereditary tendencies; possibly the rest are made by a defective education. Individual responsibility is thus in great part mythical; the self-protective interest of society would be better served if those possessing definite criminal tendencies were subjected to kindly but permanent detention, and in this manner prevented from bringing into the world others like themselves.” Professor K. Pearson writes: “Our highly-developed human sympathy will no longer allow us to watch the State purify itself by aid of crude natural selection. We see pain and suffering only to relieve it, without inquiry as to the moral character of the sufferer or as to his national or racial value. And this is right— no man is

³ Loc. cit., p. 35.

responsible for his own being; and nature and nurture, over which he had no control, have made him the being he is, good or evil.”⁴

⁴ The Scope of National Eugenics, p. 37.

The doctrine that the thief and the murderer are not responsible for their crimes, that in committing them they were not free but necessarily determined by physical forces just like the earthquake, is a most comfortable doctrine for the criminal classes, and one which they are not slow to apply in practice, as the statistics of increasing crime show. Only, the doctrine is not scientific, nor does it make for the improvement of the race. We protest then, in the name of science and morals, against necessitarianism being made the basis of Eugenics.

Sir Francis Galton claimed that as Eugenics strengthens the sense of social duty in so many important particulars, it should find a welcome home in every tolerant religion. He looked forward to the time when it would be accepted as a quasi-religion.⁵ Professor K. Pearson complains that he has not noticed that this first principle of duty to the race, of national morality, has been fully insisted on by our ethical writers.⁶ But he, too, looks forward to the time when Eugenics will have become “a creed of action.” He quotes with approval words of Sir F. Galton: “ Eugenic belief extends the function of philanthropy to future generations, it renders its actions more pervading than hitherto, by dealing with families and societies in their entirety, and it enforces the importance of the marriage covenant by directing serious attention to the probable quality of the future offspring. ... In brief, Eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to many of the noblest feelings of our nature.”⁷

⁵ Essays in Eugenics, pp. 68, 108.

⁶ The Scope of National Eugenics, p. 41.

⁷ Op. cit., p. 45.

In reply to this we may say that the scope and object of Eugenics are truly admirable, and that they already form an important element in the Christian religion. Christianity has always insisted on the virtue of Charity, which obliges us to love not only God, but our neighbor as ourselves. Catholic theologians with one accord have followed St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas in interpreting “ our neighbor” as comprising all rational creatures who are capable of happiness with God, all who are loved by Him. Charity embraces the whole, mighty family of God, our Father, future generations, as well as the present and past. The object of Eugenics, then, the physical and mental good and improvement of the race of mankind, is part of the object of Charity, the chief and the noblest of the Christian virtues. If the spiritual good of mankind be added to the list of objects, the end of Eugenics would be identical with that for which the Catholic Church exists and works. Eugenics in this sense is already a dogma of faith and a creed of action for every true Christian. However, theology teaches that true Charity is well-ordered. It looks with suspicion on eloquent professions of love for mankind in general, especially when they come from men whose words and actions are full of hatred and malice for the particular specimens of mankind that they come across in everyday life. So, in the same way, although theology must approve of general love for future generations, still it cannot allow the certain good of the present generation to be sacrificed for the sake of the problematical benefit of future generations. This may explain partially why Christian ethics has not stressed our duty of love for the men of the future. They do not as yet exist, they are not as yet in misery and want, perhaps they never will be. Our obligation of loving them will be satisfied by wishing them well, and not doing anything to injure them. The best way to avoid injuring them will be to show charity to the specimens of humanity who are already in misery and want, and to abstain carefully from injuring them. While then theology is quite at one with Eugenics as to the end to be aimed at, it very cautiously scrutinizes the means proposed for the attainment of that end.

The most drastic remedy for the danger of degeneration that threatens the nation has been proposed by Dr. R. R. Rentoul, of Liverpool. In 1903 he published a book on the Proposed Sterilization of certain Mental and Physical Degenerates, and a second, enlarged edition, appeared in 1906 under the title — Race Culture: or Race Suicide? His aim was effectually to prevent degenerates from propagating their kind, and for this purpose he advocated the surgical operations of vasectomy and fallectomy. ‘The operation consists in excising and ligaturing the divided ends of, in the male, the vasa deferentia, or spermatic cords, and in the female, the fallopian tubes.”⁸ Voluntary sterilization was to be permitted in the case of women with deformed pelvis, or diseased wombs, in the case of those who suffered from insanity when pregnant or after childbirth, and in the case of both men and women who suffered from any incurable diseases of the lungs or other chief organ. Compulsory sterilization was to be applied to “ all idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, epileptics, lunatics, deaf-mutes, defective and backward children, habitual inebriates, habitual vagrants, public prostitutes, many sexual perverts, and markedly neurotic persons. To all these we must say: You may marry if you wish — we do not advise you; you may have sexual intercourse — we cannot prevent you; you are jerry empire builders, and a grave danger to the nation, and so we cannot and will not permit you to hand down your degeneracy to inoffensive and harmless children, or to add to the sum-total of human parasites, who, by loading the already overtaxed taxpayer, prevents him from marrying, or drives him to restrict the increase of his family.”⁹ It is obvious that there would be grave danger of making mistakes, especially with regard to backward children, and doing irreparable injury to those who otherwise might have become very healthy stock. To prevent such mistakes and possible abuse, Dr. Rentoul suggests that: “No person should perform the operation of sterilization for the purpose of preventing the begetting of degenerates, without the official permission of the Lunacy Commissioners of England, Scotland, or Ireland; and the Commissioners should inquire into the

⁸ Race Culture, or Race Suicide? p. 144.

⁹ Race Culture, or Race Suicide? p. 145.

history of the person to be operated upon, and take any other steps they consider necessary. No person should operate except those specially appointed by the Commissioners;” besides other recommendations.¹⁰

¹⁰ Op. cit., p. 146.

This proposal has been discussed from the moral point of view in several of the theological magazines of Europe and America. One or two American writers have maintained the lawfulness of the operation, but all the rest that I have seen are against it. There is some conflict of expert opinion about the physical effects and consequences of the operation, but even if we admit Dr. Rentoul’s contention that if properly performed no external deformity or other evil effects of any sort follow from it, yet physiologically and morally the operation is a serious mutilation of the human body in a most important organ. Such a mutilation can only be allowed when it is necessary in order to save the whole body, or by public authority in punishment for rime, as theologians commonly teach with St. Thomas. We must, then, according to the common opinion, pronounce against the lawfulness of the Rentoul operation. Of course there would be a further difficulty from the moral point of view against the marriage or the use of marriage by males who had undergone the operation. Morally they would be eunuchs, whom Sixtus V. declared to be incapable of marrying or of using marital rights.¹¹ With regard to women who had undergone fallectomy, the question of impotence is not so clear. Adhuc sub judice lis est.

¹¹ Constitution, Cum frequenter,

22 June, 1587.

We must point out a flaw in an argument which Dr. Rentoul frequently employs in support of his proposal. “ We cannot and will not permit you,’ he says, “to hand down your degeneracy to inoffensive and harmless children.” On p. 2 he writes: “My simple contention is . . . that no person, sane or insane, has the right to punish an innocent child by inflicting it with any bodily or mental disease, so that it either dies prematurely or is a mental or physical cripple. Such punishing is murder — murder of life, murder of health, murder of success, and murder of everything worth having.” On p. 9: “We shall have compassion upon you and the coming race. We shall prevent you from begetting more degenerates. We shall form ourselves into a real society for the prevention of cruelty to children.”

It is obvious that there is a fallacy here. The alternative does not lie between the same person begetting healthy and unhealthy children. There is no question of preserving future children that are destined to be born from bodily or mental taint. The alternative is clearly between existence and non-existence of the children. The sterilized have no children ; if they had not been sterilized they might have had children, and some of these might have inherited the parental taint. But to exist even with a taint is better than not to exist at all. Materialists and those who confine themselves to the consideration of the present life may dispute or deny this proposition, but for a Christian who believes that at best this life is only a preparation for a future eternity of happiness, the proposition cannot admit of doubt. Not only are degenerates as capable as the most robust and healthy of attaining the true end of human existence, but in many respects they are more fitted to attain it. The calendar of Christian saints would be much shorter, nay, it would be robbed of some of its most glorious names, if all the degenerates were to be removed from it. But even if we confine our attention to the present life, is it so certain that it would be better for being deprived of its degenerates? Is it not true that the cripple and the otherwise unfit are often the sunny spot in the life of the family? Often enough their very weakness and unfitness call forth all the capacities for the purest and sweetest affection in those around them. If we had not the unfit, we should miss some of the noblest and most beautiful traits that human nature can show. No, although bouncing health is a great blessing, and I by no means desire the production or multiplication of the degenerate, still, if we take a wider view of life, we shall have to confess that both this world and the next would be the poorer if it were not for some degenerates.

The moralist would find less difficulty in admitting the power of the State to inflict sterilization as a penalty for crime. In Catholic times, a still more severe punishment was the legal penalty for rape in England, as Bracton informs us.

“Which crime, if it is proved, is followed by punishment, namely the loss of members, so that there may be member for member, because when a virgin is corrupted she loses a member; and therefore the corrupter is to be punished in that wherein he offended: therefore let him lose his eyes because of the sight of the beauty by which he lusted after the virgin, and let him also lose his testicles, which aroused the heat of debauchery.”¹²

¹² De Legibus Anglic, lib, ili. tract. 2, c. 28.

Professor Schmitt, in the Innsbruck Zeitschrift for January, 1911, will not countenance the infliction of vasectomy as a punishment for crime. Mutilation is not in keeping with modern humanitarian ideas, and the painlessness of the operation makes it unfit to be used as a deterrent. However this may be, there does not seem to be any grave moral objection to such a use of vasectomy or fallectomy, if the State so decreed.

Dr. Rentoul’s proposal has met with a certain amount of support from the non-theological world. Boards of Guardians have discussed it, but the more cautious and authoritative among eugenists themselves tell us that it would not be safe to practise such methods for preventing degeneracy in the present state of knowledge on the subject. According to a writer in the Times, March 2, 1911, such measures “have never commended themselves to the public conscience. In America they have been tried and found wanting. The same end is attained by lifelong detention.” Professor J. A. Thomson writes of it in this strain: “Some have taken up an extreme laissez-faire position, which, as human society is constituted, is quite untenable. . . . Others, going to the opposite extreme, have advocated what may be called surgical methods for both sexes to a degree that is more than spartan.” 18 The same writer protests on the following page against those who “do not hesitate to suggest methods of surgical elimination to an extent that is almost grotesque.”

We may then conclude that neither morality nor science approves of the sterilization of the degenerate in order to prevent them from propagating their kind. We are glad to associate ourselves with Dr. Rentoul in his uncompromising condemnation of medical abortion when used for the same purpose, as some medical authorities have proposed.¹⁴

¹⁴ Op. cit., p. 170.

Apart from the employment of surgical operations, such as have been mentioned, as far as I can see moral theology would have no insuperable difficulty in allowing other means which have been proposed by eugenists to improve the race and to remedy national degeneration. Many of them it would cordially approve. The two sciences are quite at one in their condemnation of race suicide by the artificial restriction of the number of children. If the teachings of moral theology on this subject and on matters connected with it were more insisted on and practised, there would perhaps be no need for other measures. Moral theology condemns not only race suicide, but the causes which have made it a national danger in our time. It condemns the cursed greed of gold which is at the root of the increasing difficulty in getting an honest livelihood for oneself and family. Business methods tend to oust justice and charity. It condemns the immoderate pursuit of pleasure and amusement which makes the modern woman unwilling to submit to the duties of motherhood. It condemns pride which leads people to live in a style above their means, and vie with their neighbors in foolish display and ostentation. It condemns the luxurious and artificial lives often led by the wealthy classes, which in all probability are the cause of their diminished fertility. In other words, moral theology insists on the duties imposed on men by the Christian religion, the decay of which is the prolific cause of all our troubles.

13 Heredity, p. 529.

In his Huxley Lecture, October 29, 1901, Sir Francis Galton suggested certain positive means for the improvement of the race. Young men and women might be examined eugenically, and diplomas might be granted to the healthy and the fit. Dowries might be allowed them to enable them to marry early and rear a numerous family. They should have healthy homes, honors should be bestowed on those who provide the nation with a healthy stock, and public opinion should be roused and guided so that it will condemn the marriage of the unfit and approve the marriage of the fit.

The moral theologian would have no professional objection to any of these proposals, whatever he might think of their practicability and efficacy. His science discourages the marriage of the unfit. If a man is incapable of looking after and providing for a family, he should not marry. If he does marry, he undertakes obligations which he cannot fulfil. Disease or crime detected in one of the parties to a promise of marriage gives the other party the right to break off the engagement. If one of the parties is aware that he labors under some hidden disease or defect which in the event of marriage will be hurtful to the other party, he is bound to make that defect known to the other before marriage and give him the opportunity of retiring from the engagement if he chooses. People laboring under infectious diseases are, of course, to be dissuaded from marrying while they are in that state. But as ecclesiastical law stands at present, such persons are not absolutely prohibited from marrying one who knows of the disease and who is willing to take the risks. The Church has always considered that those who wish to marry and have not voluntarily renounced it, have a strict right to do so, and that neither she nor the State can interfere with that right except for the greatest reason. Thus she allowed lepers to marry even with the probability that if children were born they would inherit the parental taint. Theologians teach that the rule laid down for lepers may be applied to other infectious diseases. It is better, they say, to be born a leper, than not to be born at all.¹⁵ Without doubt, a chief reason for this teaching is the grave moral danger to souls which would be the consequence of enforced celibacy. After all, we must guard against not only bodily disease, but the far more terrible diseases of the soul. It is natural that the Christian theologian and the materialist should not be able to look at such questions in quite the same light. They differ radically in their estimate of values.

¹⁵ Wernz, Jus. decret., iv., n. 253 ff.

Many eugenists advocate the segregation or lifelong detention of degenerates. According to the Poor Law Number of the Eugenics Review for November, 1910: “In respect to any representative of undesirable stock, the principle states that the community will keep him alive, will give him sympathy, protection and kindly treatment, but that the interest of the future demands that he shall be denied the privilege of parenthood. The community may, if it likes, provide palaces for its paupers, feeble-minded, criminals and alcoholics, to induce them to forego their desire to be progenitors of their kind through all future generations, in complete assurance that it will be well repaid in a hundred years. A cheaper alternative method is enforced kindly detention. The right of the subject may be anything but the right to curse the future” (p. 171).

The moralist would find no difficulty in these proposals except perhaps in the last. Enforced detention or segregation would mean a virtual prohibition of marriage and its use to the degenerate. As was said above, this would be contrary to modern ecclesiastical law, but if it were shown to be for the common good, the Church might change her discipline on the point. She has made impediments of marriage for the common physical good of her children in the past, and she would not be slow in the future to sanction necessary or useful means to ensure the health of the community. Her past legislation affords several instructive parallels. Thus, in the old canon law, many crimes and transgressions were punished by forbidding the criminal to marry. Pirhing enumerates seven such crimes: becoming godparent of one’s own child in baptism, murder of a priest, solemn and public penance while it lasted, knowingly and sacrilegiously marrying a nun, wife murder, abduction of another’s bride, incest with a wife’s relations within the second degree.¹⁶ So that if it were shown to be for the common good that certain habitual criminals should be prevented from propagating their kind, I do not think that the Church would stand in the way of such an enactment.

¹⁶ Pirhing, Jus canon., lib. iv., tit. 16, n. 11.

What was formerly done with the approval of the Church in the case of lepers might again be done to all who labor under infectious diseases. They were segregated and inclosed in lazar-houses. Although the old canon law enjoined on the bishop the duty of exhorting the consort of a leper to follow him and minister to him with conjugal affection, yet there was no strict obligation to do so, and the ordinance was subsequently modified. Pirhing expressly notes that the custom of segregation was approved by the canon law, which allowed such lepers to have their own Church and priest.¹⁷

¹⁷ Ubé supra, n, 4.

We must not be in too great a hurry to introduce restrictive legislation of the kind suggested. Eugenists and students of heredity are by no means agreed as to whether acquired characters and diseases in general are transmitted to offspring by their parents. Much observation and study will be required before legislation can be proposed with safety. In the Herbert Spencer Lecture, delivered before the University of Oxford, June 5, 1907, Sir Francis Galton uttered a warning against too great precipitation in this matter. He said: “Enough is already known to those who have studied the question to leave no doubt in their minds about the general results, but not enough is quantitatively known to justify legislation or other action except in extreme cases. Continued studies will be required for some time to come, and the pace must not be hurried.”