Ancient Eugenics

Ancient Eugenics

The Arnold Prize Essay for 1913

by Allen G. Roper, B.A.Late Scholar of Keble CollegeCliveden Press

Originally Published ByB.H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford (1913)

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 7514891

Distributed Exclusively ByBurgess Publishing Company 7108 Ohms Lane, Minneapolis, Minnesota

ANCIENT EUGENICS

The preface to a history of Eugenics may be compiled frombarbarism, for the first Eugenist was not the Spartanlegislator, but the primitive savage who killed his sicklychild. The cosmic process was checked and superseded byanother as ruthless as Nature's own method of elimination.The lower the community, the more rapidly it reproducesitself. There is an extravagant production of raw material,and the way of Nature, " red in tooth and claw," is theruthless rejection of all that is super fluous. When thereis no differential birth-rate, the result of foresight andself-control, and the attain ment of a higher level ofcivilization, Nature adjusts the balance by means of adifferential death-rate. In the days when human or animalfoe threatened on every side, when " force and fraud werethe two cardinal virtues," and the life of man was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," naturalselection must have been ruthless and severe. Some conception of the wasteful processes of Nature dawned upon thesavage mind. While they lived their short lives, the weakly,the deformed, and the superfluous were a burden to thetribe. Human law, super seding natural law, strove toeliminate them at birth. This was the atavistic basis onwhich subsequent Eugenics was built.

In Greece, the theory underwent a logical development. Evenin a later age of dawning civilization, war confronted menwith this same problem of the ruthless extermination of theunfit. It was recognized that the occurrence of thenon-viable child was inevitable, but remedial legislation,reaching a step further back, essayed by anticipation toreduce this waste of life to a minimum. It was realized thatto increase the productivity of the best stock is a moreimportant measure than to repress the productivity of theworst. Out of the Negative aspect of Eugenics develops thePositive.

With the advance of civilization, conditions becomeincreasingly stable: war is still imminent, but, instead ofbeing an essential element of existence, it is regarded as anecessary evil. Nature, forging additional weapons, hastensthe elimination of the unfit by disease. Some form ofEugenics is still necessary, but in the altered conditions anew ideal is born. The conception of a race of warriorsmerges into the ideal of a state of healthy citizens. Allthese formulations of Eugenics are aristocratic andparochial; they are to benefit the people of a single state,and only a section within that state. Any wider conceptionof racial regeneration was impossible to a people whodichotomized the state into free citizens and livinginstruments, the world into Greeks and barbarians.

The breakdown of the city states brought a cosmopolitanismwhich, instead of widening the ideal of humanity, centreditself on the interests of the individual. Modern Eugenicsis based on Evolution- not a passive form, but one thatconcedes some latitude to the guiding action of the humanwill (Galton, " Essays in Eugenics," p. 68.). Without somesuch postulate, egotism becomes a rational creed amid thesocial welter and world weariness of a deliquescentcivilization. Man is cut off sharply and definitely from allthat went before and all that follows. Only the isolated egoremains, "a sort of complementary Nirvana," and thephilosophy of "Ichsucht" of selfcentred individualism endsin Hedonism or ascetic alienation from an inexplicableuniverse. No scheme of social reform can bear fruit in suchan atmosphere of philosophic negation. Like Plato'sphilosopher, man shelters from the tempest behind the wall.

Three conceptions of the cosmic process are possible. We maymaintain that there is no such thing as progress, that lifeis a mere pointless reiteration of age after age till therecomes the predestined cataclysm; we may believe in aprimeval age of innocence and happiness, a golden age, or astate of nature disablement ideal; finally, we may trust inthe gradual evolution of mankind towards a terrestrialParadise, hoping that " on our heels a fresh perfectiontreads, a power more strong in beauty, born of us, and fatedto excel us as we pass in glory that old darkness." Thisconception of man as heir of all the ages, though vaguelyanticipated by Anaximander, was impossible to an age whichknew nothing of biology. No system of Eugenics is likely toflourish side by side with the belief in an unprogressive ordegenerate humanity, steadily and inevitably declining fromprimordial perfection. So long as the city state survived,patriotism prevailed over pessimism, and ideals ofregeneration were more than the idle dreams of thephilosopher. But the growing prominence assigned to thetheoretic life shows the gradual growth of despair. AfterAristotle, Eugenics takes its place among the forgottenideals of the past.

But a thought or a theory which has once quickened into lifebecomes immortal. It may change its form, but it neverperishes. Throughout time it is ceaselessly renewing itsexistence. While infanticide is everywhere disappearing,there remain still the principles simultaneously developed.Three centuries ago Eugenics was the Utopian dream of animprisoned monk. A century later Steele, more in jest thanin earnest, suggested that one might wear any passion out ofa family by culture, as skillful gardeners blot a colour outof a tulip that hurts its beauty. (Tatler, vol. ii., No.I75, I709; quoted by Havelock Ellis, "Social Hygiene.") Butneither science nor public opinion was ready to respond. Itwas not till late in the nineteenth century that the crudehuman breeding of the Spartans, in altered form and in newconditions, became the scientific stirpiculture of Galton.

To read the small minuscule of Ancient Eugenics> it isexpedient first to scan the uncials of modern theory.Beneath the new form engendered by altered conditions, withthe unessential and accidental passing away into othercombinations, there remains an essential identity of form.History can only be an attempted interpretation of earlierages by the modes of thought current in our own. Theforeground of human life we can see with exactness, but thepast is foreshortened by the atmosphere of time.

Under the modern conditions of civilization, elimination byinternational or individual violence is steadily decreasing.Nature has found an equally effective weapon in the processof urbanization. Disease spreads rapidly amid conditionsinimical in the highest degree to healthy living. But whileinfanticide forms the basis on which the ancient system wasbuilt, the abolition of that practice has been thestarting-point for the New Eugenics. It has confronted uswith problems unknown to a preChristian age.

The Ancients attempted to combat the wasteful processes ofNature by eliminating the non-viable at birth; our efforts,on the contrary, have been directed to the prolongation oftheir lives. Instead of sacrificing the unfit in theinterests of the fit, we have employed every resource ofmodern science " to keep alight the feeble flame of life inthe baseborn child of a degenerate parent." (Tredgold,"Eugenics and Future Progress of Man.")

The weapons forged by Nature have been taken from her hands.Side by side with the rapid multiplication of the unfitthere has been a marked decline in the birth-rate of theuseful classes of the community. The relatively strongestsurvive, but their strength has suffered from the influenceswhich brought extinction to the weaker. This is one of theproblems caused by a humaner sentiment.

In the second place, the abolition of infanticide hasconfronted us with the necessity of knowledge. The methodsof the breeder are ruthless and precise. He slaughters or hespares, and divergent variations are a matter of no moment.So the Spartans and Plato, with this analogy before them,were saved from the necessity of any deeper knowledge by thepreventive check of infanticide. If Nature erred in herintentions, this art was at hand to rectify her mistakes.Infanticide saved the Greeks from the problems of heredity.

For all practical purposes our knowledge is as infinitesimalas in the days of Plato. The methods of biometry andstatistics, the actuarial side of heredity, deal merely withthe characteristics of groups. Mendelism, dealing with theindividual, finds verification in man only in the case offeeblemindedness and in the inheritance of certaindeformities. Any constructive scheme of Eugenics isimpossible under the limitations of our knowledge.

Apart from the question of heredity, there is the problem ofselection. Though physique is easily estimated, andcorrelated, perhaps, as Galton held, with other goodqualities, the modern Eugenist has before him no simplehomogeneous ideal. He has to recognize the psychical as wellas the physical aspect of the intricate mosaic of humanpersonality. The self-sacrificers and the self-tormentorsclaim their place no less than a Marcus Aurelius or an AdamBede. (Galton, "Essays in Eugenics," p. 36.) Even though wehold it possible to compile a list of qualities forselection universally acceptable, we cannot, under thepresent limitations of our knowledge, prove personal valueto be synonymous with reproductive value. No scheme ofeconomic Eugenics, inferring the aptitudes of individualsfrom social position or income, can solve the hopelessperplexities that wait upon constructive methods. Passingfrom the municipality to the world, Eugenics is confrontedby the conflicting ideals not only of alternativecharacters, but also of incompatible civilizations. Sincedifferentiation is an indispensable factor in humanprogress, there arises the further problem of a Eugenicethnology.

This, then, is the shape modern theory has assumed in answerto the demands of modern civilization. Lost in Egotism,Eugenics found opposition no less formidable in a spirit ofimprudent altruism. Only the scientific altruism of to-dayhas rendered it once more practicable.

From its origin in the unreflective intuition of theatavistic past we will trace the growth of the theory tillit passed into the pages of Aristotle, and became lost toview amid the throes of a pessimistic and decadent age.

Infanticide and Exposure, terms which in early ages werevirtually synonymous, appear on first consideration to havebeen practised among uncivilized tribes for a bewilderingmultiplicity of reasons. (1 McLennan, "Studies in AncientHistory," chap. vii., passim.) There is the femaleinfanticide of China and the Isles of the Southern Pacific,the male infanticide of the Abipones of Paraguay, and theindiscriminate massacre of the Gagas, who, killing everychild alike, steal from a neighbouring tribe. There are theIndians who offer up children to Moloch or drown them in theGanges; the Carthaginians sacrifice them to Kronos, theMexicans to the rain god. There is the murder of twins andalbinos in Arebo, and the cannibalism of the Aborigines. InMingrelia, " when they have not the wherewithal to maintainthem, they hold it a piece of charity to murder infants newborn." There are the Biluchi, who kill all their naturalchildren, and there is the modern factor of shame.

Co-existing with all these various practices there is thedefinitely Eugenic motive. Among the Aborigines, alldeformed children are killed as soon as born. The savages ofGuiana kill any child that is "deformed, feeble, orbothersome." The Fans kill all sickly children. In CentralAmerica " it is suspected that infant murder is responsiblefor the rarity of the deformed." In Tonquin we hear of a lawwhich forbids the exposing or strangling of children, bethey ever so deformed. In Japan, deformed children werekilled or reared according to the father's pleasure. Amongthe Prussians the aged and infirm, the sick and deformed,were unhesitatingly put to death.

The question arises, therefore, whether the Eugenic motivefirst led to the institution of infanticide, or whether itwas merely a by-product, a later growth, springing out of apractice which owed its inception to totally differentcauses. Setting aside infanticide when prompted by merebrutality or cannibalistic cravings, and excluding themodern factor of shame, which was unknown among primitivepeoples, the motives may be classified as irrational orrational.

Irrational motives are the religious or superstitious,rational the Eugenic. Between these-two there is a wide lineof demarcation.

The origin of religious infanticide is obscure. It may bemerely evidence of fiendish passion. There may be in itsomething of a sacramental meal, or possibly the primal ideain its many variations is the gain of some benefit by thesacrifice of something of value. In any case, whatever thebasic intention, the religious motive in infanticide has norelation to the Eugenic. Such melancholy theology impliessome degree of social organization, and was, therefore, alater and independent conception.

Only some powerful and long-continued pressure could havebrought about the reversal of sentiments which must havebeen innate in primitive man as much as in other animals.The impelling sources were twoÑwant and war, or both incombination -- not want in the form of famine, which,working its own cure, not infrequently leaves an increasedprosperity behind it, nor war as brief and desolating in itseffects as warfare of to-day, but rather that long enduringwarfare pressing on generation after generation, which isthe State of Hostility. This was the normal state of earlyman, a condition of affairs inseparable from independentlife in small communities. Jacob and Esau go their separateways, form different habits and different languages.Estrangement follows inevitably.

Even before man became his own worst enemy, brute creationmust have furnished formidable foes to the naked anddefenseless savage. There must have been pending want atthis early stage of life. Under pressure of want, the groupmust adjust their numbers to the available food; underpressure of war, the same problem rises in still more urgentform. From these circumstances arises the practice ofinfanticide. It is circumstance, says Plato, and not man,which makes the laws. ("Laws," 709)

The nomadic group, passing from district to district insearch of food, would find the children a burden. The firstinfanticides, casual rather than premeditated, were in thenature of a desertion. This preparing the way for anextension of the practice would lead to its adoption in theattempt to adjust numbers to the available food-supply. Inthe same way non-combatants would be regarded in the natureof impedimenta, since they consumed food without benefitingthe group in return.

The first system of infanticide is, therefore, a policy ofdespair. The first victims would probably be the deformed,the maimed, and the weaklings, and female infanticide wouldfollow. The problem of the maintenance of the race arisingwould lead to male infanticide whenever there was adeficiency of women; hence the custom, so far from beingmerely callous and brutal, and an argument for man'sinferiority to the beast, is a proof of the highestinteIligence.

These barbaric Eugenics, therefore, eliminating at birththose foredoomed to perish in the struggle for existence,were concerned with questions both of quantity and quality.Limitation of numbers, though it does not itself constitute"aggeneration" of the race, improves to a considerabledegree the individuals of which the race is constituted.When the undesired children are out of the way} moreattention can be paid to the desired. The savage bredrecklessly, compensating his recklessness by infanticide,but a natural law of civilization has superseded theartificial law of primitive man. Control of reproduction,and resulting from it a falling birth-rate and a diminisheddeath-rate, is a tendency which, first showing itself inImperial Rome, is conspicuous to-day in every civilizedcommunity.

Infanticide, sanctioned by long usage, passed into the lawof civilized nations. It appears in the legislation ofSolon, (According to Sext. Empiricus (Pyrrhon., " Hypot.,"iii. 24A, Solon conceded to the father the power of killinghis children. Taken in conjunction with the limitation ofthe patria potestas, this appears improbable. According toPlutarch (Solon, xxii.), he sanctioned the exposure ofnatural children.) though the grounds for its adoption areuncertain, while at Rome it was ordained by the TwelveTables for a definitely Eugenic motive. A childconspicuously deformed was to be immediately destroyed.("Insignis ad deformitatem " (Cic., "De Leg.," iii. 8)) Butthis limitation was frustrated by the control conceded tothe father, which, restricted in Greece by all legislatorsalike, was as arbitrary in Rome as in Gaul. (Caes., "DeBell. Gall.," vi. I9.)

So at Rome the Eugenic motive fades into the background, andabuses become so frequent that they have to be checked byfurther legislation. Romulus is said to have forbidden themurder of sons and first-born daughters, (Dionysius, ii.28.) and the "Lex Gentilicia" of the Fabii, who were indanger of extinction, decreed that every child born must bereared.

Under the Empire we find Seneca asserting once more theEugenic justification of infanticide. "We drown the weaklingand the monstrosity. It is not passion, but reason, toseparate the useless from the fit." ("De Ira," i. I8.) Twodistinct tendencies appear, control of reproductiondiminishing infanticide among the upper classes, exposuretaking its place among the lower.

The gloomy satirists of the Early Empire, instead ofinveighing against the practice of exposure, abused theforesight which superseded it, and, so far far fromrecognizing the tendency as one demanded in the altruisticinterests of the race, saw in it merely egotisticsubservience to the "captatores." The (greek omitted) ofGaius Julius or the jus trium liberorum of Augustus werefutile attempts to combat an essential law of civilization.

The lower classes, on the contrary, propagating recklesslyamid extreme pauperismÑfor rapid multiplication is theconcomitant of bad environment -- resorted to exposure,which is the antithesis of Eugenic infanticide. Quintilian,indeed, declared that the exposed rarely survived, ("Dec.,"cccvi. 6.) but the possibilities of gain must have led tofrequent preservationÑ" vel ad lupanar vel ad servitutem."(Lact., " De Vero Cultu.," lib. vi.) Occasionally theluckless child falls into the hands of -unscrupulousmendicants, who maim it and exhibit -it for gain. (Seneca, "Controv.," v. 33.) The existence of a numerous class of(Greek ommitted) was a problem with which Pliny had to deal.

So the Christian Councils and the Christian Emperors setthemselves vehemently to oppose the practice, but, usingpalliation instead of prevention, relieved the world of oneproblem and left another in its place. Despite thelegislation of Constantine, Valentinian, and Justinian,exposure still continued. Marble vessels at the door of thechurches produced the evil turning slide, and graduallythere came into being hospitals, asylums, refuges, creches,receiving and tending the blind, the deaf, the dumb, thecrippled, and defective, and with much good has also comemuch evil. Out of the failure of the Christian Fathers tofind the right solution to a difficult problem has arisenthe imperative need for the scientific altruism of Eugenics.Beyond infanticide, which, despite its many perversions, wasin part Eugenic, the Romans made no conscious effort tobuild a scheme of racial regeneration. Whatever the appealof " patient Lacedaemon" to the sentimental vulgarity of theRomans, they learnt no lesson from their admiration, thoughthe biographer of Lycurgus lectured to Domitian. In thecrude scheme of the Germans Tacitus finds no Eugenic moral.Restrictive marriage, perhaps, would have been a perilouslesson to teach to the Caesars, in whom, from Julius theepileptic to Nero the madman, psychologists find clear proofof hereditary insanity. Pliny's boast that for 600 yearsRome had known no doctors shows that there was littleinterest among the Romans in schemes of hygiene or socialreform. The Greeks themselves had long ago forgotten theteaching of Plato and Aristotle. Eugenics was lost inStoicism and Stoicism was the creed of the Empire.

"This age is worse than the previous age, and our fatherwill beget worse offspring still." And Aratus voices againthe lament of Horace: " What an age the golden sires haveleft behind them, and your children will be worse even thanyou !" ("Phenom.," I23-I24.) The Golden Age of Rome lay forever in the past.

In Greece, the theory underwent a logical development.State-controlled infanticide passes into a definite schemeof Negative Eugenics. The Negative aspect, giving rise tothe Positive, fades into the background, and is retainedmerely as a check on the imperfections of a constructivescheme.

The systematized infanticide of Sparta, so far from being arecrudescence to atavism is an advance towards civilization.A custom which had been so deeply implanted in the race byages of barbarism, and had resisted for centuries theincessant warfare of the Christian Fathers at Rome, wouldnot easily have been uprooted in Greece. To supersede thereckless and capricious brutality of individuals by stateinfanticide on a definite basis was an essential gain tohumanity, however much the Spartans may have been actuatedby ulterior motives.

The destiny of the new-born child is no longer decreed inthe privacy of the home; it is brought instead into theCouncil Hall before the Elders of the tribe. If well set upand strong, it is to be reared; otherwise, doomed asuseless, it is cast into the fateful chasm on the slopes ofMount Taygetus, for they hold that " it was better for thechild and the city that one not born from the beginning tocomeliness and strength should not live." (Plut.,"Lyc.,"I6.)

Selective infanticide can only rest on a physical basis;there is no speculation in latent capacity. There was nolist of unhealthy geniuses in the annals of Sparta, no St.Paul, no Mohammed, no Schumann, no De Quincey. Even ifselection had been less rigorous, and genius had beenconceded the right to live, environment would have denied itthe right to develop. Sparta, content that Athens should bethe Kulturstaat of Greece, cared only that the militaryhegemony should be her unchallenged right.

Once infanticide had become a system, its recognition as apis aller would suggest regulation of marriage. By retentionof infanticide as ancillary to the Constructive Scheme, theanomalies of heredity admitted of a simple and ruthlesssolution.

Positive Eugenics, not only in the past, but also today, isbased on the analogy of animal breeding. The Spartans werethe first to realize the inconsistency of improving thebreed of their dogs and horses, and leaving to human kindthe reckless propagation of the mentally defective, thediseased, and the unfit. (Ibid., xv. 25)

The use of analogy presents many pitfalls to be surmounted,and it is easy to see the absurdity of any conception ofEugenics as a sort of higher cattle-breeding. Fullexperimental control is not possible with man as it is withanimals and plants. The analogy, literally accepted, wouldrequire a race of supermen, or some outside scientificauthority manipulating a lower stock for its own advantage.Human Eugenics, to be effective, can never be a cold-bloodedselection of partners from without; it must be voluntary,and from within, resulting from a new ethical sense of theindividual's relation to the social group.

In the second place, the whole world of spiritual motiveslies outside the province of the breeder. He is faced withno problem of differentiation. With a clear and homogeneousideal before him, he sets himself to its attainment, killingand preserving with simple and ruthless precision. TheSpartan system was partly a literal acceptance of theanalogy, partly a spiritualization. There was nocold-blooded selection of partners, and no interference withsexual attraction. The Romantic ideal was the discovery ofthe late Greek world under the Roman Empire, but anysentiment that existed at Sparta was as unhampered asromance to-day in the theory of modern Eugenists.

Marriage was by simulated abductions. (Plut., "Lyc .," xv.15.) The story quoted by Athenaeus of blind selection in adarkened room may be rejected as a palpable absurdity.(Ath., "Deipn.," xiii. 553c.) The only restriction was inthe matter of age (Plut., "Lyc.," 15; Xen., "Reip. Lac.," i.7.) -- a regulation which was the commonplace of Greekthought from the days of Hesiod ("Op. et Dies," 695 et seq.)to the time of Aristotle. Modern knowledge shows theinfluence of parental age not only upon the physique, butalso upon the character of the offsprings (Mario, "Influenceof Age of Parents on Psychophysical Characters ofOffspring." Paper read before Eugenics Congress, I9I2)

The Spartans, therefore, were, within these limits,unfettered in their choice of brides, but were punished forabuse of the liberty conceded them. There was a penaltyappointed for celibacy, a penalty for late marriage, but thethird and the greatest penalty was for a bad marriages.(Stobaeus, lxvii. 16. Vide Plut., "Lysand.fin.," p. 451ab)

A further concession, the privilege only of the worthy, isseen in the compliances permitted on the part of the wife,that she might produce children for the state. So far fromthis practice being a recrudescence to the habits of theearly savage, (Barker, "Political Thought of Plato andAristotle," p. I53.) or an instance of an Aryan custom akinto the Hebrew Levirate, (Mahaffy, "Greek Literature," vol.ii., part 2, p. 68.) it seems obvious that it was a Eugenicmeasure suggested by the analogy of the breeder. (Plut., "Lyc.," xv. 30.) Thus, it appears that within Eugenic limitsconsiderable play was conceded to human personality.

It is true that the bearing of children was regarded as theessential function of women, and this view, thoughbiologically justified, seems to ignore that other aspect ofmarriageÑmutual assistance and companionship. (Ibid., " Lyc.et Num.," 4.) But even in free Athens the ideal of aNausicaa, Penelope, or Andromache, had been superseded longsince by a conception of woman which regarded her as littlemore than a procreative drudge. Love marriages and genuineaffection were commoner in Sparta than in Athens. Theconduct of Agesistrata and Kratesickleia (Plut., "Agis," 20;"Kleom.," 37, 38.) on the death of their husbands, though itis evidence at a later date, shows traces of genuinefeeling. In this respect, therefore, the Spartan practicewas not remote from modern ideals, but infanticide,eliminating the unfit at birth, offered a solution of theproblem which we can only hope to solve by the scientificapplication of the principles of heredity.

The Spartan method of breeding avoided the pitfalls ofanalogy; their aim implied a literal acceptance. The modernproblem is the selection of qualities on a basis broadenough to represent the natural differentiation ofindividuals and nations, the problem of a Eugenic ethnology.The Spartans, like the breeder of animals, bred for a singlequality and a single uniform type. Setting life on aphysical basis, regarding bodily efficiency as the onlyquality of use to a military brotherhood, they pursued theiraim with the ruthless precision of the breeder. It was anarrow and egotistical aim, but consistent with aConstructive scheme of Eugenics which can only be maintainedby eliminating undesired elements at birth.

At the same time the selection of physique has certainobvious advantages. To the Greeks, believing only in thebeauty of the spirit when reflected in the beauty of theflesh, the good body was the necessary correlation of thegood soul. Though there was no conscious assertion of thisrelation among the Spartans, there may have been some latentrecognition helping to justify their aim. Moreover, whilethere is no dynamometer of intelligence, physique admits ofeasy estimation. There is therefore a certain justificationfor the simple and unscientific dogma of the Spartanlawgiver: "If the parents are strong, the children will bestrong."

The Spartans realized that to secure the fitness of thechild it must be guarded even before birth by bestowing duecare on the food and habits of the future mother. Antenatalinfluences explain many of the apparent anomalies ofheredity, but, while recognizing the value of the Spartanaim, a nobler conception of humanity rejects their method.Sedentary occupations can no longer be assigned to slaves.(Xen., "Reip. Lac.," 3.) Society still rests on a basis oflower labour. He " that holdeth the plough" must still"maintain the state of the world," but he is no longer amere means, a living instrument, excluded from everypolitical privilege and every social reform. The limited andaristocratic Eugenics of Sparta is amplified into a schemewhich embraces every class of the community. But thisextension involves fresh complexities. By state interferencein various ways, such as endeavours to modify "the influenceof the factory system on the women who would be the mothersof the next generation," we attempt to palliate where theSpartans were content to neglect.

The Spartans recognized that environment as well as heredityis a factor in the development of man. There is a scheme ofphysical education for men and women, and the one narrow aimwas so exclusively pursued, that it was said of them thatthey could not even read. (Isoc., "Panath. Or.," xv. 277.)Modern education on its wider basis affords no parallel withthe Spartan, but the bureaucratic control of the buagor, theilarch, and the melliran, and a common centre of supervisionhave similarities with certain modern ideals. It is claimedthat the control already established for certain classes ofchildren, during limited periods, should be exerted over allchildren, and extend through the whole course of theirevolution. There is to be compulsory control as well ascompulsory education, and there is an institution which isto be frequented by all children, on whose development thereis no effective control at home. (Dr. Querton, "On PracticalOrganization of Eugenic Action." Read before EugenicsCongress.) These methodically organized institutions,harmonizing well enough with the monistic view of theSpartan state, could never be adjusted to modern conceptionsof individual right.

Apart from the question of quality, there is also thequestion of quantity. Modern Eugenists are faced with theproblem of the diminishing numbers of the upper classes andthe rapid multiplication of the lower. The Spartans wereconcerned with the same problem in a different aspect; thistendency, suffered to run its course unchecked, meant tothem extermination by war; to-day it means elimination bydisease.

The Spartans were a small immigrant band, face to face withan extensive and powerful autochthonous population a camp inthe centre of a hostile country. " We are few in the midstof many enemies" was the warning spoken by Brasidas. (Thuc.,iv. I26. ), "and this position of constant danger affectedthe problem in two ways. There must be no falling birth-rateamong the Spartans, no unchecked fertility among theirsubjects.

Three measures were employed to maintain the number of theSpartans: prevention of emigration, (Xen., "Reip. Lac.,"xiv.) penalties for celibacy, (Plut., "Lyc.," I5; Athenaeus,xiii. 553c.) and rewards for fertility. (Ar., "Pol.,"I270b.) The man with three children was to be excused thenight watch, the man with four was to be immune fromtaxation. A third measure known to the ancient world, theenfranchisement of aliens, though adopted at times under theancient Kings, (Ibid., 127oa.) was rendered impossible bythe later exclusion of every foreigner from the land.Avoidance of moral or physical corruption was set beforepreservation of numbers. (Plut., "Lyc.," 27) The alien is adisturbing element in any Eugenic scheme.

The natural tendency of civilization, a decliningbirth-rate, would have brought destruction upon Sparta.Nevertheless, this attempt to maintain the numbers of thecitizens seems to have met with little success. Xenophonspeaks of Sparta as having the smallest population inGreece. ("Reip. Lac.," I.) Aristotle tells us that once thenumbers of the Spartans amounted to I0,000: in his time theywere not even I,000, though the country was able to supportI,500 horse and 30,000 foot. The city unable to support oneshock was ruined. Aristotle finds the cause of failure inthe unequal division of property.("Pol.," 1270a.) Butnowhere have attempts to interfere with the downward courseof the birth-rate met with success: they were doomed tofailure in Sparta as they failed in Imperial Rome. There isa moral in the tale of Plutarch, that Antiorus, the only sonof Lycurgus, died childless, dooming the race to extinction.("Lyc.," xxxi. 25.)

In limiting the numbers of the subject population, thedrastic methods of the (greek ommitted) admitted of nofailure. Infanticide was brutal, but it was set on arational basis; this indiscriminate and covert massacre onthe vague pretext of fear or suspicion, was possible only toa people not fully emerged from barbarism. On one occasionmore than 2,000 were made away with, " on account of theiryouth and great numbers." Even Plutarch, with all hisLaconism, censured the (Greek Ommitted) as an "abominablework," and refused it a place among the measures ofLycurgus. ("Lyc.," xxviii. 20.)

The productivity of the worst classes must be checked noless to-day in the interests of Eugenics, but not by suchmethods as these. We may improve their environment, so thatresponse to improved conditions may result in a naturallimitation, or with the increase of knowledge we may forbidtheir propagation, but the method of massacre died with thedecadence of Sparta.

These inchoate Eugenics had their measure of success. Themodern school of Anthropo-geography, following in thefootsteps of Mill and Buckle in an older generation, wouldattribute to material environment their limitations andtheir greatness. Surrounded by discontented subjects andhostile serfs, with enemies at their very doors, and nopoint in the land a day's march away, it was natural thatthey passed their days as in a camp: shut away in " hollowLacedaemon with its many vales," it was natural that theyhad no share in the progress of the world round them. But inthe seventh century Lyric poetry had found a new home on thebanks of the Eurotas. Terpander the Lesbian, Alcman theLydian) Cinaethon the Spartan, show that there was a timewhen Lacedaemon also had cultivated the Muses. The nobleslived luxuriously: the individual was free.

The Lycurgean discipline was therefore no arbitrary productof circumstances: it was a deliberate and calculated policy.As such, it is easy to criticize its limitations, to assertthat it mistook the means for the end, that it fitted thecitizen only for war, and unfitted him for peace.(Ar.,"Pol..," 1325a, I333b) It is wilful neglect of facts todeclare that the only success achieved was the success ofthe disciplined against the undisciplined: that the onlyveneration the Spartans received was the veneration ofconquerors. (Ibid., I338b 1324b)

Their whole aim was narrow, calculated, and egotistic; theirEugenic system was merely ancillary to the one occupation ofwar: neglecting all the complexity of man's psychicalnature, it aimed at the improvement of a single aspect ofhumanity, and that not the highest: sacrificing the Sudracaste in the interests of the Brahmins, it aimed only at theproduction of a breed of supermen. Nevertheless, it is clearthat within its narrow confines this rude system succeeded.Sparta has been proclaimed the only state in which thephysical improvement of the race was undoubted, while thechastity and refinement of both sexes was unimpaired.(Mahaffy, "Greek Literature," vol. ii., part I, p. 201.) "It is easy to see," declared Xenophon, " that these measureswith regard to child-bearing, opposed as they were to thecustoms of the rest of Greece, produced a race excelling insize and strength. Not easily would one find peoplehealthier or more physically useful than the Spartans."("Reip. Lac.," i. 10; V. 9.)

The Lampito of Aristophanes, introduced as therepresentative of her race, shows how the Spartan womenimpressed the rest of Greece. Beauty, physique,self-controlÑthese were the accepted characteristics of thetype. ("Lysistrat," 78) Sparta was the proverbial land offair women. (Athenaeus, xiii. 556a)

The direct influence of Spartan Eugenics was infinitesimal.It was an honour to have a Spartan nurse and good form toaffect the rude abruptness of the Spartan manner, but noattempt was ever made to adopt their training orinstitutions.

There were the paper-polities of Plato and Diogenes, buttheir legacy to the world was only " Words and writings."(Plut., "Lyc.," 3I .) The Athenians of the fifth century hadnothing but contempt for the institutions of their rivals,voiced in the patriotic travesties of Euripides. (Thuc., ii.39; Xen., "Mem.," iii. Eurip., "Androm.," 597, etc.) Spartawas the national foe, and Sparta fell into early decadence.

Xenophon lamented that in his time the Spartans neitherobeyed God nor the Laws of Lycurgus. (Xen., "Reip. Lac.,"xiv. 7.) Already, when Plato wrote the Laws, there are signsthat Sparta was falling into disrepute, and the Politics ofAristotle shows an imminent degeneracy: Ares bears the yokeof Aphrodite, liberty has become license. Agis III.attempted in vain to restore the old Lycurgean discipline,which had become a mere shadow and a name. Kleomenesattained some measure of success, but foreign armsintervened. Nevertheless, the empty husk of the ancientsystem lasted with strange persistence through centuries ofneglect. If the Spartan Eugenics had taken some account ofthose other tendencies of its earlier history, its influenceon the world might have been of greater importance.

The Ancients, struck by certain obvious resemblances,believed that the Spartan constitution was in part aplagiarism of the Cretan. The laws and institutions of bothcountries aimed at creating a class of warriors, (Plato, "Laws," 630 E.) but in general most new things are animprovement upon the old, (Ar., "Pol.," 1272a.) and theCretans never reached back beyond the education of theyouth.

The physical training at Crete may have suggested itsparallel at Sparta} but its broader basis of culturebelonged to Crete alone. Like Sparta, Crete endeavoured byartificial interference to regulate the growth of itspopulation, raising its numbers by forbidding celibacy,reducing them by a curious measure which has no parallelelsewhere. (Ibid., 1272a. According to McLennan, thepractice would be the result of female infanticide.) In thismatter of Eugenics, therefore, Sparta owes but little toCrete.

The constitution of Carthage was also declared by Aristotleto bear a close resemblance in some particulars to theSpartan. (Ibid., I273a) But there is no trace at Carthage ofany institution having a Eugenic tendency. There isinfanticide, but infanticide merely as a phase of a generalcustom of human sacrifice. (Diod., xx. I4; Plut., "De seranum. vindic.," 6.)

There is, however, one other ancient race, amongst whom wefind traces of Eugenic practiceÑthe sturdy warriors ofGermania Transrhenana, or Barbara. They were not, indeed, anutterly primitive people: of art and literature they werealmost entirely ig norant; of the civilization of Greek andItalian cities they knew nothing; but they possessed adefinite social organization, and a religion not lacking innobler elements.

Unfortunately, our only authority is a writer concerned morewith ethics than history, treating facts with a certainProcrustean freedom to fit a preconceived morality. Historybecomes the handmaid to moral contrast, and there are theerrors of imperfect information, on which no light is thrownby others who have dealt with this same people.

It was a system) so far as one could Judge, that relied onpositive methods. " To limit the number of their children orto put to death any of the later born, they regarded as anact repugnant to human nature (flagitium). There are norewards for the childless." (Tac. " German.," I9 and 20.)Two distinct points are involved in this approbation-uncontrolled reproduction and absence of callousinfanticide. At Rome, among the many excuses for exposure orinfanticide recognized by custom, was the birth of a childafter the will had been made. (Cic., "De Oratore," i. 57.)This does not necessarily prove the total absence ofinfanticide among the Germans; it merely indicates theprohibition of the practice from callous indolence or on thegrounds of superfluity. Tacitus, however, makes the samestatement of the Jews, to whom, having before them theinjunction to increase and multiply, the whole practicewould naturally be abhorrent. Possibly, therefore, theGermans, in contradistinction to almost all ancient peoples,had refused to sanction the custom on any basis whatever.

In the matter of uncontrolled reproduction, a highbirth-rate, though negatived almost invariably by acorresponding death-rate, was a natural ideal amongst apeople threatened with constant depletion by the severity ofmilitary selection. Tacitus, ignorant of relativism, failedto see that the evil he deprecated in Rome was theinevitable result of the tendency which he lauded amongstthe Germans.

The basis of selection was stature as well as strength.Infanticide, therefore, would have been impossible as a

check on failure. Early marriages were forbidden, butinstead of a penalty on the childless, we find anencouragement of celibacy. (Cues., "Bell. Gall.," vi. 21) Itseems, therefore, that there was some endeavour to limit thenumber of children, which found no place in the Taciteanscheme of German morality.

In place of the Spartan a compliance" we find polygamy on alimited scale, conceded as a privilege only to a few " onaccount of noble birth." Satisfied with this regulation ofnature, they paid no attention to nurture. The children grewto manhood, naked and uncared for, with no distinctionbetween master and slave. The women, it seems, like thewomen of the Republic, followed their husbands into war.(Strabo, 20.)

The results of this system appear inevitable enough. We finda race conspicuous for its stature and strength, butconspicuous also for its absence of moral courage. Thechildren, says Tacitus, reproduce the vigour of theirparents, and he speaks of their stature and strength of limbas the admiration of the Romans. Their tallness isfrequently a theme for comment in the " Histories."("Hist-," iv. I, I4; v.14) When Rome fell to theFlavianists, it was assumed that anyone of exceptionalstature was a Vitellianist and a German.

But they were mere machines with no moral courage to turntheir strength to account. With Spartan training to developthe raw material of inheritance, they would have been adifferent race. They were incapable of enduring hardships towhich they had not been inured("German.," 4): their frameswere huge, but vigorous only for attack; their strength wasgreat for sudden effort, but they could not endure wounds. (Annals," ii. I4.) Their courage was the frenzy of theBerserk, not the disciplined valour of the Spartan hoplite.

In time their stature must have deteriorated. While thechildren of tall parents tend to be taller than the average,there is a gradual return to the mean. However severe andcontinuous the selection, there is a point beyond whichadvance cannot go. (See Eugenics Review, July, I9I2;Gossack, "Origin of Human Abnormalities.")

The German Eugenics seem to have left no impression upon theRoman mind. Their stature and physique were attributedmerely to chastity. (Caes ., "Bell. Gall.," vi. 21.) TheGerman system, therefore, led nowhere in antiquity: theSpartan system led on to the theories of Plato andAristotle.

The fifth century at Athens was an age of criticism andself-consciousness: the era of reflection had followed theera of intuition, and scepticism brought iconoclasm whichshattered the ancient symbols. There were abolitionists,collectivists, social reformers in every phase, but noscheme of Eugenics till Plato. Intensity of anti-Spartansentiment may have put such theories beyond the pale of thepatriot. Social reformers could End their arguments forcommunism or promiscuity among Hyperboreans, Libyans, andAgathyrsi; but Eugenics was a creed peculiar to thehereditary foe. Nevertheless, certain aspects of thequestion had been for centuries the commonplace of Greekthought. Even in the proverbial stage of Greek philosophythe gnomic poets among their isolated apothegms have caughtsome facets of the truth.

In Theognis there is a glimpse of the analogy between thebreeding of animals and human kind and almost ananticipatory scheme of Eugenics: "We seek well-bred rams andsheep and horses and one wishes to breed from these. Yet agood man is willing to marry an evil wife, if she bring himwealth: nor does a woman refuse to marry an evil husband whois rich. For men reverence money, and the good marry theevil, and the evil the good. Wealth has confounded therace." (Theog., v. I83.)

"His starting-point is the true one," remarks the ancientcommentator, "for he begins with good birth. He thought thatneither man nor any other living creature could be goodunless those who were to give him birth were good. So heused the analogy of other animals which are not rearedcarelessly, but tended with individual attention that theymay be noblest. These words of the poet show that men do notknow how to bear children, and so the race degenerates, theworse ever mingling with the better. Most people imaginethat the poet is merely indicting the custom of marrying thelow-born and vicious for the sake of money. To me it seemsthat this is an indictment of man's ignorance of his ownlife." (Stobaeus, lxxxviii.) Lycurgus, according toPlutarch,(Plut., "Lyc.," xv. 25.) used this analogy todemonstrate the folly of other cities where the husbands,keeping their wives in seclusion, beget children from themeven if mad, diseased, or past their prime. This was thestarting-point of the Spartan Eugenics, as it has been thestarting-point of the Modern: at Athens it was never morethan the sententious maxim of an early poet.

The evils of disparity of age, the thought that " one mustconsider the ages of those who are brought together," (Cf.Stobaeus, 7I. a 20.) had formed themes for Hesiod, (695 etseq.) Sappho, (20.) and Theognis.(457.) Pythagoras, it issaid, had discussed the bad effects of earlymarriage:(Muller, " Fr. Hist. Gk.," ii. 278.) Solon hadlegislated upon it; (Plut., "Sol.," xx. 25.) and had dealtno less with that other recognized evil of antiquity andmodern times, the mercenary marriage. (Ibid., I5.)

A problem that obsessed the Greeks was the relativeinfluence of nature and nurture, of gametic and non-gameticcauses. It is a question almost invariably of morals, thoughthe dominant aestheticism of Greek thought may have reducedthe problem to a single issue: " Thou art unpleasing to lookupon and thy character is like to thy form." (Stobseus, xc.9)

"Most children are worse than their parents, few arebetter."("Odyss.," ii. 227.) "The evil are not wholly evilfrom birth, but associating with the evil they have learntunseemly deeds." (Theog., 305) "Sometimes a noble offspringdoes not spring from well-born parents, nor an evil childfrom useless parents." (Soph., "Tyro, Fr." 583.) But thegeneral view of heredity was as fatalistic as Ibsenism. Noeducation can make the bad man good: no AEsculapius can curethe moral taint. (Theog., 432.) Just as roses and hyacinthsdo not spring from squills, so from a slave-woman no freechild can be born. (Ibid., 537) Antigone of Sophocles isfierce because her father was fierce,(47I.) just as theBrand of Ibsen was obstinate because his mother wasobstinate.

Modern knowledge has justified the Greeks in attributingthis dominance to heredity. Men do not gather grapes ofthorns, or figs of thistles: the total contribution ofenvironment is merely opportunity: it can only aid or retardthe development of genetic character. The Greeks, except inthe dramatic conception of an ancestral curse, or in theinherited pollution of ancient sacrilege, never tracedcauses back beyond the immediate progenitors. Galton heldthat the individual was the arithmetic mean of threedifferent quantities, his father and mother, and the wholespecies of maternal and paternal ancestors, going back in adouble series to the very beginnings of all life. ("NaturalInheritance.") Greek thought never concerned itself withthis third and unknown datum. Mendelism has brought us backonce more to the immediate parents.

Side by side with this interest in questions of nature andnurture is the dawn of that individualistic spirit, whichculminated at last in egotistic contempt of offspring andmarriage. Heraclitus is the forerunner of Stoicism,Democritus of Epicureanism, and the negative teaching of thesophists is the precursor of that atomistic conception ofsociety which reduced it to a mere complex of self-centredunits.

If there had been any attempt to systematize thesefragmentary conceptions, we should find it mirrored in thepages of Euripides. All the inconsistencies of currenttheory are voiced by opposing characters, every speculationthat was born " in that great seething chaos of hope anddespair," thesis and antithesis but no synthesis beforePlato. It is the diagnosis and not the remedy whichinterests Euripides.

There is the question of the marriage age. It is a banefulthing to give one's children in wedlock to the aged. ("Fr."I (Phcenix)) The aged husband is a bane to the youthfulwife. ("Fr." 2 (Dan.).) No less is it an evil to wed youthto youth, for the vigour of the husband endures for longer,but a woman more quickly fades from her prime. ("Fr." 8(AEol.).)

There is the denunciation, too, of mercenary marriage. Thosewho marry for position or wealth know not how to marry.("Fr." I6 (Melanippe); "Elec.," 1096.) Nature endures,wealth is fleeting. ("Elec.," 94I.) Is it not therefore theduty of the man, who takes good counsel, to marry the noble,and to give in marriage among the noble, and to have nodesire for an evil wedlock, even if one should thereby win awealthy dower? ("Androm.," I279 et seq.) There is muchdiscussion of the relative influence of heredity andenvironment. ("Elec.," 94I.) Is it not wonderful that poorsoil, blest with a favourable season from the gods, bearscorn in abundance, whilst good soil, deprived of what itshould have received, yields but a poor crop, yet with humankind the worthless is always base, the noble never anythingbut noble ? Is it the parents who make the difference, orthe modes of training? ("Hec.," 592 et seq.) And the answerof the ancients was that " Nature is greatest."("Fr." r2(Phoenix).) How true the old tale that no good child willever come from an evil parent. ("Fr." I5 (Dictys.).) Theopinion that children resemble their parents is oftentimesproved true. ("Fr." I0 (Antig.).) Noble children are bornfrom noble sires, the base are like in nature to theirfather. ("Fr." 7 (Alcmaeon).) If one were to yoke good withbad, no good offspring would be born; but if both parentsare good, they will bear noble children. ("Fr." g(Meleager).) Nevertheless, mortal natures are complexthings; a child of no account may be born of a noble sire,and good children from evil parents,("Elec.," 368.) but noeducation can transform the bad child of evil stock. ("Fr.Incert.." 38.) The fairest gift that one can give childrenis to be born of noble parents. ("Herac.," 298.) " I bid allmortals beget well-born children from noble sires." ("Fr."I7 (Antiope).) And the well-born man is the man who is noblein character, not the unjust man, though he be born of abetter father than Zeus. ("Fr." II (Dict.).)

Nevertheless, it remains a duty to educate one's childrenwell. ("Supp.," 9I7.) Specialized athleticism is as banefulas over-refinement. You cannot fight an enemy with quoits,nor drive them out with the fist. Though war is an evil,military training is an advantage to youth. ("Elec.," 388;"Med.," 295.)

Euripides reflects no less the growing cynicism of the age,abusing women, praising celibacy, denouncing the cares andanxieties of bringing up children. ("Med.," I030; "Alc.,"238, 885 et seq.) There is something, too, of thephilosophic egotism of Marcus Aurelius: if you marry, yourchildren may turn out evil; if they are good there is thefear of losing them. (Marc. Aurel., ix. 40; "Fr. (Enom.," 2;"Fr. Incert.," 963.) But in the " Ion" he speaks with thevoice of the old Athenian morality: " I hate the childless,and blame the man to whom such a life seems good." (Eurip.,488; "Ion.")

There is one passage which served as a text for Plutarch'streatise on Education, and might serve no less to-day as atext for Modern Eugenics:

(Greek Unreproducable - ref: Plut., "De Edu.," 2; "H. F.,"I264.)

Aristophanes also reflects all the foibles and obsessions ofa sceptical age. The existence of Eugenics at Sparta,robbing the theory of something of the revolutionary aspectwhich it wears to-day, would perhaps have rendered it less afeature for debate than community of wives or women'srights.

Nevertheless, if Eugenics had ever taken a prominent placein Athenian thought, it would have furnished a richer mineof parody than the fantastic obscenity of the Ecclesiazusae.It is commonly held that Socrates suggested all the thoughtand philosophy of the succeeding centuries. We shouldexpect, therefore, to find some cartography, as it were, ofEugenics paving the way for the fuller imaginings of hispupil Plato. If we regard Xenophon as the only trustworthysource for the oral teachings of Socrates, we may seek inthe " Memorabilia" for these earlier adumbrations. (VideZeller, "Socrates and his School," p. 100. )

We find the old question of nature and nurture, and with itan attempt to solve the problems of heredity. How is it,asks Hippias, " that parents of good stock do not alwaysproduce children as good "? To put the dilemma in a modernform, Why is it that personal value is not necessarily thesame as reproductive value ? And the answer which Socratessuggests is an answer which has been given to the samequestion to-day. Good stock is not everything; both parentsmust be equally in their prime. ("Mem.," ii. 4.) "Theapparent anomalies which children present in not reproducingthe qualities of their parents only serve to reveal thepresence of particular conditions, and among thoseconditions must be included the changes which organismundergoes by reason of advancing age." (Marro, "Influence ofParental Age." Paper read before Eugenics Congress.)

There are other conditions also. Eugenics begins earlierthan birth; the unborn child must be protected by bestowingdue care on the future mother. A man, says Socrates, has atwofold duty: towards his wife, to cherish her who is toraise up children along with him, and towards children yetunborn, to provide them with things which he thinks willcontribute to their well-being. ("Mem.," book 2, chap. ii.)The fatal handicap may have already begun in the starving oroverworking of the mother.

But congenital (greek ommitted) must be emphasized byeducation: Socrates is deeply impressed with the evils ofits neglect both on the physical and spiritual side. TheAthenians, not content with neglecting a good habit, laughto scorn those who are careful in the matter. When will theAthenians pay strict attention to the body ? (iii. 5.) WhileEuripides denounces the baneful effect of the great athleticfestivals, Socrates laments the indifference which couldproduce an Epigones. (iii.12.)

It is no aesthetic view of morals which makes Socratesinsist on the need of physical training: he is concernedrather with the effect of ill-health upon the mind: thereasoning powers suffer atrophy: ill-health may expel allknowledge from a man. (iii. 12.)

There must be moral education no less than physicaltraining. "Corruptio optimi pessima" is the warning ofSocrates as well as of Plato. (iv. 2; cf. "Rep.," 497b) Theyouth with the best natural endowments will, if trained,prove superlatively good. Leave him untrained, and he willbecome, not merely evil, but degenerate beyond hope ofreclaim. The very mag-nificence of his character makes itimpossible to restrain him.

In the Socratic treatment of Eugenic questions there aretraces of that individualistic spirit which, neglectingsocial aspects and regarding only personal consequences, ledon in logical succession to abnegation of marriage andoffspring. It is not mere momentary desire, says Socrates,which influences human beings in the production of children;nothing is plainer than the pains we take to seek out wiveswho shall bear us the finest children. (ii. 2.)

And the penalty for error is the penalty, not of human, butof Divine law. What worse calamity can befall a man than toproduce misbegotten children? (iv. 4.) And so with training:because the city has instituted no public military trainingthere is no need to neglect it in private. (iii. I2.) Nodemonstration of a self-incurred penalty is likely to appealto the degenerate or feeble-minded.

Xenophon was a man of timid and commonplace mind, andreported nothing he could not compre- hend. We may suspectfrom Plato that much of the Socratic teaching has been lost,but if there had been any fuller systematization ofEugenics, it is improbable that the Philo-Laconist Xenophonwould have failed to leave a record.

Critias, the pupil of Socrates, seems to have advocatedsomething like a Spartan system of Eugenics. "I begin withman's birth, showing how he may become best and strongest inbody, if the father trains and undergoes hardship, and thefuture mother is strong and also trains." ("Krit. Muller.Fr. Hist. Gk.," ii. 68.) But a complete development alongSpartan lines begins with Plato, and Socrates led not onlyto Plato, but to Cynic and Cyrenaic individualism.

Nevertheless, the incivism of the Cynic, bringing with itthe belief in a self-centred and isolated self, neverinvolved, like the later asceticism, the entire uprooting ofall sexual desire. The wise man will marry for the sake ofchildren, associating with the most comely. (Diog., ii.)Antisthenes employed analogy from animal life, but it servedonly to point the cry of abandonment of cities andcivilization, and return to the simple and primitive. TheCyrenaic no less is (greek ommitted), and equally anegotist; but complete negation of social duties andactualization of despair was only possible when Greece hadlost for ever the ideal of the city state.

Sparta conceived the first system of practical Eugenics; thefirst formulation in theory belongs to Plato. Archytas ofTarentum, Phaleas of Chalcedon, and Hippodamus, the Haussmanof the Piraeus, may have anticipated the Platonic communism:the Platonic Eugenics is based on no Utopia, but on a livingand successful community. The scheme of the Republic, thoughit owes a little to contemporary thought, something also tocontemporary science, is most of all a speculativedevelopment of the Spartan system. In this respect onecannot speak of the Platonic Republic as the perfection ofthe laws of Lycurgus; (Montesq., "Esprit des Lois," vii.16.) nor can it be truly said that if Lycurgus had only puthis scheme in writing, it would have appeared far morechimerical than the Platonic. (Rousseau, "Emile," I.)

On the negative side there is infanticide, and approval ofthe practice of destroying life in the germ. As in thatother question of slavery, there are signs that Plato, fromhis speculative Pisgah, had glimpses of a higher humanity.But he succeeded only in formulating an ineffectualcompromise which retained the same evils under another name.Concealment of the newborn child " in an unknown andmysterious hiding-place" is still infanticide.

In an earlier passage copper may rise to silver, silver togold, and the copper-child of golden parents may be degradedto its own class. ("Rep.," 423) This is a higher ideal thanthat of Aristotle, whose slave, the hopeless product ofheredity, can never shake himself free from the trammels ofhis birth. So to-day Eugenists have recognized that in themass of men belonging to the superior class one finds asmall number of men with inferior qualities, while in themass of men forming the inferior classes one finds a certainnumber of men with superior characters. It is suggested thatbetween these two exceptional categories social exchangesshould be made, allowing the best of the lower stratum toascend, compelling the unadapted who are found above todescend to their own level. (Cf. Professor Niceforo, "Causesof Mental and Physical Characters in Lower Classes." Paperread before Eugenics Congress.)

But the Platonic dialogues, and on a higher scale theconcise lecture notes of Aristotle, are not the mereexfoliation of a finished product of thought, but a gradualdevelopment. One idea devours another; there is thesis andantithesis, and the final synthesis, if achieved at all, isfound at the end and not at the beginning. When Plato cameto formulate a positive scheme of Eugenics, his Spartanmodel seemed to show him that infanticide in some form wasinevitable, when there was no knowledge to control thevagaries of nature. It was the ancient solution of theproblem of heredity, and is still the solution of thebreeder who " breeds a great many and kills a great many."So the issue of inferior parents and defective children bornof good stock are to be " hidden away." Concealment is thePlatonic euphemism for infanticide. Men and women, past theproscribed age, are to do their best to prevent anyoffspring from seeing the light: if they fail, they are todispose of their issue on the understanding that it is notto be reared. (1 "Rep.," 461c.)

Plato's critics from the days of Aristotle have concernedthemselves with the position of his third class, but in nolong period of time this class would have suffered totalextinction. Plato solved one problem to raise another. Likethe primitive tribes, who, slaughtering every child that wasborn, were compelled to steal the children of their enemies,Plato, by eliminating the offspring of the lower class,would have forced his guardians to steal the* men of copperfrom their foes. A community needs its lower classes, justas the body needs its humbler organs: subordinate to all,these men of copper are yet the most necessary of all. Inhis anxiety to breed a race of Eugenes, Plato removed theconditions which made their existence possible. While thechildren of the lower classes are to be eliminated at birth,nature would have eliminated the children of the upperclasses. Plato's pens would have been as fatal as thecreches of Paris or the Foundling Hospital of Dublin.

Besides infanticide there are other methods for dealing withcertain types of the unfit. The Platonic theory of medicineis a recurrence to the practice of the primitive savage,who, under pressure of want or war, abandoned the aged andinfirm, and left them to die of exposure or starvation.Plato would leave the valetudinarian to die because he isincapacitated from fulfilling his appointed task, and willbeget children in all probability as diseased as himself ifhis miserable existence is protracted by the physician'sskill. ("Rep.," 407.)

Herodicus is useless both to himself and to the state, forchronic ill-health, as Socrates taught, reacts upon themind. It is no part of the physician's task to " pamper aluxurious valetudinarianism": the art of Asclepius is onlyfor those who are suffering from a specific complaint. Sothe chronic invalid will be left to die, even if he bericher than Midas.

There are two types whom Plato would condemn to naturaleliminationÑthe victims of constitutional ill-health, andthe victims of self-indulgence. (Ibid., 408.) Refusedmedical aid, they are allowed to linger on, but there is nohint of segregation or custodial care to exclude them fromparenthood. Under the later Eugenic scheme it is clear thatthe offspring of any such unions would have been ruthlesslyexterminated: there was no place in the Platonic Republicfor the " unkempt " man, glorying in a pedigree ofcongenital ailment. (Theophrastus, I9 ) To-day thelimitations of our knowledge render restrictive measurespossible only in the case of the feeble-minded.

But apart from the physical degenerate, there is the moraldegenerate, no mere encumbrance to society, but an activeforce for evil. No law of nature operates for hiselimination; therefore, like the lower desires of the soulwhich cannot be tamed to service under the higher self, hisgrowth must be stopped. Society has no course but to put himout of the way. ("Rep.," 410a.) The modern treatment of themorally incurable is humaner than the Platonic, yet lackingin humanity. We pity degeneracy when it takes the form ofdisease, but when it takes the form of immorality or crimewe blame and we punish. The habitual criminal is no less avictim of heredity than the prisoner in Erewhon, " convictedof the great crime of labouring under pulmonaryconsumption." (Samuel Butler, "Erewhon," p. 72. Cf. Bateson,"Biological Fact and Structure of Society," p. I9.)

Plato bases his constructive scheme on that analogy of thebreeder which has formed the premisses, latent or confessed,for all Constructive Eugenics from the days of Lycurgus. "What very first-rate men our rulers ought to be," saysSocrates, " if the analogy of animal holds good with regardto the human race!" Glaucon, accepting the analogy literallyand without limitation, justifies the harshest stricturesthat have been levelled against any such conception ofEugenics. ("Rep.," 459.) In the Platonic Republic, thoughnot in Sparta, there is a race of supermen, the breeders ofthe human kingdom, arbitrarily interfering with naturalinstinct in order to produce a noble stock. Plato,recognizing that even in Greece there were limits set to thesphere of the legislator, and unable to appeal to thecogency of assured knowledge to support his philosophicimperatives, resorts instead to childish subterfuge, '¢ aningenious system of lots."

But compulsion, or guidance, however veiled, is foredoomedto failure in the case of an institution which can only reston inclination or an innate sense of duty. Moreover, "custom is lord of all," and custom can only be modifiedgradually and in the course of centuries: it is only thethinnest surface layer with which the legislator can tamper.No social reform or political progress can be effected bythe arbitrary creation of institutions to which there are noanswering ideas: external coercion with no correspondentreaction can achieve no permanent good. The basis of law issubjective. Modern Eugenists have recognized that, if thereis to be Eugenics by Act of Parliament, the Eugenic idealmust first be absorbed into the conscience of the nation.

The Spartan system of " compliances " is developed into asystem of temporary marriages instead of the polygamy of theGermans. The best of both sexes are to be brought togetheras often as possible, and the worst as seldom as possible.Greater liberty is to be allowed to the brave warrior, but aliberty within restricted limits, and the concession is notfor the sake of the individual, but for the good of thestate. Plato is the slave of his analogy.

As at Sparta, there is regulation of the marriage age, acommonplace of contemporary thought, and therefore aninevitable feature of any Eugenic system. The parents mustbe in their prime of life: this period is defined as twentyyears in a woman, thirty in a man. A woman may bear childrento the state till she is forty; a man beginning attwenty-five, when he has passed " the first sharp burst oflife," may continue to beget children until he isfifty-five. For both in man and woman these years are theprime of physical as well as of intellectual vigour. InSparta we hear of no definite regulation concerning thosewho have passed their prime, beyond exclusion fromchild-bearing. Plato's treatment of the problem is " theonly point in this part of the Republic which is in anysense immoral, and a point upon which modern ethics may wellcensure the highest Greek morals." (Mahaffy, "History ofGreek Literature," vol. ii., part 1, 200 )

As to that second problem, the selection of qualities tobreed in, Plato, like Sparta, chose physique, but chose itbecause he believed that soul depends on body, matterconditions mind. There is no fairer spectacle than that of aman who combines beauty of soul and beauty of form. ("Rep.,"402.) Physical and intellectual vigour ripen simultaneously.Modern Eugenists no less hold it a legitimate workinghypothesis that the vehicle of mental inheritance is atbottom material. (Eugenics Review, July, I9I2; Cyril Burt,"Inheritance of Mental Characters.") There is a furtherrequirement that parents should as far as possible be ofsimilar nature.

There is no mention in the Republic of that care for thefuture mother which was a feature of the Spartan system. Butthere is a twofold scheme of education adapted for thedevelopment of other qualities than the merely physical, thefirst an (greek omitted) diverging little from the customaryeducation of the day, and then that second formulation whichwas to culminate in the knowledge of the good itself. Oncehe had shaken himself free from the military ideals ofSparta, Plato, concerned no longer to write a tract for thetimes, ends by building an ideal city where only gods orsons of gods could live.

In this scheme of education it is recognized thatenvironment no less than heredity plays a part in thedevelopment of the individual. The banks of the stream mustbe cleansed as well as its source. Good environment, (GreekOmmitted), is the keystone of the Platonic system; itsessence is " nurture." The young citizen is like an animalat pasture; from the things all about him he assimilatesgood and evil, and what he gathers from his environmentbecomes embodied in his character. A gifted soul in vitiatedsurroundings is like a rare exotic sown in unfavourablesoil; gradually losing its true nature, it sinks at last tothe level of its surroundings. But after all "Nature isgreatest." There are lower desires which no good influencecan ever spiritualize. Education can only turn to the lightthe intrinsic capacities of the soul.

The relative influence of these two factors has beenexpressed in much the same terms to-day. Men have aconsiderable capacity for being moulded by environment, nosmall susceptibility to the influences of education andearly training. But these influences operate in acircumscribed sphere. There is in the brain at birth aproclivity towards certain directions rather than others: tothis original inherited capacity environment can addnothing: it can only develop or frustrate it. The Socialistwho contends that all men should and might be made equalwould find no friend in Plato any more than in modernEugenists.

Finally, there is the question of the regulation of thenumbers of the state " to prevent it becoming too great ortoo small." ("Rep.," 423c.) The Spartan problem waspreservation of numbers; the problem of the Republic wouldhave centred about this same aspect in an even greaterdegree. In a state where the best children were foundlingsand the rest were eliminated at birth, the infantiledeath-rate would have more than counterbalanced any rise inthe birth-rate. Moreover, among the adult population thereare other factors working for eliminationÑ " wars anddiseases and any similar agencies." Military selection isessentially anti-eugenic: not only does it extinguish thebest elements of the state, but it removes from thereproducing part of the population large numbers of theselected. Disease, though more the resultant of the crowdedconditions following on modern urbanization, found itshecatomb of victims even in ancient times. Plato, aware ofthe ruthless waste of life which attends on Nature's processof elimination, was blind to the tendencies of his ownshort-sighted scheme.

Obsessed by the idea of the mean and a mystic doctrine ofnumbers, he would fix the number of the state at anunalterable 8,000. To attain this static equilibrium theguardians are to regulate the number of marriages. ("Rep.,"460.) The elimination of the lower class by infanticidesaved Plato from the needs of a (Greek omitted), but thealien is neither expelled nor encouraged; his existence isforgotten. There is little doubt that in no long period oftime the Platonic guardians would have been faced with thegrave problem of depopulation.

It is recognized to-day that it should be the endeavour ofsocial organization to secure the " optimum" number, and notthe maximum number. " To spread a layer of human protoplasmof the greatest thickness over the earth--the impliedambition of many publicists-Ñin the light of naturalknowledge is seen to be reckless folly." (Bateson,"Biological Fact and Structure of Society," p. 21) But thereis a natural tendency which limits the numbers of thepopulation to the energy-income of the earth. Among theintelligent classes of a civilized community it is effectedby control of reproduction; among the lower classes the sameequilibrium is brought about by a differential death-rate.The Platonic aim was justified biologically as well as fromthe economic point of view, but his methods were mistaken.

Legislation would have failed in the Republic as it failedin Sparta and Imperial Rome.

Selfish and parochial as the Spartan, the Platonic Eugenicsis more an academic dream than a practical method ofamelioration. Yet it was an essential step towards progresswhen Eugenics, divorced from militarism, found a place forthe intellect of the philosopher King beside the physique ofthe warrior.

From the Republic we pass to the " Politicus." A workintended as a " metaphysical exercise in the art ofdifferentiations has merely a parenthetic concern withEugenics. We find, however, a brief and fantasticadumbration of a constructive scheme.

In the Republic selection was on the basis of physique andsimilarity of character; in the Politicus Plato's aim is thefusion of contrasted temperaments. Rightly recognizing thatthe law of sexual attraction is " like to like," ("Polit.,"310. Cf. Havelock Ellis, "Studies in Psychology of Sex,"vol. iv.) he would yet set himself in opposition to thesimple psychology of the lover.

In the Protagoras Socrates had maintained that there wasonly one virtue; in the Politicus Plato asserts not only apartial opposition between distinct virtues, but a similaropposition pervading art and nature. It is the royal art toweave a state of one texture out of the warp and woof ofhuman society. Courage wed to courage through manygenerations culminates in insanity: the soul full of anexcessive modesty mated to a similar soul becomes in the enduseless and paralyzed. Therefore opposite must be wed toopposite, so as to effect a fusion of characters in thechild. Content to lay down principles, Plato makes nomention of the means by which he would achieve his end.

The Platonic hypothesis of fusion finds no verification inMendelism. The most noticeable point in human inheritance isthe frequency with which children resemble one parent to theapparent exclusion of the other. The phenomena of " coupling" and "repulsion," of dominant and recessive characters,under the present limitations of our knowledge, renderimpossible, even if desirable, any attempt to interlace thewarp and woof of society more Platonico. The well-attestedfact of dichotomy in human inheritance would effect thecomplete reversal of Plato's aim.

From the fantastic laconism of the Republic and thevisionary parenthesis of the Politicus we pass to thepalinode of disillusioned senility, the Laws. Like Lear,Plato has brought up ungrateful children, and they haveturned against him. An Athenian ideal supersedes theSpartan; he would show that his principles are perfectlyconsonant even with Athenian ideas; he would modify themtill they came within the scope of practical action,building a "City of Cecrops " in place of his "City of God."

Yet in the background there are still traces of his oldideal. As in the Politicus, the aim of marriage is to be thecombination of opposites. "Children," says Apuleius, "are tobe conceived in the seed-bed of dissimilar manners." Theheadstrong must mate with the prudent, and the prudent withthe headstrong, tempering their natures as wine is temperedby water. ("Laws," 773d) But not only is there to be afusion of characters, there is to be a combination also ofstatus and income: the rich must not marry the rich, nor thepowerful the powerful. This triple basis of selection, withthe infinite perplexities it involves, is the reductio adabsurdum of the Platonic thesis of fusion.

Modern Eugenists, faced with the difficulties of selection,have attempted to infer the aptitude of individuals fromtheir social and economic position. This would be a questionof acting, so that marriages would be effected predominantlyamongst the wealthy and prevented as far as possible amongthe poor. (Cf. Achille Loria, "Psychophysical and EconomicElite." Paper read before Eugenics Congress.) But Plato wasnot concerned with the relation between the economic andpsychophysical elite, or with proving that the former werethe product of the latter. On the contrary, obsessed by theidea of harmony, he would wed the rich to the poor, the poorto the rich.

The Platonic conception of marriage implies an irrationaluniverse. Personal inclination is to be sacrificed on thealtar of political expediency. Nevertheless, Platorecognized the power of the " myriad voices " of opinion. "In the case of marriages, births, and patrimonies he swervesfrom the rules laid down for the former commonwealth bymaking marriages an affair of individuals, and the businessof the suitors themselves private." ("Apul. DogmataPlatonis.") He realizes that legal compulsion in suchmatters would arouse anger and ridicule. Therefore, likemodern Eugenists, he would trust to the power of publicopinion.

The state is to be monogamous, and, as in Sparta and theRepublic, there is regulation of the marriage age. A womanis to marry between the ages of sixteen and twenty, a mannot earlier than twenty-five ("Laws," 772d) or thirty,(Ibid., 721a, 785b.) and not later than thirty-five. Theperiod of child-bearing is to last for ten years; at the endof that period, if there are no children and the parents arefree from censure, honourable divorce is to be conceded.

As at Sparta, there is to be care for the future child, seton a wider basis of science. There are times whenincontinence, ill-health, moral delinquency of any kindleave their impress upon the mind or body of the offspring.Parents must bear in mind that they are handing down thetorch of life to future generations. (Ibid., 776b.)

Eugenics is being studied from the point of view of medicalscience. Already in the Republic Plato had owed something tothe teaching of Hippocrates, (Galen., p. 875) and in thisdiscussion of prenatal influences we may trace a furtherdebt. "To form a child from birth to the best constitution,first of all care must be taken of the seed itself, then offood) drink, exercise, quiet, sleep, desires, and otherthings, all of which Plato has carefully studied." (Galen.,"Hippoc. et Plat.," p. 465)

The Modern Eugenist in such "dysgenic" influences asalcoholism finds an explanation of the apparent anomalies ofheredity. All forms of degradation, physical, intellectual,moral, fall upon the degenerates who are the offspring ofsuch parents. (Magnan and Filassier, "Alcoholism andDegeneracy." Paper read before Eugenics Congress.) But sucha system of espionage as Plato proposes is entirelyrepugnant to modern ideas. For the first ten years ofmarried life the parents are subject to continualsupervision. ("Laws," 784b) Inquisitorial methods can onlyachieve negative results.

The educational scheme of the Laws is a very different thingfrom that of the Republic. Pitched at a level which makes itpossible for all, it leads to no final knowledge of thegood. There are Public Infant Schools, but education is tocease after the age of six. Besides gymnastic and music,there is some training in the sciences, but the ideal isPythagorean rather than Platonic.

Modern Eugenists lay less stress on training, not becausetheir knowledge of heredity is greater, but because modernconditions curtail the opportunities of the educationist.The citizen of the Republic and the Laws had no need of"bread-studies."

No less than in the Republic Plato recognizes that educationby itself cannot achieve everything. Men well educatedbecome good men: without gymnastic and other educationneither soul nor body will ever be of much account. ("Laws,"641c, 766a.) But a fortunate nature is as necessary as agood education, and those of the Athenians who become goodmen become good without constraint by their own natures.Only a few can achieve perfect happiness, and these are theywho divine and temperate, and gifted with all other virtuesby nature, have also received everything which goodeducation could impart. (Ibid., 642d, 992d.)

In addition to education and heredity, Plato, influenced,perhaps, by the treatise of Hippocrates, recognizes theinfluence of material environment. There is a difference inplaces, and some beget better men and others worse. Someplaces are subject to strange and fatal influences by reasonof diverse winds and violent heats or the character of thewaters. Again, there is the character of the food suppliedby the earth, which not only affects the bodies of men forgood or evil, but produces the same result on their souls.But geographic environment cannot produce a given type ofmind any more than education: it can only foster or thwartheredity. It merely determines what shall actually be byselective destruction of the incompatible.

As to the negative aspect of this scheme, Plato wouldsegregate the madman and expel the pauper. The madman is notto be seen in the city, but the responsibility rests uponthe relatives, not upon the state. If they fail in theirduty, the law will punish them. The treatment of the insanewas a difficult problem in an age when there were noasylums.

There is another problem, also, which has assumed far largerproportions to-day owing to the growth of humanitariansentiment and the enormous numbers of the modern state.Plato has a simple and ruthless way with the pauper. In aproperly constituted state the righteous man will not beallowed to starve: there is no excuse for the beggar. " Ifsuch a one be found, he shall be driven out of themarket-place, out of the city, out of the land, that thestate may be purged of such a creature. ("Laws," 936c.) Whena city is small, there is no difficulty in maintaining thepoor; such a prohibition might have been enforced withoutdifficulty in an ancient state. We may approve of the simplethoroughness of the Platonic method, but the complexity ofmodern conditions has rendered its adoption impossible.

In the eyes of the Socialist unemployed and unemployablealike are the victims of the social system: to the Eugenist,the chronic pauper is the victim of the germ-plasm-heredity. With increased knowledge to justify restrictions,the modern state may be purged of the pauper more slowly,but no less surely, than the Platonic state of the Laws.

Plato, moreover, recognized bodily or mental defects as abar to marriage, though not viewing the question from itsEugenic aspect. He is concerned with the parents, and notwith the children. The law does not forbid marriage with anorphan who is suffering from some defect; it merely refrainsfrom compulsion. Modern Eugenists, concerned withclassifying such defects into transmissible andnon-transmissible, regard the question from a differentview-point. In the matter of inspection to decide thefitness of age for marriage there is something of the ideawhich came to life again in More's "Utopia " andCampanella's "City of the Sun." ("Laws," 925 e and b.)

Finally, there is the question of the numbers of thepopulation. It is no definitely Eugenic conception thatleads to the limitation of 5,040: there is a certainMalthusian element, and something of a prepossession with amystical doctrine of numbers. " The means of regulation aremany," but the means of the humaner Laws are not those ofthe Republic. In the case of an excessive population thefertile may be made to refrain, or, as a last resort, thereis " that old device," the colony. Faced with the oppositeextreme, the rulers will resort to rewards, stigmas, andadvice; but if disease or war bring devastation, no courselies open except to introduce citizens from without.("Laws," 741.) Births and deaths must be registered, inorder to make it possible to check the numbers of thepopulation. There is no (greek ommitted), no (greekommitted) , no infanticide, though it seems that Plato wouldconcede the practice of destroying life in the germ. It isonly in the case of some such cataclysm as Plato anticipatedthat legislative interference with questions of quantity isjustified.

Even in this endeavour to sacrifice ideals to possibilitiesthere is still the a-priorism of the visionary. There ismore humanity, more concession to the infirmities of humannature, but little that comes within the scope of practicalaction. Neither the legislation of the Republic nor theprecepts of the Laws could have ever realized the Platonicdream of Eugenlcs.

From Plato we pass to Aristotle and the culminating periodin the history of Ancient Eugenics. The Aristotelian schemeis almost entirely negative and restrictive. There isinfanticide, but infanticide in its last phase, exposure ofthe imperfect and maimed, and, in the case of superfluouschildren, destruction of life in the germ. There is nofantastical scheme for the fusion of parental temperament,no rigid selection on the sole basis of physique.

Like Plato, Aristotle believed in the intimate relationshipbetween psychological phenomena and physical conditions.("De Anim.," 402b, 8.) Body stands to soul in the relationof matter to form, potentiality to actuality; soul is theentelechy of the body. (Ibid., ii. I, 412a, 28.) Body beingprior chronologically to soul, demands attention first, butonly for the sake of the soul. ("Pol.," 1334b.) Care,therefore, must be taken that the bodies of the children mayanswer the expectations of the legislator.

There is no need for a man to possess the physique of awrestler in order to be the father of healthy children;neither must he be a valetudinarian nor physicallydegenerate. There is a via media between the extremes ofspecialized athleticism and physical incapacity, and it isthis mean which is the desirable condition for both men andwomen. The valetudinarian who would have been left to die inthe Republic may one day be eliminated by the humanermethods of Aristotle. There is much evidence to prove thatphysical weakness is a case of simple Mendeliantransmission.

As at Sparta and in the states of the Republic and Laws,there is limitation of the marriage age. Aristotlerecommends the difference of twenty years between the agesof husband and wife, or, more accurately, the differencebetween thirty-seven and eighteen. Comparison with themarriage age defined in the Republic and Laws shows thatancient thought had decreed no definite period. Four reasonsincline Aristotle to select these ages. Since theprocreative power of women stops at fifty, the harmony ofthe union will be preserved by insuring that husband andwife shall grow old at the same period of time. Thedisadvantages which attend too great nearness or distance inage between father and child are also avoided. Moreimportant than all, these ages, consulting the physicalwellbeing of husband and wife, afford the best prospect ofwell-developed children.

It is possible to approve of the postponement of marriagetill eighteen, or even later; but the disparity of agesseems unnecessarily great. Aristotle, studying the resultsof early marriage in other cities, deplored its banefuleffect on physique. Modern Eugenists point no less to theeffect on the moral character of the offspring.

Like Sparta and Plato, Aristotle forbade those past theirprime to rear children to the state. Marriage is thusdivided into two periods, and this first period is to lastfor seventeen years, not ten as in the Laws. Moreover, hewould fix even the season for contracting marriage, and inconformity with Pythagoras and Greek custom generally,chooses Gamelion. To-day it is held that neither thevitality of the offspring, their physique, nor theirintellectual capacity, show any clear correlation with theseason of birth. " There is no atavistic heritage of aspecial season for reproduction which the human race haveoriginally shown analogous to what one finds to-day in manyspecies of animals." (Gini, "Demographic Contributions tothe Problems of Eugenics." Paper read before EugenicsCongress.) "The married couple ought also to regard theprecepts of physicians and naturalists." Aristotle,belonging to an Asclepiad family, received the partlymedical education which was traditional in such families.Some of his encyclopaedic writings deal with medicalsubjects, and he is said to have practised medicine as anamateur. This is a further stage of the tendency which hadbegun with Plato's debt to Hippocrates.

Care for the child is to begin before the cradle. AndAristotle insists, like the Spartan legislator, on theavoidance of sedentary occupation and the need for a properdietary. But he is concerned not only with effect onphysique, but also, like Plato, with effect on the mind.

The first seven years of a child's life are to be spent athome, not in the creches of the Republic, nor in the publicinfant schools of Plato's Laws. This is to be a time ofgames, " mimicries of future earnest," under the charge ofthe inspectors of children, for Aristotle held with Platothat the majority of our likes and dislikes are formed inthese early ages. Education is to run in cycles of sevenyears; the child is to be controlled at every period of itsevolution. From the age of seven to puberty there arestate-controlled gymnastics, but these gymnastics, unlikethe Spartan, are merely a means to a further end thetraining of reason from puberty to the age of twenty-one.After this education ceases, and the young man brings bodyand mind, fully developed, to the service of the state.Aristotle's scheme is merely adumbrated: there are scatteredsuggestions rather than coordination, and the last stage ofscience, which is to cultivate the reason, is nevermentioned at all.

Aristotle, like the Ancients generally, recognizes theimportance of both environment and heredity. There are threestages in the formation of character, nature, custom,reason: innate potentiality, environment, self-direction bythe light of a principle. We are born good, we have goodnessthrust upon us, we achieve goodness. Heredity to Aristotleexplains the slave just as certainly as it explains thosewho never will be slaves; yet to admit emancipation for allslaves is to confess that there is no slave by naturewithout the potentialities of full manhood. It is true thatsome men from the beginning are fit only for that lower workon which the fabric of society must rest. The maintenance ofheterogeneity is an essential condition of progress: theremust always be the minuti homines at the base of things,though we have long since passed from the permanent gradesof Plato, Aristotle, and the Middle Ages. Plato, indeed, atone period seems to have conceded that the man from thecopper class might rise to the silver or gold, and it is atthis that social reform must aim, not to abolish class, butto provide that each individual shall, as far as possible,reach his proper stratum and remain in it. (Cf. Bateson,"Biological Fact and Structure of Society," p. 33. )

Like Plato, Aristotle recognizes that there are victims ofheredity who can never be made good by education. ("Pol.,"1316a.) But this factor of heredity is amenable to nocertain control. Helen may boast of her immortal lineage,but those who think it reasonable that as a man begets a manand a beast a beast, so from a good man a good man should bedescended, these fail to see that, though such is the desireof nature, her failures are frequent. (Ibid., 1255b)Nature's aim is perfection, to make this the best of allpossible worlds; but there are failures because matter isnot always congruous with form. ("De Cael.," 271a, 33; "Gen.An.," iv. 4, 770b, I6.) But "Nature's defects are man'sopportunities": matter must therefore be helped as far aspossible to the realization of its true form by the humanagency of education.

So much importance did Aristotle attach to education that,like Sparta, he would make it entirely an affair of thestate. There is to be one educational authority and one solesystem of education.

The laws of Aristotle are as catholic as the laws of Alfred:" the legislator must extend his views to everything."("Pol.," 1333a) Therefore his Eugenic scheme will beenforced by law. His aim is to embody public opinion in law,not to educate opinion to such a point that law will becomeunnecessary.

"Every city is constituted of quantity and quality."(1296b.) Aristotle, therefore, no less than Plato, would fixan ideal limit to the population as well as regulate itsquality. In the Aristotelian scheme, as in the Platonic,there emerges a certain Malthusian element; but it is alegal ordinance and not a natural law: it is to preventpopulation from interfering with the equalization of lots,not from outrunning the limits of subsistence. He conceivedthat Plato's plan of unigeniture made it more than everessential that there should not be too many sons in ahousehold, and yet, in his view, the Platonic means wereinsufficient. But there is also the conception of the mean,of an enclosing limit or (greek ommitted), flowing naturallyfrom the teleological method. Just as a boat can no more betwo furlongs long than a span long, so a state can no morehave IOO,OOO citizens than ten. ("Eth.," 9, IO, 3) Itsessence lies in the fact that it can easily be comprehendedas a whole.

Yet, though Aristotle held the State to be a naturalorganism, he would not concede that hypertrophy wasprevented by natural laws without the need for humanco-operation. It is absurd to leave numbers to regulatethemselves, according to the number of women who shouldhappen to be childless, because this seems to occur in othercities. (1265b.) Rejecting as a mere palliative the remedyof colonization, which Pheidon of Corinth had suggested, andPlato had kept in the background of the Laws, he insistedthat a limit must be set to the procreation of children,even during a seventeen years' term. When infractionsoccurred- and one would imagine that under suchcircumstances they would be of frequent occurrence there isnot to be exposure, which is impious on the ground ofsuperfluity, but destruction of life in the germ.

Today limitation of numbers among the upper classes of thecommunity is being brought about naturally by the increaseof foresight and self-control. It is the lower classes whosereckless propagation constitutes the problem of ModernEugenics. Aristotle, denying these classes the rights ofcitizenship, and treating them politically as cyphers, setsthem outside his scheme of social reform. The number ofslaves, resident aliens, and foreigners, is to be left tochance, "and it is perhaps necessary that their numbersshould be large."

The Aristotelian Eugenics, therefore, are as selfish andparochial as the Spartan. As in the animal body, thehomogeneous are for the sake of the heterogeneous. (Arist.,"Part. An.," ii. I.) Where Eugenics is most necessary,Eugenics is denied; the man who performs a task which ruinshis body or his mind is set beyond the pale as a mere livinginstrument. This was the simple pre-humanitarian solution ofa difficult problem. But Aristotle recognized, as Eugenistsrecognize to-day, that any scheme of constructive Eugenicsmust be set aside as visionary and im-practicable (Bateson,"Biological Fact and Structure of Society," p. I2.) soslender is our knowledge of the genetic processes of man.Aristotle, finding a scapegoat in a mythological nature,abandoned the problem as insoluble: to-day we are stillseeking some outline of an analysis of human characters.

The chief interest of the Aristotelian Eugenics lies in thefact that he set out to construct a scheme which should bepracticable for Athens, no academic speculation in theclouds, but a possible plan of social reform. " Thelegislator must bear two things in mindÑwhat is possible andwhat is proper. It is not enough to perceive what is bestwithout being able to put it in practiced." (1289a) Hencecareful attention is paid to popular opinion and existingcustom. The consensus mundi, the collective capacity of themany, are factors the importance of which he constantlyemphasizes. This " divine right of things as they are,"involving a certain conservatism, led him to uphold anycustom revealing after analysis a balance of good in itsfavour. Hence the acceptance of infanticide and slavery, andregulation of the marriage age. The doctrine of the meanalso, which helped to decide the proper disposition ofparents and to fix the number of the state, was an essentialarticle of received opinion. If Athens had ever instituted aEugenic system, it would have been the system of Aristotle,not of Sparta or Plato.

Aristotle, applying the idea of development to knowledge aswell as to the objects of knowledge, not only conceived hisown theories as a development of those of his predecessors,but imagined himself as standing at the culmination of Greekthought. This eschatology was justified. The Politics notonly set the final seal upon political science in Greece} itmarks also the last word in Eugenics.

Looking back upon these past systems, we find that the taskwas easier for a pre-Christian age which could sacrifice thelower classes in the interests of the higher and solve theproblems of heredity by infanticide. Even when the influenceof Sparta had died away and Eugenics was regarded no longeras a mere ancillary to war, parochialism confined it to asingle state, inhumanity to a single class. The featureswhich are so prominent in all these early schemes preciselimitation of the marriage age and detailed schemes ofeducationÑare features which, though still recognized) nolonger have their place in the foreground of modern thought.

The Greeks were concerned more with the banks of the stream;the modern aim is to control its source. The gradual processof social reform during the first three quarters of thenineteenth century has gradually brought us farther back inthe course of successive stages. From measures of sanitationand factory laws we have passed to national schemes ofeducation. A gradual extension of aim has led to efforts toguard the child at birth, even before birth; and, finally,Eugenics has set itself to solve the problems of heredity.The " Life-History Albums " of Galton would trace theworkings of the ancestral curse, the Ate of inheriteddisease as well as of inherited sin: Mendelism would renderpossible a factorial analysis of the individual.

Nevertheless, though the Greeks abandoned the question ofheredity in despair, and, unable to prevent its victimsbeing born, slew them if possible at birth, they realizedmany of the problems which, 2,000 years later, are stillconfronting Eugenists, and they realized in part theremedies. It is wrong to say that antiquity never raised thequestion as to whether a hereditary disease orpredisposition to disease should be a bar to marriage. TheSpartans, Plato, Aristotle, all realized the problem, Platoreturning to atavism for his remedy, Aristotle conceivingthe humaner methods of Modern Eugenists. Sparta and Plato,too, were not blind to the need, to-day so urgent, ofrestrictive measures dealing with the insane, and Plato evendreamt of segregation. There is the recognition, also, thatEugenics is the sphere of the physician as well as of thephilosopher; that quantity is a factor in the problem aswell as quality; that selective Eugenics must regard thepsychical as well as the physical. But even that finalformulation in the pages of Aristotle, which would have beenpossible to the age, and more possible to-day than thenarrow scheme of Sparta or the unsubstantial visions ofPlato, even these saner Eugenics have in them much that isimpossible, no little that is abhorrent, to thinkers ofto-day. But the idea had been given life and brought tobear. Long after the sowers had passed away it sprang torenewed existence in a different age and in a differentform, engendered by new conditions.

After Aristotle stretches a gulf of years in which Eugenicslies amid the lumber of forgotten theory. The stateeducation of the fourth century may have owed something toPlato and Aristotle, but there is no state control ofmarriage. Zeno and Chrysippus, influenced, perhaps, by aperverted Platonism, advocated community of wives. But Zenotaught that the intelligent man should avoid all publicaffairs except in a state approaching perfection; andChrysippus, writing a treatise on the education ofchildhood, is reproached by Poseidonius for neglecting itsfirst and most important stages, especially those beforebirth. " Poseidonius blames Chrysippus and admires whatPlato taught about the formation of children while yetunborn." (Galen., "Hipp. et Plat.," v. i., p. 465.)

No attempt was ever made to realize the ideals of theRepublic "except by dreamers and somnambulists atsecond-hand in an age of mysticism and social degeneration."Plotinus obtained from the Emperor Gallienus and his wifethe concession of a ruined city in Campania, which had oncebeen founded by philosophers. He proposed to restore it,name it Platonopolis, and adopt the laws of Plato.(Porphyry, "Plotinus," c. I2.) This early anticipation ofthe Oneida Community never seems to have been realized.

In the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More the marriagepreliminaries, suggesting something of Plato's physicalpoint of view, recall a passage in the Laws. But inCampanella's "City of the Sun " we find a closerapproximation to the Platonic Eugenics.

Marriage, recognized as an affair of the state rather thanof the individual, because the interests of futuregenerations are involved, is only to be performed in thelight of scientific knowledge. The " great master," who is aphysician, aided by the chief matrons, is to supervisemarriage, which will be confined to the valorous andhigh-spirited. There is to be a system of state education,and the women are trained for the most part like men inwarlike and other exercises. Campanella has been called theprophet of Modern Eugenics: he is the connecting-linkbetween the crude Eugenics of the past and the scientificEugenics of Galton.

There is one brief attempt at practical Eugenics, the OneidaCommunity of Noyes, which, outrunning scientific knowledgeand the ideas of the day, raised the bitter antagonism of apublic not yet fitted to receive it. Two thousand yearsafter Aristotle Galton formulated the first scientificscheme of Eugenics.

This sudden arrest of the developing Eugenic ideal afterAristotle is not difficult of explanation. Realizing onlyvaguely the difficulties with which modern science hasencompassed the problem, the Ancients might have beenexpected to have cherished the ideal till actual experimentrevealed these incommensurable factors. With theirconception of the state (greek omitted) with theirrecognition of law as the sum of the spiritual limits of thepeople, with the favourable support of the consensus mundi,which Aristotle never opposed, everything seemed opportunefor its realization.

But just as a good man is crushed by a bad environment, so asocial theory must wither in an unresponsive age. Eugenicsis dependent upon the ethical perspective; the philosophy ofegotism --le culte de soi-eme- finds no appeal in a theorywhich looks beyond the pleasure of the individual to theinterests of the future race.

From Socrates to Aristotle philosophy has striven to stemthe current of political dissolution, and in philosophy wesee an insurgent pessimism, an ever-growing prominenceassigned to the theoretic life. The supremacy of Macedonsignalized the final breakdown of Greek civilization.Aristotle, standing on the border-line, found in classicantiquity an influence sufficiently strong to place thecommunity in the foreground as compared with the individual.

After Aristotle, the tendency which had already been at workamong the philosophers of the Academy and the Peripateticscompletely reversed the position. Turning aside from theideal of man as an organic member of society, philosophyconcerned itself instead with the satisfaction of the ideasof the individual.

In place of their old dead principles men required newguides: they sought and found in two directionsÑinOrientalism and philosophy. From Orientalism they learnt toprofess complete detachment from an ephemeral world ofsordid corporeal change, to contemn women and offspring, tothrow aside costume, cleanliness, and all the customarydecencies of life: Karma will soon be exhausted, Nirvanaattained. No theory of racial regeneration can flourish insuch an atmosphere of inconsequent egotism.

Epicureanism, with its watchword of " seclusion," teachingits disciples to forego marriage and the rearing ofchildren, can have had no place for Eugenics. Equallyopposed is the tendency of Stoicism, which " draws such asharp distinction between what is without and what is withinthat it regards the latter as alone essential, the former asaltogether indifferent, which attaches no value to anythingexcept virtuous intention, and places the highest value inbeing independent of everything." (Zeller, "Stoics andEpicureans," p. 310.)

Such a system is not likely to concern itself with theinterests of a state in which the mass of men are fools, anddenied every healthy endeavour. It is true that besides thistendency toward individual independence there was a logicaldevelopment of Stoicism which recognized that man, to obtainhis freedom, must live, not for himself, but for society.(Cic., "Fin.," iii. 19, 64; Sen., "Ep.," 95, 52 ("membrasumus corporis magni").) But it was the earlier end thatcontinued to predominate, bringing Stoicism nearer andnearer to the selfish egotism of Epicurus. It is only in acommunity of wise ones that a man will marry or begetchildren. (Epict., "Diss.," iii. 27, 67.) A generationimbued with such philosophies would have as little thoughtof racial improvement as an age which found its guidance inthe teachings of Schopenhauer and Hartmann.

Moreover, cosmopolitanism, consequent on the dissolution ofthe city state, not only brought individualism in its train,but let loose the inveterate pessimism of the Ancients. Solong as the city state existed, the Greeks, forgetful of theGolden Age in the past and the inevitable cataclysm in thefuture, concerned themselves with the future progress of alimited race. But pessimism, linked with individualism,became a living force in a despairing age, which had neverdeveloped the evolutionary conceptions of Anaximander. Menof after generations will be just as foolish and unthinking,and just as short-lived. Neither the future nor the pastmatters, but only the present. ("M.A. Disc.," II2.) Sooneror later all things will be transmuted again into the fierysubstance from which they came. Individualism and belief ininevitable decadence were the two influences whicheffectually thwarted the growth of Ancient Eugenics.

But this philosophy of Weltschmerz is an abandoned creed. Letemps de tristesses dogmatiques est passe. Organic evolutionhas changed our whole perspective. We see our wills astemporary manifestations of a greater Will: our sense oftime and causation has opened out to the infinite, and weare learning to subordinate the individual lot to thespecific destiny.

So Eugenics, ruthlessly practised in those distant ages, "when wild in wood the noble savage ran," rudelysystematized, passed into the constitution of Sparta. Theselfish creed of a warrior caste, even in the hands of Platoand Aristotle it never lost its parochialism, and when thisnarrow spirit gave way before the cosmopolitanism ofsubsequent philosophy, individualism, isolating human effortfrom a world rational only to the evolutionist, effectuallychecked the growth of the Eugenic ideal for centuries.