In primitive groups, the individual was practically
nil. But modern civilized society is able
to survive without the rigid control of individual
activities which the old economy entailed. Man
comes to choose more and more for himself individually
instead of for the group, uniformity weakens and individualism
becomes more pronounced. As control of environment
becomes more complete and easy, natural selection
grows harder to detect. We turn our interests
and activities toward the search for what we want
and take survival largely for granted—something
the savage cannot do. Natural selection becomes
unreal to us, because the things we do to survive
are so intricately mixed up with those we do for other
reasons. Natural selection in gregarious animals
operates upon groups rather than upon individuals.
Arrangement of these groups is often very intricate.
Some have territorial boundaries and some have not.
Often they overlap, identical individuals belonging
to several. Hence it is not strange that natural
selection phenomena often escape attention.
But this must not lead us to suppose that natural
selection is wholly inoperative in civilized society.
We see some nations outbreeding others, or dominating
them through superior organization. Within nations,
some racial and religious groups outbreed others and
thus gradually supplant them—for the
future is to those who furnish its populations.
CHAPTER V
RACIAL DEGENERATION AND THE NECESSITY FOR RATIONALIZATION OF THE MORES
Racial decay in modern society; Purely “moral”
control dysgenic in civilized society; New machinery
for social control; Mistaken notion that reproduction
is an individual problem; Economic and other factors
in the group problem of reproduction.
From the discussion in the preceding chapter, it becomes
apparent that for the half of the female element in
a savage society possessing the most vigor and initiative
to turn away from reproduction would in the long run
be fatal to the group. Yet this is what occurs
in large measure in modern civilized society.
Reproduction is a biological function. It is
non-competitive, as far as the individual is concerned,
and offers no material rewards. The breakdown
of the group’s control over the detailed conduct
and behaviour of its members is accompanied by an increasing
stress upon material rewards to individuals. So
with growing individualism, in the half of the race
which can both bear children and compete in the social
activities offering rewards, i.e., the women who
are specialized to the former and adapted to the latter,
there is a growing tendency among the most successful,
individualized strains, to choose the social and eschew
the biological functions.
Racial degeneration is the result. Recorded history
is one succession of barbarous races, under strong,
primitive breeding conditions, swamping their more
civilized, individualized neighbours, adopting the
dysgenic ways of civilization and then being swamped
in their turn by barbarians. This is especially
pronounced in our own times because popularized biological
and medical knowledge makes it possible for a tremendous
class of the most successful and enlightened to avoid
reproduction without foregoing sex activity.
